Fallen (58 page)

Nomi lowered herself through the hole. She was straining on her arms, looking down at what lay beneath her and sweating as she struggled not to step on it. But there was no alternative. She slipped, crying out as she fell, rolled and struck the floor across the room from Ramus. Out of sight, she spoke.

“What do we do, Ramus? What now?”

“Now it wakes,” he said.

Nomi stood in the far corner of the building, and he could see that she was terrified. Her eyes were wide, the left one surrounded with a dark sheen of fresh blood, and she stared directly at him.
How?
her eyes asked. Ramus smiled because he could see excitement there as well.

“It wakes,” he said, “but I'm not sure how.”

“You've come all this way . . . ?”

“I don't think it was ever truly asleep,” he said. “Its body may be, but not its mind. That's alive. Dreaming of escape, perhaps, or locked in nightmares about
never
being freed, but it's always active. Always waiting.”

“Waiting for someone like you?” He nodded. “Someone like me.”

“I hear them,” Nomi said, and Ramus heard them too. Clicking, hooting, the Sentinels were climbing the sides of the building, using their long legs and arms to haul themselves up onto the roof. They sounded wilder than ever, but Ramus thought it was probably fear. They made noise because silence would allow them to think.

“Cut the sac,” Ramus said. “Put your knife in, Nomi, and let what's inside out.”

“It can't be that easy. After so long?”

“We can only try.” And the more Ramus thought about it, the simpler it became. The thing was trapped in there somehow, unable to break free of its own accord, but if someone willing to do the freeing came here, then why
should
it be difficult? This place was hidden from the rest of the land, protected by the Sentinels because of how simple it would be to wake.

“Nothing should sleep forever,” Ramus said, and he placed the tip of his knife against the hard, leathery sac.

Shapes appeared at the circular hole above the center of the room. Sentinels. They stared down with wide eyes and mouths hanging open, and for once they uttered nothing. They were looking at the thing with dreadful awe.

Ramus leaned on his knife and pushed it through.

Age hissed out from the fresh wound. He held his breath, but he felt the warm exhalation against his neck and chest.

Words from the parchments came back to him, strange phrases other than the stone-curse he had used so much. The shadow in his mind seemed to filter them and make one phrase stand out, and Ramus spoke it. He felt power throbbing through the knife and into his hands.

The Sentinels screamed. They sounded like children being slaughtered, and they carried on screaming as they scrabbled away across the roof and fell to the ground outside. Others took up their scream—a wailing lament that filled the room and raised the hairs on Ramus's neck and arms.

He pushed harder and tugged at the knife, cutting upward. He muttered that phrase again, but this time it felt redundant, its purpose already achieved.

More air hissed out, and it had a brownish tinge.

“Nomi?” he said.

“I can't,” she said. She had backed into the corner and held the knife up before her, shaking as if she did not know which way to aim the blade: outward, or inward. “What have we done?”

“Found a God,” Ramus said, but his voice sounded distant and insignificant now, and nothing he could say would match the grandness of this moment. So he fell silent as he worked the knife upward, widening the cut and trying to see inside. It was too dark, and the air emerging was joined by a waft of steam that scorched his face, dried his eyes. He winced and stepped back. He still held the knife, aimed at another part of the sac, ready to start another cut . . . but it was not needed.

The sac shivered all across its surface. Dust shimmered into the damp air. The pipes protruding from the sac shook, and the junctions where they met the roof and walls cracked and poured dust and grit. Ramus saw for the first time that they were partly transparent, and something seemed to boil and roll within, like clouds driven into a frenzy by a terrible storm.

Shadows reached into the pipes. These shapes had defined edges, sharp against the tumult, and they bent and pressed against the fleshy sides, stretching them to the point of breaking.

The Sentinels screeched, Nomi shouted something, but Ramus did not understand. Language seemed superfluous against something so powerful and elemental.

The first pipe broke. Something gushed from it, a heavy fluid that barely splashed when it touched the ground. Gases rose and twisted in the air, forming shapes that seemed to move of their own volition. A black, shiny thing protruded from the rent in the pipe. Its sharp end opened like a giant claw. It clicked shut again, and in that brief, violent sound Ramus heard laughter and weeping.

The Sentinels had fallen silent.

Another pipe ruptured, and another, and the chamber floor was covered with the slick, hot fluid. Vapors danced before Ramus's eyes and within, seemingly working their way into his mind and flirting with memories, toying with identity. He felt threatened and courted, and when he raised the knife it burned his palm and fell into the fluid at his feet.

The things withdrew back into the sac, and for a while it was silent and motionless. The shapes trembling in the air dispersed into shapeless drifts, waving here and there with the effects of their combined exhalations.

I'm still breathing,
Ramus thought. He remembered Ten, their journey south and the climb, and history flooded back in, returning his self. The presence was no longer in his mind with hands wrapped around his illness, ready to squeeze and coerce.

He looked away from the sac for a beat and Nomi was looking at him. She no longer seemed shocked, terrified or surprised. Her eyes now were full of blame.

“They've gone,” he said, nodding up at the roof.

Nomi shook her head, but she seemed unwilling or unable to talk.

I know,
he thought.
Not gone. Just waiting. They know things have changed, and their purpose is dead.
He wondered whether the Sentinels would be murderous or suicidal.

The sac started to move. The gash where he had sliced it puckered open, fleshy lips parting, fluid flowing, vapors dancing once again.

And Ramus bore witness to a great rebirth.

A SHADOW ROSE.
Nomi could hear the sound of ripping, see the dark things emerging from the sac, scratching at the stone wall behind Ramus and the ceiling above. They were similar to the claws on those crab-things outside, but more complex, their shiny surface home to thousands of stiff hairs, joints silvery and almost metallic in appearance. Where they touched the walls, they carved deep scratches, and symbols began to take shape. The walls shook. The ceiling rattled, actually lifting up and down on the wall behind Ramus so that Nomi caught brief glimpses of the outside.

The ground shook, sending heavy ripples through the fluid that now covered the floor.

Ramus!
she wanted to shout, but her voice had left her.

The thing rose before her old friend, colleague and enemy, and she could no longer see his eyes.

She looked up at the circular entrance hole. No faces there now, but she could see things falling from the cave's ceiling and hear the heavy splashes. Stone cracked, steam hissed and roared somewhere far off. The wall she was leaning against shook and she pushed herself away, but that did not lessen the vibration that seemed to move the air itself.

The Sleeping God was awake, the Fallen God had risen, and as it emerged from its place of rest, or prison, she could hear, above the sounds of the building and the cave beyond slowly destroying themselves, the creaks of its joints snapping back into use. It was vaguely reminiscent of the Sentinels' communication, and she wondered whether the God was speaking to them.

It heaved itself suddenly from the sack, reared up and placed several black limbs against the stone ceiling. It lifted and threw, and as it spun into the darkness, the stone slab cracked in two.

Nomi looked up, amazed, exposed. To her left, she could see where one of the fleshy pipes spanned the cavern, and molten rock now gushed from where it entered the cave wall. It sprayed down and out, and though she could not see where it struck the lake, she
could
see the clouds of steam rising up. The hissing was almost unbearable. She looked around, searching for where the other strange pipes led . . .

. . . and then she was no longer alone.

She felt its gaze upon her, piercing her skin and becoming a part of her, melting into her mind and casting Nomi aside. She sighed and slid down against the wall, but something closed around her chest and beneath her arms and held her there. Her head dipped and she saw the black flesh of the Fallen God. Each hair on that skin twitched and waved as if smelling or tasting, and something rippled beneath like a bag of snakes.

When she looked up, she stared into its face.
You
are
fallen,
she thought, because though she had never seen anything like it, its expressions were more human than she could have ever believed. Its six eyes exuded a sense of release. Its mouth hung open, dry lips cracking up and out in a triumphant grin. When its voice came, it shook the world, and it uttered dark promises she could never understand.

It lifted her and held her suspended above the roofless structure. She looked around at the storm—molten rock spewed from the places where pipes had once hung, the lake was a chaos of waves and violent steam columns, rocks cracked and tumbled from the walls and roof—then she turned and looked for the Sentinels.

They were still there. A few stood below and to her left, still on the shores of the small island. Others had turned to flee. A couple made it to the far shore; several were washed away by waves. Whether they drowned or were killed by the things living there, Nomi could not tell. She looked back down at the Sentinels that had remained. None of them had eyes for her. She and her unborn child were meaningless to them now, because their charge had arisen. She realized that they were talking, clicks and groans that she could barely hear above the chaos of destruction from around the cave. They seemed suddenly very determined and calm. Her skin crawled. Her breath came short and hard, and at first she thought the Fallen God was squeezing her tightly. But the claws around her were loose, suspending rather than holding her.

It rose, Ramus clasped in another of its several hands. Limbs writhed above and around it, more forced against the ground below, and it turned its great triangular head to look at the Sentinels.

One limb snapped forward and sliced a Sentinel in two. The others stood their ground, and when the God drew its limb back, it had turned from black to gray. But the God laughed—a terrible sound that made Nomi scream for the first time since it had emerged—and shook its arm. It shifted back to black.

They're trying,
she thought.
Doing their best to remember the words they were given to guard against its release. But they've changed too much.

The remaining Sentinels stepped forward, striving to form their mouths into shapes more used to uttering cries and hoots than complex sounds.

The God kicked over the wall of its prison. Stone tumbled and killed two Sentinels, and the others stepped aside. It reached down and picked one up, casting it across the lake, where something rose and snatched it from the surface. The remaining Sentinel stood its ground, brave and determined to the last, trying to utter lost words. The Fallen God picked it up and threw it hard, aiming for the closest gushing torrent of lava falling from the wall of the cavern. The creature disappeared in a flash.

“Ramus!” Nomi shouted, projecting her voice past the terror of what had happened. “Those words!” Whether he heard her she was not sure, because he was hanging limp in the God's hand and staring up at its face. Its head turned this way and that, eyes turning individually as if reveling in sensory input. A falling rock struck its back and shattered. Another bounced from its head and caused a huge splash as the lake swallowed it up. “Ramus!” The God turned its attention to her again, then looked across at Ramus in another hand.

And now what?
Nomi thought.
The water? The lava? Its mouth?
She closed her eyes and wished a quick end.

She felt herself moved through the air and then she was still again, and when she opened her eyes Ramus was a handbreadth away from her. He stared at her, and she could not read his expression. Perhaps he was gone.

“Can you feel the power?” he asked, voice flat.

She nodded.

“No one should,” he said. “No one, not now, not ever. This is more than Noreela can take. What have I . . . ?”

“I tried to . . .” Nomi whispered.

Ramus closed his eyes and lowered his head.

The God pulled them apart again, then close together. It was as if it was testing to see whether they would punch or kiss. They did neither.

“Ramus,” Nomi said the last time they were close enough to talk. “You have to say those words. They're the language of the Sleeping Gods, and now you're the only one that—”