Fallen Read Free Page B

comes down to this, Ramus thought. Money. Well, I'm glad Nomi is here.
    “Let me see them,” Ramus said, “and—”
    “You'll hear my tale first,” Ten said.
    Ramus finished his food and leaned back in his chair. The world went on around them. People ate and chatted, boats and sloops drifted along and across the river, traders traded and fishermen fished. But he suddenly felt more removed than usual.
    He always felt like a visitor to Long Marrakash. He was driven to travel and explore—scratchy feet, his mother had called it—and whenever he lived in the city, even for two or three years at a time, it always felt temporary. Just somewhere to rest and plan his next voyage.
    Nomi waved Savi over and ordered two more bottles of cydrax, and the three of them fell silent. Then Ten started talking, and Ramus experienced an instant of intense emotion: excitement, exhilaration and the taste of a fresh voyage ahead.
     
    “I’VE SPENT A long time walking back and forth before the Divide,” Ten began. “It draws you. I know I said earlier that it's . . . terrifying, but there's an attraction as well. It pulls you in and holds you close, and sometimes it just won't let go.
    “The first time I saw it, I was about twenty. I had a run-in with a band of marauders on the Pavissia Steppes, and I went south to get away from them. I knew what was supposed to be there, but I was young and feisty, and I'd just killed my first man.”
    He trailed off, pouring more cydrax and looking at Nomi and Ramus. Trying to see if we're shocked, Ramus thought. Nomi is, I can see that. But I hope she won't give him the satisfaction.
    “Anyway,” Ten said, and drank some more. “The feistiness didn't last. I got away from the marauders and kept going south. After a long time I found the Divide . . . or maybe it found me. It's a cliff that reaches into the sky.” He looked up into the clear blue above them, shaking his head. “Here the sky has no scale. It's blue and beautiful, but there's no real sense of it. There, the Divide touches it, and seems to devour it. The cliff rises higher than the clouds, which seem to shroud its top permanently—if it even has one. It goes east and west as far as you can see, and disappears around the belly of the land. First time I saw it, I spent a whole moon camped a few miles from its base, thinking I would never get away. There was plenty of food; berry bushes, root crops, wild sheebok grazing along the foothills. I ate well. There were flying things that buzzed me, but they never came close again after I shot one down with my crossbow. In the evenings, I'd sit and listen to the tumblers rolling across the plains.” He took another drink.
    Tumblers! Ramus thought. I always thought they were legend! But still he reserved judgment. Ten was a good storyteller, yet perhaps that was all he was. Time, as Ramus's mother had said, would tell.
    “That was when I first started thinking for myself. Until then, I'd never truly been a wanderer. I walked, yes. I traveled from here to there, but I spent most of my time simply surviving. There in the shadow of the Divide, I came alive. I spent the nights sitting by my fire and thinking on what the Divide could mean. What was at its top, if it had one? What was behind it?”
    “There's nothing behind it,” Nomi scoffed.
    “Then why is it called the Divide?” Ramus asked.
    Ten smiled. “So I sat there night after night, a good meal in my belly and the cool night air alive in my senses. I'd been drinking only water for a couple of moons, and I felt so much closer to the land. Almost as if I could plunge my hand into its loam and touch its magic.”
    “Pah!” Nomi snorted. “You're no magichalan.” She regarded such people with derision, Ramus knew, though he could never understand why. She was a Voyager and had seen many strange things in the marshes of Ventgoria. Why not believe in magic?
    “No, I'm not. But the Divide makes you appreciate the potential in things.