His head throbbed suddenly, as if something was moving inside his skull, and as he swayed he felt the Serian's strong hands grasping his biceps and changing his collapse into a controlled fall. Sweat ran cool, daylight shimmered, and then he could see clearly again. A brief burst of pain, but a reminder nonetheless. Time, Ramus thought. I have so little. He held on to the stone charm around his neck and craved the moons, but felt foolish doing so.

“No,” he said at last. “No, we must go on. If this was marauders, hopefully they're long gone.”

“I'm not so sure,” Lulah said.

“There's no time to go around! We have Nomi at a disadvantage, but they'll catch up. She won't give in.”

Lulah sighed, then nodded. “You hide in there, I'll check.” She pointed at the tomb.

“You'll not leave me waiting for you in an old tomb, empty or not! I'll come with you. Besides, you can better protect me at your side.”

“But your head, your—”

“I'm fine.”

“I saw lots of bodies, Ramus.”

“I've seen dead people before.” He stood without her help, untethered their horses and was the first to mount. He thought he hid his queasiness well.

HE HAD SEEN dead people before, but never ruined like this. Ramus stopped counting after fifteen. Piled against a wild hedge some distance from the bodies were several dead horses, fleshy gashes gaping pale in the sunlight where rain and dew had washed away dried blood.

Beyond the bodies was the temple. And as he suspected, it bore all the characteristics of an ancient building raised to the Sleeping Gods, even older than the temple they'd visited in the ravine. There were carvings in the stone plinth—words and symbols both known and obscure—and evidence of a gully dug around the outer wall to channel worshippers' prayers downward.

The blood of the dead was splashed up its sides.

It has painted itself red so that I can see it better, Ramus thought. His heart was racing, and his head seemed clearer and more certain than ever.

The temple was set in a stand of trees. The base of its walls was stone, several steps high, and above this the walls and roof rose in roughly hewn timber, bleached by weather. The carvings in the stone were splotched black with dried blood.

The bodies crawled with ants, beetles and flies, and many of them had been chewed by larger things.

It knew I would come this way, Ramus thought, but even then his panic was being countered by something that seemed to bear more sense.

“Definitely marauders,” Lulah said. “The dead wear no jewelry, and there are no children.”

“No children?”

“The marauders trade them as slaves,” Lulah said. “Some marauder clans flay them and eat them alive. Old flesh is tough.”

Their horses had stopped of their own accord, skittish from the sight and smell of the dead.