Marauders, Ramus thought, not the Sleeping God reaching for me . . . His doubts swayed, rising and sinking. “But the militia said there was no marauder activity close by.”

“And what do they know, sitting fat and drunk in their border building?” Lulah said. “Try telling that to him.” She pointed at the closest corpse, a man whose throat had been sliced to the bone. His eyes had been taken, and his death grin was stretched by days of blazing sun and nights of withering cold.

Ramus looked again at the old temple, and the blood smeared across the carvings. He could see no bodies close by—they had all been dragged away from the building to be killed—so whoever had spread the blood must have done so on purpose. No accidental splashes. No dead falling against the stone and leaving their final mark there.

A message from It to me, a warning, a guide, a sign, an acknowledgment—

“Ramus?”

“The temple,” he said. “None of them were killed close to it.”

Lulah shrugged. “So marauders have their superstitions as well.” But she looked warily at the temple, as if it had more to tell.

“We should leave,” he said. “The stench of death and blood is heavy here. It's upsetting the horses.” He kneed his mount and turned away from the slaughter, but as he trotted toward a shallow dip in the land where a small stream found home, pain erupted behind his eyes so powerfully that he thought they had ruptured, his vision scorched away in a blinding light. He cried out and reached for his head, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes. His horse darted to the right. Ramus fell.

HE IS STANDING on a low ridge, from which he can see all around, and he knows that he is alone in all of the Pavissia Steppes. There is no other human here but him, and no signs that there ever have been: no walls, no old hedges, no scars of campfires, buildings, chopped trees, ruins, cairns or trails. He is long before or long after the time of humans in Noreela, and to the south the sky burns a palette of reds, purples and maroons. He feels at once insignificant and the center of attention, but the attention of what, he cannot tell.

It, he thinks. The Sleeping God.

But it is not him thinking this, it is Nomi. And the guilt of an old illness burns behind his face.