“No, slipped, that's all.” He pressed his face to the cool stone and shivered as the breeze kissed his sweaty body. He needed a drink, but he dared not unstrap the water skin from around his neck. Not right now. The sickness in his head, the cruel betrayer, might choose that moment to punch him again.

“I need you to stay with me,” Lulah said. “I'm here under your pay, Ramus, but I'll not kill myself for you. Not like this.”

He looked up at last and nodded, seeing past her anger to the fear. He could smell fear in the sweaty aroma that drifted down from her and rose from his own body. They had both almost died then, and not quickly. If they fell, missed the ledges, drifted out past the rocky projections, it would take a long time for them to strike the ground.

“Maybe we should stop and rest when we can,” he said.

“Yes.”

They remained there for a while, gathering their composure and letting their beating hearts settle a little before moving on.

LATER THE PAIN came again, and he slipped for a third time, and when he regained his hand- and footholds he really believed Lulah was going to cut the rope. If she did, they would no longer be climbing together, and if and when he slipped for a fourth time, he would fall out of Noreela forever.

Lulah found a small ledge where they could spend the rest of that day and the night, and for a long time she did not speak. Ramus drifted off to sleep, exhaustion taking him down past the terror that had him in its clasp. He thought he may visit Nomi's own nightmares, but when he woke up there was nothing but pain. The sickness grew worse, a traitor to his body, and he began to wonder whether he would live to see the top of the Divide at all.

AFTER RAMIN’S DEATH, it took them the rest of that afternoon to reach the cloud cover. And it was the worst afternoon of Nomi's life.

The cave from which the creature had emerged was the first of several. They came across the next one soon after Ramin tumbled away, and this time the creature inside came out long before they reached it. Growling, wings whisking like metal sails, it perched on the lip of the fissure and wailed down at them. Beko again climbed up beside Nomi, and Noon and Rhiana put distance between them so that it could not take them both at the same time. Rhiana fired an arrow up, but the distance was too great; it bounced from the huge creature's underside and clattered from the rock face. Rhiana tried to catch it but missed.