“Nothing!” Rhiana called. Her voice floated down, softened by the cloud.

Noon grinned at Nomi and she smiled back, but even that took strength she no longer had.

“Nothing in here!” Rhiana shouted, louder this time. “Only water, and grubs to eat, and somewhere dry for the night.”

Nomi rested her forehead against the cliff. We'll beat you, she thought, hoping the Divide could hear her. We'll find your secrets yet.

LULAH STOOD ON the edge of the ledge, rope-free, and Ramus felt queasy just watching her. A gust of wind could send her plummeting forever.

“Do you think you're strong enough?” she asked at last.

“I think so, yes.”

“If you fall again, Ramus, I'll do my best to hold on to you. But if you fall and I don't think I can hold you, I'll not let you pull me from this cliff.”

It was cold, but it had to be said, and Ramus appreciated that. “I wouldn't want you to die for me,” he said.

Lulah nodded. “You know I'm afraid of you?”

“Afraid of what I'm learning from those pages, more like.”

“No,” she said. “I'm afraid of you. Those words you used on Konrad . . . they were a weapon. It takes a person to use a weapon, and it's that person that scares me.”

Ramus did not know what to say. He had the sudden urge to share everything with this woman he barely knew, but how would that sound? Could he really tell her that the God that might be atop this Divide might be fallen?

He thought not. Even he did not really know what that meant. A myth within a myth . . .

“We should go,” Lulah said.

On that third day, they passed a ledge where a dead body lay sprawled. It was to the west and difficult to see, but from that distance it seemed to Ramus that it was too tall for a human, arms and legs too long. One limb trailed over the edge of the ledge and hung down, and he could make out the separate sticks of its lengthy fingers. It wore clothing of some sort, and that's what troubled Ramus the most. If it was not human and it wore clothing, then what was it?

He wanted to investigate, but Lulah refused. “We go up or down,” she said. “Not sideways. Besides, something killed who-or whatever that is.” So they climbed on and left the corpse where it lay.

Nausea came and went, and the pain in his head, and Ramus thought it was his illness until he saw Lulah rubbing at her own temples. The impact of how high they were hit him then. They were climbing out of the world.

To the west, they saw things drifting out from the cliff and back again, too far away to be identified. Ramus hoped they remained at that distance, and saw Lulah casting nervous glances their way for the rest of the morning.