He suddenly moved in close until she felt his old breath against her ear. “It cannot be woken,” he said. “It's fallen, and if it rises again . . . I will not permit it. And though the Sentinels are vastly weaker than they were before I came, they will not allow it, either.”

“Fallen?”

“The Sleeping God fell. It went mad, rampaged, and the other Gods fought to put it down. And it cannot be woken.”

“I'm the last of my group,” Nomi said, shocked, confused. “Not much chance of me fighting my way from here to wake it, I think.” And at the same time she thought, Does Ramus know? Did he know all along?

“Maybe,” Sordon said. “Maybe you are the last one.” But suspicion was obvious in his voice.

“So tell me,” she said.

Sordon Perlenni chuckled. “Guild of Voyagers,” he said. “Do they have their own building?”

“Yes. A big one.”

“And is my likeness hanging there?”

Nomi nodded. “It's how I knew who you were, when I saw the statue of you.”

“The statue,” Sordon said. “Which one? There are many. So many that I've never bothered to count. Statues and pictures, carvings and paintings. Of me.”

“Why?”

“To those discovered, the discoverer is sometimes a god.”

“But they're animals. They look human in some ways, but they seem wild.”

“They are now. But not always.” Sordon shook his head again. “What's the point? I could tell you, but nothing can absolve my guilt. And you, hanging there, can do little to help me.”

“Then cut me down!”

Sordon shook his head again. “They would be upon you before you hit the ground. They're fast and strong, and more intelligent than you think. They used to be so much better, until I came.”

“Tell me anyway,” she said. Whatever I can learn could help me, she thought. Any details, any clues as to how I could escape. Because now that Sordon was here and she knew that Ramus had not yet been caught, she suddenly found determination again, and a survival instinct that had been made lazy by being looked after. She wanted to live.

Sordon Perlenni, the First Voyager of Noreela, settled back against the timber cross bracings of Nomi's sacrificial rack and looked up at the star-speckled sky.