The question confused Nomi, and she could think of no reason. “Sit with me?” she said. “I want to hear more. I'm a Voyager, like you, and though I'm tied up here, I can travel in my mind. I can learn.”

“Learn,” he said. “You don't seem like the learning type.”

“Then why tell me?”

Sordon shrugged. “Because you're here.” He started walking away.

When Nomi shouted after him, the Sentinels stood and approached, ignoring Sordon when they passed him, clicking and growling angrily. “How did you ruin them?” she shouted. “How did you change them so much?”

Sordon paused, Nomi fell silent and the Sentinels stopped, sitting slowly to the ground and staring up at her.

The old man leaned on his walking stick and stared at her, his gaze traveling farther across the space beyond the cliffs. “They made me a god when I rose up from the mythical lands of their past. But then reality intruded, as it must. I learned their language and I told them far too much—where I was from, what it was like—and they realized what they had lost. Perhaps in a way, they believed that Noreela had been taken from them. I took their offerings, their women; eventually they saw me for what I was: a mocker of their beliefs, a charlatan. And it drove them mad.” He trailed off, looking up at the sky as though he could see his sad reflection there. “Oh, but even my ego is not that large. They had the seed of madness in them, ready to be fertilized, ready to grow. I was merely the catalyst.” Then he turned and walked away.

Nomi watched him leave, leaning heavily on his walking stick. She did not call to him again. He would be back, and he would tell her more.

Ramus, she thought, you seek a Fallen God. For once she wished that she would sleep and nightmare about such a thing, and then maybe Ramus would know.

Or perhaps he knew already.

Her friends were dead, Noreela's First Voyager had come to her, she was pregnant and she would be the Sentinels' prisoner until her baby was large enough for them to rip from her womb and hang from their fetus tree, for whatever twisted reasons they had. Cold and uncomfortable though she was, the sudden wretchedness of her existence encouraged Nomi into a deep, dark sleep.

SHE THOUGHT SHE was in a nightmare. Dawn burned the eastern horizon, blazing across the clouds and singeing the horizon. The subtle warmth of the sun felt good on her chilled body, but it could not match the heat in her shoulders and hips. Waking seemed to allow the agony access to her mind, and it melted in and scorched away any dregs of dreams.