THE SERIAN GATHERED some nuts and fleshy grubs from beneath a fallen tree. Neither of them knew whether they were safe to eat, but Lulah said she'd eaten similar things many times before in Noreela. Ramus was too hungry to question her, and too tired to care. The nuts tasted earthy, and the grubs burst sour in his mouth. As he chewed quickly to merge the tastes, he rested one hand against the charms on his chest.

“We need to move on,” he said.

“I thought you'd died.” Lulah sat close by him, her weapons drawn and laid before her.

“Everything hitting home,” he said. “I'm exhausted.”

“And that,” she said. She touched his head with the damp cloth one more time, but this was not a soothing gesture.

“Yes,” he said. “Worse now that I'm tired.”

“I can't protect you if you keep collapsing like that.” She peeled another husk and popped the nut into her mouth.

Ramus could not answer. “So we should move on,” he said instead. “Explore some more.”

“We need to go back down,” Lulah said.

“But—”

“Not now. Not immediately. But you need to accept that we can't stay up here indefinitely.”

Why? he thought. But he nodded, sitting up gingerly and accepting that he should tell her what she needed to hear.

“So, when?” she asked.

“I don't know. Not today. Not tomorrow. There's so much to see, and I didn't climb so far just to turn around and leave again.”

Lulah nodded. “Perhaps after the God,” she said.

Nomi's in pain, Ramus thought, vague sensations from his dream returning in fleeting glimpses.

After more food he stood, doing his best to ignore the dizziness that threatened to tip him over. Lulah could see, he knew, but he did not look at her. He concentrated very hard and, after a few steps, found his rhythm. His muscles still ached but he welcomed that. Pain confirmed that he was awake, here and now, not hanging and suffering like Nomi.

Perhaps he should go to help. But he did not know where she was or what was happening to her. And there was something larger on his mind than the doom she had visited upon him, and her own pains he knew as a result. Something drawing him on, calming his illness, or prodding it, depending on the way his own thoughts went.

He thought of going farther south, and the pain lessened.

He thought of helping Nomi, and dizziness threatened him once more.

“Into the trees,” Ramus said. “It looks like an old path, though it's overgrown. We'll follow.”

“You think it might be that way?”

He looked at the trail through the forest, and in the distance he saw the hint of something gray and solid standing among the trees. “Something is.”