Ramus blinked several times before remembering he could turn around. His muscles obeyed slowly, and he saw Nomi standing at the entrance to the tunnel. Steam flowed and twisted and made a wraith of her. It was only the blood on her face and the way she stood that confirmed to him that she was truly still alive.

RAMUS LOOKED AS though he had never seen her before. Nomi tried to stand up straighter, not sure why she wanted to hide her injuries from him. She certainly did not expect pity. For some reason, she felt the need to seem strong.

“Ramus,” she said again. She looked past him into the cavern, saw the lake and the island and what was built thereon, and she knew they had found it. “We have to go back.”

“You can't go back,” Ramus said, and she was not sure what he meant. He would not allow it? Or she could not?

I can, she wanted to say, but then she looked at the building again and realized how close they were to something remarkable. No one ever meets their gods, she thought.

“I'm going out there,” he said, pointing behind him without taking his eyes from Nomi's. “I'm going to see what we've found, and I'll go inside and touch it, and . . .” His gaze shifted slightly to the side, his attention suddenly elsewhere. Somewhere far beyond here, or deeper inside.

“No one ever meets their gods,” Nomi said. “Don't you wonder why?”

Ramus frowned and looked back at her, and she thought she had gotten through to him at last. But then he smiled. “Because they never give themselves the chance.”

Nomi still held Lulah's knife. She took a painful step forward, wincing at the pain in her leg. Something was broken in there, she could feel it like a white-hot dagger slicing into her shin every time she moved. She'd slid down onto one of the stairs, found a chunk of it missing and fallen down three more. She was amazed she had not cracked her skull or broken her back.

“Did you fall?” he asked, and the question carried so much weight.

“Who are you asking?” Nomi said. “You're looking at me, but are you asking something else?”

And then she heard the noises behind her. Feet shuffling across stone, whispers, the soft crackles of Sentinels. They may well be terrified, but that could only make them even more dangerous than before.

“It's fooled you,” she said. “And the Sentinels are coming.”

“Then you can't go back.” Ramus held out his hand. “Come with me.”

Nomi took a few more painful steps forward until she and Ramus were almost in touching distance. He lowered his hand but smiled, his offer standing.

“Out there?” she said. She looked over his shoulder, across the surface of the lake, past steam cones and stone pipes, and things rippling the surface. “Out there to that?”

“There's nowhere else to go.”