SHE CLIMBED, AVOIDING the Sentinel bodies where she could. Most of them were broken into several chunks or completely shattered, but the ones that must have been killed before Ramus used the curse still cooled into the stone. Arrows had killed a couple, knives some more, and farther up the building she found a Sentinel's head that must have tumbled down from above.

She resisted the temptation to stop and stare at the carvings, images, small faces sunk into the stone, lines of strange writing and symbols displayed all across the side of the incredible building. Their time might come, but for now there was something even more incredible to find.

She found Lulah a dozen steps from the top. The Serian's throat had been ripped out and her arm torn off, but two dead Sentinels lay with her, one of them bearing teeth marks in its own gashed throat. Blood still dribbled from the wound. Nomi paused for a moment to look into the dead warrior's pale eye, then she carefully took the last knife from Lulah's belt and continued upward.

Five steps from the top, exhausted and in pain from the leg wound, which had started bleeding again, Nomi heard Sentinels calling and clicking behind and below her. When she reached the summit she looked down, knowing what she would see.

They were already climbing. They seemed unconcerned at their dead comrades, passing by both shattered-stone and bloodied-flesh corpses without a glance. They had eyes only for her. And for the first time in the face of a Sentinel, even from this distance, she saw purpose.

Nomi turned around to see what Ramus had been circling when she first saw him.

There was an opening on top of the building. It disappeared into a circular staircase that led down, the stairs just as deep as those she had recently climbed. It was covered by an elaborate stone canopy propped on pillars, various drainage channels carved into the floor to guide rainwater away from the hole. The entrance was dark and forbidding. Nomi inhaled the must of ages.

She could enter the hole, as Ramus had done, or wait here to be slaughtered. There really was no choice. After her climb, Nomi began her descent.

IT QUICKLY GREW dark. She sat on the edge of a step and slid down to the next one, moving fast, conscious of the Sentinels racing up the sides of the building outside. I could just leave him to them, she thought, surprised that the idea had not come sooner. Could have gone down the other side of the building and hidden, let them come in after him, find him . . .

But there was more to this than whatever may or may not be hidden down here, more than exploration and discovery. There was Ramus and her.