“No,” he said. He laughed again. “If you could only see your face. No, Nomi, I haven't thought about it. I don't need to. I don't care. This is what I was born for. This is the greatest voyage ever.”

“It's doing this to you! This isn't you, Ramus, this is—”

“Did you untie your charm?”

Nomi blinked, surprised at the question. She remembered the rope charm sinking quickly into the pool, and her fear that had sent it there. “No,” she said.

Ramus was quiet for a beat. “Then you'll never know what I gave you, ” he said. And he slipped away.

Nomi shouted after him at first, then followed, almost losing control and sending herself tumbling several times. But fast though she moved, Ramus moved faster.

“It'll lie to you!” she called.

But Ramus was gone. And even if he did hear her pleas, he chose not to answer.

Nomi continued down, feeling more alone in this absolute darkness than she had ever thought possible.

THE SLEEPING GOD called him down and showed him the way. It was still there inside him, giving and taking dreams and nightmares from the cancer eating his brain. It sat beside the cancer—memory of another Sleeping God? Perhaps, perhaps not—and called it weak. Maybe it could remove it entirely, but this was not what drove Ramus. It had been a passing thought, but he considered it no more. He was used to the idea of dying, but now the God gave him the chance to achieve something before he went away. Have you really thought about what it might do? Nomi had asked. He had, and it did not matter. The Sleeping Gods were myth and legend, just like all the other gods worshipped in Noreela and perhaps beyond. Myth and legend.

As a Voyager, it had always been his one aim in life to find the truth. This greatest truth would make him the greatest Voyager.

He could see every step, every sigil carved into the wall of the giant staircase, every thin stalactite hanging from the ceiling. He could see them because the God gave him sight beyond light. And it called him down.

Nomi shouted after him for a while, and then she started descending again. It would take her a long time. Ramus saw the way and he slipped down, down, not needing to count the steps because the God would let him know when he was nearing the bottom.

He came to a step whose edge had cracked and fallen away. He had to move in close to the central column to bypass the break, easing himself carefully down to the step below, only a foot's width of stone beneath his feet this close to the center.

Nomi could fall here, he knew, and for an instant there was a flicker of something within him. Concern? Grief, already? Then the God whispered words he could not hear or understand, but their tone drew Ramus on.