The wanderers watched him go. Ramus knew that they wondered about the story he could not tell.

He passed the standing stones and entered the forests, and here he set a fire. It was easy to burn his journal; it was incomplete and inaccurate, and as he tore out the pages and fed them to the flames he smiled at some of the foolishness written there. The parchment pages, old and new, should be next . . . but he held them in his hands for a while.

These were the last of their kind. Everything else was gone, swallowed in the turmoil of the fallen Great Divide. Blood and saliva dripped from his ruined mouth onto the uppermost page, staining the image of the God that Ramus had always known was fallen, and he closed his eyes.

He dropped the parchment pages onto the fire. When he looked again the only part left was the drawing of the God, dampened by his blood and spit. But soon even that burned away to nothing.

AT NIGHT, NOMI’S nightmares came. And during the days when he walked north, away from the Great Divide and Kang Kang, away from Nomi, Ramus held on to the hope that they would not last forever.

About the Author

About the Author

TIM LEBBON lives in South Wales with his wife and two children. His books include the British Fantasy Award–winning Dusk and its sequel, Dawn, Mind the Gap (cowritten with Christopher Golden), Berserk, The Everlasting, Hellboy: Unnatural Selection, 30 Days of Night, and Desolation. Future books include a new novel set in Noreela, more Novels of the Hidden Cities (with Christopher Golden), a collection from Cemetery Dance Publications, and further books with Night Shade Books, Necessary Evil Press, and Humdrumming, among others. He has won three British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, a Shocker, and a Tombstone Award, and has been a finalist for International Horror Guild and World Fantasy awards. His novella White is soon to be a major Hollywood movie, and several of his other novels and novellas are currently in development in the United States and the UK. Find out more about Tim at his websites: www.timlebbon.net and www.noreela.com.

Also by Tim Lebbon

ALSO BY TIM LEBBON

NOVELS

Dawn
Dusk
Hellboy: Unnatural Selection
Mesmer
The Nature of Balance
Hush (with Gavin Williams)
Face
Until She Sleeps
Desolation
Berserk
30 Days of Night
Mind the Gap (with Christopher Golden)
The Everlasting

NOVELLAS

White
Naming of Parts
Changing of Faces
Exorcising Angels (with Simon Clark)
Dead Man's Hand
Pieces of Hate
A Whisper of Southern Lights

COLLECTIONS

Faith in the Flesh
As the Sun Goes Down
White and Other Tales of Ruin
Fears Unnamed
Last Exit for the Lost

Preview for Island

If you enjoyed FALLEN, be sure not to miss

THE ISLAND

by
TIM LEBBON

Another riveting novel of Noreela, coming in 2009 from Bantam Spectra.

Here's a special preview.