She looked around, trying to see past the thing holding her, and she spied a swish of white hair behind them. “Sordon,” she muttered. He came closer, staring up at the Fallen God with nothing but dread in his eyes. He was shaking his head slowly, grasping on to his walking stick with both hands, blood matting his beard from some injury. He did not look at Nomi or Ramus, only at the God. His mouth hung open, but he could say no more.

The God turned around.

It will know him, Nomi thought. It will recognize him. With one flick of a limb it had the First Voyager in its grasp, lifting him, twisting him this way and that as it examined him. And then it turned back toward Noreela and threw.

Nomi saw him fall.

“That was Sordon Perlenni,” Ramus said. He sounded as though nothing could surprise him ever again.

The God shifted forward, feet so close to the edge of the cliff that Nomi could look directly down. She saw the old man swallowed by the clouds. This is it, she thought. Whatever it's about to do, this is it.

“Drop me before you leap!” she shouted. “I want to die my own death.”

_____

HOLD ME WITH you, Ramus thought. He looked out and down, anticipating the rush of air as he and his God fell together. And hold me tight. I want to be there when you return to Noreela.

NOMI LOOKED AT Ramus and he looked at her, and she saw his right eye turn red as something gave out in his brain, blood gushing, pain twisting his face as the Fallen God rose onto its long legs and roared.

Kang Kang!

It relaxed again, breathing harshly, staring out and down with each of its six eyes. And then, having told Noreela its name for the first time in eons, it turned its back on that land and fled south.

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

NOMI BORE WITNESS to the extinction of a world.

She was certain that Ramus was dead. That was the end of her world and the people she cared for, and to mirror that misery she watched the plateau they had found atop the Great Divide—bountiful, brutal, rich and mysterious—destroy itself. Those fleshy pipes that had pinned the Fallen God in place in that deep cavern must have been the final failsafe. But there was something wrong, and Nomi was becoming more and more aware of this with every mile the thing ran, every obstacle it overcame.

A boiling river, heated from below and breathing steam from several bubbling parts, was no barrier. The Fallen God strode into the water and waded across, holding Nomi and Ramus high. Nomi gasped for air and felt her throat scorching and her lungs filling with fluid, but at the other side of the lake the thing ran on.