“Yes,” he said. “Involved.” He walked away, holding the book to his chest as though he had something to hide.

“Ramus!” Nomi called. His illness? she thought. Or something else? I really need to know. Not for him or for the voyage, but for me.

He paused and looked over his shoulder.

“If you're unwell, we can turn around,” she said.

“I'm not unwell, Nomi.” He looked at the temple he seemed so keen to leave behind. “Some places have echoes, that's all.”

Nomi listened, and watched, and when he walked away, she saw Beko staring at her. She turned her back on all of them and looked at the ruins of the temple to the Sleeping Gods. A strange place, so old and well constructed for its time that much of it still stood. And she thought, He's lying.

“Let's get back to the horses,” Beko said. “I have a campsite in mind for the night, but it's a good twenty miles on.”

“I'll ask him,” Nomi whispered. A bird took flight from one of the nests in the cliff wall, as though it had been listening for these words. She watched it fly, wondering how many other secret mutterings it had shared.

WHEN HE REACHED his horse, Ramus risked one more look at the book. Past the page he had titled back in Long Marrakash, the first blank page was now marked by the dropped charcoal.

When he had bent to pick up both book and charcoal, he had made another mark. An accident. A fumble, a slip of the hand.

But when he had grasped the book by its cover, and when it had swung down to hang at an angle from his hand, those random marks had manifested into images he could understand. It was Old Noreelan, with the pictorial quality so common in tomes about the Sleeping Gods.

He looked at it one more time, and even in the heat he could not withhold a shiver.

It said, Never wake the fallen.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

THEY RODE HARD that afternoon, through the heat of the sun and the dust thrown up from the dried ground, and by the time Beko called a halt they were all ready to stop. He rode on ahead with Rhiana and Konrad, the three of them spread out across the trail. Nomi knew that they were making sure the campsite he had in mind was safe. They were much closer to the border with the Pavissia Steppes now, and it was not unheard of for marauder parties to make sorties into Marrakash.

She dismounted and watched Ramus do the same.