|
FALLEN - coming soon!
My new novel FALLEN is out on April 29th from Bantam Spectra, so I thought I’d post a small extract from Chapter One here. You can read more extracts, and find out more about the world of Noreela, on the Noreela Website.
If you like what you read and want to pre-order the book that Publishers Weekly called ’gripping and disturbing’ - and save an extra 5% - here’s the link.
FALLEN
Chapter One – (extract)
..:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
"I’ve spent a long time walking back and forth before the Divide," Ten began. "It draws you. I know I said earlier that it’s … terrifying, but there’s an attraction as well. It pulls you in and holds you close, and sometimes it just won’t let go.
"The first time I saw it, I was about twenty. I had a run-in with a band of marauders on the Pavissian Steppes, and I went south to get away from them. I knew what was supposed to be there, but I was young and feisty, and I’d just killed my first man."
He trailed off, pouring more cydrax and looking at Nomi and Ramus. Trying to see if we’re shocked, Ramus thought. Nomi is, I can see that. But I hope she won’t give him the satisfaction.
"Anyway," Ten said, and drank some more. "The feistiness didn’t last. I got away from the marauders and kept going south. After a long time I found the Divide … or maybe it found me. It’s a cliff that reaches into the sky." He looked up into the clear blue above them, shaking his head. "Here the sky has no scale. It’s blue and beautiful, but there’s no real sense of it. There, the Divide touches it, and seems to devour it. The cliff rises higher than the clouds, which seem to shroud its top permanently – if it even has one. It goes east and west as far as you can see, and disappears around the belly of the land. First time I saw it, I spent a whole moon camped a few miles from its base, thinking I would never get away. There was plenty of food; berry bushes, root crops, wild sheebok grazing along the foothills. I ate well. There were flying things that buzzed me, but they never came close again after I shot one down with my crossbow. In the evenings, I’d sit and listen to the tumblers rolling across the plains." He took another drink.
Tumblers! Ramus thought. I always thought they were legend! But still he reserved judgement. Ten was a good storyteller, yet perhaps that was all he was. Time, as Ramus’s mother had said, would tell.
"That was when I first started thinking for myself. Until then, I’d never truly been a wanderer. I walked, yes. I traveled from here to there, but I spent most of my time simply surviving. There in the shadow of the Divide, I came alive. I spent the nights sitting by my fire and thinking on what the Divide could mean. What was at its top, if it had one? What was behind it?"
"There’s nothing behind it," Nomi scoffed.
"Then why is it called a Divide?" Ramus asked.
Ten smiled. "So I sat there night after night, a good meal in my belly and the cool night air alive in my senses. I’d been drinking only water for a couple of moons, and I felt so much closer to the land. Almost as if I could plunge my hand into its loam and touch its magic."
"Pah!" Nomi snorted. "You’re no magichalan." She regarded such people with derision, Ramus knew, though he could never understand why. She was a Voyager and had seen many strange things in the marshes of Ventgoria. Why not believe in magic?
"No, I’m not. But the Divide makes you appreciate the potential in things. And this whole world is thrumming with potential."
Nomi chuckled and took a sip of her cydrax.
"How long did you stay there?" Ramus asked.
"Three moons, camped in its shadow. At dawn I’d see a moment of sun, and then only dusk. After a while, I started thinking about finding where it ended."
"I’ve always heard that there is no end," Ramus said. "That it goes on, out beyond Noreela’s shores."
"Maybe," Ten said. "But the closer I came to the eastern shore, the more treacherous the landscape became. Plain turned to marsh, and then bog. The bogs were venting poisonous gases, and there were creatures in there … huge. I never saw them, but I heard them, and I felt the ground shiver as they rose and rolled. So I worked northward, leaving the Divide’s shadow at last. And by the time I reached the shore, I could no longer see the Divide. The bogs steamed, the clouds closed in, and wherever that cliff struck the coast was out of view.
"I would have stayed there, but the bog gas would have killed me eventually. And if not the gas, those things that lived there." He opened the third bottle of Cydrax. The alcohol seemed to be having little effect. "I could hear them rising from the bog and dragging themselves towards me. Perhaps they were close. Or perhaps they were a long way off, and larger than I imagine. I didn’t stay to find out."
"Voyagers have tried sailing past the Divide," Nomi said.
"Piss," Ramus said. "They’ve set out with that intention, but no one knows if they succeeded, because they’ve not been seen again."
Ten nodded, a satisfied smile on his face.
"Maybe they’re still sailing," Ramus speculated.
"Or maybe," the wanderer said, "they’re in the stomachs of the bog beasts, or at the bottom of the sea, or washed up rotting against the shore. Noreela is a hungry land."
"You have a way of making it such an attractive place," Ramus said, but his interest was piqued. "Go on. What happened next?"
"I went west," Ten said. "I traveled again in the shadow of the Divide, heading for the western shores. I hoped that there I would find what the east had hidden, but I was wrong."
"What was there?" Nomi asked.
"A jungle. I started in, but the trees soon grew so close together that I could barely pass by. And there were creatures there, too. Spiders as big as my hand; snakes as thick as my thigh; ants; worms with teeth; flies that sucked my blood and left poison in its place. And other things, not animals. Not human. A bad place. I only touched its outer extremes, but I knew it went on for days."
"So you went north?" Ramus asked. "Tried to skirt the forest but keep the Divide in view? Only the forest grew north as well, and by the time you reached the western shores, the Divide was too far away to see?"
Ten stared at him for some time; so long that Ramus looked away, unnerved. "You don’t believe me," Ten said.
"I’ve met a lot of wanderers in my time, and they’re known to … elaborate."
"Ramus," Nomi said, her voice bearing a warning.
"I’m telling the truth," Ten said. "If any Voyager had made it back from that place, they’d tell you the same."
"But you have more to tell," Ramus said.
Ten glanced at Nomi, reached into his cloak and then decided against it. "I’ll tell you first," he said. "Then I’ll show you."
6:31 AM
-
0 Comments - 0 Kudos
- Add Comment
|
