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pages was more literal.
    Part of it, including the curled image of a Sleeping God, seemed to be a map.
     
    THE FIRST BOOK he chose was a heavy tome, loosely bound with twisted gut ties and covered front and back with thin wooden covers. It had no title or name, and there was no indication anywhere inside about who had written it, nor when or where.
    Ramus guessed it was maybe five hundred years old. Some of the glyphs used were similar to those in other volumes from around that time. He had referred to this book several times over the years, and there was one page in particular that had jumped into his memory.
    It took a while to find the page he wanted, inked on a rough sheet of layered silk-grass. The image there was, as he remembered, quite similar to that on the wanderer's parchment: a curled, serpentlike creature, only this one had a larger head, several limbs and hands. Each hand had six digits, and each digit was a person. Every person was screaming.
    Ramus tried to read some of the glyphs around the image. He had never translated this page, though he had seen the glyphs used before, and it took him a while to edge his concentration in the right direction.
    Fallen one put down, he read. Down is the fallen one. Deep is the God that fell. All saying the same thing in differing ways—and the more he read, the more he imagined a sense of panic overwhelming the writer. There was no information here; it was more like a statement of belief, a desire that would become more real the more it was written.
    Every story he had read of the Sleeping Gods had sprouted from the solid foundation that the Gods were benevolent, and extremely powerful. Some could move mountains, others were mountains themselves. Mention of a Fallen God was infrequent, a myth within a myth—one of those ancient Gods gone insane and fallen from grace, its wings torn from their roots and the God itself buried deep in the land by the other Sleeping Gods. Those few times he had read about it, the language had been as frantic as this.
    Superstition, he thought. Ramus liked to think of himself as a pragmatist with an open mind, but this was a tale designed to scare children at bedtime. That it managed to trouble him illustrated its power.
    He reached for another page of the parchment. This one had a more regular spread of lettering and glyphs, and across its center were images that looked like statues. Some were obviously people, with arms raised, heads thrown back and mouths open. Others looked more like representations of people—vaguely humanoid shapes, with extended necks, tall thin heads, arms that reached below their knees. These were drawn as frozen, or dancing, or perhaps paying worship to the other, more human statues. There was writing all around these images, and though Ramus recognized none of the lettering, he could already discern a pattern.
    The third parchment was damaged and darkened, and some of the stains could have been blood. It was covered in fine writing, using the same unknown language as the other pages, and interspersed here and there were images of the sun, moon and stars. Each image had a face, and the faces all had teeth.
    Ramus closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. Footsteps came close and he sat up quickly, turning the parchments over so they could not be seen. Nobody appeared, and he waited until the footsteps retreated again to the front of the library before turning the pages back over.
    He looked at those thick lines once more, dividing the pages into thirds and two-thirds, the spaces to their left blank and sterile as if no ink would take there, no thoughts could hold weight.
    These are real, he thought, his heart pummeling his chest and sweat beading on his forehead. He could pass the parchments over to the Guild, but then news would spread. Or they could go themselves—he and Nomi—to see if they could find what these pages alluded to. But the risks were great.
    One thing of which he was certain: if they could