Her explanation leaves me speechless. The leaders do have memories. They even have fears.
“Who is Joshua?” Emma asks softly.
“An old friend,” Rahab says. “And the leader of the Black Tower.”
“You’re friends?” I ask, failing to hide my disbelief. “How is that possible? You lead your towers against each other.”
Rahab smiles. “The competition has its purpose. The Scouring has its purpose. Just as Passion, Genius, and the other facets each have purpose. They all work upon you, whether you like it or not. There, now I have told you what I can. I will not stand in your way. Lead on, Alpha.”
34
IT DOES NOT take long for the Red Tower to discover that I’m nothing like our former Alpha, Axe aka Max. I sit on the throne beside Rahab in the Feasting Hall, but I don’t serve firewater or stand on the table to dance and sing. Things are quieter, more thoughtful. I don’t need to shout to show that I’m in charge. Everyone knows it. No one in Red remembers anyone capturing someone from Black, much less eleven at the same time. People whisper about me in the Feasting Hall, in the Barracks, and in the Arena as the boys compete. Furtive eyes catch mine, then duck back into conversation. People avoid me in the hallways. I go to the training ground and continue to improve, slowly. It’s the only thing that takes my mind off the next Scouring, the tunnels, my Mom, and Samantha. Emma sits with me, talks with me. She heals my bruises from the training ground. But she can’t heal the holes inside me, just as I can’t heal hers.
In the next Scouring, we lose no one and capture six. All of them from Yellow. All of them wiped. There was no sign of Monica, but we kept our distance from Black. Their ability to shut down my power makes me wary.
In the Scouring after that, I go hunting for Blue and see no familiar faces. We bring back three from Blue and two from Green. We tried to avoid Black again, but they attacked. Their girls’ powers neutralized ours, making it a pure physical struggle. The Red boys proved their worth. Jafari leapt over the wall of shields and took out the three captives by himself. Marcus, Seth, and Khan scattered the rest.
In the third Scouring since Monica stopped me, I lead our team to capture the entire team of twelve from Blue. It’s hard to drag them all back, because the other towers know that’s when we’re weak. Black and Green rush at us. We lose Seth’s pair, Amy, to Black. We would have lost more if not for Jacana and Boleyn guarding our retreat. Twelve gained should be worth one lost, but it doesn’t feel that way. We agree to be more measured next time.
One of the new captives from Blue is Tom, who I remember as the former American President Thomas Jefferson. We went on the Hunting together. We fought together for Blue in the Scouring. But despite my pleading, Rahab sends him to Behemoth to be wiped. I don’t know enough about him to help reconstruct his memories. It seems too risky. The fire will have to show him in time.
Tom is no exception. Everyone has been wiped since Hank and Emma came to Red willingly, looking for me. I miss Hank. I couldn’t bear to lose Emma again. We stay glued to each other’s side every trip into the Scouring.
Days and weeks pass. The three suns rise and fall.
Then one day, without warning, two of the suns do not appear. There’s only one, as there was when I first saw it during my voyage to the Yellow Tower with Emma. I wonder if the suns are something entirely different, like symbols that I don’t understand. There’s still so much I don’t understand, but there’s one thing I’ve learned well: how to capture in the Scouring.
It takes six more Scourings before we reach 144. Rahab announces it cheerfully in the Feasting Hall. She praises me as the leader and representative of our efforts. She says everyone may now see more of the past. She says the Scouring is doing its work, even for those who do not set foot into the battle. After the feast begins, I ask Rahab, sitting beside me on the throne, if Behemoth will finally let us enter the tunnels.
“It would now be safe to ask,” she answers, smiling.
The next morning Emma and I descend through the Red Tower together. We reach the door where Rahab first took me after arriving in Red. It is made of iron, with the shape of a flame formed out of rubies in the center—exactly like the door to the Alpha’s quarters.
“Touch the symbol with your fire,” I say to Emma, and she does.
The door opens, letting a dank stench spill out.
“Ugh.” Emma holds her arm over her nose. “That’s terrible.”
“You don’t like the smell of wet dog?” I ask, and she laughs uneasily. The joke would hide my fear, except that Emma knows what I feel through the Pairing. It probably has her on edge.
When we step through the door, it slams shut behind us. This time there’s no Rahab on the other side. There’s no handle or way out. The room is pitch black. A low rumble sounds like breathing near us.
“It’s okay,” I whisper, more to myself than to Emma.
“What should we do?” she asks.
“I don’t know.” A faint breeze of air brushes against my skin. There must be another doorway to reach the tunnels. “Let’s look for an opening.”
I take Emma’s hand, and we move as quietly as possible, staying close to the wall. The deep breathing continues as we inch forward. My heart thumps quickly. We still can’t see anything. Eventually we come back to the same door we had entered, with the flame symbol. It’s still closed.
“It’s a circle,” Emma whispers. “What now?”
A faint light appears. I look back into the room. A huge yellow eye has opened. It stares right at us. The dragon’s body doesn’t move, except for a slight parting of its lips, revealing teeth as long as my arms.
“Do you want out?” the dragon growls.
I grab for the air but cannot find it.
“Won’t work here,” it rumbles, sounding like an avalanche of stone.
I force myself to stay calm. “Rahab said you are Behemoth. She told us you would let us pass into the tunnels.”
The dragon snorts and a dozen flames suddenly spring into life around the perimeter of the room. The cavern is like a dome. The beast has reddish black skin like magma. It stretches, straightening its short legs and raising its wings high into the cavern, almost touching the walls around us. It’s the dragon we saw in the mountains. It’s the dragon that breathed fire and burned Seymour to nothing and first showed me Samantha. It’s the dragon with serpentine eyes fixed on me.
“Do you fear me?” Each word grinds out slowly from the creature. “You have much to learn. Even the wildest forces were made to be tamed.”
With its neck arched up, there’s a sudden intake of air, like a vacuum sucking up all the oxygen in the vast room. Then comes a deep growl and a blast of fire, spewing out of its mouth and up through a chute in the ceiling. The blazing fire lights the cavern completely and makes the room unbearably hot. Emma and I instinctively crouch back toward the door, but the fire relents.
“So be it.” Behemoth moves to the side. “You may enter,” it rumbles, looking to the spot where it previously laid, where an opening leads down.
This is the tunnel? I can’t imagine entering there. What are we supposed to do when we come back? Tap the dragon’s belly?
“We want to reach the Black Tower,” I say.
The huge slitted eyes blink. “Go left.”
I look to Emma. Her pale face is strikingly serene.
“You still okay?” I ask.
She nods and turns to the beast. “You are chaos,” she says, “not destruction.”
“Wise one,” Behemoth growls. “Passion has chaos at its core. All was chaos before order.”
“You don’t have to be afraid,” Emma says to me, grabbing my hand and pulling me forward. I spare a last glance at the dragon as we step into the tunnel. It eyes me like breakfast but does not move to stop us.
I try to breathe deeply, to calm myself, but it doesn’t stop the shaking. Something about what Emma said, and Behemoth’s answer, has unsettled me. It grows darker and darker as we descend. I can barel
y see my own feet.
“Can you light the way?” I ask.
“Sorry, my power’s not working,” she says. “We can feel our way.”
She sounds so confident, so unlike how I feel. I stop walking. “Have you been here before?” I ask.
“Not that I remember,” she says, “but it shouldn’t be far. The Black Tower is close, to the left. Come on.”
I follow the sound of her footsteps, losing my orientation. It does not take long before we reach an opening. Emma continues to lead, following the wall on the left. There is an echo and a movement of wind that makes me think we’ve entered a vast room, maybe even bigger than the room with Behemoth.
Something snags at my foot, almost tripping me. There’s a hollow thud and clinking sound, like whatever I tripped over was knocked away. After a few more steps I’m suddenly stumbling over countless clinking objects. Emma causes the same sound as she moves just in front of me.
“What is this?” I ask, trying to step carefully.
“I think the tunnel opened up,” Emma says from ahead, her voice echoing. “Maybe it’s the pit Rahab mentioned.”
She has stopped, from the sound of it. I move forward step by awkward step over the rolling, clinking objects. I still can’t see anything. Then I bump into something. Emma.
“Sorry.” I manage to hold her arm and stabilize both of us. The ground is no longer firm underneath. It is completely covered by these shifting, rolling, hollow things.
“Can you feel the air?” she whispers.
It is moving, swirling in a gentle breeze. This room must be huge. “Try again to summon a fire,” I say. “We need light.”
“No, something’s not right.” She sounds afraid, but mesmerized. “We have to keep going. Faster.”
We hold hands as we stumble forward over the objects, always within reach of the wall on our left. We move faster and faster, fear tightening around us. We would run if we could, but we continually trip over the objects on the floor.
There’s a shift in the air, as if maybe there will be another tunnel. We have to find the way out. The darkness makes it impossible. It would help to at least feel my way ahead, with the air. I focus and summon a thread of it. But the moment the air moves under my command, chaos erupts around us. The wind gusts and knocks me back against the wall. I collapse onto the clattering pile.
35
SUDDENLY THERE’S A LIGHT. What you see was meant to be, says a booming voice, the same one that came when I was in the white circle in the Scouring. But it never happened, because of you.
A vision overwhelms me.
Samantha, an older, gray-haired Samantha, stands in a kitchen with marble countertops and pristine white tile floors. The windows reveal a rolling green landscape. There is a red barn and a silo. Picket fences separate the fields in the distance. It is bucolic perfection. And Samantha is happy, deeply happy. I feel exactly what she feels, as if she wore a link around her neck.
Sam, it’s me, I try to say, but I can’t. I have no option but to watch and listen, to experience the world as she does. Or as she might have. It never happened...
She looks from the beautiful view out the window to seven young children who sit at the kitchen counter. They are eating breakfast—scrambled eggs. Their red and blonde hair has a lustrous sheen in the morning light. Their bright faces stare at Samantha as they chew.
“Nana,” one of kids says. “Where do eggs come from?”
Samantha comes to the counter and leans on her elbows, glancing from child to child. “Good question, Anne! Eggs come from chickens. I can show you today, if you’d like.”
“Yes, yes!” The other kids join in. They are very excited about these chickens.
“Can we go now?” one of them asks.
“Finish your breakfast,” Samantha says. “Your parents really ought to get you out of the city more often.”
“But I like the city,” a young boy says. “It has pigeons.”
“Did you know pigeons can carry messages?” Samantha asks.
This strikes all the kids with wonder. Samantha tells them about how pigeons carry little notes tied to their legs. She says they always seem to know how to get back to the same place, like an internal homing device. She tells them how she hopes they’ll learn to feel the same way about coming to see Nana in the country.
A man and woman enter the room. Three of the seven kids rush to them. There are hugs and kisses.
“Mommy! Daddy!” the oldest says. “We get to see chickens today!”
“And eggs!” another adds.
The couple smiles. The woman looks just like Samantha. The man is handsome, in a tweed coat and loafers. He looks to Samantha. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen a chicken. Can we join?”
“Of course,” Samantha says. “But breakfast first!”
The kitchen bustles with life as the children and their parents eat. Another couple enters. This time it’s the husband who looks just like Samantha. By now I know, these are Samantha’s children and her grandchildren. The plates are mostly empty. Dishes are stacked in the sink as the sunlight streams in.
An older man opens the back door and steps inside. He wears a felt hat and a trim green coat. His boots are covered in mud.
“Don’t you dare take another step,” Samantha says, moving to him. She kisses him and smiles. “Ready to lead the adventure?”
“My, my,” he says, lifting off his hat and bowing his head slightly. “You’re beautiful as the sunrise.”
“Oh hush.” Samantha’s cheeks warm as she touches his hand and feels the gentle and joyful glow of decades of knowing his love. “The children are listening.”
The older man looks out over the group. There are eleven others now—the two younger couples and their seven children. “Who’s ready to see the chickens?” the man asks. “Maybe find a green rooster feather?”
The kids rush to the door, squealing with excitement. Samantha helps them as they slip on their boots and coats and follow the man out the door. She turns back into the kitchen, where she finds the two couples waiting.
Her daughter is smiling. “They’re going to come back so muddy.”
“Dirt does a kid good,” Samantha says.
“It’s cleaner than a city street,” her son replies. “Thanks again for taking care of them. We’ve needed a break.”
“Oh it’s our pleasure,” Samantha says. “You four finish up and get going. We’ll take good care of the kids. You need time with each other. Just you. God knows Henry and I needed it. Would you believe we’ve been married forty years now?”
“We know, mom,” her daughter says with an indulgent smile.
“And you know how we met, working in the hospital?”
“We know, mom,” her daughter answers again. “He was a young pastor, you were a nurse and...”
“He had the tenderest heart,” Samantha says. “Good thing I worked late that night to see him, because otherwise there was this young doctor who had been flirting with me. He was married. That would not have ended well.” She looks to her son and her son-in-law. “You young men work too hard. Remember, there’s different kinds of success. Like having a next generation and one after that to come out to your place and see the chickens, okay?”
“We know, mom,” her son says. He rises and gives her a hug. “You’ve told us enough times now.” He glances to his sister. “That’s number four hundred fifteen, right?”
She laughs. “I’d lost count.”
“That’s okay,” he says. “The more she says it, the better behaved we’ll be, right?”
“Right,” Samantha says, hands on her hips but smiling. “Now get going, you four. Don’t you worry about the dishes. I’ll take care of it.”
36
WHEN THE VISION ENDS, everything is dark. Odd shapes are underneath me, like short and thick sticks, poking at painful angles. I try to sit up but slip and fall. The objects clink and clatter over each other. I reach down through them but there’s no bottom. The th
ings must be stacked high. What are they? Bones?
“Cipher, here,” Emma says, very close to me but completely hidden in the dark. Her hand finds mine. We help each other stand.
“We have to get out of here,” I say.
“I know.” Her breaths are quick and shallow. “You feel...like me. Let’s hurry.”
We manage not to trip as we find the wall and inch along it again. I don’t dare summon my power, fearing it will bring another vision. This one was so beautiful and so good, but the voice said it never happened, because of me. It makes it painful, because if the Samantha in the vision is right, I’m the one who stole that future from her. How could I have known? Why would this place show it to me? There’s something very wrong about it.
It is not far before we find a doorway. We enter and, finally, come to the end of the things on the ground. There’s only solid rock under our feet. A speck of light the size of a pinhead shines in the distance. We run for it.
The path bends steeply upward. My legs begin to feel the effort. As the light grows, we slow down. We can see each other now.
I stop to catch my breath and look back. It’s too dark in the tunnel to see whatever it was we left. The sound of the clinking objects still reverberates in my mind.
“Don’t stop yet.” Emma pulls me forward. “Let’s get outside first.”
We continue quickly to the opening. It is perched high on a ledge of a steep, rocky slope. Rows of terraced green hills lay before us, with a few figures scattered about in the distance. They seem to be working, heads down, oblivious of the strangers who appeared through the tunnel. The hills are bordered on the left by cliffs rising to a steep ridge. We must have gone underneath it, crossing from Red to Black. To our right, the hills flatten and lead to a shaft of seamless iron that jabs into the sky. The Black Tower. It is closer than I expected, and more intimidating. Beyond the tower the land flattens and stretches to the ocean, which extends to the horizon.
“What now?” Emma sits on the ground, hugging her knees.
The Red Tower (The Five Towers Book 2) Page 18
