by Ted Dekker
“So you believe me.”
He was seated on a boulder under the shade of a large palm, one foot planted on the sand. His eyes were daring, and everything in his tone told me that he did believe. But I wanted to hear him say it, if only to support my belief.
“Of course I believe you,” Samuel said, rising. He walked toward Razor, his horse, who was feeding on soft reeds on the pool’s bank. “I believe in the woman named after my own mother who has come to me out of a dream.” He turned, walking backward with arms spread now. “For all I know, this is my dream, and you’re the maiden I’ve called to rescue me from myself.”
He flashed a grin and let his statement stand for a moment. Then he turned to the horse, jerked two swords from their scabbards on either side of the saddle, and faced me, blades hanging from each hand.
He walked toward me. “And if the rumors of Elyonites really are true, then all of them must be true, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Including the rumor that among Elyonites, the Mystics are second to none in the fighting arts. Also called the Roush arts.” He stopped ten feet away. “Show me.”
With that, Samuel of Hunter tossed the blade in his left hand toward me.
But I wasn’t a warrior. I had no idea what to do with a sword. So I simply watched the blade sail past me, clatter against a large boulder, and land in the sand at my feet.
I looked over at him. “I told you, I have no clue how to hold that thing, much less swing it.”
“No, of course you don’t. You’ve lost your memory. And without memory of who you are, you can’t be who you are. This much is obvious even to a child. But that doesn’t mean you can’t recover the memory of who you are.”
Justin’s words came to me. Re-member who you are. Recognize yourself.
“Maybe, but I can tell you—”
“You didn’t even reach for it! How do you know you can’t wield it?”
I heard a rustle in the tree and glanced up. There, perched on a limb, was the plump Roush. Gabil, the one with a limp.
“What is it?” Samuel had followed my stare and was looking directly at the Roush. “The southern breeze. It still carries our scent north, away from the Horde, who are still far south. Trust me when I say we Albinos know how to remain hidden.”
Gabil fluttered down and landed on a boulder just behind Samuel. He was grinning in a sneaky way, as if having played some great joke.
I stared, trying not to look too astonished at what Samuel couldn’t see.
“It is I and I alone,” Gabil said to me. “And I must remain at a distance. I’m not to meddle. Do you think this counts as meddling?”
“Humor me,” Samuel was saying, focused on me again.
“Humor him,” Gabil said, hopping down to the sand, where he nearly stumbled before righting himself. “Show him the move I showed you before Justin came.”
Gabil was real. Yes, of course he was and always had been, I knew that. I also knew that I couldn’t speak to him without appearing foolish to Samuel.
“Don’t look so shocked,” Samuel said, approaching. “My logic is sound. If you really are one of these Mystics and have just lost your memory, then I want to see if I can help you recover the most important part. Which is the memory of wielding a sword.”
He reached for my hand and I gave it to him without thinking. Before I realized his intention, he’d pulled me up, spun me around so that he was at my back, and had his arm around me, sword extended in front of me.
“Take it,” he whispered in my ear. “I’ll guide you.”
“Let him guide you,” Gabil said, behind me now. “This is Samuel, son of Thomas, as worthy a companion as any. And he does know the arts, I must say. I don’t think I’m meddling when I say ‘take the blade,’ do you?”
Only a part of my mind was engaged with Samuel—his one arm snug around my waist, the other extended before me holding the sword. His breath on my ear and the pounding of his heart against my back. These were all things my senses, heightened by years of blindness, registered in full.
But most of my mind was racing with questions for Gabil. The seals, my identity, my quest, the dreams—surely he would have insight.
Samuel reached all the way around me with his free arm, gently lifted my hand alongside the blade, then folded my fingers around the hilt.
“You see?” he said. “Just like this. You remember the feel of the well-heeled leather hilt in your hand, begging you to join in. Albinos may not use the blade to kill Horde these days, but even children are trained in the arts. Think of your relationship with the sword as you would a courtship ritual. And remember that, as an Elyonite, you are among the best skilled in these arts.”
I only half heard his words, because Gabil was hopping around us and now faced me again, just there, ten feet in front of me, grinning with delight.
“It’s true,” he said. “As a Mystic from beyond the pass, you must have been very skillful in all the arts. Go on, play with him.”
Play? It was all a big game to these two. To make it certain, Gabil leaped in the air, executed two slicing swipes with his feet, and landed in a pile. He quickly righted himself. “Sorry. Maneuvering on the ground isn’t exactly my forte. But it is yours.”
Oblivious to the Roush, Samuel slowly removed his hand from mine and stepped around me, eyes bright. In doing so, his leg passed through Gabil’s wing as if it wasn’t there at all. Still, the Roush quickly got out of the way.
“Go on,” Samuel said, scooping up the sword he’d thrown past me moments earlier. “Like this.” He slowly weaved the blade side to side. “Remember?” He effortlessly twirled it through a full circle once, then twice, without removing his eyes from mine. “Let it come back to you. Show me that the young maiden from the other side of the world is as skillful as she is beautiful.”
“Show him!” Gabil cried, swaying and bobbing his head.
Wearing half a smile and feeling silly, I moved my arm, felt the weight of the heavy sword, still utterly clueless. “Like this?”
Samuel’s smile softened. “No, not like that.”
The late afternoon air grew still. Without warning, he sprang forward, spun once in the air, and brought his blade about in a wide, slashing arc directed at my chest.
I can’t say how what happened next did, because I wasn’t thinking. I only reacted, dropping to a crouch and jerking my own blade up to intersect the path of his. The clash of metal on metal rang out in the canyon.
“Like that,” Samuel said.
He was over me, his blade pressing against mine as if frozen in time. For a moment we just stared at each other, he as shocked as I.
“You could have killed me!”
His eyes flashed. “I would have pulled short.”
“I knew it!” Gabil cried, flipping through the air, swiping his wings like blades. “I knew it! All Elyonites are . . .”
I lost the rest of what he said, because Samuel was moving again, swinging his blade through a reverse arc. I easily blocked this blow as well. And the next, a roundhouse kick with his right leg. And then the knife he palmed from his thigh and sent my way with enough force to cut through any breastbone.
The last I slapped away with the back of my hand, but not without feeling the sharp pain in my knuckles.
“Stop it!” I cried, dropping my blade and running back a few steps. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He stood up straight, confused. “Sparring.”
“With real blades? What if I’d missed that knife?”
“It was headed past your right shoulder. I would never actually harm you.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing!” But I did know. I was blocking his blows without any conscious control, and that frightened me.
Samuel looked at me, dejected. “Forgive me. I wanted to shock it out of you. You know, force your instincts to kick in.” He shrugged. “It worked. Which means you have me hilt, blade, and scabbard. You’re far more skilled th
an I could have hoped, and we’ve only just begun!” He dipped his head. “I will follow you to the ends of the earth.”
“Because I can fight?”
“Heavens no. But it is a part of who you are. Like your beauty. And like the mark on your arm. Is there any doubt that I was summoned to your side?”
I noticed the odor of burning acid then. Just a hint on the breeze, but enough for me to spin around and scan the canyons. Nothing.
“What is it?” Samuel asked.
This was different from the scent of Horde, I thought. Then it was gone.
A flurry of wings behind me spun me back. Gabil was making for the sky in haste. No meddling.
“What are you looking at?” Samuel asked, gazing about.
“I thought I smelled something.”
He tested the air. “Nothing. I told you we were safe here. Yes, Jacob is rumored to be good, but no Horde is that good.” He stepped up to the blade I’d dropped and scooped it up. “No more knives, I promise. Just swords. Maybe you can teach me a thing or two.”
The stench returned, this time full force, as if a blanket of it had been dropped over us. I jerked my eyes up and saw them, thousands of them, settling on the cliffs above us. Large black creatures with glowing red eyes. Like hooded serpents with wings.
I froze, breathless. These had to be Shataiki. We were surrounded by them!
Samuel was by my side, staring up unseeing, but my reaction had his full attention now.
“What do you see?”
“Shataiki,” I whispered. But I was thinking, Shadow Man.
He slowly turned, face white, searching the cliffs. “How many?”
“Thousands. We have to leave!”
“You’re sure they’re real? It’s not just a figment—”
“They’re as real as you, trust me.” I was trembling. “We have to run!”
“Calm down,” he said, but his voice was tight with fear. “I’m positive they can’t hurt us.”
“I’m not.”
“They can only make you afraid.”
“I don’t care, we still have to leave. We’re trapped in this canyon! Why would they be here? You’re sure you can’t see them?”
Samuel set his jaw and looked me over. “You. They must know who you are.” He nodded once. “Okay, we leave.” He grabbed my arm and guided me toward the horse, casting furtive glances at the darkening sky. “I have to get you to my father.”
The Shataiki were perched high a hundred yards from us. Even at that distance I felt their power reaching down to smother me. Fear. The kind that works its way deep into a mind and blinds a person to anything but survival. The kind I had felt a thousand times through a thousand nightmares.
Even as I thought it, one of them leaped from the cliff, followed by two others. They circled down toward us, floating on wide black wings tattered from abuse. The air filled with distant hissing and clicking, the sound of swarming locusts.
I hurried, passing Samuel. But the nearest of the three approaching Shataiki veered and settled to the ground between us and the horse. I pulled up. The Shataiki had a long snout with bared fangs, a snapping tail, and beady, pupil-less eyes. He was like a rabid fruit bat. Or a cobra. The wings, its hood.
“What?”
“There, on the ground,” I whispered. “Between us and the horse.”
Samuel stepped up next to me. “Razor doesn’t notice.”
“I do.”
The creature sprang into the air, flapped for us, and landed on Samuel’s shoulder, red eyes fixed on me.
“It’s on you!” I cried, jumping away.
“What’s on me?” Samuel faced me, frowning. He swiped at his shoulders, but his hand went through the creature. “You’re saying a Shataiki is on me? I don’t feel a thing.”
The Shataiki’s jaw opened, hissing. Its fangs locked onto Samuel’s head and a long pink tongue snaked into his ear. All the way in . . .
Fear washed through me like acid. “Don’t move,” I rasped. My heart was hammering and my palms were sweating.
“What do you mean, don’t move?” He batted at the air. “Enough with this! We ride! We ri—”
He went still. The Shataiki took flight with a clicking hiss that cut to my heart. Samuel stood frozen for a moment, then dropped to all fours and pressed his ear against the sand. And as he did, I heard the pounding hooves beyond the hissing of the Shataiki.
“Horde,” he growled, standing. A dark glare drenched with bitterness transformed Samuel’s face.
The hosts perched on the cliffs above us rose like a blanket of flies from a carcass. They swooped to the canyon’s entrance, where they hovered over rising dust from the desert.
“Follow!” Samuel sprinted for his horse, which was now stamping and snorting.
I followed. He reached back, hoisted me by the waist, and threw me onto the horse. Snatching the reins, he swung under the mount’s neck like a tetherball and landed on the saddle in front of me. He shoved a sword into my hand and tugged a bow from its sling behind me.
“We go straight for them,” he said, kicking the mount. “Remember, you know how to use that sword. Use it!”
Then we were galloping for the wide canyon mouth, straight toward a line of thundering Horde mounts now in clear sight. I didn’t understand why we weren’t taking the escape route he’d told me about. It was behind us, past the pool at the back of the canyon.
“Why this way? We don’t stand a chance! Why not—”
“They’ll only follow! We don’t have the speed, both on one horse. We need one of theirs. If you see him, tell me which is Jacob.”
I understood his logic concerning the horses. But I didn’t understand his recklessness in also taking a swipe at Jacob while the opportunity presented itself. Our lives were at stake. My life was at stake!
They came in a wide line, at least thirty abreast. And we, just one horse with both of us bent forward, blazing for certain disaster.
“Samuel!” I was lost to panic. “We can’t do this!”
“We are doing this. I take the left, you the right. Go for the head.”
Still they came. Still my heart pounded. Still my mind screamed its warning of imminent death. The Shataiki hovered above the warriors, a wall of black against the graying sky. I forced my eyes back to the Horde.
“Like a Shataiki out of hell, Razor,” Samuel said. Then he released the reins, strung his bow with an arrow from the quiver at his knees, pulled the string back at a full gallop, and let the arrow fly. I watched its trajectory: rising at a thirty-degree angle, sailing through a lazy arc, heading back down toward the line of horses.
We were closing fast, fewer than a hundred paces now, and yet Samuel’s arrow reached one of the warriors at precisely the right point. The Scab grabbed at his neck and tumbled backward off his mount.
“You see him?”
“Who?”
“Jacob. We have to kill Jacob!”
“We have to escape!”
He’d lost his mind, I thought. The Shataiki had poisoned him with its tongue. How could anyone be so headstrong? Or he knew something I didn’t about their ways. I prayed it was the latter.
Samuel shot another arrow. Took the warrior next to his first victim from his mount. Then a third. My scattered thoughts finally made sense of what he was doing when he veered for the narrow gap he’d created.
“Take the one on the right!”
The calculating frontal lobe of my brain shut down when we were ten strides from them. Panic gave way to raw survival instinct. I wasn’t aware of what I was doing. I just did it.
Gripping Samuel’s leather breastplate with my left hand, I hung down to my right, sword nearly dragging on the ground, light in my hand.
Then we were on top of the Horde warrior. I didn’t see his face. His blade swung for Samuel at the same time mine cut deep into the mount’s foreleg.
Samuel easily ducked the slicing blade. The Scab’s horse had no such opportunity. It snorted in pain and collapse
d full stride in our wake.
“That’s my girl.” Samuel continued in a full gallop, pulling Razor to the right in pursuit of one of the riderless stallions. “You see him?”
I didn’t bother answering.
We drew abreast of the horse as the warriors behind us doubled back.
“Take Razor. If we get separated, he’ll take you to Thomas. There are four knives strapped to the saddle. One more pass, and if you see Jacob, gut him!”
Then he was off and straddling a terrified black mount, which he struggled to control.
I, on the other hand, had no such problem with Razor. My body knew what to do. I shifted forward, grabbed the reins with my left hand, and dug my feet into the stirrups, close on Samuel’s heels.
It took only a dozen strides for the Horde stallion to know he had a new master. Samuel reined him high and abruptly pulled him around. Our eyes met and held for a moment. Then he dipped his head with respect, spurred his horse, and tore back the way we had come.
We’d covered half the distance to the Horde when I realized that they were waiting for us. They had no desire to repeat the first pass. Did they know about the passage out the back? No. Jacob intended to trap us in the canyon if we got past them this time.
It occurred to me that the knives were far more useful to me than the sword. Why? Because I was better with the smaller blades.
I quickly shoved the sword into its scabbard and palmed two of the four knives strapped to Razor’s shoulders. One went between my teeth, the other in my right hand.
Samuel had already taken down two of the Horde with arrows before I threw my first knife. I watched it fly true, end over end, before slamming home in a warrior’s chest. Heavier than an arrow, the blade sliced cleanly through his leather armor. He was likely dead before he hit the ground.
I was low and ready to hurl the second knife when one of the warriors to my left veered toward me. “No harm to the woman!” he thundered. “Let them pass!”
It was Jacob. I knew his voice.
He’d seen my skill with a knife and surely knew that I would make him my next target, yet this didn’t seem to bother him. Why?
If you see Jacob, gut him!
How could I kill this man I had spoken to, negotiated with? It wasn’t in me. And yet, this was my course, wasn’t it?
