by Ted Dekker
“Listen to me! How many did the scouts report?”
“Too many, Thomas. It doesn’t matter. My men are all diseased!”
Thomas could feel the onset of the same confusion he’d once felt when the disease had nearly taken him before in the desert. But he was still thinking clearly enough to realize what had happened.
Rachelle said it for him. “Johan knew.” She gazed at the confusion before them. “He knew that Justin was pure, and he knew that innocent blood would poison the lake.” She looked at him with wide eyes. “We’re becoming like them. We’re becoming like the Horde!”
It was true. This was Martyn’s true betrayal. This was how he was waging his battle. They would take the forests without swinging a single blade. The only difference between the Forest People and the Desert Dwellers now was a lake that no longer functioned. In a matter of hours, maybe less, the Forest Guard would look, act, and think like their own enemies.
There wasn’t much time. “Give me your sword!”
William stared dumbly.
Thomas reached forward and yanked the blade from William’s scabbard. “Call the men! We fight now. To the death!”
His wife was staring at the red lake, eyes wide, but not with horror now. There was another look in them—a dawning of realization.
A shriek split the morning air behind them. Thomas spun and saw a woman pointing to the front gates. He twisted and looked down the main street. The front gates were five hundred yards away—he couldn’t make out any detail, but enough to see that an army had arrived.
A Horde army.
“The men, William! Follow me!”
He gripped the sword in his fist and ran across the beach, toward Martyn, shoving from his mind the terrible pain he felt. Feet were padding the sand behind him, but he didn’t stop to see who it was.
The plan that had emerged from the fog in his mind was a simple one, with only one end: Qurong’s death. In his current condition, he wouldn’t have the same advantage that he ordinarily would, but they wouldn’t take him down before he killed the Horde leader, the firstborn, Tanis.
“Thomas!”
He recognized the voice. Mikil was running up the bank in a blind panic. He ignored her and raced on. The distant sound of swords clashing carried over the village. Some of his Guard were putting up a defense. But the more ominous sound of boots and hoofs—thousands upon thousands marching in cadence up the main street—made the meager defense sound like a children’s sideshow.
One of the Scabs had left Qurong’s army and was running to meet him. No, not a Scab warrior, but a Scab general, with a black sash.
Martyn!
“Remember, Thomas, he’s my brother,” Rachelle said behind him. It was his wife, not William, behind him. And she wanted him to leave Johan unharmed?
He glanced back. “He betrayed Elyon.” The Council members, led by Ciphus, had finally arrived at the lake and were testing its waters. The uproar had settled in the hopes that perhaps the elder could fix this terrible problem. No one seemed to worry about the army in the streets—they wanted to bathe. Only to bathe.
Rachelle pulled up next to him. Johan was now only fifty yards from them.
“Thomas, there is another way. Do you remember what Justin told me?”
Thomas slowed and held out his sword with both hands. “The only way I know now is to take Qurong with me. If you want your brother to live, tell him to let me pass.”
“You’re not listening!” she whispered harshly. “‘When the time comes,’ that’s what he said. Thomas, this is that time.”
Martyn had withdrawn his sword and slowed to a walk. Thomas stopped and prepared to meet the general in whatever way he had in mind. His skin was crawling with fire, and his joints felt like they’d fractured, but he knew that the Horde fought through the pain all the time. He could do that and more, if not die trying.
“He said he had a better way,” Rachelle said. “Justin told me to die with him.”
“That’s what I’m preparing to do. And with me Qurong will die.”
She grabbed his arm and spoke hurriedly. “Listen to me, Thomas! I think I understand what he meant. He said it would bring me life! He knew that we would need life. He knew that he would die. He knew that the lake would no longer give us life because it would be defiled by the shedding of innocent blood. His blood!”
The lone figure walking toward them faded from his vision.
Die with me.
“We’ve died with him already,” he said. “Look at us!”
“He said it would bring us life !”
Martyn’s face was shrouded by his hood. He carried his sword loose, by his side—overconfident, taunting.
Thomas looked at the lake, at the sea of red that sent chills down his spine. Justin’s message suddenly seemed quite obvious to him. He couldn’t imagine actually doing it, but if Rachelle was right, Justin had asked them to die as he had died.
He’d asked them to drown in this sea of red.
Thomas had swam through a sea of red once, deep in the emerald lake that could be breathed.
A fresh cry erupted from the shore. Evidently Ciphus had failed in his task to prove that all was still fine with his lake. But there was more. Ciphus was screaming above the chaos.
“He’s gone!”
Thomas cast a quick glance over his shoulder. The elder stood on the shore, dripping with water. He looked surprisingly like a Scab—with dreadlocks he would look like Qurong himself.
“There is no body!” the elder cried. “They have taken him!”
Thomas spun back to face Martyn. “He’s lying,” Martyn said. “The body could be anywhere under the water by now. He’s setting you up.”
“Thomas, you have to listen to me!” Rachelle pleaded.
The disease was making his head swim. He blinked and tried to think clearly. “You’re suggesting that we run into the lake and drown ourselves?”
“You would rather live like this?”
Martyn stopped ten feet from them, head low so that shadows hid his face.
Thomas adjusted his grip on the sword. An image of Justin’s swollen face filled his mind.
Follow me. Die with me.
It was an incredible demand that Justin had suggested to whoever would listen.
He spoke to Martyn. “What have you done to us?” His voice came out low and unearthly, bitter and full of pain at once.
Martyn lifted his head and Thomas saw his face.
It wasn’t the scowl he expected. Tears filled the general’s eyes. His face was drawn tight, stricken with fear. Fear!
Martyn was suddenly walking again, closer, sword still by his side.
“Stop there,” Thomas ordered.
Martyn took two more steps and then stopped.
This wasn’t what Thomas had expected. He could easily take two long steps and thrust his blade into the general’s unprotected chest. A part of him insisted that he should. He should kill Martyn and then run for Qurong.
But he couldn’t. Not now. Not with Rachelle’s words ringing in his ears. Not seeing tears in Martyn’s eyes. Could this be more trickery?
“I remember,” the general said. The remorse in his tone was so uncharacteristic that Thomas blinked. “I remember, Rachelle. He spoke to me, and all night I’ve remembered.”
Rachelle let out a sob and started toward her brother.
He lifted a hand, just barely. “Please, no. They can’t see us.”
Johan looked past Thomas toward the bank behind them. The first of the Horde army had arrived on the shores. Sporadic cries arose as villagers scattered for safety, but there were no sounds of swordplay or resistance, Thomas noted. The disease had taken most of their minds already. The mighty Forest Guard had been stripped of its will to fight by a disease none of them had defeated before.
Johan looked at Thomas, eyes begging. “I knew he was innocent. I knew his blood would defile the lake. I even knew who he was, but I couldn’t remember why I should care. Now
I’ve murdered him. I can’t live with this.”
“No, there is a better way!” Rachelle said.
“Please, I’ve decided. I will return to my army with a proposition of surrender from you, and then I will kill Qurong and publicly take the blame for poisoning the water. Ciphus will blame you. I told him that if anything went wrong with our plan, he was to blame you. He’ll say that you took the body of Justin and poisoned the water. In the people’s state of shock from the disease, they’ll believe him. The least I can do is protect you.”
“Protect us from what?” Rachelle demanded. “Not the disease.”
Thomas lowered his sword. Johan glanced at it, then over his shoulder. Qurong motioned to a line of his warriors, who started to march up the beach toward them.
“Qurong suspects something. We don’t have much time,” Thomas said. He looked at the water. “Do you remember the boy saying that he had a lot riding on us?”
“I suggest we bow our heads in a sign of mutual agreement,” Johan said. “Qurong must see that we’ve struck some kind of—”
“Forget your plan,” Thomas interrupted. “Do you remember the boy saying he depended on us?”
“Yes.”
“Justin said the same thing to Rachelle yesterday morning. Then he told her to follow him in his death. It would bring life in a better way, he said. Rachelle’s convinced he meant for us to die by drowning in the sea of red, like he did.”
Johan glanced at the water.
“Do you believe he was Elyon?” Thomas asked.
“I . . . I don’t know. He was . . . he was innocent.”
“But do you believe he was Elyon?” Thomas demanded again. “Was he the boy?”
Johan paused and stared out at the glassy red water. “Yes. Yes, I think he was.”
Thomas spoke quickly now. “And is it possible to breathe Elyon’s red water?”
“Perhaps.” A fresh tear leaked from Johan’s right eye and ran down his scabbed cheek.
“Then I think she’s right,” Thomas said. “And I think if we wait any longer, our minds will be confused by the disease with the rest.”
Ciphus was delivering a diatribe down the shore. Thomas heard his name repeatedly, but at the moment, the elder’s web of lies felt like nonsense next to the things his wife was now suggesting.
“You’re suggesting we drown like he did?” Johan asked.
They were all looking at the lake now. A row of warriors had broken from the new arrivals and were approaching from their right. The ones Qurong had dispatched were drawing closer on the left. They were running out of time.
Rachelle spoke with a tremor in her voice. “I’m afraid.”
“But that’s what he told you?” Johan asked. “To drown like he did?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“And Samuel? Marie?” she said.
“If you’re wrong, they’re dead with us.”
Thomas had been here fifteen years earlier, torn between fleeing Elyon’s lake and diving in. Then, it had been a pool of life. This lake looked like a cold pool of death.
Johan uttered a small gasp. He was staring across the lake.
“What is it?”
But Johan didn’t have to answer. Thomas and Rachelle saw them together, and instinctively Rachelle grasped his arm. Thomas’s first thought was that the trees on the opposite side of the lake had sprouted a thick harvest of cherries.
But these cherries were set in black eye sockets that were attached to furry black bodies.
Shataiki!
A hundred thousand at least, clinging to the trees just beyond the nearest branches, watching them with unblinking stares.
It had been fifteen years since Thomas had seen the bats, black or white. What had changed now? Justin had been killed. The forest was now inhabited by Shataiki. Or had Justin’s cry for them to remember opened their eyes as it had opened Johan’s mind? Either way, it was both terrifying and revealing at once.
Johan suddenly threw back his hood. Tears slipped down his face in long ribbons now. He gave the bats one last glare and stripped off his cloak, revealing shockingly white and flaky flesh. The sight of their general standing in only a loincloth brought the Scab warriors to a complete halt less than fifty yards on either side.
In that moment Thomas knew what he must do. What he wanted most desperately to do. Whom he must follow. Why Elyon had a lot riding on him. On them.
He didn’t bother discarding his tunic. He glanced to his right, caught Rachelle’s wide eyes; his left, Johan’s frantic stare.
“For Justin,” he said.
He ran.
Despite his earlier statement, Thomas almost turned to find his children. The thought of leaving them among the Horde sickened him. But he pushed on—this wasn’t the time to stop and make provision for them, no matter what the outcome. His children were now in Elyon’s hands. If he survived the next few moments, he would sweep them off their feet and kiss them with joy.
They tore down the bank, Thomas first, with Johan and Rachelle hard on his heels. The Horde grunted in shock to his left and right; he could hear that much. The Shataiki screeched. He wondered if anyone else could hear them.
Then he was airborne.
He hit the water and was immediately swallowed by a cold sea.
Red.
His first impulse was that their decision had been a terrible mistake. That the disease had softened their reasoning and caused them to do something so insane as to follow Justin in his death.
He kicked deep so that his feet wouldn’t flail on the surface for the Horde to see.
The water changed on his second stroke, less than five feet under, from cold to warm. He opened his eyes in surprise. He’d expected a dark abyss below him—black demons waiting to satisfy their lust for death.
What he saw was a pool of red light, dim and hazy, but definitely light! He looked left, then right, but there was no sign of Johan or Rachelle.
Thomas stopped kicking. He floated. The water was serene. Silent. Unearthly and eerie. He could hear the soft thump of his own pulse. Above him, countless Scabs were watching the water for signs of his emergence, but here in this fluid he was momentarily safe.
And then the moment passed, and the reality of his predicament filled his mind.
His eyes began to sting, and he blinked in the warm water, but to no relief. He was already running out of oxygen; his chest felt tight and for a moment he considered kicking to the surface to take one more gulp of air.
He opened his mouth, felt the warm water on his tongue. Closed it.
It’s his water, Thomas. You’ve been in this lake a thousand times, and you know that the bottom has always been muddy and black. But now it’s light. You’ve been here before.
But this plan suddenly struck him as irrational. What man would willingly suck in a lungful of water? He’d entered intending to throw his own life away? The disease had ruined him! He’d actually believed for one desperate moment that dying would bring him a new kind of life, but at the moment, nothing felt quite so foolish.
What of Johan and Rachelle? Would they claw for the surface in panic?
But what choice did he have? Was returning to the living death above any less absurd? He hung limp, trying to ignore the terrible knowledge that his lungs were starting to burn. But that was just it—he didn’t have the luxury of contemplating his decision much longer. He was down to a few seconds already.
A jolt of panic, a despair he’d never felt before, ran through his body, shaking him in its horrible fist.
Thomas opened his mouth, closed his eyes. He began to sob. A final scream filled his mind, forbidding him to take in this water. Justin had sucked at the water, but that was Justin.
No, that was Elyon, Thomas.
Then his air was gone. Thomas stretched his jaw wide and sucked hard like a fish gulping for oxygen.
Pain hit his lungs like a battering ram.
He tried to breathe out. In, out, like he once had in
the emerald lake. But this wasn’t that kind of water. His lungs felt as if they were full of stone. He was going to die. His waterlogged body began to sink slowly.
He didn’t fight the drowning. If Justin was Elyon, then this was the right thing for him to do. It was that simple. Justin had told them to follow him in his death, and that is what they were doing. And if Rachelle was wrong about all of this, then he would die as Justin died to show his respect for his innocence. There was no life above the surface anyway.
The lack of oxygen ravaged his body for long seconds, and he didn’t try to stop death.
Then he did try. With everything in him, he tried to reverse this terrible course.
Elyon, I beg you. Take me. You made me; now take me.
Darkness encroached on his mind. Thomas began to scream.
Then it was black.
Nothing.
He was dead; he knew that. But there was something here, beyond life. From the blackness a moan began to fill his ears, replacing his own screams. The moan gained volume and grew to a wail and then a scream.
He knew the voice! It was Justin. Elyon was screaming! And he was screaming in pain.
Thomas pressed his hands to his ears and began to scream with the other, thinking now that this was worse than death. His body crawled with fire as though every last cell revolted at the sound. And so they should, a voice whispered in his skull. Their Maker was screaming in pain!
He’d been here before! Exactly here, in the belly of the emerald lake. He’d heard this scream.
A soft, inviting voice replaced the cry. “Remember me, Thomas,” it said. Justin said. Elyon said.
Light lit the edges of his mind. A red light. Thomas opened his eyes, stunned by this sudden turn. The burning in his chest was gone. The water was warm and the light below seemed brighter.
He was alive?
He sucked at the red water and pushed it out. Breathing! He was alive!
Thomas cried out in astonishment. He glanced down at his legs and arms. Yes, this was real. He was here, floating in the lake, not in some other disconnected reality.
And his skin . . . he rubbed it with his thumb. The disease was gone. He turned slowly in the water, looking for Rachelle or Johan, but neither was here.
