by Ted Dekker
Qurong stopped twenty yards up the bank. He would see his own sentence through without any display of weakness. But even from here, Thomas could see the supreme leader’s drawn face. He wouldn’t be surprised if those were claw marks on his neck from Patricia.
Now Woref was being marched down the bank behind Chelise. But Thomas didn’t care about Woref.
Chelise walked past the warriors. The flames lit her face.
She was staring at him.
Thomas felt his remaining strength wane. His face wrinkled in sorrow. She stepped onto the platform and stopped ten feet from him. Thomas moved toward her without thinking.
“Back!” A fist clubbed his head. The night went fuzzy, but he didn’t lose sight of Chelise.
“We are dying for our love!” she said for all to hear. “You’ll deny even that? If you are going to drown us, then let us share at least a moment of the love we are dying for!”
The guard glanced at his superior.
“Let her go to him,” Qurong said.
Chelise walked toward him slowly, like an angel. Her chains, hidden by the flowing white gown, rattled on the boards. Fresh tears ran from her eyes when she was halfway to him. He stumbled toward her, and they fell into each other’s arms.
There was no reason to speak. The tears, the touch, the hot breath on their necks spoke much louder than words.
Shame on the rest! They stood watching a true love that had been condemned by the religion they had the nerve to call the Great Romance.
Here was romance!
Woref stepped onto the platform.
“Enough,” Qurong said. “Finish this before I force the rest of you in with them!”
“Put them abreast!” Ciphus ordered.
“You gave your life for me,” Chelise whispered in his ear. “Now I will die for you.” She sniffed.
“You don’t have to!” Thomas said. “It’s not too late . . . your father will accept your denial. Please, I know your love, but you have to find a red pool . . .”
Hands pulled her from behind. Her eyes looked into his.
“You’re my red pool,” she said.
“We aren’t going to make it!” Mikil said. “They’re already on the plat-form. Hurry!”
She’d raced back to the others, knowing that she would need their help if there was any chance to save Thomas. But time was running out.
“We still don’t know if this will work,” Suzan said. “We still have time to stop the execution. Four of us with swords could scatter them!”
“We can’t save him by killing the Scabs,” Mikil snapped. “We might as well be Scabs ourselves. Just dig!”
“Not as easily as you think,” Johan said. “If they have the sashes of assassins, they won’t run like the ones we walked through the other day.”
Jamous threw his weight into his sharpened stick. The passage was now four feet deep, and they clawed away at both ends. Close, so close. Any swing and either wall of remaining dirt would be breached. They’d cleared over a hundred medium-size boulders and now worked feverishly with torn hands on the soil that separated the two bodies of water.
Mikil shoved the dirt aside as fast as she could, careful not to be hit by one of their digging sticks. Her husband paused, panting. “Suzan’s right. We don’t know this will—”
“Just dig! There’s nothing that says it takes more than a drop! Is an ocean of blood better than a bucket? One drop of Thomas’s blood and I can enter his dream world. I’m telling you that one drop of this will do the same. Now—”
“I’m through!” Johan shouted.
They froze. Had his voice carried across the lake? It no longer mat-tered. They were running out of time.
“It’s flowing!” Johan dropped to his knees and pulled aside clods of dirt. Red water spilled over his fingers and splashed into the bottom of their trench.
“The other side!” Mikil cried. “Break it down!”
“Unhand me!” Woref seethed.
The guards shoved them into position, three abreast across the wide platform. Several tall towers similar to the one they’d used to drown Justin stood to the left of the dock. Evidently Qurong had ordered a method that would spare him from watching his daughter struggling while hanging from her feet, half submerged. The heavy bronze shackles around their ankles would pull them to the bottom where they would drown unseen.
They now stood ten yards from the end of the platform. Chelise looked straight ahead, jaw set. But her show of strength couldn’t stop the steady flow of tears down her white cheeks.
Thomas tore his eyes away from her. Please, Elyon, I beg you. Rescue your bride. Have mercy.
“Step forward,” Ciphus ordered. “Stop at the edge of the platform.”
Hands pushed Thomas. He moved ahead without any more encouragement. “Please, Chelise. This water means nothing to me, but I can’t bear the thought of your death.”
“I couldn’t live with myself,” she said softly. “And you’re wrong. My father would never undo what he’s ordered. I don’t want him to.”
He came to the edge and stopped. “You could save yourself. You could save me. You could keep my heart from breaking.”
Woref looked ahead at the forest, eyes now searching with quick movements. “I beg you, I beg you,” he whispered. His stoic bravado had been replaced by this odd plea to the forest.
Thomas followed his eyes. This was the same forest in which he’d seen the Shataiki after Justin’s death. What did Woref see?
“I beg you, my lord,” the general muttered. He was crying out to Teeleh, Thomas thought. Let him.
Thomas followed Chelise’s gaze into the dark water ten feet below them. Long poles disappeared into the black depths. How many bodies were entombed down there, bones chained to their anchors?
The guards were binding their hands behind their backs now.
“Please, my love . . .”
“You’ve drowned before.”
“But not in this water.”
“Did you know that when you dove in, or did you sink in desperation?”
It had been both. Fear and a sliver of faith. But there was nothing to hope for here. He stared across the lake. Beyond the torch’s reach the water was jet-black. Blacker than midnight. Blacker than he remembered.
“Now stand and face the rage of Elyon,” Ciphus said behind them. The planks creaked under his feet as he paced. His voice rose. “Let this be a lesson to all who would defy the Great Romance by denouncing those whom Elyon himself has put over this land.”
Chelise looked at him. The flames danced in her misty eyes. Her lips trembled. “You are my husband.”
“And you are my wife,” he whispered.
“Prepare them!” Ciphus said.
A guard behind each of them planted a fist between their shoulder blades and grabbed their hair.
“Pull!”
The guards jerked their hair down so that their heads buckled back-ward, forcing them to stare at the sky above. Three abreast, hands bound with canvas strips, feet laden by heavy chains, powerless and readied to die.
Mikil dropped to one knee on the right of the trench and stared across the black waters. Jamous knelt beside her; Johan and Suzan followed their lead on the other side.
“Please, Elyon,” she whispered. “Mercy. Save him.”
She glanced down at her left. The trench was roughly two feet wide and four feet long, and it now flowed with a rich stream of the red water from the red pool they’d found behind them. Thomas had told Kara about it absently, but the moment Qurong had sentenced him and Chelise to death in the library, she’d known that this was their only hope. To find the pool of Elyon’s water and dig through the barrier between it and the Horde’s lake.
But would it be enough?
The red water looked like a black fan as it spread out into the brown muddy waters. Moving fast. Faster than she would have guessed.
“Please, Justin. Save your bride.”
“Thomas!” Chelise’s voice was
faint, tight. Her throat felt frozen. She’d seen both kinds of drownings before—from the platform and the tower—and if there was any measure of relief in her sentence, it was that Qurong had mercifully chosen the platform. In a fit of outrage, her mother had finally demanded at least that much, and her father had quickly agreed.
“Elyon’s strength,” Thomas whispered.
“As Elyon has commanded, so now you die,” Ciphus cried. “Now die!”
A hand shoved her in the back, and suddenly there was nothing beneath her feet.
None of them made a sound as they fell. Woref hit the water first. Chelise saw his splash from the corner of her eye just before the cold water swallowed her legs, then her chest. Thomas plunged in on her left.
Then she was under.
She fell straight down, pulled by the chains bound to her ankles. She instinctively struggled against the restraints around her wrists—as was the custom, they were only loose bindings hastily tied to prevent an episode at the last moment on the platform. Amazingly they came free, sending a streak of hope through her mind. She opened her eyes.
Black. So black.
She clenched her eyes shut and, in so doing, shut the door on the last of her hope.
Elyon! Take me. Take me as your bride as you have Thomas.Her thoughts were born of panic, not reason. At any moment her feet would land in a pile of bones.
Elyon! Justin, I beg you!
The water around her feet, then her legs, changed from cold to warm. She opened her eyes and looked down in surprise. She’d expected a murky lake bottom below her—black demons clamoring for her in their lust for death.
What she saw was a pool of red light, dim and hazy, but definitely light! She looked left, then right, but there was no sign of Thomas or Woref.
Then Chelise fell into the warm red water. She floated. Serene. Silent. Unearthly and eerie. She could hear the soft thump of her own pulse. Above her, Qurong and Ciphus were watching the water for signs of her death—bubbles—but here in this fluid she was momentarily safe.
And then the moment passed and the reality of her predicament filled her mind. It was warmer and much deeper than she’d expected, and it was red, but she was still going to drown.
Her eyes began to sting, and she blinked in the warm water but received no relief. Her chest felt tight, and for a moment she considered kicking for the surface to take one more gulp of air.
She opened her mouth, felt the warm water on her tongue. Closed it.
Is it Justin’s water?
But who would willingly suck in a lungful of water? She’d entered intending to die. She knew that Thomas was right—the disease had ruined her mind! But dying willingly had felt profane.
She hung limp, trying to ignore her lungs, which were starting to burn. But that was just it—she didn’t have the luxury of contemplating her decision much longer.
A wave of panic ran through her body, shaking her in its horrible fist with a despair she’d never felt before.
Chelise opened her mouth, then closed her eyes. She began to sob. A final scream filled her mind, forbidding her to take in this water. Thomas had drowned once, but that was Thomas.
Then her air was gone. Chelise stretched her jaw wide and sucked hard like a fish gulping for oxygen.
Pain hit her lungs like a battering ram.
She tried to breathe out. In, out. Her lungs had turned to stone. She was going to die. Her waterlogged body began to sink farther.
She didn’t fight the drowning. Thomas had wanted her to follow him in death, and this is what she was doing. There was no life above the surface anyway.
The lack of oxygen ravaged her body for long seconds, and she didn’t try to stop death.
Then she did try. With everything in her she tried to reverse this terrible course.
Elyon, I beg you. Take me. You made me; now take me.
Darkness encroached on her mind. Chelise began to scream.
Then it was black.
Nothing.
She was dead. She knew that. But there was something here, beyond life. From the blackness a moan began to fill her ears, replacing her own screams. The moan gained volume and grew to a wail and then a scream.
She knew the voice! She didn’t know how she knew it, but this was Elyon. Justin? It was Justin, and he was screaming in pain.
Chelise pressed her hands to her ears and began to scream too, thinking now that this was worse than death. Her body crawled with fire as though every last cell revolted at the sound. And so they should, a voice whispered in her skull. Their Maker was screaming in pain!
A soft, inviting voice suddenly replaced the cry. “Remember me, Chelise,” it said. Elyon said. Justin said.
Light lit the edges of her mind. A red light. Chelise opened her eyes, stunned by this sudden turn. The burning in her chest was gone. The water was warmer, and the light below seemed brighter.
She was alive?
She sucked at the red water and pushed it out. Breathing! She was alive!
Chelise cried out in astonishment. She glanced down at her legs and arms. The shackles were gone! She moved her legs. Free. Real. She was here, floating in the lake, not in some other disconnected reality.
And her skin . . . She rubbed it with her thumb. The disease was gone! Thomas had been right! She was an albino. Here in the bowels of this red lake she was now a stunning breed, and the thought of it filled her with a thrill she could hardly fathom.
She spun around, looking for Thomas, but he wasn’t here.
Chelise twisted once in the water and thrust her fist above (or was it below?) her head. She dove deep, then looped back and struck for the surface. What would they say?
She had to find Thomas! Justin had changed the water.
The moment her hand hit the cold water above the warm, her lungs began to burn. She tried to breathe but found she couldn’t. Then she was through, out of the water.
Three thoughts mushroomed in her while the water was still falling from her face. The first was that she was breaking through the surface at precisely the same time as Thomas on her left. Like two dolphins breaking the surface in coordinated leaps, heads arched back, water streaming off their hair, grinning as wide as the sky.
The second thought was that she could feel the bottom of the lake under her feet. She was standing near the shore.
The third was that she still couldn’t breathe.
She came out of the water to her waist, doubled over, and wretched a quart of water from her lungs. The pain left with the water. She gasped once, found she could breathe easily, and turned slowly.
Water and strings of saliva fell from Thomas’s grinning mouth. She wasn’t sure what had happened to him, but he was alive.
She lifted her arm and stared. Her skin had changed. A dark flesh tone. Deep tan. Smooth like a baby’s skin. And she knew without a doubt that her eyes were emerald, like Thomas’s.
She was as albino as any albino she’d ever seen.
Only then did it occur to her that Qurong was still seated on his horse less than thirty yards from where she stood. His face was stricken. To her left the guard stared in stunned silence. No sign of Woref. He was undoubtedly drowned.
“Seize them!” Ciphus cried from the platform.
“Leave them!” Qurong ordered.
Chelise walked out of the lake, plowing water noisily with her thighs. Thomas walked beside her—there was no need for words.
In some ways she felt as if she was looking at a whole new world. Not only was she a new person, drowned in magic, but the Scabs she faced were now foreign to her. The disease hung on them like dried dung. But when they understood what Elyon had done for them in this lake, they would flock en masse into the red waters. She would be run over, she thought wryly.
Then she remembered her own resistance to the drowning. She stared at her father, who still looked as though he was staring at something in his nightmares come to life.
“The law states that they must drown!” Ciphus sa
id, walking to the edge of the platform, finger extended.
“They have drowned,” Qurong said.
“They are not dead!”
“Does my daughter look like a Scab to you?” Qurong shouted. “If this is not a dead Scab, I don’t know what is. She’s been drowned and paid her price! You will not lay a hand on her.”
Chelise wanted to run up and throw her arms around him. “Father, it’s real. The water is red! This is now a red pool.”
His eyes jerked to the water behind her. She followed his gaze. The lake looked black, but there was a tinge of red to it.
Ciphus was staring and had now seen it too. “Seal off the lake!” he shouted, spinning to the guard. “No one enters.”
“No!” Chelise. “The people must be allowed to drown! Father, tell him.”
Qurong looked back out at the water. He scanned the surface. “And Woref?”
“Woref didn’t believe,” Thomas said.
Her father eyed him. “And how did this water become red?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that Mikil and Johan found the red pool you had covered.”
Qurong frowned. “Seal the lake,” he said.
“Form a perimeter at the top of the shore,” Ciphus said. “Not a soul steps on the beach until we have repaired this damage.”
Chelise took a step toward Qurong. “Father, you can’t allow this!”
He lifted a hand. “Stop there.”
“Drown!” she cried. “You have to drown, you and Mother! All of you!”
Her father drew his horse around so that he faced her. “They are free to go,” he said. “They and their friends will be given free passage from our forest. No albino is to be hurt before we know the truth of what has happened here.”
“Father . . . please, I beg you . . . you know the truth.”
“You’re my daughter, and because of that I will let you live in peace,” he said. “But I have my limits. Leave now, before I change my mind.”
He turned his horse and walked up the shore.
Chelise stared after him, torn between the urge to drag him into the lake and the realization that she was no different only a day ago. But there was hope, wasn’t there? He was going to consider the matter.
