by Dekker, Ted
He paused, then reached for a concealed knife within his robes. "Who is there?"
Cassak stepped into the light. Kept his dagger where Sucrow could see it.
Coming to fulfill his duty to Marak and make certain Warryn didn't get too carried away with his torture. The leech.
Sucrow stilled but let a sneer spread across his face. "I could order you executed for treason, Captain. Enter."
The man closed the door and entered the room. Twirled his dagger.
Sucrow lit a candle and sat against the small wooden table.
Cassak sat. Long braids fell heavy over his shoulders. The man stank of desert, blood, and sweat.
"Now, what is it you want, Captain?" It was almost comical, this notion that a mere captain would try to sway Teeleh's priest on his general's behalf.
"Don't tempt him too far, Priest."
"You are not in a position to make demands. Did you not hear? Qurong has granted all military authority to myself and my serpent warriors." Sucrow waved a dismissive hand and moved to a seat across from Cassak. "Why are you here?"
"You're torturing my general's brother."
"Now isn't the time for second thoughts on trapping Jordan of Southern, Captain."
"The plan was simply to capture and execute them."
"Patience." Sucrow began to wish he were speaking with Marak instead. Marak was much more reasonable. Cassak, though, better appreciated Sucrow's position.
"First of all, I believe it is Marak prolonging the inevitable. I merely provided him an outlet-all he had to do was leave them at my full disposal. Sec-"
"Priest-"
"And second, Qurong wanted my serpent warriors dealing with these albinos because Marak won't be able to do what's necessary to break them. He's too close. Third, and most important, I am now your general's ranking officer. To question me is treason."
Cassak's expression turned dark. "Execute them and be done."
The man was tenacious, that much was certain. If it wasn't enough that Marak himself was clinging to Sucrow's arm and crying like a baby, it was worse with his captain nagging him.
"What do you care about three albinos, anyway?"
"I don't. But I don't torture them."
"Spoken like a warrior."
"Spoken like a man."
The two drilled each other with hard stares. Sucrow lost. He stood and waved a dismissive hand. "Go. I have things to do."
"Priest-"
"Be gone."
"Priest, do not dismiss me."
Sucrow turned back. "Answer me this: do you think your own general is losing his edge?"
The captain grew silent, white-faced, as if he hadn't considered what his demands were implying.
Sucrow let that thought sink deep into Cassak's mind. He sneered. "Either the capture of his albino brother is making him unfit to lead an army, Captain, or your claims are but ill-founded woman's speak. Now, which is it?"
Cassak's expression changed with the epiphany that his concern would undermine his general. He growled and stalked out.
Sucrow turned back to his work. Such idiots.
EVEN AS JOHNIS PARTED MOSS AND VINES AND CROUCHED next to the hidden pool, the strange woman's haunting plea stayed with him. He hadn't heard her voice again, but the impulse to run into the desert increased.
"Still seeing invisible women?" Silvie asked. By now the moon was overhead and the stars were out, and he couldn't see her very well.
"No. Not in two hours, since last time."
"But. . ."
"But I still think we need to go into the desert." He splashed water on his face, expecting it to sting a little.
"It doesn't sting." Johnis stared. As he stared, an image shimmered along the surface of the water. A woman's pale face and shimmering, white-blonde hair. One eye blue, one purple. Both with red slivers.
Her mouth moved. Aid me, Chosen One. . . "
"Johnis." Silvie touched his back.
The image faded.
Silvie stared down at him as if he'd grown a thousand limbs, like the grove of spider trees they hid in.
His gaze drifted to the grove. Spider trees were enormous bushes that grew to about ten feet. Runners spreading up to fifteen feet.
Beneath this tentlike canopy was the hidden pool.
Johnis looked back at the dark surface of the water, just to be sure.
Nothing.
"Silvie, something isn't ..."
She sank down next to him and cupped the liquid with her hand. "It's ..."
"I saw something. In the water."
"Your imaginary friend?"
"Well ... Yes. I saw her reflection in the water. Something's wrong. It should burn like mad, and I swear I saw something."
Silvie scoffed. "There's nothing in it."
"I want a better look."
Johnis wiped the dirt off his palms until they were clean and scooped with both hands. Again, no stinging sensation. No healing power.
"This isn't ... Why doesn't it work?"
"Maybe we have to give it more time."
"No. No, they've defiled it." Johnis raked long fingers through wet, muddy hair. Dirt flaked out. "But I thought they didn't know about this one."
"It's been five years here. Maybe ... maybe they found it."
johnisss . . .
Johnis stared at the pool, merely a dark, glassy spot here in the shadows. The woman's image surfaced, willowy across the rippling water. Her transparent skin seemed to glow.
The desert.
Her image receded.
Johnis sucked a breath. "I don't think they found it ..."
He had to know.
He scooped a double handful and walked out into the sand and the moonlight. The light glinted at an angle.
A reddish tint colored the dark liquid.
He dropped the water.
"Johnis?" Silvie's footsteps fell toward him.
The water was red. Bloodred.
He shook his hands.
The desert. Something in the desert.
Silvie caught him by the tunic and tugged. Johnis tried to breathe. But she wouldn't believe him, so there was no point.
"Darsal, Johnis." Silvie pulled him back into the grove. "Darsal, water, Thomas. No shenanigans, no lunatic ideas."
He nodded. Forced his legs to move. "We'll have to wait for morning. We need to rest anyway. Although I don't know if Darsal will know to look for us here."
"She said she'd find us, remember? And you left her a sign." She grinned. "Though she might kill you for carving a Book of History."
Johnis half-smiled. The desert still plagued him.
The woman's song soothed his soul. She wanted him to come. Needed him to come.
"Johnis."
He shook himself back to reality.
"She'll know it was us ..." Johnis rubbed his ear. "We didn't really count on being chased out. She wasn't at the lake ..."
"We didn't exactly have time to wait for her. She's buried herself somewhere; we'll find her in the morning."
"She's good at hiding." His mind slipped back into the past.
Then grew cloudy, eclipsed by those strange eyes.
Aid me, Chosen One. I await in the desert. Aid me. "
"Snap out of it, Johnis."
He pivoted on his heels. Grumbled at his own foolishness. "Right. Darsal we'll look for in the morning. There's water in the desert, Silvie. Remember?"
"I'm not traipsing across the desert again, love. Sorry. I've followed you to hell and back enough times. And we had Roush to thank last time. No such luck now."
"Maybe, maybe not."
His heart screamed to go south, out into open desert.
Not this time.
Johnis wrenched his mind to his own will. Please, Elyon. This is not a good time for this. "If Thomas is in the desert, we'll have no choice. And Thomas will go where there's water."
"Darsal would go to the lake."
So much time lost.
Each second one closer
to turning Horde.
The desert.
If they turned Horde before reaching Thomas, it was all over.
"It's a risk we have to take," he said finally.
Silvie didn't answer. They were both torn between Darsal, the safety of the Forest Guard, and Elyon's healing waters.
"I'll take first watch."
Long pause.
"Wake me in two hours," Silvie finally said. "We leave at dawn."
arsal pulled Xedan's cloak over her body and vanished beneath it, nightmares of treachery and swarming bats and cold shackles flooding her. Desert and death. All her past sins swept over her, the carnage consumed her.
In the dream she died by fire, in an inferno she deserved.
"Elyon! Elyon ... !"
"Darsal. Darsal, wake up!"
Darsal's eyes flew open beneath the dark canopy of a tattered cloak. She flung back the cloak. Her joints were stiff and cramped.
Night consumed her. "Elyon?"
A single soft laugh. "No, dear. I am Xedan. You were having a frightful dream, dear girl."
"Grandfather is hardly the Maker." Jordan gave an uneasy chuckle. "You aren't still afraid of turning to Horde, are you?"
She slumped along the bars.
An itch started down the back of her neck and worked its way along her spine.
I'm trapped. Trapped in hell and turning Scab while these insane Forest Dwellers try to convince me the inevitable won't happen.
"Darsal?" Jordan repeated.
Elyon remained silent, the elusive wellspring just beyond her reach, mocking her while dark bats hunted her down like a rodent to devour her alive.
Elyon, have I overly angered you? Will mercy never be granted me?
Her dry, parched throat felt like cotton. She rose to her knees and rattled the bars. "Guard," she rasped. "Guard!"
A minute later the Scab came, scowling at her and grumbling for rousing him out of sleep or whatever mindless thing he was doing. "What?"
"Could I have some water? Please." Darsal rubbed her throat and chest. Over her breastbone it ached a little. "And is it day or night?"
He studied her, then grunted. "Midmorning. I'll see about the water."
Darsal sank back down. "Do any of you feel it yet?" She massaged her elbow.
Not even Elyon could stop the scabbing disease without water.
"Darsal, it's going to be all right," Jordan said. "There's nothing to fear. Calm down." He spoke sternly, eyes riddled with concern. "No, I don't feel anything. What happened to you to make you think this way?"
"Nothing!" she snapped, then softened. "It's the way it is, which is why we have to get out of here. We have to find Thomas."
"Thomas?" Xedan gave a short laugh. "I wouldn't worry about him. He's probably buried so deep no one will ever find him until he's ready to be found."
"You know where he is, then?" Xedan was making sense again-either that or she just didn't have the strength or will to retaliate against his seductive lies.
"Well, no. No, I don't. But that's my point, love. You see ..."
The guard's boots thumped lightly on the dirt floor. Torchlight momentarily blinded her. He shoved a tumbler of water between the bars. "Here, wench."
Darsal started forward and snatched it from his hand. She poured a little into her palm, thinking maybe, just maybe ...
Nothing.
She sighed and drank to the bottom, then returned it. "Thank you."
No water. No Middle Forest.
No Thomas. No Johnis and Silvie and Billos.
No bats.
Nothing but Scabs and their bloody skin disease.
Her bloody skin disease.
"Now," Xedan said softly after the Scab stomped off. "Tell me what's made you think you're in such desperate need to bathe once you've already done so?"
Darsal tensed. "I've been gone awhile. The last time I was here was before the Scabs took over Middle. I haven't bathed in..."
Technically she hadn't bathed in over a decade. How much faster would the disease progress? Did she start on day one here or day two or three?
Maybe she was already Horde and didn't know it yet.
This is a nightmare concocted by Teeleh himself. He knows what I want most. And he's offering it on a silver platter.
"For the love of Elyon, what's happened these past five years?" she asked.
Jordan answered. "What happened is a drowning that turned the lakes red. You really don't remember? The Horde. The blood. The ..."
Haunted eyes looked into the distance, relived some horrific memory.
He sucked a breath. "Don't you remember any of this?"
"As I said, I've been gone a long time. My friends and I returned to this ... this place ..." Darsal trailed off at the thought of what had befallen in their absence. "But you say the water turned to blood. How did you keep the disease away?"
"We found something greater than the lakes." Xedan continued to study her, transfixed at the idea she was unaware of such important events.
"Sacrilege." She stiffened. Now I know this is all a ruse of Teeleh, a final temptation. The devil's invitation.
"No, love. Who is greater: the lakes or Elyon?"
Darsal cleared her throat. "I don't think you understand ..."
"Understand what, love?"
Seconds ticked on.
"Everything."
The Books of History. Six in an attic storage space well out of reach.
Thank Elyon, Johnis had taken one.
Assuming he didn't turn Scab.
Darsal tensed.
They had found the books. Then left them.
If they all turned Scab ...
No. She didn't care.
The books were history.
The others were waiting on an answer.
Darsal had held her tongue for a decade. Held it for so long, and then everything came crashing in. And there had been no point in trying to say it to her two lovebird partners in crime.
They wouldn't understand, anyway.
But Xedan looked as if he might.
And if he didn't, he would pretend.
So Darsal told them about the other world.
All of it.
"Another world. Another life. And for me it was much longer than five measly years. A world with more darkness and less hope than I care to remember. Bleak and starless, full of diseased men. It's inside them there. In some ways it makes it worse. You don't know who's diseased and who isn't. You don't know when you've become a Scab."
CASSAK SWUNG OFF HIS HORSE AND LET HIS BOOTS THUMP. Dust from the hot desert floor swirled up and clung to his nose.
He turned to meet his men and the twelve albinos they'd captured. Four youths, the rest adults. Three female. All bound and forced to their knees.
"They were headed for the city," his lieutenant said. "Likely a rescue party for the three the general's got."
Cassak looked the prisoners over. He preferred to take his own tallies, the only reason these twelve required his presence before execution. Their faces were set-even the youngest. Pendants dangled from their throats.
"Which one's the leader?" he asked.
"They're not saying."
Cassak frowned. Not that it would have spared any of them. "Start with the youngest."
His man drew his sword and went to the smallest of the youths. Drew back.
Hooves pounded the desert. Cassak turned. Warryn and two others approached. Cassak turned back to the albinos.
Warryn's boots thumped against the ground. He'd swung down off his horse. "This is the priest's territory."
"My orders come from Marak."
"And Marak no longer has the authority to execute albinos."
"I am on an errand regarding Eram."
"These are not Eram," Warryn reminded, a sneer ever fixed on his face. "My orders are to ensure protocol is followed."
"General's orders," Cassak snapped. He gave the command to execute the albinos. This time the blade fell. Soon the albinos
lay dead in a row. Twelve less to worry about.
"Now," Cassak continued, "you may come with me to see to this scouting party of Eram's or you may return, but do not interfere where it is not your concern."
Warryn's eyes narrowed. "Remember your place."
"It is you who forgets."
Cassak remounted and summoned his men. "Hiya!"
DREAMS PLAGUED JOHNIS THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT. THE desert summoned him. The woman's eyes wouldn't leave him. Blue, purple, red.
He woke stiff jointed and thirsty. Muddy grass and a dark hollow swallowing him. A soft body shifted against his back. He bolted upright. His foot and lower leg fell into water.
He jumped away from it. A shaft of light broke between mossy spider trees. He sighed. "Silvie ..:' She breathed steadily and deeply at his side.
He could now feel the onset of the disease in his joints and on his skin. If they didn't find water, they could be half-Scab by the end of the day.
Johnis rubbed his face and stared into the crimson water. Bloodred. Not just tinged red, but thick, jewel-colored liquid so still it looked like glass.
johnis .. .
His brow furrowed. The voice was coming from the water.
johnis .. .
Her eyes. The perfect skin, the multicolored gaze that beckoned him from afar ...
Silvie shifted in her sleep, mumbling. She rolled closer to where Johnis had just been lying and seemed to reach for him. Her arm struck air, though, and flopped to the ground.
Silvie turned back on her side, massaging her face and squinting in the pale light.
"Johnis?"
"You still don't hear her, do you?"
The red pool seemed to mock him, a round gaping hole fixed in a menace, a malignant gloating, laughing at his helpless plight.
Red water.
Siren song from the deep.
"No, I don't." Silvie stirred and sat up. "Why does she want you-
"I don't know what she wants."
Impulsively he eased the book out of his waistband and set it to the side.
"Maybe she tainted the water."
"No ...,,
The pull intensified. He could see her reflection again. She invited him in, wanted him to come. She needed him.
His whole body screamed for Elyon's water.
Johnis stepped toward it.
"Something's wrong." Silvie's voice briefly pulled him out of the trance. "It's tainted. The voice proves it."
