“You don’t sound as though you approve of that possibility.”
“I don’t approve of your uncle or the way he does business. Granted, I have no memory of anything, so I can’t be the best judge, but any man who shoves a gun at an innocent woman…” He shook his head. “Not to mention, I seem to recall that Lydia is a Christian nation. The royal family members are all godly people. I can’t condone an attack on them.”
Lily’s heart beat harder at his zealous proclamation. “I think, if you feel that strongly about it, that should tell you something about who you are.”
He paused and looked at her for the first time in their conversation.
Hope rose inside her as she met his eyes. “I don’t know who you are, but I know that I trust you—right now, I trust you more than I trust my own parents. You’ve proven yourself to be worthy of that trust, and they haven’t.”
He cupped his hand above her forehead, blocking the sun that shone in her eyes as she looked up at him. She stopped squinting and smiled. “Whoever you are, you’re a kind, compassionate man. Your actions reveal that.”
But his hardened expression didn’t soften. “You need to be careful. Until I know who I am, you can’t trust me. Not completely.” He turned back toward the southeast and pressed on.
Lily followed, the soldier’s words a reminder she didn’t want to accept. It was almost as though he was telling her to guard her heart against him, but already she cared for him. “Alec?”
“Hmm?” He looked back at her.
She grinned. “You answered to it. I think it is your name.”
“Call me whatever you like.” He kept moving doggedly forward.
They continued in silence, but Lily found she was tired of hearing nothing but their muffled footsteps and the lonely whispers of the wind. Replaying the events of the day before, she tried to sort out what she could of the ambush on the motorcade. Everything had happened so quickly, the blasts erupting from nowhere in the midst of a peaceful, music-filled procession.
The Lydian national anthem had been broadcast from somewhere, and now it stuck in her head, playing in a constant loop as she recalled the words she’d been taught as a child. Finally, unable to stand the silence any longer, she decided to sing. “O, Lydia, my motherland,” she began, working her way through the verses, faltering only slightly when her parched mouth struggled to carry the words. But conviction strengthened her voice as she sang the lines, “None can triumph o’er your walls, where duty, faith and freedom calls.” The ancient words quickened her breath, and her song faded to a whisper as she reached the last line, “O, Lydia, forevermore.”
As she sang, her steps fell into rhythm with the haunting melody, and she found her feet less inclined to drag. Too soon, the song came to an end, and she caught her breath, swallowing past the dryness of the desert air, preparing to launch into the song again.
But before she found her voice, the soldier next to her picked up the tune, his deep voice a solemn bass as he chanted in the minor key. His masculine intonations caught her so off guard, it took her a moment to realize he wasn’t singing in English.
The exotic words that slipped from his lips fit the tune even better than those she’d sung, and her heart beat faster as she hurried to keep up with him, straining to hear each word, though she didn’t know what any of them meant. The wadi through which they’d traveled had given way to endless white sand, and the sun sank lower in the sky, stretching their shadows long across the wind-rippled desert floor. They plodded on as he sang, his voice deep, sturdy, strong. She wished he’d keep singing forever, a marching tune for their unending trek.
When he finished the song, the last note lingered in the still air.
“What was that?” she asked once she got up the courage to break the sacred silence.
“The Lydian national anthem.”
“In what language?”
“Old Lydian.”
A cold shiver chased across her skin in spite of the heat of the desert. No one had spoken Old Lydian in generations—English had been made the official language of the tiny country around the time of the First World War, and everyone had stopped speaking Old Lydian. How did the soldier know it?
“The song was originally written in Old Lydian,” she surmised.
“It was composed in the ninth century by Queen Gisela. She was a daughter of Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor.”
Lily didn’t question how he was able to recall the ancient facts. She’d already determined that only his personal memory had been erased. But she wondered if, perhaps, by tapping into the facts he recalled, she could somehow get him to reveal something about himself that would help them identify who he was. When he fell silent, she prompted him. “Queen Gisela? That’s a lovely name.”
“I understand she was a lovely woman. Her husband was King John, and her son was King Thaddeus. My brother is named after him.”
The revelation caused Lily to stumble, and when the soldier caught her by her arm, preventing her from falling, she looked into his eyes, and could see the window to the past shutter as quickly as it had opened.
Desperate to reach him before the window closed completely, she scrambled to think of something to ask. “You have a brother?” she asked at last.
He blinked, and she could see that the window had closed.
But this time he’d left enough of a trail she hoped they might be able to follow it. “You have a brother named Thaddeus.”
“Do I?” He appeared to be genuinely uncertain.
“He was named after King Thaddeus.” They’d stopped walking, and Lily had no intention of traveling on, not until she’d plumbed the tiny spring of information to its depths. A thought struck her, and she gripped his forearms with both hands.
“Thaddeus,” she repeated. “Is it a common name in Lydia?”
The hollow void behind his eyes held no answers.
She wished she could call back the man who’d peeked out from his walled-off consciousness only moments before. “Alec.” She repeated the name the soldier had used. “Alexander.”
He blinked.
“I went to watch the royal motorcade, to watch the royal family of Lydia pass by. Do you know the names of the royal family of Lydia?”
“King Philip and Queen Elaine.”
“Who are they?” She wanted to shake him but resisted the impulse. Instead, she prayed silently that her words would pierce the dark shroud that hid him from himself.
“The king and queen of Lydia.”
As an American, Lily had limited knowledge of the Lydian royal family, but her father held joint Lydian citizenship, and her uncle’s position high in the military meant that Lydian politics were occasionally discussed in her home growing up—not that she’d ever cared about them enough to listen before. In fact, she’d tended to tune out anything her uncle talked about, simply because she couldn’t stand the man.
“Do they have any children?” She moistened her dry lips with her tongue.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve known everything else. You knew about the helicopter’s fuel capacity, you knew where to find water in the desert. You know Old Lydian, but you can’t remember anything about yourself.”
His forehead furrowed, and sorrow etched through the scabs on the left side of his face.
Lily shuffled to his right, staring at his profile. She hadn’t seen a picture of the whole royal family of Lydia since the princes were much younger, and yet, it fit. His face fit, the names…everything fit. Her breathing increased as she realized who he might possibly be.
“You can remember facts,” she prompted him, “but not personal details. So why can’t you recall the names of the princes and princesses of Lydia?”
* * *
He stumb
led back. He wanted to lie down, but he knew the sand was still baking hot. That simple fragment of knowledge only compounded the truth of what Lillian had said. He knew all about the desert.
He shuddered as ripples of memories tore through him with the force of the searing blasts that had rocked the streets of Sardis.
In spite of his best efforts to stay on his feet, he found himself knocked to his knees by the concussive force, gripping his head, fighting against the flashes that shot through his skull, the brilliant glare of the grenades shrieking through his thoughts.
Rocking forward, he caught himself with his hands, and flinched back as the hot sun scorched his palms.
“You’re all right,” Lily soothed him, her voice echoing from far away, though he knew she stood right beside him. She held his shoulders and pulled him back, her small hands tugging him from the brink of panic.
He swallowed back his nausea and tried to get a handle on what was happening.
The burning, searing scent of the explosions assaulted him, and the tinny sound of the Lydian national anthem tinkled like a tightly wound music box between his ears.
The princesses—his younger sisters! He had to reach them! They didn’t know anything about surviving an ambush. He had to find them.
A blast rocked his body and he grasped the air in front of him, expecting to encounter limestone walls.
There was nothing but arid desert air.
Throwing his head back, he let loose an anguished scream with all that was in him, but still the sound was not loud enough to drown out the terror of the attacks that echoed through his mind.
He screamed again and staggered to his feet. He had to reach his sisters. He had to save them! He stumbled forward.
“Alec?” Lily’s voice was patient as she ran along beside him, sprinting to keep up. “Alexander?”
He stopped and shook his head. “I am, aren’t I?”
She nodded.
“They’re gone?”
“Who?”
“My sisters, my parents—ough!” He cried out again. “My brother, Thaddeus, has been missing for six years.” He shook his head, shook his whole body, as though if he could rattle his jumbled brain enough, all the missing pieces might fall back into place. His jaw clenched as the memories surfaced. “General Bardici wants to know where he is.”
He flinched as though he’d been struck, then fell to his feet again, the sharp pain against his back nearly enough to make him pass out.
Yes.
He had passed out, had awakened in a blur on an airplane bound for home. The needles had pierced his arms with a drug-induced promise. You won’t remember. You were never tortured. You were never struck. The scars on your back are from a childhood tangle with a house cat. He peeled back the whitewashed words, revealing the lies for what they really were.
He looked up at Lillian, who stood over him with concern knitting her brow.
“Could you look at my back? Are there scars there?”
She didn’t move. “Not scars. Scabs. They’ll scab over eventually, but they’re still fresh. I saw them when we were on the boat.”
“How old would you judge them to be?”
“Less than two weeks, maybe even less than one week old. Do you recall how you got them?”
“Could they have been caused by a house cat?”
Lily shook her head and extended her bare arms toward him. “I’ve made it a habit of trying to rescue every stray that’s ever crossed my path.” A filigree of white lines etched through her tanned skin like the gossamer threads of a spider’s web. “That was no house cat that sliced your back, not even a wildcat or lion. You look as though you were beaten.”
“Whipped?”
“Quite likely.” Pain knit her features. “Do you remember now what happened?”
He eased himself to his feet, the memories settling into place, though he didn’t like any of them. They were ugly, evil things, and if he’d had any choice in the matter, he might have opted to suppress them again. But he needed that knowledge, needed it desperately if he was going to have any chance righting the wrongs against his family. “More than I’d like to.”
Alexander plodded forward, a thousand times more determined to get out of the desert. He had somewhere he needed to be. In fact, he was long overdue. “What do you suppose the penalty is for whipping the heir to the throne of Lydia?”
* * *
Lily hurried to keep up with the soldier’s angry strides, trying to make sense of the scattered memories he’d flung at her. “Is that who you are, then?”
“I was, before my family was attacked. We’ve got to get back there. We’ve wasted so much time.”
“Do you think they’ve unseated your family? How do you know all of this, all of a sudden?” Her heart pounded inside her, a thousand questions raining down through the desert air. Was he really a prince? He’d been whipped? And what had become of his family?
Alec met her questions with a question. “What day is today?”
“It’s Saturday evening.”
“The ambush on the motorcade was just last night—Friday night?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe there’s still time,” he muttered, then took a deep breath and explained. “Eight days ago, your uncle, General David Bardici, called me into his office in Benghazi. I’ve been deployed there with my unit on a humanitarian mission. I thought he wanted to check on the progress of our work, but he immediately started asking me questions about my brother’s disappearance.”
“Your brother, Thaddeus?” Lily tried to keep up, not only with the soldier’s furious progress across the sand, but the suddenly complex story that had unraveled all around them. In the midst of her struggle to put the pieces together, her heart shouted loudly, he’s a prince! He’s a prince!
“Yes. He’s the oldest, the only heir to the throne in line ahead of me. Six years ago, he and his best friend, Kirk, went sailing. Kirk returned alone. No one has heard from my brother since then.”
Lily panted as she jogged along. She’d caught some of that story on the national news. “Kirk—he was accused of murdering your brother, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but there was no body. No evidence my brother was actually dead.” Alec paused, and for the first time seemed to realize how much Lily was panting. He pulled the canteen off his shoulder and handed it to her. “You look like you could use a drink.”
“Thank you.” She tipped the bottle back and forced herself to sip slowly of the precious liquid, even while she came to grips with what Alec told her. He was a prince. Her heart burned with the realization, and she realized she had gotten far closer to him than she likely should have. He was far out of her league.
Alec continued his explanation. “Kirk was my friend, too. He wouldn’t hurt my brother, and if by accident he did, he would have apologized and explained what had happened. Instead he refused to say what had become of my brother. It made my father absolutely furious. He hasn’t been the same since.”
Lily handed the canteen back, and waited while Alec took a sip. “Do you know what happened to Thaddeus?”
“No.”
“Why would my uncle think you do? And why, if he thought you knew something, would he wait six years to question you?”
“He didn’t just question me. He tortured me, trying to get the information he wanted.”
“But how could he possibly get away with that? That’s got to be highly illegal.”
Alec’s expression clouded, and he looked down at his arm.
Lily noticed a faint, faded-yellow bruise inside his elbow.
“He gave me something to make me forget. A drug of some sort.”
“A memory-erasing drug?”
Alec looked uncertain, and of
fered her the canteen again. “Is there such a thing?”
“Nothing legal.” Lily shook her head, thinking back in time to research rabbit trails she’d followed in her undergrad studies. “There are drugs that are known to have the effect of erasing short-term memories, but they’ve never been thoroughly researched because their use raises tremendous ethical questions. You can’t mess with people’s memories. Who would do such a thing?”
Alec met her eyes. “Your uncle?”
His words hit her like a slap to the face. Of course. Her evil uncle, who’d had the prince tortured, who’d put a gun to her head. “I wonder if the effects of the drugs contributed to your amnesia after the attack?”
“I don’t doubt they did. But now that my memory is back, I seem to have tapped into those memories, as well.” Alec screwed the lid back into place on the canteen and nodded in the direction of their march. As they headed off again, he explained his theory. “That uncle of yours is up to something—something huge. This ambush on the motorcade, torturing and questioning me, it’s all been festering for some time, and now it’s coming to a head.”
She could feel his impatience that he wasn’t in Sardis to squash whatever it was that was rising. “What are we going to do? We’re hundreds of miles from Lydia, and my uncle’s men have been searching for us. If they come back to the wadi and find the canteen missing, they’ll know we weren’t killed by the rocks or the undertow. Our footprints will lead them straight to us. We can’t risk going back the way we came.”
“We can’t risk doing anything that might get us caught again,” Alec agreed. “That should be our first priority. I want to find out what’s happening back home, as well. Who knows what might have become of my parents and sisters? I can only pray God has kept them safe.” He looked up to the sky, where sickly green twilight crept across the desert from the east, as the sun puddled in a pool of red on the opposite horizon.
“And then,” he panted, “somehow, we’ve got to get back to Sardis.”
Lily shuddered at the thought. “But, Alec? The last time you were there, you were ambushed. They tried to kill you.”
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