by Dekker, Ted
All three were watching her closely.
Forest Dwellers. Albinos.
Darsal released her breath and felt most of the tension leave her corded muscles. This could still be a dream. All a dream.
"My name is Xedan." The old man smiled in the hazy gloom. Several teeth were missing. His leathered face was bruised and battered; he cradled his right arm in a makeshift sling crafted from what appeared to be a shirtsleeve. He scooted forward and extended a three-fingered, nail-less hand through the bars.
A full thirty seconds passed.
Finally she remembered the old Forest Guard greeting.
They clasped forearms.
"Elyon's strength. That rascal is my grandson Jordan. The woman is his wife, Rona." Xedan motioned to the young couple.
Jordan lifted his hand in a greeting. Rona remained unmoving.
Darsal rocked back, trying to make sense of it.
Another itch behind her neck.
"Elyon's strength. We've got to get out of here before we turn Scab."
Jordan quirked a brow and muttered something unintelligible. "There's no need to panic. From here there is no shadow of turning."
Darsal scowled. "What do you mean, we won't turn? Of course we will. It just hasn't started yet. Unless this itch I've got counts."
"You're just scared. You're safe. Never mind the itching skin.
It's only that." He rose up on his knees and faced her, gripping the bars. "You can't turn. You can't. They can become like us, but we can't go back to being like them."
"You're lying." She looked them over. Their skin was smooth, mottled only by the Scabs' abuse. "How long have you been down here?"
"We're not sure, actually. Many days. Time passes differently down here. But you'll see. You'll see, I promise."
"Don't mock me," she said. "You know full well in three days, maybe four, we'll be completely Horde. You can't have been here more than a day. You've lost your sense of time. Is this what they do? Lock us up until we turn and then kill us?"
Jordan's shoulders sagged. He glanced back at his brutalized wife, rested his forehead against the metal. "Well, they will kill us."
Xedan held up his hand, silencing his grandson. He motioned for Darsal to come closer. She leaned up against the bars, felt her slick, sweaty flesh against the warm metal.
The grandfather reached his fingers between the bars and brushed back her dark hair from her face. A certain sadness was in his eyes, the kind an adult reserved for a frightened child who had no reason to be.
His finger traced the scar on her cheek. "What's your name?"
"Darsal. My name is Darsal, and we have to get out of here before we turn Horde."
Xedan passed a tattered cloak through the bars. "Here. Try to rest."
"What in the name of Elyon have they done to you?" she asked.
"I might ask the same of you. Do you think Elyon so fickle?"
"It's something in the food, isn't it? The water, the food, the air, something."
This was a nightmare. She'd been driven into a hellish sleep from which she could never wake.
"Look, we want out as badly as you do," Jordan said. "I don't want to die or see my wife die. But we aren't deceived. Look at me. Do I look deceived? Does Grandfather sound crazy?"
It made such shocking sense. She could almost believe it ... only it wasn't true. This was Shataiki talk. So this is how Teeleh seduced Tanis. I want to believe them, but I don't dare. Dear Elyon, I've traded one hell for another.
The dungeon doors clanged open. They fell quiet. Jordan stood, defiant despite the torture. Two purple and black-robed men entered behind the guard, who moved for Ronas cell.
Jordan grabbed the bars on his cage, confidence abruptly replaced by deep anguish. "Please . . . Don't . . . You have no right!"
But Darsal suspected these Horde weren't interested in rights.
One of the men went into Ronas cell and dragged her out. She was barely conscious and other than a groan offered no resistance. The other went into Jordan's cell and struck him three times with a cane. The man left Jordan in a heap, slammed the cage door shut, and locked it. Then they were gone.
None spoke for several minutes.
Darsal broke the tension.
"There has to be a way out of here."
"I've already tried." Jordan twisted slowly to face her, anguish bared. Tears gathered in his eyes, a few slid down his cheeks. His chest heaved. "It should have worked. It should have worked."
Darsal searched her cage for any sign the iron had corroded enough to let her break out. She tested the bars one by one.
But each proved stronger than her.
If she couldn't get out, maybe there was a way to lure one of the guards in. The four Scabs had taken her easily enough, in large part because of her reluctance to use lethal force, but against a single guard ...
She was sure she could easily handle one of these Scabs.
Elyon, Elyon, did you save me only to cast me back into hell?
Johnis had promised her she was forgiven-and that mattered. It also mattered that she'd undone the damage she'd created. Stopped the storm she'd unleashed these last ten years.
Ended the chaos.
This was her penance. This captivity in hell. But no penance would ever soothe her remorse. Not even this dungeon.
"Darsal?" Xedan's voice whispered. That soft voice so gentle she wanted to believe his insanity.
She fell forward onto her face and wept quietly into the ground.
"THE NEXT TIME YOU DEFY MY ORDERS TO WAIT, I'LL SEE you hanged," Cassak snapped.
"On whose authority?" Warryn taunted.
Cassak cracked a knuckle. The throater had defied him because he now had his loophole. The serpent warriors were running the army.
Priests commanding generals.
Abominable.
"Your priest has the upper hand at the moment," Cassak warned. "But Qurong himself will want to know why you're prolonging the lives of diseased albinos."
They were still in the interrogation room. Without Jordan's screams the chamber was far too quiet.
Warryn sneered. He finished relighting the incense and cleaned up the blood and skin from his last effort. He enjoyed his newfound power.
"The problem with military men is that they see things too simply," the throater commented. "You fail to appreciate the true nature of such a threat."
"The true nature of the threat is that the albinos are diseased and it's spreading. We have an epidemic and potential civil war on our hands."
Warryn sneered at him.
Cassak drew his weapon and brought up the arc. His blade clashed against Warryn's. Metal grated. The swords twisted free. Again they clanged.
Warryn feinted and thrust sideways. Cassak blocked, twisted. More singing steel. Cassak disarmed the throater and forced him against the wall, sword point beneath his opponent's chin.
For a long minute they glared at each other. Point made.
"Well, finish it," Warryn goaded.
Cassak growled. Cut Warryn's skin.
A scout knocked in the doorway.
Cassak snorted and sheathed the blade. Marak didn't need any more trouble. He stepped back and allowed Warryn to stand. Didn't turn his back on the throater.
"Come." Cassak extended his hand without looking at the man. A scroll fit in his palm. He unrolled the note. Scanned it.
Movement in the northwest desert. Eram was up to something. Eram, the half-breed general, holed up in the desert. He'd lured about a third of their people-all half-breeds themselvesinto the northwest desert shortly after the drowning incident, two years and two generals ago.
The Eramites were smaller in number, but entirely made up of half-breeds, former Forest Dwellers.
Two guards arrived behind the scout, carrying a woman between them by the armpits. Albino. Barely conscious.
Albino wretch.
What was left, anyway.
Warryn kept her in an induced stupor. Tormenting
the woman had nothing to do with interrogation and everything to do with breaking down the husband.
Rona was half-dragged to the altar and placed prone on top. Wrists and ankles restrained.
Warryn took a long dreg of wine and motioned for his assistant to begin. The assistant picked up a shaft of wood about a foot long with a thick knot on one end the size of Cassak's fist.
The tortures began. The albino didn't have the strength to scream. Only a pathetic whimper as the small club struck her knee. As Warryn progressed, Cassak grew uneasy.
Marak didn't deserve this.
Cassak narrowed his eyes. He'd seen enough. And there was Eram to deal with. "I'm going to attend to real business."
"Such as?"
"A rebellion in the desert." Cassak started for the door. "A word of warning: don't harm the woman more than you must."
He left before Warryn could respond.
Time to give the priest a little visit.
" oHNIS . . ."THE ALLURING FEMALE VOICE CAME INTO HIS mind again.
He stopped at the edge of the hard-packed path and listened. Quiet singing drifted along the wind. Memories of Natalga Gap entered his mind.
"Silvie, are you sure you didn't ..."
"I haven't said a word, Johnis, just like last time." She glanced back at him, shielding her eyes from the waning sun. Smoky yellow cloud cover wafted.
A g i f t - g i v e r in the south ... "
Johnis looked at Silvie, her blue eyes narrowed. Frustrated. But the longer he looked at her the less she looked like Silvie. Before him Silvie transformed. She grew tall, her fair skin translucent and smooth, so delicate he could see her veins. Flawless. One blue eye carried a sliver of red, the other turned purple with the same red glint. Her short hair grew long and looked of white gold.
Aid me, Chosen One. . . "
"What are you looking at?" Silvie asked.
The vision fled.
Johnis gaped. "I saw a beautiful woman. She wanted my help."
Silvie looked over her shoulder, then glared at him. "Flattering, but I don't need your help."
"No, no, it wasn't you. It was ..."
"There's no one there."
"She was white. Really white."
"A Roush?" She meant the furry, green-eyed white bats, enemies of Shataiki and servants of Elyon, who had aided them. The same kind who got them into this mess.
"No. Not a Roush. A ... woman."
"Come to think of it," Silvie continued, not really listening, "we've seen neither Roush nor Shataiki since we returned. You'd think Shataiki would be swarming a Horde city."
"True." Johnis gladly accepted the change of subject. But he could still see the multicolored gaze in his mind's eye, still feel a pull toward the hidden pool at the edge of the forest.
Aid me, Chosen One. . . "
Johnis spun, sword ready. No one. "Okay, who's there? Come out where we can see you!"
"There's no one here yet, and I want it to stay that way."
A woman wandering in the desert, faint from thirst. A man imprisoned by an enemy closing in.
"Chosen One .. .
"She wants our help, Silvie," he protested. "I can't ignore her. She's ..."
"She's what?" Silvie's brow went up. The vision receded. "I don't like this talk of another woman."
"It isn't like that. She's just ..."
He described the woman and her voice. But the more he dwelled on her, the stronger her song became. He could hear her voice in his head.
Cool air breezed over his skin.
"We are not chasing the woman in your head," Silvie pronounced. "Forget it. You are not going lunatic on me again. Ever."
The reddish, purple-blue eyes fixed on him. Swelled, opened wider and wider, until all he could see was what they reflected. Stark, endless white desert. Orange-red sunlight fading. Purple shadows.
She was surrounded by enemies. Being devoured by darkness.
His heart yearned for the desert.
"Johnis." Silvie snapped her fingers in front of his face.
His arms fell loose at his sides. Johnis took several steps toward the desert.
Silvie grabbed his shoulder. "Where are you going?"
"To help her."
"No. You're taking me to that hidden pool of yours. We are not wandering out into the desert because you think you heard someone calling you."
"I saw Roush once, remember? No one else did." His feet begged forward. Only Silvie's hand restrained him.
"So you did. But I don't hear voices, and I'm not going. Nor are you."
"Silvie ..."
More visions. The eyes showed him the canyons, Natalga Gap, and beyond. South. He had to go south.
Silvie pulled him east. "You said it was this way. The pool."
"That woman ..."
"There is no woman. There's you and me. Darsal somewhere, and we need to bathe before we turn Scab. I personally can't stand the itchy skin, and the flaking is gross. So come on." She pulled. "Show me the pool."
"Silvie, wait. What if it's a vision from Elyon? Wouldn't it be wrong to ignore it? My heart says to go."
That quieted her.
"Elyon wants you to bathe," she said.
"But Silvie ..."
The southern desert. The woman.
"Johnis." Silvie's sweaty, slender hand pulled him back. East off the path, just like he'd told her earlier.
"Johnis, we're in the open. We can't stay here."
He lingered. Silvie was distracting him, cutting off the troubled woman. Every time Silvie spoke, he could no longer hear the beautiful woman in the desert.
"Your heart is with me. With Elyon. Now come. No more talk of imaginary women."
She had a point.
Johnis started to follow. But the draw toward the desert intensified with each step. His feet were heavy and sluggish.
Aid me, Chosen One. Aid me. . . "
"We can't stay, Johnis."
He'd stopped again.
"I'll admit you'll smell better." Silvie smiled at him. "And I'm all the woman you need, don't you think?"
South. He had to go south, not east.
He had to bathe too.
Why didn't Silvie want to help this woman? The scabbing disease, maybe. No, too soon.
Johnis nodded. "East it is."
They went on, but the siren song wouldn't leave.
I await you, johnisss .. .
hat cause did you have to torture them, Priest?" Marak demanded.
"We needed information out of the boy. I merely did the nasty business of interrogating your little brother for you." Sucrow's slate-gray eyes, covered in a milky film, drilled Marak with a hard stare. A bony finger with a massive brass-and-gold ring jabbed toward his face. The gaudy snakelike bangles that adorned the dark priest's arms jingled at the movement.
They stood at the bottom of the steps of Qurong's palace, now with its own private sanctuary built onto the northwest side, directly across the lake from Sucrow's thrall.
The step gave way to a hard-packed dirt road that spanned wide enough for four horses to walk abreast, and it split in three forks: one north, one south, and one toward the bridge.
Sucrow jeered. Fingered the serpent pendant around his neck. "You know, sometimes I think you care more about the albino than you care about our cause. Maybe you should have been betrothed to him."
The knot in Marak's chest tightened.
"She moans like a coward when we bleed her. And whenever Teeleh comes she screams. She knows well the tickle of his claws. Didn't baby brother tell you, General?"
Marak snugged the hilt of his sword in his right palm, in part as a message to the white-faced priest, in part because he wished to use it.
The priest cackled. "Now that will serve you well: a dead priest to go alongside all your other failures. Besides, I don't think Qurong will appreciate you killing your superior. Treasonous, don't you think?"
He turned his back on the priest. "Get out of my sight."
"You
r family's turned into the enemy, General."
Marak marched away from Sucrow before he could decide to follow through on his impulse to take the man's head off.
Three subordinates waited for Marak, all save one were on horseback. The last offered Marak the reins to his own mount.
Marak accepted. "Go interrogate her. We'll find the other two. Then tell the commanders to meet me at the lake an hour before first light. We'll ride at dawn. Anyone who's late will face penalties."
The men obeyed. Marak went for the atrium. He glimpsed Cassak, his captain, headed from the interrogation chambers.
Where Warryn was torturing his brother.
The captain was almost past him. Marak had to know.
He caught his friend's arm. "What's the word?"
Cassak stopped. Marak saw the scroll in the captain's hand and tore it from him. He skimmed.
"Cassak ... tell me."
Hesitation.
"Don't let Sucrow get to you," the captain said.
Marak growled. "Take a troop into the desert and find me those albinos. Then I want you personally to report Eram's whereabouts."
Cassak frowned. "Marak."
So much for pretense.
He straightened and looked at his friend. "How bad was it?"
Cassak shook his head. "You shouldn't ask me questions, Marak. Just trust me." Marak raised a brow. Something was bothering his captain. He threw him a questioning look, eyes narrow.
Cassak scowled. "When it comes, it comes."
"What?"
His friend spoke slowly. "They've taken Rona again."
Marak worked his fist.
"General, end it. Don't wait for Sucrow to force you or to use them against you. Do the right thing and execute them."
"They're already dead." The general turned his back and stormed out. He had an albino hunt to lead.
SUCROW WAITED UNTIL MARAK WAS GONE BEFORE REtreating into his temple. The foolish general needed to learn to leave religious matters to priests and worry only about his precious plan to eliminate the albinos. His Desecration. A fitting mission name.
Marak also needed to learn his newfound place in the world. A world in which he was subject to Qurong's priest.
Sucrow crossed through the atrium and the outer court into a side chamber, intent on a hidden passage to the library.
Someone pressed the sharp tip of a dagger between his shoulder blades.