by Ted Dekker
She quickly dressed in her battle clothes that were in the saddlebag. A leather skirt, protective leg and arm shields, a breastplate. Then she swung behind Hunter and galloped into the forest, toward the lake’s north end, where she dipped out of the forest long enough to fill her water bags.
Johnis and Silvie would be searching by now, informing the Roush maybe, launching a search from the sky. But Darsal was headed into the northern half of Middle Forest, which was largely uninhabited.
Time was slipping, and Billos was … dead? Running? In chains? Being tortured this very moment, while Darsal, the one he’d risked his very life for, sat on a horse fretting over what consequences she might face for kidnapping a furry white animal?
Hunter rode smugly in front of her, warm back against her belly. Refusing to look at her, refusing to show the slightest concern.
“We’re far enough from the village; I’m going to let you talk,” Darsal said, stopping below a large nanka tree that hid the sky. “Nod your head if you swear not to give an alarm.”
The winged creature squared its round shoulders and sat still as if he hadn’t heard.
“You’re refusing to help me find Billos, the man whom I love?”
Hunter turned his green eyes up and peered into Darsal’s. He finally dipped his head.
“Yes, you’re refusing to help? Or yes, you’re agreeing not to sound an alarm?”
“Hmmm, humm …”
Darsal couldn’t understand, so she slipped the loop off his mouth.
“Fine. Thank you for allowing me to swallow my own spittle.”
A cloud of regret and sorrow suddenly settled over Darsal, and she had to lift her face to hide her stinging eyes.
“I won’t raise an alarm,” Hunter said. “But you know this is a mistake. No good can come of trying to find Teeleh.”
“You’re afraid of him?”
“I spit on his face. I detest the air he breathes; I vomit at his sight.” Hunter had gone from settled to heavy breathing in three phrases. “If you hadn’t abandoned your search for the books, I could see your going after that beast, but there’s—”
“But I haven’t abandoned the search! To find Billos I need a book. That’s exactly what I’m doing: I’m going after a book.”
The revelation made the Roush blink its round, green eyes. “On your own?”
“Never mind the questions; it’s not your place to understand my logic. If anyone knows more about the books’ whereabouts, it’s the Shataiki, so—”
“What makes you say that?”
“If the Roush knew more about the books, Michal would’ve told us. According to Johnis, the Horde know nothing more. That leaves the Shataiki, who are obsessed with finding the books. If anyone knows more, it’s them.”
“You’d have to be both foolish and desperate to go after Teeleh. Besides, it’s not Teeleh you want. If anyone does know more about the books—which I doubt, mind you, I sincerely doubt—it would be that other mangy one under him. Alucard.”
“You’re sure about that? Alucard?”
“Cut from the same rotting flesh.”
Darsal’s heart slammed. “Where can I find Alucard?” she asked, then swallowed.
“The Black Forest, naturally.”
“It’s gone! We—”
“Not that one. A forest two-days’ ride north. There are seven such forests, all hidden to you humans. This one’s hidden in a hole west of your Northern Forest. But I have to tell you, it’s not a place you want to …”
Darsal kicked the horse and turned it north.
“So that’s it, eh? You’re just going to ignore my warning and head straight into trouble? Then why bother letting me speak, if nothing I say is more than noise to you?”
“Please, spare me the drama or I’ll put the muzzle back on.”
“Foolish, foolish, foolish prodigals.”
“I don’t have a clue what you mean.”
“Humans who run off on their own and find disaster.”
“I don’t need to find disaster,” Darsal said. “It’s found me.” She urged the horse into a trot. “Do I need to muzzle you?”
Hunter bounced in front of her, silent for a few beats. “No,” he finally said in a heavy voice. “I suppose I’ll have to come along to save your neck. But I do wish you would have let me kiss Teagan and Martin before leaving.”
“Teagan and Martin? Who?”
“My two children. I have a terrible feeling they will be left fatherless.”
IT TOOK THEM AN HOUR AT A FAST CLIP TO REACH THE FOREST’S northern border, where Darsal pulled up the horse and stared at the flat desert, stretching as far as the eye could see. Ominous, but she’d been through enough desert in the last few weeks to deal with any danger that came from the elements. Apart from the foreboding voices that kept flogging Darsal’s thoughts, nothing threatened their progress.
Nothing, that is, until a horse stepped out from the trees behind them.
“Darsal?”
She spun her mount, forcing Hunter to frantically spread his wings to keep from falling. There on a brown mare that was ten times her size sat Karas, the little Horde girl who was no longer Horde.
Darsal was too stunned to speak.
“Well, well, well,” Hunter crooned. “Well, well, indeed. Hello, little girl.”
Karas showed no sign she’d seen or heard the Roush. But, of course, only Billos, Johnis, Silvie, and Darsal had had their eyes opened.
“What are you doing here?” Darsal demanded. She scanned the tree line for others, but it appeared that this squat had come alone, unless she was being used as bait while they hid in the bushes. “Are you alone?”
“Yes,” Karas said. “Except for the horse, that is. Do you count horses as companions?”
“People, you little fool, not horses.”
Karas frowned. “You think I’m a fool?”
Darsal scanned the trees again, just to make sure there was no one else.
Eyes on Karas. “You’re a fool for following me. What do you think you’re doing out here by yourself?”
“Following you.”
“Yes, following us,” Hunter said.
“Just you remember our agreement,” Darsal snapped at the Roush.
“What agreement?” Karas asked.
“Nothing. If you head back now, you’ll be home before it gets dark. I suggest you get moving.”
“I could take her,” Hunter said. “She’d get lost on her own.”
“Why would a fool who’s followed this far turn back now?” the little girl on the huge horse said.
“Because following me into the desert would be even more foolish,” Darsal snapped. “Because they’re probably already screaming for you back at Middle. Because you have no reason to follow me in the first place!”
“Would I be here if I didn’t have a reason?”
“Only if you really are a fool.”
“She doesn’t look like a fool to me,” Hunter said.
“Shut up, Hunter,” Darsal said.
“Hunter?” Karas blinked. “My name’s Karas, and it’s not polite to be so harsh.”
Darsal set her jaw, “What reason do you have to follow me?”
Karas hesitated, then nudged her horse closer. “Does the name Grace mean anything to you?”
“I don’t know, should it? I’m telling you, you’d better head back before—”
“She was my mother. My father, the high priest, killed her,”
Darsal sat still. No matter how frustrated she was at the girl’s presence, she didn’t have the heart to tear into her the way she wanted to.
Karas continued. “She used to say that somewhere out there I had an auntie, because she had a younger sister—fifteen years younger— a long time ago. I think that I’ve found my mother’s sister.”
“Me?”
“You look like her twin.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She had to be much older … She was a Scab.”
“Weren’t you
listening? I said her sister was much younger. Thomas told me that when the Great Deception ruined the world thirteen years ago, families were broken up. The disease took most of their memory. But I can swear you’re mother’s sister because you look like my mother. Except for the scar.”
Darsal didn’t know how to respond to such an absurd claim. “Is this possible?” she whispered, then prodded the Roush for an answer.
“Yes. Yes, of course it’s possible,” Hunter said.
“Yes,” Karas said.
The forest’s edge stood tall and silent. Darsal couldn’t accept it, not after the years of suffering following her parents’ deaths.
She calmed herself and let anger creep into her tone. “Either way, you can’t just walk up to people and latch yourself on to them without knowing what’s happening.”
“Which is what?” Karas asked.
“Which is none of your business. This is crazy. It’s going to be dark in an hour!”
“Then we’ll build a fire,” Karas said.
Hunter offered a soft chuckle.
“No. We will not. I will, not you, because you’re not coming; it’s out of the question!”
Karas seemed unfazed. “I insist. I don’t know what you’re up to, but it looks like you’re headed out into the desert. I know the desert better than you.”
“We know it well enough. You just escaped the desert, for Elyon’s sake! Your insolence is infuriating!”
“We? You and I? So you’re saying I can come?”
“Slip of the tongue. I certainly don’t mean you.”
“I can help you survive danger,” Karas said.
“You’re a ten-year-old squat!”
“I have more water.”
“She has more water,” Hunter said.
Indeed, having just been healed by the lake water, she seemed especially enamored with it. Two full bags rested over her saddle.
“Where are we going?” Karas asked.
“Nowhere.” Darsal turned her mount, kicked its flanks, and trotted into the desert, begging reason to catch up to the foolish little girl.
“That’s it, show her who’s the boss,” Hunter quipped.
“Quiet.”
Taking a Roush to a Black Forest to find Alucard was one thing. Taking a young girl whom Johnis had risked his life to save—whom Thomas Hunter had taken an inordinate interest in—was madness.
The way Darsal now understood her situation was that she had a two-hour head start on Johnis, who would come after her as soon as Karas returned with the news that she’d headed north. But two hours were ail she needed.
“We should head west first to avoid the Horde camping in the north.”
Darsal spun in her saddle and saw that Karas followed ten feet behind, undeterred.
“She’s right; the Horde is camped north,” Hunter said.
“You can’t come! Thomas will have my head!”
“I hope to help you keep your head, Big Sister,” Karas said.
“And stop calling me that. You don’t know it’s true.”
“I do know. I also overheard you talking to yourself about going to the Black Forest in search of Alucard, one of the legendary Shataiki that Witch often talked about. Don’t worry, you’ll grow to appreciate me.”
“Why do you speak like that?” Darsal demanded in frustration.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re a scholar rather than a child? I thought the Horde were stupid.”
“Deceived, not stupid. And I’m not Horde anymore, or didn’t you notice?”
Hunter sat grinning like a monkey. “Amazing,” he muttered. “For all you know, Elyon has sent her to save your skinny neck.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Keep telling yourself that, you might listen,” the Roush said.
Darsal took one more minute to consider her options, which were either to return with the girl or press on in the hopes of saving Billos.
She’d escaped from Johnis’s house thinking that life was hers to risk. Then she’d taken Hunter by force, and now Karas was in her care. The equation had changed. But her desperation to find Billos had not. And shed already committed herself.
Their lives, all three of them, were on Billos’s head, not hers.
Darsal humphed and galloped toward the sinking sun, followed closely by the little girl who claimed she was her niece and insisted on calling her “sister.”
The world is coming apart at the seams, she thought. First Billos, and now Karas. They are mad, all completely mad
he spider named DELL stared at Billos with glowing, pupil-less red eyes. A whole circle of them ringed its head like a crown. They hadn’t actually “opened” per se, but they had come to life and were peering at him.
Still, the beast did not move.
Billos had been in tight, life-threatening situations dozens of times, and if there was one thing that had been cut into his instincts, it was the importance of seizing the advantage. He had to move now, while he had the element of surprise. Surely the beast was as stunned as he; what else explained its inaction?
Billos feigned left, then darted to his right, knife still extended. His plan was simple: disable one leg, maybe two if he had the opportunity; leave his enemy vulnerable on one side, then keep to that side.
He thrust the knife into the thigh, twisted, and ripped backward. The skin tore, bled a white fluffy substance.
Feathers.
Billos jumped back, confused by the sight. The creature had not reacted. It hadn’t even flinched.
He lowered the knife and stood up. So then, it wasn’t a spider, not an ant, not a beast of any kind. This was a flower, or a bush, or … a tree maybe. Or a weapon of some kind. Maybe a fancy buggy.
And since the wall looked like the glass Thomas insisted came from his dreams, perhaps this object also came from his dreams.
For that matter, maybe Billos had stepped into Thomas’s world.
He walked forward and tentatively touched DELL’s leg, then decided that his first instinct had been correct. This was a chair or a bed, not a leg. Which meant he was supposed to sit or lie on it.
For the first time since he’d crossed into this strange and terrible place, Billos grinned. A daring, fascinated grin with just a little relief.
This didn’t end his troubles, of course—he still had to find a way out before he starved to death. The books were nowhere to be seen, and he didn’t have the slightest idea what the contraption did or how to work it, but at least he wasn’t pinned under its hungry jaws.
“So, so, so, what do we have here?” he muttered. “Tell me what surprises you hold for me, DELL, Let’s make friends.”
Armed with his new conclusions, Billos slowly ran his hand over the cut he’d made. A chair. Yes, of course, how foolish of him to think this contraption was a spider.
DELL was undoubtedly a horseless buggy. Six reclining seats and a spokeless wheel in the center. He touched one of the shiny black spheres that rested at the top of each chair, saw that they were attached only by cords, and carefully lifted one up with both hands.
It was a helmet, hollowed on the inside like his own leather helmet but made of hard shell. Dark glass rounded the front to cover the eyes. One of the strange ropes he’d originally thought were roots ran between the helmet and the hub.
So then, the warrior was intended to place this helmet on for protection when he drove this buggy. It was a war machine.
Immediately Billos’s pulse surged. He’d found a weapon that was far more advanced than anything he or any of the Forest Dwellers could have imagined! And if he, Billos, could find a way to operate it, perhaps find a way to return it to the forests, enter it into battle against the Horde, even … if he could do that, the possibilities were endless. He might single-handedly save the forests!
Each thought spun through his mind as quickly as the next, which reminded him that he was trapped in a white room without the books or food or a clue how this contraption worked. And he w
as here because he’d ignored the warning not to touch the books with blood.
Billos took a deep breath and walked around the machine, touching and prodding the surfaces. The central hub with all the small red lights he’d first thought were eyes was as hard as stone. But when he rapped on it with his knuckles, it sounded hollow.
So, how did one operate this beast? He rounded the whole contraption twice, looking for something to control it, like reins, though he doubted he’d find reins—this wasn’t an animal. Still, there were no reins, no levers, no objects of any kind. In fact, just the smooth hub and the six seats sticking out. And the red lights that had brightened when he first touched it.
Light was coming into the room from glowing squares on the ceiling, likely some kind of glass through which the sun was shining, though Billos couldn’t see past them. It made sense that the red “eyes” were just crystals reflecting light from the ceiling.
Billos sighed and was about to climb into one of the seats when he noticed a thin outline, one square foot, on the hub. He touched it, pressed lightly, felt it move.
He gasped.
The square silently slid up, revealing a row of buttons on the surface beneath. Buttons with letters on each.
How was that possible? Something unseen was making this contraption move!
Magic, then. Like the books. This weapon was even more powerful than he could imagine.
He couldn’t steady the tremble in his fingers as he reached for the letters. He wasn’t one who could write, like Johnis, but he knew the letters Thomas had insisted every child learn. He pushed a few and stood back.
Nothing changed. But what did he expect to change? Billos then set to work pushing buttons in every conceivable order, growing more and more frustrated as the minutes dragged on.
How many combinations could there possibly be? He tried words like go and start and wake, but the buggy sat dumb.
An hour stretched past, maybe two. The contraption refused to respond to his touch. Yet it had opened! There was magic inside. The weapon could be activated; he just had to learn how.
But nothing he tried seemed to work. Feeling miserably defeated, Billos tried the locked knob on the main door again, then slowly sank to his seat in the corner and stared at the silent contraption.