by Ted Dekker
But all of that was a lie! Karas was his savior! He would worship the thought of her, give his life to save those like her. Elyon, Elyon, how foolish had he been? Billos wailed at the sky.
“Hello, Billos.”
He started and jerked his head to his right. The young blond-headed boy who’d warned him about the Dark One stood in the alley, hands limp by his side. Samuel.
“Now do you believe me?” the boy asked.
Billos gripped his hair in both hands, lowered his head so that his chin rested on his chest, clenched his eyes tight, and cried to cover his shame.
“There is a way, you know,” the boy said.
Billos looked up. “What? It’s hopeless! They’re dead already!”
“For you, I mean,” Samuel said. “It might be too late for them, but there may be a way for you.”
“I don’t need a way!”
“That’s your first mistake. You need a way more than they do.”
“Black has them!” he snapped angrily. “How can you say that?”
“No. Black has you, Billos.”
Whether it was the use of his name or the way that Samuel said it with such authority, Billos wasn’t sure. But he knew that his whole life was somehow wrapped up in those simple words. Black has you, Billos.
The wind seemed to ease, quieted by the moment. Samuel stared at him with green eyes that drew him with their absolute surety.
“Do you want this?” the boy asked.
Billos pushed himself to his feet. Everything went quiet except for the thumping of his heart. The green of Samuel’s eyes begged him to run, to leap into a water that would wash away the darkness Black had filled him with.
“I can give you something that makes his suhupow seem silly.”
“Yes,” Billos said.
Samuel’s lips twisted into a tempting grin. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, Yes, show me.”
“Follow me.”
Samuel spun on his heels and bounded barefoot toward the forest. He glanced over his shoulder, grinning wide. “Come on!”
Billos stumbled forward, then ran after the boy. Into the forest. Following glimpses of Samuel, who raced ahead, leaping over fallen logs, crashing through the brush like a deer.
The wind was gone here, held back by the trees, replaced by the sound of Billos’s feet cracking twigs and his lungs pulling at the air. There was something familiar about the trees here. A scent that seemed common to him. If he didn’t know better he might have guessed that he was back in Middle Forest, racing after a Roush.
The boy was leaving him behind. “Wait!”
But there was no need for Samuel to wait, because the trees ended. Billos slid to a halt at the shore of a brilliant green lake surrounded by emerald trees.
The boy was halfway down the sandy beach, sprinting for a large rock set half in the sand, half in the water, Billos watched in amazement as Samuel launched himself up onto the rock and then catapulted himself into a beautifully arched dive.
For a moment he seemed to hang suspended, and then he plunged into the green waters with hardly a splash.
Billos stood panting from the run, waiting for the boy to reemerge, wondering if he was supposed to follow. But he knew the answer already. The lake, like the boy’s eyes, begged him to run. To jump. To dive deep.
Billos ran. He tore down the shore, bounded up on the rock, and dove into the air.
The instant Billos hit the water, his body shook violently. A blue strobe exploded in his eyes, and he knew that he was going to die. That he had entered a forbidden pool, pulled by the wrong desire, and now he would pay with his life.
The warm water engulfed him. Flutters rippled through his body and erupted into a boiling heat that knocked the wind from his lungs. The shock alone might kill him.
But it was pleasure that surged through his body, not pain. Pleasure! The sensations coursed through his bones in great unrelenting waves.
Elyon.
How he was certain, he did not know. But he knew. Elyon was in this lake with him.
Billos opened his eyes. Gold light drifted by. He lost all sense of direction. The water pressed in on every inch of his body, as intense as any acid, but one that burned with pleasure instead of pain.
His violent shaking gave way to a gentle trembling as he sank into the water. He opened his mouth and laughed. He wanted more, much more. He wanted to suck the water in and drink it.
Without thinking he did that. He took a great gulp and then inhaled. The liquid hit his lungs. Billos pulled up, panicked. He tried to hack the water from his lungs, but inhaled more instead. No pain. He carefully sucked more water and breathed it out slowly. Then again, deep and hard. Out with a soft whoosh. He was breathing the water! In great heaves he was breathing the lakes intoxicating water.
Billos shrieked with laughter. He tumbled through the water, pulling his legs in close so he would roll, and then stretching them out so he thrust forward, farther into the colors surrounding him. He swam into the lake, deeper and deeper, twisting and rolling with each stroke. The power contained in this lake was far greater than anything he’d ever imagined.
I made this, Billos.
Billos pulled up. He whipped his body around, searching for the words’ source. A giggle rippled through the water. Billos grinned stupidly and spun around.
“Elyon?” His voice was muffled, hardly a voice at all.
Do you like it?
The words reached into his bones, and he began to tremble again. He wasn’t sure if it was an actual voice or if he was somehow imagining it.
“Yes!” Billos said. He might have spoken; he might have shouted—he didn’t know. He only knew that his whole body screamed it.
Billos looked around. “Elyon?”
Why do you doubt me, Billos?
In that single moment the full weight of Billos’s foolishness crashed in on him like a sledgehammer. He curled into a fetal position within the bowels of the lake and began to moan.
I see you, Billos.
I made you.
I love you.
The words washed over him, reaching into the deepest folds of his flesh, caressing each hidden synapse, flowing through every vein, as though he had been given a transfusion.
The water around his feet began to boil, and he felt the lake suck him deeper. He gasped, pulled by a powerful current. And then he was flipped over and pushed headfirst by the same current.
A dark tunnel opened directly ahead of him, like the eye of a whirlpool. He rushed into it, and the light fell away.
Pain hit him like a battering ram, and he gasped for breath. He instinctively arched his back in blind panic and reached back toward the entrance of the tunnel, straining to see it, but it had closed.
He began to scream, flailing in the water, rushing deeper into the dark tunnel. Pain raged through his body. He felt as if his flesh had been neatly filleted and packed with sale, each organ stuffed with burning coals, his bones drilled open and filled with molten lead.
Black’s raspy chuckle filled his ears. Then his own laughter, as sinister as Black’s, and he knew then that he had entered his own soul.
Billos involuntarily arched his back so that his head neared his heels. His spine stressed to the snapping point. He couldn’t stop screaming. The tunnel gaped below him and spewed him out into soupy red water. Bloodred. He sucked at the red water, filling his spent lungs.
From deep in the lake, a moan began to fill his ears, replacing his own screams. Billos twisted, searching for the sound, but he found only thick, red blood. The moan gained volume and grew to a wail and then a scream of terrible pain.
Elyon was screaming,
Billos pressed his hands to his ears and began to scream with the other, thinking now that this was worse than the dark tunnel.
Then he was through. Out of the red, into the green of the lake, hands still pressed firmly against his ears. Billos heard the words as if they came from within his own mind.
I
love you, Billos.
Immediately the pain was gone. Billos pulled his hands from his head and straightened. He floated, too stunned to respond.
I choose you.
Billos began to weep. The feeling was more intense than the pain that had racked him.
The current pulled at him again, tugging him up through the colors. His body again trembled with pleasure, and he hung limp as he sped through the water. He wanted to speak, to scream, to yell, and to tell the whole world that he was the most fortunate man in the universe. That he was loved by Elyon. Elyon himself.
Never leave me, Billos.
“Never! I will never leave you.”
The current pushed him through the water and then above the surface not ten meters from the shore. He stood on the sandy bot-torn, retched a quart of water from his lungs, and straightened. For a moment he had such clarity of mind that he was sure he could understand the very fabric of space if he put his mind to it.
He was chosen.
And then a new thought mushroomed in his mind.
“Darsal.”
When he spoke her name, light spilled from his lips and fell heavily to the water. He held up his hands and saw that light drifted off his fingertips. The boys words came back.
I can give you something that makes his suhupow seem silly.
Run, Billos. Run.
Billos ran.
he dark stairwell swallowed Johnis and Silvie for the second time that night, or was it still day? Either way it hardly mattered. We are plunging into eternal darkness, Johnis thought.
“What are we doing?” Silvie’s cry echoed down the stone enclosure, battering his ears. What? Exactly what, he didn’t know.
“We have to get an advantage!”
“Down here?”
Johnis reached the bottom and rushed for the door that led into the tunnel.
“Johnis!”
He spun back, and as his body turned, the water bag in his right hand slipped out. It landed with a loud slap and, before Johnis could react, splashed its contents on the stone floor. A loud hissing and sizzling filled the atrium, then slowly faded.
“What did you do?”
“I have one more.”
“We won’t have enough to go back!” Silvie snapped. She couldn’t hide the panic in her voice, and it only pushed Johnis closer to the same.
“You don’t think I know?” he shouted, then shoved his hand into his last water bag. “How many bags do you have?”
“One more. This one’s almost empty. Not enough, Johnis. We’ll be stranded down here.”
“And not above?”
“I’d rather die fighting than be stuck in a hole!” She strode back toward the stairs.
“No! Silvie, we can’t go back up. It’s death!”
“And this is not?” she shouted.
“Okay.” He paced, trying to think. “Okay, calm down. We have water, right? We have the blessing of Elyon, We are on a noble mission.”
“Noble warriors are the first to die,” she pointed out.
And so they were. Johnis lowered his voice and spoke quickly. “Okay, forget the noble part. We have water. We go in, take Alucard hostage, threatening him with only one drop of water; that’s all we need. We march him out, and he leads us from the forest.”
“On foot? It’ll take us a day.”
“Better than a day down here.”
“He knows that if we kill him, Billos or Darsal will die. They have a vow.”
“We don’t know that they will actually die! That could be fable.”
“Like the Roush are fable? Like the Shataiki are fable? Do you want to take that chance?”
“No. But he can be made to think differently.”
As if in answer, a loud thump echoed down the stairwell. The outer door closed.
Metal clanged.
And now the door was sealed.
“Great,” Silvie said.
Johnis turned back to the door leading in and pulled it wide. “That settles it.”
Silvie hesitated, then he heard her feet moving across the wet ground.
arsal stood like a pole, refusing to look up at Karas. They’d hog-tied Karas the same way they’d tied Billos, then hoisted her up so that she hung like a bag of salt, belly down.
The girl was being brave, braver than anyone her age Darsal had met. Whether or not she really was her niece by blood, she was now a sister by a stronger bond. But even the bravest girl couldn’t stop the tears that wet her pink cheeks.
Darsal had come expecting to give herself for Billos, only after convincing Karas to wait in the eatery with the books in the event she could set Billos free and would need a fast escape. But after agreeing, Karas had caught up to her at the edge of the temple and had offered a newly formed reason.
“Black wants the books,” Karas had explained.
“So then get back there and guard them! Get out of here!”
“He’ll take you in exchange for Billos, but you won’t give him the books. So he’ll kill you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, Sister. You’re too principled to give him the books.”
“Either way, there’s nothing you can do. Now, get back!”
“I can’t go back knowing that you’ll die.”
She had heard Billos crying out. They were running out of time!
“Please, I can’t bear this!” Darsal had said. “Get back before I knock you out and drag you back.”
“Then Billos will die,” Karas had said. “My mind is set.”
Billos had cried out again.
“Then you’re a fool,” Darsal had said. She had turned her back and was striding toward the temple, furious. But Karas had followed.
Now she hung like a hog to be slaughtered if Darsal didn’t tell him where the books were. She had no choice. Say what she may, the young girl had grown on her.
“Okay!” Darsal snapped. “Let her down!”
“Where are the books?” Black asked.
“I’ll show you.”
The Dark One hesitated only a moment. He nodded at Claude.
“You sure? They killed Steve. We’re owed.”
Then the one named Black did something Darsal could never have predicted. His jaw snapped wide, twice as wide as she imagined possible, so that his chin slammed into his chest. Baring perfectly formed white teeth, he jerked his head forward and roared at Claude, who shrank back.
The man’s jaw clacked shut. He stepped forward and lowered Karas.
“Show me,” Black said.
Karas looked up at Darsal with round, apologetic eyes. Darsal marched forward, through the mob, around the corner. She scanned the village for a sign of Billos, but the weak-minded fool was nowhere to be seen.
According to Billos, Black needed them to find these books. Why, Darsal wasn’t sure, but it gave her one final opportunity, however slim, to escape.
Then again, if Black kept her separated from the books, all hope was lost.
“I’m sorry, Sis,” Karas said.
“Don’t be.”
“Keep your drums shut,” Black said. “You can kiss and make up later.”
Darsal led them to Smither’s Barbeque and pushed the door open.
“That’s far enough.” The Dark One stepped past her, sauntered up to the bar, and turned around, wearing a sly grin. “Now. Come in, and keep your hands where I can see them.”
She walked in, followed by Karas. Claude filled the doorway, long gun in hand. The rest stayed in the street, watching.
“Where are they?”
“You expect me to just give them to you?”
Black lifted his hand, and she watched it fill with a long gun with two barrels, stretched out toward Karas. “You expect me not to blow your little doll here all over the wall?”
He’d made his point. “How do I know you won’t anyway?” she demanded.
“I’m going to count to three. One, two, thr—”
“Behind the counter.”
Black kept the gun on Karas, who stood too far away for Darsal to touch, no matter how well things went. And she wasn’t going to leave the girl.
“Give me your assurance that you’ll let us go if I give you these four, and I’ll help you find the other three,” she said.
“The other three? What makes you think I need your help?”
“Billos said you needed his help.”
“To bring the four books to me from wherever they came. The rest was just to get his attention.” The man smiled, “And for the record, the other three books aren’t here. They’re in the real world of Paradise. This”—he scanned the ceiling and walls—“is all a simulation of sorts. Real enough, but no flesh and blood. You’re strapped in a chair at the moment, playing a game. The only way to enter the flesh-and-blood Paradise is through an open book. Unfortunately, once you do that, there’s no going back. Ever.”
What he was suggesting was nothing but a trick, of course. “If none of what I see is real, then neither are the books,” she said. “They’re useless.”
“No, the books are outside all this. They’re the only thing that is real here. Except me and your mind, that is. Which is why if I kill little Miss Muffet here, she dies. So it might as well all be real, comprende?”
She didn’t comprende, whatever that meant.
“The books, if you would be so kind. Let’s go on three again, shall we? One, two …”
The rear door crashed open. “Three.”
Boom!
Darsal’s breath caught in her throat. Billos appeared in the doorway and finished Black’s threat. But the word hadn’t left Billos’s mouth before Black swiveled his gun and fired from both barrels.
A blast of heat swallowed her, from Billos’s or Black’s gun she wasn’t sure at first. Light had blasted from Billos with that word, and it met the suhupow from the Dark One’s gun head-on.
The light from Billos slammed into her, threatening to tear her clothes off. It rushed past her and smashed the glass from the eatery’s windows like ten thousand fists.
Black stood in the face of the light for one moment, then grabbed his coat with one hand and turned into it. He spun and was gone. His last words echoed in the space he’d vacated.