“NO ONE knows of this room?” Thomas asked, leading the way down the flight of steps.
“None,” Qurong said gruffly. “Keep your eyes ahead.”
“I’ve had ample opportunity to take you out, if I had any intention of doing so.”
“Don’t think so highly of yourself.”
“You’ve let your guard down a dozen times. You know I have no desire to see you harmed. It’s not only against my nature, it’s against Chelise’s.”
Silence.
“She knows,” Qurong said.
“Of this place?”
“I showed it to her when she took such an interest in the books. But that was before I came into these lost books you speak of.”
The light from Thomas’s torch cast a flickering glow over the stone stairs. They came to a small atrium shut off by a wooden gate.
“Inside.”
“How did you manage to build this without anyone’s knowledge?” Thomas asked, pushing the gate wide.
“It was here.”
“It was?”
“The tunnels and caves were here. A nest of some kind—Shataiki, for all I know. Ba’al tells me they have a wicked appetite for the books.”
“Naturally. They seek to make their own history by bending the will of all men in the same way they’ve bent yours.”
Qurong grunted and steered him to his right, into one of five tunnels beyond the gate. The hollowed passage looked as old as the world, carved through the rock but straight enough. They walked twenty paces before making another right through another wooden gate and into what appeared to be a library.
Old books lay on a round table at the center. Bookcases along the right wall. A writing desk to his left. He was about to ask if this was it, when a glow flooded the room. Qurong had lit a second torch on the wall.
Four chairs sat around the table, and beyond it, a couch with stuffed silk pillows. There was everything a reader intent on studying could want down here, including a pitcher of water, a bowl of fruit, even a fireplace.
“This was here?”
“As I said, the cave was here. It’s my only escape from the dark priest’s prying eyes. He has servants in the walls.”
At least one of the shelves was stuffed with volumes from the Books of History. But the Horde could not read the books; Thomas had established that much long ago. To the albino, the words read perfectly clear, but the scabbing disease turned this truth to nonsense in the Hordes’ minds. Their scribes were obsessed with writing their own history in plain bound books, a way of legitimizing their own failure to read the Books of History.
Everyone wanted to create his own history. There was nothing as powerful as the written word; history had taught them all that much.
“You can read the Books of History?” Thomas asked to be sure.
“No one can.”
“Albinos can.”
“That is a lie,” Qurong said simply.
There was no way to prove otherwise. He could just as easily pretend to read from the books and Qurong would never know the difference. Such was the nature of religion, plied by man to control the masses.
“But we didn’t come down here so you could admire my library.” Qurong crossed to the desk. “You say you can give me what I need to destroy my enemies through these books.”
He opened a drawer and pulled out a canvas bag bound by rope. He untied the bundle and withdrew colored Books of History, one by one, setting them on the desk. Six of them. The binding of each one a different color.
Qurong faced him. “So show me.”
Thomas walked up to the desk and reached for the books. “May I?”
“One. And only one.”
“Of course.”
He picked up the green book. They were all bound by old leather embossed with the same concentric rings, the symbol for completeness. Elyon’s stamp.
The Circle.
Thomas traced the symbol. “Have you opened these?”
“They’re empty.”
Blank! But Michal said these were a key to both time and the rules that governed the other blank books.
He pulled the cover back. The page was smothered by blood. It had been used. Thomas’s heart pounded at the prospect of entering.
“Let me have your knife.”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“Do you want to do this or not?” Thomas snapped. Then he considered a possibility that made him second-guess himself. What if he vanished into the other world without the books? How would he ever make it back? He couldn’t conceive of going without knowing he would return to Chelise and the Circle. To Samuel. To Jake.
Michal had all but demanded he use them. So he would.
“Do you have any rope?”
“What for?”
“Trust me. Rope.”
Qurong eyed him, then plucked a length of twine from a stand beside the desk and tossed it. “I’m now relegated to trusting my gravest enemy,” he said.
“Don’t be thick, old man. I don’t have any harm in mind. We are in this together.”
“And just what are we in for?”
Thomas bound four of the books together with the top cover held back to reveal the first page stained with blood. He then tied the bundle of books to his arm. “I need your knife. Trust me, if this works you’re going to love—”
“No!” Qurong slammed his hand down on the books, pinning them to the desk. “Enough trust!”
Perhaps he had been too hasty. Thomas lifted both hands to calm the man.
“Easy. I thought I’d already explained. These books unlock time. You and I can vanish”—he snapped his fingers—“and wake in another world where it will all become clear to you.”
“Assuming this nonsense is true, what truth do you speak of? How will this save the Horde?”
“I can’t explain it. You’ll have to . . . to trust me. The world will become clear in ways you’ve never imagined. Think of it as a gift, one that will save far more than you—”
“Just that?” Qurong snarled. “Just ‘trust me’? I am the supreme commander of the Horde kingdom, and I rule all of the known world. I am not a servant for you or for Ba’al or for any other living creature to toy with!”
Thomas’s eagerness was partly to blame for Qurong’s frustration.
“Listen to me, you old crustacean!” He was shouting. “My son Samuel has just joined the half-breeds! They will rain rage and fire down on you for the torment you’ve caused them all. The Horde will be drained of blood, and the Shataiki will feed on your precious kingdom! Now give me your knife!”
CHELISE PULLED up sharply at the sound of Thomas’s voice murmuring urgently down the tunnel.
She’d entered the city from the south, through the familiar gardens that she once frequented. The journey took longer than she’d hoped, for the simple reason that unlike most albinos, her face, even without the scabbing disease, would surely be recognized by any who caught a glimpse of her.
But she knew a secret way in, behind the stables, via an alley that she’d used numerous times as a girl. Then through a low basement window that she was glad to find had not been boarded up.
She’d donned a cloak from a closet behind the kitchen, then crept through the servants’ quarters with one objective on her mind.
Find her father.
Find Qurong, who would know what had happened to Thomas. She would make sure he knew of her love for him after ten years without a word.
Naturally, she could live without Qurong. Had lived without Qurong. But without Thomas, she wasn’t so sure. He’d been her lover since the day she learned how to love, really love. He’d shown her the Great Romance. She’d begged Elyon for Thomas’s life with every step she’d taken.
The palace was buzzing, and she’d hidden behind a pile of barrels in the pantry. Still, she could hear whispers of an albino who’d come, and that could only be Thomas. No one seemed to know where Qurong had vanished to.
Her first thought was of his library. She’d slipped into the root cellar that led to the tunnel, found the door into the secret passage open, and descended on light feet.
And now . . . her breath hung in her chest. He was alive! Thomas was alive and with her father, whose voice reached her now.
“Just ‘trust me’? I am the supreme commander of the Horde kingdom, and I rule all of the known world. I am not a servant for you or for Ba’al or for any other living creature to toy with!”
“Listen to me, you old crustacean!” She was astounded that Thomas would use such language with her father.
“My son Samuel has just joined the half-breeds! They will rain rage and fire down on you for the torment you’ve caused them all. The Horde will be drained of blood, and the Shataiki will feed on your precious kingdom! Now give me your knife!”
It took a moment for the words to form meaning in Chelise’s mind. They claimed that Samuel had joined Eram and intended to wage war on the Horde, but that was . . .
How could Samuel consider such a thing?
“Thomas?” She started to run. “Father!”
THOMAS REALIZED he’d pushed too far. Panic began to set in. Once angered, Qurong wouldn’t be easily overcome. A woman’s voice yelled down the tunnel.
They both spun toward the gate. They were discovered! Patricia?
Now! While Qurong was off balance. He had to move now!
Thomas whirled and snatched Qurong’s knife from his belt. Slashed his own palm, barely aware of the pain.
Qurong swung his arm to retrieve his weapon, raging like a bull. Thomas ducked under the blow and grabbed his other hand. Tugged it toward him, blade ready.
For an absurd moment they each pulled at the hand, Qurong desperate to be free, Thomas knowing that his plan to win Qurong by taking him now threatened his own mission to return.
“Father!”
The woman was behind them, at the gate, screaming. Not just any woman, not Patricia, not Horde.
Chelise.
Qurong faced her. As he flinched, Thomas seized his last hope. He yanked the man’s hand, sliced his fingers, and thrust both his hand and Qurong’s hand onto the blood-smeared page.
Immediately the world began to spin, and his heart stopped.
It was working.
He twisted back, saw Chelise fading at the gate, eyes wide.
“Save the Circle, Chelise! Save them from Samuel! I’ll be back!”
But everything had gone black.
CHELISE’S BLOOD ran cold. They were there inside the library, in a tug-of-war over her father’s hand, when she cried out. Her father looked up, stunned by her appearance.
Thomas had moved like a man possessed, slashing Qurong’s hand with a knife, slamming their bleeding fingers onto a stack of bound books.
Thomas twisted his head; she knew with one look into his wide, green eyes that he was the same man she’d always loved.
“Save the Circle, Chelise! Save them from Samuel! I’ll be . . .”
Before he could finish, he vanished. They both disappeared—knife, books, and all—before Thomas could utter another syllable.
There one moment, grappling and bleeding, gone the next.
She stood in the gate, stunned. It had happened. This other world Thomas had talked to her about so often as they lay next to each other under the stars was real. Not that she’d doubted . . .
But she had.
She walked in. Stepped through the space her father and lover had occupied just seconds earlier. His world was not only real, but it had taken him again. She cried out, fists tight. How could he do this? Both of them! Gone! She could kill them both.
Save the Circle, Chelise! Save them from Samuel! I’ll be . . . Back. He meant back. I’ll be back.
Samuel . . . What had the boy done? Dear Elyon! She had to get back to Marie and the council.
Chelise turned and ran from Qurong’s library.
She had to get back to her only son. To Jake.