CHELISE HAD raced over the desert, expecting at any moment to see signs of stragglers converging on the Gathering in Paradose Valley, latecoming albinos who’d heard the summons that Thomas of Hunter was calling the Circle together for the first time in many years. And Eramite scouts, preceding Samuel.
But it wasn’t until she was nearly in the valley that she saw any sign of albinos or Scabs, and the sight made her pull her mount up hard. The mare snorted.
A line of Horde, maybe twenty in all, turned to look at her. They rode in full battle dress over a dune not a hundred yards from where she’d stopped. Horde scouts, so deep?
But these weren’t from her father’s army, which she’d left last night. To begin with, their armor was a light tan and blended into the sands, not black like those she’d seen yesterday. And these warriors wore no helmets. Their hair blew freely, no dreadlocks.
Her first thought was that they were Eramite, though she’d never seen an Eramite warrior before. And she knew they couldn’t be scouts. These twenty carried spears and maces, spiked steel balls, dangling from each saddle, not the lighter weapons of a fast-moving scout.
This was a contingent from a full army, riding without care within a half-hour march of Paradose Valley! That the warriors saw her and made no attempt to cut her off disturbed her even more.
She stared in stunned silence, lost for a moment. Thoughts of the Gathering crashed through her mind. All twelve thousand had surely arrived by now.
Did these soldiers know how close they were to the Circle’s most prized tribe? But of course they must!
Samuel.
Samuel had done precisely what her father predicted. He’d brought a contingent of Eramites to the Circle. She’d fled her mother’s tent with the scout Stephen as an escort and made the best possible time across the desert, hoping that Qurong’s information was wrong, or at least twisted. Stephen had left at her insistence nearly six hours ago. She knew the way from here, and it was safe.
But here and now, she knew that there was only one explanation for the twenty nonhostile half-breeds on the dune to her right. She kicked her horse and galloped on, down the slope and up the far rise, heart pounding. Up the rise, begging Elyon for time. The elders knew about Samuel, but what would they say to . . .
Chelise slid to a halt atop the next dune and gawked at the sight that greeted her. The valley was alive, flooded by an army that stretched to the horizon.
Samuel had not only brought a contingent of Eramites, he’d brought the whole half-breed army! A massive throng, no less than a hundred thousand strong, capable of crushing the Circle under hoof without breaking stride.
And where was Elyon?
The world awaits you, Chelise. Michal’s words whispered through her mind.
Chelise whipped her horse and cried out, urging it to run, to race as fast as was possible despite legs tired to the breaking point.
She had to tell them that Qurong had already gathered his army.
That they could not listen to Samuel.
That they could not make a move without Thomas!
A hundred thoughts pounded through her head, and she slapped the mare’s hide harder, racing around the army. It didn’t matter; not one seemed even slightly disturbed by the presence of an albino on a horse. Only curious. They’d already seen plenty today.
They were half-breeds, but their gray eyes and flaking skin were no different from full-breed Horde’s. These half-breeds were as Horde as her own father.
They watched her from a distance, and the sheer scope of their enormity sent a shiver down her spine.
It took her less than twenty minutes to cut a line across the dunes, around the gathered army, into the canyon, and to the corrals behind the tents.
The camp looked deserted. But the albinos had to be around the corner, gathering in the amphitheater where Thomas himself had toasted the Great Romance not two weeks ago.
Then she heard his voice. Samuel’s voice, echoing unseen from beyond the cliff. She ran up the path to the overlook and pulled up sharply.
The Circle had indeed arrived, all of them. They stood or squatted on boulders and sat on the cliffs, and their attention was firmly fixed on the flat stone surface where Marie had fought Samuel in the earliest bid to end this craziness.
And here he was again, this son of Thomas, Samuel of Hunter, standing next to an albino woman dressed in Horde battle armor and a red cape. Behind them, an Eramite leader, perhaps Eram himself, sat on his horse with a half dozen other half-breed fighters.
The elders stood to their right, arms crossed, watching with a mix of skepticism and interest. Why weren’t they stopping this?
“Wasn’t this day prophesied of old?” Samuel called. “It is said he will ride on a white horse and deliver those who swim with him to a new world, where there are no tears.”
His voice rang out. “Where his fruit is heady enough to make the most pained heart laugh with delight. Where our children no longer fear that a Horde sword will gut their mother or drop their father’s bloody head to the ground. For ten years we have fled this oppressor. Will Elyon never rescue us?”
“But he has,” Mikil said.
“Let him speak!” someone shouted back. “This is Thomas’s son, and what he says has merit.”
Samuel continued without giving Mikil opportunity. “Mikil’s right. Elyon has saved our hearts, and now he extends his hand to pull us from this wretched life on the run. Our enemy will not mock us, they will not ridicule us, they will only envy the Great Romance. I am Elyon’s prophet and I say it is so.”
“It is as he says!”
“He speaks the truth!”
“No, no, this can’t be . . .”
The response was a cacophony of mixed sentiment.
“Do you doubt?” Samuel shouted, red-faced. They quieted slowly. “Do you think I was born to Thomas of Hunter for no reason? If he was here, would he deny the prophecies of old? We cannot escape our destiny.”
“It is as he says.”
“He speaks the truth.”
“The day of Elyon’s wrath against the Horde has come, my friends. We will destroy the Horde!”
“Through an alliance with the Horde?” Johan demanded. “This is ill-advised.”
“Ill-advised,” Samuel mocked. “Our elders are too intellectual to follow the passions of Elyon, who uses whomever he sees fit. Today that is Eram and the famed Forest Guard.” He called the half-breeds as they were known before acquiring the scabbing disease. “I’m proposing we ally ourselves with Eram to this end. He needs us as much as we need him. Let me take five thousand of the strongest fighters here, and we will lead the army you’ve all seen just outside our canyon in one crushing blow against the Horde!”
It sounded perfectly reasonable, Chelise thought, except for what they didn’t know. And according to the Roush, the world awaited her, Chelise, who’d been sent back by Thomas in his stead, to save them all.
The Circle awaited her.
She lifted both hands and stepped forward, overlooking them all. “I am Chelise, wife of Thomas, and I find fault with this son of mine!” she cried for the whole Gathering to hear. They tilted their heads up. A murmur ran through the Gathering as she hopped down and stood on a large boulder to Samuel’s right.
“Hello, Mother,” Samuel said.
She ignored him. “I have come from the east, where the Horde army is assembling in the Torun Valley. They know we are here at this moment, with the Eramites, and they beg us to come so that they can crush us and leave our bodies for the buzzards!”
“I love you, Mother, but you’re wrong.”
She whirled to face him. “You’re saying the Horde will not slaughter many, if not all, if you march now?”
“Well, yes, there would be some bloodshed. But you’re still wrong. Mother. You don’t know everything. You don’t know that Elyon has given me a supernatural means of victory.”
She was at a loss for words.
Samuel stepped forward and addressed the assembly. “It’s true, I’m a prophet for this day, but I don’t come with words alone. How could I stand up to the quick tongues of the council or my own mother? But I come with another.” He looked at the woman beside him. “I present to you the strong arm of Elyon himself, in the flesh, for our benefit.” He reached for her hand, kissed it, and held it high. “Friends of the Circle, I present to you Janae, a messiah in her own right.”
Applause started with a smattering and grew.
“Show them, Janae.”
The dark-haired witch had the look of a seductress. There was a strange rash on her neck, similar to the one Chelise now saw on Samuel’s neck.
Janae stepped forward and paced before them like a general surveying the troops. She motioned casually over her shoulder with a single finger. “Bring him.”
Two of the half-breeds hauled a chained Scab into the clearing. Chelise recognized him immediately: This was Stephen, the very scout who’d treated her so kindly as an escort.
His gray eyes found hers. “Please . . .”
“Let him go!”
The witch twisted around. “We will! As soon as he shows everyone what I already know.”
Janae pulled out a small vial and held it up for the whole assembly to see. “In my hand I hold Elyon’s gift to us all.” She plucked the stopper from the top of the glass tube and waved it in front of her nose like a precious perfume. “The scent of the most high. To you and I, who have bathed in the lakes, half-breeds and albino alike, it is a gift.”
Chelise could smell the potent scent from where she stood, a mix of lemon and gardenia flower if she was right.
Samuel’s seductress lifted it up and walked to the closest observers. She held it out. “It gives us only strength. But to this infidel behind me, the scent of Elyon is poison. Yes? If he comes within ten paces of me, as he is now, the scent will enter his nostrils, penetrate his blood, and excite the very scabbing disease that makes him Horde. To be more precise, the scent repels the worms that eat him alive, throwing them into a fit. They will wreak havoc . . .”
The scout began to whimper. He scratched at his skin in a growing panic.
“. . . with his nerves,” Janae finished. She nodded at the guards. “Release him.”
They unlocked the scout’s chains and pushed him forward. Stephen had gone from a terrified Horde who feared his captors to a debilitated man panicked by whatever was happening to him. He staggered forward, bent at his knees like an old man. “What’s happening? Take it off me!”
“It’s not on him,” Janae said for all to hear. “It’s in him, and it is Teeleh’s breath, stimulating the worms eating his body.” She paced before the crowd, scanning them with an even stare. “Yet I feel nothing. The halfbreeds feel nothing. The council feels nothing. Those close enough to inhale this breath from hell feel nothing. Why? Because we have all bathed in the lakes at one time and are immune to my Raison Strain.” Then she added, “Elyon’s gift to us.”
A mumble of amazement swept through the crowd with a few sharp expressions of protest, but even more cries of agreement. “She tells the truth, she tells the truth!”
Janae walked to Samuel, who gazed at her as if she might be his own personal goddess. She stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. Taking his hand, she turned back to the Gathering.
“Elyon’s gift. He gave it to me and told me I would find Samuel with the Eramites. Together we would come to the Circle, in peace. We would extend the grace of Elyon, and then we would march on the Horde army, feed them Teeleh’s breath, and slaughter them all in their weakened state.”
Chelise stood on the boulder, bound by twisted cords of objection.
Where was Elyon in all of this? Janae spoke with authority. Could her son’s new lover have come from Elyon? Her message was desperately needed by many in the Circle. They would drink it deep and satisfy their thirst for Elyon’s power once again.
But this woman could not have come from Elyon! She was a seductress, a harlot with words that tickled the ears. And she was missing the most important element in Elyon’s charge to them all.
Chelise yelled it now, shouting over both Johan and Mikil, who’d stepped forward as one and were objecting.
“Love the Horde!” she cried, pointing at the Horde scout who was now shaking in fear and pain. “This is our only charge regarding these poor souls. Judgment will be Elyon’s to wield, not ours.”
“What she says is true,” Johan shouted.
“We can never take up a sword and cut down another human in Elyon’s name,” Chelise said. “Never!”
“So says the daughter of Qurong, the cousin of Teeleh.”
She didn’t know who from the throng of twelve thousand had made the point, but no one protested the comment. She stood high on the boulder, staring at the full assembly of albinos, and for the first time in many years she felt like a stranger in their midst.
She, who’d drowned in Elyon’s love and been washed of the disease, felt more Horde than albino in this moment. What was the difference between them and Qurong? Between Samuel and Stephen?
The scabbing disease was the difference.
And the insight to acknowledge that the condition was evil, affecting the mind and heart as much as the skin. And the bravery to follow Elyon into the red pool, drown to this life of disease, and rise from the waters as a new creature.
Because wasn’t her mother, Patricia, capable of love? Wasn’t her father worthy of life? She would die before she considered taking up arms against any Horde!
All eyes were on her. Both Samuel and Janae seemed content to let her engage her own people. She silently begged Elyon to bring Thomas to them. Now. In these deserts, the people would follow him like no other. They needed him desperately.
She needed him. She required her lover by her side, for the warmth of his body and his soft words of encouragement and his tender kiss of love.
“Yes.” Her voice was shaking. “I am the daughter of Qurong, and yes, my father is still deceived. He can’t see the truth when it stares him in the face. But isn’t this the way of the world? They can only see the ordinary, and Elyon is anything but ordinary. His love is extraordinary, extending beyond you and me to our own fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers who are still Horde.”
“His love is extraordinary, Mother,” Janae said. “But then so is his wrath.” The woman stepped away from Samuel and drilled her with a stare. “Do you challenge my authority as the one who has come with this gift from Elyon?”
What if she was right? What if this really was Elyon’s gift to them all? It was strange that this woman had come to them from nowhere, much like Thomas had first come. Strange that she had taken up with Samuel, son of Hunter. So similar yet so . . . different.
Before Chelise could answer the woman’s question, Janae faced the Gathering. “And what say you?” She lifted the vial she claimed to be Teeleh’s breath. “How many will hear the voice of one calling from the desert? ‘Prepare the way of the lord, for every valley shall be filled in, every mountain made low. And the whole world will see the salvation of Elyon.’”
“Is it so impossible?” Vadal, son of the elder Ronin asked quietly.
“Sit down, Vadal,” Marie snapped.
He looked into Chelise’s eyes and she saw his confusion. When put this way, how could they deny?
Janae repeated her question. “Who will stand with me? And who will challenge me?”
Nearly half stood to their feet. A jumble of support and objection filled the canyon.
Chelise felt her world crumbling. It was too much. Thomas, Thomas, Thomas. Where are you, my love? She felt as though she might burst into tears.
She slowly lifted one hand into the air and spoke clearly. “I do.”
Mikil, who’d been yelling the crowd down along with Jamous and Johan, looked up at her. But no one else showed they’d heard. The council argued among themselves. Even they were divided.
“I do!” she cried louder, shaking her fist at the sky. Then she screamed it, letting her emotions rally. “I do!”
Now they were listening. All of them. She breathed hard and pointed to Janae. “I do challenge your authority as the one who has come with this gift from Elyon.”
She leaped from the rock, strode over to Samuel. Yanked his sword from his back where he’d slung it. Walked to the center of the stone slab.
“I do challenge you by the same rules invoked by Samuel, and I deny any to fight for me.”
“What’s this?” Janae asked whimsically.
Samuel explained that a challenge once settled disputes. The winner’s way would be followed.
Chelise wasn’t sure what she expected in the moment—some resistance from the council at least, a moment to judge the skill of her opponent as they squared off. Anything but what happened.
Janae handed her vial to Samuel, stepped over to Eram, who was still watching with amused interest, took his sword from the scabbard, and sprang forward.
But this was not just any ordinary leap. She took two steps, launched herself into the air like a cat, and flew a full ten yards before landing in a crouch directly in front of Chelise, sword on guard.
“Your first mistake, Mother,” Janae said. “And your last.”
Chelise lowered her sword by her side as if surrendering, but turned it in at the last moment and ran it up under Janae as she threw herself back into an aerial somersault with a loud cry.
It was one of Thomas’s basic maneuvers, once taught to all Forest Guard, extremely effective because an opponent had to contend with both the blade and the attacker’s feet at once. But Janae had something not even Thomas had.
The speed of a bat.
How did she manage to escape Chelise’s sword and appear behind her? Chelise couldn’t know; she’d been upside down when Janae moved.
But Chelise was no slouch, and she didn’t waste any energy trying to understand what had just happened. She was swinging her sword with as much strength as she possessed before she landed.
Their blades met with a clang that echoed through the canyon. Chelise’s hands stung with the clash of metal against metal. But they’d both escaped injury.
Each having earned the other’s respect, Chelise expected they would hesitate in the crowd’s silence for a moment before . . .
But Janae was moving already, this time with such speed that Chelise couldn’t react except to gasp and attempt a block with a wild swing of her sword. Her opponent’s blade sliced cleanly through the strap that held her chest armor in place.
Janae reached in and yanked the armor down. The leather thongs slipped free, and the chest guard fell to the ground.
“You’ve lost your top, Mother.”
She felt naked with only a tunic between herself and this witch’s blade. More to the point, she knew she was as good as dead. What kind of black magic empowered this woman was an easy guess, but unless Elyon himself granted her the strength and agility of the Roush, she would die.
She now knew that fighting this woman was utterly foolish, but Chelise was committed. And this fight was for her father, whom they sought to kill. If she must die, she would do so knowing she’d died for him.
“Come on, you little whore,” she breathed. “Kill me. Or die trying.”
Janae flung her sword to one side, easily evaded a thrust from Chelise’s sword that would have connected with most mortals, and punched her soundly in the jaw.
Chelise’s world spun. Faded. The ground beneath her feet tilted. She landed on the ground with a hard thud.
“I will not kill a child of Elyon,” Janae was crying in the distance. “Our war is not between us. It is with the enemy of Elyon! Now this matter is settled. Samuel has joined Eram and the Forest Guard who wait over these hills.”
Chelise’s world began to right itself. She tried to push herself up but was still too weak.
“Today we will march on the Valley of Miggdon, where Qurong will move his army. In two days’ time we will crush them with one blow of Elyon’s wrath, and we will leave the blood of the dragon in the valley to feed the lust of all Shataiki. Then, and only then, will Elyon deliver us into his glory!”
A roar spontaneously erupted.
“Who is with me?”
Not all of them, certainly not all. But many were crying out in support. Chelise had to stop them! This could not be happening, not now with Thomas gone.
She tried to call out, tried to stand. But then Janae lifted her head by the hair and slammed it into the ground, and Chelise thought her skull may have broken.
Twelve thousand souls who’d drowned in the lakes and found new life were crying out, but to Chelise, the roar sounded muffled, like a voice from a large shell. Someone was shaking her, calling her name.
Then the sounds faded completely, and she lay in darkness for a while.
COMPLETE AND utter solitude and contentment. Chelise was stripped of all worries for the first time since Samuel had ridden into the Gathering and slung the Horde head onto the ground. Just one moment of absolute peace, sweet and restful.
Where was Thomas?
“. . . dead.”
“No, no, don’t speak that . . . more fruit . . .”
The silence gave way to this soft talk around her. Chelise’s mind dragged itself from the solitude with gaining awareness. She wasn’t alone. Two people were talking over her. One thought she might be dead. The other wanted to give her more fruit.
“We need to get the juice down her throat,” one was saying. “Sit her up again.”
“Why would she respond now? She’s been like this all night.” This was Marie’s voice. Marie, sweet Mar . . .
All night? She’d been here all night? No. No, it had only been a moment.
“Dear Elyon, have mercy on them.” Johan’s voice.
Chelise tried to open her eyes. Failed. Then tried again. Firelight glowed around the edges of her sight.
“She’s waking!”
A piece of fruit was pressed against her lips. Chelise bit deeply and felt the juice of a peach run down her throat. Then more, until she was eating large chunks of the flesh, ravenous for the healing nectar. Her mind cleared and the light grew bright.
They were in Marie’s tent with Johan. It was dark outside, and one of them had said she’d been out all night. Janae had beaten her in the challenge while the sun was still high in the sky, many hours ago.
She could hear desert crickets singing outside. The camp was all peace and quiet. Which could only mean . . .
Chelise blinked. Tried to speak, then cleared her throat. “How many?”
Marie glanced over at Johan, who responded. “Nearly five thousand.” “Five thousand? Here?”
“No, five thousand left with Samuel and the half-breeds,” Johan said.
“Vadal is with them,” Marie said.
“Vadal?”
She bolted up in bed, but a headache of thundering proportions made her world spin again, and she dropped back down.
“No, Mother,” Marie whispered. “It’s too late, they’re gone and you’re hurt. Give the fruit some time.”
Johan spoke in a soothing voice that failed to calm her. “We did all we could, Chelise. After you lost the challenge our footing was weak, but the council mounted a long defense that won many over to our side.”
“And the rest? The five thousand?”
He shrugged. “They’ve been deceived by a compelling case.”
“So they go against the Horde?”
“Yes,” Johan said. “They go to Miggdon where they will die.”
“Die?” But Johan would know more than most—before drowning he’d been a Horde commander of undisputed skill. “What makes you think Qurong will defeat them?”
“Because Qurong and the master he serves are far too crafty.”
Chelise sat up, this time successfully. She looked around the room, saw no sign of Jake.
“He’s with Mikil,” Marie said. “Seven thousand are here, by the red pool. They’re lost in tales of glory. And I’m here, lost in sickness over that fool who would be my husband.”
“I’m sorry.” Chelise pushed herself to her feet despite Marie’s objections. “I know. Believe me, I know. And now I have to go.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Mother. You’ll go nowhere.”
“They’re going to kill my father,” she cried. “Get me more fruit.”
“And they’re going to kill Vadal. I’ll go with you.”
“I’m not going to the Eramites.”
Johan nodded at Marie. “Then I’ll gather—”
“No,” Chelise snapped. “This time I go alone.”
They faced each other, knowing even a show of objection was pointless. The same thought that had echoed through her mind for a day now came again: The world awaits you, Chelise. She’d failed to stop Samuel here—Michal’s admonition clearly referred to something else.
Johan withdrew a vial from his pocket and handed it to her. “Then take this.”
“What is it?” She took the small glass bottle, identical to the one the witch had called Teeleh’s breath.
“We don’t know. It fell from her cloak. The label says it’s Thomas’s blood. Maybe it has some power. Why else would she carry it?” Johan turned and lifted the tent flap. “If you see the harlot, shove it down her throat for me.”
Marie was still pouting. “Mother, please—”
“No. I go to my father, and I go alone.”