Infidel Read online

  “But what if he’s not?” Thomas whispered in the darkness.

  His task isn’t to save us, Rachelle had said. His task is to destroy the Dark One.

  The Dark One. Teeleh? The Dark Priest? The Horde? For all Thomas knew, the Dark One was from another world entirely. He himself was. Wasn’t he?

  Thomas reached the smaller dunes with the first hints of dawn. He hurried in stealth now, eager to lose any pursuit. He had only one shot at this, and it all came down to the next half hour.

  The dunes steepened and gave way to shallow canyons. Scanning the sand, he ran, keeping to the rocks that littered the ground.

  It took him fifteen minutes to find the right lay of rock and sand. Balancing on two rocks, he dug the sand between them deeper, then lay back in the shallow grave. Already he could feel the onset of the Scab disease paining his joints. He looked at his skin, but the light was too dim to show any scabbing or cracking.

  He took one last pull from Jackov’s canteen, popped the lenses out of the hollow gourd that made his telescope, put one end into his mouth to form a breathing tube, and buried himself.

  The wind was blowing already, as the sun’s warmth pushed air from the east. The silt would cover his marks within an hour.

  As far as the Horde would be concerned, Thomas Hunter had disappeared. For now.

  Or so he desperately hoped.

  “HURRY!” KARAS SPUN BACK. FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE Johnis had met this young bundle of spice, she looked truly frightened. Her eyes shot to the stairs down which Johnis had come the last time he’d been here. Nothing.

  “What’s going on?” Silvie asked in a high, nervous voice. “Is that you, Johnis? What’s happening?”

  Karas finally got the cage latch to fell open and threw the door wide. Johnis had been here once and knew that talking to Silvie now, in this state of transition to full Horde, was nearly poindess. It took a very seasoned will to remain clear.

  But this time Rosa recognized him without hesitation. She hurried over. “I’ve been waiting, Johnis! I knew you would come back. Silvie and I have been waiting. I wasn’t sure, you know, that it was you before. But I’ve been waiting, Johnis. I’ve been here waiting for you …”

  Johnis lifted his finger to her lips. Once-pink lips cracked gray with disease. He couldn’t take her disorientation, her rambling, because he knew it came from the priest’s abuse, not simply the disease.

  “Shhh, Mother. We have to hurry.”

  The floor above them creaked.

  “Lie down, both of you.”

  “Johnis, what’s—”

  “Lie down!” he snapped. “On your backs! Both of you.”

  “Not the water, please,” Rosa begged. “Not the water, Johnis.”

  “You don’t mean that. Lie down, please, Mother, hurry.”

  Silvie stepped back. “Johnis, maybe you should listen to her.”

  “Ger down!” he yelled, realizing too late that anyone upstairs would surely hear.

  They dropped down immediately this time, put their arms by their sides, and stared up at him with wide eyes.

  “Close your eyes,” he said, unwinding the twine on the bottled lake water.

  They clenched them tight, and he threw, rather than poured, the water over them from above. Rosa gasped, whether from the cool water or from the healing he couldn’t tell, but her transformation was immediate and staggering. Sweet, sweet relief, flushing her body from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet—Johnis had felt it twice before.

  He splashed the healing waters over Silvie, soaking her clothes and hair, then moving back over his mother, then splashing even more on himself.

  “What … what is that?” little Karas asked, voice wound right. “What’s happening to them?”

  Johnis was about to splash the last of the water over Silvie when her voice stopped him.

  “Do want to see?” Silvie asked. “We could wash you.”

  Karas backed up two steps, terrified. “No … no.”

  He suddenly wanted nothing more than to save little Karas from her own disease; never mind that she didn’t even know she was diseased. The Forest Guard was sworn to kill the Horde, but at this moment Johnis wanted to save this frightened Scab.

  But they didn’t have time.

  Silvie and Rosa were both up on their feet.

  “Johnis? Dear Elyon, Johnis!” Rosa rushed forward and kissed him on his cheeks, then started on his hands, weeping with gratitude now.

  “Mother, we don’t have time. I love you desperately, and I’ll tell you later, but right now I need you to run.” He spun to Silvie. “Through the passage, up the stairs, there’s a stable out the back. Mount and ride as hard as you can, out of the city.”

  “You?”

  “I’m with you.” Dropping the nearly empty bag of water, he rushed to the gate and pushed them ahead of him. “If we get separated, we meet at the rocks, follow?”

  “Follow,” she said.

  “Then on into the desert, if the other party doesn’t come within ten minutes. We’ll have Horde horses, so we’ll need a head start.” The desert water that the Horde horses drank made them slower than Guard horses, it was said. None of them really knew if that was the real reason.

  They ran toward the tunnel, first Rosa, then Silvie, then Johnis. They were going to make it. There was still the main road to navigate at full speed and the desert to cross, but armed with swords and free on horses, he and Silvie could manage easily enough.

  A surge of hope and gratitude washed over him. There was Thomas, but they actually had a chance of recovering him from the Red Valley now. He’d hoped against the faintest hope that precisely this would be his outcome.

  Speed, boldness, and more than a little bit of foolishness had become speed, boldness, and brilliant maneuvering.

  Only the missing Books of History remained problematic. But his first priority had to be his mother. Then he would get back to his vow and start the quest for the books from scratch, “Through the tunnel, all the way to the end!” His voice echoed softly in the long passage. “Come on, Karas!”

  No response. He turned around. “Karas?”

  But Karas was gone. The room was empty except for the limp bag of water in the cage. And deadly silent. She’d run into another passage, perhaps, unnerved by his water.

  “Johnis!” Silvie whispered.

  “Go, go!” He ran after them, down the tunnel, into the underground room with the large table and weapons.

  “Follow me,” he breathed, rushing past them. “It’s a sprint out of the city now,”

  But his mother needed no encouragement. She wasn’t in the same condition shed been in before her captivity, but her training as a fighter and her eagerness to escape this hellhole didn’t fail her entirely. She pressed hard at his heels, pushing Johnis faster.

  They slipped through the upper house and into the storage room. Johnis searched the staircase one last time to see if Karas might have decided to follow them after all, but only darkness stated up at him.

  When he stuck his head back into the pantry, Rosa was already out and Silvie halfway. He piled through the window after them.

  “This way!” Johnis sprinted to the stables, ignored Thomas’s horse which, though normally faster, was worn half-dead from the night ride, and chose three stallions in close stalls. These were undoubtedly among the best the Horde owned, picked from among the hundreds of thousands they bred for war.

  A dog began to bark from one of the nearby houses. “Forget the saddles. Bridles only.”

  They slid the Scab-designed bits into the horses’ mouths and threw their legs over bare backs.

  “You came back, Johnis,” Silvie said. “Thank you. You’re a bold man.”

  “And a bit foolish,” he said. “Okay, remember it’s a full sprint. They may give chase, but we stand a good chance if we don’t hesitate. You know the way, Silvie. Right down the middle of the city. If they have the city gate blocked, split two ways and join at the boul
ders. Ready?”

  “Let’s go.” Silvie grabbed a sword off the wall, kicked her mount, and pushed past the doors, followed by Rosa, who snatched down her own blade.

  “She’s right,” Rosa said, drilling Johnis with a bright stare. “YouVe grown into a bold man since I last saw you.”

  “I missed you, Mother.”

  “And I missed you, my son.”

  The sky was fully gray now. Roosters crowed here and there about the city. The dog that had started to bark stilled, but now another answered it from across the way.

  Thrall woke in the same way the Middle Forest woke, Johnis thought, and then spurred his horse forward. Silvie, then Rosa, then Johnis bringing up the rear.

  He rounded the house, followed them into the street already at a full gallop, and glanced back at the temple. It was simply a parting look, perhaps because he knew he would be back for the books soon and wanted to imprint the lay of the land on his mind.

  Instead the sight of a young child seared his mind, like a branding iron on a horses hide.

  Karas.

  She stood in a large triangular window above the temples main door, feet strapped tightly together, arms bound behind her back.

  A hangman’s noose hung around her neck.

  The Dark Priest stood in the temple doors, hands clasped in front of his long black cloak. Even at this distance his white eyes shone in contrast to his dark clothing.

  “Her life for yours, Chosen One,” the Dark Priest said with just enough power for his voice to carry through the still dawn.

  Johnis jerked the reins hard, and the horse snorted in protest.

  “Johnis!” Silvie cried. “Run!”

  He glanced toward them and saw that both had stopped. “Go!” he shouted. “Silvie, take her out! Promise me!”

  “Johnis? No, Johnis—”

  “Go! Go, Silvie. I’ll be right behind! I promise!”

  “Please …” Her voice was begging and desperate, and he knew then that she loved him.

  “Go, go, go—or they’ll kill us all!”

  “Johnis!” his mother cried. “Johnis, you come right this instant! I’m not going to lose you.”

  “I’m coming, Mother. Just go. Ride, for the love of Elyon, ride!”

  Silvie spun her horse, slapped its rump with her sword, and charged down the street with Rosa galloping behind.

  Johnis would follow them, of course. Surely he would never jeopardize his mission to save Rosa by last-minute heroics. Leaving Rosa with a dead son would be worse than if she had never been rescued in the first place.

  So he would go, now, as soon as he sorted this mess out in his mind: this absurdity of a father threatening to hang his sweet, nine-year-old daughter; never mind that she was a Scab whom the Forest Guard was sworn to kill in battle at every opportunity.

  The sight of her in the window above him stopped his heart.

  “If Qurong knew what was in his interest, he’d butcher you, Witch,” Johnis said, using the name he’d heard used for the priest. He said it in a soft voice laced with bitterness, but the words carried unmistakably across the courtyard.

  “And if you run, I’ll butcher her.” Witch said.

  “She’s your daughter!”

  “And it seems you care for her more than I do,” Witch said. “I, on the other hand, care for the other four books. You’re going to tell me where to find them.”

  The Books of History. Witch was looking for the other four. There were seven in all. Which had to mean he had three, not just the two Johnis had lost!

  Johnis knew he had to leave now, before guards rushed out on all sides. The sound of Rosa and Silvies escape faded as they raced further on.

  He gave his horse a slight nudge to turn, “You won’t do it. She’s your daughter.”

  “Then run, Chosen One. And look behind your shoulder to see the doll fall.”

  Johnis was going to turn and run then, for his mother’s sake, for Silvies sake, for the sake of Elyon and the forests and the Roush and his own oath to find the missing Books of History and to try to rescue Thomas. But then something happened that he never could have anticipated.

  Karas began to cry. Softly at first, like a low flute hiccuping in the stillness. Choking back the terror that flooded her small lungs.

  “He’s going to kill me,” she said, barely above a whisper. But it struck Johnis like a hammer.

  The anguish in her voice. The agony of hopelessness. She didn’t expect Johnis to exchange his life for hers, or she would have said, He’s going to kill me if you don’t save me, Johnis. But she wasn’t the kind of girl who knew a hope that would expect anyone to save her.

  “He’s going to kill me.”

  The heavens might have opened then and dumped buckets of empathy on Johnis for all he knew. One moment he was chiding himself for delaying his own escape because of this fury he felt against the Dark Priest. And the next he didn’t care about his escape or the priest’s wickedness.

  In that moment he cared for nothing but Karas, for this nine-year-old Horde who was crying with white eyes in the bell tower.

  For this infidel.

  The pain that slammed into his chest made him weak and limp. He wanted to rush up to her and save her, whatever the cost.

  But he had to go. He knew that. He simply had to go, for Elyon’s sake, for Mothers sake. Karas was only a Scab. His other obligations and loves were for his own, not for the Horde.

  “He killed my mother,” the litde girl cried in a very soft voice.

  Pain crashed around Johnis like a torrential rain. He couldn’t move for the hammering of his heart. It was as if he felt every fiber of her pain, her panic, her terror, trembling up there in the bell tower one shove away from a cracked neck. He had to leave.

  But he didn’t.

  Unable to withstand the absurdity before him for even a moment longer, Johnis threw his arms wide, tilted his head up, and screamed at the sky. A long, full-throated scream that shut down the pain in his heart for a few seconds.

  He was shaking, he realized, resigned now to what he knew he must do. For all he knew, he’d followed his heart to the Horde city for Karas as much as for Rosa or Silvie.

  His cry echoed around him, and he sucked in a long breath. When he lowered his head and opened his eyes, he saw that there were six guards in the courtyard, facing him with spears. He could still go, he knew that. The priest wouldn’t kill him if he turned to flee even now—the man wanted the Chosen One alive.

  But Karas would die. Witch wouldn’t soil his reputation with anything less.

  “Bring her down,” Johnis said. “Set her free.”

  ilvie lay atop the tallest dune and gazed out at Thrall sprawling out under the blazing midday sun. Riding away, she thought shed heard a long, piercing scream from far behind, but with the pounding of the horse’s hooves and the crashing of her own heart filling her ears, she hadn’t been sure.

  Still, she’d almost turned back. If it weren’t for Rosa, who was still weak from her captivity, she would have. But she’d promised Johnis to take his mother to safety, and that was one promise she would keep no matter the cost.

  An hour had passed while they paced at the boulders where they’d first met Karas. The little Horde girl seemed to have bewitched Johnis.

  When two hours had come and gone, Silvie knew he wasn’t coming out, but she refused to admit it. She’d moved them to the dune and wrestled with the decision of whether to continue on as promised, or go back and perhaps sneak into the city this very night to set Johnis free as he had done for them. Never mind that he’d told them to leave if he didn’t join them in ten minutes.

  But setting him free this time wouldn’t be an easy task: they would be waiting. Whereas Martyn, the Horde general, seemed bent upon Thomas Hunter’s destruction, the Dark Priest was more interested in Johnis, the Chosen One, as he called him.

  He’d pressed Silvie for several hours for information on the Books of History, and she’d told him that Johnis knew it
all. She’d done it for his sake. As long as the Dark Priest thought Johnis held valuable information, he wouldn’t be killed.

  Even so, the Dark One was playing them, she now saw. He’d told her that Johnis would return, though he clearly hadn’t expected him so soon. Still, he had what he wanted.

  He had the Chosen One.

  “They have him,” Rosa said. “We have to go back in after him.”

  “Do you know why the Horde aren’t scouring these hills looking for us, Rosa?”

  Rosa looked around as if wondering the same for the first time.

  “Because they’re commanded by the general, Martyn, and Martyn is far wiser than any Horde I’ve ever heard of. He knows that you and I have no chance of recovering Johnis, and having realized this, we’ve fled to Middle Forest.”

  “But I would never leave my son!”

  “Obviously. Risking your neck for the Catalina cacti is what started this whole thing in the first place.”

  “And I think you would do the same, if I’m reading your eyes correctly.”

  Silvie looked at Johnis’s mother and knew there was no hiding what both understood. “You’re right. I love your son. So we have a problem.” She looked back at the city. “We have to leave for the forest, but we can’t leave without Johnis.”

  “And we don’t have any more water,” Rosa pointed out.

  “Correct.”

  They rested on their elbows, staring in hopelessness.

  “How old are you?” Rosa asked.

  “Sixteen. Nearly seventeen.”

  “Then you’re older than him.”

  “Not much.”

  “It’s young to be married,” Rosa said. “I know it’s common, but still … very young.”

  “Do you really believe that, or are you more interested in keeping him?” Silvie asked. She felt free, after two days together in the cell, to say anything to Rosa.

  “I suppose it’s to keep him,” Rosa said, sighing. “You’d be a very lucky girl, you know. He’s stubborn, but he’s a purebred.”

  “Then you know about the prophecy?”

  Rosa blinked. “What prophecy?”

  “A chosen child marked by Elyon will prove his worth and destroy the Dark One,’ the secret prophecy goes. Thomas and Rachelle claim it was kept secret to protect whoever that Chosen One was. You know the mark on his neck?”