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  Still, Thomas needed them.

  “I’m going after them, Jeremiah. Believe me when I say that our very survival may depend on the Books.”

  Jeremiah stood shakily. “That would mean going after Qurong!”

  “Yes, and Qurong is with the army that we defeated in the Natalga Gap. They’re in the desert west of here, licking their wounds.” Thomas stepped quickly to the window. Daylight had begun to dim the moon.

  “You’ve told me where the commander’s tent lies—in the center, always. Isn’t that right?” he asked, turning.

  “Yes, where he is surrounded by his army. You’d have to be one of them to get anywhere near—”

  The old man’s eyes went wide. He walked forward, face stricken. “Don’t do this! Why? Why would you risk the life of our greatest warrior for a few old books that may not exist?”

  “Because if I don’t find them, I may die.” He looked away. “We may all die.”

  RACHELLE SAT at the table as if in a dream.

  Knowing that it was in fact a dream.

  Knowing just as well that it was no more a dream than the love she had for Thomas. Or didn’t have for Thomas. The thoughts confused her.

  The dream was vivid as dreams went. She was working desperately over the table, seeking a solution to a terrible problem, hoping that the solution would present itself at any moment, sure that if it didn’t come, life as she knew it would end. Not just in this small room, mind you, but all over the world.

  This was where the generalities ended and the specifics began.

  The white table, for example. Smooth. White. Formica.

  The box on the table. A computer. Powerful enough to crunch a million bits of information every thousandth of a second.

  The mouse at her fingertips, gliding on a black foam pad. The equation on the monitor, the Raison Strain, a mutation of her own creation. The laboratory with its electron microscope and the other instruments to her right. This was all as familiar as her own name.

  Monique de Raison.

  No. Her real name was Rachelle, and she wasn’t really familiar with anything in this room, least of all the woman who bore the name Monique de Raison.

  Or was she?

  The monitor went black for a moment. In it she saw Monique’s reflection. Her reflection. Dark hair, dark eyes, high cheekbones, small lips.

  It was almost as if she was Monique.

  Monique de Raison, world-renowned geneticist, hidden away in a mountain named Cyclops on an Indonesian island by Valborg Svensson, who had released the Raison Strain in twenty-four cities around the world.

  Whoever searched for her would probably never find her. Not even Thomas Hunter, the man who’d risked his life twice for her.

  Monique had some feelings for Thomas, but not the same as Rachelle had for him.

  She stared at the screen and dragged her pointer over the bottom corner of the model. One last time she lifted the sheet of paper covered with a hundred penciled calculations. Yes, this was it. It had to be. She set the page down and withdrew her hand.

  Something bit her finger and she jerked her hand back. Paper cut. She ignored it and stared at the screen.

  “Please, please,” she whispered. “Please be here.”

  She clicked the mouse button. A formula popped into a small box on the monitor.

  She let out a sob, a huge sigh of relief, and leaned back into her chair.

  Her code was intact. The key was here and, by all appearances, unaffected by the mutation. So then, the virus she engineered to disable these genes might also work!

  Another thought tempered her elation. When Svensson had what he wanted, he would kill her. For a brief moment she considered not telling Svensson how close she was. But she couldn’t hold back information that might save countless lives, regardless of who used that information.

  Then again, she might not be close at all. He hadn’t told her everything. There was something—“Mother. Mother, wake up.”

  Rachelle bolted up in bed.

  “Thomas?”

  Her son stood in the doorway. “He’s not here. Did he go out on the patrols?”

  Rachelle threw the covering off and stood. “No. No, he should be here.”

  “Well, his armor’s gone. And his sword.”

  She looked at the rack where his leathers and scabbard usually hung. It stood in the corner, empty like a skeleton. Maybe with all of the people arriving for the Gathering, he’d gone out to check on his patrols.

  “I asked in the village,” Samuel said. “No one knows where he is.”

  She pulled back and closed the canvas drape that acted as their door. She quickly traded her bed clothes for a soft fitted leather blouse laced with crossing ties in the back. In her closet hung over a dozen colorful dresses and skirts, primarily for the celebrations. She grabbed a tan leather skirt and cinched it tight with rolled rope ties. Six pairs of moccasins, some decorative, some very utilitarian, lay side by side under her dresses. She scooped up the first pair.

  All of this she did without thought. Her mind was still in her dream. With each passing moment it seemed to dim, like a distant memory. Even so, parts of this memory screamed through her mind like a flight of startled macaws.

  She’d entered Thomas’s dream world.

  She’d been there, in a laboratory hidden in a mountain named Cyclops with—or was it as?—Monique, doing and understanding things that she had no knowledge of. And if Monique had found this key of hers, she might be killed before Thomas ever found her.

  Her heart pounded. She had to tell Thomas!

  Rachelle crossed to the table, snatched up the braided bronze bracelet Thomas had made for her, and slid it up her arm, above the elbow where—

  She saw the blood on her arm, a dark red smear that had dried. Her cut? It must have been aggravated and broken open during the night.

  The sheets were stained as well.

  In her eagerness to find Thomas, she considered ignoring it for the moment. No, she couldn’t walk around with blood on her arm. She ran to the kitchen basin, lowered it under the reed, and released the gravity-drawn water by lifting a small lever that stopped the flow.

  “Marie? Samuel?”

  No response. They were out of the house.

  The water stung her right index finger. She examined it. Another tiny cut.

  Paper cut. This was from her dreams! Her mouth suddenly felt desert dry.

  A thought crashed into her mind. Exactly how she was connected to Monique she didn’t know, but she was, and this cut proved it. Thomas had been emphatic: If he died in that world, he would also die in this one. Perhaps whatever happened to Monique could very well happen to her! If this Svensson killed her, for example, they both might die.

  She had to reach Thomas before he dreamed again so that he could rescue her!

  Rachelle ran into the road, looked both ways through several hundred pedestrians who loitered along the wide causeway, and then ran toward the lake. Ciphus would know. If not, then Mikil or William.

  “Good morning, Rachelle!”

  It was Cassandra, one of the elder’s wives. She wore a wreath of white flowers in her braided hair, and she’d applied the purple juice from mulberries above her eyes. The mood of the annual Gathering was spreading in spite of the unexpected Horde threats.

  “Cassandra, have you seen Mikil?”

  “She’s on patrol, I think. You don’t know? I thought Thomas went with them?”

  Rachelle ran without further salutation. It was unlike Thomas to leave without telling her. Was there trouble?

  She raced around the corner of Ciphus’s house and pulled up, panting. The elder was in a huddle with Alexander, two other elders, and an old man she immediately recognized as the one who’d come in from the desert. Jeremiah of Southern. The one who knew about the Books of Histories.

  Their conversation stalled.

  “He’s gone?” she demanded.

  No one responded.

  Rachelle leaped to t
he porch. “Where? He’s on patrol?”

  “A patrol,” Ciphus said, shifting. “Yes, it’s a patrol. Yes, he’s gone—”

  “Stop being so secretive,” she snapped. “It’s not a patrol or he would have told me.” She looked at Jeremiah. “He’s gone after them. Hasn’t he? You told him where he might find the Books and he’s gone after them. Tell me it isn’t so!”

  Jeremiah dipped his head. “Yes. Forgive me. I tried to stop him, but he insisted.”

  “Of course he insisted. Thomas always insists. Does that mean you had to tell him?” At the moment she was of a mind to knock these old men’s heads together.

  “Where has he gone? I have to tell him something.”

  Ciphus shoved his stool back and stood. “Please, Rachelle. Even if we knew where he was, you couldn’t go after him. They left early on fast horses. They’re halfway to the desert by now.”

  “Which desert?”

  “Well . . . the big desert outside the forest. You cannot follow. I forbid it.”

  “You’re in no position to forbid me from finding my husband.”

  “You’re a mother with—”

  “I have more skill than half of the warriors in our Guard, and you know it. I trained half of them in Marduk! Now you will either tell me where he’s gone or I will track him myself.”

  “What is it, child?” Jeremiah asked gently. “What do you have for him?”

  She hesitated, wondering how much Thomas had told the man.

  “I have information that might save both of our lives,” she said.

  Jeremiah glanced at Ciphus, who offered no direction. “He’s gone to the Natalga Gap with two of his lieutenants and seven warriors.”

  “And what will he find there?”

  “The leader of the Horde, in the desert beyond the Gap. But you mustn’t go, Rachelle. His decision to go after these books may lead to tragedy as it is.”

  “Besides,” Alexander said, “we can’t afford to send more of our force on yet another crazed mission.”

  “This has to do with these dreams of his?” Ciphus asked.

  “They may not be dreams after all,” Rachelle said, and she was surprised to hear the words come from her mouth.

  “You as well?”

  She ignored the question. “I have information that I believe may save my husband’s life. If any of you would even consider holding me back, then his death will be on your hands.”

  Her overstatement held them in silence.

  “If you have any other information that would help me, please, now is not the time to be coy.”

  “How dare you manipulate us!” Ciphus cried. “If there is any man who can survive this fool’s errand, it is Thomas. But we can’t have his woman chasing him into the desert four days before the Gathering!”

  Rachelle stepped off the porch and turned her back on them. Now her determination to track Thomas down was motivated as much by these men’s insults as by her own realization that her husband had been right about his dreams.

  “Rachelle.”

  She turned and faced Jeremiah, who’d walked to the end of the porch.

  “They will be due west of the Gap,” he said. “I beg you, child, don’t go.” He paused, then continued with resignation. “Take extra water. As much as your horse can carry. I know it will slow you down, but the disease will slow you down even more.”

  The tremble in the old man’s voice put her on edge.

  “He means to become one of them,” Jeremiah said. “He means to enter their camp.”

  Rachelle could not dare believe what she had just heard.

  And then she knew it was true. It was exactly what Thomas would do if he knew, if he absolutely knew, that both realities were real.

  Rachelle sprinted for the stables.

  Dear Elyon, give me strength.

  THEY WERE nine of his best, including William and Mikil. With himself, ten.

  The three extra canteens of water they each carried weighed them down more than Thomas would have liked. It was a dangerous game that he was playing, and he couldn’t risk being caught without the cleansing water.

  They had ridden hard all day and now entered the same canyon their black powder had blasted thirty-six hours earlier. The stench rose from thousands of dead buried beneath the rubble and strewn on the desert floor.

  They rode the Forest Guard’s palest horses. Thomas’s steed snorted and pawed at the sand. He urged the horse on and it moved forward reluctantly.

  “Hard to believe that we did all this,” William said.

  “Don’t think it’s the end of them,” Mikil said. “There’s no end to them.”

  Thomas pulled a scarf over his nose and led the warriors into the rocks. The horses carried them through the canyon, past the burlap-cloaked bodies of their fallen enemy. He’d seen his share of dead, but the magnitude of this slaughter made him nauseated.

  It was said that the Horde cared less for the lives of their men than the lives of their horses. Any Scab who defied his leader was summarily punished without trial. They favored the breaking of bones to flogging or other forms of punishment. It wasn’t unusual to find a Scab soldier with numerous bones broken left to die on the hot desert sand without having shed a drop of blood. Public executions involved drowning the offender in pools of gray water, a prospect that instilled more fear in the Scabs than any other threat of death.

  The Horde’s terror of water had to be motivated by more than the pain that accompanied cleansing in the lakes, Thomas thought, though he wasn’t sure what.

  He waited until they had passed the front lines of the dead before stopping by a group of several prone bodies. He dismounted, stripped the hooded robe off a Scab buzzing with flies, and shook it in the air. He coughed and threw the cloak over the rump of his horse.

  “Let’s go, all of you,” he said. “Dress.”

  William grunted and dismounted. “I never would have guessed I’d ever stoop so low as to dress in a whore’s clothes.” He dutifully began to strip one of the bodies. The rest found cloaks and donned them, muttering curses, not of objection, but of offense. The stench couldn’t be washed from the burlap.

  Thomas retrieved a warrior’s sword and knife. Studded boots. Shin guards. These were new additions, he noted. The hardened, cured leather was uncharacteristic of the Desert Dwellers. The painful condition of their skin tempered their use of armor, but these shin guards had been layered with a soft cloth to minimize the friction.

  “They’re learning,” he said. “Their technology isn’t that far behind our own.”

  “They don’t have black powder,” Mikil said. “Ask me and I’ll say they’re finished. Give me three months and I’ll have new defenses built around every forest. They don’t stand a chance.”

  Thomas pulled the robe he’d liberated over his head and strapped on the foreign dagger.

  “Until they do have black powder,” he said, stuffing his own gear behind a boulder. “Have you considered what they could do to the forest if they had explosives? Besides, I’m not sure we have three months. They’re growing brave and they’re fighting with more intelligence. We’re running out of warriors.”

  “Then what would you suggest?” Mikil asked. “Treason?”

  She was speaking of the incident in the Southern Forest. A runner had arrived just before their departure and reported on the Southern Forest’s victory over the Horde.

  Only it wasn’t Jamous who’d driven the Scabs away. He’d lost over half of his men in a hopeless battle in which he was outflanked and surrounded—a rare and deadly position to be caught in.

  No, it was Justin, the runner said with a glint in his eye. He’d single-handedly struck terror into the Horde without one swipe of his blade. He’d negotiated a withdrawal with none other than the great general, Martyn himself.

  The entire Southern Forest had sung Justin’s praises in the Elyon Valley for three hours. Justin had spoken to them of a new way, and they had listened as if he were a prophet, the run
ner said. Then Justin had disappeared into the forest with his small band.

  “Have I once suggested yielding to the Horde in any way?” Thomas asked. “I’ll die waiting for the prophecy’s fulfillment if I have to. Don’t question my loyalty. One stray warrior is the least of our concerns at the moment. We’ll have time enough for that at the Gathering.”

  He’d told her about the challenge and the Council’s request that he defend it, should it come down to a fight.

  “You’re right,” she said. “I meant no disrespect.”

  Thomas mounted and brought his horse around. “We ride in silence. Pull your hoods over your heads.”

  They headed out of the canyon, dressed as a band of Desert Dwellers, following the Horde’s deep tracks.

  The sun set slowly behind the cliffs, leaving the group in deep shadows. They soon emerged from the rock formations and headed due west toward a dimming horizon.

  Thomas’s explanation of the mission had been simple. He’d learned the Horde had a terrible weakness: They rode into battle with the superstitious belief that their religious relics would give them victory. If a small band of Forest Guard could penetrate the Horde camp and steal the relics, they might deal a terrible blow. He had also learned that at this very moment, Qurong, who’d certainly commanded the army they’d just defeated, carried those relics with him. The relics were the Books of Histories. Who would go with him to deal such a blow to the Horde?

  All nine had immediately agreed.

  At this very moment, he was lying in a hotel room not ten blocks from the capitol building in Washington, D.C., sleeping. A hundred government agencies were burning the midnight oil, trying to make sense of the threat that had stood the world on its end. Sleep was undoubtedly the furthest thing from their minds. They were busy trying to decide who should know and who should not, which family members they could warn without leaking the word that might send a panic through the nation. They were thinking of ways to isolate and quarantine and survive.

  But not Thomas Hunter. He understood one thing very few others could. If there was a solution to Svensson’s threat, it might very well lie in his sleep.