Green: The Beginning and the End Read online

  “Of course not, my lord.”

  Qurong walked to the window overlooking the western city. More than two million Horde lived in Qurongi City; of those, over a quarter were males of fighting age, trained in combat as required of all adult men. But no sign of impending war was evident in the sprawling city with its mud huts and smoky chimneys.

  His subjects had grown fat off the forests; rich, even. Little did they know the mounting threat from the desert.

  “Prepare the army.” He swung around. “Send word that we will march north to the Torun Valley for training exercises.”

  “Consider it done. It will be good to take our third division out; they’ve grown fat.”

  “Take everyone,” Qurong said. “Including the temple guard.”

  Cassak blinked. “I’m not sure I understand. A training mission that size has never been attempted.”

  “All of them! North. Within the week.” He glanced at the door, then back. “I want them well fed, hydrated, armed, and ready for a full-scale assault at my command.”

  Understanding filtered into Cassak’s eyes. “Then it’s not a training mission.”

  “Recall our scouts from the northern desert and debrief them. Send out six teams of Throaters with orders to infiltrate the Eramite city and report back by week’s end.” He paced. “I want to know numbers, strengths, weaknesses. How many children, how many women. Weapons. Morale. Anything that has changed in the last few months.”

  “A week isn’t enough time—”

  “It’s all we have.”

  “You’re saying you plan on invading within the week?”

  “I’m saying I want to be ready to crush the infidels within a week. Sooner if I decide.”

  Now Cassak was quiet. The order was unprecedented. Not since the invasion of the forests had the Horde fought a full-scale war, and even then they’d never committed all of their assets to one front.

  Qurong kept his voice low. “The war drums are beating, Cassak. Samuel, son of Hunter, is uniting Eramite and albino forces with the intention of undercutting us.”

  “I didn’t know the albinos had a force.”

  “They don’t, but it’s not for lack of strength. Their will is weak, but that could change. I don’t intend to give them that chance.”

  Cassak nodded and joined him by the window. “I agree. Eram is a thorn to be rooted out. But one week? What’s the rush?”

  “Ba’al’s the rush. He’s on his way to some cursed Black Forest now, and if I’m not mistaken, he has ambitions of his own.”

  “So we move before he can get his prickly fingers into our business.”

  “And we take his own little army with us.”

  His general regarded him with a crooked smile. “I was going to say that the dark priest is a snake, but now I should say that about you.”

  “I never claimed to be a serpent. And I don’t think Teeleh would be too upset if Ba’al were his only loss in a war that destroyed the half-breeds and the albinos together.”

  “Agreed, sir.”

  Qurong nodded. “I also want you to send out three of our best scouts into the west with flags of truce.” He sighed, not eager to pass on the order. “Tell them to find Chelise.”

  Cassak stared as if he’d heard wrong. “Impossible. We can’t just find the Circle.”

  “No, but they can pass word for Chelise to meet her mother in the Torun Valley in four days. She will come.”

  “They could ambush the queen, my lord. This isn’t safe!”

  “I thought you said they’re a peaceful bunch.” Qurong grabbed a bowl of morst for his skin and headed toward the door. “Just do it. And there’re two albinos in Ba’al’s dungeon, scheduled for execution tonight. See to it that they both stay dead.”

  “Sir?”

  Qurong turned back. “Dead, Cassak. I want them both dead.”

  THE ONLY reason the search didn’t leave them naked was the guard’s ignorance that anything so small as a vial hidden under the band of Janae’s undergarments could do any damage. This and the Horde’s general disgust for albino flesh. Maybe if Qurong had overseen the search, Ba’al’s journal in Billy’s underwear and the precious vials would have been found.

  Their situation was simple and dire. Billy and Janae’s advantage was worthless in the dungeon below the Thrall where they awaited execution at nightfall. The ten cells ran along a tunnel lit only by a single torch near the heavy wooden door to freedom. All were empty except for the one they occupied, but the stench of urine and sweat crowded the small space.

  “Still there?” Janae demanded, bunched up in one corner.

  Billy pressed his face between two bars and peered down the passage where two priests stood guard. He pulled back and paced the straw floor.

  “Well?”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  “Don’t these animals ever use the bathroom?”

  They couldn’t tell what time of day it was, but nightfall had to be fast approaching.

  Billy bent down and uncovered the items he’d hidden under straw in the corner. A vial of Raison Strain B. A vial of one of the most potent, nonbiogenetically engineered viruses, Asian Ebola, responsible for over a million deaths the decade before a vaccine was developed. A third vial contained Thomas’s blood. Janae had lined her bra with all three in Bangkok.

  The last item was Ba’al’s journal. The blood book.

  They considered calling the guards over and trying both viruses on them. But Billy and Janae didn’t know what the results would be and would surely tip their hand. Regardless, the guards had refused to come after repeated calls.

  Still, within half an hour of exploring their cell, they landed on a simple means of escape. The lock.

  A brief examination of the crude metal lock revealed it to be an archaic thing with a rudimentary mechanism. She was convinced that she could pick it using nothing more than the underwire from her bra, which she’d already removed.

  They would still have to contend with the two guards at the end of the hall. And once out of the dungeon, they had to escape the Thrall and then the city.

  Billy had pored over Ba’al’s writings in the dim light, filling in the numerous blanks between the memories he’d taken from Ba’al earlier. The collection of writings carefully outlined hundreds of details from numerous sources about this world, but the sections that Billy read and reread as the hours passed related to the Thrall and Marsuuv’s Black Forest.

  Ba’al had sketched the Thrall’s basic blueprint, which showed a back door just beyond the dungeon’s entry. If they could get past the guards and climb the steps to the atrium unnoticed, he was sure they could escape the Thrall.

  And once out of the Thrall, their course was clear.

  “That’s it,” Janae snapped, rising. “We have to go now, before they come for us.”

  “Slow down, we only get one shot at this! Keep your voice down.”

  Her face wrinkled as if she was going to cry. “We have to go, Billy,” she begged. “We’re going to run out of time! Do you hear me? This is going to get us killed!”

  She looked to be on the edge of her own sanity. He had no shortage of urgency himself, but Janae looked like she was on the verge of a breakdown.

  She scratched at a rash that had sprung up on her right arm. Only then did it occur to him that his lower back had begun to itch as well. Rash. Surely, it had to do with lice or something in this cursed place.

  He imagined larvae crawling through their skin. Worms. He’d had his fill of them already.

  Billy shivered and snatched up the artifacts. “Okay. Try to spring the lock, but keep it quiet.” She was already at the gate, her frantic hands fiddling. “But wait until I say; just try to get the lock open.”

  She spun back, and held up the sprung lock. “Simple.”

  So fast? She’d obviously messed with locks in her time. He hurried forward and handed her the vials. “Hide these.”

  Janae grabbed the small glass containers and stuffed
them back into the sides of her bra. Her skin was milky white, and he saw now that the rash wasn’t only on her arm but on her belly and neck.

  An unreasonable fear slammed into his mind. Déjà vu. He’d been in this situation before, far below a monastery. The worms there had been much larger, but he was now certain that they’d come from Shataiki. He and Janae should wait—they should proceed with extreme caution, but he wanted nothing more than to be out of this cage, guards or no guards.

  Billy brushed past her, pulled open the gate, and slipped into the dark hall. His recklessness was an impulsive, irrational reaction to the fear, and he knew it even as he faced the guards down the tunnel, but by then it was too late.

  They stared back at him as if he were a ghost.

  “I appeal to the power of Marsuuv, queen of the twelfth forest,” Billy said, marching forward. Never mind that he was a bare-chested albino; he had knowledge that no ordinary man, Horde or albino, should have, and he intended to use it now. Janae was breathing hard behind him.

  Billy lifted the blood journal. “My maker, Marsuuv, with the blackest heart compels you—bring Ba’al and I will speak for my lord.”

  Ba’al was gone, Billy knew that. The guards yanked out their daggers and crouched, but they didn’t sound an alarm. “Back,” one cried in a hoarse voice.

  Billy stopped no more than six feet from the guards and spread both arms wide. A surge of power swept over him with surprising force. More then adrenaline. There was a power in the air.

  He tilted his chin up and spoke with as much authority as he could muster. When his voice came, it sounded like that of an old man, but it carried a power that shook his bones.

  “I am born of Black; I am eaten with worms. My place is with my lover and my master, who waits for me in the twelfth forest with Teeleh. Any man who touches my servant will die.”

  He could barely breathe, so powerful were his words. A wave of power rolled down his spine, and he knew, as he’d never known before, that he was close, so close to being home. The fact that home resembled hell more than any utopia hardly mattered.

  He belonged. This was his destiny.

  A cry and a whoosh of air startled him out of his reverie. Janae had taken the dagger from one guard and slashed his neck. She was now thrusting that same blade at the second guard, moving with unnatural speed. She, too, seemed empowered beyond herself.

  She thrust the long dagger straight through his belly, pinning him to a beam. Janae held his body there for a moment, then released it and stepped back, panting.

  “Okay, then,” Billy breathed. And for a long moment neither said anything else.

  Janae absently wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing it with blood. She licked her lips and swallowed, eyes still on her handiwork, perhaps unaware of what she’d just tasted.

  She finally faced him, eyes wide. “The twelfth forest?”

  Billy swallowed. “Marsuuv’s forest. My forest. It’s where the dark priest has taken the lost books.”

  Janae spun and started up the steps. “Then we have to go.”

  “Wait.”

  She didn’t wait. “We have to go now!”

  “Wait!” he spat. “You need to cover up. We’ll dress in these priests’ clothes first.”

  She turned and stared down at the bodies. After a moment she began to strip the clothes off the first guard she’d killed. The bloodier of the two.

  They both dressed quickly and slid the daggers into their belts. With any luck they would pass through the city under cover of darkness and be free.

  “How far?” she asked.

  The Black Forest. “Three days. Maybe two if we don’t stop.”

  “Then we can’t stop.”

  He thought about objecting, thinking he should be rational. Better to be cautious and live than die rushing over a cliff. But he couldn’t deny his own desire.

  “Agreed,” he said.

  Janae suddenly turned to him, wrapped her arms around his body, pulled him tight, and kissed him on the lips. “Billy . . .” She kissed him hungrily, smearing the guard’s blood on his mouth, breathing through her nose. “Thank you, Billy.”

  Her teeth bit into his lip, drawing blood. Strangely, he found it natural. This was how Shataiki mated, wasn’t it? He wasn’t sure of the mechanics, but he knew it had to do with the passing of blood. And this . . .

  This small expression of affection was merely foreplay, he thought.

  Then Janae pulled away and hurried up the steps, hiking her robe so as not to trip on the long garment, like a maiden rushing up the tower stairs to meet her prince.

  30

  A FULL DAY had passed since the books vanished with Billy, Janae, and Qurong. Thomas spent half of it wearing the carpet thin.

  His first reaction had been to deny what his eyes told him. The books were there on the table by the door, and the redheaded witch, who was one with Ba’al, was securely locked up. But then Billy was in the library, and in the books, and gone.

  The lost books, vanished. He’d rushed to the table and slammed his hand down, as if by force he could bring them back. Slowly the bitter truth dried his mouth. His only way back was gone.

  Following an urgent discussion, Kara and Monique appeared eager to reassure him. He was here for a purpose, Monique kept saying. It would work out, Kara agreed, but she wasn’t disappointed that they were together. He should embrace this turn of events for his own sake, she suggested. For the sake of the world.

  Their words fell on deaf ears, because Thomas could only think about Chelise now. An hour later, unable to shake the haunting of her face, he’d asked to be alone so that he could clear his head.

  He’d been separated from his lover many times, and though he always missed her, he’d never been cut off from her. There was always a path home into the arms of the one woman he’d come to depend on more than anything else in his world.

  In fact, it wasn’t until now, stranded, that he realized just how much he needed her. He glanced at the empty table again, dropped his head into both hands, and held back his emotion.

  He’d once lost those he held closest, and the notion of suffering through it again was too much. What if he never saw her again? What if he’d been returned to this world to finish whatever business awaited him here? What if this was the end of the other world for him?

  Panic crowded his mind.

  The white bat’s order whispered to him. Go to the place you came from. Make a way for the Circle to fulfill its hope. And return quickly before it’s too late. Do that and you might save your son.

  The same could surely be said for Chelise. Images of his bride swelled in his mind’s eye.

  He recalled the time she’d rushed out to meet him with Jake thrown over her shoulder like a bundle of firewood. “Look, Thomas!” She dropped their son onto his seat and stood back. “Show him, Jake. Show him what you can do.” Jake wobbled to his feet and began to walk. How the boy managed to stay upright was a mystery still, bobbing and weaving and crossing his feet like a drunken stork.

  They’d danced late that night and exhausted themselves in passionate expressions of love. Thomas had always been the impulsive one, given to zeal over reason, but next to Chelise he was the calm leader. After all, he was more than ten years older and had commanded armies. It only made sense that he would begin to settle down.

  He remembered the time he’d tasked his elder daughter, Marie, with teaching Chelise everything there was to know about hand-to-hand combat. Like in the days of old, their fighting arts resembled a choreographed dance, thrusting and sparring with ferocity, but always for the precision and beauty of it, not with Horde in mind.

  After only a month, Chelise and Marie performed by the fire for the whole tribe to see. Marie’s skills were finely tuned, unmatched at the time. But Chelise . . .

  His throat knotted, remembering: Her toned legs cutting through the air in an airborne roundhouse kick that showed her stunning grace. Landing nimbly on her feet, like a cat, then
flipping into three consecutive back handsprings. The way her hair swirled around her face, her fiery green eyes, the cries from her throat. She reminded him of his first wife, and lying in bed that night, he’d wept.

  Chelise had asked him what was wrong, and when he’d finally confessed, she’d wept with him. For him. He’d never thought of another woman, dead or alive, since.

  How many times had Thomas walked through the meadow with Chelise, hand in hand, listening to her enthusiasm on whatever subject had ignited her that day? She’d never been shy of her passion, and if her aim was ever off, she would eventually acknowledge her overexuberance on the matter, though usually in soft, mumbled words.

  “But don’t be mad,” she would say before kissing him. “I’m just learning.”

  She’d been learning how to be the wife of Thomas of Hunter, supreme commander of the Forest Guard, for ten years now, but as he often told whoever was gathered about the fire, it was he, Thomas of Hunter, servant of Elyon, who was learning from Chelise.

  Not that she wasn’t also teaching him other things, he would say with a grin. Who could light up a tent like Chelise? Who could lighten a load with a single giggle? Who else could master fighting techniques in only one month? Was there a more perfect vision of a bride in the whole of the Great Romance?

  Then he would excuse himself to find his bride. They had unfinished business. Thomas and Chelise always had unfinished business. And at no time had he been so aware of just how unfinished their business was as now.

  He remained alone in the library for an hour, allowing his self-pity to numb his mind. When no amount of focus presented an immediate solution, he headed out and found both Kara and Monique seated in the hall, waiting for him.

  It was Kara’s idea to help settle him by taking him into the city. He rejected the idea of leaving the library, where the books would hopefully return. But after a moment of argument, he saw that Kara was right.

  He had to clear his mind. Bathe. Get into some clean clothes.

  He’d forgotten how luxurious hot running water could feel on the skin, and he let it wash away the lingering Horde stench until the water turned cold. To his surprise, Monique had held on to some of his clothes, among other memories. The jeans weren’t as loose as a tunic, but both Kara and Monique insisted they fit him perfectly.