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  You bleed in one; you bleed in the other.

  Surely Monique would believe after seeing what had happened to Carlos. With Thomas’s prompting, she would likely believe that she was connected to Rachelle. But was this a good thing?

  And if he killed Johan, would Carlos die here? Perhaps.

  Allowing Johan to live had been the right decision; he was sure of it. Now that he knew the link with Carlos, he would have to reconsider. But how could he kill Rachelle’s brother?

  And there was another matter that bothered him, something he was having difficulty placing. His memory had been clouded with these dreams, and he couldn’t quite say why, but there was a problem with Justin of Southern.

  The warrior had defeated him soundly and revealed his intentions of brokering a peace, while the Horde was plotting their final defeat. Mikil had sent out two groups of scouts, but none had yet reported any grave threat. Thomas had reinforced the Guard on each side of the forest, but otherwise he could do nothing except wait while Justin—He pulled up.

  Monique stopped. “What?”

  “Nothing.” He ran on.

  But there was something. There were Qurong’s words—the ones he’d overheard in the Horde camp. He could hear them now.

  “I tell you, the brilliance of the plan is in its boldness,” Qurong had said. “They may suspect, but with our forces at their doorstep, they will be forced to believe. We’ll speak about peace and they will listen because they must. By the time we work the betrayal with him, it will be too late.”

  By the time we work the betrayal with him, it will be too late.

  Who was “him”? When Thomas learned he hadn’t killed Martyn—that the man Qurong had been speaking to wasn’t Martyn—he’d assumed that “him” had to be Martyn. The thought had passed through his mind as Justin led Martyn from the amphitheater. It was partly why he had no intention of believing in any peace those two brokered. His Guard would be ready.

  But what if “him” was Justin of Southern?

  Of course! Who better to betray than a hero among the people, a mighty warrior who’d ridden like a king through the Valley of Tuhan and defeated the commander of the Guard in hand-to-hand combat?

  It was a trap! Justin must have an alliance with Martyn already. He’d negotiated the Scabs’ withdrawal from the Southern Forest. Then he’d ridden back to the main Horde camp with Martyn and arrived in time to save Thomas and his band in a show of good faith. The man atop the hill overlooking Thomas and his men had been Martyn.

  It all made perfect sense! The battle at the Southern Forest, Qurong’s words in the tent, Justin’s saving Thomas in the desert, Justin’s victory in the challenge, and now this unveiling of Martyn as Johan. Even the march through the Valley of Tuhan.

  And it was all to this end. A trap. A betrayal.

  What if the betrayal ended in the slaughter of their village? The death of the children? The death of Rachelle? Would Monique die? What if he was killed by the Horde? He was needed here.

  Thomas would not be fooled by their betrayal. He would hold the line and refuse any peace offered by Johan and Justin. It would end in a terrible battle, perhaps, but—

  Another thought struck him. What if he used this knowledge against the Horde? What if he created a reversal of his own, one that might avoid war altogether? His own peace on his own terms.

  Thomas stopped again, heart pounding with an eagerness to dream again. He had to return and deal with Justin’s betrayal!

  Ahead, at the edge of a clearing, lay a small stone quarry. The lights of a farm cottage glowed several hundred miles down in the valley.

  “What now?” Monique demanded, panting.

  “It’s almost dark. We don’t know how far we have to go or where we’re really going, for that matter. We have to stop for the night.”

  “What if he catches up to us?”

  “I don’t think Carlos will expect us to stop for the night—he’ll go on to the city or he’ll search the barns and the towns.” He nodded at the farm lights ahead.

  She looked around. “You want us to stop here?”

  He jogged over to the quarry. The ground fell twenty feet, like a bowl. Several huge boulders lay at the bottom.

  “We can lay down some branches or straw.”

  He thought she might protest. But after a moment she agreed. “Okay.”

  Ten minutes later they had covered the ground with grass and propped several large leafy branches against the largest rock to form a rough lean-to.

  Thomas sat on a boulder near the lean-to, strung too tight to even think about sleep. But that was just it—he had to sleep now. He was desperate to sleep. To dream. To stop Justin before the betrayal could destroy both worlds.

  “Thomas?”

  He looked at Monique, who leaned on the boulder next to him.

  “We’ll be okay,” he said.

  “I think you’re too optimistic.”

  “How can I not be optimistic? Three days ago I persuaded the president of the United States that my dreams were real, and he sent me on a fool’s mission to find you. It cost some men their lives, but I did find you. Now we’re free, on our way back to the world with information that will change history.”

  She looked away, clearly unconvinced. “We’re in France. Unless I missed something back there, the people who’re doing this have control over France. And you do understand that I have no evidence that the information I have will actually create the antivirus, don’t you?”

  “Svensson has the antivirus. We watched him inoculate himself.”

  “But I don’t know if what he used is based on the information I gave him.”

  “Fortier all but said it was yours.”

  “Why did they keep me separate from the others?”

  They sat in silence. Under other circumstances it might have been an uncomfortable silence, but now, on the eve of the world’s destruction, with pretension long gone, it was only silence.

  “So you really do believe all of this,” Monique said.

  She meant his dreams. “Yes.”

  “How is it possible?”

  “You didn’t have too much trouble believing that I got information from my dreams. That’s information out of thin air. Why not more?”

  “There’s a far cry between dreaming up information and cutting someone’s neck without touching him,” she said.

  “I was also shot dead in the hotel right in front of you.”

  She paused. “It goes against everything I’ve ever believed.”

  He shrugged. “Then you’ve believed in the wrong things. And if it’s any consolation, so have I. When you live it like I have, it begins to feel quite real. Even natural. I’m not saying I understand. I’m not saying that I’m even meant to understand it.”

  She looked at the sky. “You think about God in all of this?”

  “I don’t have a good history with religion, despite my father being a chaplain. Maybe that’s because my father was a chaplain. For the first couple weeks of these dreams, even though I had some incredible dreams of encountering God in the emerald lake, I kept it all in its own little box, reserved for the unexplained. There was the colored forest with its version of God, and there was this Earth, each in its own set of dreams. On this Earth God doesn’t exist, I believed. I wasn’t ready to think differently.”

  “And now?”

  “Now the reality of Elyon is feeling very compelling again. In my dreams, I mean. For a long time after the Shataiki invaded the colored forest, battle was more real to me than Elyon. I’ve been commander of the Guard, fighting wars and spilling blood for fifteen years, and not once has anyone reported seeing a black bat or hearing a single word from Elyon. We call our religion the Great Romance, but really it feels more like a list of rules than anything similar to the Great Romance we once had. But now I think the knowledge of Elyon is starting to work its way into me again—in both realities. Make any sense? If Elyon’s real there, surely God must be real here.”

&
nbsp; “It might explain your dreams,” she said.

  Another long silence.

  “I’m still not ready to believe that I’m connected to a woman named Rachelle who is conveniently married to you,” she said.

  He sighed. “It may be best that you don’t believe it. Because if you are connected to her, then anything that happens to Rachelle may also happen to you.”

  “You mean if Rachelle gets cut, I get cut? Like Carlos?”

  “Rachelle has already experienced that very thing. We can’t allow anything to happen to you.”

  “Because it will affect Rachelle as well.”

  Thomas sighed and leaned back against the boulder.

  “Is Rachelle in danger of being killed?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. We all are.”

  “Then I suppose you’d better dream and save the world.”

  By her tone he knew that she was frustrated with these ideas of dreams, but he didn’t have the energy to win her over now. He decided to give her one parting thought.

  “I just may. But I think I’ll have to go after Justin to do that.”

  She didn’t ask who Justin was.

  The moon was bright and the night cold when they finally agreed that they should sleep. The lean-to was meant to hide them from any prying eyes in the sky, and Thomas insisted they both sleep under the leafy branches.

  Despite their initial attempts at modesty, they both accepted the fact that comfort and warmth were more important at the moment than forcing themselves into positions that would keep them up half the night. They lay shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm in the dark and began to drift off.

  Thomas was almost asleep when he felt her hand rest on his. His eyes opened. At first he wondered if she was touching his hand in her sleep. He should ease his arm away.

  But he couldn’t. Not after what he’d put her through.

  It took him another fifteen minutes to begin drifting again. They fell asleep like that, wrist to wrist.

  CARLOS COVERED the ground in a steady, fast walk. The moon was high enough to light his way, which made the going easier than during the first hour of darkness, before the moon rose.

  He traveled alone because this issue of Thomas Hunter had become a very personal matter, and also because he knew he could deal with the problem without ever revealing the full truth of what had happened in the house.

  In his hand he held a receiver that accepted a signal from the woman. They’d sewn the transmitter into her waistband a week earlier—no reason not to keep very close tabs on such a valuable asset. If and when she discarded the slacks, he would have a problem, but until she reached a town, she wouldn’t have the opportunity. And based on their course, that wouldn’t happen before morning.

  They had stopped. Even at this pace he would reach them in a matter of hours.

  He lifted his hand and touched his neck again. The blood had dried; the cut was hardly more than a scratch. But the manner in which he’d received it played heavily on his mind.

  As did what Thomas had said about his own demise after his usefulness had expired. He’d considered the possibility that Fortier would simply dispose of him once the man had what he wanted—there were never guarantees with men like Fortier.

  But Carlos wasn’t a man without his own plans. This development with Hunter could actually play into his hands. For one, it gave him a perfect reason to kill Hunter once and for all. But it could also ensure his own value until he had the opportunity to take out both Svensson and Fortier. He would tell them that before dying Hunter had confessed something new from these histories of his, a major coup attempt immediately following the transition of power to Fortier. They would keep him alive at least long enough to head off the coup.

  Hunter would make no such claim, of course, but there was some truth in the statement. There would be a coup attempt.

  Muslims, not a godless Frenchman, would end up the winners in this war of Allah’s.

  Fortier wasn’t the only man who knew how to think.

  20

  THOMAS GASPED in his sleep and was instantly awake. He jerked up.

  Black. Silent.

  He blinked and strained for sight. The walls slowly came into focus. Monique was in the bed beside him, breathing steadily.

  No, not Monique. Rachelle, who’d cried herself to sleep last night after learning the truth about her brother, Johan.

  An ache ran up his forearm and he felt his wrist. Bruised and cut. Yes, of course—the handcuffs they’d placed on him were too tight and had bit into his skin. There had been blood on his wrists. He had bled here as well.

  The events of both worlds crashed in on him. He’d escaped with Monique and was sleeping under a boulder in the quarry, desperate to dream so that he could come back here and deal with the betrayal.

  He swung his feet out of bed, grabbed his boots and clothes, and sneaked into the main room without waking Rachelle. Leaving her alone without a word for the second time in a week struck him as possibly cruel. Yet he didn’t dare wake her and run the risk of her interfering with such a perfect plan. What he had in mind had a ring of lunacy to it, and Rachelle would undoubtedly hear that ring and call it out.

  Mikil, on the other hand, would jump at the chance.

  He dressed quickly, slung his sword over his shoulder, and slipped into the cool morning air. The overcrowded village was still lost in deep dreams of the day’s unusual events and the evening’s high-pitched celebrations. They’d roasted a hundred goats along the shores of the lake as was the custom on the second night. The dances had gone late, and the talk of Justin and Martyn had gone later.

  The warrior from Southern was defended as vigorously by some as he was chastised by others. The idea of peace with the Horde, regardless of the circumstances, was offensive to most. Even Justin’s supporters agreed on one thing: If the Horde did march on the forest, it would probably mean that Justin had betrayed them. But not to worry—their hero of the Southern Forest would never betray them. When he said he would broker peace, he had only true peace in mind.

  Why Thomas hadn’t realized earlier the truth of Qurong’s words, he didn’t know. Perhaps because his dreaming had confused his mind one too many times. Maybe because he was so taken aback by Martyn’s true identity that he couldn’t keep his thoughts objective. Either way, he was sure that if he told the counsel what the Horde leader had said in that tent, they would rally an army to head off Justin and Martyn’s plan for “peace.”

  He found Mikil in deep sleep and woke her with a gentle shake. She bounded out of bed, sword in hand.

  “It’s me!” he whispered.

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes. Hurry, we have business.”

  “The scouts have reported in?” She rushed to the window and peered past the shutters.

  “No. No word. Hurry.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way. Meet me at the stables.”

  He ran for the Guard stables at the edge of the village and was there when she caught up to him.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Shh, keep quiet. What would you say if I told you that Justin might have betrayal in mind?”

  “I would say this is old news. You’ve learned something new?”

  He opened the stable gate. “Saddle up. I’ll explain when we’re clear.”

  They walked their horses past the main village entrance, then mounted and rode into the forest.

  “Tell me,” she demanded, glancing back. “What is it?”

  “I dreamed.”

  “That again. Fine. What did you dream?”

  “I dreamed of what I overheard in Qurong’s tent.” He told her again, word for word, and explained his logic.

  She kicked her horse, surged ahead, and then turned it back. “I knew it! He’ll be the end of the forest! How many times did I warn you?”

  She was right. His silence was confession enough.

  “We have to stop this!” she said.

 
; “Why do you think we’re on horses before dawn? We ride to the eastern desert, where Qurong last camped. If I’m right, he will still be there, maybe even closer.”

  “What, you plan on the two of us taking on the whole army?”

  “I think our scouts will find that Justin was right: The Horde has gathered in larger numbers than we’ve guessed. For all we know they have an army to the west, waiting until our preoccupation with the east bares our flank. That would be Martyn’s kind of strategy.”

  “Then you’re thinking of negotiation? That’s the same plan Justin has! No, Thomas. No peace!”

  “I’m thinking that Martyn will listen to another proposal. One that will turn the tables completely.”

  THE SUN was hot.

  Monique opened her eyes. Sun?

  Light streamed through shutters, exposing a thousand particles of lazily floating dust.

  Where am I?

  I am home.

  Who am I?

  You are Monique.

  She pushed herself to her elbow and blinked. She wasn’t entirely herself. Or she was completely herself. Rachelle.

  She lifted her hand and moved her fingers. She was Monique, and she knew that she had to be dreaming while sleeping under the boulder next to Thomas, but she also knew that she was experiencing much more than just a dream. Amazing. This was how Thomas felt when he woke.

  She’d dreamed of Thomas’s other world because she was holding his hand while she slept? And she was dreaming as Rachelle because she believed that she was connected to Rachelle? It was about belief, Thomas had said. She was sharing Rachelle’s life.

  Does this mean it’s all true? Everything Thomas said is true?

  She knew the answer immediately, because as Rachelle she knew this reality was as real as France or Bangkok. What else did Rachelle know?

  My husband’s name is Thomas. And I have children.

  She twisted to his side of the bed. “Thomas!”

  But Thomas was gone. Of course, he always woke early. She knew that too. She knew that he was only home one out of every two days because he was the commander of the Guard, a mighty warrior and hero whose name was practically revered in all of the forests.