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  “If you think your armies can survive the explosives we have for them, you’re sadly mistaken. Surely you heard about the fate of your Scabs in the canyons. If it’s more death you want, tell Qurong to march now, tonight! But I can promise you, for every one of my Guard you kill, our gunpowder will rip the head off a hundred of yours.”

  It was all a bluff; they had no explosives. But by Johan’s slight reaction, Thomas thought it had at least created some confusion.

  He continued quickly. “I will ensure your safe passage into the forest with Qurong and Justin. Bring a thousand of your best warriors if you like. Before the people, you will expose the betrayal of Justin and Qurong, and I will swear that what you say is the truth. We will condemn Qurong to death. You will step into the vacancy.”

  Slowly a smile nudged Johan’s mouth. “You are the son of the Shataiki, aren’t you?”

  “That would be Qurong, the firstborn who brought this sickness upon us in the first place.”

  “And Justin?”

  Thomas shrugged. “He will be discredited. Banished.”

  “I may kill him?”

  The question struck Thomas as strange. “Why?”

  “His loyalty to Qurong would be a problem for me.”

  Thomas hesitated. “Do what you must.”

  “You think I’m foolish enough to walk into a trap with only a thousand of my men at my side? Qurong will never agree to this.”

  “He will if I agree to stay here as a guarantee of his safety.” It was the most troublesome element of the plan for Mikil. But Thomas had convinced her that the world was at stake. Without some kind of compromise, there would be a bloodbath. Qurong would attack. The forest would be burned. They might kill most of the Horde army, but in the end they wouldn’t have their wives or children to justify such a terrible victory.

  “Your plan is treasonous,” Johan finally said. “I’m not a man who will entertain treason.”

  “My plan will save your people. And mine. I am the husband of your sister. I beg you, consider your heritage and help me build a truce. With Qurong there is only war. Teeleh has bound him hand and heart. I believe that in your heart there is still room for Rachelle and your own people.”

  Johan looked at him and finally stood. “Wait here.” He walked out into the desert and faced the distant dunes. For a long time he stood with his back to Thomas. Then he walked slowly back into camp.

  Mikil ran into the tent. “Well?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is he considering it?”

  “I think.”

  “I still don’t like it. What’s to keep a stray soldier with a sickle from taking off your head?”

  “I will insist on protection. The last time I checked, I could handle a stray maniac with a single sickle. Besides, you’ll have Qurong at the tip of your sword.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Then they don’t take you into custody until Qurong is in the forest, under our Guard’s watch.”

  “Of course. Here he comes.”

  She retreated, eying the approaching general with skepticism.

  Johan swept his robe aside and sat down. “I don’t care what you say; you are a son of the Shataiki,” he said. “But I like your plan. My conditions are as follows: As a sign of good faith, you will not only stay, as you have offered, but you will pull the army on your perimeter back to the center of the forest. I don’t want you waging war while I am inside.”

  Thomas considered the request. Qurong would be their guarantee. As long as Mikil had their leader, they would never attack.

  “Agreed.”

  “My other condition is that you allow me to conduct Qurong’s execution as a show of my new authority over my people. It is a language they will understand.”

  “Understood.”

  Martyn, general of the Horde whose name was once Johan, dipped his head. “Then we have an agreement.”

  THEY SPENT another half-hour refining details before Thomas and his lone aide mounted and rode away from the camp. His second—Mikil, she was called—would leave for the forest tonight after dark. Qurong, Martyn, Justin, and a thousand warriors would follow the next morning. They would enter the forest in exchange for Thomas, who would then be taken into custody by the Horde army.

  Qurong and Thomas would entrust their lives to each other.

  The entourage would arrive at the lake in the evening with full assurance that Mikil had set the stage. If she hadn’t done so satisfactorily, Qurong and Martyn would retreat. If they were ambushed by the Guard, Thomas would also die. And of course, vice versa.

  So it was planned. So it was agreed.

  Martyn stared toward the west, where he could just see the distant forest in the twilight. Qurong stood beside him, frowning.

  “So they suspect nothing?”

  “Nothing. He honestly thinks I would betray you. They are children, as I once was.”

  “And Justin will agree?”

  “Justin will agree. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Qurong grunted and turned back to the camp. “As will they all, soon enough.”

  22

  DARKNESS SWALLOWED the desert. The moon rose and cast an eerie glow over the rising dunes. How many hours had passed? The sun would surely rise soon—she had to hang on until then. That’s what Rachelle kept telling herself. If she could just make it to morning, the light would bring new hope.

  But now a new problem presented itself: She hadn’t bathed for a full day and a half, since the night of the celebration, and her skin was beginning to burn. The pain beneath her skin was now nearly as bad as the dull ache of her wounds.

  She lay on one side, feeling the disease slowly eat at her skin, afraid to close her eyes, afraid sleep would take her life, afraid someone might find her and kill her, afraid that she might never see Thomas or Samuel or Marie again. How would they cope without a loving wife and a knowing mother?

  They would be lost without her. She didn’t think of herself in any inflated way; it was simply a fact. Thomas needed her like he needed water. Samuel and Marie had friends who’d lost their fathers to war, but not their mothers.

  She’d managed to crawl off her horse without losing consciousness. The stallion waited patiently, twenty paces away. She wasn’t sure whether she wished it would go and find help, or stay in case she needed it to ride out, although she couldn’t imagine either actually happening.

  She faded in and out of a semblance of sleep. Oddly enough, she was quite sure that she was still asleep under the lean-to with Thomas in France. Perhaps this was all a dream. Was she bleeding from her leg and side there?

  So much that she didn’t understand.

  The hours dragged on. No crickets here. No forest sounds. The silence of the desert was its own sound. It was cold, but that was good because it kept her from slipping into unconsciousness. She had to concentrate to keep from shivering, because shivering sent waves of pain through her back. Maybe she had a fever, because she couldn’t remember it ever being—Was that light? Rachelle stared at the barely graying horizon.

  Already! The dawn was coming. She’d made it! Filled with an irrational hope, she moved her arm to sit up. Sharp pain sliced through her belly.

  She closed her eyes and winced. Her whole body was going stiff. She couldn’t get to her feet, much less to the horse. And when the sun was finished welcoming her to the land of the living, it would only burn her to a crisp. Hope fell to the pit of her stomach like a lead weight.

  Her heart plodded on, but it felt slower now. Hardly like a heart at all. Like a horse walking through sand. A shooshing sound more than a thudding heart sound. For a moment she imagined herself on a horse, plodding out to the desert. She was hallucinating.

  Rachelle cracked her eyes. Saw the horse. Plod, plod, shoosh, shoosh. Right toward her as if it were real and the means for her delivery.

  That is a real horse, Rachelle.

  Now she did hear her heart, and it was bolting in her chest. There, not twenty paces aw
ay, stood a pale horse. Its rider was throwing his leg over the saddle to dismount.

  This was a Forest Dweller!

  She jerked up. Pain filled her eyes with black specks, but she held on.

  “Hel . . . hello?”

  “It’s okay,” the voice said. “Hold on!”

  He—yes, it was a he—was hurrying to her. Thomas?

  Her vision cleared and she saw him plainly for the first time. This was Justin of Southern!

  Her strength gave way and she sank back down. Tears flooded her eyes, but they weren’t from the pain.

  Justin ran the last few steps and knelt by her side. His hand gently touched her forehead. “Just relax. Breathe. I’m so sorry, my dear. I came to find you as soon as I heard what the patrol had done, but it took me all night to follow your tracks through the canyons. You’re a fighter, no doubt about that.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure she even had the strength to speak intelligently. This was Justin. She wasn’t even sure what to think about that. Tears were leaking down her cheeks, blurring her vision.

  “Shh, shh. It’s okay, Rachelle. I promise you it will be okay.”

  He knew her from when he was under Thomas’s command. His hand touched the arrows, each one, as if he was checking to see whether they were too deep to pull.

  “I’m dying,” she stammered.

  “No, I won’t let you. But you’re turning.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Are you carrying water on your horse?”

  She glanced at the skin on her arm. Gray. He must not be carrying any, or he’d have retrieved his own.

  “Some,” she said.

  “Where is your horse?”

  She looked past him. The horse had gone off?

  It was suddenly all too much. There was no way. Even now, having been found, she knew that she could never survive the injuries she’d sustained. And the lake was too far. Her life was seeping from her by the moment.

  She closed her eyes and let herself go. Sobs wracked her body. Not sorrow for herself, but for her children and for Thomas.

  “Why are you crying?” he asked.

  She sniffed and swallowed deep. She would die with her head high, not blubbering like a baby.

  “Hear me, my child. I will not let you die today.”

  He was trying to console her, but she was lying here with arrows protruding from infected wounds, barely clinging to life; his words rang empty. Did he think she was a child to build her hopes on such empty words of promise?

  “Don’t lie to me,” she said.

  “No, I would never—”

  “Don’t lie to me!” she shouted. “I’m dying! And I’m dying because of you. He came out here because of your obsession with this impossible peace!” The words came out in a rush that left her breathless. Justin deserved no such tirade, and her anger was really directed at her circumstance more than him, but she didn’t care. This was the man who’d defeated her husband in the inquiry. And, at least in part, she was dying now because of it!

  Justin stood. Then stepped back. He stared at her, eyes round. She’d hurt him, surprised him. But she was too far gone with pain and dread over her own predicament to care. She rolled her head away from him and cried.

  For a long time she stayed like that, and for a long time she didn’t know what he was doing. A minute passed. Two. It occurred to her that he might have left. The thought terrified her.

  She jerked her head around and looked for him.

  He was gone!

  But what was this? Someone else was there. A small boy was pacing in front of a large boulder twenty feet away. The boy was crying. His arms hung limp by his side and he was naked except for a loincloth.

  Samuel? No, it wasn’t Samuel. The sickness was taking her mind. The boy was weeping, beside himself. Sympathy spiked through her heart. But she knew this had to be a figment of her imagination. Yet the boy looked so real. His cries sounded terribly real.

  The boy!

  This was the boy!

  She closed her eyes, opened them. The graying sky was blurry, and she blinked rapidly to clear her vision. The boy was gone.

  Justin stood not ten feet away, with his back to her, hands on hips, head hung. Was this also a hallucination? She blinked again. No, this was Justin. But what she’d seen had unnerved her to the core. An image of Justin sweeping the little girl off her feet in the Valley of Tuhan ran through her mind.

  The warrior lifted his head and stared at the cliffs. This was the man who had defeated Thomas in battle. Who seemed to be able to have his will with any opponent. It was no wonder that the women and children and fighters from the Southern Forest were so taken with Justin. He was an enigma.

  And she’d yelled at him.

  But why wasn’t he helping her? “I’m sorry,” she said. “But I’m going to die here. Please allow a dying woman her liberties.”

  “You’re not going to die,” he said softly. “I have too much riding on you to let you die.”

  She’d heard that before. Where had she heard that?

  He faced her. “You think a few arrows and some torn flesh have much to do with death? I will take your pain away, Rachelle, but it is your heart that worries me.”

  “How can you take away my pain? My skin is gray and there are still arrows in my body. I’m dying and you’re just standing there!”

  “You’re as stubborn as Thomas. Maybe more. And your memory is no better than his either.”

  He was talking nonsense. A shot of pain traveled through her bones, and she grimaced.

  “I want you to listen to me very carefully, Rachelle.” He knelt on one knee and clasped her hand in his. He was making no attempt to help her or tend to her wounds. He knew as well as she that there was nothing either of them could do.

  “We have brokered a peace between the Desert Dwellers and the Forest People. Qurong will go with Johan and me to the village, where we will offer our terms for peace.”

  The Council would never accept any terms for peace; didn’t Justin know that?

  “Thomas will stay in the Desert Dweller’s camp as a guarantee for safe passage. Mikil is with Qurong to ensure Thomas’s safety. When the Council understands that a second army, twice the size of the one to the east, is camped on the other side of the forest, they will agree to peace. What happens then must happen for the boy. Do you understand? Because of the boy’s promise.”

  “Thomas is in the Horde camp? They’ll kill him!”

  “Mikil will have Qurong and Johan in trade. It must happen this way. No matter what happens, remember that. No matter how terrible or at what cost.” He paused. Then he put his other hand on her head, leaned over, and kissed her forehead. “When the time comes, remember these words and follow me. It will be a better way. Die with me. It will bring you life.”

  Rachelle closed her eyes. She wanted to scream. Her heart felt like it might break free from her chest, and she understood none of it. Not what he said nor her own emotions. “I don’t want to die.”

  “Find Thomas. Your death will save him.”

  “I can’t die!” she cried.

  “They’re waiting for me.” Justin stood. “I must go.” He strode to his horse and swung into the saddle. The steed snorted and stamped.

  He was leaving her?

  “I don’t understand,” she cried. “Don’t leave me!”

  “I have never left you. Never!” His eyes flashed with anger, then filled with tears. “We will be together soon and you will understand.” He spurred his horse and the stallion galloped into the canyon.

  She was too stunned to speak. He was leaving her?

  “Remember me, Rachelle! Remember my water.”

  “Justin!” she screamed.

  “Remember me!”

  This time his voice echoed long as he pounded down the canyon. The echo of his last word, me, seemed to dip into laughter. A child’s laughter.

  A giggle. A boy’s giggle that bubbled like a brook.

  She caught her bre
ath. She’d heard that sound before!

  The laughter suddenly grew, as if it had taken a turn at the end of the canyon and decided to rush back toward her. Louder and louder, until it seemed to swallow her whole.

  Something unseen hit her hard. She gasped. Her whole body jumped off the ground and then arched. She shook in the air for several seconds, then dropped hard back to the sand.

  The sound of giggling was sucked back into the canyon, leaving only silence in its wake.

  Rachelle sucked in a lungful of air and trembled. But it wasn’t from fear. It wasn’t from pain. It was from a strange power that lingered in her bones.

  Her world momentarily faded.

  Then with a flash it returned. What had . . . what had happened?

  Monique was gone, for one thing. She’d probably woken.

  Rachelle jerked up. No pain. She stared at her side, shocked. Where an arrow had protruded just moments ago, there was only a bloody hole in her tunic. She pulled the garment up and examined her flesh. Blood, but only blood. No wound.

  And her skin had lost its gray pallor.

  She scrambled to her feet and frantically grasped at the bloody spots. Not a single wound. In fact, she felt as refreshed and whole as if she’d slept the night in perfect peace. She lifted her head up and stared at the canyon.

  Remember me.

  A chill washed over her skull. They were the words that the boy had spoken to her so long ago before he’d run down the bank and disappeared into the lake. Just remember me, Rachelle, he’d said.

  I have a lot riding on you.

  She couldn’t breathe. It was him! Justin was the boy! Only he wasn’t a lamb or a lion or a boy now. He was a warrior and his name was Justin! How could she have missed it?

  “Justin!” Her call came out like a squeak. She ran. She tore over the sand, desperate to catch him.

  “Justin!” This time her cry echoed up the canyon. But he was gone.

  Justin was the boy, and the boy was Elyon. Elyon had just touched her. Kissed her forehead! If she had known—

  She groaned past a terrible ache that had filled her throat.

  “Elyonnnn!”

  She fell to her knees. Sobs wracked her body. Panic. Waves of heat that flushed her face. But there was nothing she could do. He’d been within a foot of her and she hadn’t fallen to her knees to kiss his feet. She hadn’t clung to his hand in desperation.