Red (51 page)

He jerked upright and immediately gasped at a sharp pain that shot through his skin. A quick glance confirmed the worst. The disease was upon him. Not just a light graying, but a nearly fully advanced condition!

He bent his arm, but the pain stopped him. The gray flaking on the epidermis didn't begin to characterize the horrible agony. How had this happened? He had to get to the lake!

Again he bent his arm, this time ignoring the pain, as he knew the Desert Dwellers did. It felt as though the layer of skin just under the epidermis had turned brittle and was cracking when he moved.

Rachelle sat up. “What's that?”

The screams were coming from the west. The lake.

“What . . .” Rachelle cried out with pain and stared at her skin. “Didn't we bathe last night?”

Thomas peeled off his covers and forced himself to stand through the pain. His mind swam with confusion. Maybe they'd accidentally used rainwater instead of water from the lake. It had happened before.

Rachelle had risen and rushed to the window, wincing with each step. “It's the lake. Something's wrong with the lake!”

“Papa!” Marie ran into the room. She too! The disease covered her skin like white ash.

“Get your brother! Hurry!”

“It hurts—”

“Hurry!”

They didn't bother with slippers or boots, only tunics. Thomas and Rachelle led their two children from the house, urging them to move as quickly as possible, which resulted in tears and a pace barely faster than a walk. The screaming had spread; hundreds, thousands of villagers had awakened to the same condition. The disease had swept in over night and infected them all, Thomas thought. They streamed down the main street, desperate for the lake.

Thomas grabbed Samuel's hand and pulled him along. “Ignore it. The faster you get to the water, the sooner the pain will be gone.”

“Why is this happening?” Rachelle panted.

“I don't know.”

“It's everyone! Maybe it's punishment for the death of Justin.”

“I hope only that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know, Rachelle!” he snapped.

She hurried beside him in silence. Marie and Samuel were both crying through their pain, but they too knew enough to push ahead. Elyon's lake was their salvation; they knew that like they knew they needed air to breathe. Every cell in their bodies screamed for the relief that the lake alone could give them.

The sight that greeted them on the lakeshore stopped Thomas short. Five thousand, maybe ten thousand diseased men, women, and children stood back from the water's edge, staring aghast or swaying back and forth, moaning.

The water was red!

Not just tinged with red, but red like blood.

Hundreds of brave souls had stepped into the lake and were frantically splashing the red water on their legs and thighs, but most were too terrified to even walk up to the water.

The screams weren't from the pain that would normally be associated with cleansing in such a diseased state, Thomas realized. There was terror in their voices and there were many words, but the ones that seized his mind were those that rose above the others in this sea of chaos.

“The power is gone!”

A man Thomas barely recognized as William, his own lieutenant, staggered from the water. His skin was wet but the disease clung to him like cracked, mildewed leather.

William gripped his head with both hands and looked around in desperation. He saw Thomas and lurched up the shore. “It doesn't work!” He had the look of a crazed man. “The power is gone! The Horde is coming, Thomas!”

Thomas glanced down the shore to his left. Martyn and Qurong stood with arms folded two hundred yards distant. Behind them, the thousand Scab warriors who'd accompanied them watched in silence.

“You mean these?”

William paced frantically, lost to Thomas's question.

“William! What do you mean they're coming?”

“The scouts have come in. Both armies are in the forest.”

Both?

“How many? How far?”

“He was innocent! Now we will die for allowing it.”

More people were running onto the shores. Even more were fleeing the lake in panic. William was hardly lucid. Thomas grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Listen to me! How many did the scouts report?”

“Too many, Thomas. It doesn't matter. My men are all diseased!”

Thomas could feel the onset of the same confusion he'd once felt when the disease had nearly taken him before in the desert. But he was still thinking clearly enough to realize what had happened.

Rachelle said it for him. “Johan knew.” She gazed at the confusion before them. “He knew that Justin was pure, and he knew that innocent blood would poison the lake.” She looked at him with wide eyes. “We're becoming like them. We're becoming like the Horde!”

It was true. This was Martyn's true betrayal. This was how he was waging his battle. They would take the forests without swinging a single blade. The only difference between the Forest People and the Desert Dwellers now was a lake that no longer functioned. In a matter of hours, maybe less, the Forest Guard would look, act, and think like their own enemies.

There wasn't much time. “Give me your sword!”

William stared dumbly.

Thomas reached forward and yanked the blade from William's scabbard. “Call the men! We fight now. To the death!”

His wife was staring at the red lake, eyes wide, but not with horror now. There was another look in them—a dawning of realization.

A shriek split the morning air behind them. Thomas spun and saw a woman pointing to the front gates. He twisted and looked down the main street. The front gates were five hundred yards away—he couldn't make out any detail, but enough to see that an army had arrived.

A Horde army.

“The men, William! Follow me!”

He gripped the sword in his fist and ran across the beach, toward Martyn, shoving from his mind the terrible pain he felt. Feet were padding the sand behind him, but he didn't stop to see who it was.

The plan that had emerged from the fog in his mind was a simple one, with only one end: Qurong's death. In his current condition, he wouldn't have the same advantage that he ordinarily would, but they wouldn't take him down before he killed the Horde leader, the firstborn, Tanis.

“Thomas!”

He recognized the voice. Mikil was running up the bank in a blind panic. He ignored her and raced on. The distant sound of swords clashing carried over the village. Some of his Guard were putting up a defense. But the more ominous sound of boots and hoofs—thousands upon thousands marching in cadence up the main street—made the meager defense sound like a children's sideshow.

One of the Scabs had left Qurong's army and was running to meet him. No, not a Scab warrior, but a Scab general, with a black sash.

Martyn!

“Remember, Thomas, he's my brother,” Rachelle said behind him. It was his wife, not William, behind him. And she wanted him to leave Johan unharmed?

He glanced back. “He betrayed Elyon.” The Council members, led by Ciphus, had finally arrived at the lake and were testing its waters. The uproar had settled in the hopes that perhaps the elder could fix this terrible problem. No one seemed to worry about the army in the streets—they wanted to bathe. Only to bathe.

Rachelle pulled up next to him. Johan was now only fifty yards from them.

“Thomas, there is another way. Do you remember what Justin told me?”

Thomas slowed and held out his sword with both hands. “The only way I know now is to take Qurong with me. If you want your brother to live, tell him to let me pass.”

“You're not listening!” she whispered harshly. “‘When the time comes,' that's what he said. Thomas,
this
is that time.”

Martyn had withdrawn his sword and slowed to a walk. Thomas stopped and prepared to meet the general in whatever way he had in mind. His skin was crawling with fire, and his joints felt like they'd fractured, but he knew that the Horde fought through the pain all the time. He could do that and more, if not die trying.

“He said he had a better way,” Rachelle said. “Justin told me to die with him.”

“That's what I'm preparing to do. And with me Qurong will die.”

She grabbed his arm and spoke hurriedly. “Listen to me, Thomas! I think I understand what he meant. He said it would bring me life! He knew that we would need life. He knew that he would die. He knew that the lake would no longer give us life because it would be defiled by the shedding of innocent blood.
His
blood!”

The lone figure walking toward them faded from his vision.

Die with me.

“We've died with him already,” he said. “Look at us!”

“He said it would bring us
life
!”

Martyn's face was shrouded by his hood. He carried his sword loose, by his side—overconfident, taunting.

Thomas looked at the lake, at the sea of red that sent chills down his spine. Justin's message suddenly seemed quite obvious to him. He couldn't imagine actually doing it, but if Rachelle was right, Justin had asked them to die as he had died.

He'd asked them to drown in this sea of red.

Thomas had swam through a sea of red once, deep in the emerald lake that could be breathed.

A fresh cry erupted from the shore. Evidently Ciphus had failed in his task to prove that all was still fine with his lake. But there was more. Ciphus was screaming above the chaos.

“He's gone!”

Thomas cast a quick glance over his shoulder. The elder stood on the shore, dripping with water. He looked surprisingly like a Scab—with dreadlocks he would look like Qurong himself.

“There is no body!” the elder cried. “They have taken him!”

Thomas spun back to face Martyn. “He's lying,” Martyn said. “The body could be anywhere under the water by now. He's setting you up.”

“Thomas, you have to listen to me!” Rachelle pleaded.

The disease was making his head swim. He blinked and tried to think clearly. “You're suggesting that we run into the lake and drown ourselves?”

“You would rather live like this?”

Martyn stopped ten feet from them, head low so that shadows hid his face.

Thomas adjusted his grip on the sword. An image of Justin's swollen face filled his mind.

Follow me. Die with me.

It was an incredible demand that Justin had suggested to whoever would listen.

He spoke to Martyn. “What have you done to us?” His voice came out low and unearthly, bitter and full of pain at once.

Martyn lifted his head and Thomas saw his face.

It wasn't the scowl he expected. Tears filled the general's eyes. His face was drawn tight, stricken with fear. Fear!

Martyn was suddenly walking again, closer, sword still by his side.

“Stop there,” Thomas ordered.

Martyn took two more steps and then stopped.

This wasn't what Thomas had expected. He could easily take two long steps and thrust his blade into the general's unprotected chest. A part of him insisted that he
should
. He should kill Martyn and then run for Qurong.

But he couldn't. Not now. Not with Rachelle's words ringing in his ears. Not seeing tears in Martyn's eyes. Could this be more trickery?

“I remember,” the general said. The remorse in his tone was so uncharacteristic that Thomas blinked. “I remember, Rachelle. He spoke to me, and all night I've remembered.”

Rachelle let out a sob and started toward her brother.

He lifted a hand, just barely. “Please, no. They can't see us.”

Johan looked past Thomas toward the bank behind them. The first of the Horde army had arrived on the shores. Sporadic cries arose as villagers scattered for safety, but there were no sounds of swordplay or resistance, Thomas noted. The disease had taken most of their minds already. The mighty Forest Guard had been stripped of its will to fight by a disease none of them had defeated before.

Johan looked at Thomas, eyes begging. “I knew he was innocent. I knew his blood would defile the lake. I even knew who he was, but I couldn't remember why I should care. Now I've murdered him. I can't live with this.”

“No, there is a better way!” Rachelle said.

“Please, I've decided. I will return to my army with a proposition of surrender from you, and then I will kill Qurong and publicly take the blame for poisoning the water. Ciphus will blame you. I told him that if anything went wrong with our plan, he was to blame you. He'll say that you took the body of Justin and poisoned the water. In the people's state of shock from the disease, they'll believe him. The least I can do is protect you.”

“Protect us from what?” Rachelle demanded. “Not the disease.”

Thomas lowered his sword. Johan glanced at it, then over his shoulder. Qurong motioned to a line of his warriors, who started to march up the beach toward them.

“Qurong suspects something. We don't have much time,” Thomas said. He looked at the water. “Do you remember the boy saying that he had a lot riding on us?”

“I suggest we bow our heads in a sign of mutual agreement,” Johan said. “Qurong must see that we've struck some kind of—”

“Forget your plan,” Thomas interrupted. “Do you remember the boy saying he depended on us?”

“Yes.”

“Justin said the same thing to Rachelle yesterday morning. Then he told her to follow him in his death. It would bring life in a better way, he said. Rachelle's convinced he meant for us to die by drowning in the sea of red, like he did.”

Johan glanced at the water.

“Do you believe he was Elyon?” Thomas asked.

“I . . . I don't know. He was . . . he was innocent.”

“But do you believe he was Elyon?” Thomas demanded again. “Was he the boy?”