White (51 page)
“You have done well, Thomas. Don't let them forget my love or the price I've paid for their love.”
I won't, Thomas tried to say. But nothing came out.
Justin looked at the others and nodded at each. “Suzan, Johan. Jamous, Mikil.” He let tears run down his cheeks. “My, what a good thing we have done here.”
His jaw flexed and his nostrils flared with pride.
“What a very good thing.”
Then he pulled his stallion around. “Hiyaa!”
The horse bolted. On cue, the massive ring of Roshuim stood and roared. The ground shook.
Chelise ran from the red pool, up the slope toward Thomas. She pulled up beside him, staring at Justin. Thomas drew her close, and they watched the receding entourage in awed silence.
Justin galloped into the desert, followed by the ranks of white lions on either side. The desert settled back into silence.
For a long time no one spoke.
And then Thomas married Chelise, surrounded by an exuberant, rejoicing Circle still intoxicated by Justin's love.
S
o then, were you right or were you wrong?” Gabil asked, scanning the titles of Books on the library's top shelf. “It really is a simple question with a simple . . .” He stopped short. “Ah! I've found it!”
He withdrew an old leather-bound book and swooped down toward Michal, who teetered on the edge of the desk, peering at another Book of History he'd withdrawn only minutes ago. A single candle lit the old pages. The Horde library lay in shadows, deserted at this late hour.
“None of this is simple,” Michal said. “Patience.”
“I thought you said you'd found it,” Gabil said, fluttering for a landing beside Michal. He set the Book he'd retrieved on the desk.
“I said I found the section that deals with the Great Deception, not the actual sentence that states the actual date.”
“You did tell Thomas of Hunter early in the twenty-first century. I remember that much.”
“And if I did, then you agreed,” Michal said, scanning the page.
“Did I? You're positive?”
“Did you disagree? You're far too interested in this minor point, Gabil. What difference does the date make in the end? This is a silly exercise.”
“I'm interested because the histories couldn't have said early in the twenty-first century. Thomas changed history. The virus didn't ravage the world. So the question is, when does the Great Deception take place? Or does it even?”
Gabil studied the cover of his Book, then opened it to the first page. This history was taken from the colored forest. He flipped toward the back of the Book.
“Of course the Great Deception takes place,” Michal said. “I'm reading the details now, as we speak. You see, right here . . .” The Roush stopped.
“What?” Gabil released the page in his fingers, hopped once, and leaned over to see.
“Give me some room,” Michal protested. “This . . . I don't remember anything about . . .”
“I knew it!” Gabil chirped. “Yes, I did. I knew it. It's changed, hasn't it?”
“Well, it's no longer early in the twenty-first century. But we could have been mistaken about that. But these other things . . .”
“Thomas changed history!”
Michal ran his finger down the page. “The Tribulation as recorded by John hasn't changed, but the date . . . and the Great Deception . . .” He returned to where he'd started reading. “I do say, the events leading up to John's prophecy have changed.”
“He did change history. He did, he did!” Gabil hopped again, twice, lost his footing, and toppled to the floor. He bounded to his feet and did a little jig of sorts. “Ha! It's fascinating! It's magnicalicious!”
“Please, settle down. That's not even a word.”
“Why not?” Gabil said. “If Thomas can change history, I think I have the right to change a few words.”
He jumped back up on the desk and resumed his search in the Book that recorded the colored forest's demise.
Michal looked at him, still gripping the page he'd been reading. “So you really think knowing how Thomas entered the black forest will shed any light onâ”
“Here!”
Michal jumped. “What is it?”
“I think I've found it! This Book records his story.” He flipped forward to the very end, scanning anxiously. “Here, here, it has to be here in this volume.”
Michal looked over the pages with interest.
“Give me space,” Gabil said.
“Humph.” Michal took a tiny step to his right.
Gabil came to the last page and stopped cold. “What is this?”
“What?”
“It's been . . .” He leaned forward. “It's been changed. Erased and written over.”
Michal crowded Gabil again. “What's it say?”
The smaller Roush ran his index finger under the words of the last paragraph, which were clearly written in handwriting different from those preceding.
He read aloud.
“Then the man named Thomas found himself in the black forest, where
he fell and hit his head and lost his memory. Ha.”
Gabil looked up at Michal, taken aback.
“âHa'?” Michal asked, incredulous. “It says âha'? That's it?”
“That's it. Then it's signed.”
Gabil looked at the page.
“Billy, Storyteller,”
he read. “Someone named Billy who is a storyteller wrote this.”
They stared in silence for a few seconds.
Michal sighed and returned to his Book. “I have to admit, this is . . . fascinating.”
“It seems Thomas wasn't the only one who changed history,” Gabil said. “Didn't I tell you? Ha!”
“Ha?”
“Ha!” He closed his book and hopped on top of it. “So read. Read this new history that I told you we would find even though you doubted.” He lifted his chin and grinned.
Michal eyed his fuzzy friend. “Yes, I guess you did tell me.”
Then the Roush took a deep breath and began to read from the Book of Histories.
THE END
I
t's amazing how clear hindsight is. If only our foresight were as clear. If we only had been able to see then what we see now, we could have purchased a hundred thousand shares of Google and become gazillionaires. If only, if only, if only. But every once in a whileâfor reasons beyond our understandingâwe make decisions that might as well have been made with clear foresight even though we had little at the time.
Such was the case with my penning of the Circle Trilogy
âBlack,
Red,
and
White
âin 2003. I won't lie; much of what's happened since was in my mind way back then. But not everything . . . not by a long shot.
The whole idea for the Circle Trilogy began during a time of meditation when I saw a crystal clear image of a man diving into a lake and breathing the water: not ordinary water, but the essence of God Himself. The man trembled in the folds of intense pleasure.
That was it.
I threw myself into expanding this image into a tale that I called
The
Song of Eden
and submitted it to a reputable agency. The story was summarily rejected.
So I retooled and rewrote and resubmitted, this time with an agent who believed in what I was doing. He submitted the new and improved story to a dozen publishers, and they all passed, saying it was too edgy for the intended market.
Over the next few years I went on to publish a handful of novels with Thomas Nelson that quickly gained acclaim. Armed with renewed confidence and Thomas Nelson's full support to write whatever I desired, I returned to
The Song of Eden
, completely overhauled the story, renamed it
Black
, and resubmitted the fresh manuscript as Part One of a trilogy.
I still remember waiting for that
Come to Jesus
phone call all writers either dread or beg for after turning in a manuscript.
What is it: thumbs
up or thumbs down? If it's thumbs up tell me, tell me more, and don't stop
telling me.
If it's a thumbs down there has to be a mistake. Reconsider, repent,
return, and restate.
In the case of
Black
the call was from then VP of Marketing and now Publisher of Fiction at Thomas Nelson, Allen Arnold. And it was the former kind of call, the kind you live for. But this time Allen took it a step further. “Ted, what do you think about publishing the entire trilogy, all three books, in the space of one calendar year? We'll call it The Year of the Trilogy. Can you do it?”
Intoxicated by the flattery, I made a show of bemoaning the effort he was asking of me, but then gave up the charade and cried out my response.
Yes! Of course!
Six months later I was still slaving over
Red
, swearing that if I ever made it through the next few months I would never agree to such an absurd notion again.
Little did I know.
My objective in writing
Black, Red,
and
White
was to retell redemptive history by mirroring it in another reality while keeping the reader firmly rooted in our own world. I didn't want to write pure fantasy: rather an amalgamation of thriller and fantasy that incorporated intense pacing with weighty exploration of truth.
But not everyone at Thomas Nelson was as enthusiastic as Allen Arnold. I remember being told by one member of the team that publishing this series could very well sink my career. Why? Because nobody read this kind of story.
The prediction crushed me. But I was growing used to rejection by this point, and rather than folding up my books and going home a defeated storyteller, I went where my heart led me. I began to work on an expansion of the story by plotting out what would eventually become Project Showdown:
Showdown, Saint
, and
Sinner
.
By the time the trilogy was released, we all began to realize that instead of not being read as some had predicted, the Circle Trilogy was striking a chord with a whole new group of readers. A large group at that.
The ideas were larger than me. Thousands wanted to chime in. So we launched The Circle, a virtual gathering place at teddekker.com to discuss the stories. Fifty thousand joined over time, and their thoughts led me to consider an even
further
expansion of the story. After all, plumbing the depths of our own redemptive history isn't a task easily handled by three measly books. Nor six.
And so was born the idea of not three books, not six books, but
ten
books to flesh out the full story. It would be called The Books of History Chronicles. Three series, each dependent upon the others, yet each completely independent. Stories that twist in and out of each other like grapevines before the harvest. You can read any of the three following series first or last, but it is best to read the books within each series in order.
The Circle Trilogy
â Black, Red, White
The Lost Books
â Chosen, Infidel, Renegade
(May 2008)
, Chaos
(May 2008)
Project Showdown
â Showdown, Saint, Sinner
(October 2008)
In addition graphic novels are now available for the Circle Trilogy
,
with plans for the rest to come out in graphic format in short order.
As I write this short history on The Books of History Chronicles, I have just begun writing the final book of ten,
Sinner
, and the interconnection woven throughout all ten books is amazing to me. I had my plans at the outset; sure I did. But this is no simple linear story your grandmother cuddled up next to the fire to read.
This is a labyrinth of wickedness and destruction and pleasure and, above all, love, because in the end it's all just one big, mind-bending love story, isn't it?
It's as if the books had their own story to tell, and I've come along as the scribe chosen to pen them. A confession: I just learned this year where the worms in
Showdown
actually came from. I should have known, of course, it makes perfect sense. All the signs were there.
I've also learned why Thomas was allowed to cross realities. And why Billy wrote that one innocent little statement that started the whole thing in
Showdown
. My family thinks I've lost my noodles because each night I come bounding out of my dungeon, giddy like a child having discovered one more nugget in this saga of ours. The further you get the better the discoveries become.
Four years have passed since
Black,
the novel that so many within the publishing world said would never work, was published with the full support of Allen Arnold. Today more people are buying the Circle Trilogy on any given day than any other novel I've written before or since.
I once told Allen that I was born to write these chronicles. Admittedly, their writing is only a small part of my life. But if I was born to write them, then in a small, small way you may have been born to read them. We, like the stories themselves, find ourselves interconnected in this wonderful thing called the story of life. You are part of my history and I am a part of yours. And this, my friend is what it means to come full circle.
Welcome to the Books of History.
Welcome to the Circle.
