Red (52 page)

Johan paused and stared out at the glassy red water. “Yes. Yes, I think he was.”

Thomas spoke quickly now. “And is it possible to breathe Elyon's red water?”

“Perhaps.” A fresh tear leaked from Johan's right eye and ran down his scabbed cheek.

“Then I think she's right,” Thomas said. “And I think if we wait any longer, our minds will be confused by the disease with the rest.”

Ciphus was delivering a diatribe down the shore. Thomas heard his name repeatedly, but at the moment, the elder's web of lies felt like nonsense next to the things his wife was now suggesting.

“You're suggesting we drown like he did?” Johan asked.

They were all looking at the lake now. A row of warriors had broken from the new arrivals and were approaching from their right. The ones Qurong had dispatched were drawing closer on the left. They were running out of time.

Rachelle spoke with a tremor in her voice. “I'm afraid.”

“But that's what he told you?” Johan asked. “To drown like he did?”

“Yes.”

Silence.

“And Samuel? Marie?” she said.

“If you're wrong, they're dead with us.”

Thomas had been here fifteen years earlier, torn between fleeing Elyon's lake and diving in. Then, it had been a pool of life. This lake looked like a cold pool of death.

Johan uttered a small gasp. He was staring across the lake.

“What is it?”

But Johan didn't have to answer. Thomas and Rachelle saw them together, and instinctively Rachelle grasped his arm. Thomas's first thought was that the trees on the opposite side of the lake had sprouted a thick harvest of cherries.

But these cherries were set in black eye sockets that were attached to furry black bodies.

Shataiki!

A hundred thousand at least, clinging to the trees just beyond the nearest branches, watching them with unblinking stares.

It had been fifteen years since Thomas had seen the bats, black or white. What had changed now? Justin had been killed. The forest was now inhabited by Shataiki. Or had Justin's cry for them to remember opened their eyes as it had opened Johan's mind? Either way, it was both terrifying and revealing at once.

Johan suddenly threw back his hood. Tears slipped down his face in long ribbons now. He gave the bats one last glare and stripped off his cloak, revealing shockingly white and flaky flesh. The sight of their general standing in only a loincloth brought the Scab warriors to a complete halt less than fifty yards on either side.

In that moment Thomas knew what he must do. What he wanted most desperately to do. Whom he must follow. Why Elyon had a lot riding on him. On them.

He didn't bother discarding his tunic. He glanced to his right, caught Rachelle's wide eyes; his left, Johan's frantic stare.

“For Justin,” he said.

He ran.

Despite his earlier statement, Thomas almost turned to find his children. The thought of leaving them among the Horde sickened him. But he pushed on—this wasn't the time to stop and make provision for them, no matter what the outcome. His children were now in Elyon's hands. If he survived the next few moments, he would sweep them off their feet and kiss them with joy.

They tore down the bank, Thomas first, with Johan and Rachelle hard on his heels. The Horde grunted in shock to his left and right; he could hear that much. The Shataiki screeched. He wondered if anyone else could hear them.

Then he was airborne.

He hit the water and was immediately swallowed by a cold sea.

Red.

HIS FIRST impulse was that their decision had been a terrible mistake. That the disease had softened their reasoning and caused them to do something so insane as to follow Justin in his death.

He kicked deep so that his feet wouldn't flail on the surface for the Horde to see.

The water changed on his second stroke, less than five feet under, from cold to warm. He opened his eyes in surprise. He'd expected a dark abyss below him—black demons waiting to satisfy their lust for death.

What he saw was a pool of red light, dim and hazy, but definitely light! He looked left, then right, but there was no sign of Johan or Rachelle.

Thomas stopped kicking. He floated. The water was serene. Silent. Unearthly and eerie. He could hear the soft thump of his own pulse. Above him, countless Scabs were watching the water for signs of his emergence, but here in this fluid he was momentarily safe.

And then the moment passed, and the reality of his predicament filled his mind.

His eyes began to sting, and he blinked in the warm water, but to no relief. He was already running out of oxygen; his chest felt tight and for a moment he considered kicking to the surface to take one more gulp of air.

He opened his mouth, felt the warm water on his tongue. Closed it.

It's his water, Thomas. You've been in this lake a thousand times, and you
know that the bottom has always been muddy and black. But now it's light.
You've been here before
.

But this plan suddenly struck him as irrational. What man would willingly suck in a lungful of water? He'd entered intending to throw his own life away? The disease had ruined him! He'd actually believed for one desperate moment that dying would bring him a new kind of life, but at the moment, nothing felt quite so foolish.

What of Johan and Rachelle? Would they claw for the surface in panic?

But what choice did he have? Was returning to the living death above any less absurd? He hung limp, trying to ignore the terrible knowledge that his lungs were starting to burn. But that was just it—he didn't have the luxury of contemplating his decision much longer. He was down to a few seconds already.

A jolt of panic, a despair he'd never felt before, ran through his body, shaking him in its horrible fist.

Thomas opened his mouth, closed his eyes. He began to sob. A final scream filled his mind, forbidding him to take in this water. Justin had sucked at the water, but that was Justin.

No, that was Elyon, Thomas.

Then his air was gone. Thomas stretched his jaw wide and sucked hard like a fish gulping for oxygen.

Pain hit his lungs like a battering ram.

He tried to breathe out. In, out, like he once had in the emerald lake. But this wasn't that kind of water. His lungs felt as if they were full of stone. He was going to die. His waterlogged body began to sink slowly.

He didn't fight the drowning. If Justin was Elyon, then this was the right thing for him to do. It was that simple. Justin had told them to follow him in his death, and that is what they were doing. And if Rachelle was wrong about all of this, then he would die as Justin died to show his respect for his innocence. There was no life above the surface anyway.

The lack of oxygen ravaged his body for long seconds, and he didn't try to stop death.

Then he did try. With everything in him, he tried to reverse this terrible course.

Elyon, I beg you. Take me. You made me; now take me.

Darkness encroached on his mind. Thomas began to scream.

Then it was black.

Nothing.

He was dead; he knew that. But there was something here, beyond life. From the blackness a moan began to fill his ears, replacing his own screams. The moan gained volume and grew to a wail and then a scream.

He knew the voice! It was Justin. Elyon was screaming! And he was screaming in pain.

Thomas pressed his hands to his ears and began to scream with the other, thinking now that this was worse than death. His body crawled with fire as though every last cell revolted at the sound. And so they should, a voice whispered in his skull. Their Maker was screaming in pain!

He'd been here before! Exactly here, in the belly of the emerald lake. He'd heard this scream.

A soft, inviting voice replaced the cry. “Remember me, Thomas,” it said. Justin said. Elyon said.

Light lit the edges of his mind. A red light. Thomas opened his eyes, stunned by this sudden turn. The burning in his chest was gone. The water was warm and the light below seemed brighter.

He was alive?

He sucked at the red water and pushed it out. Breathing! He was alive!

Thomas cried out in astonishment. He glanced down at his legs and arms. Yes, this was real. He was here, floating in the lake, not in some other disconnected reality.

And his skin . . . he rubbed it with his thumb. The disease was gone. He turned slowly in the water, looking for Rachelle or Johan, but neither was here.

Thomas twisted once in the water and thrust his fist above (or was it below?) his head. He dove deep then looped back and struck for the surface. He had to find Rachelle! Justin had changed the water.

The moment his hand hit the cold water above the warm, his lungs began to burn. He tried to breathe but found he couldn't. Then he was through, out of the water.

Three thoughts mushroomed in his mind while the water was still falling from his face. The first was that he was breaking through the surface at precisely the same time as Rachelle on his right and Johan on his left. Like three dolphins breaking the surface in a coordinated leap, heads arched back, water streaming off their hair, grinning as wide as the sky.

The second thought was that he could feel the bottom of the lake under his feet. He was standing.

The third was that he still couldn't breathe.

He came out of the water to his waist, doubled over, and wretched a quart of water from his lungs. The pain left with the water. He gasped once, found he could breathe easily, and turned slowly.

To his right. Water and strings of saliva fell from Rachelle's grinning mouth. She had just died as well.

To his left. For a brief moment he didn't recognize the man five feet to his left. This was Martyn the Scab, but his skin had changed. Flesh tone. Smooth. Pink like a baby's skin. His eyes shone like emeralds. This was Johan as he once had been, without a trace of the disease. He too had breathed the water.

They stood in the water, three drenched strangers facing a hundred thousand Horde, some dressed in the tunics of Forest People, some dressed in the hooded cloaks of the Desert Dwellers, all dressed in the white skin of disease.

For a while no one spoke. Qurong stood with his army a hundred yards to their right, face shrouded by his hood. Ciphus stood fifty yards to their left, lips drawn. There, directly ahead, were Mikil and Jamous and Marie and Samuel, gaping with the rest.

Thomas walked out of the lake, plowing water noisily with his thighs. In some ways he felt like he was looking at a whole new world. Not only was he a new person, drowned in magic, but the thousands he faced were different. The disease hung on them like dried dung. But when they understood what Elyon had done for them in this lake, they would flock en masse into the red waters.
He would be run over,
he thought wryly.

The Horde warriors who'd been sent to investigate stood fifty paces off. They had their answer, and Thomas doubted they understood it.

He glanced back to where he'd seen the Shataiki. Gone. No, not gone. They were still there, undoubtedly, but he could no longer see them.

He was about to speak, to tell them what had happened, when a shrill voice shattered the silence. “It was them!” Ciphus cried. “They have deceived us and poisoned Elyon's water.”

Johan stepped up beside Thomas. “We will tolerate your lies no longer, old man! Are you blind? Do we look poisoned to you?”

“Look at yourselves! The water has stripped you of your flesh!”

“Stripped us?” Thomas asked, dumbfounded. He looked at the people. “It has stripped us of our disease. Can't you see that?”

“Impossible!” Ciphus said. “This is no longer Elyon's lake. This is red water, poisoned by death.”

It was what one of the Horde would say,
Thomas thought. Ciphus had turned completely. He searched the bank for Marie and Samuel, found them, and saw that Rachelle was already running for them. She knew as well as he, if the disease had taken them all so quickly, they might not be so receptive.

He faced the elder, who'd turned to the people. “The law states with no uncertainty that the body must remain in the water until morning, but you all saw with your own eyes. There is no body!”

Again it was Johan who took up their defense. “No one crossed my line of guards to steal the body. You hardly searched. And this is Horde law that you're quoting, not your own. Since when do you bow to Horde law?”

“It is law!” the elder shouted. “And you were complicit in their plan to steal the body. Who would have suspected the two generals were working together to enslave the entire world in one twisted plot?” He pointed at the lake. “Look at what you've done!”

Johan stepped forward and spoke directly to the people. “The lake isn't poisoned; it has only been changed. Am I dead? Does the disease still cling to my flesh? Am I a Scab? No, I'm free of the disease, and it's because I did what Justin told us to do. To follow him in his death by drowning in the lake and finding new life! This is the fulfillment of the boy's prophecy. This is the blow against evil the boy told us about, and it has come when all other hope is lost.” He thrust his hand back toward the lake. “Enter the lake and find his life. Drown, all of you! Drown!”