Elyon (21 page)

Shaeda drove him into a crouch, bidding him linger still. The priest stood in the center of a craggy, rugged hole easily a mile wide. There in his black and purple robes, tight fists gripping the white staff of power, Sucrow truly did look every inch Teeleh’s high priest and not a superstitious old wizard.

The opening orations continued—how long was the priest going to go on? Couldn’t he just kill the bloody Circle and be done with them?

But that would work in their favor, wouldn’t it?

In the back of his mind, a prickling sensation raised his neck hairs, and Jordan’s faint voice drew his hand to his throat, touching the pendant. But Shaeda’s siren song silenced his brother, directed his attention back to the priest.

“And may the accursed albinos fall, and with them whoever dares attempt to thwart us. Let their flesh shrivel and fall aside and their intestines rot and burst forth . . .”

The serpent warriors’ spear butts struck the rock in unison and began pulsing like war drums.

Marak lunged for the priest, but Shaeda held him back.
“Patience, my general, patience . . .”

But why? The priest had to die. The priest had to die before the ceremony ended and the invocation rang out. If they waited much longer, they would be too late.

“The Chosen One has not yet died. Yet, when he does, you shall attend the priest and claim the amulet for us.”

You will kill him to further your own purposes?
Marak felt a tingling in his spine. If she would turn her back on Josef, could she not do the same to him?

Shaeda’s soothing hand caressed his skin.
“Have no fear, my pet. Such was necessary and regrettable. You, however, are required to live and rule with me . . .”

Sucrow lowered his staff. “Bring the sacrifice and the blood.” He took a silver dagger and readied himself while the serpent warriors prepared an offering on the rock, spilling the blood of the Chosen One and of Qurong over grain and wine and the innards of a jackal.

The priest began to speak over those present. “A boon to him who hears my words, who this day comes to the mountain to glory in the work of the Great One, our lord and master Teeleh. Glorious and valiant is he who overcomes such evils and this day becomes participant in the destruction of his master’s enemies! For long have we waged war against the diseased among us, those who would spill out our blood as drink offerings. Against such evil we have long toiled, and now, now, my fellows, my brethren in arms and in faith, comes the fruition of our labors . . .”

The Chosen One . . . The Chosen One was Josef . . . Johnis, onetime friend of Darsal, so long ago overdrawn and destroyed. Shaeda’s mind opened, and he saw her with Johnis and Silvie in the desert, feasting with them as they succumbed to her power.

Shaeda’s power, the mind-bending combination of speed, strength, sensation, and foresight that made her impossible to resist and so intimately desirable.

Johnis had to die, and once he was dead, they would take the amulet from Sucrow. But hadn’t Sucrow killed him already?

No, not yet. Not yet, not yet, but why . . . ?

Not Sucrow, Derias. He hated Derias.

Shaeda’s presence slithered around his throat and clamped down tight. Marak ached to be at the priest’s throat, but the Leedhan’s talons drove hard into his back and shoulders, pinning him in place.

Above him the Shataiki hosts roiled, lusty for blood. They screeched above the thunder, beady red eyes glinting in the blinding flashes of lightning.

Derias, queen guardian of the amulet, swooped low over their heads, his massive leathery wings so close the tip nigh brushed Marak’s ear. Shaeda tensed. Her fear trickled down his spine as melting ice. They both sucked a breath.

Marak’s hand slid to his knife. Shaeda’s intoxicating presence reprimanded him; his mind’s eye saw the Leedhan’s shape—her long, willowy body; her silky, white-gold hair; her perfect skin; and above all, her eyes.

And he also saw Sucrow in all his glory, bathed in a purple haze. Marak licked his lips as the startled priest resumed his ceremony.

A Throater placed a bloodstained knife on the stone before Sucrow. A row of seven Eramites, shackled hand and foot, was dragged before them. Forced to their knees, the rebel half-breeds were stripped, their flesh already torn and bloodied.

A sacrifice, as part of the ceremony leading up to the command to attack the albinos. The fool.

The Shataiki quivered and bristled with anticipation, all snapping their fangs and hissing at the victims. Sucrow stroked the amulet around his neck.

Marak drew his knife and started to rise. Shaeda forced him back down, shoved his blade back into its sheath. Sucrow was so close . . .

Not yet.

First the Chosen One had to die. Marak licked his lips. Then the end would come.

thirty- one

J
ohnis tensed and squeezed his eyes shut. Someone knelt beside him—a horrible-smelling beast with a seductive voice. She untied the canvas sack around his head, then ripped it off.

“Are you prepared to die, my pet?”
Shaeda’s voice still taunted him.

He blinked, wrinkling his face while his eyes adjusted. Darkness lingered, with two million Shataiki overhead. Thin shafts of light flickered between black leather wings.

The same rough hand pushed his head and shoulders up a few inches and pressed a water bottle to his lips. Johnis turned his head, determined to resist.

“Johnis, don’t fight me anymore.”

Soft chuckling in his head.
“No, my little Chosen One, no longer shall you resist. You must lay down your life for me and die.”

He squinted and blinked a few more times, then turned his head to look at the woman beside him. His eyes widened, then narrowed. The voice.

Johnis growled. “Traitor.”

“No, Johnis. Look at me. Open your eyes, my friend.”

He obeyed.

“Darsal?” His throat was dry and parched. “D-Darsal . . . ?”

Her brown eyes were bright, brow creased with worry. Her tanned, smooth skin shone in the dusky light.

“Die, Johnis. You must die.”

No, Shaeda, don’t do this.
Part of him still wanted his entity, his Leedhan. Her power, her strength . . .

Her will dug into him. Johnis squirmed. She really intended to kill him. And Darsal was helping.

Darsal smiled. “Yes, Johnis. Here, drink. I know you’re thirsty.

Look, Silvie’s already had some.”

Silvie.

His head cleared, heart ached.

You said she was dead!

“She shall be . . . just as you shall be, my Johnisss. She shall have part in your death. In this she shall serve me, she who would not give me your heart.”

Darsal scooted aside so Johnis could see the second figure, much smaller, slimmer, and paler, also staked to the ground about four feet away. Just beyond arm’s reach.

Silvie had turned her head to watch them.

“S-Silvie?” Johnis licked his lips, but his tongue was too dry to wet them. “I thought . . . They told me . . .”

Now he saw her tearstained cheeks. “I saw everything, Johnis. Everything. They made me watch.”

Darsal pressed her water bottle to his mouth again. This time he accepted and drank greedily. Then he let his chin strike his chest. Darsal laid him back down. He tugged the chains.

“Where are . . . ?”

“An oasis in the northwest desert, a mile south of the high place. A particular Leedhan told me its existence.”

“Shaeda.” Johnis struggled, trying to clear his head as much as free himself. His blood grew chilly. The Leedhan was serious. She and Darsal and Silvie were all going to kill him. “So you believe me now.”

“I believed you before. And I see how intoxicating she can be.” Darsal’s smile faded a little, mournful.

“What do you want with us?” He pulled at the chain. “They’re going to set off the attack. The Shataiki, they’re—”

“They’ve reached Ba’al Bek. It won’t be long now.” Darsal brushed mud and grime off his face and washed it with her head-scarf. Pain shone on her face.

“They’ll find you too.”

“Yes. They will . . . Sucrow meant to kill you, Johnis. If I wanted to betray you, I would have left you with him. Is that not right?”

She had a point.

“Shaeda told me how to find you, how to bring you here. And she told me there was only one way to keep Sucrow from using the amulet. I saw Gabil. He said she was telling the truth.”

A cold feeling crept up Johnis’s legs, then up to his midsection.

Yes, he knew that too. Whoever took the amulet from the Shataiki guardian . . .

“You die.”

Darsal offered him more water, then squeezed fruit on his wounds. The burning made him flinch.

“What are you—?”

“The only thing I can do, Johnis. It’s a healing fruit. There’s a whole grove here. Don’t struggle. Now, listen. I’m trying to help you. So I need you to listen, and listen fast.”

“Help us? We’re staked to the ground in the middle of—”

“Just listen. Do you know why there is an oasis in the northwest desert, Johnis? Look to your right. Just look. What do you see?”

He turned his head and strained to see, knowing there was a body of water behind him.

A lake. A moderate-sized lake surrounded by trees with leaves as wide as Johnis’s head, and long vines drooping down. Heavy mist lingered in the air, dissipating fast in the light of the rising orange-gold sun.

A red lake. The crazy albino slave had taken them to a red lake.

“By the Maker . . . you’re going to drown us.”

“Don’t panic, Johnis. I haven’t the time to calm you down. But listen to me. I’ve thought about this.” Darsal spoke quickly. “Johnis, Shaeda used you.”

Johnis winced and tried to scratch an itch he couldn’t reach. The grass made it worse. He twitched, desperate to make it stop. Shaeda chuckled in his head, voice low and intoxicating.

“My foolish little pet, heed my voice once more . . .”

Cold and darkness swarmed over him. Shaeda needed him free, free to kill Sucrow, free to take back the amulet and use it for his own designs. He needed her powers. Needed . . .

“No, my pet . . . die . . . Even your Elyon wishes such . . .”

“Let us go, and stop this nonsense. Sucrow—We have to get to Sucrow.”

Darsal found the spot on his side and scratched it, scowling as she understood Johnis wasn’t talking to her. When she withdrew her hand, it was covered with flakes of skin.

“Yes, we do.” She brushed her fingers off and gave him more water. “Which is why you have to drown. Think about it, Johnis. Shaeda is half-Shataiki. She wanted you to kill the Circle
and
the Horde. She used you. Her power is a drug. And the amulet’s power lasts four days or until the one who took the amulet dies.”

The cold water cleared his head.

Darsal helped Silvie drink. She rubbed an itch on Silvie’s arm for her.

“We can stop Sucrow. But first you have to drown. Both of you.”

His mind reeled, desperate to keep up. Darsal was talking fast, and she couldn’t seem to stop moving. Johnis scowled.

“Drown.”

MARAK WATCHED THE DARK PRIEST FORCE EACH OF THE seven Eramites to their knees with Derias raging overhead. He struggled with Shaeda, tried reasoning with her.
Take it, take it now! Before Josef and his lover come back! Before Sucrow takes the amulet’s power for himself!

Shaeda wrapped herself around him like a robe and drew him into her seductive embrace. Her eyes drank him in, showed him what would befall.
“A little longer, my pet, a little longer. We must wait until the other dies. Only then, only then . . .”

Understanding flowed from her mind into his, her answer to his barely conjured question. They could not take the amulet from the priest. Marak felt a cold chill at the next revelation: they would have to take it from the Shataiki guardian. From Derias.

His name brought bile into Shaeda’s mouth.

She cut off the flow of thought and directed him once more to the crazed priest, drunk on his own asserted victory. Sucrow had not even noticed Marak here in the darkness, covered by whatever spell Shaeda cast over him.

From the shadows came a figure Marak hadn’t noticed earlier but recognized now as Cassak, sword in hand.

Cassak was with the priest?
Focus.
Marak gripped his knife. Shaeda spilled over him. So his favored captain thought him a traitor and sought ambition over friendship. Marak’s jaw tensed. How long had they been in league together?

Everything started to make sense now. Sucrow had enchanted him. Cassak had changed sides.

“My general, unfortunately his eagerness to attend your family was not for your benefit. He used them, used your pain, for his own glory. Such was he who determined they would never be released. Qurong would have relented . . . for he as well lost a child to the albinos.”

He felt an invisible knife tear into his gut. Cassak had him convinced he’d had no choice. But why had Cassak lied? He’d killed them on principle. He’d taken Jordan and Rona and Grandfather out into the desert and slaughtered them like . . .

The memory came back to him, stark and vivid as the day he’d gone with Cassak to do it. Thus far Marak had managed to silence it with Darsal, but now . . .

He drew his knife and started after the priest and his treacherous captain.

Shaeda’s talons dragged him back. He snarled.
Let me go!

Not yet, she insisted, not yet. Marak knew what was coming now, now that Sucrow took blood and sereken and poisons from deep within the desert’s bowels and mixed them in a stone bowl, chanting.

Shaeda distracted him, setting his mind to Martyn’s journal, so similar to this—minus the key component. Martyn had been thorough. From various hints and implications—either overlooked or ignored in favor of war—Marak had been able to glean what poisons would react with an albino’s skin, what they would be susceptible to that a non-albino would not.

He’d read it in Martyn’s journal, set his men to work making three copies of notes regarding the Desecration of the albinos. And he had watched as his family was eaten alive: their skin eroded away and stripped, their flesh boiled off their bones, their brittle gray skeletons turned to ash.