Lunatic (6 page)

Sucrow!

He froze. Then bolted to his right, dragging Silvie with him.

"Get them!" Sucrow screamed.

He released Silvie's wrist and fled out the front door, down the whitewashed temple steps. Side by side they vaulted a low railing and sprinted down a hard-packed dirt road.

"Which way?" Silvie asked from his side.

"Alley!"

He cut to his right between two mud huts. The sounds of barking dogs chased them south. Barracks ahead on the left, with the lake to his right-west.

"This way," he panted, cutting right again.

He leaped over a box lying in the street. Past Horde children playing with a vine jump rope. The children's mothers shrieked and called them away from the crazy albinos racing past.

On past wood-and-reed frame houses, then mud-brick ones. Out of the cleaner, prettier part of the city. Deeper into the trees. Past weeds that overran yards, swallowing the little huts alive. Enormous tree roots sometimes grew straight through the sides of the buildings. No fences between the yards.

Mud squished where hard-packed dirt had been.

The muddy lake lay directly ahead.

"We've lost them!" Silvie cast a look over her shoulder as she ran for the lake by his side.

"Into the water!"

Johnis cut through a yard and down the steep bank. Tossed the Book of History into the grass. Leaped off the ledge like he used to when he was a boy and dove into warm, murky water.

No burning, tingling sensation.

No healing powers of Elyon's water.

He swam deeper, submerged, feeling nothing.

Then surfaced twenty yards from shore, sputtering and coughing. Johnis looked down. Silvie came up immediately after.

The water was so brown he couldn't even see the two of them in it. Muddy droplets made rivulets down Silvie's light skin.

Why?

"It's not working," Silvie cried, eyes wide on him. "Now what?"

Johnis set his jaw and started for the shore to his right. At least they were free of the guards. For the moment.

johnis .. .

"What?"

Silvie eyed him. "I didn't say anything."

johnis..

Her mouth had not moved. Johnis shrugged it off. Retrieved the book and pocketed it.

"Where now?"

An image formed in his mind of something he'd forgotten. A pool, near the edge of the forest.

`Drink .. .

"Johnis?"

"Nothing. Just an odd sensation. We can't stay here."

"And Darsal?"

Darsal. She would come looking soon. "Give me your knife."

He carved a simple sign into the tree closest to him, then returned the knife.

"Old hiding place of mine." Johnis's throat was even more parched now that he'd swallowed mud. "The bank winds around, and then a path heads south. Follow me!"

he cage door clanged shut. Darsal broke her fall with her palms. Her shackles clanked together and thumped against the hard-packed dirt floor.

"Fool albino," muttered the guard. He turned the lock and left her, torchlight retreating with him. A second door thudded closed.

A thin tendril of pale light came down the corridor. Dimly she noted her immediate surroundings. A six-by-six cell, probably not over six feet high.

For a long time she merely lay there, drifting in and out of restless half-sleep. Her body slowly numbed itself to the beating, and the tears dried on her face. The metal bands around her wrists and ankles were cool against her skin.

Elyon save me.

She rolled to one side. More time elapsed, her limbs stiffening, joints beginning to ache. Her left side went numb from lying on it so long.

"Elyon ..."

Darsal wrapped her arms around her knees, pressing them against her chest. Then flinched back when her hand touched an open wound on her right arm.

But the pain cleared her head. She bit her lip.

Had Johnis and Silvie made it? If not, this had all been for nothing.

Darsal hadn't fought her way out of a storage closet to wind up as Scab target practice.

She jumped up, slamming her head against the back corner of the cage, and grabbed the bars. Darsal winced, then ran her fingers along the lock and tried to pick it with her fingernail.

"I don't imagine that will aid you."

Darsal turned. "Who's there?"

An itch. She scratched the back of her head.

Past hers, rows of large iron cages lay mostly empty, desolate save the occasional bone or scrap of clothing. In the cell next to her own lay a gray-bearded man with an eye patch and a lined face. The remaining eye regarded her with a piercing gaze-the kind difficult to break free of.

In the cell on his other side was a youth-a blond boy of about sixteen or seventeen whose bare back was scarred from old whiplashes and raw and bleeding from a fresh scoring, his body burned and beaten.

And in a cell beyond him a woman lay shrouded in shadows. Her face wasn't visible, only her outline and long hair.

All three were watching her closely.

Forest Dwellers. Albinos.

Darsal released her breath and felt most of the tension leave her corded muscles. This could still be a dream. All a dream.

"My name is Xedan." The old man smiled in the hazy gloom. Several teeth were missing. His leathered face was bruised and battered; he cradled his right arm in a makeshift sling crafted from what appeared to be a shirtsleeve. He scooted forward and extended a three-fingered, nail-less hand through the bars.

A full thirty seconds passed.

Finally she remembered the old Forest Guard greeting.

They clasped forearms.

"Elyon's strength. That rascal is my grandson Jordan. The woman is his wife, Rona." Xedan motioned to the young couple.

Jordan lifted his hand in a greeting. Rona remained unmoving.

Darsal rocked back, trying to make sense of it.

Another itch behind her neck.

"Elyon's strength. We've got to get out of here before we turn Scab."

Jordan quirked a brow and muttered something unintelligible. "There's no need to panic. From here there is no shadow of turning."

Darsal scowled. "What do you mean, we won't turn? Of course we will. It just hasn't started yet. Unless this itch I've got counts."

"You're just scared. You're safe. Never mind the itching skin.

It's only that." He rose up on his knees and faced her, gripping the bars. "You can't turn. You can't. They can become like us, but we can't go back to being like them."

"You're lying." She looked them over. Their skin was smooth, mottled only by the Scabs' abuse. "How long have you been down here?"

"We're not sure, actually. Many days. Time passes differently down here. But you'll see. You'll see, I promise."

"Don't mock me," she said. "You know full well in three days, maybe four, we'll be completely Horde. You can't have been here more than a day. You've lost your sense of time. Is this what they do? Lock us up until we turn and then kill us?"

Jordan's shoulders sagged. He glanced back at his brutalized wife, rested his forehead against the metal. "Well, they will kill us."

Xedan held up his hand, silencing his grandson. He motioned for Darsal to come closer. She leaned up against the bars, felt her slick, sweaty flesh against the warm metal.

The grandfather reached his fingers between the bars and brushed back her dark hair from her face. A certain sadness was in his eyes, the kind an adult reserved for a frightened child who had no reason to be.

His finger traced the scar on her cheek. "What's your name?"

"Darsal. My name is Darsal, and we have to get out of here before we turn Horde."

Xedan passed a tattered cloak through the bars. "Here. Try to rest."

"What in the name of Elyon have they done to you?" she asked.

"I might ask the same of you. Do you think Elyon so fickle?"

"It's something in the food, isn't it? The water, the food, the air, something."

This was a nightmare. She'd been driven into a hellish sleep from which she could never wake.

"Look, we want out as badly as you do," Jordan said. "I don't want to die or see my wife die. But we aren't deceived. Look at me. Do I look deceived? Does Grandfather sound crazy?"

It made such shocking sense. She could almost believe it ... only it wasn't true. This was Shataiki talk. So this is how Teeleh seduced Tanis. I want to believe them, but I don't dare. Dear Elyon, I've traded one hell for another.

The dungeon doors clanged open. They fell quiet. Jordan stood, defiant despite the torture. Two purple and black-robed men entered behind the guard, who moved for Ronas cell.

Jordan grabbed the bars on his cage, confidence abruptly replaced by deep anguish. "Please . . . Don't . . . You have no right!"

But Darsal suspected these Horde weren't interested in rights.

One of the men went into Ronas cell and dragged her out. She was barely conscious and other than a groan offered no resistance. The other went into Jordan's cell and struck him three times with a cane. The man left Jordan in a heap, slammed the cage door shut, and locked it. Then they were gone.

None spoke for several minutes.

Darsal broke the tension.

"There has to be a way out of here."

"I've already tried." Jordan twisted slowly to face her, anguish bared. Tears gathered in his eyes, a few slid down his cheeks. His chest heaved. "It should have worked. It should have worked."

Darsal searched her cage for any sign the iron had corroded enough to let her break out. She tested the bars one by one.

But each proved stronger than her.

If she couldn't get out, maybe there was a way to lure one of the guards in. The four Scabs had taken her easily enough, in large part because of her reluctance to use lethal force, but against a single guard ...

She was sure she could easily handle one of these Scabs.

Elyon, Elyon, did you save me only to cast me back into hell?

Johnis had promised her she was forgiven-and that mattered. It also mattered that she'd undone the damage she'd created. Stopped the storm she'd unleashed these last ten years.

Ended the chaos.

This was her penance. This captivity in hell. But no penance would ever soothe her remorse. Not even this dungeon.

"Darsal?" Xedan's voice whispered. That soft voice so gentle she wanted to believe his insanity.

She fell forward onto her face and wept quietly into the ground.

"THE NEXT TIME YOU DEFY MY ORDERS TO WAIT, I'LL SEE you hanged," Cassak snapped.

"On whose authority?" Warryn taunted.

Cassak cracked a knuckle. The throater had defied him because he now had his loophole. The serpent warriors were running the army.

Priests commanding generals.

Abominable.

"Your priest has the upper hand at the moment," Cassak warned. "But Qurong himself will want to know why you're prolonging the lives of diseased albinos."

They were still in the interrogation room. Without Jordan's screams the chamber was far too quiet.

Warryn sneered. He finished relighting the incense and cleaned up the blood and skin from his last effort. He enjoyed his newfound power.

"The problem with military men is that they see things too simply," the throater commented. "You fail to appreciate the true nature of such a threat."

"The true nature of the threat is that the albinos are diseased and it's spreading. We have an epidemic and potential civil war on our hands."

Warryn sneered at him.

Cassak drew his weapon and brought up the arc. His blade clashed against Warryn's. Metal grated. The swords twisted free. Again they clanged.

Warryn feinted and thrust sideways. Cassak blocked, twisted. More singing steel. Cassak disarmed the throater and forced him against the wall, sword point beneath his opponent's chin.

For a long minute they glared at each other. Point made.

"Well, finish it," Warryn goaded.

Cassak growled. Cut Warryn's skin.

A scout knocked in the doorway.

Cassak snorted and sheathed the blade. Marak didn't need any more trouble. He stepped back and allowed Warryn to stand. Didn't turn his back on the throater.

"Come." Cassak extended his hand without looking at the man. A scroll fit in his palm. He unrolled the note. Scanned it.