Out of Exodia (23 page)

The buzzing in my ears rings loud with
humiliation. Then louder still as I realize what I hear is
Malcolm’s box. A smoky cloud of vapors spreads into the tent and
rises.

* * *

The judges looked from Harmon to Bram
and back. As they listened to Harmon’s boasts and harsh claims they
focused their attention on his body language and also on Bram’s.
Whereas Harmon’s face grew red and wrinkled with indignation,
Bram’s stayed smooth, untroubled. They watched Mira, too, as she
shuddered with sour resentment, her face growing paler.

They all tensed as the smoke snaked
into the tent. It held no scent of burning, but spread an aroma
unlike anything they knew and quickly became more of a skin-coating
than a smell. Pleasant. Mollifying. Harmon waved the vapors away
and when a booming voice called him and Mira out of the tent he
dropped to his knees. They both crawled out, leaving the judges and
Bram to listen through the canvas.

Harmon caught a glimpse of
Malcolm before the cloud enveloped him and Mira. The voice
encompassed them, loud but embracing. The slow sounds constricted
around them:
“Listen to my words. Bram is
like no other prophet. I don’t reveal myself to him in visions. Nor
do I speak to him in dreams. He doesn’t see the future in the
stars. No, none of that.

“
He finds my messages
scrambled in letters or hears my words in the music wafting through
the atmosphere. On the mountain I spoke to him face to face,
clearly and not in riddles. You should be afraid, very afraid, to
speak against my servant.”

Harmon kept his face on the ground,
shamed, but Mira spun her head to look around as the divine anger
burned against them.

The humming from the box softened; the
cloud lifted. The Reds outside who had witnessed the whole thing
held their tongues until Harmon rose up. Then several of them
pointed at Mira and screamed. Harmon turned to his sister, saw her
whitened face, the flesh half eaten away, and took a horrified step
back.

He called out to Bram, “Bram, my
brother! Please don’t hold this against us. We were foolish. I’m
sorry. So, so sorry.”

Bram emerged from the tent, humbled
even more by the heavenly vindication and ready to mend the break
with his siblings. He reached for Mira’s hand then saw her face.
Shocked by the snow white leprous skin he paused then took her hand
anyway. Instant tears sprang to his eyes and he cried out to the
sky. “O God, please heal her!”

Mira fell into his arms and Lydia ran
away.

* * *

My sister’s skin hangs in strips,
bleached and bloodless. The twelve judges come out of the tent.
Their expressions vary from disgust to alarm. I push Mira off my
shoulder and look at her again. I feel my lips quivering downward,
repulsed. She presses her hands to her cheeks, feels the decay, and
slowly pulls her hands away. The sores have oozing pus and her
hands are slick with it. She steps aside, retches, soils her
clothes with puke; dribbles of vomit seep through her fingers,
stain the earth. Mira stares at her own filth then at me, a
question and a hope in her eyes.

No one says a word. There’s no answer
to my prayer. No phrase that I can unscramble to know what to do to
make things right again.

Mira looks at the mess and
a strange gurgle escapes her throat. I concentrate harder, afraid
to move, but afraid not to move. And then I see this scene as if a
heavenly hand painted this gruesome tableau and labeled it just as
crudely:
Mira sees vomit, pus, and
decay
.

I have the answer.
“
Mira, seven days outside
camp
,” I say. “Harmon, set up her tent and
you can stay with her just beyond the entrance to Hazel Roth
campground. Seven days and she’ll be healed. We won’t move on until
then.”

Lydia returns with towels and a bucket
of water; Onita has a robe for Mira. They hustle her off toward the
road. I look to the judges who pull their beards, nod, stroke a red
elbow, or make some other sign that they understand.

Chapter 16 Twelve Spies

From the twelfth page of the
fourth Ledger:

Then he heard the voice
again: Send twelve warriors to explore the ancestral
land.

He chose wisely from each
tribe.

AFTER A WEEK of women doing laundry,
men fixing or building carts, honeymooners caring for the horses,
and children sitting on logs listening to their elders try to teach
them unnecessary lessons, the Reds were excited to see Harmon and
Mira walk back up the lane. Harmon kept his face slack,
emotionless, but Mira was less opaque. Her sores had healed, the
color had returned to her cheeks, her skin was smooth and
attractive, and her relief was evident.

Word spread through the camp that two
contrite souls had rejoined their society. Everyone expected that
to mean they would be nomads again and leave Hazel Roth campground
immediately. Two children were sent to the meadow to fetch Bram and
Lydia. Korzon, anxious himself to move on, went looking for
Malcolm.

* * *

I tie the tether around the last horse,
hobbling the mare with the others in the grassy meadow that borders
the far side of the lake. The park grounds cover at least a couple
of square miles, plenty of room for all of us, and though there’s a
hint of crispness in the air I know we could winter here and enjoy
it more than the dark year we spent underground. I first ran from
Exodia almost four years ago. It feels like forty. I’m beyond
anxious to see that land where we can settle, build homes, put our
skills to use. I never knew how good I had it living in the
capitol, even if I was only the pretend grandson of the ruler.
Bliss, that’s what it was. Good food, a comfortable bed, servants.
But it was ignorant bliss. What I have now with Lydia is harmony
and pleasure and when we reach the new land everything will fall
into place.

Last night I heard the voice. Miles and
miles away it must have been, but gemfry ears like mine,
well-attuned, discerned the mountain top echo.

“
You’re deep in thought,”
Lydia says. She pats the neck of the horse I just
tethered.

“
Not so deep that I didn’t
hear you.”

“
That hasn’t always been
the case.” She smiles. I will always sigh inside when she smiles
like that at me. “But it’s been a while since you’ve had one of
those episodes when you freeze up for several minutes.”

“
I still get messages.
We’re getting close, Lydia. It won’t be long before we reach our
destination.”

“
What do you mean? We
aren’t even moving. We’ve been here a week and this is south of
where we need to go.”

“
Sometimes you have to turn
left to go right.”

“
Now that’s cryptic. Sounds
like the sort of thing Barrett would’ve said.” She says this with a
healing heart; she’ll always miss him.

The mare nuzzles her arm and she
returns to stroking the horse’s neck. I hear distant children’s
voices.

“
I have to choose twelve
scouts to go north.”

“
Why can’t we just keep
following the cloud?”

“
I don’t know. Maybe
there’s an ambush set up. Maybe the way is too narrow for all of us
to fit. I was awake half the night wondering the same thing.” I
pull her into my arms. “But Lydia, we’re close. We’re almost
home.”

She smiles at that and rubs her fingers
along my week old beard, then kisses my nose, my cheeks, my lips.
Between kisses she tells me I better not be one of the scouts, that
she couldn’t bear to have me gone, and after a few more kisses she
gives me a really good idea. She says I should send one man from
each of the twelve groups, to keep things fair. I had already
thought of sending Josh and Blake and Asher. Her suggestion is
good. A mix of judges and men from each tribe would make a strong
team to explore, travel fast, and report back quickly.

The children’s voices perk Lydia’s ears
now. “Are they yelling for us?” she says.

“
Yup. They want us to come.
They’re saying that Harmon and Mira are back.”

* * *

The twelve stand before me. Blake,
Josh, and Paul, Teague’s son, are the most psyched up to make this
journey. Their excitement is transferred to the horses they’re
leading, prancing in place, men and animals. Seth is next; I chose
him instead of Asher when a problem came up in Asher’s tribe.
Calmer men, Shane, Chris, Emil, Felix, and Billy, hold their
mounts’ reins in steady hands. The last three, Jules, Joe Jr., and
Sam finish tying packs behind their saddles and look cautiously
eager to be on their way.

“
Listen,” I say, “You’ll
have to go north, back the way we came and then on into the hill
country. See what the land is like, take note of any people who
live there. Don’t engage them, but watch to see if they’re strong
or weak, few or many. Try to find out what weapons they have, if
they’re fortified, if they have gemfry traits.”

I see the frowns on Sam’s and Felix’s
faces so I uncover the cart at my side and pass out supplies: extra
weapons, two nano-guns, a fair amount of ammo, and one section from
the rod. I’ve already had Harmon instruct Blake in its many uses. I
hand it to him. “Try to bring this back in one piece.

“
As I was saying, find out
what kind of land it is, where the towns are. Woods? Farms? Lakes?
Orchards?”

Josh groans. “Fruit? That would be
unbelievable.”

“
Well, try to bring some
back, would you?”

I wish them luck and Godspeed. A big
part of me wants to go with them, but I can’t leave Harmon in
charge again.

The men scatter their farewells behind
them as they trot their horses up the roadway, toward the ghost
town and north.

* * *

A week’s ride brought the twelve men
into the hill country and to an overlook where all of them, from
Blake to Joe Jr., struggled to stifle cries of astonishment and
joy.

“
You can see for
miles.”

“
Hundreds,
probably.”

“
There’s a
city.”

“
Look at those
farms!”

They pointed and laughed and took turns
looking through an old pair of binoculars that Joe Jr. had taken
from his room in the underground city.

“
I can’t believe we’ve been
this close all these months!” Josh shook his head with a mixture of
anger and disbelief.

“
Let’s go back and get the
others right away.” Joe Jr. reined his horse around.

“
Not so fast,” Josh said.
“We’ve got a mission. First we find a place to leave the horses and
then ten of us will split up and sneak in on foot. Tonight. Find
out what we can and come back. Two, three days tops.”

“
Ten? Who’s not
going?”

“
You, Joey. You and Seth
can stay with the horses. No argument.”

* * *

Josh and Blake watched from their
hiding spot. From late afternoon until dark they had seen at least
fifty vehicles motor by. They had taken the center route and sent
the other men, in two groups of four, to the right toward the farms
and to the left toward a flat-topped settlement. The largest city
lay straight ahead, their goal.

With the setting sun came a cacophony
of chirruping insects, but thankfully few mosquitoes.

“
Did you notice that not a
single vehicle was a two-seater?”

“
What?” Blake stuck a blade
of grass in his mouth and chewed.

“
Their cars, they’re more
like trucks. Huge. These people’s heads are either set up on super
tall bodies or the seats in those cars are elevated.”

“
Hadn’t noticed. Too busy
trying to figure out how this place escaped Exodia’s eye. Wouldn’t
a spotter plane have found this valley easy enough?”

Josh shrugged. “Maybe Truslow had a
treaty with them.”

Blake spit the grass out and pointed at
the lights that were popping on in the city. “Think we can just
walk in? Maybe they’re friendly.”

They cut through the fields and came at
the city not from the streets, but through what must have once been
an impressive park. A group of men were playing a game with a ball
and two sticks. Josh and Blake stayed back and watched for a bit,
listening to their high voices and northern accents.