Loss (19 page)

White blood cells, the soldiers of the human body.

It was an a-ha moment, all “Eureka!” and “Of course!” with the barest hint of “Duh.” His mind was telling him what his body already knew: Billy had been fighting back from the moment Pestilence struck.

He could see it now—a swarm of giant white blood cells chasing after the contagions in his body, surrounding them and, one by one, destroying them. As if inspired by Billy’s attention, the cells redoubled their efforts, annihilating all foreign entities in his bloodstream. When the overstressed cells began to fall, more rose up to take their place. It was the natural order of things: Disease and infection invaded, and Billy’s immune system worked to save him.

In the real world, perhaps it wouldn’t have been enough, for the Conqueror’s attack had been brutally efficient. In the real world, even when you worked to keep the ball in play, you could still get viciously elbowed and then go down for the count. But here, in the White? And now, since he understood that he wasn’t the same walking target he’d been just a few days ago?

“Got it,” he croaked.

And he did. Billy went deep inside himself, into his bone marrow, and created more and more cell soldiers to take up arms against the invading diseases. He did this in the way that people breathe—he didn’t pause to wonder how he was coaxing his stem cells to produce thousands more white blood cells. He simply did it. He was the White Rider, and his blood was a battleground.

And as with all such battlefields, there came a point when the fighting ceased because there was nothing left for him to fight.

He’d won. The Conqueror had unleashed a horror of illnesses upon him . . . and Billy survived. For the first time that he could remember, he was victorious.

For a while, he just lay on the forest floor, too drained to do anything other than get his breathing under control. Eventually, it sank in that the longer he stayed sprawled on the leafy ground, the more time the Conqueror had to run. With a groan, he climbed to his feet.

“Please,” said the woman in black, her eyes wide and imploring. “Please return to us.”

That she wasn’t looking at Billy when she spoke didn’t alter the feeling that she was trying to talk to him, even though she was using previously scripted words. Or maybe he was just a sucker for girls in black.

“Oh, he will,” said Billy. “He can’t hide anymore.”

It was true. Billy had the feeling of the Conqueror now, a nagging, tickling sensation in the base of his skull that felt, for lack of a better word, White. The man who had been King Mita was out there, somewhere in the Greenwood; Billy knew it.
Felt
it. Maybe Billy’s presence somehow anchored the Conqueror, forced him to remain in this particular memoryscape; maybe the White Rider had forgotten how to leave. Maybe something else entirely. It didn’t matter. The Conqueror was there—on the run, on the lam, hoofing it, had hit the trail, was making serious tracks, was gone, baby, gone. That, too, didn’t matter.

No matter how far the Conqueror went, no matter how cleverly he hid, Billy was going to find him.

“Return for me,” pleaded Famine, looking where her Conqueror had been.

“Hold that thought,” said Billy. And then he took off after the White Rider.

***

Billy tried not to be distracted by the Greenwood as he went hunting for the elusive White Rider, but damn, it was difficult. Even peripherally, the forest was magnificent. Filled with trees that would have given skyscrapers a case of the nerves, the woodland made his senses hum. The earthy, herbal smells of dirt and wood and plant pleasantly stung his nostrils, making him think of the potpourri his mother kept in bowls in the living room. Over the sounds of his feet snapping fallen twigs and dead leaves came the squawking of birds hidden in the trees. But what impressed him the most was the size of the woods. He’d been to Los Angeles years ago, and at the time he’d been stunned by how vast the city was, with block to sprawling block crammed with stores and apartments and people, so many people they were like a disease. But this forest made LA look insignificant.

That being said, he wouldn’t have minded a sidewalk.

Time passed as he marched. Well, more like as he moved at a steady plodding sort of pace. His feet had turned to cement some time ago, making it difficult for him not to slip or get his legs tangled in the thorny undergrowth. He’d expected a proper path, even a road, but if there was such a thing, the Conqueror avoided it. Billy pushed on, trying not to grumble. Who knew that rocks and other hard things could be felt so easily under sneakers?

Or that there were streams in the forest, with ice-cold water that soaked right through those very same sneakers?

Squelching as he walked, Billy tried to pretend he wasn’t cold. Or wet. Or that he wasn’t getting bitten to death. Killing yet another bug, he fervently hoped that his own itching was due to mosquitoes and not fleas. For a memory, this forest had teeth.

At one point, after climbing over yet another fallen tree that was far too large to walk around (and disturbing the writhing mass of beetles clustered on the trunk), he thought he saw a man waving at him. But when Billy turned, he was alone in the woods.

He frowned, and squinted . . . and there, there was the man again, grinning at him and waving him over. Not the Conqueror—the insistent tickle in the back of his head was quite certain of that—and not the dying Robert Hode, come to seek final refuge in the Greenwood. This man was dressed in a dark red that was completely out of place with all the greenery, and he was grinning fit to burst. But as Billy approached, the man blurred until he was nothing more than a smudge of scarlet, and then that, too, was gone.

Huh.

Still frowning, Billy headed back to the fallen tree and continued his hunt for the Conqueror.

The next time he saw someone in the woods, it was at arrowpoint.

He had just decided that trees were highly overrated. Maybe he was just sick of looking at them, to say nothing of all the
green
—green leaves on branches, low enough to slap a face or poke an eye; green bushes filled with thorny plants, sharp enough to sting his legs even through his jeans; green above, forming a canopy that barely let sunlight speckle through; green below, the grass just tall enough to disguise roots that grabbed his feet. Everywhere he looked: green.

Which was why he didn’t see the cloaked man in his forest greens until it was too late. The man sprang up from behind a large shrub, a bow in his hands, the arrow nocked and aimed right at Billy’s chest.

With a shout, Billy threw his hands up in a universal Don’t Shoot gesture.

The archer took a step toward Billy, then misted into nothingness.

Billy stared at the spot where the archer had been.
They’re not real
, he told himself.
Maybe they were at one point, but now they’re just ghosts haunting a memory.
Still, he had no intention of getting shot with a ghost arrow. The bug bites sure felt real; he absolutely didn’t want to learn the hard way whether arrow wounds also felt real.

He kept on going, paying more attention to the nagging itch that was the White Rider’s presence and less to the flashes of people scattered in the forest. Some, though, were impossible to ignore—the giant of a man, for example, who held an enormous staff and blocked passage across a log bridge. Billy nearly fell into the river when that staff swung for his legs: He hopped backwards with a squawk, saved from an unintentional dunk by madly pinwheeling his arms (and more than a little luck). The giant laughed and vanished. Good riddance.

And there was a girl. Older than Billy, and dressed like someone going to a Renaissance festival, she suddenly appeared by his side, smiling at him coyly, as if she knew him far, far too well. Looking at her made him feel Marianne’s absence so completely that it was like someone had scooped out his heart. He turned his head away and picked up his pace, but the girl stuck by his side. He thought he heard musical laughter before she, too, faded to nothing.

Listening to the White whisper in his brain, Billy kept searching.

He didn’t know when he first became aware of the sound; maybe it had been building gradually in the background as he’d stumbled onto a forest trail and he just hadn’t noticed it until now, when the birds and squirrels and other woodland creatures paused in their chatter. But he heard it now: the bubbling, rippling sound of rushing water. Soon the rush grew into a roar, and he came upon a waterfall, cresting over three levels of rock and coming to land in a river that flowed across their path. A fallen tree stretched across the width of the water, acting as a bridge.

Billy stared, awestruck. This was nothing like the chiseled fountains he’d seen in parks, with gentle flows of water spouting from tapered marble mouths; this tumble of water surged before him, shouting rapturously as it soared and crashed, soared and crashed. Sunlight danced in the spray, dazzling him with rainbow light.

And then the sunlight dimmed, and the water stopped mid-tumble.

“White Rider,” said a cold voice.

He whirled around to see a tall figure standing a few paces behind him. A long robe covered the stranger from neck to toe, and a hood left the face cloaked with shadow. Flanking him were two horses, one pale, one white.

Billy’s stomach twisted and a chill worked its way through him, turning his legs weak and sealing his mouth tight. He didn’t need to see the man’s face to know he had bottomless blue eyes.

The Pale Rider had come calling.

“I come for thee,” said Death.

Billy’s mouth opened and closed, and his heart skipped wildly. How could a memory of Death see him? Billy worked up some moisture in his throat and opened his mouth, even though he had no idea what he was going to say.

And from behind him, on the other side of the river, a man’s voice called out, “I shall not ride!”

Again, Billy spun around, and this time he saw the forester Robert Hode standing on the end of the log bridge. But the forester image was just a memory; Billy could see, could
feel
the presence of the Conqueror swimming beneath the mortal skin. Here was the White Rider, both present and past.

A burst of lightning tore the sky, and thunder rolled over the treetops. The air was heavy with humidity, but no rain fell.

The Conqueror called out: “I will not help you bring about the end of everything!”

Another lightning flash, and an afterimage burned in Billy’s mind: Death, walking around in Billy’s living room, telling him about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

“Is the world going to end?” Billy whispered.

“Of course it will,” Death said cheerfully. “But not today. Really, you people get so hung up on the smallest things.
Apocalypse
is just a word, William. If everything were coming to a crashing halt, you’d know.”

“You walked away from your responsibility for more than seventy years,” Death said to the White Rider of the past. “You presume the Crown is still yours to wear.”

And Billy said to the Conqueror hiding within the memory: “It’s not the end of the world.”

“I know better.” The White Rider stood tall at the end of the bridge, and Billy couldn’t tell if it was the memory addressing Death or the Conqueror replying to Billy directly. “The Crown is mine to keep. As long as the White Rider does not ride, the world cannot end.”

Behind Billy came a phlegmy snort.

“Your steed disagrees,” Death commented.

“You’re wrong,” said Billy, shaking his head. “Hiding here in a memory, or in the memory of a memory, doesn’t save the world.”

The Conqueror balled his fists. “I won’t listen to you.”

“But you know I’m right,” said Billy, taking one careful step onto the log bridge. “You thought you were being clever by going into a coma and hiding in a memory. In a coma, you can’t ride, but you’re still alive, so Death can’t take back the Crown. You thought you finally found a way to keep the White Rider from going out into the world.” Billy took another step. “But there’s still disease. Pestilence still exists.” Billy knew that last part all too well.

“If you won’t listen to me, or to your steed,” said Death, “then listen to the world. It cries beneath the burden you shoved upon it. It screams. You walked away from your Crown, leaving the Great Pestilence in your wake.”

“There will always be sickness,” said the man pretending to be Robert Hode.

“Not like this.” Death’s voice held no pity, no mercy. “I have been riding through the world, bearing witness to millions falling ill and dying.
Scores
of millions.”

“The Conqueror still has the Crown,” said Billy. “But Pestilence has a Bow that shoots poisoned arrows. You haven’t stopped anything by hiding here.”

The White Rider said nothing. Overhead, the sky raged.

“Don’t you get it?” Billy said, taking another step on the bridge. He was close enough now to see the features of the man’s face—the eyes wide and shocked, the mouth pressed into a tight line, the tension on his brow, which seemed to beg for a Crown to cover it. “By staying here, in a memory, you’re allowing disease to run free in the real world.” He spread his hands helplessly. “Pestilence can’t control disease. Only the Conqueror of sickness and health can do that.”

Something played in the Conqueror’s eyes—recognition, perhaps, or remembered horror.

“I have run out of patience.” Thunder punctuated Death’s words. “Thou art the White Rider. Either ride once more, or take thy rest.”

“Are you the White Rider,” said Billy, “who can save the world when disease runs out of control? Or are you just a little king who’s dooming the kingdom of the earth?”

Death’s voice, commanding and cold: “Choose.”

Deep in the memory of stolen time in a shire wood, the White Rider closed his eyes and shuddered. Billy, more than halfway across the bridge, held his breath.

And finally, the Conqueror opened his red-rimmed eyes. “You have reminded me of my duty,” he rasped. “I’ll not forget this.” He strode forward—and walked right through Billy.