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Where is your love for them, Thomas?

“I can't pretend to know what's happened to you, Thomas, but you're not the same man I last saw.”

“No? Perhaps living here among your old friends has made me mad.”

Johan wouldn't dignify his cut.

“Forgive me,” Thomas said. “I love you like a brother.”

“I may use my weapon?” Johan asked.

“Use your conscience.”

Johan nodded at a group of warriors stretching by what looked like a barracks directly ahead. “I doubt my conscience will help against them.”

Thomas hadn't seen them. Several watched them curiously. Even with hoods pulled low, the Scabs would know the truth soon enough. Their faces, their eyes, their scent. They were albino, and there was no way to hide it.

“You have the fruit?”

“Two pieces.”

“When I go, ride hard.”

“That's your plan?”

“That's my plan.” One of the Scabs was suddenly walking toward the road as if to cut them off. “Ride, brother. Ride.”

He kicked his horse hard. “Hiyaa!”

The steed bolted. Both horses in tow snorted at the sudden yank on their bits. They galloped straight toward the startled Scab, who scurried out of the way.

Thomas and Johan were past the barracks and at full speed before the first voice cried out. “Thieves! Horse thieves!”

Better than albinos. Thomas forced his horse off the street onto the lakeshore and pointed it straight for the dungeons.

There were two guards on duty at the entrance. By their expressions Thomas guessed that neither had ever defended the establishment against a prison break. The guard on the left had his sword only halfway out of its scabbard when Thomas dropped from his horse and shoved it back in.

He swung his elbow into the man's temple with enough force to drop him where he stood.

The second guard had time to withdraw his sword and draw it back before Thomas could take him out with a swift boot heel to his chin. Like old times, quick and brutal.

He snatched the keys from the first guard's belt. “I need thirty seconds!”

“I'm not sure we have thirty seconds,” Johan said.

A group of unmounted warriors were lumbering up the path. They'd been caught on foot, but they realized now that stealing horses wasn't the intent of the two riders who'd blown past them.

“Do what you have to,” Thomas said. Then he plunged down the steps, three at a time. There was still something wrong gnawing at his gut, but he felt new clarity. They should take a torch to the whole city.

He sprinted down the narrow corridor. “William!” He'd forgotten to grab one of the torches from the wall, and now he was paying for his haste. There were rumors that some of the Horde still kept some of their earliest prisoners alive somewhere in this dungeon, but Thomas wouldn't have the time to look for them.

He called into the dark. “William! Which one?”

“Thomas?”

Farther down. He ran past a row of cells and slammed into the bars of the sixth one. William and Suzan stood, dazed. Cain and Stephen were pushing themselves up on either side.

“We have two dozen Scabs closing in,” he panted. He shoved the key into the lock and turned hard. The latch released with a loud clank.

“Are there others?”

“Probably.”

“Run! Horses are waiting.”

Thomas ran without a backward glance. They would help each other. He felt a surprising compulsion to engage the Scabs who bore down on Johan. A year ago, two of them could have taken on two dozen and at least held them at bay. He could taste the longing to tear into them like copper on his tongue. Blood lust.

Thomas took the stairs in long strides, lungs burning from his burst of activity. The voices of yelling Scabs reached him when he was only half-way up.

“Hold them!”

A voice cried out in pain. Johan?

Thomas tore from the dungeon into the light and slid to a stop.

The sight stalled his heart. Twenty sword-wielding Scabs had formed a semicircle around the entrance. Johan stood with his hood pulled back, bleeding badly from a deep wound on his right arm. The Horde was momentarily stunned by the sight of their old general, Martyn, staring them down.

The scene brought back images of a day thirteen months earlier. They had been gathered around Justin then, but in Thomas's eyes this scene was hardly different. They had killing in mind.

Something snapped on his horizon. Red. He scooped up the fallen sword from the second guard he'd knocked out earlier and swung it in a circle over his head. “Back!” He threw back his hood. “You don't recognize Thomas of Hunter? Back!”

The ferocity in his voice unnerved even him. He clung to the grip with trembling hands, desperate to tear into the Scabs. Johan was staring at him. The Horde was staring at him. He had a familiar power at hand, and he suddenly knew that he would use it.

Here and now, he would swing a blade in anger for the first time in thirteen months. What did it matter? They were all dead anyway.

The Scabs held their swords out cautiously. But they didn't back up as he'd ordered.

William and the others spilled from the dungeon behind him.

“Are you deaf?” Thomas cried. “Take up the other sword, Johan.”

Johan didn't move. “Thomas—”

“Pick up the sword!”

You've lost yourself, Thomas.

He rushed the Scabs, screaming. His blade flashed. Struck flesh. Sliced.

Then it was free and he was leaning into his second swing. The sword cut cleanly through one of their arms. Blood flooded the warrior's sleeve.

The attack had been so quick, so forceful, that none of the rest had time to react. They were guards, not warriors. They knew Thomas only by the countless stories of his incalculable strength and bravery.

Thomas stood panting, sword ready to take off the first head that flinched. These animals who wallowed in their sickness deserved nothing less than death. These disease-ridden Shataiki had refused the love of Justin.

They were to blame for Chelise's deception.

Thomas felt his chest tighten with a terrible anguish. He clenched his eyes and screamed, full-throated, at the sky. A wail joined him—the second man he'd cut was on his knees clutching his arm.

Thomas spun to Johan. “The fruit.”

Johan reached into his pocket and pulled out a fruit that resembled a peach. “Use this,” he said to the Scab, tossing the fruit.

Immediately the Scabs stepped back in fear, leaving the wounded man with the fruit by his right knee.

Thomas dropped his sword and lunched forward. “For Elyon's sake, it's not sorcery, man!” He grabbed up the fruit and squeezed it so the juice ran between his fingers. “It's his gift!”

He grabbed the man's sleeve and yanked hard. The seam ripped at the shoulder and the long sleeve tore free, baring a scaly arm, severed below the elbow. The bone and the muscle were cut.

The Scab began to whimper in fear.

Thomas reached for the arm, but the man slapped him away.

His earlier rage welled up again. He slapped the man on the cheek. “Don't be a fool!” He knew that he was doing this all wrong, that everything about this escape had gone very wrong. But he was committed now.

Thomas gripped the man's arm with one hand and squeezed the fruit over his wound. Juice splashed into the cut.

Sizzled.

A thin tendril of smoke rose from the parted flesh. The healing was working.

Thomas stood and tossed the fruit at the first man he'd cut. “Use it!”

He turned his back on the Horde. The others were staring at him with something like shock or wonder; he wasn't sure which. He marched to his horse and swung up. “Ride.”

He was sure the Horde would rush them, but they didn't. They were staring in horror at the man he'd given the fruit to. His arm was now half healed and hissing still. William broke toward a horse. Suzan, Cain, and Stephen rolled onto three others.

“If you think Qurong's power is something to fear or love, then remember what you've seen here today,” Thomas said. “This time I give you fruit to heal your wounds. If you pursue us, you may not be so fortunate.”

With that he whirled his horse around and galloped toward the forest, stunned, confused, sickened.

What had he done?

23

N
othing,” Qurong demanded.

“They run better than they fight,” Woref said. He stood on the castle's flat roof with the supreme leader, staring south over the trees. But Woref wasn't seeing trees. He wasn't even staring south. His eyes were turned inward and he was seeing the black beast that had steadily dug its way into his belly over the last few days.

He had known this beast called hatred, but never quite so intimately. He suspected it had something to do with his encounter with Teeleh, but he'd given up trying to understand the meeting. In fact, he was half-convinced the whole thing had happened in his dreams. There wasn't a real monster crawling around his innards, but the knot in his chest and the heat that flashed through his veins were no less real. He was now des-perate for Chelise for his own reasons, and they had nothing to do with any nightmare of Teeleh.

He would possess her at all cost, to her or to himself. If he couldn't possess the daughter's love, how could he possess the kingdom?

“That doesn't answer my question,” Qurong said. “Do we have a sighting of them or not?”

“No.”

The supreme leader rested his hands on the rail that ran along the roof. He stood very still, dressed in a black robe, the withdrawn hood showing his thick dreadlocks.

“You executed the guards as I instructed?”

“Yes.”

“The one who was healed by their sorcery?”

“He died quickly enough. A second guard tried to use the fruit, but it didn't work.”

“And this is important why?” Qurong asked. He turned and looked Woref in the eye. “I'm interested in the albinos, not a few guards you failed to place properly.”

They'd already covered Woref 's responsibility in this catastrophe. The fact that Qurong would bring it up again, not two hours later, showed his weakness.

“I have accepted full responsibility. While you steam, they run.”

Qurong grunted and looked back to the forest, perhaps surprised at his boldness. Woref kept his eyes to the south. When the time came for him to take his place as supreme ruler, he would burn this forest to the ground and start over. Nothing here attracted him any longer.

He swallowed bile. Other than Chelise, of course. And in some ways he craved the mother as much as the daughter. If he didn't one day kill Patricia, he would marry her as well. But it was the prospect of possessing them, not their pretty faces, that brought the knot to his gut.

He shivered.

“I'm not sure you realize what has happened here,” Qurong said. “Two days ago I paraded Thomas through the streets to celebrate my victory over his insurrection. Today he makes a fool of me by escaping. If you think that you will survive Thomas, you are mistaken.”

“You give him too much credit,” Woref said.

“It took you thirteen months to bring him in, and now he's slipped out of your clutches again!”

“Has he? Know your enemy, we say. I think I'm beginning to understand this enemy.”

“Yes. I understand that he outwits you at every turn.”

“And what if I were to tell you that I knew his weakness?”

Qurong crossed his arms and turned away from the forest view. “He's an albino! We know his weakness! And it hasn't helped us.”

“What price are you willing to pay to bring him back?” Woref asked.

“I'm willing to let you live!”

“And what consequence to the person who aided the albino's escape?”

“Anything but a drowning would mock me,” Qurong said.

“No grace whatsoever?”

“None.”

“And will you be gracious to your daughter?”

“What does she have to do with this?” Qurong demanded.

“Everything!” Woref shouted. His face burned with heat. “She is everything to me, and you've fed her to that wolf!”

Qurong's eyes flashed with anger. “Remember yourself! Your duty to me as general supersedes any lust you have for my daughter. How dare you speak of her at a time like this!”

“He has escaped with her help,” Woref said. He might have slapped the supreme leader. “Don't be a fool.”

“She instructed the guards not to force the rhambutan fruit down his throat as I ordered.”

“And this is helping him? You're blinded by jealousy of a warrior in chains.”

“He's not in chains now. That's the point, isn't it? He's free because he dreamed and found a way to use his sorcery to guide Martyn in, exactly as Martyn once said Thomas of Hunter could. He dreamed because he didn't eat the fruit. Chelise is complicit, I tell you!”

“Mark my word, Woref, if even one guard suggests this is untrue, I'll drown you myself!”

“We executed the guards an hour ago.”

Qurong strode to the door that led below and jerked it open. “Bring Chelise to me at once!” He slammed the door. “Then I'll let you accuse her yourself. How dare you accuse my blood of favoring an albino?”

“You don't think I'm distressed? I haven't slept since I saw them—”

“Not another word!”

“I can prove myself.”

Qurong was reacting as Woref himself might have had he not seen. The thought of anyone, much less one's royal flesh and blood, conspiring with their enemy was hardly manageable.

The door pushed open and Chelise stepped out. “I just heard that you allowed my teacher to escape!” she snapped, looking directly at Woref. “Is that true?”

“Did I?” he said. Woref felt his control growing thin. She insulted him by thinking he wouldn't know what happened under his command. “Or did you?”