White (50 page)

“Surely it'll show up.”

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

45

A
sunset painted the dusk sky orange over the white desert. Thomas sat on his horse at the lip of a small valley that resembled a perfect crater roughly a hundred yards across. The depression harbored an oasis, and in the center of that oasis a red pool was nestled among large boulders. A ring of fruit trees grew from the rich soil beside the limestone that held this particular pool. Twenty-four torches blazed in a perfect circle around the pool. The rock ledge around the water was roughly fifty yards in diameter, and it kept the pool clean so that, from his perch above the scene, he imagined he could almost see the bottom, though he knew it was at least fifty feet deep.

Tonight Thomas of Hunter would wed once again.

Chelise, who was now being prepared by the older women, would soon walk into the circle of torches and present herself for union with Thomas as was the custom from the colored forest. The four-hundred-odd members of this tribe had been joined by another two thousand from those tribes close enough to make the trek for the occasion. They were gathered on the far slope, beyond the ring of torches.

Thomas's mind went briefly to Rachelle. He missed her, always would. But the pain of her loss had been whitewashed by his love for Chelise. Rachelle not only would approve, but she would insist, he thought.

Ten days had passed since Chelise's drowning. In that time nearly five thousand of the Horde had joined the Circle, urged on by Chelise's pas-sionate voice. If ever there was a prophet in the Circle, it was she. With Qurong's own daughter now among the albinos, the threat from the Horde WHItE had all but vanished. At least for the time being. Teeleh wouldn't wait long before taking up his vain pursuit again, but until then Qurong's decree would protect the Circle from any unauthorized attack. Rumor had it Ciphus was being forced to keep his disapproval to himself. He'd drained the lake and was refilling it again. His religion would be back in full swing soon enough.

Suzan and Johan were mounted on black horses next to Thomas. They would be married in two days in a similar ceremony. Mikil and Jamous sat on the other side. They were fools for love, all of them. The Great Romance had swallowed them whole, and this gift of love between couples was a constant reminder of the most extravagant kind.

“How long?” Thomas asked.

“Patience,” Mikil said. “Beautifying is a process to be enjoyed.”

“And marriage isn't? I don't see how they could possibly add to her beauty.”

Suzan chuckled.

Thomas lifted his eyes and looked at the sunset. It was a paradise, he thought. Not like the colored forest, but close enough. With Chelise at his side and Elyon on the horizon of his mind, more than a paradise.

“You still haven't dreamed?” Mikil asked.

The dreams.

“I dream every night,” he said. “But not of the histories, no. For sixteen years the only way I could escape the histories was to eat the rhambutan fruit. Now I couldn't dream of the histories if I tried.”

“But they did exist,” Johan said. “I was there myself.”

“Did they? Well, yes, the histories existed. But when we finally get access to the Books in Qurong's library—”

“He's agreed?” Susan asked.

“Eventually we'll get our hands on them. I'm sure the fact that we can read them will play to our favor. But when we have access to the Books, I don't know what we'll find. It happened; I'm sure it happened. But will it all be recorded? I don't know. Either way, I don't live in the histories. I live here.”

An unsure smile crossed Suzan's mouth. Thomas looked at the boulder around which Chelise would soon come. What was keeping them?

“You don't believe that it happened, Suzan?” he asked. “Tell her, Johan. Was it real or was it only a dream?”

“If it was a dream, it was the most incredibly real dream I ever had.”

“Did I say I didn't believe?” Suzan said. “But let's be honest, Thomas. Not even you know exactly what to believe about these dreams. Mikil has her thoughts about shifts in time; you talk about shifts in dimensions. I'm not saying the dreams didn't happen, Elyon forbid. But they make about as much sense to me as the red pools do to the Horde.”

“Exactly!” Thomas said, impressed. “To a Scab the notion of drowning to find new life is absurd. And to all of us, the notion of entering a different dimension through dreams is as absurd. But the lack of understanding doesn't undermine the reality of either experience.”

“I must say, the memory is fading,” Mikil said. “It hardly feels real anymore. Everything that was so important to Kara seems so distant. What consumed that world hardly matters here.”

“No, what happened there helped to define me,” Thomas said. Although he had to agree. The human race had faced the threat of extinction, but the drama there was overshadowed by the drama here.

“But I see your point, and I think it was meant to be,” he continued. “How can the rise and fall of nations compare to the Great Romance? Think about it. A whole civilization was at stake there, and at first it scared me to death. But by the end, the struggles in this reality seemed far more significant to me. Certainly far more interesting. The battle over flesh and blood cannot compare to the battle for the heart.”

He took a deep breath. “On the other hand, the blank Books are gone. That's interesting. And how the Books came into existence in the first place. For that matter, how I bridged these two realities.”

Johan faced him, eyes bright. “I have a theory. Why and how Thomas first entered the black forest, we'll never know, because he lost his memory, but what if he managed to fall, hit his head, and bleed at precisely the same moment that he was struck on the head in the other reality? This could have formed a bridge between what can be seen and what can't be seen.”

“Then Earth, the other Earth, still exists?” Suzan asked.

“It must,” Johan said. “And the blank Books are most likely there.”

“Unless you subscribe to Mikil's theory that Elyon used Thomas's dreams to send him to another time,” Suzan said. “You see what I mean? They both make sense only if you use liberal amounts of imagination.”

“Principalities and powers,” Thomas said absently. “We fight not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers.”

“What?”

“Something I now remember from the other reality. It was no less obvious there how these things worked. They called it the natural dimension and the spiritual dimension.”

“Spiritual. As in spirits?” Suzan asked.

“As in the Shataiki here. We can't see them, but our battle is really against them, not the Horde.”

“Well, we know the Shataiki are real enough,” Johan said. “So why not the dreams?”

A distant rumble like the sound of thunder from the far side of the world drifted over them. Thomas cocked his head. “You hear that?”

They were all listening now. The rumble grew steadily. Thomas's horse snorted and stamped nervously.

“The ground's shaking!” Suzan said. “An earthquake?”

“Too long.”

All of their horses were now restless, unusual for beasts trained to stand still in battle.

“Dust!” Mikil cried, pointing to the desert.

They turned as one, just as the first beasts crested the long dunes in the nearby desert. Then more came, thousands, stretching far to the left and to the right.

Thomas's first thought was that the Horde had staged a massive attack. But he immediately dismissed the notion. Johan spoke what was on his mind.

“Roshuim!” he cried.

A thousand, ten thousand—there was no way to count such a large number. The massive white lions that Thomas had last seen around the upper lake when he'd first met the boy poured over the dunes like a rolling fog.

They were split down the middle. There, slightly ahead of the lions, rode a single warrior on a white horse.

Justin.

Johan, Mikil, then Jamous and Suzan slid from their saddles and dropped to one knee. It was their first sighting of him since they'd fled the Horde after his death. The sounds from the crowd opposite them had stilled, but they rose as one and stared to the west.

Thomas had just overcome his shock and started to dismount when Chelise walked out from the boulders below them. She seemed to glide rather than walk. His bride was dressed in a long white tunic that swept the sand behind her. A ring of white tuhan flowers sat delicately on her head.

Thomas froze. Chelise surely heard the approaching thunder, but she couldn't see what he saw from her lower vantage point. She must have assumed it was the pounding of drums or something associated with the ceremony, because her eyes were turned toward him, not the desert.

Her eyes pierced him, and she smiled. Oh, how she smiled.

She reached the circle, faced him, and lifted her chin slightly. The black, red, and white medallion hung from her neck, fastened by a leather thong.

On Thomas's left, the Roshuim lions ran on, led by Justin. It occurred to Thomas that he was still standing in one stirrup. He lowered himself to the ground, stepped forward, and knelt on one knee. Chelise followed his gaze.

The lions split and swept in a wide circle, pouring around them as if this pocket of desert was protected by an unseen force.

Justin, on the other hand, drove his horse straight on, right over the berm that encircled the small valley, directly toward Chelise.

Now she saw.

Justin reined his horse back ten yards from Chelise, who stood in stunned silence. The stallion whinnied and reared high. Justin's eyes flashed as only his could. He dropped the horse to all four, then slid to the sand and took three steps toward her before stopping. He was in a white tunic, with gold armbands and leather boots strapped high. A red sash lay across his chest.

The lions still poured around the valley, giving them all a wide berth, twenty yards behind Thomas.

Justin looked up at Thomas. Then back at Chelise, like a proud father. Or a proud husband?

He strode into the circle, up to Chelise, took her hand, and bent to one knee. Then he kissed her hand and stared into her eyes. Chelise lifted her free hand to her lips and stifled a cry. She might be a strong woman, but what she saw in his eyes would undo the strongest.

Justin stood, released her hand, and stepped back. He placed both hands on his hips, then immediately lifted them to the sky, and faced the stars.

“She's perfect!”

He turned toward the gathered crowd, most of whom had fallen to their knees. “And each one of you, no less! Perfect!”

Justin bounded for his horse, leaped into his saddle, grabbed the reins, and galloped up the slope, directly toward Thomas.

The Roshuim had completed a circle and now faced the valley. The moment Justin cleared the lip, they fell to their bellies in a soft rolling thump and lowered their muzzles to the sand. The sight knotted Thomas's throat, and he wanted to throw himself to the sand and worship as the lions did, but he couldn't tear his eyes from Justin, racing toward him.

“Elyon . . .” Johan whispered.

Justin veered to their right. Then the sound of metal sliding against metal ripped through the still air. Justin pulled his sword free, leaned off his mount, and thrust the blade's tip into the sand.

He wheeled his horse around and rode away from Thomas, hanging low in a full sprint, long hair flowing in the wind, dragging the sword in the sand. The soft cries of joy joined the thudding of his horse's hooves. They all knew what he was doing. They'd all heard the stories.

Justin was drawing his circle.

And he was drawing it around all of them, claiming them all as his bride. The circle was symbolic.

Justin, on the other hand, was not.

He completed the circuit behind Thomas and turned his horse back toward them. Thomas felt compelled to lower his head. Justin's horse walked by, hooves plodding, breathing hard, snorting. Leather creaked.

It stopped at the top of the slope, not ten yards from where Thomas knelt.

For a long moment there was silence. Even those who had been crying on the opposite slope went quiet.

Then the sound of laughter. A low chuckle that grew.

Surprised, Thomas glanced up at Justin. The warrior/lover who was also Elyon had thrown back his head and had begun to laugh with long peals of infectious delight. He thrust both fists into the air and laughed, face skyward, eyes clenched.

Thomas grinned stupidly at the sight.

Then the laughing started to change. Honestly, Thomas wasn't sure if this was laughter or sobbing any longer.

The grin faded from Justin's face. He was weeping.

Justin suddenly lowered his arms, stood up in his stirrups, and cried out so they all could hear him. “The Great Romance!” He glanced to his left and Thomas saw the tears on his cheeks. “From the beginning it was always about the Great Romance.”

He sat and turned his stallion so that its side faced the valley.

“It was always about this moment. Even before Tanis crossed the bridge, in ways you can't understand.”

Justin scanned the crowd.

“My beloved, you have chosen me. You have been courted by my adversary, and you have chosen me. You have answered my call to the Circle, and today I call you my bride.”

For a long time he gazed over the people who filled the valley with the sounds of sniffing and crying. Chelise was kneeling in her own tears now.

Justin turned toward Thomas. He nudged his horse forward.

“Stand up, Thomas.”

Thomas stood, legs shaking. He looked up at Justin, but he found it difficult to look into those emerald eyes for more than a few moments.

“No, look into my eyes.”

Those wells of creation. Of profound meaning and raw emotion. Thomas wanted to weep. He wanted to laugh. He was in the lake again, breathing an intoxicating power that came from those eyes.