Green: The Beginning and the End (11 page)

12

But there was nothing left to do. Except beg.

Beg Elyon to show mercy. To provide a way of escape. To save his son. To stop Teeleh’s servant, whose sickness knew no bounds.

He’d watched helplessly as they hauled Samuel down with hardly a fight. His son seemed to know that resistance without a weapon was hopeless. His green eyes held Thomas in a bitter stare as they hauled him to the altar, stripped him, and strapped him spread-eagle to the rings at each corner.

All the while, those red eyes in the sky watched him. Thomas had turned away so they wouldn’t see his weak resolve in the face of such a tragedy.

But it would be a tragedy only if Elyon failed them, right? And if Elyon failed them, there was no reason to live. He could only beg Elyon, and so he did, without a pause.

Ba’al stood before the stone slab in perfect stillness as his priests carefully stacked wood in a tower ten feet from the altar. When they’d doused the wood in oil, they took up their places with the others, swaying. Qurong and his general still sat atop their horses, watching from thirty yards back. The Throaters held their posts at the boulders.

All was prepared.

“You’re going to get him killed,” Mikil said in a low, unsteady voice.

How dare she doubt his love for his son at a time like this? “If Ba’al was going to kill Samuel, he would have done it already. He can’t afford a martyr in front of his people. He needs his devil to show his face.”

“He
has
shown himself!” she whispered, glancing at the Shataiki circling high above. “I can’t watch this.”

“Then I suggest you join me and demand that Elyon show himself as well.”

Ba’al shrugged out of his robe and stepped forward, naked. His body was threaded with sinewy muscle that looked more like roots than flesh. The man was even thinner than Thomas had imagined. In his right hand he held a long dagger shaped like a claw.

The dark priest lifted the blade high.

“Dark Master, hear our cry!” Ba’al wailed. His eyes, glistening with tears, searched the sky. “Rescue your servant from this body of death! I who am your captive, locked in your embrace, implore you. Show me your mercy.”

Thomas’s breathing slowed, then stilled. It sounded almost as if Ba’al was praying to Elyon, as if Ba’al had learned his own ways from the Forest Guard. As if he were a half-breed.

“Hear my voice, great dragon,” Ba’al cried. “I once knew your enemy as you did, was betrayed by my own and left to die. But you, Teeleh, and your lover Marsuuv showed me mercy.” He wept at the sky like a prodigal begging to be allowed back in his father’s palace. “I beg you, imprison me once again. Show your great power. Don’t allow them to make a mockery out of me.”

Thomas hung on his twisted words. The gathering of priests had taken up a soft moan to accompany their swaying. One of them walked out and placed a torch on the wood. Flame leaped up, licking at the sky.

Samuel lay on the altar, chest rising and falling like a blacksmith’s bellows. The priest who’d lit the fire gathered up Samuel’s clothes and threw them into the flames, putting an exclamation mark on their intention. Samuel would not need any clothes where he was going.

Ba’al’s voice rose to a scream. “Kill me now, or send me back to the other world where you sent the chosen one through the lost books. But do not betray me!” He shook where he stood, gasping for air. “Let the land of the living know that you live with power to consume all who will not bow at your feet.”

Ba’al’s cry cut through the pain ravaging Thomas’s mind.
The chosen one.
The words carried the sound of secret knowledge. What did the dark priest know of the chosen one, and what were these lost books? Whispers about seven lost books had been heard around late-night fires, but they were only talk.

Samuel was on the altar, chest heaving with terror.

“We offer our blood to you. Drink and taste our waters of life, lord of the night. Devour our gift to you, the son of this idolater, who serves the one who cast you into the pit.”

The priests’ moaning rose to a dull roar. On some unseen cue, the front row stepped out and approached Ba’al in single file. The first took the dagger from Ba’al’s lifted hand, kissed his high priest’s fingers, then nicked his own wrist.

They were bleeding themselves.

The priest stepped to the altar and let some of his blood drip onto Samuel’s heaving chest, then walked past as the second priest took up Ba’al’s dagger. Cut himself.

“I won’t watch this,” Mikil said, turning her back. But Jamous and Thomas watched without wavering. And after a moment, Mikil turned back and spit to one side. “Elyon has abandoned us.”

Ba’al was begging Teeleh to take Samuel.

And Thomas was begging Elyon to save his firstborn son, covered by the priests’ blood on Ba’al’s altar.

Mikil grunted. “This is the end.”

“So be it,” Thomas said, glaring. “But if this is the end, then it’s by Elyon’s design. Have you forgotten who once turned the world inside out? Who saved us from the Horde more times than you can hold in your sliver of a memory? Unless you have a prayer, keep your mouth closed.”

“That was then . . .”

“And this,” he shouted at her, “is now! Pray!”

He faced the altar and saw that seven priests had spilled their blood on Samuel. Dark trails ran off his son’s chest and pooled on the stone.

Qurong had backed away with his general and vanished from the circle of Throaters. Now it was Thomas and Elyon against Ba’al and Teeleh, a contest of spilled blood against . . .

Against what? What would it take to get Elyon’s attention? He’d left them with some fruit and some red pools and then seemed to have vanished. They could rid their bodies of the scabbing disease by drowning; they could heal their bodies with the fruit; they could dance and sing deep into the night, remembering his love.

But where was Elyon to rescue them from the Horde who pressed in relentlessly? What would it take? Samuel’s blood?

No. There was no more need for blood. This would come down to the very essence of the challenge he’d first cast. The stage was set. Either Teeleh would take Samuel’s life and prove that he could destroy Elyon’s own, or Elyon would show his might.

Still the moaning priests filed past the altar, slashing their skin and wetting his son. Still Ba’al stood over the scene, white arms spread wide, gloating over Samuel’s bloody body. His eyes glistened, round, unblinking, like those of the Shataiki circling overhead.

The mangy black beasts had descended, and he could make out their triangular heads. They looked like flying wolves, emboldened by the constant moan begging them to come. By the priests’ shuffling dance, shaking the bells on their robes. By the sight of the albino’s smooth skin covered in blood.

The priests’ self-inflicted wounds dribbled slowly. They’d undoubtedly cut themselves before for the beast whose mark they bore on their foreheads.

Thomas let the scene wash over him, allowing his anger to boil beneath his good reason. This display of evil was not Horde. This wasn’t the making of Qurong or Eram and his half-breeds. The blood sacrifice before them was the creation of Teeleh and this wraith named Ba’al, who had lived in his bosom. Thomas would be in his rights to take a sword and slaughter the man where he stood.

Instead, he pulled at his hair and begged Elyon to come to his senses.

But the night only grew darker, and the Shataiki thicker, and the raging fire consumed more and more wood. Samuel lay still, by all appearances resigned to his fate, but Thomas knew better. If Samuel lived, his bitterness would know no bounds. This challenge would cost him dearly no matter what happened.

It was too much! It was far too much!

Thomas could no longer hold himself in check. He stepped forward and shouted his bitterness. “Is that all you have, Ba’al? This is all the blood you can spill on my son?”

Ba’al showed no indication he’d heard the mockery. Mikil started to offer some advice, but Thomas cut her off.

“Your dragon-god needs to feed his bloodlust with more than just a bucket of blood,” he cried. “He drinks from the jugular! He’s drunk on the blood of Elyon’s faithful. A little dribble from your sick, wounded animals won’t do. Is that it?”

The moaning grew louder, joined by the rush of flapping wings overhead. The Shataiki hovered half a mile above them now, an organic river of rotting flesh, silent except for the
whoosh
of their wings.

“The beast requires a pool of blood to fool himself into believing he, too, has a lake, like Elyon’s red lakes,” Thomas shouted. “Cut yourself, Ba’al. Drain your blood, you betrayer of all that is holy. You half-breed.”

At that last word, Ba’al seemed to be pulled out of his trance. He slowly turned his head to look at Thomas, as if trying to decide what to make of the accusation that he’d been one of the Forest Dwellers when the Horde overtook the forests, and, like all half-breeds, had only then become Scab.

He grinned, faced the roiling black bats, and cried to the sky. “Take me home, Marsuuv! Fill me once again with your glory. Take this firstborn son as an offering to ease your wrath.”

“Louder!” Thomas cried.

“It is written,” Ba’al cried. “I am your chosen one, and the books will be yours. By blood you will enter the secret place and reclaim all that was once yours!”

“Louder, you pathetic worm! More blood. Drain yourself!”

Tears were now streaming down Ba’al’s face as he screamed his petition to his god and his lover, Teeleh, and this Shataiki named Marsuuv.

“Save me!” The high priest gulped at the night air. His eyes were closed and his body shook from head to foot, like a boy trapped in a dungeon, crying out for mercy. “Save me. Save me, please save me!”

“Dear Elyon,” Jamous muttered under his breath. “He’s a tortured beast.”

For the briefest of moments, Thomas felt pity for the dark priest. If he was a half-breed, then he’d once known the truth and rejected it to become Horde. But if Qurong guessed his high priest was a half-breed, the leader would surely execute him outright. Any possible connection between the priest and his enemy Eram was far too great a risk to be tolerated.

Then again, Qurong was easily deceived by Teeleh. And whatever else Ba’al might be, he was a handmaiden of the beast. Or of Marsuuv, who was likely some queen who supped at Teeleh’s bloody table.

The two hundred priests had all cut themselves and deposited their blood on Samuel once. Now they were halfway through the second round. Their swaying had yielded to jerking as they joined Ba’al and cried with greater frenzy. They didn’t merely dribble their blood on their sacrifice now; they leaned over his body or leaped onto the altar to express streams of blood from their veins before staggering off in a weakened state.

How long could they keep this up? The cuts merely seeped when the priests weren’t wringing their arms over Samuel’s body, but it was only a matter of time before they collapsed. For now they lurched on, accompanying Ba’al’s flagrant call for salvation.

“He can’t hear you!” Thomas screamed.

Ba’al flung his arm toward Thomas and pointed an accusing finger. “My lord has shown himself through his servants, but there is no sign of your feeble God. The dragon from the sky will devour the child. The tribulation you have suffered all these years, running from the ruler of this world, has now come to an end. You will bow or be consumed!”

The authority with which Ba’al thundered his announcement made Thomas’s gut turn. His last reserve of patience melted like ice under a flame. But rather than shout over the cacophony, he chose his words carefully and bit each off so there could be no misunderstanding.

“Elyon shows himself now, to all who have the eyes to see. He lives through me and through the one you seek to kill on your bloody altar. The dragon tried to kill the Creator once, but Elyon lives still, in his servants, free of disease. You’ve made a mistake, half-breed. You’re serving the wrong god.”

Ba’al whirled back to his priests. “More! Empty yourselves. Die for your master, you unclean worms. Shed your blood on this son before Teeleh consumes you himself.”

Thomas watched with dread as the priests each leaped on the altar a third time, slashing their arms and chests in a frenzy. Blood poured from their wounds, spilled over Samuel, and ran into a three-foot-wide trough at the base.

Samuel lay still, breathing steadily. His hair and his loincloth were both soaked red. If one didn’t know better, he would surely assume Samuel’s skin had been stripped off his muscles.

Jamous and Mikil had turned away and clung to each other, muttering protests or prayers or both.

But Thomas could not turn from his son. He could only stare through his teary eyes and beg Elyon for mercy.

The first priest to die collapsed while he was still on the altar, trying to bleed on Samuel. Nothing would come; he hadn’t practiced enough restraint earlier. Grunting, he milked his left arm with his right hand, but failed to produce more blood.

Ba’al shrieked and swung his sword. The blade severed the man’s arm cleanly at his elbow. Blood dribbled out.

The man stared at his arm silently, tried to stand, then toppled sideways, bounced off the corner of the altar, and lay still on the ground.

“Bleed!” Ba’al screamed. “Bleed or I will bleed you all!”

The priests clambered onto the altar and gave their blood to satiate the beast.

Yes, this was his son, but he could no longer stand to watch. The Circle’s code demanded that no man, woman, or child who suffered should be left to suffer alone. They would mourn with those who mourned, weep with those who wept, and above all, they would never hide their eyes to protect their own hearts when another suffered pain or death.

Yet this . . .
Elyon, dear Elyon . . .

Thomas settled to one knee and steadied himself. He no longer had words for Elyon.