They were at the edge of the forest now, and they looked out on the vast desert that stretched away before them and vanished into the shimmering horizon. Brother Peter nodded toward the endless sand. “That is what I see, Honored One.”
“The desert?”
“The peacefulness. Empty of human pain and misery. Empty of struggle. Restored to the perfection of nature.”
“And all that man has made and built?”
“It will turn to dust. This world will heal of the infection that is man. The world will be whole and perfect again.”
They stood there for many minutes as they each considered this.
“Do you know,” asked Saint John at length, “that I always knew this day was coming?”
Brother Peter turned and stared at him.
“Mother Rose,” said the saint. “It was inevitable that she would betray me. It was ordained that it happen. Like in the Christian story of Jesus and Judas. The betrayal was always part of the plan. Judas was a good and righteous man for most of his life, but in a moment of weakness, or perhaps pride, he stepped off the path.”
Brother Peter nodded.
“For ordinary people,” the saint continued, “such a thing can be forgiven. It can be ascribed to human weakness. As with Thomas, who doubted, and Peter, who denied. Those are momentary weaknesses, forgivable sins.”
“But not Judas?”
“Not him for the Christians, and not Mother Rose for us. She is not an ordinary person. Neither are you, and neither am I. Why? We have looked into our minds and have seen the true face of our god.”
“The darkness,” said Brother Peter.
“The darkness,” said Saint John. “I fear that Mother Rose has turned away from the darkness and allowed herself to become seduced by the light. By this world. Not the pure world that will come, but the corrupt and infected world that existed before the Fall. I have long suspected that she enjoyed being in the flesh. She has become seduced by its illusion of power.”
“Yes.”
“It is why she has worked so hard to recruit new reapers.”
“But we need—”
“No. We have more than we will ever need. We have reapers in the thousands, and we have the Gray People in their millions. Mother Rose has never quite grasped that. Or rather, she has purposely ignored it. She wants people to stay alive.”
“Why?” asked Brother Peter, appalled by the very thought of it.
“For the same reason she has recruited so very many reapers.”
“And… why?”
Saint John smiled. “She wants to conquer the world, my son,” he said, “and then she intends to rule it.”
Brother Peter shook his head. “But she knows the darkness. She believes—”
“Don’t you think that Judas believed in the son of his god? Don’t you think that those people who flew planes into towers or strapped on vests of explosives believed in their god? There are misguided people in all faiths, and there always have been.” Saint John sighed. “Mother Rose has been very quietly recruiting from within the reapers. Brother Alexi, Brother Simon… others. The weak ones who think they are strong, but who long to be here rather than to truly be with the darkness. She will use them as her generals. They probably believe in her with their whole hearts. Some of them are quite lost. Others… well, there has always been corruption in any organized religion. Insidious people who exploit the honest faith of the masses. Mother Rose will use all that — faith, belief, greed, whatever tools she can find — and with those she will very likely conquer every settlement, town, and city in this country. She will make a kingdom for herself here on earth.”
He pointed into the desert.
“And I suspect she wants to make Sanctuary her Camelot, the seat of her power.”
Brother Peter felt stricken. “Then… we have failed?”
The saint turned toward him, his face filled with love but also with a passionate light. “No, my son, and do not fall to doubt now. Mother Rose does not know that we know. In her pride, she opens her throat to us.”
FROM NIX’S JOURNAL
Tom wasn’t one for he-man war quotes, but there were two that he liked.
“Si vis pacem, para bellum,” which was a quote from De Re Militari by fourth-century Roman author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus. It translates as: “If you wish for peace, prepare for war.”
Tom said that the best way to ensure that you won’t be attacked is to be too strong to make it worth the other guy’s while. Or something like that. I mean, I never read much about samurai or armed soldiers getting mugged.
The other phrase was one from the samurai: “We train ten thousand hours to prepare for a single moment that we pray never comes.”
I get that.
61
For a long time Chong floated in an infinite ocean of pain.
For hours, days, weeks… maybe years.
Time was meaningless.
Then he heard a voice.
“You in there, boy?”
“Don’t… call me ‘boy,’” Chong said thickly.
“I need y’all to wake up,” said Riot. “We need to have us a talk.”
Chong slowly opened his eyes. He was lying on his uninjured side and had to look over his shoulder to see Riot, who knelt behind him. She appeared to be studying the exit wound. When Chong looked down at the entry wound, all he saw was a red-black burn.
He expected it to hurt, and it did. The area around the burn was puffy and red. Chong felt hot, as if the heat of the cauterizing blade had infused his entire body. Sweat ran down his torso and pooled under him.
“I don’t feel too great,” he said.
Riot breathed in and out through her nose for a moment. “Yeah, well, that’s the thing,” she said. “We maybe got us a problem.”
“Really? A problem?” He arched an eyebrow. “Beyond arrows, burned flesh, an army of killers, and the end of the world?”
She did not smile.
“Riot—?”
Instead of answering, she picked up the arrowhead she’d unscrewed. She sniffed it, and her frown deepened. Then she picked up the quiver of arrows and studied the blackened tips of each.
“Oh, man…,” she breathed.
“What is it?” asked Chong. “What’s wrong? Is it poison?”
Riot got up and walked around so she faced him. There was a haunted look in her eyes, and her mouth was drawn and tight.
