Green: The Beginning and the End by Ted Dekker Read Free Book Online Page A

Qurong to her death over the insults of this one witch on the stone.
    Marie was doing no less, she realized. Confusion swirled about her.
    Marie and Samuel exchanged a round of clashing blows, each effectively deflected by the other. But there was more blood now. Marie’s thigh lay open, and the side of Samuel’s head was bleeding.
    Having sought the right to kill Horde, he was being soundly beaten in a fair fight, Chelise thought. She caught herself and shook the idea from her mind. Had the resentment of their tormentors grown so deep that they could no longer tolerate the abuse? The running and the hiding, the death of a loved one . . .
    Just last week one of the camp’s finest dancers, Jessica of Northern, had lost her son, Stevie, when he went out to hunt deer with two of his friends. They were young and bold, and their search had taken them into the forest, where Horde assassins called Throaters had fallen on them from the trees and killed Stevie. Jessica had wailed for a day before falling hoarse.
    The thoughts spun through Chelise’s head at a dizzying pace, punctuated by the cries and clanging of swords. Both combatants were panting, bleeding, caught up in a sole objective now: survival.
    She had to stop this. It didn’t matter that they had the right to the contest, as Ronin claimed. Thomas had to stop this before one of their children was killed. It would fracture the Circle. It would lead to more death!
    But Chelise didn’t know what to do.
    And then it didn’t matter, because in the space of time it took Chelise to blink, Marie was on her back, flailing for a grip. She’d fallen. Tripped on a small ribbon of rock that edged the flat stone.
    Samuel, seeing the opening, hurled himself forward. He didn’t go for her throat. She would have expected that. Instead, his right foot made contact with the butt of her blade and sent it spinning through the air.
    Marie was left without a weapon.
    A roar erupted from the crowd.
    The woman with red eyes screamed at Chelise.
    Samuel dropped one knee on Marie’s gut, effectively preventing her from twisting free. His blade slammed against the rock an inch from her neck, spraying her right cheek with shards of stone.
    That resounding crash of metal against stone silenced the Gathering. But the night was not quiet. A wail of bitter remorse cut through the air.
    Chelise had heard this once, only once, three years ago when twenty-three women and children were beheaded by Throaters while the men were out searching for a lost child. Thomas had heard the news, dropped to his knees, and cried to the sky.
    She spun around, crushed by the cry of anguish.
    Thomas was on his knees on a twenty-foot cliff behind her, arms spread, sobbing at the night sky. “Elyonnnnnn . . . Elyonnnnnn . . .”
    For long seconds he wailed unabashedly, struggling to find breath, trembling like a man who’d just learned that his child had been found dead at the bottom of a cliff. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he wept. For his Maker. For his children. For the Circle. For the Horde.
    All around the valley, the Gathering stood rooted to the earth, cowering under this horrible sound. Behind Chelise, Marie and Samuel breathed hard, but there was no sound of swinging blades.
    “It’s over,” Thomas wept. “It’s over!”
    “No,” Chelise said.
    He cried to the sky. “You’ve left us.” Then even louder, “You’ve left us!”
    “No,” she said again, begging him to hear her. “No, he has not left us.”
    His chest rose and fell.
    “No, Elyon has not left us,” she cried. “I did not die for this!”
    Thomas lowered his chin and blinked. He looked lost, a shell of the man who’d led the mighty Forest Guard to victory in campaign after campaign before Qurong overtook them. For a moment, Chelise thought he’d lost himself in hopelessness, a man stripped of all he once treasured.
    His eyes slowly cleared and he staggered to his feet, looked around at the Gathering. His gaze settled on his