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

you’ve said all night. Why he insists I leave the palace to join him in the Thrall at this hour is beyond me, but I’m telling you, this had better be the stuff of life and death to every living being or I’ll make him pay for this arrogance.”
    She stopped and glared with gray eyes. Patricia had always been provocative when angry, but in the wake of his latest ailment—this ceaseless wrenching in his gut that denied him sleep—he felt only annoyance. She’d taken a moment to apply a dusting of morst to her face and to throw on a hooded black silk robe that covered her body from head to heel. Her stark white face peered from the hood like a ghost. The tattoo of three hooked claws on her forehead had been perfectly placed, red and black against her white skin.
    “Watch your tongue, you brute,” she cautioned. “We’re out in the open here.”
    “With whom? My general, who’d die for me?” He flung his hand out toward the dark city on the other side of the black lake. “Or with the rest of these rodents under Ba’al’s spell?”
    “Commander!” Her term when she was beyond despair. “Have you lost your mind?”
    “Yes, I’ve finally misplaced my senses! Ba’al will have a reason to make a play for the throne, and I’ll be forced to kill him. Such a tragedy. You’re quite sweet to suggest it, my bride.”
    Qurong swung around and continued his march toward the Thrall, lit by the glow of flaming torches in the temple’s towers and doors.
    “That’s not what I meant,” Patricia objected.
    “No, of course you don’t wish Ba’al dead. You’d likely prefer to kiss his feet.”
    “You’re a double-minded oaf, Q. One minute you wake me, insisting that I offer a sacrifice to Teeleh to heal your ailments, and the next you curse him and his high priest. Which is it? Do you love Teeleh or do you hate him?”
    “I serve him. I am his slave. Does that mean that I must drink his blood and have his children?”
    “If he demands it.”
    “Let’s just hope this aching in my belly isn’t his growing child.”
    “That would be a sight,” his ranking general, Cassak, said behind them.
    Patricia wasn’t finished. “If you serve Teeleh, you serve Ba’al. One of these days you’ll get that through your thick skull.”
    “Like I served Witch, then Ciphus? Then Sucrow, now this wretch Ba’al?”
    “Stop!”
    This time when he caught her eye, he saw he’d gone too far. The lines of her ghostly face were etched with fear.
    “You will not speak about him that way in my presence!” she said.
    “And what am I, your poodle to play with?” Qurong demanded. Then, with a clenched fist, “I am Qurong! The world bows at my feet and cowers under my army! Remember whose bed you share.”
    “Yes. You are Qurong and I love Qurong, leader of all that is right in this cursed world. I am humbled to have known you, much more to be called your wife.”
    She was toying with him, he thought, only half-serious, but enough for Cassak to believe it all.
    Patricia continued. “And you will show your love for me by keeping me away from danger.”
    “You’re more afraid of that witch than of me?”
    “Of course. You love me. Ba’al hates us both, and his hatred would only be aggravated if he heard you speak of Teeleh or him the way you do.”
    Qurong frowned, but his fight was gone.
    A sharp pang of pain cut through his belly, and he resumed his march down the muddy path that led to the Thrall.
    They walked in silence until they reached the wide steps that rose to the large gate. It was guarded on either side by bronzed statues of the winged serpent, a likeness of Teeleh that their first high priest, a scheming character named Witch, had supposedly seen in a vision. Few besides the priests had claimed to see the great beast in these last twenty-five years, since the waters had turned to poison. Woref, the general, had once claimed to have seen Teeleh. In Qurong’s distant memory, Teeleh was more of a bat than a