Red

  Praise for RED and

  Ted Dekker’s other novels

  “Full of heroic action, deep meaning, and suspense so palpable your fingers will dig grooves into the book’s outer cover, Red magnifies the story of Black times ten, raising the stakes to epic proportions. But Ted Dekker’s biggest ace in the hole is that he understands what so many others never realize: substance and meaning can go hand-in-hand with exciting, cinematic storytelling. Red is a thrilling, daring work of fiction that not only entertains—it inspires. Why aren’t there more stories like this?”

  —ROBIN PARRISH, editor,

  Fuse Magazine, www.fusemagazine.net

  “As a producer of movies filled with incredible worlds and heroic characters, I have high standards for the fiction I read. Ted Dekker’s novels deliver big with mind-blowing, plot-twisting page-turners. Fair warning—this trilogy will draw you in at a breakneck pace and never let up. Cancel all plans before you start because you won’t be able to stop once you enter Black.”

  —RALPH WINTER,

  Producer—X-Men, X2: X-Men United, Planet of the Apes,

  Executive Producer—StarTrek V: Final Frontier

  “Put simply: it’s a brilliant, dangerous idea. And we need more dangerous ideas . . . Dekker’s trilogy is a mythical epic, with a vast, predetermined plot and a scope of staggering proportions . . . Black is one of those books that will make you thankful that you know how to read. If you love a good story, and don’t mind suspending a little healthy disbelief, Black will keep you utterly enthralled from beginning to . . . well, cliffhanger. Red can’t get here fast enough.”

  —FuseMagazine.net

  “Just when I think I have Ted Dekker figured out, he hits me with the unexpected. With teasing wit, ever-lurking surprises, and adventurous new concepts, this guy could become a read vanguard in fiction.”

  —FRANK PERETTI

  “The action [in THR3E] builds with clever twists along the way, delivering plenty of suspense . . . Dekker’s latest tale of intrigue will have crossover appeal to fans of Dean R. Koontz or Frank Peretti.”

  —Library Journal

  “Black has to be the read of the year! A powerful, thought-provoking, edge-of-your-seat thriller of epic proportions that offers great depth and insight into the forces around us.”

  —JOE GOODMAN, film producer,

  Namesake Entertainment

  “Ted Dekker is clearly one of the most gripping storytellers alive today. He creates plots that keep your heart pounding and palms sweating even after you’ve finished his books.”

  —JEREMY REYNALDS,

  syndicated columnist

  “[With THR3E] Dekker delivers another page-turner . . . masterfully takes readers on a ride full of plot twists and turns . . . a compelling tale of cat and mouse . . . an almost perfect blend of suspense, mystery, and horror.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Ted Dekker is the most exciting writer I’ve read in a very long time. Blink will expand his fan base tremendously. Wonderful reading . . . powerful insights. Bravo!”

  —TED BAEHR, President,

  MOVIEGUIDE Magazine

  RED

  © 2004 Ted Dekker

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

  Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotation in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Published by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc., P.O. Box 141000, Nashville, TN 37214.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dekker, Ted, 1962–

  Red : the heroic rescue / by Ted R. Dekker.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-8499-1791-3 (HC)

  ISBN 1-5955-4000-8 (IE)

  I. Title.

  PS3554.E3R43 2004

  813'.6—dc22

  2004004529

  Printed in the United States of America

  04 05 06 07 QW 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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  For my children.

  May they always remember

  what lies behind the veil.

  Dear Reader,

  Thomas Hunter’s story begins in Black, Book One of The Circle Trilogy. If you’ve yet to read Black, I strongly encourage you to start there. Red is far richer once you’ve fully experienced Thomas’s initial journey into two realities. There are numerous plot twists that deserve grounding before you plunge into the pages ahead.

  Once you’ve read Black, you're ready to step into Red. But be forewarned, nothing will prepare you—or Thomas—for what awaits him in this second book of the epic trilogy.

  Publisher,

  WestBow Press

  Bangkok

  KARA GOT halfway to her door and stopped. She and Thomas were in a large hotel suite with two bedrooms. Beyond her bedroom door was a short hall that ran to the living room and, in the other direction, to the adjoining suite. Across that hall—her brother’s room, where he lay dead to this world, dreaming, oblivious to the news she’d just heard from Deputy Secretary Merton Gains.

  The virus had been released exactly as Thomas had predicted just last evening.

  Half an hour, Secretary Gains had said. Bring him down in half an hour. If she woke Thomas now, he’d demand to go down immediately. Every minute of sleep—for that matter every second—could be the equivalent of hours or days or even weeks in his dream world. A lot could happen. Answers could come. She should let him sleep.

  Then again, Svensson had released the virus. She should wake her brother now.

  Right after she used the bathroom.

  Kara hurried to the side room, flipped the light switch, turned on the water. Closed the door.

  “We’ve stepped off the cliff and are falling into madness,” she said. Then again, perhaps the fall to madness had started when Thomas had tried to jump off the balcony in Denver. He’d dragged her to Bangkok, kidnapped Monique de Raison, and survived two separate encounters with a killer named Carlos, who was undoubtedly still after them. All this because of his dreams of another reality.

  Would Thomas wake with any new information? The power was gone from the colored forest, he’d said. The colored forest itself was gone, which meant that his power might be gone as well. If that was the case, Tom’s dreams might be useless except as fantasies in which he was falling in love and learning to do backflips off a pinhead.

  The water felt cool and refreshing on her face.

  She flung the water from her hands and stepped
to the toilet.

  1

  THOMAS URGED the sweating black steed into a full gallop through the sandy valley and up the gentle slope. He shoved his bloody sword into his scabbard, gripped the reins with both hands, and leaned over the horse’s neck. Twenty fighters rode in a long line to his right and left, slightly behind. They were unquestionably the greatest warriors in all the earth, and they pounded for the crest directly ahead, one question drumming through each one’s mind.

  How many?

  The Horde’s attack had come from the canyon lands, through the Natalga Gap. This was not so unusual. The Desert Dwellers’ armies had attacked from the east a dozen times over the last fifteen years. What was unusual, however, was the size of the party his men had just cut to ribbons less than a mile to the south. No more than a hundred.

  Too few. Far too few.

  The Horde never attacked in small numbers. Where Thomas and his army depended on superior speed and skill, the Horde had always depended on sheer numbers. They’d developed a kind of natural balance. One of his men could take out five of the Horde on any bad day, an advantage mitigated only by the fact that the Horde’s army approached five hundred thousand strong. His own army numbered fewer than thirty thousand including the apprentices. None of this was lost on the enemy. And yet they’d sent only this small band of hooded warriors up the Gap to their deaths.

  Why?

  They rode without a word. Hoofs thundered like war drums, an oddly comforting sound. Their horses were all stallions. Each fighter was dressed in the same hardened-leather breastplate with forearm and thigh guards. These left their joints free for the movement required in hand-to-hand combat. They strapped their knives to calves and whips to hips, and carried their swords on their horses. These three weapons, a good horse, and a leather bottle full of water were all any of the Forest Guard required to survive a week and to kill a hundred. And the regular fighting force wasn’t far behind.

  Thomas flew over the hill’s crest, leaned back, and pulled the stallion to a stamping halt. The others fell in along the ridge. Still not a word.

  What they saw could not easily be put into words.

  The sky was turning red, blood red, as it always did over the desert in the afternoons. To their right stretched the canyon lands, ten square miles of cliffs and boulders that acted as a natural barrier between the red deserts and the first of seven forests. Thomas’s forest. Beyond the canyon’s cliffs, red-tinged sand flowed into an endless sea of desert. This landscape was as familiar to Thomas as his own forest.

  What he saw now was not.

  At first glance, even to a trained eye, the subtle movement on the desert floor might have been mistaken for shimmering heat waves. It was hardly more than a beige discoloration rippling across the vast section of flat sand that fed into the canyons. But this was nothing so innocuous as desert heat.

  This was the Horde army.

  They wore beige hooded tunics to cover their gray scabbed flesh and rode light tan horses bred to disappear against the sand. Thomas had once ridden past fifty without distinguishing them from the sandstone.

  “How many, Mikil?”

  His second in command searched the horizon to the south. He followed her eyes. A dozen smaller contingents were heading up the Gap, armies of a few hundred each, not so much larger than the one they’d torn apart thirty minutes ago.

  “Hundred thousand,” she said. A strip of leather held her dark hair back from a tanned forehead. A small white scar on her right cheek marred an otherwise smooth, milky complexion. The cut had been inflicted not by the Horde, but by her own brother, who’d fought her to assert his strength just a year ago. She’d left him unscathed, underfoot, soundly defeated.

  He’d died in a skirmish six months after.

  Mikil’s green eyes skirted the desert. “This will be a challenge.”

  Thomas grunted at the understatement. They’d all been hardened by dozens of battles, but never had they faced an army so large.

  “The main body is moving south, along the southern cliffs.”

  She was right. This was a new tactic for the Horde.

  “They’re trying to engage us in the Natalga Gap while the main force flanks us,” Thomas said.

  “And they look to succeed,” his lieutenant William said.

  No one disagreed. No one spoke. No one moved.

  Thomas scanned the horizon again and reviewed their bearings. To the west the desert ended in the same forested valley he’d protected from the Horde threat for the past fifteen years, ever since the boy had led them to the small paradise in the middle of the desert.

  To the north and the south lay six other similar forests, inhabited by roughly a hundred thousand Forest People.

  Thomas and Rachelle had not met their first forest dweller until nearly a full year after finding the lake. His name was Ciphus of Southern, for he came from the great Southern Forest. That was the year they gave birth to their first child, a daughter they named Marie. Marie of Thomas. Those who’d originally come from the colored forest took designation according to which forests they lived in, thus Ciphus of Southern. The children who were born after the Great Deception took the names of their fathers. Marie of Thomas.

  Three years later, Rachelle and Thomas had a son, Samuel, a strong lad, nearly twelve now. He was wielding a sword already, and Thomas had to speak loudly to keep him from joining the battles.

  Each forest had its own lake, and Elyon’s faithful bathed each day to keep the painful skin disease from overtaking their bodies. This ritual cleansing was what separated them from the Scabs.

  Each night, after bathing, the Forest People danced and sang in celebration of the Great Romance, as they called it. And each year the people of all seven forests, roughly a hundred thousand now, made the pilgrimage to the largest forest, called the Middle Forest—Thomas’s forest. The annual Gathering was to be held seven days from today. How many Forest People were now making the exposed trek across the desert, Thomas hated to imagine.

  Scabs could become Forest People, of course—a simple bathing in the lake would cleanse their skin and wash away their disgusting stench. A small number of Scabs had become Forest People over the years, but it was the unspoken practice of the Forest Guard to discourage Horde defections.

  There simply weren’t enough lakes to accommodate all of them.

  In fact, Ciphus of Southern, the Council elder, had calculated that the lakes could function adequately for only three hundred thousand. There simply wasn’t enough water for the Horde, who already numbered well over a million. The lakes were clearly a gift from Elyon to the Forest People alone.

  Discouraging the Horde from bathing was not difficult. The intense pain of moisture on their diseased flesh was enough to fill the Scabs with a deep revulsion for the lakes, and Qurong, their leader, had sworn to destroy the waters when he conquered the much-coveted resources of the forest lands.

  The Desert Dwellers had first attacked thirteen years ago, descending on a small forest two hundred miles to the southwest. Although the clumsy attackers had been beaten back with rocks and clubs, over a hundred of Elyon’s followers, mostly women and children, had been slaughtered.

  Despite his preference for peace, Thomas had determined then that the only way to secure peace for the Forest People was to establish an army. With the help of Johan, Rachelle’s brother, Thomas went in hunt of metal, drawing upon his recollection of the histories. He needed copper and tin, which when mixed would form bronze, a metal strong enough for swords. They’d built a furnace and then heated rocks of all varieties until they found the kind that leaked the telltale ore. As it turned out, the canyon lands were full of ore. He still wasn’t sure if the material from which he’d fashioned the first sword was actually bronze, but it was soft enough to sharpen and hard enough to cut off a man’s head with a single blow.

  The Horde came again, this time with a larger force. Armed with swords and knives, Thomas and a hundred fighters, his first Forest Guard, cut th
e attacking Desert Dwellers to shreds.

  Word of a mighty warrior named Thomas of Hunter spread throughout the desert and forests alike. For three years after, the Horde braved only the occasional skirmish, always to their own terrible demise.

  But the need to conquer the fertile forest land proved too strong for the swelling Horde. They brought their first major campaign up the Natalga Gap armed with new weapons, bronze weapons: long swords and sharp sickles and large balls swinging from chains. Though defeated then, their strength had continued to grow since.

  It was during the Winter Campaign three years ago that Johan went missing. The Forest People had mourned his loss at the Gathering that year. Some had begged Elyon to remember his promise to deliver them from the heart of evil, from the Horde’s curse, in one stunning blow. That day would surely come, Thomas believed, because the boy had spoken it before disappearing into the lake.

  It would be best for Thomas and his Guard if today was that day.

  “They’ll be at our catapults along the southern cliffs in three marks on the dial,” Mikil said, referring to the sundials Thomas had introduced to keep time. Then she added, “Three hours.”

  Thomas faced the desert. The diseased Horde army was pouring into the canyons like whipped honey. By nightfall the sands would be black with blood. And this time it would be as much their blood as the Horde’s.

  An image of Rachelle and young Marie and his son, Samuel, filled his mind. A knot swelled in his throat. The rest had children too, many children, in part to even odds with the Horde. How many children in the forests now? Nearly half the population. Fifty thousand.

  They had to find a way to beat back this army, if only for the children.

  Thomas glanced down the line of his lieutenants, masters in combat, each one. He secretly believed any of them could capably lead this war, but he never doubted their loyalty to him, the Guard, and the forests. Even William, who was more than willing to point out Thomas’s faults and challenge his judgment, would give his life. In matters of ultimate loyalty, Thomas had set the standard. He would rather lose a leg than a single one of them, and they all knew it.