Ted Dekker - Outlaw

He’d no sooner allowed the thought passage through his mind than Shaka’s teaching came to him.

When the evil man comes against you, do not resist him. Doing so will only strengthen his power. Among men, resistance always draws equal and opposite resistance.

You’re forgetting, Stephen. Already.

He shoved the thought from his mind and stumbled forward, aware that he was making far too much noise. He took a deep breath, calmed his nerves, and continued on lighter feet, using fallen logs and stones as his path through the understory.

Down into a narrow creek bed. Across to the slope beyond.

The telltale sound of crashing in the brush behind and to his right pushed him up the slope to his left.

South , he thought. My mother is there, south . So he angled farther to his left as the crashing behind faded.

The distant whispers in his mind were still there, laced once again with a thin, high-pitched whine. He felt no need to pay the sound any mind.

He was distracted, instead, by a new concern: the continued presence of those other small voices—the ones that said he’d abandoned Lela after promising to protect her. The thoughts that entertained, if only for a moment, the impulse to resist the warriors directly.

The thought that he was running toward, not away from, danger.

But he knew nothing else to do. This was the valley Shaka had sent him to. Death was only a shadow here. He could learn this only by walking through it now, undeterred by the insane mind, which had forgotten that it could not be threatened except by its own insanity.

Truly, the Tulim valley was his own mind.

Stephen was so distracted by the reflections warring in his mind that the sudden appearance of a well-worn path took him off guard. He pulled up hard in the middle of a wide trail pounded barren by constant foot traffic.

With a single glance he knew where the trail led. And without allowing himself further contemplation he followed the voice that assured him he’d find his mother at the end of the path.

He would go of his own accord, not herded or bound by the Warik.

Stephen turned up the path and jogged forward, eyes fixed on the corner ahead.

The whining in his head rose to a bone-clawing screech, but he still paid it no mind.

Move forward, Stephen. Run.

He ran. One step in front of the other, pounding the soft earth underfoot.

Find your mother, Stephen. Bring her peace.

He rounded the corner, took three long strides, then pulled up sharply. The path opened up to a huge, grassy field that sloped down to a ten-foot-high fence made of erect, sharpened timbers bound together with vines, extending far in either direction. A massive gate made of two swinging sections beneath a round beam waited at the end of the path.

Beyond the gate a sea of brown grass-roofed huts stretched into the jungle, some within his view, most undoubtedly not. Hundreds—perhaps thousands—of dwellings made up the Warik stronghold, split down the center by a wide swath of earth that ran up to a large complex near the center of the village.

But it was the bodies of two impaled natives suspended on tall sharpened poles, one on either side of the outer gate, that rooted him to the ground. This and the hundreds of bleached skulls set upon the beam over the gates and along the fence running east and west.

Confusion swarmed his mind. How could this happen? And who were those who could do such a thing? He could feel as much as see the carnage.

And with that feeling, another whispered that he was a stranger here, alone in his own distant existence. This was the rest of the world? He did not belong here.

No, that couldn’t be true. He simply belonged where he was at any given moment. And yet he felt at impossible odds with the sight spread out before him.

And he’d abandoned Lela.

Shaka’s words returned in force—the ones he’d spoken on the cliff before giving Stephen his mother’s book.

Darkness has swallowed them, Stephen. They are blind. Captive in the night. And if you forget who you truly are, their insanity will call you into its dark pit.

Immediately the thin screams that had hung in the air faded to silence. To the extent that he retained faith in his true identity, he would not be pulled into their insanity. Nor would he be alone, for his true self was never alone.

My mother waits in the valley of death.

He strode forward like a dead man walking, because he was dead to their world.

Chapter Twenty-seven

STEPHEN HAD covered only a quarter of the long slope that descended to the village when he heard feet pounding on the path behind him. But he held his pace—the warriors would allow him to walk. His mind returned to the prospect of walking into this place so at odds with the high mountain on which he’d lived.

The jungle seemed to have stilled for his arrival. He placed one foot before the other, aware now of the others running to his left. In his peripheral vision he saw a dozen warriors jog by, eyeing him curiously.

Another dozen passed to his right, two of these carrying Lela’s limp form between them.

For the space of two breaths his eyes blurred and the sky screamed, and he knew that their world encroached on his own, daring him to resist. But he knew this ploy already and he let the desperate emotions pass through him. Lela was not his to save now.

His mind went silent.

He could see. The village growing nearer with each step as he approached the towering fence. Smoke from a hundred cooking fires coiling lazily into the air. The warriors jogging through a doorway in the fence to the right of the gates, carrying Lela like a pig.

He could hear. Birds calling from far away and chirping from the nearby jungle. His breath being pushed in and out of his lungs. His heart pounding steadily in his chest.

He could smell. Woodsmoke laced with the scent of cooked meat. Feces and mud. Rotting flesh.

He could feel. The worn grass under his feet. The still, humid air pressing into his skin, filling his nostrils.

The slight tremble in his right hand.

Father, save me.

He could see some things more clearly now. The bodies of the two naked natives—one an elderly man, the other a young woman—dead on their perches on either side of the gate. He found that he couldn’t process this madness with reason, so he released his attempt to do so and walked on.

Down the hill. All the way to the gate, keeping his eyes forward so that he wouldn’t have to look at the dead body on either side.

He was wondering how he would enter the village when the gates began to swing out, each pushed by a warrior. Like a blossoming flower, the Warik stronghold opened to him.

And yet there was no beauty here that he could see.

Still he walked, arms limp by his sides, breathing deliberately as he passed through the gate and into the village.

The wide path was packed down the center, muddy along the edges. Round huts had been built on stilts in rows set back ten or fifteen paces. At least one human skull bleached by the sun hung above the entrance to each hut.

A long line of warriors had stationed themselves on either side of the path. All were armed with spears or axes, some with steel machetes. Their faces were painted in blacks and reds and they wore bands on their foreheads, arms, and legs. To a man they stared at Stephen with round, white eyes, as though dead.

They didn’t show any signs of hostility. They did not scowl or shout or lift their weapons. These were warriors enslaved by fear and uncaring of all but their own survival. They were only funneling him toward the one he’d come to see.

Kirutu.

And his mother.

Slave of Kirutu.