Mortal

by Ted Dekker

  They looked at her. “You’re suggesting one of us told Saric?” Triphon demanded.

  Seriph shook his head. “I’m only saying what needs to be said. That we were foolish for allowing a dead Sovereign to be kept in stasis to begin with.”

  “We?” Rom said, glaring at the Nomad. “Say what you mean. Accuse me. Accuse Book.” He flung his arm out to Jonathan, who stood in the grip of his own distress over the dead Dark Blood. “She gave her life for Jonathan under the express agreement that we would keep her in stasis for nine years until Jonathan took his seat. Once he became Sovereign we were to bring her back to serve under him. But we were the ones saving the woman who died for Jonathan while you were still a desert Corpse!”

  “She died to see him to power, not to come back and undo it all!”

  “Silence!” the Book snapped, stepping out onto the floor. His eyes were fired, his face cut with an urgency Rom hadn’t seen in many years. “I made the promise with Jonathan’s full agreement.” He stared Seriph down. “Only a fool would question what was done long after it was done. No more of this!”

  Rom nodded once. “Roland’s right. We have to assume that this was Saric’s doing.”

  Triphon wasn’t ready to assume anything. “But how could he have known—”

  “That’s not important now!” Rom said. “No one else in Order would have the same incentive as Saric to take her body. Even if they did, they’d present no threat to Jonathan. But if Feyn is resurrected before Jonathan comes into power, she, not he, will be rightful Sovereign.”

  Silence.

  “Tell me I’m not right, Book.”

  “Yes. The laws of succession are clear. Her claim precedes his. If Feyn is brought back to life before Jonathan takes office, she is Sovereign by right.”

  “Then we find her and kill her,” Roland said. “Now. Before Jonathan comes to power.”

  “No!” the Book cried. “If Feyn is alive, she is Sovereign already! And if a Sovereign dies, power passes to the last living former Sovereign, not to Jonathan.”

  A beat of silence passed between them all.

  “Saric,” Rom said.

  “Saric?” Roland glanced between them. “I heard nothing of Saric being—”

  “Few knew.” Rom paced, one hand digging at the back of his head. “He became Sovereign for a few days when his father died. As Sovereign, he changed the laws of succession. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that if Feyn is alive now, Jonathan will never be Sovereign. And her death would only put Saric in power.”

  “As I said,” Seriph murmured. “Keeping her in stasis—”

  “Leave us!” Roland thundered.

  Seriph blanched.

  Roland shoved a finger at the door. “Now.”

  The Nomad got up, slowly dipped his head, and strode for the door, jaw tight.

  “Your zealots are fools,” Rom said, after the door closed behind him.

  “They aren’t my zealots,” Roland corrected. “And they’re not all fools.”

  And yet, all of those who’d argued for a more forceful approach to ensuring Jonathan’s coming to power would have to be watched, Rom thought. But for this moment, at least, they had far more immediate issues to deal with.

  “You have to find her.”

  The voice came from the back, from Jordin. He looked at the young fighter who’d taken up the unspoken role of Jonathan’s second—and perhaps, of late, his closest—protector. Her face was set and her hazel eyes blazed with surety.

  “Jonathan owes her his life,” she said.

  Rom turned from the girl. “Book? How long can her body survive disconnected from the machines that kept her in stasis?”

  The Keeper shook his head. “Forty-eight hours. At most. We must assume Saric has her.”

  He had to force himself to say his next words:

  “If he has her, he’s killed her already and become Sovereign.”

  “No. He will need to establish her as ruling Sovereign first to prove that she is alive. He will need her in power. If Saric has her, he will install her.”

  “Or has already.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Then we’ll hope so,” Rom murmured.

  Michael stepped in front of what had been Seriph’s seat. “How can you say that?”

  “No, he’s right,” Roland said, frowning, deep furrows across his forehead. The Nomadic ruler rarely betrayed concern, but he had to be as unnerved as the rest of them, Rom knew. There was no better man to have at his side.

  “If Saric has Feyn in hiding, we have as little chance of finding her as we do of finding these other Dark Bloods. But if he installs her as Sovereign we know where she’ll be. It’s our best hope.”

  “To what end?” Triphon demanded. “If she’s Sovereign already, Jonathan is finished!”

  “Hold your tongue!” Rom snapped.

  Triphon stared at him and then looked away.

  In all of this, Jonathan hadn’t moved once from the side of the dead Dark Blood. He watched them now with silent eyes. His was not the look of a world leader on the cusp of losing his reign, but neither was it the reaction of a naïve boy. There was far more happening in that mind, Rom was sure, than perhaps even Jordin knew.

  To date, everything predicted by the first Keeper, Talus, four hundred and eighty-nine years earlier, had come to pass. There could be no doubt about the veracity of the first Keeper’s claims. The fate of humanity rested on Jonathan’s shoulders, and Rom was prepared to give his life to see that fate fulfilled.

  Never mind that Mortals could now make other Mortals with their own blood, rendering Jonathan’s blood redundant, as some had recently begun to whisper.

  Never mind that no one knew just how Jonathan would bring life to the world. Or that the zealots in particular were far more interested in protecting Mortals as an elite race than seeing any more Corpses come to life.

  Never mind that Jonathan had shown neither defining desire nor expected aptitude for ruling the world as Sovereign.

  Everything Rom and the Keepers had done had been with one purpose in mind: to bring Jonathan to power as required by the sacred vellum written by Talus. Nothing else mattered now.

  Nothing.

  A single tear broke from Jonathan’s eye and snaked down his right cheek.

  “Jonathan?” Even in the midst of sick unease about Feyn’s disappearance, Rom felt a tug of empathy for the boy chosen to carry the world’s burdens. “Forgive us. No harm will come to you, I swear it on my life.”

  Jonathan dipped his head, barely. “You have a good heart, Rom. It’s Feyn I worry for.”

  Of course Jonathan’s heart was drawn first to the woman who’d paid a terrible price for him. The woman Rom himself had led into life once, if only for a short time.

  Desperation thickened in his chest.

  As he turned to the others, his mind was already set, but he would at least act in deference to the Nomadic way.

  “Roland. Your recommendation.”

  The prince spoke after only brief consideration: “If we knew where these Dark Bloods gathered and the full nature of their defenses, we could take them and Saric with them. They’re very strong and we’re outnumbered, but we have seven hundred fighters with unequaled skills and Mortal perception. We would destroy them.”

  “Even if we knew where,” Rom said, “slaughtering them would go against everything Jonathan stands for.”

  Roland gave a nod. “You asked. I speak my mind. Either way, we don’t know where they are. So we go for Feyn.”

  Rom faced the old Keeper. “Book?”

  “You must find Feyn…” He rubbed at his head, shaking it. “Saric will have moved quickly. If she isn’t Sovereign already, she will be soon.”

  Michael said flatly: “So we find her and do what?”

  “She has the ancient blood in her,” the Book said. “She’ll hear you, Rom. That’s our one hope.”

  Yes. It was.

  “Roland, you’re with me.”r />
  The Nomad nodded.

  “We ride for Byzantium.” Rom stepped toward the door.

  He had taken two steps when Jonathan’s voice sounded from behind him.

  “I will go.”

  Rom stopped. Turned around. “No.”

  Jonathan was on his feet. “I must go. She loved you, Rom, but she died for me. My blood is stronger than any other Mortal. I’ll go to Feyn.”

  He had never been beyond the perimeter of protection. He’d never stepped foot in any town or city since the day he had entered Byzantium as a boy to make claim to the Sovereign throne. He’d never even seen a Corpse beyond those who came to camp.

  “I can’t allow that.”

  “He goes,” the Book said, crossing to the altar, retrieving the stent where he had left it. “We may not have a second chance.”

  “Then I go as well,” Jordin said, stepping toward Rom.

  “Out of the question.”

  “She goes,” Jonathan said, eyes on the olive-skinned girl.

  Michael flung up her hands and began to protest, but Roland stopped her with a raised palm. “Jonathan’s right. Jordin goes. She’s one of the best fighters we have.” To Michael: “You will stay with our people.”

  Rom looked from one to the other, then to Jonathan, whose arm was already in the Book’s grasp, the stent going in to the vein.

  Blood? Now?

  “What are you doing? We don’t have time!”

  “I need to know what happened.” The Book glanced at the dead Dark Blood. “You’ll be gone for a day. And I need to know now.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  DOMINIC PACED BEHIND the heavy desk in his office, staring at the bookshelves. Staring without seeing. He needed to consult the texts. The commentaries on the Book of Orders. He needed counsel. He needed Rowan.

  Rowan, whose head had all but toppled off his neck, blood spurting into the air…

  What abomination, what profane act, had he just witnessed?

  He shook his head, suppressing terrible fear. Not for Rowan, but for himself at the spectacle of death.

  Saric’s claim that they were all dead still rang in his ears. Perhaps the most blasphemous words ever spoken in the senate chamber.

  Dominic stared out the window and willed himself to feel something other. Other than horror. Other than abject fear at what he had just witnessed.

  But he could not. Gone were the sentiments of a baser age called Chaos. Humanity had risen above them and peace had reigned.

  It simply wasn’t possible that a virus had changed them genetically as claimed by Saric.

  We know the Maker exists by his Order. It was the first line of the liturgy. The most basic statute of Order. Order was the hand of the Maker. To question Order was to question the Maker. By that alone, he knew Saric’s claims from the dais for sacrilege. That whatever dark blood flowed in Saric’s veins was anathema.

  And yet… he had brought his sister back.

  So then… it was possible to bring a body back from stasis. There was no end to Alchemy. Megas had been an alchemist—was it possible that he’d crafted this virus called Legion?

  The thought stung Dominic’s mind. No. There was only one truth, given by the Maker in the way of Order as written by their prophets. The fear Dominic felt now was borne of righteousness. He knew without investigating any of Saric’s claims that the man was more than twisted.

  He was evil.

  Born once into life, we are blessed. And if we please, let us be born into the afterlife, into Bliss everlasting.

  Dominic’s greatest fear now wasn’t for his own life. It was that in failing to act today he might have somehow left his fate unsecured. Or that in failing to act in the future, he might achieve the same. He dare not risk Bliss. He feared Hades.

  He straightened, his purpose clear. Adjusting his robe, he strode for his office door, yanked it open.

  The anteroom of his office was filled with senators. They were only slightly less pale than when they’d witnessed the horrors of just an hour ago.

  He dipped his head. “Senators.”

  “What would you say?” Senator Compalla of Russe said.

  He strode forward, heart set. “Isn’t it obvious? Feyn is our Sovereign. We will serve her without question as we serve the Maker.”

  “And what about Saric?”

  “Saric,” Dominic said, facing her, “is a blasphemer.”

  “And his claims?”

  “You dare ask?”

  “Not to question.” She faltered. “Only to know where you stand.”

  “False! All of them.”

  They were in the grips of fear, practically wavering where they stood. A nation could not be ruled like this. A world could not be ruled by the weak.

  “I have consulted the archive. He fills your ear with lies. Guard your mind, lest you compromise your hereafter.”

  It wasn’t the truth—he hadn’t gone to the archive, he’d spent the last hour pacing. But it was the truth. Order was infallible. It was far better to lie once than to display such lack of obedience as to go looking for proof that it was not.

  The prudence of his decision—of his own obedience—was immediately evidenced in the slight, but very real, settling on the faces before him.

  “We know the Maker exists by his Order,” he said. “And for that reason, hear what I say now. Saric must be stopped. At all costs.” He spun and walked past them.

  “And how will you stop him?”

  He stopped at the outer door and faced them.

  “I won’t. The Sovereign will.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  EIGHT HOURS HAD PASSED since Feyn had woken to find her world completely changed. And although she knew precisely who she was, in some ways she didn’t know herself at all.

  The face looking back at her was not her own. Familiar, yes. So pale. Skin to set the standard of beauty for the world. And right there—the dark vein beneath her temple. So dark. It had been blue before. And her eyes had been palest gray. They glittered now, like faceted onyx.

  Feyn turned her head, considered the inky veins spreading up over her cheek like the branches of a winter tree… the tributaries of a black river. A river with a single headwater.

  A face appeared beside hers in the mirror.

  “You’re beautiful, my love.”

  Saric.

  Feyn considered him in the glass. The strong line of his jaw, broader than she remembered it. The neatly trimmed hair beneath his lower lip, precise as she remembered it.

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  His voice filled her with strange warmth.

  He reached around her and unfastened the top of her gown. Pulled wide the broad neck, bearing the scar that crossed from her sternum almost to her waist on the other side.

  She flinched—not at the sight of it, but at the sudden memory of the sword. Flashing down, light glinting off the blade. A scream in her ears—her scream as she held her arms wide. She had opened herself to the slashing blade. Given herself to it.

  She had died that day.

  Feyn clasped the front of the gown, pulled it closed. And then his hands were on hers and pushing them gently away, fastening the hooks up the front.

  “Don’t worry, my love. I will remove the scar. I’ll see it gone from you. Nothing will mar your beauty or remind you of that day. Nothing except the fact that it brought you to me. That would please you, wouldn’t it?”

  She lifted her gaze to his in the mirror. “Yes.” And then: “Thank you.”

  He smiled. “Wait here.”

  Her brother stepped away, and she turned to watch as he moved toward the chest in the corner. Her jewelry chest. Here, in her chamber.

  She glanced out toward the broad windows at the tumultuous sky, churning beyond the curtain of heavy velvet drawn back on each side. At the dressing table with the large, round mirror. At the bed, too big for one person, or even three. Up, to the vaulted ceiling overhead.

  Saric was back, ho
lding up a pair of dangling sapphire earrings.

  “You never wore these before. A state gift, I believe, of Asiana on the occasion of your inauguration the day you were taken from me. You always insisted on such simple baubles. But the time for those childish days is over, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose it is,” she said, as he slipped them through her earlobes.

  The old Keeper had said she would not die. That she would sleep for a time… and would live again. And he had been right, in a manner of speaking.

  He had been wrong, too.

  It had not been sleep.

  And now there was Saric, the face she remembered, peering at her distantly, as though from another life.

  She didn’t remember him being so muscled, or even quite so tall. She didn’t remember the curve of his mouth when he smiled as he did now.

  There had been pain. Pain, worse than the wound that had killed her. She had no doubt now that she had been dead.

  Had she been in Bliss, then? She had no memory of fear. Of the eternal torment of Hades that one goes to when one fails the known bar of Order, wherever it might be set, that day, and for that person. And on the day she’d died, she had renounced Order and changed the course of its succession.

  How strangely it had all worked out.

  “Tell me, sister, did you dream?”

  He wanted to hear that she had. She saw it in his eyes.

  She smiled slightly.

  “But of course you did,” he said in a low, soothing voice. “Of me, I’m sure.”

  Her mind drifted to the scene at the senate. Like a dream, but real, alive. Every eye, staring at her. She had been naked, but it hadn’t mattered at first because she was still in the dream, and in dreams fear always manifested as nakedness. A fear that the world would see the dreamer as they really were. That they were never what they pretended to be.

  “Of course,” she said, smiling again. She wanted to see him smile. Had Saric been quite so gentle with her before? Or as beautiful? Had he changed as much as it seemed?

  Or was it her, only now seeing him for who he was?

  The flush of warmth again, this time, as he took her hand. He had chosen her rings, her gown, even put her shoes on her feet. With great care, he had drawn back the sides of her hair into a sparkling diamond clasp.