Mortal

by Ted Dekker

  “Cover him,” she said. It sounded almost like a plea.

  Rom hauled himself up out of the grave, grabbed the shovel, and began filling it back in. Twenty minutes later they had returned the grave to a semblance of its original shape and strewn field flowers over the dirt. But even a Corpse would know that the earth had been freshly disturbed. And any Mortal with their keen perceptive sense would know immediately without doubt.

  He could hear the outrage already.

  It no longer mattered. Jordin’s reasoning had grown in him as he’d dug, pushing him to steely resolve. If she was right… Maker. The whole world would change.

  Jonathan’s other statements, cried like a madman at the Gathering, mushroomed in his mind. I will bring a new, Sovereign realm…. Death brings life… You won’t know true life until you taste blood. He had said all of it as Avra’s heart had dripped with blood in his hands.

  But he could just as easily have been speaking of his own.

  Jordin bundled the vessels in her coat, carefully placed them in her saddled bag, and threw herself on her horse.

  They rode down from the plateau side by side, speaking only as they approached the camp.

  “Take the blood to the inner sanctum,” Rom said. They’d already agreed that they would perform the ritual with the Keeper’s instrument, and for this they had little choice but to involve him. “I’ll wake Book.”

  The inner sanctum was lit by three candles hastily gathered by the Keeper. In less than half an hour, morning light would filter into the valley, and Roland and his band would rise early to prepare for their journey north. They had to hurry; Rom had no desire to explain himself to any Mortal who might find their actions outrageous in the least and profane at worst.

  Rom had pulled the old Keeper from sleep, insisting they’d discovered something that could prove all of his predictions true. Not until the old man had rushed into the ruins and stopped cold, eyes on the three ceramic jars, had they told him just what.

  “What have you done?” the Keeper had cried. “He’s dead!”

  “And we mean to follow him in his death,” Rom said, hearing the absurdity in the echo of his own words.

  The old man spun to stare at him. “You mean to die?”

  “No, I mean to follow. The blood in those containers. Will it kill me?”

  The Keeper hesitated. “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On what’s in the blood.”

  “Can you tell?”

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for…”

  Rom saw the wheels begin their slow turn in the man’s head.

  Within minutes, he had laid the stent on a simple white cloth and announced that the seal on all the jars was intact; the blood hadn’t congealed. But then he seemed to hesitate.

  “This could be blasphemy,” the Keeper said, pushing his white hair back from his head in a way that only made it seem more disheveled than before. “Centuries of guarding the secret of this blood, and now to open the sacred vessels…”

  Rom had already rolled up his sleeve. “Then you owe it to the centuries and to those who came before you to learn the truth.”

  “You’re quite sure you’re willing to risk this?” the Keeper said.

  “When did following Jonathan not involve risk?”

  Jordin’s hand came to rest on his forearm. “No. I go first.”

  “It was I who was destined to find Jonathan as a boy,” Rom said.

  She frowned. “Yes, but—”

  “Who brought Jonathan to this valley?”

  “You did.”

  “And who did Jonathan embrace as leader of the Keepers?”

  “Fine. But know that whether you live or die, I will take the blood.”

  There was something wild in her eyes and he knew with certainty she would sooner be dead than without Jonathan, that the prospect of death to her now was, in itself, a gain. He couldn’t blame her.

  He nodded. And then he pulled his sleeve up over the crook of his right arm, perched on the edge of the altar, and lay back.

  “You’re sure about this?” the Keeper asked, picking up the steel stent.

  “Would you do this?”

  The old Keeper considered the question for only a moment, then dipped his head. “I would.”

  “Then do.”

  “How much?”

  “As much as it takes.”

  Rom closed his eyes and waited for the swab of cool disinfectant on his skin. The sting of the needle. A chill passed down his neck when it came, like the bite of a scorpion, cold in his veins. His heart rate surged, expectant.

  Then nothing but the steady draw and push of his own breath.

  He didn’t know what he had anticipated—perhaps a bolt of energy or gut-wrenching cramps similar to the first time he’d taken the ancient blood so many years ago.

  “Anything?” Jordin whispered.

  He kept his eyes shut and shook his head.

  “Stay still,” the old Keeper said.

  Rom lay unmoving, waiting for some unexpected sign that the blood flowing into his veins held power.

  Nothing.

  “Enough,” the Keeper said, withdrawing the stent and pressing a swab to the puncture wound. “Any more and—”

  “I need more.”

  “I’ve already given you twice the amount Jonathan gave to bring Corpses to life.”

  “Give me more.”

  “Rom, we don’t know what effect—”

  “More! Do it!”

  The old man finally shook his head and then reinserted the stent. A moment later cold flooded his veins once more.

  Rom gripped his hand to a fist and closed his eyes again. His mind drifted behind the darkness of his closed eyes, a sea of darkness studded with pinpricks of light. The memory of stars in the sky as they had exhumed the grave. But nothing else. He felt no surge of power, no swell of emotion, no pain, no wonder, not even the slightest tingle beyond the cooler temperature of the blood itself.

  Nothing.

  A great sorrow settled over him like a suffocating blanket. Jordin was wrong. Jonathan’s blood was powerless. His sovereign realm didn’t exist any more than he himself did now. No hope lived beyond the grave in a world still imprisoned by death.

  All that Rom had lived to protect was gone.

  The tiny dots of light floated through the darkness, falling to a black horizon like falling stars, winking out.

  He was being fed the blood of a corpse. What if that blood undid the power of Jonathan’s living blood within him? What if, in his desperate quest for the dream of a Mortal Sovereign, he had given up the very life in his veins and converted from Mortal to Corpse as surely as Jonathan had?

  A sudden panic swept through his body, pushed sweat from his pores. Stop! Rip the stent out before it’s too late!

  He wanted to. In his mind’s eye he was already reaching across his body, clawing at the stent, tearing it out with a cry of outrage.

  His body began to tremble.

  Images of Jonathan dancing with the children skipped through his mind. Of the little girl he’d rescued from the Authority of Passing—Kaya—grinning as she had lifted her arms to him. Of a thousand Mortals leaping up and down as their roar washed over their Sovereign to-be, standing with arms spread wide on the ruin steps.

  Images of Jonathan’s blade effortlessly slashing through the line of Dark Bloods, of his finger pointed at the Mortals as he hurled words of accusation. Of blood splashing over his naked body as though to cleanse him.

  The last winks of light faded. Darkness, deeper than any he’d known, edged into his psyche like a heavy black fog. He felt his breathing thicken, his pulse slow, his body cool.

  You’re dying, Rom.

  When the realization hit him, it was already too late. He tried to open his mouth and cry out, but his muscles didn’t respond. His arms remained at his side, quivering with the last vestiges of life.

  Voices sounded urgently from the far reaches of his
consciousness. Voices, but he couldn’t make out their words.

  Another image crawled into his waning thoughts, of the Dark Blood they’d injected with Jonathan’s blood, foaming at the mouth before slumping without pulse. Rom had desecrated Jonathan’s grave, taken his blood, and now he would pay the same price.

  He felt the stent being torn free. Hands on his body, shaking him. Words of horror rasped by the old man.

  And then he felt nothing.

  Only perfect peace.

  Darkness.

  Silence.

  Death.

  Jordin stood over Rom’s dormant body, filled with icy dread. The sweat on his face and arms glistened in the candlelight—a baptism of death. His eyes, twittering beneath his eyelids only a moment earlier, had stopped moving. His nostrils had pulled in a last, long breath and then his chest settled, stilled.

  Maker. Was it possible?

  Jonathan’s blood had taken Rom’s life.

  For a long moment she stared at his waxen face. It was pale as though drained of blood. The old Keeper was frantically searching for Rom’s pulse.

  “He’s dead!” the old man whispered, eyes darting up.

  No! He couldn’t be dead.

  “Blessed Maker. We’ve killed him!” the Keeper said, clapping his hands to his head.

  Jordin’s breath quickened, her pulse a heavy thud, as though the life-robbing power that had spread through Rom in his dying moments had leaked in through her pores.

  Jonathan had abandoned her. He’d loved her and chosen her, only to be washed away by madness, by a belief that by his death he could save them all. For two days she’d clung to that dying love, refusing to believe that Jonathan could invite his own death and leave her bereft, never to know love again. Because there would be no other after Jonathan. He’d taken her heart with him to the grave.

  And now Rom had joined him.

  She stumbled back a step, mind numb, breathing in quick, frantic pants that echoed throughout the inner chamber. Panic overtook her like an arctic wind, cutting her to the bone.

  What Jordin did next did not come from any place of sound reasoning, but from the intuitive despair of a woman summarily thrown into darkness to die without a parting word from her master.

  She leapt forward with a grunt and slammed her fist down on Rom’s lifeless chest.

  “No!”

  Like a beast clawing to escape the pit, she dug her fingers into his clothing and jerked him back and forth.

  “No! Don’t you dare leave! Don’t you dare!”

  The Keeper was at her side, hand on her arm, gently pulling her back. “Please, Jordin—”

  “Wake up!” she screamed, beating at his chest. “Wake up!”

  “Jordin—”

  She slapped Rom’s face, hard enough to make it snap to the side. His head lolled to the side.

  She slapped him again. “Wake up!”

  His face was cold. He did not wake up.

  The finality of Rom’s passing fell over Jordin like a crashing wave from the deep. And with it, absolute resignation to the smothering sickness of lost hope. Her legs buckled. She fell over Rom’s lifeless body with her head on his chest and her arms draped over the far side of the altar.

  Her sobs came slowly at first, seeping up as though from her very bowels. And then it boiled over with ragged breaths and finally with a keening wail.

  She was vaguely aware of the Keeper’s hand on her shoulder. That he was whispering something, trying to help her up.

  She clung to Rom’s body, the body filled with Jonathan’s blood.

  “Please, Jordin, daylight is coming. We’re going to have to explain ourselves to the others.”

  His words cut her like a knife in the back. She could not explain herself to the others because even in this last act she had failed Jonathan. She, not Rom or the Keeper, would accept full blame. The woman Jonathan had loved while he lived, who had made a mockery of him in his death.

  She slowly released her grip and sank to the floor, curled up in a heap, and sobbed.

  The soft thump of her own heart mocked her, the palpitating rhythm of a heart pushed beyond the brink. And why not? Death had swallowed hope and abandoned her in a Hades. She no longer had reason to live. It thudded too hard, growing in intensity like a horse speeding into full gallop as though desperate to escape death itself.

  The beat increased to a fast and heavy pounding. But it wasn’t coming from her.

  She heard the Keeper’s sudden inhalation. Snapped her eyes wide. Jerked her head from the floor.

  The sound came from the altar above her.

  Jordin scrambled to her knees and spun to Rom. His body was improbably arched, shaking with violent tremors like a leaf in a storm.

  She threw herself back against the Keeper, who flung a protective arm out in front of her.

  What is darkness? What is light when there is only darkness? How does the mind process life when there is only death?

  These were the underpinnings of Rom’s impossible quandary when light came out of the vacant darkness that was his nonexistence as he lay dead and unaware.

  The light did not seep into his consciousness or grow from a first spark; it exploded with a hot white flash. It didn’t change his world; it created a new one. Let there be life. There was nothing and then there was everything.

  Every fiber of his being was suddenly screaming with life, flooded with warmth, smothered by mind-bending love, shaking with more pleasure than his mind could contain.

  He was only vaguely aware that he had a body that was reacting to the eruption within him, distorted beyond what occurred naturally, because in the moment nothing was natural. All was new.

  The very air was raw pleasure, and he was breathing it like a drug that strained his synapses to the breaking point. A sensation exhilarating and beautiful, too powerful to resist.

  “Do you feel my life, Rom?”

  Jonathan’s whisper echoed through his new world, soft but laden with as much power as the light.

  “Do you see now how great my love is?”

  And with those whispered words a distant scream. His own, without words but with singular meaning.

  Yes… Yes!

  “Crush the darkness with my life, Rom. Live…”

  He was shaking violently, weeping unrestrained with mouth spread wide, mind erupting with bliss. He wanted to say, I will. I will crush the darkness. I will live. But he could only scream.

  He didn’t know how long that first explosion lasted—a moment. An hour. A lifetime—of weeping with gratitude. Begging for forgiveness for doubt. Vowing unending love.

  And then the light faded into his mind’s horizon, leaving him fully alive. Released, he felt his body drop heavily to the stone surface beneath him.

  He was new.

  Alive.

  Rom opened his eyes.

  Jordin watched Rom’s body remain impossibly bent for several long beats before it dropped back to the altar’s stone surface and go limp. His scream had shattered the chamber’s silence, but it barely occurred to her that those in the camp might hear. Now his mouth snapped shut and he lay with tears running down past his temples.

  Breathe, she had to remind herself, as utter quiet settled into the sanctuary. Far away, a rooster crowed.

  Rom’s eyelids suddenly sprang open. He jerked upright and sucked in a long, desperate gasp that reverberated through the chamber.

  She watched in stunned silence as he stared around, lost for a moment, as though acquainting himself to the world for the first time. He lifted his hands to look at them, laid a palm against his chest to feel his own breath, blinked to clear his vision.

  She watched all this with trembling desire, desperate envy.

  Rom turned his head and stared at them—first the Keeper, then Jordin. His eyes lingered on her.

  “Jordin,” he rasped.

  “You… you’re alive.”

  “I died?” he asked. Then answered his own question. “I died…” />
  “You’re alive!” she cried.

  “Alive,” he said, as she threw herself forward, flinging her arms around his body, weeping.

  “You’re alive,” she sobbed.

  “More alive than you can imagine,” he said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  ROM STOOD ON THE COURTYARD STEPS with Jordin and the Keeper, facing a thousand Mortals who’d rushed to the ruins as word spread that Jonathan lived. Three hours had passed since first Rom, then Jordin, then the Book had taken Jonathan’s blood and entered the overwhelming light of the new Sovereign realm.

  Mother and fathers, sons and daughters, Nomads and Keepers alike had listened with riveted attention for thirty minutes as Rom had made his impassioned plea for them all to die and rise again to find a new life they had never known. The Council stood abreast at the bottom of the steps watching with a blend of curiosity, hope, and skepticism. But it was Roland’s flat expression that drew Rom’s consideration.

  The prince had heard Rom’s fervent call to life with interest, but as Rom tried to explain what this new life felt like, a shadow had descended over the prince’s eyes.

  How did one express the certainty of life with evidence of things not seen to a people who’d embraced the Mortal hope? He had no new skills that he knew of, at least not yet. Surely they would come, as they had before, in stunning display that would render their former lives banal. But for now, neither Rom, Jordin, nor the Keeper could summon a storm as Jonathan had or snap their fingers and split the ruin’s marble steps.

  Regardless, he could not mistake the overwhelming urgency of life that had pulled him from the darkness and filled him with explosive light and knowledge. A new power had risen in his mind and heart, unsurpassed by any he’d yet understood.

  He knew.

  Like a master who saw the workings of all he had made, he knew.

  The Mortals staring up at him with blank faces, however, did not. Could not.

  “I see you, not as I did yesterday, but in a new way. I see your love and your doubt. Your minds and your hearts.”

  He paced to his right and looked out at the crowd.

  “The first Keeper knew that a boy would bring new life into the world, and his words proved true. But Talus could not know how that life would change us. He said nothing of our Mortal sense or for how many years we would live. He assumed that change would come through political means—by force, if necessary. But Jonathan claimed he would bring a new kingdom through his death. A rule of Sovereigns.”