by Ted Dekker
Indeed, the plan. So Pravus had the same thirsts but needed Saric to quench them.
Ambition. It was the greatest of those serpents within him. It made him feel full, to have them inside him, and very tall. He felt great in this room, as though he filled it merely by standing in it. As though the Citadel could not contain him, as though the world itself would not, perhaps, sate him. Everyone else—everything else—felt minuscule in comparison.
“I wonder, my lord,” Corban said, coming closer. “Do you feel anything else? Joy perhaps?”
“Joy?”
“They also called it satisfaction. A sense of well-being, according to the record. Fulfillment.”
Saric looked at the relics around him. “I feel joy every time a new woman is brought in for me. I feel joy at the sound of her screams.”
Corban was studying him with intense scrutiny.
“Has your lab rat satisfied your curiosity, then?”
“You misunderstand my motivation,” the older man said. “And I do not believe that what you describe is joy. We have reignited some emotions, but not all. Only those of a darker nature, apparently.”
“My appetite for meat has increased. It’s what I crave, to the exclusion of all else—”
“That isn’t unusual. Meat is the mainstay of the world diet.”
For nearly two centuries, the law had restricted citizens’ caloric intake, monitored carbohydrates, and eliminated sugar. It was common knowledge that carbohydrates, even those found in vegetables, shortened life. To think, in the age of arcane science there had been diets based on vegetables!
“No. I can’t even bear the thought of overcooked food. It repulses me. In fact, the smell of the venison that you ate for supper repulses me.”
“You can smell that?”
“I can smell blood anywhere and prefer my meals running with it. And then there is this—” Saric pulled away the sodden neck of his cloak and in three strides loomed over the alchemist.
“Do you see how my veins stand out against my skin?”
In just the last day his jugular had turned nearly black beneath the surface, as though it ran with ink. Saric’s skin was already translucent, so much so that he never needed to accentuate the vein along his forearm, as some royals did, with blue cosmetic powder. Indeed, Saric had been pleased at the change and marveled at it. But as he had watched the blue branching of his veins darken, he had wondered with fear and fascination what it meant.
“As far as side effects go, I would think you’d find it pleasing,” the alchemist said. “Now, if that is all, my lord—”
“It is not all. I want to know what the Chaos serum might do to my wife, Portia. Each of the women I’ve given it to has died, sometimes before I finished with her.”
Corban shook his head. “I strongly urge against it. We’ve allowed it in the women brought to satisfy your new tastes, knowing they would not survive. But giving it to Portia is inadvisable. We studied your bloodline for months before administering the serum. Clearly, it does not suit all bloodlines, and many of our initial samples did not yield…favorable results. Let me remind you that there are only three who know of your recent conversion, including yourself. It is extremely dangerous to share this secret with anyone.”
Saric turned away. So there it was. Was he even now dying as a result of his reanimation?
If he was, he would wrest from this world every drop of pleasure and power he could. What did it matter? The very foundation of the Order was a lie.
Besides, he was in Hades already.
A shudder passed up through his spine. It took all his resolve to keep it from overtaking his limbs.
“And yet, Corban, we will have to get a fresh sample of the serum. Because I am most interested in sharing this—these new passions—with my wife.”
A sharp rap came from the other side of the door. And then he smelled it: copper and salt.
Blood.
“Come!”
Two guardsmen entered the chamber. One of them, the taller of the two, carried a sack, the mouth of it gathered in his fist.
“My lord.”
Saric took the sack from him, hefted it once as though weighing it, and then emptied it with a heave in Corban’s direction.
The head of an old man rolled out. It lolled before coming to rest faceup. The eyes were open with an unlikely mixture of fear and amazement.
“That’s him?”
“The keeper, yes,” the taller one said. The other, who looked far stronger, glanced at Corban.
“He’s the last, then.”
“The last that we know of. Besides the one you have in the dungeons.”
“The vial. Where is the blood?”
The guard hesitated. “The old man found him.”
“Found who?”
“The son of Elias. The keeper passed it to him, before we could get it.”
“You’re saying a dead keeper’s son has the blood.”
The guardsman nodded.
Saric let out a slow, controlled breath. “You saw this.”
“Yes.”
The blood was rumored to be superior to the Chaos serum Saric had received. It would return the one who took it to the fully devolved state of chaotic man. A reawakening, to be precise, more complete than the one he was now experiencing. Whether it actually had such properties remained to be seen, but at least one thing now was certain: It existed.
“You know where he will go?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve had him under surveillance for years, since the death of his father.”
“Find him. Get the blood. If I don’t have his head by day’s end tomorrow, I’ll have yours.”
Chapter Four
Rom thought the familiar sight of the narrow lane behind the houses on his block would calm the hammer of his heart. He expected the modest homes on Piera Street, with their cracked paint and old brick, to set right the axis of a world suddenly jarred askew.
They didn’t.
The slim houses with their straight sides and asphalt shingles seemed at strange odds to him, even against the mundane sounds of barking dogs and someone replacing the lid on a metal trash bin.
He glanced back twice as he ran down the left side of the drive, then slowed near the outbuilding of the fourth house. The paint on the outbuilding had peeled to a nondescript gray, though the sill of the lone window was new and still almost white.
Rom’s workshop, inherited from his father.
His father, a simple artisan like him. Was what the old man said even possible, that his father had been one of these keepers?
Not twenty feet away, he could see the back of the home he shared with his mother. Light shone through the kitchen window, which was cracked open. From inside came the sounds of dinner in progress: a spoon scraping the contents from a pot, that pot being set with a clatter in the sink below the window.
No sign of the Citadel Guard.
The familiar form of his mother, Anna, leaned over the sink. His fear began to abate at the sight of her making dinner as though it were any normal night, but it sailed again at the reality that he had just committed a capital offense.
What would she say when he told her? Would she turn him in? She was obligated by Order to do so, but he didn’t think she would—not if she knew they would kill him. To disobey Order was a fearful thing, the courting of Hades. But to aid or introduce death to your own flesh and blood was equally fearful, akin to bringing death on oneself. It was a conflict of fears that the Order couldn’t resolve, no matter that assembly services preached obedience regularly.
He glanced down at the muslin-wrapped box in his hand. It felt glued there, stuck tight in the clasp of fingers that had forgotten how to unclench. He had to get control of himself, to think.
Rom rounded the small building, digging in his pocket for his key ring. He found it and quickly unlocked the shop. Flipped the light switch.
No guardsmen waiting to kill him.
He latched the door behind him and ga
zed at the trappings of his life, oddly irrelevant now in the face of crime: the distressed worktable in the center, the equally weathered workbench along the wall. The lathe, the bins of wood and metal scraps he’d salvaged from other projects and abandoned buildings. The workshop was just as he’d left it that morning, even down to the half-finished cup of coffee on the workbench.
He glanced at the tattered chair in the corner, the one with the permanent dent in the seat cushion. It was where Avra sat when she came to visit after she was done for the day in her father’s laundry shop.
Avra. Again, he tried to picture what she would say if she knew what he had done. Because of their association, she would soon fear for herself even more than she already did, which was saying much.
But right now he had his own fears to contend with.
He walked to the worktable, set the box down. One thing he knew: He couldn’t run from the Order forever. They would find him and kill him because of a mysterious vial, the importance of which he couldn’t begin to grasp.
He wet a rag and wiped blindly at the dried blood on his face, then threw the rag into the trash. He paused, grabbed the rag back out of the trash, bundled the box in it, and pushed it to the bottom of the bin.
After exchanging his dirtied jacket for another one lying across the back of the chair, he headed out of the workshop to the house.
Inside, the glow of a lone electric light illuminated the kitchen. Another lit the small living room toward the front of the house. These were the two small extravagances they afforded themselves, those two lights that would be replaced by candles as soon as dinner was over.
In the kitchen, Anna retrieved two glasses from the cabinet. A secondary school teacher, she had always been considered wise and was often sought out by her students for advice. “If Bliss truly exists in the hereafter,” Rom’s father had once said, “your mother will be the first to receive it.”
And then he had gone on to investigate for himself. That was five years ago.
“How was your day?” Anna said to Rom over her shoulder.
Stew steamed from a bowl at the center of the small kitchen table. But rather than soothe, the smell of it only turned his stomach.
“And take off that old jacket before you sit down. Didn’t you at least wear your good one to basilica?”
When he didn’t respond, she glanced up, struck by his frozen silence. “Rom? What’s the matter with you?” She set down the glasses and came to him. “Are you ill?”
“Something…” He cleared his throat. “Something happened today.”
“What do you mean, something? And what happened to your head?” She pushed back his bangs and leaned in to examine him.
“I was coming home from basilica and there was an old man waiting for me on the way home. He said he knew Father.”
Her brow arched, but she remained her stoic self. It took a lot to awaken Mother’s fear, a trait she’d passed on to him. “Many people knew your father,” she said, as if to say, So what?
The place settings on the table were as clean and vacant as fresh faces. What he wouldn’t give for it to be any normal dinner on any normal day.
“I thought he was crazy, but then the Citadel Guard came. They must have been following him—”
“The Citadel Guard?”
“He said Father didn’t die of fever, but that he was killed.”
“But that’s not true.”
“He gave me a box—the same one he said Father was killed for. He made me take it. And then the Citadel Guard…”
Her gaze held steady, and she said nothing.
“Mother, they had a knife.” A tremor had come into Rom’s voice. “I watched them cut his throat, there in the alley. They killed him.”
Now she paled, showing the first signs of a fear not even she could suppress.
“You must be mistaken.”
“I watched it! I saw his blood spill out.”
She hesitated, then said quickly, “His path was his to follow. As was your father’s. Neither is any of your concern. None of it. Remember that and this will all pass.” She turned back toward the table and then hesitated. “I trust you discussed these things with the guard.”
So then, here it was. The mistake that would surely earn him his death.
“No.”
Anna froze.
“I ran.”
She turned back, her face a white slate.
“I dropped my bag,” Rom said. “They know who I am.”
For several long seconds, they stared at each other, speaking with their eyes what was now painfully obvious. In this one simple act, Rom had done the unthinkable. He had forever altered not only his life, but hers.
“So they know where you live,” his mother said.
“Yes.”
He felt powerless to stop the fear slicing through his mind. If such a wise and reasoning person as his mother was afraid for her life upon hearing what he’d done, how much more should he fear for his own?
“You should not have run.”
“I know.”
The words hung between them.
“Don’t fear, Mother. I’m going. When they come, there will be nothing here to cast suspicion on you. They won’t hurt you.”
“Yes, you should go.”
He carried the greatest respect for her. He honored her in the way the Order prescribed. And although her living or dying was really none of his concern, he felt obligated to show his commitment by removing her from suspicion when they came for him. He had no business affecting her journey with his own mistakes. Her request that he leave was her way of saying he must take his own journey—with its consequences—without affecting her own.
“But before I leave, I need to know. Did anyone ever call Father a keeper ?”
“A keeper? What is that? I’ve never heard the term.”
“Then he hid himself from you as well?”
“Your father’s path was his path. Whether he was killed or whether he died—what concern is it really to either of us? Our responsibility right now is to love one another enough to do what is best. To keep Order and ensure our own proper passing. Perhaps to meet in the afterlife.”
Love. Truly, Mother and he loved each other, for what was love but the obligation of loyalty?
“I’ll get the box and go.”
She went very still. “You still have this box.”
“Yes.”
“You brought it to our home?”
“It’s in the workshop.”
“You must report it immediately! Give it to them and tell them your having it was a mistake.”
“They’ll never believe me. The time for that is past. I ran, Mother. They chased me for a long time.”
She averted her eyes, stepped to a chair, and sat carefully, staring off toward the window.
“I’ll leave now,” Rom said.
“No.” She looked at him. “It’s too late. Go get the box. We’re both at risk now. We’ll take it to the Citadel together.”
She pushed up from her chair, looked around her, and then started to untie her apron. “We’ll go. We’ll take it to the Citadel and clear this up.”
She seemed sure of herself. In the face of her confident loyalty to Order, her unquestioning regard for compliance, his fear eased. She was right. It was the right thing to do. It was what he should have done from the beginning.
“I’ll get my coat,” she said. “Go get the box.”
Rom went out the back, not bothering to shut the door behind him. Inside the workshop, he dug the box from the waste bin.
It was the box that had determined his father’s fate and would now determine his own. His fingers tingled at the thought and he wondered if he would ever know its meaning. The question was cut short by a scream.
Rom’s heart seized. It had come from the direction of the house.
Another scream cut through the night air. His mother’s. Raised, muffled voices followed in its wake.
He dropped the box an
d spun toward the door. What Rom did next did not come from a place of reason or wisdom or even honor. He simply reacted, without thought, tearing for the house before he knew that his legs were even moving.
He flew up the steps to the back porch, crashed through the open doorway into the kitchen, and then pulled up sharply. There in the entrance to the dining room stood a guardsman with his back to Rom. A knife was in his fist, pointed at the floor.
It was the second time that day he’d seen such a sight, and this time it struck him as even more surreal than the first. These images were not meant to exist. Not in real life, not in front of any decent man’s eyes, not in his home.
The guardsman with the blade glanced over his shoulder, saw Rom, and turned to face him.
“There you are.” He was a thick-faced man with flat lips and dark eyebrows, holding the knife as if it were a natural extension of his arm. “Bring her out!”
Two other guardsmen, also bearing knives, hauled his mother around the corner, each holding her up by one of her arms. Her dress was red from a trail of blood that flowed from a three-inch gash in her right cheek.
This was his mother, frozen by terror. Gone was her customary cloak of wisdom or any pretence of surety. She was visibly shaking in their grasp.
“Rom…” Her lips, stretched thin, were quivering. Her eyes pleaded as though she were a child.
The door behind Rom opened, and with a quick glance he saw that two more men had entered the house. He was surrounded.
“Please don’t let them kill me!” She hung between the guards, her words devolving into terrified sobs.
Rom saw it all in still frames, the inevitability of it all. He was going to die. As was his mother.
Oddly, for the moment at least, Rom felt no fear. He felt nothing at all.
“You feel that, boy?” The thick-faced guard lifted his blade and pressed it to his mother’s throat. “You feel the fingers of fear wrapping around your heart?”
Blood seeped over the blade’s edge where it bit into the skin of her neck.
“You feel it because you have no doubt that what you see with your own eyes will also happen to you.”
Fear found Rom like a fist to the throat.