by Ted Dekker
She crossed her arms. “Tell me about the keepers. About Talus, this first keeper. How has your order kept these secrets for so long? The boy, if he exists—what exactly is he supposed to do? The vellum said he must come to power. What power? As Sovereign?”
“What you are really asking is what’s to become of you.”
“I know what’s to become of me. I want to know what you think should become of me.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you.”
She gave a sharp laugh. “Why?”
“I’ve taken a vow of silence.”
“Then you don’t have to worry, do you?” she said. “If I’m dead, I will be as silent as the grave.”
“Here we are, two corpses, talking. What use is there in that?”
“Then you don’t claim to have this supposed life of yours?”
He paused. “Not yet. Soon.”
She studied him. Despite his riddles, this old man had a strange way of easing her fears. He spoke of death, but his eyes flashed with knowledge of something wholly other.
“I see the glint in your eyes, and it isn’t from the light. You’re no idiot and yet you speak in riddles. You sound like an alchemist.”
He turned back to the window. “Perhaps because I am,” he said.
“An alchemist?”
He folded his hands behind him. “I am a keeper. A protector and warrior of the truth. But the keepers were alchemists first and foremost. What I know of alchemy would confound your brother’s finest peers. That said, make no mistake: I can swing a sword with the best. Now that he’s dead, I will admit that Alban, the keeper your brother killed only days ago, was a better fighter than I. Well, some days.”
“Alchemist or not, you’re a throwback to the Age of Chaos. Everything that stood against Order!”
“Yes!” he thundered, twisting back with a clenched fist. “In my day I could have taken out ten of those guards out front! And get it straight: Chaos is life! As much as Order is death.”
“Blasphemy!”
“Truth!”
“Believe me, if there is truth, I would be the first to embrace it,” she said. “But there is none here.”
The keeper stared at her. A slight smile toyed with the corner of his mouth. “That’s why I chose you, dear Feyn, Sovereign-to-be or not. That’s why I told Rom to seek you out. You have the unwavering and impeccable character of a true Sovereign. You know nothing but loyalty and allegiance to what you believe is the truth. You’re a slave to it. All your life you have been trained to bow only to the truth.”
“To the Order.”
“Yes, to your Order. But what if I am right?”
“You could never prove it.”
“And if the boy exists?”
“Even if he does, how could you bring him to power? What do you propose to do, kill me?”
“As I said, I’ve sworn an oath of silence.”
“Then break your oath!”
He stepped forward, eyes bright. “There’s one way only for me to bring you into confidence.”
“What way?”
He stopped in front of her, his gaze searching her own. Now she could see clearly: His were not the eyes of a lunatic.
“Renounce all you know,” he said with stale breath. “Relinquish your right to all that you hold sacred. To Order. To all you have been taught to fear.”
“That’s heresy.”
“Heresy,” he mimicked. “Because to do so is to gain Hades itself?”
“Yes.”
“There’s your fear talking. What you don’t know is that you’re already in Hades!”
His words seemed to sink to the pit of her stomach. Had she risked her eternity in drinking the blood, in knowing its wild throes? “Perhaps the blood takes one to Hades,” she said quietly. “Perhaps it ruins the soul.”
“Ruins the soul?” He gave a gruff and mirthless laugh. He had mastered the mimic as well as she. “If you drank it, you’d know better.”
“I drank it, and I don’t!”
He blinked. “You—you took it?”
“I drank the poison, if that’s what you mean.”
“How can that be? There’s too much fear in you!”
“It seems that I drank less than the allotted portion. The effects wore off.”
His face had gone white. “You took the final portion?” he rasped. “What was it like? You’ve tasted life? Hope? Love? Surely you felt these things!”
“Love?” she said faintly. If she tried, she could remember the way she’d cupped Rom’s face, the way she dashed up the knoll…in the same way that she remembered what she ate for breakfast. But it no longer stirred her heart.
He grabbed her by her shoulders and gave her a shake. “Love, woman! Did you feel it?”
“Take your hands off me!”
He released her and stepped back. “Forgive me, but you must tell me. I’ve waited my whole life to feel what you have felt.”
“I can’t,” she said, stepping away from him.
“I’ve protected the truth my whole life; I have sworn my life to what you’ve come by so cheaply—and you dictate terms to me?”
Feyn turned back. “I’ll tell you everything that happened to me, but only in exchange for this fairy tale of how you plan to bring the boy to power.” And then she added, “Assuming such a boy even exists.”
That quieted him.
“Was it the blood that made you so crafty, or were you like this before?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I’m to be Sovereign.”
“Then tell me this: In that moment that you were alive, did you realize that you’d been dead all your life?”
“I was intoxicated! It broke my sense of Order.”
“Because your Order is not life!”
“So you’ve said. The vellum claims the boy must destroy Order—”
“No, Talus prophesied that the boy would free us from the Order.” The keeper grabbed his beard and dismissed her with a flip of his hand. “But why am I telling you this? I can’t.”
“And yet you must.”
“So that you can kill the boy?”
“What? Of course not. It’s against Order to murder. On that, I give you my oath as Sovereign. But what’s this? We might as well be talking about a mythical creature.”
He searched her face. “You’ve tasted life. There must be a spark of life left in you. It can’t have left you completely. And so a part of you knows. Knows why we’ve gone to such lengths. You deny it because you are dutiful and because you will be Sovereign and because you fear for your eternity, and for a thousand other reasons, but somewhere within you, you know. What I wouldn’t give for one ounce of that blood,” he said, murmuring now, seemingly to himself.
A part of her wanted him to be right. But he was wrong. She didn’t know.
“You see an old man gone mad, reeking in his own rags,” he said. “But I would seize a sword and fight to my last breath—spill every drop of my worthless blood—to defend the truth. And so would you, dear Feyn. Because when you know what we know, what I know even in my own dead state, there’s no going back. There is nothing else. Whatever it takes, we live for this truth, this hope—even if we can’t feel it.”
“You’re rambling, old man.”
“You know it, girl. I know you do,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’m telling you, I don’t.”
“She knows it,” he said, murmuring again. “If I can be a keeper, then by the Maker, so can she.” He glanced up. “And so you will have your deal.”
“My deal?”
“Yes. I will tell you more than I’ve ever told a single soul, dead or alive, because by drinking the blood you surely became one of us even if you didn’t know it.”
“Tell me what?”
His eyes bore into hers.
“Tell me what it was like to drink the blood. Then I will tell you precisely how the boy will come to power.”
Chapter Thirty-two
The door
to Neah’s apartment hung open. It swung on its hinges with the wind as though pulled by an invisible diaphragm.
Rom stood rooted to the floor, breathing a prayer. Twilight had brought out a chorus of crickets, but no other sound came from inside the house.
He’d spent most of an hour with the boy, there in the countryside, basking in mystery, believing Avra was safe. But now as he stepped into the living room, his heart froze.
The apartment had been ransacked. Neah’s glass vases were broken on the floor. Chairs lay askew. Cushions torn open. Stuffing everywhere. So much for Neah’s soothing and fearless world.
“Avra?”
Nothing.
He ran to the kitchen, crushing shards of china underfoot. Open packages of meat and wilted vegetables covered the floor.
Panic. “Avra!”
Every room told the same story, of the search for one thing.
The blood.
Where were Triphon and Neah? And what about Avra? He couldn’t be sure that Feyn had been able to free her. For all he knew, they were all being held captive.
“Avra!”
Then he saw it. There, scratched right into the surface of the counter, where he had kissed Avra last:
R—
The place you hid.
—A
He blew out a breath. She got out. They must have all gotten out.
He helped himself to a knife from the kitchen, tucking it into the waist of his trousers.
The closet in the back room hung open in similar disarray, coats and cloaks spilled onto the floor. Another priest’s robe hung among several articles of Neah’s personal clothing. He grabbed it, rolled it into a bundle under his arm, and then left, racing down the outside stairway. At the bottom, a neighbor unlocking her front door turned to stare at him as he rushed by.
He wondered how many others saw him through their windows, were even now hurrying to report him.
He ran.
Rom unfurled the robe as he descended into the underground station, pulled the cowl up over his head. Midday traffic was thicker than usual just two days before inauguration, but no one paid attention to the priest who purchased the single pass and rode with his head bowed in pious prayer.
All the way out to the southeast edge of the city, he thought of Avra, of Feyn.
Of the boy.
He knew without a doubt that he would give his life for Jonathan if required. Many keepers already had. For the first time, he could think of his mother’s death with a measure of comfort, knowing that her death had been for something. For everything, really.
And now? Avra waited for him, and Feyn was somewhere in the Citadel.
Out on the street, it was all he could do to walk sedately. But as soon as he turned down the old cobbled street, he quickened his pace and then broke into a full-out run. Down to the end of the lane, to the old print shop with the boarded-up windows.
The splintered board that had ripped his jacket was gone, pulled away by stronger hands. A gaping hole yawned in its place. He glanced around and, seeing no one, ducked through the opening into darkness.
“Avra?”
Dripping water echoed from an unseen leaking pipe.
“Triphon?”
He saw, from the periphery of his vision, the small form rushing him from the side before he heard her. Avra flew into his arms with a sob. Relief hot as lifeblood itself flooded him. Only then did he realize he was shaking.
He buried his face in Avra’s hair. Breathed deeply. Thank you. Thank you. He was only vaguely aware of Triphon standing nearby, of Neah off to his side. He had never felt such gratitude in his life. And then he pulled Avra away to look at her and his heart stuttered. Her face was marked by a dark, angry bruise.
“What happened?”
She pressed back in against him. “Don’t let go.”
He wrapped his arms around her slight frame. “Who did this? Did Saric do that? Triphon! I told you to keep her safe!”
“It was my idea.” Avra said. “I wanted to go.”
“I’ll kill him.”
“It’s nothing!” Avra said. “You’re safe. I’m alive.”
She was right. But it did little to quell the rage.
“Tell me this is all he did to you.”
“It is,” she said. “He did it knowing he had to let me go. Feyn exchanged herself for me.”
So it had worked. Feyn had gotten back.
And Rom had found the boy.
Rom let out an uneven breath. “Never again. You can’t ever do anything so stupid again!”
“She saved you, man,” Triphon said. “She risked her neck for you!”
“And you, Triphon. I swear if you ever let one hair on her body come to harm—”
“You’ll what? Beat me down? With what—your pen?”
“Try me.”
“Stop it!” Avra said. “What’s this, Rom? Not even a kiss for me?”
He kissed her, hard, desperate for the warmth of her, the taste of her, the feel of her lips against his own. “I love you,” he whispered into her hair. “I love you. You hear me? I’ll love you forever.”
Avra wrapped her arms around him and buried her face in his neck.
“I thought they took you,” Neah said, moving toward them, her arms wrapped around herself, her eyes seeming too large in her head. “I thought they had you.”
“They didn’t. And I got to Feyn. But I couldn’t get word to you in time. I had to get her out of the Citadel.”
“You—you got to her?” she said faintly. “What happened?”
He told them everything. Barging into Feyn’s room, escaping the Citadel, the ride through the night. The blood he had given Feyn. Her decoding of the vellum and Talus’s account…that the world was dead.
“Dead?” Triphon blinked. “Dead how?”
“Where there’s no capacity to feel and love, where the soul of humanity itself has been stripped from the genetic code, there’s no life,” Rom said.
Triphon fell back against the wall. “Dung hills. The whole world? A world of walking…corpses?”
“Pretty much.”
“And us?” Neah asked.
“The blood brought us back. For now. It isn’t permanent.”
Neah glanced at Triphon, but then stared at Rom, as though just now understanding him. “What did you say? It isn’t? How long do we have?”
“I don’t know. A year? Ten? Months?”
“That long?”
“What do you mean, that long? It’s life!”
“How can it be life if it wears off?” she demanded. “For all you know what we’ve felt is only the beginning of it. For all you know we could become monsters in a week! Don’t you feel the pain?”
Rom hadn’t considered the possibility. But surely, the vellum would have pointed this out. Or the keeper.
Then again, the boy’s dreams disturbed him. What if he saw a future very different from the one predicted in the vellum? Wars, he had said. He had dreamed of war. Talus was an alchemist, not a prophet. His predictions had come from advanced scientific calculations and mathematics in a time when machines could model more than the mind could.
So the future was still uncertain.
“We have to go with what we know. And what we know right now is that we’re alive,” he said.
“What about Feyn?” Avra asked softly. “She didn’t have a full portion.”
“She’s reverted already. But we now have an ally.”
“That’s a pretty powerful ally,” Triphon said.
“And the boy?” Avra said.
“I found him. Out east, on an estate beyond the hamlet of Susin. There’s a road that leads to a small home. He’s there with his nurse and Lila, his mother.”
“You’re sure it’s him?”
“It’s him.”
“How do you know?” Triphon said.
“If you met him…you’d know.”
“He knew about the vellum?”
Rom gave him a curt nod. “But he
knows more than that, too. From his dreams. He knows about us.”
“His dreams? How’s that work?” Triphon said.
“I don’t know, but until I showed him the vellum he thought his dreams were just dreams. But I think somehow he knew. Maker, he’s only nine! I can’t imagine what that’s like.”
“And what does he know from his dreams?”
“Only what I’ve told you. He wouldn’t say more. But he’s a cripple, just like the vellum predicted.”
“I don’t get it,” Triphon said. “How’s a cripple supposed to do…all that he’s supposed to do?”
“Somehow. I don’t know.” How would anyone, for that matter?
“Maybe it’s a mistake.”
“It’s not a mistake. Because he’s also alive.”
“Like us? How can that be?” Avra said.
“He was born with the blood.”
Avra was shivering. When he looked at her she glanced away.
“What is it?”
“There’s something not right with him.”
“He’s the one, I’m telling you! I was there.”
“Not the boy,” she said.
“Then who?” But he knew.
“Saric.” Avra turned her dark gaze toward him. “The boy isn’t the only one alive with some other blood.”
“He’s alive?”
“Not like us. Not like it seems the boy is. More like a monster.” She wouldn’t say more.
Saric, filled with emotion?
The thought sent a chill through Rom, and for the first time he wondered if Feyn was in danger. Surely Saric had plans of his own.
Neah lowered her arms, eyes on the obscured window. “We should go and make our peace with him before he kills us all.”
“Don’t be crazy!” Rom said. “It’s up to us to see the boy into power, not make peace with his enemy.”
“How can one crippled boy be an answer to anything?” she demanded.
Rom wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “Haven’t you been listening? This boy has the power to right all that’s wrong.”
“We have to stop Saric,” Triphon said. “We have to kill him.”
“No. Feyn has to be the one to fix this. She needs to know that I found the boy.”
“How do you know you can trust her? For all we know she’s told Saric everything,” Triphon said.