by Ted Dekker
Without thinking, Rom swung his sword to fend off the objection. His blade hissed through the air, missing Triphon by only an inch as the man leaped back.
His friend stared at him, stunned. “What are you doing?”
“Why did you let her die?” Rom cried. He could hardly hear himself. “You swore to keep her safe!”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Rom. Please—”
“She’s dead!” Spittle and snot sprayed the air with his outburst. “She’s dead!”
Triphon’s face was set and red. He barged forward, grabbed the blade from Rom’s hand, and thrust it at the hacked-up body. “He is your enemy, Rom. Saric killed Avra!”
But Rom no longer cared who had killed Avra. Only that she was dead, and dead under Triphon’s watch.
He threw himself at the man, who jumped out of the way. Rom instinctively spun back, blinded by rage. But before he could rush him again, Triphon leaped forward and swung the blade at the fallen corpse’s bloody neck, severing his head from his body in one slashing blow.
“He is your enemy!” Triphon cried, and he swung again, this time taking off the man’s right arm. Without a moment’s pause, he leaped over to one of the other fallen corpses and buried his sword into his prone body, shrieking.
He stood back, panting. A soft sobbing sound reached into Rom’s heavy world. But Rom’s eyes were back on Avra’s body. He’d felt the terrible curse of death once already, when he’d wept over his mother’s body only hours after being awakened by the blood.
He wavered, feeling that same hammer now, crushing his nerves with even greater brutality than before. This was the great terror eradicated by Order. Nothing could compare to this mockery of love. If there was peace in death, it left only horrifying pain behind.
“Jonathan!” Triphon whispered.
Rom stepped over to Avra’s body, sobbing, only vaguely aware that Triphon was running toward a rock. The boy was there, curled up in a ball, crying.
But Jonathan was alive. Avra lay dead at Rom’s feet. He sank to his knees by her body and set his hand on her leg.
Dear Avra! Oh Maker, Avra, I’m so sorry.
Triphon was down on one knee beside the boy, who was weeping.
“I don’t know what to do,” Jonathan said.
But it hardly mattered now. Avra was dead.
“It’s all my fault,” the boy was saying. A bird cawed above them. “They killed my mother, didn’t they? It’s all my fault.”
“We don’t know that.”
“But Rom does.”
A pang of sorrow for the boy joined Rom’s own, but then it was gone. He couldn’t think straight much less feel straight. His mind was being shut down by this ruthless sorrow. It was all wrong.
“Rom?”
Triphon was calling to him, wanting to know if he knew the fate of the boy’s mother.
“She’s dead,” he said.
The boy hesitated a moment, then pushed himself up, turned his back, and limped away from them. His gentle sobs drifted up the canyon.
It was all terribly, terribly wrong, Rom managed to think.
Then he slumped to his side beside Avra, wept into the sand, and lost himself to the pain.
“We will bury her here,” Rom said, stopping his horse at the top of the hill. The sun was well past its zenith, but in Rom’s mind time had ceased to exist. He’d wept over her body, arms thrown around her, head resting on her belly.
At some point he had risen, stiff-legged and numb, loaded her body on her horse, and led Triphon and the boy from the canyon without a word.
He would not bury her in that chasm of death. Not among those bloody corpses in the sand.
He dismounted. Triphon pulled up behind him. Jonathan sat on his own horse off a way, on the next rise. The boy blamed himself, and in some ways so did Rom. Avra had given herself for the boy as much as for him.
It took them twenty minutes to dig a shallow grave using their swords, Rom weeping all the while. They were in Hades.
They lay Avra’s body next to the grave and Rom sank to his knees.
“We have to leave,” Triphon said. He held out a knife.
“What’s this?”
“The boy said something to me in the barn. I didn’t understand it then, but I do now. He told me that he thought we should protect her heart.”
“Protect her heart?” Rom cried. “Protect her heart? She’s dead!”
Triphon swallowed and nodded. “She’s the first of the living to die. Keep her heart.”
Rom stared at him through a prism of tears. “You…expect me to cut her heart out? Have you lost your mind?”
Triphon flipped the blade on end and thrust the handle toward Rom. “Take it, Rom. Don’t leave her heart behind.”
The knife was as long as his forearm. Straight, simple.
“Just c—” He could barely say it.
“Cut it out.”
He stared at her chest, horrified. How could such an innocent boy make such a grisly suggestion? But no—he had said only to protect it. It was Triphon who wanted to take the heart.
His hands trembled.
And yet…there was mad logic to it. However disturbing, wouldn’t it honor Avra to take her heart and treasure it always?
Rom cried out, sank the blade into the open wound, cut the organ free, and lifted it from her body. It was cold; thickening blood ran from his fingers.
He wrapped her heart in a white cloth and set it in a glass food jar the boy’s mother had packed in one of the saddlebags.
“Avra’s heart,” Triphon said quietly. “We will always remember.”
But to Rom the pronouncement sounded profane. She was his to remember, not theirs.
When they’d covered Avra’s body with dirt, Rom took a large stone and rolled it to the head of the grave. He etched with his knife on the rock:
Life Has Been Swallowed by Death
My Heart Is Gone
Sweet Avra
It was all he could manage.
Triphon led them north toward the ruins. The boy rode behind and to the left, slumped in his saddle, silent. Crushed.
Rom followed them, carrying Avra’s heart in his saddlebag. His own heart was dying.
Perhaps it was already dead.
* * *
Triphon rode in silence, mind gone to the turn of events that had so drastically reset the playing field.
Avra…dead.
Rom…near dead, riding like a ghost fifty paces behind him. A darkness had swallowed his friend—not just sorrow, but true rage that threatened to compromise him.
He could almost understand the sorrow; the fact that Neah had abandoned them in the night still followed him like a black cloud. But if they had a leader, it was Rom. He was the one who’d driven them through every turn to this point. And with Avra gone, leaving only himself as a balance in the mix, they were as good as lost.
Did this leave him to take charge?
Charge of what? Saving the boy, yes, but Rom had been convinced that the boy must be brought to power. How were they supposed to accomplish such an impossible task now? Never mind that—how had they ever expected to bring him to power?
One thing was now certain, even if Rom was lost to them: The boy was no ordinary child. He’d known that Avra would die, hadn’t he? Perhaps not how or when, but Triphon was sure that he’d intuitively known it, perhaps from those dreams of his. He’d all but said so in his mother’s barn.
“One day,” Jonathan had whispered, “everyone will remember her.”
He looked back and saw that Jonathan was staring at him as if trying to determine whether he could be trusted. Maker knew Rom had ignored the boy in the wake of Avra’s death, not that Triphon blamed him. Neah had cursed the pain the blood had brought them. Maybe she was on to something. The emotions of Chaos had been forbidden for good reason.
The boy nudged his horse and slowly pulled abreast. He looked so fragile on the massive beast. It was strange to think that this simple b
oy carried any hope, a vessel for the blood that might awaken a dead world. Tears had dried on his dusty face, leaving small trails down his cheeks. His eyes were wide—the poor boy was frightened. And no wonder.
“I’m sorry,” Triphon said softly. “No boy should have to live through this.”
Fresh tears gathered in the child’s eyes.
“Don’t be bothered by Rom, Jonathan. He loved Avra. He’ll come around.”
“We need a keeper,” Jonathan said.
“A keeper?” Triphon blinked. “Your mother said to find the nomads, right?”
“But we need a keeper.” Jonathan looked at him. “Do you know where the keepers are?”
Triphon scratched the back of his neck. “As far as I know there’s only one keeper left alive. He’s in the dungeons at the Citadel.”
“Then I think you should get him.”
“Get him? He’s in the Citadel, I said.”
“A keeper will know what to do.”
It seemed to be like this with the boy: He knew some things but not most. At least he seemed to be aware of what he didn’t know. So if he said they needed a keeper, maybe he was right about that.
Triphon looked ahead at the winding canyon. Listen to me, I’m deferring to a nine-year-old boy.
“All right,” he said. “But just how are we supposed to get to the keeper?”
“Ask Rom. He’ll know, won’t he?”
Triphon glanced back at his friend, slumped in his saddle. They hadn’t talked about what had transpired at the Citadel, but Rom had sneaked in twice now.
Triphon could get them in easily enough. Between the two of them he was sure they could find a way into the dungeons. But breaking the keeper out would be a different matter. They would need inside help.
“We’re running out of time, and that’s a long way back.”
Once again it struck Triphon that this boy was placing his full trust in them. If the vellum was true and Jonathan was the boy it hoped for, he and Rom were now his only hope.
Unless they could get to the keeper.
“I’m sworn to protect you, Jonathan. I promised Rom I wouldn’t leave you. You’re sure we need a keeper?”
The boy nodded, fixated on this one task. “He’ll know what to do.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
So all is as it should be.” Pravus stood on the top of the Citadel tower overlooking Byzantium at midnight. A rare moon shone overhead. Saric wondered if he should kill him then. Sooner or later, the man who’d brought him the power of life would have to die.
But Pravus wasn’t a fool easily killed. Even now he likely had an assassin positioned to take down Saric at any sign of betrayal.
“My men failed to capture the boy or his protectors,” Saric said.
The master alchemist stared out at the calm night. “You think I don’t know? I don’t need to remind you that your own life hangs in the balance.”
“You’ve made that clear enough.”
“They’ll come tomorrow. You must be ready for them.”
“Let them come,” Saric said quietly. “We will be ready, and Feyn will be crowned Sovereign.”
“We can take no chances. Control your wild cravings for flesh.”
Did he know about Feyn? No, they were his thoughts alone.
“You underestimate me, old man.”
“How can I underestimate a man who’s failed to end the life of one boy?”
“Soon the world will gain its true Sovereign. And a new Age of Chaos will begin.” He looked directly at the master alchemist. “And you will learn never to question me again.”
* * *
Triphon’s heart hammered. Returning to the Citadel and finding Rowan, following Rom’s rather indifferent retelling of his own methods, had been a relatively easy task. But convincing the senate leader to listen had not. The man had paced and wrung his hands for half an hour.
Rowan was forbidden by Saric from any audience with Feyn, he kept saying. This business that Rom had opened his eyes to had haunted him with nightmares.
If Saric was the threat, then surely the keeper, Saric’s greatest enemy, stood with Feyn, not against her. In fact, the keeper might be Feyn’s only hope for surviving any conspiracy that Saric had hatched. If the evidence that both Rom and now Triphon had laid out for Rowan turned out to be true, and Saric intended on succeeding Feyn as Sovereign as the new law required, Feyn’s life was indeed in terrible danger.
Triphon thought he had done a good job with that.
From Rowan he learned of the senate leader’s efforts to present a motion in the senate to subvert a standing Sovereign. But it had not worked. It had been hard enough to delay the standing Sovereign’s command to kill all nine-year-old boys. Saric had raged when he learned of Rowan’s actions and threatened to execute him for treason. But there was hardly time for such a command before the inauguration. And so he’d accused Rowan of putting Feyn’s life in grave danger, then stormed out of his office.
“He doesn’t know that I am aware of all that he is doing,” Rowan said. “But now I live under a death sentence.”
“Then help me get the keeper out,” Triphon had said. “He poses no threat to you or to Feyn, only to Saric. You might be saving your own life, man. Help me!”
Rowan had finally given him what he needed, if only out of fear for the Order and, ultimately, his own life. This was the worst, and most selfish, side of death, Triphon thought.
Rowan would not—still did not dare—attend him directly. Luckily, five centuries without threat or incident allowed Triphon to make his way into the dungeon, wearing only a simple priest’s robe for disguise, without raising an alarm.
Following Rowan’s instructions, he’d made his way through the back entrance, which he knew all too well, and then down into the dungeons. It had taken him only a few minutes to locate the cavern that held the keeper.
A single torch lit the barred cell. Snores emanated from behind it.
“Hello?”
The old man snorted once in his sleep, then settled back into his dreams, oblivious.
“Wake up, old man.”
“Eh?” The man jerked his head up, and Triphon thought he looked like nothing so much as a giant rodent caught eating bread crumbs in the dark corner.
This was the keeper? First a frail, crippled boy to save the world, and now this ancient carcass to guide them? With Rom lost to his own anguish and Triphon himself the only one with his apparent wits about him…They were on a fool’s mission.
“You’re the one they call the keeper?”
The man cleared a hitch in his throat, then spoke in a scratchy voice. “Says who?”
“Says me. Triphon, friend of Rom Sebastian and the boy that he rides with.” He would see what kind of response that brought.
“The boy?”
“Yes, the boy.”
The man straightened, suddenly fully awake and fully engaged. “What boy?”
“You tell me.”
“You…You’ve found him?”
“I don’t know, have we?”
The old man grasped at the rough-hewn wall and pulled himself to his feet. He took a step forward and made a weak attempt to wipe drool from his bearded mouth with the back of a sleeve.
“Rom found the promised boy?”
“If by promised boy you mean Jonathan, a cripple who has dreams and—”
“I knew it!” The keeper flew at the bars and gripped them with white knuckles like a man possessed. “He’s alive?”
Alive?
“Of course. Did you think we dug up a corpse?”
“I mean alive! Alive, man! Is he alive?”
So then this was certainly the keeper.
“He was crying when I left him.”
The old man sucked in a breath.
“His mother is dead. So is Avra, killed by Saric’s guard. Rom’s lost out there with a broken heart. The boy told me that we need a keeper.”
“He did?” The man blinked, eyes round with
wonder. “Did he say my name?”
“No. Are there any other keepers I should fetch instead?”
He shook the bars, rushed to the latch, and rattled his cage again. “Get me out, man! Get me out of the blasted prison. I have to go to my master.”
Triphon reached into his pocket, grasped the large key Rowan had given him, and stepped up to the latch. “He’s not what you might think. Certainly no master that—”
“Hurry, man!”
“Keep your voice down!”
The man’s hand reached through the bars and snagged Triphon’s collar. “Do you know what this means? Do you have the slightest clue how history has conspired to bring us to this single moment of hope once again?”
“If you don’t let go so I can spring you, you’re going to pass it unconscious.”
The man’s frantic eyes searched his as he let go of his cloak.
“Are you one of the five? Alive?”
Hearing it like that filled Triphon with a renewed sense of purpose. “I am.”
“And your name?”
“Triphon.”
“Then I am your greatest friend, Triphon. Now, get me out of here and take me to the boy.”
Chapter Forty
Dawn spilled like a wound along the horizon, seeping crimson into the eastern sky.
They had failed. Avra lay dead, buried in a hilltop grave.
Rom passed the last hours of the night on the top of the cliffs, grateful for the darkness and drone of the wind, the two together like a shroud over the mind.
But the wind had faded with the darkness, and the pain had intensified with the light. He was exhausted, but sleep refused to offer him any peace.
From his vantage point he could see the embers of the fire below in the canyon. At a short distance from the camp, the shallow pool that had provided them with water reflected the russet of the rising sun.
The boy had told Triphon they needed a keeper. Evidently Rom was no longer qualified to lead them. Not that he disagreed. He was swallowed by resentment. The whole business of ushering the boy to power to bring life to the masses sat like a bitter pill in his throat. What good was life that brought such terrible pain? His thoughts were unfair, true enough, but Rom could not deny them.