by Ted Dekker
He’d played his role in finding the boy, and he’d told Triphon how he might find the keeper, but he could not see past this day to the hope the boy might bring.
To his surprise, Triphon had returned with the keeper in the middle of the night.
When he’d arrived, the keeper had rushed up to the boy and fallen to his knees. Then he’d lifted his hands to the sky and cried out his approval. “My eyes have seen the hope to whom I’ve sworn my allegiance. Today all those who have kept this secret knowledge for generations find fulfillment in this lineage of the first keeper, as prophesied.” He’d kissed the boy’s feet.
The keeper looked over at Rom. “And now when Feyn sees us at the inauguration, all will be gained.”
Whatever that could mean, Rom didn’t know.
Jonathan had stood there, shaken by the keeper’s grandiosity. Then the keeper had taken the child’s hand and led him up the canyon, where they spent two hours alone. When they returned the boy’s tears were gone. Wonderment was in his eyes.
He’d stepped away from the fire and walked into the darkness.
“Let him go,” the keeper said.
Rom had listened to the keeper and Triphon through the wee hours, talking about the nomads.
“We knew them from the first days,” the keeper explained, pacing about the fire. “It was the keepers who confirmed what the nomads suspected of the Order’s deception, the keepers who taught them survival. They can go days without water and subsist off the most barren land. And their horses are bred to be as hardy as they are. They come and go like ghosts and move entire camps within an hour.”
“What happens if they find us here?” Triphon asked.
“They already know we’re here, boy. They’re probably watching us now, especially here, near the ruins, which are sacred to them. Every time I’ve ever set foot on these lands, one of them has come to meet me within a day of my arrival.”
“So you’ve been here before.”
“Of course. And now I learn that the boy lived among them for a time as well. I never knew it!”
While Triphon hung on the old man’s words, Rom stewed in his misery. None of it mattered. Not anymore. Soon enough, the keeper would be as much a relic as the knowledge he had sheltered all these years, and the boy would be just another orphan.
He had left them by the fire and come here to face the sunrise alone. The keeper was pacing and talking again, Triphon at his heels with questions. The boy was nowhere to be seen. The old man took a sword from Triphon’s pack and went through a series of motions, wielding it with surprising dexterity. Triphon was quick on his feet with a second weapon, trying to follow the man’s movements.
As though any of it mattered.
The sky to the west was still the dark azure of retreating night. But it was cloudless. The Day of Rebirth would dawn bright and clear in Byzantium. Those in the city would take the bright sky as an omen, unaware that Rebirth was merely an illusion. The priests would pray and believe the Maker had blessed them even as Feyn became Sovereign at the point of Saric’s sword.
Farther down the canyon lay the old ruins, perfectly camouflaged by the land, lost within the outcrops unless one approached up the narrow canyon or looked down on it directly. Rumored to have been a church carved directly into the rock by monks at the end of the Age of Chaos, it was thought to have been destroyed more than four centuries ago. Unknown to the Order, the keepers and nomads held the place as a refuge.
Rom stood on the ledge, warding off a passing notion to throw himself over the edge to the rocks below. He scanned the canyon.
Only then did he notice Jonathan sitting atop a rocky lip across the canyon, looking at him. Rom had believed in that boy, but what had that brought him? Nothing but the bloodied heart of the woman he loved, encased in a household jar.
He shifted his gaze and stared at the horizon. The first edge of the sun was spreading noxious light into the sky. Miles away in Byzantium, bells would soon be tolling.
He glanced back across the canyon. The boy was gone.
The wind lifted and struck a hollow note through the chasm. It was the sound that would keep company with Avra’s grave through the ages. She wouldn’t be there to hear it. Avra, who feared assembly, who feared death more than anything, had now found it.
The ache in Rom’s throat was so terrible that he could not swallow.
The keeper’s mission to protect life; the vellum that promised the day of that life; the boy who would bring that life…Avra’s destiny stood in mockery of it all.
“No.” Rom grunted the word through a clenched jaw. He faced the wind, fists tight now. “No.” Louder this time.
But what difference would any of his denial make? What attention would death pay to his pathetic voice? He was powerless without her.
His shoulders began to shake with unrelenting sobs. His tears blurred the sky. He hung his head and wept, wishing that death would swallow him as well. For the first time since the hour of Avra’s passing, Rom let his tears go. He lifted his chin into the wind, spread his arms, gaped at the sky, and groaned. The groan grew to a wail, ugly and loud, fueled by his hatred of death and its mockery of life.
He had lost them all—his father, his mother—for this. But they, at least, had never tasted the true hope of life. Avra had.
Had she been brought to life for this? Had he? Had his heart been awakened to love and joy and ecstasy only to be dashed by death? He’d been a fool to embrace life. A fool!
He wheeled and strode toward his horse, snapped open the saddlebag, and yanked out the jar holding Avra’s heart. Pulled it out, barely able to see. Unwrapped it from the bloody cloth.
He took the heart in his fist, cold and bloody, and strode to the edge of the cliff, jaw tight. Then he shoved his fist at the sky and screamed. Blood flowed from the heart and ran down his forearms. He gripped it tighter, shaking with rage.
I curse you.
I curse the day that I found life.
He trembled.
If this is the pain that comes with life, I curse that life. Let me join her!
Rom drew a long breath and whispered: “How dare you give me life only to take it. Make me dead. Make me dead once more!”
Only silence answered him.
He walked to his horse, withdrew the keeper’s vellum, and wrapped Avra’s heart in the text that had promised life once again.
It took Rom only fifteen minutes to reach the canyon floor. But it could have been an hour. He no longer cared.
He rode the horse into the camp where the keeper and Triphon were engaged in some kind of debate. The boy sat on a ledge fifty paces closer to the ruins. The keeper was coaxing Triphon toward him. Both held swords. The taller man lunged and Rom stared, sure for a moment that he was about to cleave the old man in two. But the wiry keeper spun away. Only the barest hiss of steel gave away the parry that had saved him.
Triphon saw him and stood straight. “Rom!”
They lowered their weapons as he approached.
Rom dismounted, withdrew the vellum folded around Avra’s lifeless heart, and walked to the keeper. He thrust the heart at the old man.
“If this is what your promise brings, I want none of it.”
The man clasped the bundle. “Come boy, you don’t know what you’re saying.”
Rom spat onto the dry ground at the old man’s feet. “Boy? My mother called me a boy. So did my father, once. They’re both dead. Your promise of life has brought nothing but death.”
The keeper returned his stare.
“You call this life?” Rom cried. “I want to die!” He threw his arms wide. “Kill me!”
“You don’t mean that.”
Rom wasn’t finished.
“You’ve deluded yourself into thinking the ancient words matter, but the truth is, it’s a promise of death. Better to leave them all dead than to give them life and then steal it away.”
The old man handed the bundle to Triphon. “The day will come, Rom, when you wi
ll see all of this differently. When the boy returns as a warrior dressed in a robe of red. White, dipped in blood. His own. I promise you this.”
It made no sense. That boy was no warrior—nor would he ever be. The only sense Rom knew was pain.
The keeper jabbed his finger at the vellum. “Let her heart be a sign of that promise. You will see, you who have life and aren’t grateful; you who speak to an old man who would give his head to see a single day of the life you now have.”
“Keep your words. This pain is no life.”
“You only feel pain because you’re alive, boy!” the keeper thundered. “This is the mystery of it. Life is lived on the ragged edge of that cliff. Fall off and you might die, but run from it and you are already dead!”
“Then I would rather be dead!”
“And Avra’s death will have been in vain. The world fled the precipice of life once. It stripped us all of humanity and established its Order of death. Now you speak like those who conspired to kill every living soul.”
“What do you know? Have you felt this pain?”
The keeper stalled. “No.”
Rom strode past them and headed for the outcrop of rocks that hid the pool on the far side.
“We need you, Rom,” the keeper said behind him. “Our mission is failed unless we go to the inauguration and Feyn looks into your eyes.”
“There is no mission,” Rom said, whirling around.
“I made my promise to her. It’s worthless without you. You yourself made a promise! You have to learn to control those emotions, boy!”
Rom spat on the ground and cast a glare over his shoulder. “I didn’t ask for these emotions! I’ve kept my promise. You have your precious vellum. The boy is alive.” He turned and strode on. “And Avra is dead.”
Chapter Forty-one
In the world, there were seven primary continents. And seven houses that governed them. Seven, for the Maker; seven, the number of perfection.
Byzantium ruled them all.
Now her population of five hundred thousand had swelled to nearly one million. Among them, senators, prelates, each of the continental rulers, and nearly all of the world’s twenty-five thousand royals.
Feyn had been chosen from among all known candidates not by peer or by merit, but by the hand of the Maker himself, according to the twelve-year cycles of Rebirth, which had been completed three times in Vorrin’s forty-year reign. The births of those royals born closest to the tolling of the seventh hour on the seventh day of the seventh month of each new cycle had all been recorded. And she, among the others, had been born closest of all.
According to the Order, a Sovereign must be at least nine years of age to be inaugurated, and eighteen to rule. Feyn’s election had been announced nine years earlier, upon the end of the last cycle, and for nine years she’d prepared to take rule, devoting herself to all matters of Order and loyalty to the truth.
For nine years, the world had awaited this day.
This was the way of Order, and that Order brought peace to the world. Feyn’s rule was to begin a new age of Order, the first time that a Sovereign would be replaced by his own daughter.
The world prepared. Across the globe, the blue light of television screens illuminated the city centers of every continent, broadcasting images of the inauguration in Byzantium.
The observance of Rebirth was required to be witnessed by all, to a man, woman, and child. The passing of authority from one Sovereign to another was among the holiest of events. Across the world, they gathered in the hundreds of thousands in every city to watch and swear aloud their allegiance as Feyn Cerelia took power over the continents of Asiana and Greater Europa, of Nova Albion and Abyssinia, Sumeria, Russe, and Qin.
The most observant had camped by the Processional Way for days. The stands had been filled with spectators holding the best seats, which opened the day before yesterday. Tents and portable bathrooms and vendors had clogged the side streets of Byzantium for a mile radius since yesterday, so that the black cars of arriving royals and heads of continents had to be ushered through at a crawl.
Overhead, the sun shone bright on the city, seemingly on the entire world.
The new age was soon to begin.
Chapter Forty-two
Rom lay facedown on the sand next to the pool. An hour passed in silence, so empty but for the pain that he wondered if the Maker had delivered on his prayer to make him dead again after all. Slowly his emptiness swallowed him and pulled him toward the next best place this side of the grave.
Sleep.
He dreamed, a dark nightmare locked on Avra’s face as the blade slashed through her chest, exposing her heart. But as happens in dreams, the scene left him, replaced by another filled with the image of a young boy who stood on the sand, arms limp at his sides, face stained with tears.
This was the boy whose life had demanded Avra’s death.
Rom stood still, looking at him circumspectly, unsure what the boy wanted or what he might say after all that had transpired. The canyon was silent except for the sound of his own breathing and the very faint sound of murmuring—the keeper spinning his tales for an eager audience.
“If I could bring her back, I would,” he said. “But my blood isn’t ready. And even if it was, I’m not sure it would work.”
This was the echo of something he’d heard the keeper say around the fire.
“I’m just a boy, Rom. And I need you to protect me.”
He’d made a promise to an old man in an alley about a vial unknown to him. That had been a different Rom. A dead one.
“If I share my dream, will you help me?” the boy asked.
Guilt settled over Rom with the boy’s sweet voice. Jonathan had felt the pain of death, too. He had lost a mother and wept. He was a cripple, a threat to all that the Order stood for, a defenseless young boy lost in a world that despised him. The world would hunt him to his death.
And here Rom slept, smothered by self-pity.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” Rom said. “But I don’t know if I can help you. My heart’s broken.”
“Then maybe we can help each other, because mine is, too.”
For a moment the dream faded, then replayed itself as dreams sometimes do. This time he changed his response when the boy mentioned sharing his dream.
“What dream?” he asked.
“The dream I’m having of Avra,” the boy said.
“You’re dreaming of Avra? What does that mean? How do your dreams work?”
“I just dream. But I think they’re real, so maybe you’ll be able to see it, too.”
Rom hesitated and then said, “Let me see her. Please. Show me your dream.”
The boy walked forward and Rom was suddenly sleeping on his back there in the sand by the pool. The boy eased himself down and rested his head on Rom’s belly as if it were a pillow. He curled up, put one hand on Rom’s chest, and closed his eyes.
That’s strange, Rom thought. The boy who will one day rule the world is sleeping on me.
But then his dream changed again. He was standing in the canyon again, fully awake. He would swear it, even though a part of him was certain that he was sleeping.
“Rom?”
A voice whispered through the canyon, sweet and high. A voice he could never forget. His pulse quickened, and he slowly turned.
He recognized Avra at once despite the fact that her eyes, once so dark brown, were as pale as gold.
She stood ten paces away, clothed in white. Her skin seemed to both refract and invite the sun at once. Rom’s breath escaped him. They’d buried her in the ground yesterday and yet there she stood…alive.
“Avra?”
She stared at him, looking as startled to be here as he was to see her. She took an uncertain step forward. Then another, and another as she closed the gap between them.
Avra threw herself into his arms, nearly knocking him from his feet. He swept her into the air and buried his face in her neck, inhaling her scent as if i
t were the only air that could give him life.
“Avra…” He tried to say more, but only a sob came out.
“Rom.” She was crying, barely able to say his name. “Is it really you?” Tears spilled down her cheeks.
He pulled back so she could see him. “Do I look like a ghost?”
“No,” she said.
She looked so beautiful, so perfect. Rom kissed her eyes, her hair. He touched her face with trembling hands, traced the line of her neck, the wide curve of her scar. He kissed the smooth skin of it, leaving tears in the wake of his lips. But surely…
He drew the neckline down in the middle, toward her sternum, where the sword had cut through it. The skin there was smooth, unmarked.
“I missed you, Rom.”
He ran his lips over her hand, her fingers, then took her into his arms. “I missed you,” he said. “I missed you so much.”
She was warm flesh in his arms; her heart was beating against his chest.
“The boy did this?” he said.
“I don’t know, but I’m alive. Maybe not in the flesh, but I’m alive.”
What was she saying? Rom looked around for the boy, but he was gone. Was he still dreaming? He must be, and yet…
“I can’t be with you now, Rom.”
“Then I’ll come to you!”
“Shh, shh.” She laid a slender finger on his mouth. “The world needs you. The boy needs you. Ask the keeper, he’ll know what to do next. Lead them, Rom. Remember my heart and lead them. Don’t let your sorrow stand in the way any longer.”
She sounded different now, wiser, older, as if in her death she’d lived another lifetime. He clung to her, suddenly afraid she might vanish.
“The human heart is a delicate thing.” She drew back and put her hand on his chest. “I know that now. It’s the sorrow you feel that allows you to crave love. Without that suffering, there would be no true pleasure. Without tears, no joy. Without deficiency, no longing. This is the secret of the human heart, Rom. You feel so much pain, I can see it in your eyes, but there is also love. In the end, the only thing worth living for is falling in love. Bring that love to humanity.”