by Ted Dekker
He covered her hand with both of his. “I will, Avra.”
“Wage war on death. Live for love.”
His heart felt as though it might burst, hearing these words from her.
“I will. As long as I live I will fight for love.”
“You’ll have to learn to control your emotions. They’re new, like a child’s now, bursting with passion. Never let them fade, or part of you will die. But they can also destroy you. Hold them dear, but don’t let them take hold of you.”
“Never.” He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant, but she spoke with such tenderness and authority that he didn’t dare question her. It was Avra, dear frail, fearful Avra.
She was now his queen.
Avra smiled and looked deep into his eyes. “I love you, Rom.” She kissed him tenderly on his lips. “I love you with all my heart. Don’t let my love for you go to waste.”
“I won’t! I swear, I won’t.”
One moment Avra was in his hands, and then she wasn’t. For a long moment the world swirled around him, empty but still full of her. Of Avra.
His eyes snapped wide and he stared up at the blue sky, heart pounding in his chest. A dream. Just a dream! The blood drained from his face as the heaviness of his loss settled over him. She’d been there, in his arms, and now she was gone again.
He became aware of a weight on his stomach, and he lifted his head to see Jonathan sleeping with his head resting on his belly. The boy’s left arm was hooked up, lying on his chest, thin and frail.
The world stilled around him, leaving only this tender boy’s sleeping form, chest slowly expanding and contracting as he breathed through his nose, eyelashes smudging his cheek.
Rom knew then that he’d more than simply dreamed. He’d shared the boy’s dreams—those dreams that were not merely dreams but some kind of reflection of reality.
In a way that Rom could not yet begin to understand, Avra was still with him, begging him to save this very boy.
Jonathan’s eyes flickered open.
They stared at each other, frozen in the moment.
“You’re here,” Rom said.
The boy shoved himself up to one elbow. “Did you dream?”
“How…How did you do that?”
“I’m not sure.”
Rom scrambled to his feet, bumping the boy in his rush. “I saw Avra.”
The boy got his good leg under his body and pushed himself up. He looked up at Rom, uncertain. “So did I.”
“Was it real?”
“It must be.”
“Can you share your dreams again?”
“I…I don’t know.”
What a beautiful child. What a beautiful soul.
Truth. Love. Beauty, Feyn had said. Truth, he had found. Love, he had also found. Beauty stood before him.
What had become of him, that he had thrown away his loyalty so easily? He dropped to one knee, took the boy by his shoulders, and spoke past the thickness in his throat.
“I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”
“I forgive you,” Jonathan said simply.
“You asked me to protect you. Jonathan, I promise that for as long as I live, I’ll be by your side.” His voice broke. He thought he should say more, but all he could manage was, “I promise.”
“Thank you, Rom.”
Their task suddenly blossomed in Rom’s mind. He leaped to his feet, grabbed the boy’s hand, and pulled him toward the camp. “Come on!”
Triphon and the keeper were still by the fire when he got to the outcrop. As one they looked their way. For a moment, none of them spoke.
Rom released Jonathan’s hand as he strode toward them. “Where’s the heart?”
“The heart?”
“Avra’s heart, man! Where is it?”
Triphon pulled out the bundle from his pack and held it out. Rom took the vellum, peeled back the wrapping, and held up the heart nestled in the soft leather.
“This will be our battle cry. We will not let Avra’s death go to waste. For Avra’s heart.”
Triphon glanced at the keeper and struck his chest with an open palm. “For Avra’s heart!”
“Always, always for Avra’s heart.” Rom turned to the keeper. “How long do we have?”
The keeper quirked a grin and turned toward his horse. “Five hours. Time is short.”
“Where are we going?” Triphon said.
“We’re taking Jonathan to the inauguration,” Rom said.
“We’ll never make it.”
“Then we’d better ride fast.”
Chapter Forty-three
The world had become a drone outside Feyn’s window, the sound reaching even here, into her locked and guarded chamber. Inside her apartment, the tables and corners of the front room were crowded with fresh greenery of every kind brought in by the servants, the gifts bearing the names of the myriad royal families who had sent them.
Feyn had thrown herself into the preparation, selecting her own gown for the occasion, pausing to read the cards on the flowers, to hear the chanting of the crowds outside.
Anything to drown out the words of the keeper, haunting her.
Nuala had dutifully made her beautiful, dressing Feyn’s hair and applying her eyeliner, touching rouge to her lips. But her servant could not hide the fear in her eyes.
Then she, too, knew: Death waited beyond that podium. Saric would not let her live long.
Feyn stared at the image in the mirror before her: the icon of the world robed in new white. But her mind was far from Rebirth.
Nuala smoothed Feyn’s sleeve one last time. “The world awaits you, my lady.”
Feyn dismissed her with a nod.
What the keeper suggested was impossible. It flew in the face of the very Order she was destined to uphold. The truth. But that was just it, wasn’t it?
What was the truth? She, the slave to truth, was suddenly no longer certain of her master.
If what the keeper said was true…Dear Maker, she begged for it not to be so.
And yet, if it was, she alone could save that truth.
She glanced into the mirror. The face she’d known as the future Sovereign’s stared starkly back. Was it possible that the keeper’s way was the only one?
She walked to the window. The gray stallions, wreathed in flowers, stood ready at the gate. The gates, too, were adorned in evergreen. Beyond them, the city milled as one great living entity, a sea of people awash with green, waving leafy branches and flowers purchased from vendors on the street.
If she craned against the window, she could see the assembled royals, thousands of them gathering at the entrance to the Grand Basilica beyond the Citadel gate. Theirs were the seats at the end of the Processional Way, closest to the platform erected upon the basilica steps where the ceremony would take place.
Hundreds of thousands of souls, all come to observe Rebirth.
A pounding at the door. It opened abruptly to reveal a broad-shouldered guard.
In that moment, she had settled the matter in her mind: She would take Saric into custody within the hour of her inauguration and do what was necessary to protect the Order. If Saric intended to end her life, he would pay for his terrible crime with his own.
Then again, if what the keeper had told her was true, Saric would be the least of her problems.
“My lady, it’s time.”
“How much time?” Rom cried over his shoulder. The sun stood nearly directly overhead.
“Less than an hour,” Triphon said. “We won’t make it!”
They’d come to the edge of Byzantium’s hill country and found only empty streets. The whole world had gone to line the processional route or to watch the ceremonies from areas with televisions. Every spectator could count on the punctuality of Order. The new Sovereign-to-be would be received promptly at noon.
“Ride!” Rom shouted, thundering over the hill. “Ride!”
He rode with the boy, the horse straining beneath them. The keeper drew abreast, his tattered
robe flapping in the wind. Rom spurred his horse faster. The keeper kept up. This man, whose kind had lived for this day, wasn’t about to let thirty minutes separate him from his destiny.
The boy had been silent. Riding in front of Rom, grasping the horse by the mane, he looked like any nine-year-old trapped by uncertainty might, frightened yet trusting at once.
Invigorated by the keeper, Triphon had sworn with fiery eyes his oath to the new Order of Keepers. He was still as exuberant and clumsy as a young bull, but his new mentor had promised to teach him the finer points of becoming a warrior. Triphon had latched onto that promise, reminding the keeper of it three times already.
And the keeper—Rom swore the man looked thirty years younger. The sun seemed to soften every line and crag of his face. Purpose was in his eyes, and though he knew himself to be dead, the corner of his mouth twitched on occasion, tempting life of its own.
If the keeper had a plan, he wouldn’t go into more detail, telling them only that they were all now at the mercy of truth. “Trust me, Rom!” His eyes were fired with destiny. “Trust me, the truth will find its way! Jonathan is alive!”
Yes, indeed, the boy bouncing on the stallion in front of Rom was alive, and certainly no ordinary boy, but that didn’t mean the keeper was not mad.
That they weren’t all mad.
Rom never would have thought that riding to one’s death could put a smile on anyone’s face, but there was little doubt in his mind that was exactly what they were doing.
“Ride!” he roared over his shoulder.
The world was Saric’s. Before him, the leaders of the houses of the seven continents stood on either side of the basilica steps. Below them, his elite guard stretched like a human gate, twelve strong on either side. Two hundred thousand spectators filled the Processional Way beyond, standing still in reverence, eyes fixed on their Sovereign.
They had held evergreen branches high and whispered Feyn’s name in awe as she dismounted. The sound of it was unnerving and astounding at once.
Her stallion was black, to stand out from the other Brahmin grays, a gift from Saric himself. There had been trumpets, and somewhere back in the narthex of the open basilica, a choir had sung as Saric and Feyn ascended the steps to the platform together, the ceremonial scepter’s warm weight in his hand.
Rowan stood waiting, the lines of his face drawn taut as he gestured them toward their places on the platform.
“My lady?” he said. Saric saw that the man noted Feyn’s rigid posture. She’d done surprisingly well, he thought, even with the knowledge that she would soon die. Surely she at least suspected by now.
Feyn’s gaze turned toward the gold basin that would hold the blood of the sacrificial bull. She paused, until Rowan took her gently by the arm and led her to her place. Saric came to stand at her side just as a great Brahmin bull was led to the base of the basilica steps on a golden rope. A white beast rippled with sleek muscle. He was magnificent.
Saric had heard of people being fearful at the sight of the bull bleeding out at his father’s inauguration. He had often wondered if he would feel his own visceral response to it here, at his own.
After all, this was his inauguration as much as Feyn’s.
For that reason it must be perfect, but for that reason also, he was filled with strange gratitude toward his sister. Without her, his rise to power would have been impossible, not to mention far less pleasurable.
The great basin was lifted from its stand and carried down the steps between the world’s seven prelates. Saric marveled at the hands of the priests laid upon the animal’s wide shoulders and head as the prelate of Greater Europa raised the broad sword.
He felt Feyn’s gaze on him, cool and heavy at once.
There was something unsettling in it.
The blade slashed through the flesh of the bull’s neck. The priest caught the first crimson spray in the golden bowl, then replaced it with another larger basin when the ceremonial one was sufficiently full. The animal sank to its forelegs, and then to the stage completely. Onlookers turned away.
The priest with the basin ascended to the platform and stood before Feyn. Rowan carefully lifted up her left sleeve; Saric held back the right.
But Feyn seemed not to notice, her gaze fixed on the dead bull.
“The basin, my lady,” Rowan said.
When she didn’t move, Saric took the basin and set it in her hands. She looked down. Blood sloshed up against the basin’s gold edges. Her hands and arms were trembling.
Rowan waited. The world waited. But she stared down at the bowl, saying nothing.
“The words, my lady,” Rowan whispered.
She only lifted her head and stared out at the crowd.
Rowan glanced between them. Several prelates looked back with anxious gazes.
“The blood of life. Given by the Maker!” Saric cried for all to hear.
They were the words a Sovereign anticipated speaking all his life. Saric felt them like a charge along his arms, all the way up to his shoulders.
“Born once into life, we are grateful,” the priests recited in response.
The voices of one billion more around the earth echoed the words as required: “We are grateful.”
In a matter of minutes the world’s leaders would come before Feyn to dip their fingers in the bowl and make their blood oath of loyalty. They would give her the scepter now held in trust by Rowan.
They would pledge their undying allegiance. And Saric would later demand it of them.
But for this moment, he could stand by and drink her in. Because even in fear and outside of herself, she was the most magnificent creature in the world, like the Brahmin bull, so sleek and singular before it died.
True, she would die soon. But until then, what a spectacle, what a moment! His sister, even fear-bound, was more than regal. She embodied something greater to the populace than they could conjure within themselves. Order. The hand of the Maker on earth.
He could almost believe it himself. For a moment, he almost wanted to. He gazed out past the stage toward the throng.
A movement down the Processional Way caught his eye. Riders, three abreast. One of them was a boy.
He stared, not sure he was seeing it clearly. They had actually come? The brazen stupidity of these country fools knew no bounds.
But they were too late.
He glanced at the clock and decided the matter then. In seven minutes’ time, Feyn would be Sovereign. And in ten, he would take the office from her.
Chapter Forty-four
The sea of bodies on either side stilled as Rom turned his horse onto the middle of the Processional Way that led to the platform, half a mile distant. He stopped, dismounted, and, with a glance back at Triphon and the keeper, led his horse on foot with the boy perched atop.
Whispers rose in the air only to die again. Even the wind had fallen quiet. Around them, the world had seemed to stop.
For a boy.
Jonathan rode in silence, eyes round, flanked now on either side by Triphon and the keeper, whose plan still unnerved Rom to his core.
Rom glanced up at the keeper. “Are you sure about this?”
“About what, son of Elias?”
“About Feyn.”
The keeper nodded. “We are all in agreement.”
Rom fixed his eyes on the inaugural platform with its banners as tall as the basilica’s great columns, the stately torches upon their stands, flames licking at the bright sky. Though he couldn’t make out faces from this distance, there was a figure in a white gown in the center of it all, standing expectantly amid the others. It could only be Feyn. She was there, and alive. Perhaps less so than she’d been in the fields with him, but alive. He made out Saric and the senate leader flanking Feyn, standing expectantly on the platform, watching their approach.
The eyes of the world had turned on them. Above them all, cameras mounted on tall poles peered at them, sending images to the corners of the world.
The bright
sun coaxed sweat from the pores on Rom’s forehead. A fly lit on the neck of his stallion and took flight, chased by its quivering flesh. Their horses’ shod hooves sounded upon the pavestones, steady as a heartbeat. Yet the occasional snort of the animals gave away the fear in them all.
A dog’s bark pierced the stillness as they continued their approach. The rest of those gathered dared not utter a word. To a man, woman, and child they stood in perfect fear. Surely the world knew by now that something had gone terribly wrong.
Neah strained against the tower window. Her breath fogged it, and she wiped the glass clean with her sleeve. She could almost make them out, the small group coming down the Processional Way. The stage was obscured from her vantage by the basilica itself. Her heart had begun pounding the moment she recognized them.
The old man—was he the keeper she’d led Rom to see just days ago? And there, who was that on the horse led by Rom? It couldn’t be. But she could see clearly that he was smaller than the others.
The boy.
She could make out Triphon’s form, but it was the boy to whom her gaze returned. She had betrayed them, and there they were. She had betrayed them in the name of Order, which had represented truth to her all the years of her life.
If that boy was real…
She could not stomach the fear that gripped her. She twisted and slid down to the floor of her tower cell.
The pain of life was nothing compared with this fear. If she was wrong, and that boy was what they said, then he walked now to his death, and the world’s hope would die with him.
As for her, there would be no pit of Hades deep enough.
Feyn willed her legs to hold her upright. She hadn’t expected to feel so much fear at the turning of Rebirth. In the rest of the world’s eyes, she was finally and fully coming into her own, presented and crowned as Sovereign. But on the stage, she was staggering under the immense weight of that sovereignty already.
And through it all the keeper’s words whispered in her ear. There is a boy, Feyn. The world is dead. I speak the truth and you are sworn to truth.