Ted Dekker - Mortal

Rom stood atop the steps, pulse quickening at the sight of the thick band of humanity brimming with emotive celebration. Beside him, Roland inhaled as though he would breathe in their collected fervor-that one voice that was neither man nor woman, old nor young, but that was simply and exceptionally alive .

On either side of the ruin steps, wood had been stacked, each the height of a man. Behind Rom three thick wooden poles had been erected and bound together at the top to form a rigid tripod that supported a sagging leather bowl.

With a glance and a nod at Roland, Rom stepped forward to the edge of the top step and thrust his fist up toward the sky.

“Life!”

Life! the entire camp echoed.

“Freedom!” Roland thundered from his side.

Freedom! the reverberating cry.

Rom and Roland each seized a torch from the nearest of the ancient columns. Rushing down the steps, they shoved the torches into the resin-soaked woodpiles. With a whoosh, twin flames leaped into the air. Ululating calls pierced the night. A hundred drums beat in unison.

Rom ran back up the ruin’s steps, fists lifted high and wide, crying out his approval as the valley filled with the dissonant roar of unrestrained triumph. Sparks flew to the sky as wood popped within the fire. For a few minutes, thoughts of Feyn fell away.

The Gathering’s celebration filled the Seyala Valley.

He leaped to the ground, ran into the circulating mass, and caught a young woman with braided blond hair up into his arms. She threw back her head and stared at the night sky with bright Mortal eyes highlighted by large red circles. He swung her around then brought her down into his arms and kissed her.

He let her go, both of them breathless, and then she was gone, the feathered mass of her braids disappearing into the throng.

He surged ahead, slapping Keepers and Nomads on their backs. With a roar, Roland threw himself into a circle of warriors who leaped at him like cubs springing at a lion.

Rom veered away and swept his arms high, urging increase. “More!”

They gave him more. The roar of the drums and cries shook the ground beneath the ruins, drowning out his own. And then he was back in the mix, dancing and surging with the sea of Mortals.

The Nomads had a penchant for celebration, but none compared to the surreal scene before the ruins. Between the twin raging fires, the twelve hundred Mortals who had found life in a dead world celebrated their humanity in extravagant abandon.

The celebration showed no signs of slowing for an hour. Rom lost track of time. Of those bodies pressed against his own; the kisses given and taken like wine.

And yet no drink had been tasted. No food had yet been touched. The night would begin and end with dancing. With Mortality, wild and untethered. With the reason they danced at all.

Jonathan.

Only then did it occur to Rom that he hadn’t seen him. Jonathan had kept to himself in the hills west of the river most of the day, Jordin had said.

Where was he?

Rom broke from the dancers and bounded up the stone steps, turned to gaze out over the celebration, searching for him. With so many, it was nearly impossible to pick out any one person. There was Michael, her thighs clasped to the chest of one of the warriors who held her up as she reached for the sky. There were tears on her face, smearing the black stripes on her cheek. The man released her and caught her in his arms.

No sign of Jordin, but she was too diminutive to stand out in the crowd. Surely she was here somewhere. Jonathan would be with her.

His gaze fell on two forms standing far to his right, beyond the main body of Mortals. Roland, no longer bare-chested but in a black tunic. A veiled figure stood next to him, tall in the darkness, unadorned, clothed in leathers.

Feyn.

So then, let her see . He nodded, wondering if they caught the sign of approval.

It was time.

Rom lifted his arms and let out a cry that rang above the din.

“Mortals!”

On queue and in unison, the drums ceased their pounding. The dance stopped; silence settled. Heads turned to stare up at him in anticipation.

“We come to celebrate life! Today your liberation has come. Let the earth know that we are alive !”

A thunderous roar of consent.

“Tonight, we honor the blood in our veins. Of Jonathan our Life-Giver. Our Sovereign, who brings a new kingdom of life without end!”

A reverberating echo from twelve hundred throats filled the air.

But Jonathan was nowhere to be seen.

Rom lifted his hand for silence, and spoke only when the night was still. On either side of the ruins, the freshly fueled bonfires crackled and sent flames high into the sapphire sky.

“Tonight we honor the blood of those fallen,” he said, his voice now lower. “Of all those who have died, alive .”

They stared with wide eyes, each remembering those Mortals who’d died in sickness or mishap. They revered passed Mortal life in this way at every Gathering, hearing each as they stood in silence.

Rom spoke their names, seven in all since the last gathering, one a mere child of two, Serena, who’d been struck in the head by a horse’s hoof and died. It wasn’t the Nomadic way to mourn with keening except in private. Every life was sacred. Every name spoken. But in the end they would celebrate, not mourn, them all.

He came to the last two, pacing before them. “The warrior Pasha.”

Still, not a sound.

“The Keeper and third-born, Triphon!”

He let the name linger, knowing that these last two were still fresh in all of their minds and hearts.

“We remember them all with honor, knowing they are alive still.”

His words echoed over the assembly for several long beats as tension mounted. They all knew what would come next.

Avra.

Slowly, he dipped his head once, then turned and looked at the leather bowl suspended on the wooden tripod.

Stirs in the crowd.

Every year a shudder ran through his body when the time came-not for the memory of Avra’s slaying or of the lifeless body he had buried, but for the sacrifice she’d made so that he could live.

He lifted his right hand and held it steady, palm open. A hundred drums began pounding as one in steady rhythm. From the corner of his eye, he saw Zara the councilwoman striding up the steps, a wrapped bundle in her hands. It should have been Triphon, as had become custom.

She set the bundle in his hand and the cadence of the drum beat surged. Blood dripped through the bindings onto his fingers as Zara untied the parcel. It smattered the limestone as she pulled the pouch open before retreating down the steps.

“And then, there is the first martyr,” he said.

Rom reached into the vessel, gripped the organ inside. An equine heart, cut just that morning from one of the horses, the meat of which had been quartered onto the spits. It was the most sacred kind of heart the Nomads knew, standing in now for Avra’s, enshrined in the inner sanctum.

He thrust the fresh, raw heart up into the air.

A resounding roar from the mass below.

“Tonight we honor the first martyr. Who gave up true life to usher in the hope we have before us now!”

The drums stopped.

“For Avra’s heart!”

The Mortals erupted in one resounding cry.

Goose bumps crawled up Feyn’s arms as the entire camp exploded into a fresh riot of celebration, the drums threatening to reorder the beat of her own pulse. They mourned Triphon’s death, not knowing that Saric had found a way to coax life from him yet. Telling them the truth would betray her Master and accomplish no good among these Mortals.

It was Avra’s heart that fascinated her more. She’d laid eyes on the woman outside the Citadel grounds once, in that other lifetime. This woman whom Rom had loved.