Ted Dekker - Mortal

“Life!” he screamed. “Life!” He spread his arms and began to dance. His movements were wild, jerking like blood spurting from an artery.

The crowd didn’t seem to care, relieved to return to its celebration in ways more fevered than before. Dancers leaped up at the sky again, holding others aloft as though to pull down the stars.

A figure raced up the steps, taking them two at a time. A young girl on the cusp of womanhood, clad only in a sarong, thick braids flying.

“Kaya,” Roland muttered. “She’s the girl he took from the Authority of Passing.”

The girl leaped up the last step, impulsively set her hands in the blood at her feet, and smeared it on her face and chest. She curled her hands into fists, tilted her head to the sky, and began to dance like Jonathan, stomping naked feet into the blood as it spattered onto her legs.

Jonathan grabbed her hand and together they ran down the steps where no less than two dozen children were gathered-as nearly a hundred more ran out to join them in their frenetic dancing. As one they hopped and whirled, arms raised, laughing as the drums thundered approval. The sight of so much rapture filled Feyn with a strange longing to be a child once again, this time with the full emotion with which they celebrated.

She glanced up then, her eyes prisms of firelight.

Up on the stage, Rom stared at the fallen heart, all but trampled underfoot.

FEYN CLOSED HER EYES, attempting to shut out the sounds of drums pounding in her skull, as the celebration outside wore relentlessly on. Never had the gulf in her mind been so deep, never the darkness so bottomless, never her confusion so great.

She couldn’t escape the certainty that she clung to a razor-thin wire as storm winds raged, threatening to tear her fingers free. She would fall, but fall into what? More darkness… or freedom?

The only true freedom she’d found since returning to life had come during those hours of absolute submission to Saric. And yet another Maker called to her now. A boy who had once required her death so that he could come to power. Succumbing to the Mortal’s call now would end in another death, she was sure of it.

They’d brought her back to the yurt a couple hours ago when the sheer pain of the Nomadic drums in her temples had become unbearable. A guard stood outside-she could hear him calling occasionally to others in the main camp, clearly disgruntled by his removal from the main body. If the last hour was any indication, he would eventually be relieved and replaced by another so that no one guard would go without his fill.

She’d considered cutting her way out the back of the yurt and making a run for it. She didn’t know where this valley was, only that it was far north of the city. If she headed south she would eventually come across a road or a river or some other landmark, surely. But it would only be a matter of time before they discovered her missing and recaptured her. If folklore about the Nomads was true-and so far all of it had proven accurate-they were expert trackers.

But even if she could escape, she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Something else called to her here.

Images of the wild boy crying out from the ruins barraged her thoughts as she sat on the thick mat that was her only furnishing and stared at the lone lamp that lit her prison. His words had stirred more awe and mystery than offense-not only in her mind, but in the minds of those who called him Sovereign. She’d seen it on their faces, heard it in the hush before doubt had given way to revelry’s more persuasive sway.

She hadn’t had an opportunity to talk to the boy, but now she wasn’t certain what such a talk would achieve.

The sudden image of Saric pushed thoughts of the strange boy aside, calling her back to reason. This much she knew: Saric’s blood had given her life, made her Sovereign, and filled her with peace to the extent that she embraced that life. Deviation from Saric, her office, or her existence through him only brought her confusion-the confusion she felt so keenly now, in the Mortals’ camp.

Feyn lay back on the mat and stared at the yurt’s framework. Rom’s undying idealism had plied her mind more than she’d thought possible. Memories of him had stirred her like an eddy muddies the waters of a river. And yet even nostalgia paled next to Saric’s siren call.

He was her Maker. Not Rom. Not Jonathan.

The door suddenly snapped wide and Feyn jerked up on the mat. There, in the opening, stood Jonathan, dressed only in a loincloth, chest rising and falling as he hauled in a breath as though he had run all this way. The loincloth clung to him, damp and still stained, though he himself seemed to have washed, as though he had leaped into the river on the edge of camp. Judging from the damp look of the feathers in his braids, that was exactly what he had done.

There was fire in his eyes.

“My Sovereign,” he said, stepping in as the door fell shut on its wooden frame behind him.

Feyn stood up, unsure what to say.

“They told me you’d come to see me,” he said. He spread his arms. “Tell me, do I look like a Sovereign to you?”

She stared at the young wild man before her, this boy who would be Sovereign, as words refused to form in her mind, much less her mouth.

“Then again, what should a Sovereign look like? The fact is, none of us are who we appear. For nine years you were in a grave, living in death. And I was a boy, dying to live. So which is it, Feyn? Who will live and who will die? Isn’t that the question on everyone’s mind?”

Uncanny boy! He was obviously crazed.

And speaking the truth.

But whose truth?

“It’s my honor to see you again, Sovereign.” He stepped forward, took her hand, dropped to one knee, and kissed the back of her hand.

The moment his lips touched her skin, something within her reeled, careened off balance. Darkness threatened to envelop her. She gasped and jerked back, startled by her own visceral response. To the thing that had just threatened to swallow her whole.

He went on as if nothing had happened. But of course nothing had. She was tired and hadn’t eaten enough today, that was all.

She suddenly became aware of the fact that she hadn’t spoken since his brash entrance.

“Forgive me… You caught me unprepared,” she said.

“But you are prepared, Feyn. The question is, am I?” He paced like a young lion, one hand raking through his braids, eyes darting side to side. She could hardly reconcile this frenetic young man before her with the quiet one who had appeared just days ago in her chamber with Rom. “So what is it?”

“I’m sorry… What is what?”

“What are we to do?”

“I don’t know.”

Jonathan stopped pacing and looked at her. A smile formed on his face.

“It’s all right. I do.”

“You do.”

“Yes. But again, the question is whether or not I’m prepared. What would you say, Feyn? You’ve studied the role of a Sovereign all your life. So, am I?”

“Prepared?”

“Yes.”

“I thought I was prepared. I find in truth that I hardly am,” she said with strange honesty.

“But you know you’re meant to be Sovereign.”

“Yes.”

“And yet, I know that I am to be as well. And so here we are. One seat of power, two Sovereigns. It’s a dilemma, isn’t it?”

“So it seems.”

Jonathan began to pace again, speaking, it seemed, to the canvas walls as much to her.

“I take it you have no intention of relinquishing your Sovereignty to me.”

So forthright. So enigmatic. What an exotic young man he was. So strangely endearing. How powerful he could become!

And how dangerous.

She’d recovered enough to choose her next words with care. “Should I?”