Ted Dekker - Mortal

He glanced at her. “You’ll know what you must do when the time comes. Tonight I just want you to know who I am.”

“I believe I know.”

“Then you know I will be Sovereign. That tonight you will swear your loyalty to me,” he said.

His audacity knew no bounds. “Really. You know this.”

Jonathan stopped and stared into her eyes. Calm settled over him like a mantle. When he spoke next, his voice was reasoned and laced with certainty.

“I know that you long for love, Feyn. That only death will give you the life you seek. That the one who enslaves you now will die before you. That love, not Order or any code, will win the hearts of the dead.”

Saric… die? Barring his tipping his own hand to an assassination attempt, he couldn’t possibly know that.

Jonathan searched her eyes and she suddenly felt powerless to look away.

“I know your longing, Feyn. How desperately you desire love. It’s why you once gave your life for me. I will never forget.”

She gave only the slightest of nods.

“I will repay that debt. We will rule the world, Feyn… You and I. Not like they expect, but we’ll rule, mark my words. This world cannot be enslaved by an Order designed to appease an exacting Maker. We’ll come to terms, you and I.”

She wasn’t sure what to say.

“If there are problems when I come of age in two days, you and I must play our roles unified. Do you know where the old outpost at Corvus Point is?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“Five miles northwest of here. There’s an old road-you have to look for it because it’s completely missing in places.”

“The Citadel would have records of such a road.”

He nodded. “Five miles northwest. Meet me there, alone, in two days. We’ll come to terms, you and I. Can you do that?”

“Perhaps.”

He smiled. “I will count on you. But tonight I only ask for your loyalty.”

“Forgive me, Jonathan, but-”

“Would you like to see the truth?” he said.

“The truth?”

She watched, confounded, as he spat on his palms. And then, before she could back away in shock or protest, he closed the gap between them with two swift steps and laid his hands on her eyes.

The world darkened as his palms shut out the light. But in the next moment the night swallowed her whole, a vortex sucking her into the abyss-a place she immediately recognized as the same from when he’d kissed her hand just minutes earlier.

She pushed him away with a cry.

“What are you doing?”

But when his hands left her face the darkness remained, blacker than tar.

“See yourself, Feyn,” she heard him say. “The blood in you.”

Terror seized her, cutting through the soft yolk of horror that flooded her veins. She didn’t see darkness as much as feel it-a black, living maw to suck her in, as though into the pit of death itself.

“Is this the path you will follow?”

Feyn heard the question, like a call from a far horizon, but her mind was locked in crushing panic. She lurched, shaking, flailing for direction, but there was no up or down, no right or left. There was only the suffocating certainty of death.

Her only remaining instinct was to scream, but her lungs refused to push enough air into her throat to give it any voice. The room filled with a dreadful whimper-her own.

Free me!

“When the times comes, you will deliver the world new life, Feyn. Free yourself from Saric. We will be Sovereign, you and I.”

A hand touched her cheek and she instinctively wrenched away. As if sucked into itself, the darkness receded. Light flooded the room.

Feyn stood, trembling, staring into Jonathan’s somber hazel eyes. The lamp still burned, seemingly brighter than before. Distant drums still carried the night’s celebration. She was still alive.

Her lungs expanded her breath returned-but with it, a sorrow as unnerving as the terror that has preceded it.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan said. “I had to help you understand.”

Tears flooded her eyes and spilled down her face. She reached out for him and dropped to her knees. Grasped his hands and pulled them to her.

There, with her face pressed against his fingers, Feyn wept.

THE MORNING AFTER PAST GATHERINGS, Roland had woken with pounding in his skull and exhaustion like languor in his limbs as he rolled over to cradle the body next to him, never sure until later whether it was wife, concubine, or other. Such disorientation was synonymous with that celebration to him-the only possible conclusion to the defiant catharsis of the night before. This morning, however, he woke tense, far too clear-headed, and alone.

The thing that had woken him came again: Michael’s unmistakable voice, shouting his name.

He leapt up from the mat where he’d attempted an insomniac’s fitful sleep a scant three hours ago, hurried to the door of his yurt, and squinted into the new morning light.

Michael was running toward him, fully dressed, bow over her shoulder.

“She’s gone.”

She…

It took him a moment to reorient himself and place who “she” might be. Images from the Gathering strung through his mind. The dance, the food, Avra’s heart, Jonathan’s crazed behavior, Feyn…

He looked sharply to the north, the direction of the yurt where they’d kept Feyn under guard. “What do you mean?”

Michael closed the gap between them, slowing to long, urgent strides, panting. “The Dark Blood. She’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Gone. Escaped. With her guard.”

“Which guard? Ours?”

“The putrid Dark Blood she brought with her. I told you it was a mistake from the outset. It was far too dangerous!”

With a curse, he rushed into his yurt, shoved feet into boots, tucked a knife into the waist of his pants, and grabbed his sword and the tunic he had discarded last night. And then he was striding out the yurt and after Michael, who was already running through the sleeping camp toward the horse pen. One of the Nomads he recognized from the late watch was there, hurriedly helping to saddle Michael’s horse as Michael began to saddle his.

“Who was on watch?” Roland demanded, buckling on the sword.

“Narun and Aron,” Michael said. “Aron ran into camp this morning. The Dark Bloods took the horses. Narun is still there.”

Roland pulled the tunic on, pushed the man out of the way, and cinched the saddle girth himself. Then he and Michael were tearing out of the pen, away from camp. North.

Within twenty paces of the two temporary yurts, he could already tell that the unmistakable odor of Dark Blood was gone.

Narun rushed to meet them as they dismounted ten yards from the larger of the two yurts.

“They cut their way out the back. Neither one of us ever heard-”

Roland closed the gap between them with a single stride and slammed his fist into the man’s jaw. Narun reeled back and fell to the dirt, hard. He clawed for purchase and began to rise, but Roland struck again. The guard collapsed to his back and rolled to the side, spitting blood. It streamed from his mouth and nose into a tuft of grass.

“Roland!” Michael hissed.

Roland looked up, hand on the man’s collar, fist drawn back for another blow. He dropped the Nomad back to the earth, kicked a spray of dirt onto the guard’s face, and stepped over him.

Michael stared as he stalked past her, but said nothing.

He flung the door wide and stepped into the yurt. One glance at the precise cut in the thick canvas told the story clearly enough.

He spat to one side.

“We don’t know where she got a blade,” Michael said, stepping in behind him. “We checked them both for weapons when they came. Best guess, she got it somewhere between the Gathering and when Jonathan came to see her.”