Ted Dekker: Mortal

“Preposterous! Absolute heresy!”

“Is it? Ask yourself: is it loyalty that compels you to your feet in this instant? Love, for Order?”

“Yes,” Dominic said, straightening.

“Are you so certain? Or is it only that you fear losing Bliss in the next life if you do not leap to your feet and defend the way of Order? Just as you function from day to day caring only that you’re not caught in transgression and that your offenses do not multiply so that on the day when life arbitrarily cuts you off from the world, you do not end up in fear eternal?”

The senate leader stood absolutely still-not angry, as Corpses were incapable of such emotion-but terrified. Rowan had risen to his feet as well.

“Fear guides us as it should,” Dominic said.

“Should? The truth is, you are incapable of anything but fear because you’ve been genetically stripped of those sentiments. Of that which makes you human. The truth is, my dear Dominic, Rowan… esteemed members of the senate… all of you are in fact, quite dead .”

They stared at him as if he were a madman. By these words he’d just killed all credibility in their eyes, naturally. But this was expected. Who, being told they were dead, could possibly believe the bearer of such news sane?

Saric waited for a moment, briefly considering the gavel in his hands, before laying it aside on the marble tabletop, just so, and moving again to the edge of the dais, where he faced Rowan.

“Am I not your former Sovereign? The last acting Sovereign to stand in this chamber?”

“Yes,” the Regent said, “but-”

“Have I not had access to every archive in the chambers beneath this very one?” He glanced toward the door beyond the dais. It was quite obviously sealed around the edges, without doorknob or handle. But anyone who knew the Citadel had at least heard rumors of its subterranean maze of secrets.

“Yes.”

“Do I not come from the royal line of alchemists?”

“Yes,” Rowan said, his mouth a flat line.

“And am I dead, as you and everyone else here, once presumed?”

He hesitated. “Clearly not.”

“Tell me,” Saric said, pacing along the dais, pulling wide the top of his robe where it fastened at the neck. He turned to face the assembled senate.

They stared at the black treelike skeleton of veins beneath his pale skin, far darker than the coveted blue of royal Brahmin veins-so praised that royals had for years highlighted their color with blue powder. His body was chorded with muscle, stronger than any other body they could have possibly seen.

“This is life! I know so because I was once dead.” He released his robe. “Tell me, when is the last time you wept at the sight of the sky? At the devotion of your constituents? That you looked forward to a meal with anything more than duty to your body… when you did not crave every experience if only for the sake of taking each ounce of life into yourself?”

They stared, unfathoming. That, too, was expected.

“But you cannot possibly do any of these things. Do you know why? Because you lack the capacity for any of it!”

This time there was the beginning of an outcry, but he threw up his hand for silence.

“Nine years ago, the Master Alchemist Pravus injected me with a serum that fired my veins with emotion the likes of which you have never even imagined. Anger. Lust! Jealousy. I was a thing turned feral. Chaos ruled my heart. Yes, I know it is blasphemy against Order. But I tell you today, your Order is a blasphemy against life itself!”

Off to the side, Rowan was staring at him strangely, as though with a new revelation of his own.

“Those days…,” Rowan said quietly. “Before the inauguration… when you wanted to become senate leader…”

“Yes. And so now you know. I could not contain such virulent emotion, and Pravus reclaimed me. Eight years I spent in stasis. Until the day that he drew me out as one reemerging from the womb. This time, perfected. He spent months with me, teaching me. Schooling me in this new, reclaimed humanity.” His voice broke. “I was his child. He was my father.”

“This is… this is abomination,” Rowan whispered.

For that, the man would die.

Saric ignored him and spread his arms as if he were their father. “Today there is only one living man in this chamber. See now and know that I am he!”

For an extended moment, no one spoke. The dead could not stoop to challenge such an absurd claim. So it had been, and so it would be…

At least for a few minutes more. And then their entire world would change before their very eyes.

“My Lord,” Dominic said, in a practiced, conciliatory tone. “We will most certainly investigate the veracity of all that you claim. This is quite a… revelation.”

It was not the word he wanted to use. It was blasphemy to him, Saric knew. As Order was blasphemy to him.

“We revere you for your service to the world-in such a time as your father’s abrupt passing, no less. And while Order is given by the Maker, law is not the Maker. It is not perfect. But we must follow the dictates of the law until it is changed. These are serious claims, and to make them known would throw the world into nothing short of raw panic. We cannot afford such uproar, and if such claims are proven true, we must proceed with utmost care.”

Rage rose up within Saric like bile. Did the man really believe he would be placated by such patronizing foolishness?

Dominic continued: “Until such a day that your claims are proven and the senate dictates otherwise, Order must be upheld. Our Book of Orders is infallible, created not by Sirin or by Megas who wrote that holy book, but by the Maker who inspired its writing. And until such a day it may be proven wrong, we serve Order and the Maker both by obedience to its statutes.”

Murmurs of assent.

Saric inclined his head. So very predictable. Somehow he had hoped for more from this one.

Overhead, the senate flame burned straight and even, throwing her faint smoke onto the black of the ceiling. Dominic would look quite handsome, he thought, in a glass sarcophagus.

“Yes. Forgive me,” he said, tilting his head. “Your memory is infallible. These items, you have said, will be investigated by the senate. The veracity of them will be checked, and the senate will act accordingly-even if it means altering the history of Order itself, which is the history of the world, and of the Maker.”

Dominic hesitated, obviously uncertain about this last bit. “Yes. If such a revelation may be proven true.”

“Until then, I bow to your wisdom.”

“Thank you, my Lord. Now, if we may-”

“As you bow to the authority of the senate. As only the senate may decide these matters under the Sovereign.”

“Yes. Such is the way.” Dominic inclined his head.

“And to the authority of the Sovereign, who holds all sway over the senate.”

“Yes, of the Sovereign. That is true.”

“But the Sovereign is not here…?” Saric turned, looked around him.

“He will soon come of age. Until then, there is Rowan-”

“And if your Sovereign were here… the one chosen by the cycle, as dictated by Order… born on the seventh day of the seventh month, closest to the seventh hour, would you bow?”

“My Lord?”

Rowan was sitting forward, frowning. Out in the senate chamber, the senators had returned to their seats, most of them, the alarm of earlier having smoothed into a strange calm-except for those few, still white-faced, obviously undone by Saric’s claims.

“You would serve your Sovereign first, before the senate,” Saric said, brows raised.

“Of course. I serve the Sovereign first in all things. As do we all.”

Saric glanced at him sidelong. “And you would have it no other way.”