Mortal Page 25

  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.

  “She died?” she said, glancing at Roland.

  “The day before you did.” The impassive lines of his face expressed no empathy for the reference to Feyn’s own death at the hands of the very Keeper she now saw wending his way through the back of the gathered celebrants. Did he know she was here, the one he had so brutally cut down and then so carefully preserved? And if she were to come face-to-face with him, what would she say to him, or he to her?

  She shifted, thinking of the scar across her torso. It itched. “And Triphon?”

  “Killed by your brother’s Dark Bloods days ago.”

  Triphon, too, she had met once, if only briefly.

  The prince returned his attention to the ruins, making it clear he wasn’t waiting for any sort of a reply.

  He had come to her earlier, calling her out from her yurt, saying that it was time. Janus, he had said, would have to remain behind. She could not mistake the lines of mistrust and displeasure etched into the Nomad’s face as she’d followed Roland into camp. She had not needed to be told that it was only Rom’s order that assured her any safety here.

  Now they watched together as Rom moved across the elevated ruins to the tripod and carefully set the heart inside the soft leather bowl suspended between the wood supports. How strange to reconcile the naïve, impetuous man she had known with the leader who commanded such respect among these wild Mortals. The Rom she’d known had been a poet, an artisan who’d sung at funerals—the lowest kind of fare in the world of Order.

  The man at the top of the stairs was a leader of warriors, majestic in his own way.

  A man who had kissed her… tasted her…

  He was also the enemy of her Maker and therefore hers as well.

  Rom turned toward the gathering. He drew a knife from the sheath at his
belt. “We remember those lost to us. We remember those who died. And we celebrate, proving with our lives that their blood was not spilled in vain!”

  With his last words, he slashed the bottom of the leather bowl. A stream of blood began to flow to the ground.

  Bodies were in motion once more, grappling for the sky, the names of Avra, Triphon, and Pasha shouted to the stars. They were fervent, these Mortals, she would give Rom that. Fervent… impassioned…

  And as such, more dangerous than she would have guessed.

  She glanced at the yurts to her right, each of them lit from inside, with fires burning in the pits outside. Children dashed from one dwelling to another, snagging food from the fires before running toward the cooking pits at the edge of camp.

  Where was the boy? She hadn’t seen him anywhere in the crowd or on the ruin steps. He was the one, after all, she had been brought to meet.

  She surveyed the assembled Mortals. These were only what… a thousand? Slightly more? But she’d seen the faces of the warriors and had noted their zeal, in such stark contrast to the icy discipline of Saric’s Dark Bloods.

  “I can smell your calculation,” Roland said.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “It smells like curiosity. And ambition. And interest.” He turned toward her as he said it. She studied the high and hard line of his cheekbone. The broad forehead, the long, thick braids with their wealth of beading. The paintlike tattoo on his temple. A woman’s finger had painted it, she thought. She wondered what kind of woman kept the interest of a man like this. One as magnificent as he was deadly.

  He leaned toward her as though to share her line of sight. “You’re counting what… five, six hundred? There are seven hundred. And twelve hundred of us altogether. Far less than your brother’s army; tell him that. But make no mistake.” He turned to gaze at her, his eyes both heavy-lidded and sultry. “March against us here and we will defeat you.”

  A shout went up from the frenetic dancers and echoed through the crowd like a rolling peal of thunder. Feyn turned and saw its cause.

  Jonathan. Leaping up the ruin stairs.

  He was naked except for a loincloth.

  His face was bare of the paint the other warriors wore, and his hair was adorned perhaps the least of any Nomad in the company, but no one seemed to care. The shouts of the throng escalated into a roar unrivaled yet this evening.

  Rom embraced the boy, then stepped back, arms spread.

  “Your Sovereign!” he cried.

  The Mortals roared, a cry so forceful, so full of hope and emotion that Feyn felt tears well in her eyes. What power in this boy evoked such powerful expression, devotion, and loyalty from others?

  The roar coalesced into a chant: Sovereign! Sovereign! Sovereign! Rom seemed to be waiting for the shouts to die down enough to speak, but the cry continued, unrelenting, rising impossibly. The Nomad beside her stood in stony silence.

  Jonathan stood still, unpretentious, making no sign that he was embracing their praise or that he longed for it. Only when Rom lifted his hand did the last chants die down. He looked at Jonathan and nodded.

  The boy faced them, silent for a few seconds. And then their Sovereign spoke:

  “Do you celebrate the martyrs?”

  Shouts of agreement.

  “You celebrate their blood, shed for me. For the new kingdom, for the Sovereigns of the new realm to come. You celebrate my blood, given for you.”

  Roaring agreement from the Mortals.

  “Then you celebrate not only life, but death.”

  This time, a confused response. They waited, anticipating more. And the boy gave it to them.

  “Because that death brings life.” He beat his chest once with a fist. Now he leaned into words and his voice rose, nearly accusing. “You want blood?”

  Cries, frenzied from the assembly. Next to Feyn, Roland frowned slightly. Rom glanced away from him, seemingly unsure.

  Jonathan suddenly spun and took three long steps to the canvas bowl that held Avra’s heart. He dipped his hands into the bowl and scooped a remnant of blood out with both hands. And then he splashed it on his chest and smeared his face, his hair his torso.

  The drumbeats drifted as if those responsible had forgotten to beat them.

  Jonathan whirled around and raised both fists in defiance. “Death, for life!” he shouted. His teeth and eyes gleamed macabre white behind the mask of blood.

  The crowd fell deathly silent.

  But their Sovereign was not finished. He grabbed the canvas vessel and tilted it so that a fresh torrent of blood fell down over his hair and chest, darkening the flax of his loincloth to match the rest of him.

  Even from where she stood, Feyn saw the mask of shock on Rom’s face. He made for the boy, then stopped, at a loss.

  Jonathan plunged his hand into the canvas bowl, pulled out a bloody fist, and stared at his fingers. The heart which Rom had ceremoniously placed in the bowl bulged in his hand.

  Gasps now, from those assembled. Feyn stared, stunned. The celebration clearly had taken an unplanned turn. Those in the throng cast about furtive glances as strange silence settled around them.

  Was the boy drunk? Mad?

  “He’s lost it,” Roland muttered beside her.

  “For now…” Jonathan staggered forward, holding the heart high. He opened his hand and the heart fell to the ground with a sickening, wet thud. “Let the dead bury the dead,” Jonathan said.

  Five paces away, Rom stared. The last of the drums stopped. The entire celebration had come to a standstill.

  Rom laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder but he batted it away. When he spoke again, it was in a quiet voice:

  “You won’t know true life until you taste blood.”

  As though desperate to find something worthy of celebration, someone shouted agreement.

  “You came for life! I will give you life! I will bring a new Sovereign realm!”

  A cry rose, immediately joined by more. The drums returned as though relieved, like a heart stuttering back to life after arrest.

  “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.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  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 duri
ng 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.