Mortal

CHAPTER NINETEEN

IN TWO DAYS’ TIME, the great bonfires before the temple would burn as high as the ancient columns standing above it. The growing piles of wood were already the size of a small yurt and would be even larger by the time the fires were lit on the night of the annual Gathering. Hunters had gone out in search of boar, hare-as much game as they could bring back. The roasting pit had been dug on the edge of camp and lined with coals-soon the smell of roasting meat would send every stomach in camp growling.

Wine had been retrieved from the deep crevasse in the cliff face where it was stored, carried off from the last northern transport Roland’s cadre had raided before the entire camp had relocated to the Seyala Valley. It had been stored here, untouched, in anticipation of the Gathering. For centuries the annual event had drawn Nomadic factions scattered throughout the continents together for trade, marriage, and, most important of all, the remembrance of Chaos. In this way Nomads celebrated life as it was known in Chaos, by rote, void of emotion, as best as Corpses could celebrate life.

These last years the Gathering had taken on a decidedly more frenzied pace. The small bands of a hundred or two hundred Nomads each that had come together the year Jonathan had joined Roland’s tribe had never separated again. Nine hundred Nomads in total who no longer needed to travel long distances to gather, who no longer gathered in remembrance of Chaos but in celebration of life.

Mortal life through Jonathan’s blood.

A life that Rom had just a day and a half ago learned was rapidly slipping away.

Rom paused in midcamp, staring vacantly at the smoldering remains of last night’s bonfire. It had burned lower than usual-and would burn lower yet, tonight, in preparation for the great fire to come the night after. The celebration promised to be the most hedonistic and frenzied Gathering yet for the anticipation of Jonathan’s succession to the Sovereign throne-of the kingdom to come. New life to invade the dead world.

But looking at the embers now, Rom felt only dread.

Roland was gone on his wild gamble of a mission to acquire Feyn. A hundred fighters had been sent out as scouts, leaving those within the camp vulnerable. All this for Jonathan’s sake.

Rom needed to see him. To lay eyes on the boy with the uncanny nature who was both naïve and too wise at once. To see him and remember the day he’d first found him in secret as a boy. To remind himself that this was the boy predicted by Talus. Surely, the prophecy would come true.

But of course it would. Jonathan’s very existence was proof that all Rom had lived and fought for these nine years would somehow still come to pass.

He strode for Adah’s yurt, impatient for Triphon, who’d gone to find the boy an hour ago. What was taking him so long?

Ten minutes later, he was seated at Adah’s table at her insistence, a bowl of rabbit stew and a cup of fermented mare’s milk in front of him.

Watching as the older Nomad hurried out to check on something cooking in her outdoor oven, Rom could not help but think of Anna, his mother. She’d never known life-he could only hope that she now knew Bliss. The thought should have comforted him but instead brought him new anxiety. So many had died… Anna. Jonathan’s mother. The first old Keeper who had given him the vial of blood on that day nine years ago…

Avra.

Too many, and yet he couldn’t shake the fear that they might be few compared to the cost that awaited them in the days to come.

Appetite gone, he forced himself to eat-the first time he had done so since early yesterday morning, before the debacle with the Corpse and Jonathan’s increasingly erratic behavior.

Adah ducked back into the tent and he forced a slight smile and a wink. “Delicious as always, Adah.”

She grinned and started to refill his bowl. Rom held out his hand. “Please, I’ve had enough.”

“Nonsense, dear. Eat. You’ll wither up and blow away.” She ladled steaming stew into his bowl.

There was no denying Adah. Rom obediently nodded, dipped his spoon into the hot stew and was about to take a bite when the door flew wide.

There stood Triphon. Forehead wrinkled.

Rom pushed up from the table, food forgotten, already knowing he didn’t want to hear whatever Triphon had to say.

“He’s gone.”

“Jordin-”

“She’s gone, too.”

“What do you mean ‘gone’?”

The bull of a man shook his head, braids brushing his shoulder. “They’re both gone. So are their horses.”

“I could have told you that,” Adah said, turning from the kettle.

“What do you mean?”

“They came for food early this morning-nothing much, just some dried meat and cheese. I told him I was making stew, but he said they wouldn’t be back in time to eat this evening.”

Rom blinked, glanced at Triphon, whose face had gone stark.

“This evening? Where’d they go?”

She shrugged. “Where does Jonathan go, you ask? Wherever he likes. He’s Sovereign.”

“Not if we can’t find him to put him on his seat!” To Triphon: “Where?”

“The Corpse outpost?”

“No. They’d be back by afternoon.” Rom raked a hand through his hair and strode out past Triphon, aware of the taller man on his heels.

He stormed through the camp, ignoring those who stopped to stare at him and a few who tried to hail him. He stopped at the Keeper’s yurt only long enough to duck his head inside and confirm that the old man wasn’t there.

“The temple,” Triphon said.

Then Rom was running toward the ruins, rushing up the steps and through the columns, back toward the inner sanctum.

He didn’t pause inside the back chamber, but made his way past the silk-draped altar with the Book of Mortals upon it. To the back wall of the chamber and the small door, fitted to cover the opening exactly. The lock was open.

He hurried down the stairs, into the limestone chamber below, Triphon’s heavy step behind him. Lantern light drifting up through the well.

The bottom of the stair opened into a small chamber-the dry store and work space of the old alchemist, safely out of the elements.

The Book sat at a metal table before an array of vials and metal racks of samples. His ledger was open, his pen in hand, an there was an array of crumpled papers on the floor. Rom took one look at his haggard appearance and knew he had worked here through the night.

“No matter what I do, I cannot for the life in me figure out what is happening to his blood. I cannot pinpoint it. I cannot reverse it. I cannot stop it!”

“We have another problem,” Rom said.

The old man sighed, as though there could be no other, let alone greater, problem.

“Jonathan’s gone.”

The old man glanced up, blinked. “Gone. Gone where?”

“I’m praying you know. You saw him last, when you took your latest sample from him. Did he say anything, that he meant to leave camp at all?”

The old Keeper shook his head vaguely, shadows playing about the winkles under his eyes.

“He said very little. He asked about Order, and about Byzantium. But what do I know of Byzantium-I have never lived there. He wanted to know about the dead…”

“The Corpses?”

“No, the to-be-dead. The ones with the defects, taken away to die.”

Rom exchanged a look with Triphon. “The Authority of Passing?”

“Yes, yes. The Authority of Passing. That was it. He wanted to know what happened to them and what it would take to save…” The old man paused. “He said he wished he could help them.”

In a beat, Rom was running up the stairs, striding out of the inner sanctum, through the columns of the ancient basilica, Triphon at his side, shouting ahead for their horses.

“No. Roland’s gone,” Rom said. “And half of his men are out as scouts. I need you here…”

“I’m not letting you go alone,” the taller man said. “The danger is out there-not here. Caleb is ranking warrior. He’ll take charge…” And then he was running toward the horse pens.

Jonathan had no idea of the ways of a city like Byzantium! He had no business doing what he was doing. He was naïve, distracted by compassion, unaware of the danger to himself. Even with Jordin and Roland, they had barely escaped the city last time.

It took them only five minutes to reach the pens and secure what water and food they would need.

Rom slung canteens onto his saddle, pushed the young man preparing his horse aside, and cinched the girth himself.

“Triphon!” he shouted. “Now!”