Mortal

Jonathan, as she’d guessed, having overheard the children’s plans for the game earlier.

He was sitting cross-legged on the scrubby grass, dust on his pants and boots. He had changed so much from the boy with the limp who had come to them nine years ago when Jordin herself was nearly ten, just after her mother had died. He was now a rangy young man two heads taller than she, with a strong neck and broadening shoulders, and hands that played the Nomadic lyre as easily as they wielded a sword. He had his knife out and was just blowing the dust off a new carved game piece when he saw her and smiled.

She returned his smile with her own and quickened her stride, easily concealing her gladness at having found him. Again.

Jonathan. The man who gazed at her differently than the way he looked at other women. The man who bowed his head when they came to tap his blood as if he was a well. She wanted to take him away every time the Keeper came looking for him.

“Jordin, come play!” one of the children said. “Jonathan’s making a second set!”

“Oh?” she said, dropping down to the ground beside them.

“What do you think?” Jonathan said, handing her the piece. It was the length of a man’s hand, cylindrical in shape.

“I think it looks like…” She paused, taking in the rough carving of the hair, pulled back. The figure was standing on a stone to make her the same height as the others. She glanced up at Jonathan. “Like me.”

“It is you!” one of the children crowed. “And here are Michael and Roland!”

She let out a soft laugh as she glanced at Jonathan, whose braids had fallen into his face.

“I’m surprised you didn’t make Triphon.”

“The piece would be too tall,” Jonathan said with a wry smile.

“He’s calling for you. The council needs you. It seems to be urgent.”

“Urgent? Isn’t it always?”

“I think this is different.”

Jonathan looked down at the knife in his hand, nodded once, and got to his feet, extending his hand to help her up.

“Don’t go!” one of the boys said.

“I’ll be back. Promise.”

Jonathan took her hand and led her from the children, then released it and helped her down a short drop. He’d never been reserved about showing affection, but there was something more to the way his hand had held hers of late. She had wondered each time, afraid to ask his intentions, afraid that what she dared hope might be crushed with a simple word that he was only showing her friendship. Could he feel the surge of her pulse when he touched her fingers? Hear the shortening of her breath?

They didn’t speak as they descended toward camp. There was no need to fill the comfortable silence between them; in this way they were much alike.

Those bathing and washing clothes got to their feet as they crossed the river, several of them coming to greet him, reaching for his hand.

“Jonathan,” they murmured, lowering their heads.

He let them. He always let them, as they took his hand, their fingers touching the vein along his wrist-an acknowledgment of the life that flowed through it. A few, an older woman among them, reached up with aging fingers, to touch his neck.

And then they went on, along the edge of camp-passing through it would take far too much time. They slowed again as those working out behind their yurts came to touch him, to murmur his name. Even then some, seeing him, hurried into their tents and came out with bits of meat, a cup of wine, mare’s milk. He took them all, drinking the milk, tearing into the meat with a gusto that made those watching nod approval, tossing back the wine as expected.

It had never been a mystery to Jordin why he kept to the fringe of camp when he could. It wasn’t just for his sake-because he wouldn’t do anything other than accept each of their gifts with grace, no matter how tedious-but for their sake, because they could not see him without feeling compelled to thank him for the vast gifts of Mortal life. For the acute perception that served them so well in every hunt. For the wild existence they celebrated in everything they did from the riot of color in their clothes to the beat of their drums and strength of their wine at night. All of which they craved and consumed with abandon.

All of which Jonathan-and Jordin, too-enjoyed as much outside camp as within it. More.

They came to the temple ruins from the side. Above the stone stairs, the ancient pillars opened to the sky. The vaulted ceiling that had once covered them had long ago caved in and been carted away by scavengers. It had been a basilica at one time, before the time of Order, when men knew the Maker as another name: God.

In the face of the lone stone beam that bridged the two columns at the front of the courtyard, Rom had chiseled the creed by which all Mortals lived: The Glory of the Maker is Man Fully Alive. They said it had first been spoken by an ancient saint named Irenaeus during the second century of Chaos, twenty- three hundred years ago.

Today, the stone corners were broken away and tiny plants grew in the cracks between each step, but every time Jordin mounted these stairs her skin prickled. In the sanctum of this temple called Bahar-a name she was once told meant “Spring of Life”-she had come into Mortality on the high platform without mother or father to clasp her afterward.

It had been Jonathan who’d kissed her and welcomed her to life with the stent still in his arm.

They passed through the long corridor of pillars to the inner sanctum at the back, pulling open the double doors together and entering without a word.

The smell assaulted her without warning and she jerked back. Jonathan, too, hesitated.

Stench of Corpse.

Of something more…

Ten heads had turned, Roland, Michael, Rom, and the strange old Keeper among them. On the wide aisle before the altar, a large and very pale man slumped in a chair. Was that what she smelled? He looked like a Corpse. He was half again as tall as she, his tangled and unkempt hair hanging like ropes from his head. Her hackles raised at the sight of him.

Rom hurried forward to meet them as the others got to their feet. Roland and Michael were already standing.

“Jonathan,” Rom said. He lowered his head.

“Who do I smell?” Jonathan said.

“That’s the Corpse Roland and Michael brought back last night.” His jaw was tight. “We need a decision from you.”

Jonathan stared at the Corpse, the Adam’s apple in his throat bobbing slightly as he swallowed.

“Please.”

Rom led Jonathan to the front of the chamber.

Jordin faded back toward the last row of stone benches, to stand on the edge of a fringed rug. Something was wrong about the Corpse, obvious by the sidelong glance of Siphus, the dart of Zara’s eyes from Roland to Rom and back. The set of Roland’s jaw.

Behind her, the doors opened and Triphon burst into the room. One of the doors slammed on the ancient hinges. The stained glass shuddered in the nearby window. The Corpse in the chair stirred at the commotion.

“I can’t find h-” Triphon stopped. “Ah, Jonathan.” He wrinkled his nose, apparently readjusting to the smell in the chamber, and then strode down the aisle to the front, giving Jordin a slight nod as he passed and went to take his seat.

“This… Corpse that Roland and Michael brought back,” Rom said, gesturing to the man stirring in the chair, “is new.”

Jonathan nodded, gazing at the man. His tunic was still dusty from where he had been sitting on the knoll.

“He claims to be alive. To have been given life…” Rom paused, as though unsure about what he would say next. “By Saric.”

“Saric?” Jonathan said, more sharply than Jordin had ever heard him speak.

“Yes. He claims Saric is alive. And that he has made three thousand other warriors-Dark Bloods, he calls them- like him. But there’s something else. This one…”