Saric felt his sword wrenched from his hand. He jerked his head around to see Jonathan flying down the steps, no longer a boy but a warrior streaking toward the nearest line of Dark Bloods.
With a scream that turned Saric’s blood cold, Jonathan tore into the closest of them, easily sidestepping a frantic thrust of the warrior’s spear. The boy’s blade flashed and severed head from body.
Jonathan spun, screaming still, narrowly missed by another thrusting blade. He was too fast. Twisting with beautiful grace and power, Jonathan slashed into another warrior, cutting him nearly in two at the midsection. He sliced into another, separating arms from shoulders before plunging his sword through the man’s chest.
Saric watched, frozen in horrific wonder, as Jonathan summarily slaughtered six of his children without allowing a single blade to touch him.
Orders rang out. His ranks surged around the boy. Before they could close the circle, Jonathan cut down a seventh and sprang away into open ground. As if executing a carefully choreographed dance, he swept to the pole that held Triphon’s dead body.
He dropped to one knee and bowed his head in respect to his fallen friend. Long trails of blood from the wound in the Mortal’s gut streaked his belly and legs.
Jonathan stood and gazed up at the man, face wrenched with sorrow. He reached for one of the bloodied feet, leaned slowly forward, and kissed it. His sob of anguish echoed through the valley, cut short by a plea for all Mortals to hear.
“He will see life!” Jonathan cried, facing the line of Mortals where their leaders were mounted. “For the sacrifice he paid to save me, I give him life! Leave his body. He will not be buried with the others. As you find life, Triphon will find life.”
Jonathan spun and pointed the sword at Saric, eyes aflame. He held his position for an extended beat, then ran toward him, hunched low like a sprinter off the blocks.
Only then did it occur to Saric that the warrior who so easily killed seven of his children might as easily take their Maker who still knelt, immobilized and unarmed.
Panic flooded his veins. He started to push himself up, but the world around him was spinning.
And then Jonathan was at the base of the ruins. He took the steps in three long bounds and whirled to face the valley, bloody sword raised.
“Is there no end to death?” he cried.
He tossed the sword, sent it clattering to the stones just beyond Saric’s knee.
Saric turned and stared at the sword, red beneath the darkening sky. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jonathan seize the two poles that held the broken leather bowl. Torment, anguish on his face. He was mad. He was magnificent. Arms spread wide, the boy flung his words at the world.
“Is there no song without the sword? Is there no love without jealousy? Is there no end to rage?”
His body began to shake. He rocked back and forth like a man possessed, beyond himself. The clash of battle had stopped, replaced only by the wind, the thunder, and the boy’s broken shouts.
“Will the children all die? Will the sun be turned red? Will you drain my blood to feed your own ambition? Do I die so you can live?”
His braids flew back in the face of the storm. Tears streamed from his eyes, blown back toward his temples before they could mar his cheek.
“Find love!” he screamed. “Find beauty! Find life and know that the realm of Sovereigns is upon you!”
A lone voice of objection pierced the valley from far and high. Saric turned his head and saw a lone figure up on the western cliff, arms spread wide. A woman crying out in horror at the scene beneath her.
“No!” She fell to her knees. “Jonathan!”
She lifted her chin, drew a deep breath, and hurled a great wail at the sky.
A helpless sob erupted from the boy, dangling from the poles as though they held him and not the other way around. He stared up at the lone woman, his face twisted with anguish. “For love…” He sucked at the air, a horrible, lurching gasp. “For you, Jordin!”
Saric felt his mind fracture, broken by the war in his soul.
These were surely the words of a love saturated with power far greater than any he knew. He could not kill the one destined to bring such life.
These were surely the words of a power that would render his impotent. He was compelled to destroy the one destined to crush his lesser life.
Jonathan suddenly grasped his tunic at the neckline with both hands and ripped it wide to bare his chest. His eyes lowered to Saric.
“Take it!” he screamed, face red and drawn.
He grabbed the poles again, arms spread wide, his chest bare.
“Take my life for all of them. Spill my blood and drain it for this world. Take what you have come to take and be forever changed!”
Saric remained frozen.
“Obey me,” the boy said in a lower voice that reached into Saric’s mind and shattered the last of his confusion.
Darkness flooded his vision. He grabbed his sword by the hilt, shoved himself to his feet, and with a full- throated scream, lunged for the boy.
The blade slashed down across Jonathan’s body, severing his torso nearly in two.
Jonathan’s eyes went wide. His mouth was parted, midgasp. He stood motionless for a suspended instant before sinking to his knees. Cries from the Mortals drowned out the high keening on the cliff.
The boy collapsed into a pool of his own blood, a broken heap at Saric’s feet.
Saric staggered back a step. The sword fell from his hands and with it, the world.
The ruins began to shake beneath his feet. Wind roared through the valley, threatening to push him to the ground.
He staggered, struggling to keep his footing beneath the blackened sky. Before his very eyes the valley floor buckled. Large slabs of the far cliff began to slide into the valley. Unrelenting peels of thunder crashed through the heavens, shaking his bones to the core.
A full half of his children hugged the earth for safety, the other half tried to run, staggering and pitching like a drunken mob. The Mortals’ horses reared and threw their riders to the churning ground.
Then, as quickly as the quake came, it quieted. The earth rumbled to stillness. Unnatural calm settled over the valley, punctuated only by the rattle of falling stone and whinnying horses.
With a final whoosh, the vortex in the sky sucked up the dark clouds, returning them to an overcast gray pushed by a gentle breeze.
Silence.
It occurred to Saric that he was still on his feet. Alive. But the moment the thought entered his mind he knew that he was not the same man who’d considered himself alive only moments earlier.
His thoughts were no longer those he’d entertained before. He’d seen a light in the boy’s eyes. He’d obeyed his commands. He’d submitted to a power that left him crushed for all the world to see.
Nothing was the same.
Nothing could ever be the same.
Shaking badly, Saric walked to the edge of the steps, descended them one at a time, and crossed to a horse whose flesh still quivered with terror. He unsteadily mounted, only vaguely aware that Dark Blood on all sides were rising, some of them taking an unsteady knee at sight of him.
Varus rode up, face white. “My Lord?”
Saric avoided his gaze, the questions in his eyes, and pulled his mount around, only vaguely aware of the myriad gazes upon him.
“What is your command?” Varus said.
His command? He could not summon the resolve to lead. The boy had cursed him and robbed him of that power. Something had happened to him. The light in the boy’s eyes…
“My Lord, your orders?”
“Leave this place,” he said. “No more death.”
