had known. They Keeper lowered himself into the grave, took the jars one by one from Jordin, and set them in a bed of straw next to the body. When he tried to climb out, his strength suddenly failed and Roland had to help him.
Rom lifted a handful of earth and willed his fingers to release it into the grave.
Anathema. Blasphemy, to see it fall upon that supine body.
He released the dirt onto Jonathan’s torso, then stepped to one side. Roland came forward and did the same. Jordin dropped only an armful of flowers atop the smatterings of dirt, sobbing all the while. One by one the rest of the procession came, the children last of all tossing anemones into the grave. And then the Keepers were there with their spades.
Rom turned away, looking toward the west, squinting at the sun.
They buried the rest of the Keepers in the long burrow beyond Jonathan’s grave.
By the time they’d placed the Nomads upon the pyre and set the fires, the sun had begun to set in splendid amber on the horizon.
The fires roared and crackled, lighting up the northern sky.
There were no songs. No stories of exploits of the fallen. None of the usual celebration could find footing amidst the flames of so many burning bodies.
The mass funeral consumed the day. Family members hovered over graves and smoking pyres until dusk, some feeding small meals to children beneath the first stars, others refusing or unable to eat. The embers would continue to burn into the night and morning.
Rom stood staring at the waning fire, aware only of the lone grave apart from the others. Jonathan had always been apart, alone. But there was Jordin, beside him even now in the twilight, watering his grave with her tears.
A terrible loneliness settled over him. He felt utterly lost. Abandoned in the middle of the battlefield where… where what? A victory had been won? History had been changed? Love had conquered?
Was this victory or the making of history? Was this love?
A step at his side. He hadn’t noticed Roland’s approach until the prince was at his shoulder. For a moment neither spoke.
“And now?” Rom said, without turning.
Roland quietly exhaled. “We continue as we have for centuries.”
“To what end?”
At last, the prince turned toward him in the darkness. “I know this is a hard day for you, but you must remember what the boy left us. We live as Mortals, full of his life. This was his purpose.”
“To die? I can’t believe that.”
“Believe as you will. As for me, I believe he lived to give life, and when that life left his blood, he willingly died. Now my people will take the power he gave us and fulfill our destiny. We, not Jonathan, will rule the world. Perhaps this was always the way it was to be.”
Could he have been so wrong? If Roland was right, this was only the beginning. But they didn’t rule. And there were fewer Mortals alive now than before. But even as the questions warred within him, he knew one thing for certain.
“We will honor his death forever,” he said.
Roland turned toward the smoking pyres. “We will honor his death by living forever.”
This new preoccupation seemed seared into Roland. Just as he had fused his people with their identity as Nomads, he would now draw them into his new mission: to live as a superior race that answered to no one but their prince.
How was that so different from the mission of the Dark Bloods?
“What will you do?”
“I will take my people north. We will regroup and grow stronger. When the day comes, we will do what is necessary.”
“What day?”
“The day we overcome all oppression and rule.”
The prince dipped his head and walked away.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
FOR TWO DAYS, the Seyala Valley lay under the gloom of shattered hope and mangled dreams. Under Rom’s orders the ruin’s stone courtyard had been washed clean of blood and the inner sanctum left vacant. Some of the yurts had been erected, but many slept in temporary shelters made of canvas flaps. Night fires burned, but the songs and dancing that had once filled the valley were not to be seen or heard except on the north end, where some of the Nomads raged about their exploits in war and spoke of coming days of glory.
Triphon’s dead body served as a constant and macabre reminder of defeat. Rom resisted questions as to the sanity of leaving a dead body exposed and defied mounting pressure to give Triphon a proper burial. Instead, he agreed to move the post with Triphon’s body to the side of the ruins where it was not so flagrantly visible.
The greater question confronting them all was far more urgent: what about those who still lived?
There was no Mortal Sovereign to take the seat of power. No new kingdom to waken the world to life. No miraculous and fanatical boy to inspire hope. No promise of life beyond that which already ran, rampant but aimless, in their own veins.
Only a broken valley with ruins bathed in the memory of blood.
Nothing made sense.
The council had met twice in an attempt to find consensus, but no clear path could be agreed upon. Rom and the Keepers were too distraught with the inequity of Jonathan’s death to even consider direction, let alone the future. How could the one who’d promised them a new kingdom have removed that possibility by offering up his own life? In his slaughter of the Dark Bloods, he’d displayed more skill and strength than any Mortal might have expected of him. Why, then, had he bared his chest and given up the sword to Saric?
The sky might have cleared, but the valley was shrouded in the thick fog of confusion and grief.
Even Roland, so steadfast in his resolve to see their new race of Nomads rise in power, offered few particulars as to how they should proceed.
North, yes. With full life, yes. But what of the expectation for freedom and autonomy embraced by his people during Jonathan’s life? What now?
Jordin was rarely seen in the valley, preferring instead the company of Jonathan’s grave. Rom had gone to the plateau on the eve of the second night to meditate and found her curled up next to the freshly disturbed earth, asleep. He’d sat down and watched the steady rise and fall of her breathing, trying for the hundredth time to make sense of the questions that flooded his mind.
He had never known Jonathan to speak untruth or to mislead. Then what had he meant in saying on the day of his death that he was bringing a new realm of Sovereignty? And how could he, when his blood had lost its potency?
Was it possible Jonathan had simply succumbed to the pressure of expectation that he would deliver them all? To the years of being bled, viewed less and less as a boy and more as a vessel of power?
Was it their own fault that they had pushed a fragile boy to grow into a leader that he had not owned the strength to become?
What could it mean to follow him as he’d urged in his last days? How did one follow the dead?
What of the storm and earthquake? Some called it the Maker’s Hand. Others said it was nothing more than a terrible storm.
For that matter, did the Maker even exist? Some said no-how could He, given all that had happened? What had happened in Jonathan’s blood was a matter of genetics, of science, and not mystery. Two days earlier, Rom would have derided them as blind and ungrateful, but how could he today? Why would a Maker allow the one source of
