Mortal, Page 2

  Mortals called it seeing and technically it was. But by seeing they meant fully understanding every component of that vision so that the world seemed to slow, filling each instant, breath, heartbeat, with information. A superior advantage, a great gift of the extraordinary blood flowing through their veins.

  The wind rifled through his braids, swept across his nape. He felt that, and far more. His heart beat like the hide-covered drums of the Nomads. Beyond the odor swilling in his nostrils there was more… than the textures and scent and sound of the world immediately before him.

  Time seemed to slow around him. There was the door lever, scratched and prematurely weathered. Latched, through the thickness of the wooden door itself. There was the distance between him and that door, the wind, funneling between them, the particles of dust gusting by.

  He held that posture, that vision, the scent in his nostrils, for an elongated second until, like a man stepping into another world, he became a part of it.

  And then he moved, fully committed, knowing he held a supreme advantage to whatever waited inside.

  His shoulder slammed into the door, splintering the wood around its latch. It flew wide with a crash and the details of the room snapped into place all at once.

  Bar: across the back of the room, topped with an array of bottles. Three were open, one of them reeking of hundred-proof alcohol. Twelve mugs. Three were dirty. Stools: nine, aligned in front of the bar, no backrests. To the right and left: seven tables. Round. Dark wood, treated with creosote. Side wall: closed door. A back room, then.

  Four large warriors dressed in strange, paneled leather armor, large knives on their belts, leaning on the bar. Two with mugs of beer in their fists. They were larger and stronger than any Corpse he’d seen—muscled necks and quick black eyes, already jerking toward his disturbance.

  One common Corpse in a smock behind the bar. No sign of Maro.

  Roland saw all of this at once before his boot landed on the floorboards.

  The room seemed to stall, the scent of freshly poured beer in his nostrils. One heartbeat. Half of another—theirs. Not his.

  And then his hands flashed with the speed of vipers. He flung the knives underhanded with enough force to send them straight and true for thirty paces.

  The blades flashed toward their targets, one at each end of the bar. End over killing end, through the air. Turning heads, too slow, eyes bleary with drink. Facial muscles flinching, too late.

  His blades took one in the right eye and the other in his forehead, slamming home to their hilts in rapid succession.

  The scent hit him then, like a wall. An odor of emotions he’d never encountered before in any Corpse. The realization sliced into his mind like a spear.

  But it wasn’t life. Not possible.

  His hands were already on the second set of knives, committed to the certainty that these men were not alive. That they were enemies who would kill him without a second thought. He spun to his right, gaining momentum for a second salvo.

  When he rounded again he saw how quickly the other two had turned. As fast as any fighter he’d seen. Perhaps faster.

  One had his knife drawn and was halfway through the throw. The other was shoving away his slumping neighbor.

  Roland took the one who had launched the knife first—in the face, not certain if his own blade would penetrate the heavy leather armor over their hearts. Without waiting to watch his blade find its target, he plunged forward and catapulted his full weight toward the last man.

  Head lowered, three sprinting strides, up under the man’s jaw like a battering ram.

  It was customary for Nomads to sew leather into the crowns of their hoods for such a purpose. There were few parts of the body that could not be used in combat if properly protected, the head chief among them. No wasted movement, no wasted weapon, no wasted moment.

  He felt the crown of his head crash into the man’s jaw. He heard the shattering of teeth and the crack of jawbone. The man arched wildly over the bar, instantly oblivious, limp.

  Even as the body collapsed on the bar Roland saw that his third knife had found its mark, leaving only the server behind the bar, wild-eyed and scrambling for a sword propped against the wall behind him.

  Patience spent, Roland sent his last knife into the back of the man’s neck. The Corpse dropped like a bag of feed.

  Roland stepped back and ripped off his hood. The air was still, filled with rot. Four were very dead and would never feel again. The fifth was unconscious, unable to feel anything for the moment.

  He would soon learn everything that one knew.

  But first—Roland strode to the door leading into the back room and pulled it wide. Inside a small storeroom lay the hogtied body of his cousin, Maro, mouth covered by a thick gag, eyes wide.

  Roland took one long look at him and slammed the door shut again. A muffled cry sounded from within.

  “Michael!”

  She was already at the door, studying his handiwork as one reads the page of a book. Her eyes flicked up at him.

  “Maro?”

  “In the storeroom.”

  “Alive?”

  “Until I get to him.”

  Her eyes settled on the form slumped backward over the bar. She flipped out a knife and started forward to finish him.

  “He stays alive,” Roland said.

  She halted in midstride, shot him a glance.

  “Untie Maro. Use the rope to secure this man to his horse. We take him with us.”

  He strode for the door.

  “And the others?” she asked.

  “The rest remain in their funeral pyre,” he said without looking back. “We burn this box to the ground and piss on the ashes.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE FORTRESS SPRAWLED along the edge of the forest, her turrets rooted deep into the earth like industrial claws. Like the talons of a steel-footed throne.

  From the highest lookout among the twisted pines, one might monitor the hills of Byzantium twenty miles away and gaze at the roiling sky’s ominous poetry, diffusing the sun’s light as those beneath lived under the guise of death.

  The thin strain of violins filled Saric’s master chamber, pumped in through the vents like air. Not the soulless stuff composed in the last half millennium, but the music of Chaos as it had been five centuries earlier, resurrected—a melody to tear at the soul. The minor key saturated the darkened chamber, the heavy silk hangings, the very candlelight, until it ruined the air for anything else. Saric had ordered it played throughout the fortress every evening at the same time for the benefit of those dwelling within these walls.

  So much had changed.

  Nine. It was the number of years since the Master Alchemist Pravus had first injected him with the serum that awakened him to a semblance of dark life. His entire being had seethed with new emotion. It had been a tortured birth that nearly destroyed him. And yet today he celebrated that first awakening because it had ultimately led to a far greater life—the same one that now allowed him to relish the ancient paintings of lush landscapes that lined the walls of the room in which he sat.

  The master chamber was twenty paces to a side. An expansive, thick rug woven from the hides of lions lay before a long ebony desk that doubled as a dining table when Saric felt so inclined. And he was inclined often. Gold silk panels gathered in each corner, hanging from the ceiling to pool on the marble floor like sunlight fallen to his feet. On the far side of the room, a tall cylindrical glass sarcophagus stood against the wall.

  Eight. It was the number of years he had spent in stasis in that very sarcophagus, here, in his former master’s fortress. He had little memory of those years except for the nightmares of his time before stasis—dreams of sweaty ambition. Of clawing and desperate jealousy. Of anger like poison in the veins.

  Seven. It was the number of months since he’d woken from those dark visions to find himself a man reborn. Something more than he had been, a masterwork of his maker, Pravus.

  He was
evolved, perfected from those first violent days of a lesser life years ago. The base sentiments of anger and greed and raw ambition had been joined by a capacity for joy and love, peace and wonder. It was then that he became aware of his true purpose: to fully embrace true life at any cost. And for this hunger he would be eternally grateful to his maker.

  Saric sat behind the carved ebony table and considered the steak topped with the tiny raw quail egg. The egg was smattered with caviar, the salty aroma of which he had inhaled now for a full ten minutes. His eyes fluttered closed. The ecstasy he felt at the thought of eating life into his very cells was only the beginning. Soon he would taste life in a way that exalted him to the heavens.

  He touched the silver knife with a fingertip, slid it across the damask tablecloth before gently picking it up. He lifted the fork with similar reverence and then, with deliberate leisure, slipped tines and tip at once into the steak. The egg trembled and spilled yolk onto the plate as he lifted the first salty bite to his mouth. He chewed slowly, the caviar popping, briny as life, against his tongue.

  Six. It was the number of months since he had first discovered that out of this reborn life there were two things he could no longer abide: death, and any power that threatened his mastery of life, which equated to any power greater than his own. He had found true life at last in this dead world, and nothing could be allowed to compromise or supplant the unquestioned power that came with it.

  He slid his gaze down the table past the glow of the candelabra to the glass sarcophagus. Pravus stared back with sightless eyes.

  Five. It was the number of months since he’d killed Pravus. The memory of that day was stamped into his mind like a birthmark. His master had been bent low over a microscope in Corban’s lab, analyzing a new sample of flesh quickened by a strengthening serum, when Saric had quietly stepped in behind him, axe behind his back, trembling with the thought of what he was about to do.

  He’d hesitated only a moment, considering the profanity of killing the one who’d given him life so abundantly. But Pravus could not become Sovereign of the world as he, a royal in the line of Sovereigns, could. Though he loved the man as a father, he would always stand in the path of Saric’s discovery of all this new existence could offer him. Raw power was an expression of life, and Saric’s destiny lay in unrestrained consumption of both.

  Pravus had turned as Saric rushed forward, but the rage he felt as he buried the axe in his master’s face had been directed at himself. The slaying had been a deeply distasteful experience. He’d fallen to his knees and wept as Pravus slumped in the chair, dead, bleeding onto the floor.

  And yet, in his death Pravus had given him a great, final gift brimming with power. And so he would revere him forever.

  Saric set down the knife and fork, slid back his carved chair and rose. He rounded the end of the table and walked to the sarcophagus, napkin still in hand. Tilting his head, he wiped the barest bit of a smudge off the front of the glass, resisting the urge to weep at the sudden loneliness that seized him.

  Tubes fed into the back of the sarcophagus, twitching ever so slightly at the pulse of the fluid within them. For an instant he thought of ripping them away. Instead, he touched one thoughtfully, knowing it sent nutrients even now to the layer of living flesh he’d ordered Corban to graft over the long wound that had forever separated Pravus’s eyes an inch too far—that gash that had opened under Saric’s ax, spilling blood and brains so that he could fulfill his calling.

  He stepped back, his faint reflection transposed over the soulless face of his former master. Saric could not count the times he’d stood before this sarcophagus and wept. But there was new life yet to be found. And power greater than any yet understood. He leaned forward and placed a light kiss on the glass.

  “Forgive me.”

  And he knew his master did.

  Four. It was the number of days ago he’d first learned that Byzantium’s Citadel, home to the world’s highest administrative offices, housed a terrible and beautiful secret.

  A knock at the door. Saric slowly turned his gaze from the sarcophagus and glanced at the delicacies on his plate. He didn’t like to be interrupted at times like this. He considered ignoring the intrusion. Instead, he folded the napkin between his fingers.

  “Come.”

  The carved double doors swung open on their hinges, revealing the robed form of Corban, his chief alchemist.

  His head was bowed, his long hair bound into a braid wrapped tight with black silk that fell down over his chest. It was a preference the alchemist had adopted since waking to the life that he had once been denied by Pravus. It was Saric who had given it to him.

  Two others stood behind him, taller, broader of shoulder than Corban—products of the same chambers from which Saric himself had emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon. They knelt in reverence, one in the shadow of each door, twin images of sinister beauty, perfectly muscled with inky veins beneath their pale skin so similar to his own. As Pravus was his maker, he was theirs—a better maker, having seen to it that they were stripped of all ability to countermand him. They would never know the disquiet or anguish of killing their creator as he had. He was their father, and they were his children, whom he loved as much as his own life. To a point.

  “Yes?”

  The black eyes of all three lifted to him with devotion.

  So much had changed.

  “We’ve found her,” Corban said.

  “Where is she?” Saric was careful that his words not bely the acceleration of his heart.

  “Here, liege.”

  “You brought her?” His heart drummed to a thundering crescendo within his chest.

  “Yes.”

  “Alive?”

  “In stasis.”

  For a moment he could not move. Could hardly fathom the good fortune that had found him with these words. But this was his destiny, and the day of that glorious fulfillment had finally come.

  Breathing deliberately against the terrible new hunger that flooded his veins, he strode forward, barely aware now of the floor underfoot, the walls that hid his legion from an unwitting world, the air he breathed.

  He swept past Corban and walked down the stone corridor, quickly now. Silks—red, the color of life—billowed out from the wall in his wake like lungs, lifting with crimson breath.

  He did not ask where they had brought her. He knew.

  Violins assaulted his nerves, ricocheting off the basalt stone of the corridor. He passed several of his brood—Dark Bloods as evolved, nearly, as he. They knelt the instant they saw him, their heads swiveling as he passed to descend the vast stair at the far end of the fortress into the subterranean chamber below. Dimly lit, it reeked eternally of chemicals and formaldehyde. Of death—one of the two things so offensive to Saric.

  But he hardly noticed that now. There, on the great steel table in the center: a body sheathed in cloth, one arm dangling off the edge, snaked through with tubes. The skin, where he could see it, still perfect…

  He willed his breath to slow again. Inhaled.

  “Leave.”

  He waited until the test tubes along the far wall, neatly stored in their racks, untouched in years, ceased their jittering shudder after the great doors slammed closed.

  Only then did he notice the silence—the music did not reach this chamber. But in this moment, silence was the only appropriate sound.

  With reverent fingertips he peeled back the cloth from that face. From the long line of that neck, shoulders, and torso, unblemished all this time except for the red marks where the tubes had been sewn in to keep her alive. From the seam of a great scar where metal sutures had once held it closed.

  He lifted the hand, righting the pale moonstone ring that had twisted on Feyn’s slender finger. He lifted it to his lips.

  “My love,” he whispered, turning his cheek against the delicate backs of those fingers. “Now we will embrace the full power of life… together.”

  CHAPTER THREE

 
HIDDEN DEEP IN THE SEYALA VALLEY, twelve hundred Mortals began their routines after a late night of revelry. A daily rhythm of gathering, hunting, grazing horses, and consuming life with eagerness bound up in the imminent promise of the boy’s coming reign. After five hundred years of oppression and death, the entire world would soon be ruled not by the statutes of Order, but by life.

  By Jonathan.

  But those twelve hundred living souls were oblivious to the turn of events that had brought strange new death among them in the dead of night.

  Roland and Michael had returned to camp before dawn. Now, six hours later, the Council of Twelve convened in the temple ruins built into the craggy cliff. Here, in the temple’s inner sanctum, the ancient windows still boasted an array of stained glass, the only ones still intact.

  Roughly thirty paces deep, the chamber lay beyond the outer courtyard. Richly woven rugs covered the pocked marble floor and ran past the stone benches up three steps to a small platform. An ancient altar stood at its center, draped in burgundy silk embroidered with the emblem of Avra’s heart. Avra, the first Mortal martyr. Atop the altar lay a simple volume propped on a wooden stand. The Book of Mortals. Within it were recorded the names of every Mortal and the date of his or her rebirth as well as an exact translation of the Keeper’s ancient vellum that had put every event in motion to make such life possible.

  Torches lit against the overcast morning threw warm light on the exposed stone of the chamber’s six pillars standing like sentries down the length of the room. But they did little to lend color to the ghastly pale Corpse gagged and bound to a chair at the foot of the platform.

  Rom Sebastian, Keeper, First Born Leader of the Mortals and protector of Jonathan, stood before the Corpse, carefully considering what this turn could mean.

  Nine years had passed since Rom had drunk from the ancient vial of blood that had brought him to life and sent him on a quest to find the boy foretold by Talus.