Forbidden (22 page)

“The only bird I’ve ever held is one I’ve made,” he said. “I make them sometimes, like this.” His attention was less on his own fingers than on the boy, who watched as Rom folded the leaf into the shape of a kite, then back along the edges to form wings. The long end formed a narrow neck. Then the crane’s head.

“You see?” He lifted the leaf bird up to the air and then set it down between them.

“Hmm,” the boy said in a voice so fragile it seemed the very wind might break it. “That’s a nice bird.”

Jonathan stood, limped over to one of the bushes, and set his own bird on a branch. He was indeed crippled, but the limp didn’t seem to bother him. He returned, sat back down, and lifted Rom’s small offering.

“May I have this?”

“I made it for you,” Rom said.

His eyes brightened with delight. “Thank you.”

Rom’s heart nearly broke at the sight of the boy’s smile. There was a magic about him that he’d never seen or felt before in any other person.

Or was he simply—and unfairly—transposing Talus Gurov’s hope onto this child because of the sheer miracle of his existence?

“There’s something else,” Rom said, reaching into his back pocket. He pulled out the vellum and unfolded it. “I found this a couple of days ago. It’s very old.” He laid it out on his knee. “It’s is how I knew to find you.”

Jonathan stared at the vellum for a few moments, then lifted his eyes. “You were looking for me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Well…” What could he say? Even if the keepers were right and Jonathan
was
the long-awaited child whose blood held the only hope for humanity, the boy couldn’t possibly know that, could he? By all accounts he was only a nine-year-old boy who got on well with birds and was full of life without knowing it.

“Because I think you might be a very special boy,” Rom said.

Jonathan grinned. “That’s a nice thing to say.”

Or did Jonathan know more than he was letting on?

“Jonathan, do you ever feel differently than other people? Do things like…I don’t know…do sorrow or joy mean anything to you?”

Something like surprise lit the boy’s eyes.

Surprise? Not fear.

“You know about those feelings?”

He knew! Surely because he had felt it himself!

“Yes. I drank some ancient blood and it changed me. If I’m right…If the vellum is right, the world is dead. Everyone! But I was brought back to life by the blood.” He said it in a rush, desperate to be out with it all. Too much too quickly, he thought. But now he was fully committed. “The keepers say that a nine-year-old boy’s blood will bring life back to the world. And Jonathan, I think that boy might be you.”

He waited for a reaction. A nod. A knowing look. The boy only stared at him as though waiting to see if he’d say more.

He told himself to remember that Jonathan was only a child. And yet he wasn’t reacting with as much surprise Rom might have guessed. Or with as much confusion, for that matter.

“Do you know anything about this?” Rom pressed. “About sorrow?”

“So you think it’s true?” the boy asked.

“I’ve felt it!” He gripped his own forearm. “It’s here, in my blood. I
know
it’s true.”

“I mean about the boy. Do you believe the world is dead and that a boy can bring it back to life?”

“It must be. You tell me, is it?”

Jonathan looked over at the bushes where he’d released the bird. A slight tremor stirred his frail fingers. “I have dreams,” the boy said.

“Dreams?”

His eyes were back on Rom. “Are you saying they’re true?”

“What dreams?” Rom could hardly contain his excitement.

“I dream every night. That the world is dead and I’m the only one alive. About people called keepers who protect me. About a war.”

“A war?”

The vellum claimed the boy must be brought to power but said nothing about a war.

“About people dying,” Jonathan said. He blinked and looked away again, but Rom could not miss the subtle lines of fear on his face. Tears glassed the boy’s eyes.

Rom laid his hand on Jonathan’s arm. When he spoke, his voice was barely more than a whisper. “You’re the boy, Jonathan.” The bird in the bush fluttered away. He didn’t know what else to say. He could scarcely think, much less speak.

“I shouldn’t talk about it,” the boy said. “The dreams make me cry.”

“But what if you’re alive, like I am—maybe
more
than I am? What if you’re very special—or even the rightful Sovereign?”

Jonathan’s eyes darted over his shoulder to where his mother stood. “They’re just dreams. I’m a cripple. I’m not even supposed to be alive. Feyn will be the Sovereign.”

He knew about Feyn? But of course, the whole world knew about Feyn.

“Yes, Feyn is the rightful Sovereign,” Rom said, “but you’re more than just a cripple. The vellum
predicted
you would be crippled! That you must be. So you see? It
must
be true. All of it!”

Who was he trying to convince? The boy, or himself? Because in that moment, Jonathan looked nothing like a hoped-for Sovereign-to-be.

But he was here. He was alive. Everything the keeper had said, everything the vellum had said, was accurate.

“What are you feeling?” Rom asked. “You’re feeling things that your mother can’t feel, aren’t you? It’s because you’re alive even though you haven’t taken the same blood I took, which can only mean that your blood is alive and your dreams are real. That your mind is somehow different from ours and you can see things no one else can see. It’s true, Jonathan. It’s all true. I’m here to tell you that and…to protect you.”

He hadn’t known that last part for certain until he spoke it. But now he knew with no lack of certainty that it, too, was true.

Any other nine-year-old hearing these impossible things might think it a game. But there was an earnestness about Jonathan that betrayed him.

He knew. He’d surely suspected all along that his dreams were real. Maybe he’d even been preparing himself for this moment without even knowing it.

“You have to believe me, Jonathan. You are very, very important to the world.”

Jonathan stared at the ground. What thoughts lived behind those brown eyes? What was it, to be so unusual, and alone? To know the world had never accepted—would never accept—you? That it would go to lengths to end you if the secret of your existence became known?

To be a boy without a mother who could return his love, or weep, or laugh? Or do anything but be afraid each time that you did?

Rom found himself fighting back tears. What had it been like, the nine years of this boy’s existence?

“Do you want to tell me more about the dreams?”

The boy took a deep breath, swallowed, and settled. “If you’re right, maybe I shouldn’t say anything more about my dreams.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t understand them.”

“Maybe I can help you understand them.”

“I don’t think you can.”

“That’s all right.” After a minute, Rom said, “Can you at least tell me what I’m supposed to do?”

“I don’t know. But I think you’ll know. Maybe you should listen to your dreams.”

“I don’t have those kinds of dreams.”

Jonathan looked up at him, clearly troubled. “How could I be Sovereign? Feyn is Sovereign-to-be.”

“Yes, that’s true. Unless…”

He didn’t want to speak the obvious. The thought of Feyn’s death struck him as a terrible offense. Suggesting it to a nine-year-old boy seemed profane. But if this world’s hope of life rested on Jonathan’s shoulders and only Feyn stood in his way, maybe he was not the one meant to die. Maybe she was.

No, that surely could not be.

“I think you’re supposed to tell me what I should do,” Rom said, standing. He paced in front of the boy, running his fingers through his hair. “I was lucky to find you, and now that I have, I’m at a complete loss. But I don’t have much time.”

“I’m just a boy,” he whispered.

“I know.”

Rom sighed, looked around, tried to decide what to do. But Jonathan’s next words snapped him back.

“In my dream, there were four others.”

“What?” Rom’s heart skipped a beat.

“They drank the blood.”

“You know about the others?”

“I dreamed about them. Are they real?”

“Yes!”

“You found me.”

“Yes.”

“I saw all of that.”

“In your dreams?”

“Yes.”

“You saw
me
? Who I was?”

“Not you, just a man. But now I know it’s you. And that’s how I know that you’ll know what to do when the time comes. If the dreams are true, and I have to do what I have to do, then you have to do what you have to do.”

There was now no question in Rom’s mind that he was staring at a boy who against all logic would one day rule this world.

The boy would become humanity’s only hope, and his life had been entrusted to Rom.

The weight of the last three days crashed down on him. He knew that what he’d told the boy’s mother was true: He would protect this boy, even at the cost of his own life.

“But you should know, some die,” the boy said softly.

“The world is already dead, Jonathan.”

The boy’s eyes were twin pools of sorrow. “Sometimes death is the only way.”

Rom eased himself back down, cross-legged across from the boy. “You believe me, then?”

The boy’s finger stroked the head of the leaf-bird. “You found me.”

“I found you,” Rom said.

“Will you stay with me for a little while?” Jonathan said. “Will you show me how to make a bird from a leaf?”

In that moment, Jonathan seemed like only a boy again.

“I would spend the rest of my life showing you how to make birds if that’s what you wanted,” Rom said.

W
hy do
they call you the Book?”

Feyn’s question hung in the air. The man staring out the tall window of her receiving room remained as still as he had been since the guards ushered him in.

Her apartment was the epitome of Order. The bed was made and the hole in her closet ceiling had been repaired. The faint smell of fresh paint still lingered in the air. In the foyer, a bouquet of rare and wildly expensive flowers, forced to bloom and stripped of thorns, jutted from a rare crystal vase. The card beneath them read only,
Your servant—Saric.

She had sent Nuala away with assurances that she was fine, that she needed time to herself to work, to rest, and to meditate, all in the name of easing her anxiety over her coming inauguration. It was partially true.

But the other truth was that she needed time to think, and to learn more from this keeper.

Her meeting with Saric had played through her mind a hundred times since her return to the security of her chamber. She’d immediately summoned Rowan, head of the senate, and learned the full details of her father’s death and her brother’s subsequent rise to power. His relief in seeing her safe had fueled his detailed explanation of events, through which she had finally come to understand the political logic behind Saric’s temporary rise to the office of Sovereign.

And then there was the related but separate conclusion she’d come to the moment her brother had struck her.

Saric intended to kill her.

She’d learned from Rowan that Saric had ordered the immediate execution of all nine-year-old male royals, an order that Rowan had stalled only at great risk to himself. “He’s got the notion of a threat to your sovereignty,” Rowan had said.

“You see why the senate was foolish to bring him into power.”

“Perhaps, but what were we to do? Your kidnapping threw the senate into a panic, so we fulfilled the letter of the law.”

She’d eased Rowan’s fears and assured him that he’d done well to delay Saric’s order. She did not tell him that her brother was motivated by more than fear, blaming the command on only “inexperience and folly.”

Regardless, she was now sure: Saric was driven by dark passions. He would not rest until he’d wrested Sovereignty from her—permanently. With passage of the new law, he would be next in line for the office the moment she died after assuming rule. And she had no delusions that she would indeed die by Saric’s hand, if not the day of her inauguration, then the next, or the day after. At any given moment, her life would be forfeit, a container broken open to spill out the power that Saric craved for himself.

And so she’d played into his twisted affections for her, offering him hope where there was none, going so far as to say that he would head her senate once she took office.

But that would never be.

Her brother would never rule because he would die before she did. At the very least he would reside in his own dungeons for treason. It would be her first official act as Sovereign, before he had any time to destroy her. Only the fact that he was the current Sovereign precluded her from making any move now. She had no official power over him or the senate. Saric, on the other hand, did.

And so she must be clever.

She’d said nothing of this to Rowan. But he would know soon enough. She would see to it.

Meanwhile, the keeper who had spoken to her of secrets just days ago now stood silent as a pillar.

“Why won’t you speak to me? I’ve read the vellum and know your history. Didn’t you hear me? The man you sent to find me found me.”

She’d chased the words of that vellum through her memory. They were little more than the strange beliefs of an ancient sect that sought hope where there was none to be found. Talus Gurov, like her own brother, hounded the forbidden intoxicants of Chaos. As Sovereign, it would be her duty to eradicate for good all traces of that former age.

This is what her mind told her.

But her memory lingered on the image of Rom, trying to summon the way he had affected her. Trying to touch, again, her own heart.

But if it existed within her, she could neither find nor feel it. There was only the fear—fear for the blood’s dangerous aftermath and how it might affect her subjects, their future…her own.

There remained the matter of Rom, an innocent trapped by the musings of heresy. He deserved nothing more heavy-handed than gentle correction. This was the true aim and beauty of Order. As Sovereign she was determined not to squash those who erred, but to correct them. Order was its own illumination. It was neither natural nor comfortable for anyone to wish to be outside it.

And what if there is truth to the vellum, Feyn?

But there could not be. The mere thought was ludicrous. They were all dead? Preposterous.

What if there is a boy?

A hollow pit of uncertainty gaped in her mind.

“Rom has gone to look for the boy,” she said. “But there is no boy, is there? No, but you wouldn’t know that. Your mind is captured by this fantasy.”

The keeper slowly turned to face her, eyeing her as if it were he who ruled this world. He had been spilling over with mad ramblings of boys and blood and secrets, but now he was like another person. Distant, as though she were not the same woman who had gone to the dungeon in search of him before. Still, he said nothing.

“Even if a cripple did somehow survive,” she said, “the world would never accept him. We are only days from Rebirth.”

“The Day of Rebirth,” the old man quietly said at last.

“Ah, he speaks,” she said. “I had begun to wonder if you were the same manic man I met in the dungeon.”

“You do realize there hasn’t been a real Rebirth yet.”

“So say insurgent heretics.”

“That we are all dead,” he continued. “That at this very moment you and I stand here, hardly more than breathing corpses.”

So the vellum had said.

She unfolded her arms and walked to a small table that held a silver pot of hot tea. “And here I was worried you’d gone mad.”

“Oh, I’m quite mad, I assure you. I have been for a while. Try carrying the truth that the world is dead around with you for nearly a century. To be one of the last of your kind. Too much to say, so much to talk about. Only yourself to talk to. It’ll make you mad.”

She poured the steaming liquid into a porcelain cup. Its twin sat on the small table nearest the keeper, already tepid and untouched. “And yet you believe that I am the one who is mad,” she said. “That in reality you are among the few sane still living.”

“No, not living.”

She took a sip without tasting it, and then abruptly set the cup down.

“Peace has reigned for hundreds of years. The Age of Chaos was filled with so much war and pain. Why would you even dream of returning to such a state?”

“Only corpses rest in peace.”

“Then leave us dead! Let the living crave what I already have. The world is at peace!”

“A corpse may rest in peace, but make no mistake, it has no life. No true humanity. No true love or joy, not even true peace, any more than a rock has peace.”

“And no anguish or ambition or greed or all of the pain that comes with your kind of love.”

His brow arched. “She speaks of the forbidden so eloquently. You surprise me.”

Because I have tasted your kind of love, old man, and I have felt its pain.

“Forbidden, yes,” she said. “But its history proves that it’s not so eloquent.”

The keeper stared at her for a moment. “You ask me why I am called the Book.” He stepped slowly away from the window, combing gnarled fingers through his white beard. “The questions skitter through the brain like rodents. Who is the boy? Who is this man? Where is the Maker? And the grandest of all: Who is truly mad…and who is dead?”

She crossed her arms. “Tell me about the keepers. About Talus, this first keeper. How has your order kept these secrets for so long? The boy, if he exists—what exactly is he supposed to do? The vellum said he must come to power. What power? As Sovereign?”

“What you are really asking is what’s to become of you.”

“I know what’s to become of me. I want to know what
you
think should become of me.”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you.”

She gave a sharp laugh. “Why?”

“I’ve taken a vow of silence.”

“Then you don’t have to worry, do you?” she said. “If I’m dead, I will be as silent as the grave.”

“Here we are, two corpses, talking. What use is there in that?”

“Then you don’t claim to have this supposed life of yours?”

He paused. “Not yet. Soon.”

She studied him. Despite his riddles, this old man had a strange way of easing her fears. He spoke of death, but his eyes flashed with knowledge of something wholly
other
.

“I see the glint in your eyes, and it isn’t from the light. You’re no idiot and yet you speak in riddles. You sound like an alchemist.”

He turned back to the window. “Perhaps because I am,” he said.

“An alchemist?”

He folded his hands behind him. “I am a keeper. A protector and warrior of the truth. But the keepers were alchemists first and foremost. What I know of alchemy would confound your brother’s finest peers. That said, make no mistake: I can swing a sword with the best. Now that he’s dead, I will admit that Alban, the keeper your brother killed only days ago, was a better fighter than I. Well, some days.”

“Alchemist or not, you’re a throwback to the Age of Chaos. Everything that stood against Order!”

“Yes!” he thundered, twisting back with a clenched fist. “In my day I could have taken out ten of those guards out front! And get it straight: Chaos
is
life! As much as Order is death.”

“Blasphemy!”

“Truth!”

“Believe me, if there is truth, I would be the first to embrace it,” she said. “But there is none here.”

The keeper stared at her. A slight smile toyed with the corner of his mouth. “That’s why I chose you, dear Feyn, Sovereign-to-be or not. That’s why I told Rom to seek
you
out. You have the unwavering and impeccable character of a true Sovereign. You know nothing but loyalty and allegiance to what you believe is the truth. You’re a
slave
to it. All your life you have been trained to bow only to the truth.”

“To the Order.”

“Yes, to your Order. But what if I am right?”

“You could never prove it.”

“And if the boy exists?”

“Even if he does, how could you bring him to power? What do you propose to do, kill me?”

“As I said, I’ve sworn an oath of silence.”

“Then
break
your oath!”

He stepped forward, eyes bright. “There’s one way only for me to bring you into confidence.”

“What way?”

He stopped in front of her, his gaze searching her own. Now she could see clearly: His were not the eyes of a lunatic.

“Renounce all you know,” he said with stale breath. “Relinquish your right to all that you hold sacred. To Order. To all you have been taught to fear.”

“That’s heresy.”

“Heresy,” he mimicked. “Because to do so is to gain Hades itself?”

“Yes.”

“There’s your fear talking. What you don’t know is that you’re already in Hades!”

His words seemed to sink to the pit of her stomach. Had she risked her eternity in drinking the blood, in knowing its wild throes? “Perhaps the blood takes one to Hades,” she said quietly. “Perhaps it ruins the soul.”

“Ruins the soul?” He gave a gruff and mirthless laugh. He had mastered the mimic as well as she. “If you drank it, you’d know better.”

“I drank it, and I don’t!”

He blinked. “You—you took it?”

“I drank the poison, if that’s what you mean.”

“How can that be? There’s too much fear in you!”

“It seems that I drank less than the allotted portion. The effects wore off.”

His face had gone white. “You took the final portion?” he rasped. “What was it like? You’ve tasted life? Hope? Love? Surely you felt these things!”

“Love?” she said faintly. If she tried, she could remember the way she’d cupped Rom’s face, the way she dashed up the knoll…in the same way that she remembered what she ate for breakfast. But it no longer stirred her heart.

He grabbed her by her shoulders and gave her a shake. “Love, woman! Did you feel it?”

“Take your hands off me!”

He released her and stepped back. “Forgive me, but you must tell me. I’ve waited my whole life to feel what you have felt.”

“I can’t,” she said, stepping away from him.

“I’ve protected the truth my whole life; I have sworn my life to what you’ve come by so cheaply—and
you
dictate terms to
me
?”

Feyn turned back. “I’ll tell you everything that happened to me, but only in exchange for this fairy tale of how you plan to bring the boy to power.” And then she added, “Assuming such a boy even exists.”

That quieted him.

“Was it the blood that made you so crafty, or were you like this before?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I’m to be Sovereign.”

“Then tell me this: In that moment that you were alive, did you realize that you’d been dead all your life?”

“I was intoxicated! It broke my sense of Order.”

“Because your Order is
not
life!”

“So you’ve said. The vellum claims the boy must destroy Order—”

“No, Talus prophesied that the boy would
free
us from the Order.” The keeper grabbed his beard and dismissed her with a flip of his hand. “But why am I telling you this? I can’t.”

“And yet you must.”

“So that you can kill the boy?”

“What? Of course not. It’s against Order to murder. On that, I give you my oath as Sovereign. But what’s this? We might as well be talking about a mythical creature.”

He searched her face. “You’ve tasted life. There must be a spark of life left in you. It can’t have left you completely. And so a part of you knows.
Knows
why we’ve gone to such lengths. You deny it because you are dutiful and because you will be Sovereign and because you fear for your eternity, and for a thousand other reasons, but somewhere within you, you know. What I wouldn’t give for one ounce of that blood,” he said, murmuring now, seemingly to himself.