Amar Kabal seed

Jasher paused, regarding them with icy blue eyes. “‘Amar’ means ‘seed.’ The Amar Kabal are the People of the Seed.” He turned his head and lifted the roll of hair. At the base of his skull was a raised portion of flesh the size of a walnut.

Jason winced. It looked like a huge cyst. “What’s it for?”

“The amar is the vehicle of our immortality. It dislodges at our death, granting new life when planted in the earth.”

“You mean you grow?” Rachel asked in amazement. “Like a plant?”

“Buried in fertile soil, the man grows from the seed within a few months. Less fertile soil requires more time. If my seed dislodged in extremely arid terrain, I might never be reborn.”

Jason leaned forward. “So you’ve died before?”

Jasher gave a small, grim smile. “Many times.”

“And then you come back to life,” Rachel murmured.

“Yes. The miracle of the amar preserves my memories until a new body germinates.”

“You remember all of your lives,” Jason said.

“Every moment until every seed has dislodged and become separated from my senses. Nine times I have perished in combat. Five times I have allowed my life to be taken, because my body was nearing the end of its usefulness and I wished to start anew. Once I drowned at sea. Once I fell to my death scaling a cliff. And my First Death.”

“That must feel strange, becoming an infant with all of your former memories,” Rachel realized.

Jasher laughed as if the idea were absurd. “No, we are reborn into the prime of adulthood, the age at which we first die. Our First Death is a ceremony held around age twenty.”

“How long can your seed survive unplanted?” Jason wondered.

Jasher shrugged. “The amar can lie dormant for years. But eventually the seed would perish.”

“So if Maldor wants to truly eliminate you,” Jason said, “he would have  to kill you and then destroy your seed.”

Jasher’s eyes flashed. “The destruction of an amar is the unpardonable sin. He who commits such an act incurs a death penalty, to be executed by the Amar Kabal, who from that moment onward will stand united as his enemy.”

Chapter 18