The Undead King: The Saga of Jai Lin: Book One (25 page)

“I’m not a great reader,” Crow said, slightly ashamed.

“Kara is. She will help you.”

“She’ll be coming with me?”

Alvin smiled. “Excited at that prospect, are you? Yes, she will be accompanying you. As will Oliver, Stephen DeMontaigne’s son. There will be three of you on this first stage of your journey, no more, no less. From this point forward, the three of your destinies are now intertwined, or so the dreams have told me.”

“I see.” Crow searched Alvin’s face, looking for whatever it was that the older man wasn’t telling him. “You said you were a monk of Jai Lin. What is that, then? A church? A city?”

Alvin’s eyes squinted a bit, a depth appearing in their dark irises that Crow had not seen before. “It’s all in the book, Skalla Ta. Read it and learn of how this world came to be and what must be done to save it. You must go now, as there is no time to waste. Tell DeMontaigne to bring you to the Cliffs of the Widow. Give him this, so that they know these are the words of an Elder.”

Alvin handed Crow a small, egg-shaped plastic device which beeped at a steady rhythm in his hand. Upon closer inspection, Crow saw there was a screen which had black blocks arranged into the shape of a type of creature.

“What is it?”

“It’s from the long ago, a sort of pet the old ones made with their technology. Tell Captain Stephen that it is a gift from Alvin of the Elders. Now go, Crow. The shield waits for you, as does Plaguewind. Time is of the essence.”

Crow nodded his thanks to Alvin. He turned to the other Elders to do the same, but they were back in their trances, as still as stones. Alvin quietly floated back to his chair, drifting off into the world of dreams before Crow had even made his way back to the door.

“Did you learn all you needed to, Skalla Ta?” Kara asked when he had emerged from the chamber of the Elders. She sat with her legs crossed on the floor, her hands busy with the braiding of a hempen bracelet.

“Call me Crow,” he said, helping her to her feet. “At least until I’m standing before a wave of blood with just a shield to protect me.”

“A shield?”

Crow showed her the book. “It’s all in here, or so Alvin told me. You can help me make sense of it. We’re going on a trip west, to the Karyatim Salt Flats.”

“Oliver too, yes?”

“You know more than you let on, don’t you?”

Kara returned his smile. “I only know what the dreams tell me.”

They made their way back down the stairwell and through the building. As they passed through, Nameless came out to bid them farewell, hanging from every available surface. They waved and bowed, hummed and chanted. Above all else, though, Crow heard them shout
Skalla Ta
, their voices hopeful.

“That didn’t take too long,” DeMontaigne boomed as they neared the ship. It was just Kara and Crow who had crossed the bridge back from the Ruins of the Nameless, all the others staying behind and watching the Boat People from the empty windows of the towers.

“Here you are, Captain. From Alvin of the Elders.” Crow handed DeMontaigne the small plastic egg. The captain shielded the device’s screen with a large hand and looked upon it with slack-jawed amazement. He clicked his teeth before putting the egg in one of his pockets.

“So you really are Skalla Ta...” DeMontaigne’s voice was serious, reverential. “Where am I to take you?”

“Not just me, but Kara too. And…”

“And who? Tell me which of my Boat People you require for your journey, and I will provide.”

“The Elders said there would be three of us, no more, no less...” Crow hesitated, feeling the weight of what he was about to ask. “Alvin told me that Oliver was to come with us. Would that be, erm… alright with you?”

DeMontaigne let out a deep sigh before looking up from the deck into Crow’s eyes. “I feared this would be your request, Skalla Ta. Oliver is my son, but he is also my best warrior and a good man to have at your side. I understand why the dreams told the Elders he should go with you. So of course, Skalla Ta, it is alright with me. He will serve you well on your journey.”

DeMontaigne turned. All eyes of the Boat People were on him, awaiting his orders. “
Ma famille!
Get set to sail! Fire the furnaces! We’re heading back north. We’re going home.”

His people cheered. Crow could feel their unease slough off as the prospect of finally returning to safer climes became a reality. On the shore, he still saw the thin white line, the hungry horde of corpses that seemed to have grown even greater since his foray into the Ruins of the Nameless.

Crow felt someone else staring out with him towards the shore. He looked up to the ship’s highest mast, thinking he’d see Kara, that the two of them would have an exchange of thoughts through no movement of their lips. Instead, he saw Oliver. The serpentine man’s body was wrapped around the mast, his mouth a firm line.

“There are more than there were,” Oliver shouted to Crow, his inky eyes never wavering from the zombies. “How can there be so many? There seem to be more
corps
than there are people living in the Green Lands. I just don’t understand.”

“I don’t either, but I think we both will, in time. We’ve a long journey ahead of us, and I can tell you all that the Elders told me.”

“I heard whisper that I was to accompany you. Funny that no one has taken the pain to tell me directly.”

“Well, you are sitting higher than the seagull flies, my friend. If I didn’t feel you staring out with me towards the shore, I wouldn’t have known where to find you either.”

Oliver wrapped his nunchaku around the mast before gracefully sliding down the pole until he was standing nose to nose with Crow. He put his hand out.

“I look forward to this,” Oliver said. “This will be an adventure.”

“Yes,” Crow said, taking his new comrade’s hand and shaking it. “It certainly has the makings of one.”

They parted ways, both presumably to get some rest. They did little of that, however, their nerves being too ‘lectric to allow them sleep. Crow sat in his bunk listening to the hum of the ship’s engines as it chugged its way upstream. He had initially balked at Alvin saying that his destiny was intertwined with Oliver’s, and dreaded the prospect of being on the road with him for a half-moon, but his view had shifted, had evolved. He now saw the tall, young man as a kindred spirit and could think of no one better to accompany him west. That thought, as well as the vibrations of the ship, took him over the edge of wakefulness and into sleep.

“Brook!” Crow cried, bolting upright in his bed. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. He had been dreaming of his sister, of them running through the woods, pale white corpses stumbling after them in hot pursuit. He had thought Brook had been running right next to him, but then he heard her scream, and turned to see their hands all over her, tearing at her flesh. The killim hooked their hands into her wailing mouth and started to pull, the skin around her lips tearing. Her scream became inhuman, like the cry of a great underwater beast, growing louder and louder the more the killim tore. The sound was pulling him out of the forest, away from his sister and back to the waking world.

He was alone in the darkness, semi-delirious, when his nose filled with the brine of the river and the second blast of the foghorn sounded. He remembered where he was. He rubbed at his eyes as he thought of the dream, of his sister’s scream which had shifted into the foghorn, pulling him from the throes of sleep. He prayed to Elon that she was okay, that she had made it back to the Black Wing camp alright.

Thinking of her made his stomach feel like a bloot berry being squeezed between a sweaty pair of hands; he was at once disgusted with himself for allowing himself to get caught and separated from her and uneasy from not knowing whether she was alive or dead.

“If she’s dead, then that’s on you,” Crow seethed to himself. “You’ll have to live with that for the rest of your days.” He could hear DeMontaigne barking orders above deck before another blast of the ship’s foghorn drowned him out. They must have been nearing the Cliffs of the Widow. It was about time he started on the next leg of his journey.

Within minutes, Crow was above deck, standing next to Kara and Oliver as the ship neared the cliffs. His black clothes had been mended and cleaned, as had his cape, which had been torn by the slaver’s spear he had narrowly dodged. He had by his feet a pack that had been given him by the Boat People, filled with dried food and supplies for the trip ahead. His knives were polished to a gleam and rested fitfully on the belt around his torso. He felt as ready as he ever would.

The cliffs loomed over them, scraping the sky, their gray, basalt columns rising from the foaming edge of the Hud all the way to their peak. There was the ruin of a bridge at its top, a structure that had once spanned the Hud in the long ago. Kara reached over and squeezed Crow’s hand. “How do you feel, Skalla Ta?”

“I told you, call me Crow,” he said, smiling. “And I feel fine. A little nervous, but fine.”

“Do you have the book that the Elders gave to you?” She asked. Crow nodded. “Let me see it.”

Crow reached into his pack and delicately pulled the old tome out from between the softest clothes he had stowed away. Kara looked it over, her eyes burning fiercely. “Do you see what it says on the cover of the book?”

Oliver looked at them from the corner of his eyes, his interest piqued. “No, I am not familiar with those words,” Crow said.

The foghorn sounded again as Kara turned the book around so the cover faced both Crow and Oliver. A floating dock, so small when compared to the hugeness of the Cliffs of the Widow, came into view, extending out into the river as though it were a leech at the suck, its body trailing out behind it. Crow and Oliver didn’t see it, though; they were transfixed by Kara’s gaze. “The book is called
The Saga of Jai Lin
. In here lies the history of the Green Lands, as well as our destinies. There will be much to discover between its pages.”

Chapter Ten

Dusty Yen

“
B
Y THE TALONS OF ELON… that is the Rip, is it? To think that man could once make things so vast.” Brook spoke to the others from the confines of the small rowboat they had bought for ten silvers upstream in Dune Town, a small settlement on the shores of the Esopus. Tim the wagon-man had parted ways with them, unsure if he was heading back north to cut his losses with the River Tribes or try his luck out east with Dusty Yen. He had grunted a good-bye and said to look out for his flayed hide in the rebel camp, for who knew what a restless group of mercenaries would do to a poor old wagon-man.

They had passed beyond the mouth of the Esopus into the choppier waters of the Hud an hour or so ago. Brook and Jompers huddled close together under a large black blanket, their teeth chattering in the wet and chill of the night air, while Mercer and Solloway rowed against the current, slowly making their way towards the colossal silhouette that spanned the river ahead.

“It’s been years since I’ve seen it,” Jompers said, caressing Rory’s white and gray feathers with his trembling fingers. “Still, it takes my breath away.”

“Don’t stop breathing on me now, Jed.” Solloway’s voice was strained from the rowing. “We might need you to provide us with some more of those pyrix spheres for when we’re up there. Do you see the lights all along the bridge? It’s making me think that Dusty Yen has got his men from here all the way to whatever swampy hole he’s hiding in. It might be even harder to get to him than I thought.”

“So what do you propose?” Mercer asked. “We’ll have to sneak in.”

“That’s probably going to be the way of it. I just have to get close enough to see how this whole operation is set up. We might have to sneak up on some of his men and knock them out, then take whatever badge or tag they’re wearing saying they’re a part of Dusty’s army. But then, hey, it’s also very possible that they’re a bunch of rabble with no order to speak of, in which case we can move pretty deep into camp without bother.”

“As long as you take your uniform off, Sergeant. Wouldn’t want them to see you’re an axe man from the Fort.”

“No, Jed. Wouldn’t want that at all.” Solloway spit off the side of the boat, then pulled his oar in. “Looks to be some sand right over there on the other side of the river. I say we pull in and go the rest of the way on foot. Another minute in a boat and that slop from dinner is likely to be frothing right out my mouth.”

The boat grated to a halt as its hull caught on the sandbar close to shore. Leo was the first to jump from the boat, Mercer close behind him. While the pit bull rolled around in the grass and mud, the young swordsman grabbed the boat’s bow and dragged it up on the beach.

“Take off anything that would give you away as something other than a mercenary in Dusty’s army,” Solloway whispered as they all unloaded their packs and weapons from the small rowboat. He began to unbutton and take off his ornate shirt, revealing a barrel chest covered in scars and the same coarse brick-brown hair spouting from his chin. He produced a cotton shirt from his pack and pulled it over his head as he mumbled, “That includes your wings, Brook, and your coat, Jed.”