The Undead King: The Saga of Jai Lin: Book One (21 page)

“We’ve seen as much,” Mercer replied. “From what happened in Young Poe to the dead men we’ve encountered on our way north. What I don’t understand is…”

Mercer felt a knot rise in his throat as he remembered the man who would hug him close after he’d fall and scrape his knees, who had taught him about science and religion and farming. What had happened to Willis Crane? How had such a good man become so twisted, so evil?

“It’s okay Mercer,” she said as he violently pulled his hand away from hers. He unsheathed Jai Lin in one quick motion and swung it through the air. The crown of the small tree in front of him fell to the ground, a clean cut through its trunk. Mercer turned to another tree, an oak as wide as Tim’s wagon, and hacked away. Wood chips and tears coalesced in the air, Mercer’s teeth gritted against the image of Plaguewind taking shape in the lines and undulations of the tree bark.

“Mercer!” Brook cried. Leo whined, taking a few steps back from the swordsman. Eventually, he stopped, a smoldering wound in the tree, sap bleeding out, Mercer’s shoulders heaving.

“Nothing will be okay.” He said, his voice creaking, deep. “All good things die, or become twisted. That’s just how it is.”

“That’s not true, Mercer. Even after the longest night, morning comes. Winter births spring. We’ll stop the armies from marching on one another, we will. Once they know there are killim coming up from the south, all men will unite together in common cause against Plaguewind. I’m sure of it. Then dawn will come, as it always does.”

“You heard the man in the church and the man in the dream. This is the sort of night that dawn does not come from. Those men were Apostles, from Revelation Island. Disciples of the Church of the Bleeding Christ. My father taught me all about them, long ago, when he was still Willis Crane. They’re a religious cult obsessed with the end of days. They see the Time of the Great Dying as their god’s ultimate judgement against the unrighteous, who they see as anyone who is not them, as far as I can tell. They believe God’s wrath will come about in the form of four horsemen, the first three which came in quick succession in the old days, after the oil ran out: Famine first, then pestilence, then war. Now comes plague. It seems they’ve armed him with a powerful weapon.”

“The Sceptre of Jai Lin. That’s what the two Apostles called it. Do you think…?”

“Do I think it’s connected to the sword? It has to be. When I went in that trance the other day, Plaguewind found me. He drew me to the Blight through the connection the sceptre had with the sword.”

“The apostle in the church said that Jai Lin was the only hope. Did he mean your sword was the only hope to save the Green Lands? Did he mean the sceptre?”

“I really don’t know. It’s likely a secret he’ll take to his grave. All I know is he desperately wanted to get north, to whatever land lies beyond the Aderon Mountains.”

Brook pursed her lips. “That sword is more powerful than you and I even know. It might be the key to stopping your father.”

“He seems to want it, but also fears it,” Mercer said, inspecting Jai Lin’s blade. “Come on. Let’s get back to the others.”

Jompers was the first to see them emerge from the forest and hailed them with a hearty “
hallo
!” He seemed fully recovered, but as Brook said, there was a large bump which shone like a pearl on his forehead. Solloway tottered out from behind the wagon, his cheeks rosy and wet splotches of liquor on his uniform.

“Did you get it?” He asked, his words like paste. Brook smiled and tossed him the bag of coins. “Very nice. Did he put up a fight, or did he take one look at Leo and run like a Lazarus Township nancy?”

Mercer cleared his throat. “He was mortally wounded, actually. He died soon after we found him.”

“Oh dear, oh dear... I killed the man. I never meant to. I just wanted to scare him off. Oh no, I’m a murderer. Oh dear, oh dear…”

“Relax, Jed. The thief had it coming to him. That’s what happens when you steal from a group such as ours, eh?” Solloway chuckled, his eyes locking with Mercer’s. There was something in the old sergeant’s stare, the exact thing Mercer had been looking for earlier, when Solloway was far less drunk. The man was keeping secrets from him, that much was clear. This man said his father had died, but Willis Crane must have gone south long ago, well before Solloway had left Kingston on his journey. How else could his father have twisted into Plaguewind if not for the passage of several years?
Solloway must know something
, Mercer thought.
What sort of game is he playing by hiding the truth from me?

“Is everything alright?” Solloway asked Mercer, a pugnacious tone underlying the drunkenness in his voice. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

“Everything is fine,” Mercer said, though the sentiment couldn’t have been further from the truth. He felt much the same as he did before, when he had hacked a tree to pieces, imagining his father’s malformed face on its bark. What did he really know about Solloway, he wondered. What were this man’s intentions?

He decided to keep with his decision of not telling the others any more of what he and Brook had encountered and learned, both in their dream together and in the church in the hills. Particularly not Solloway. He’d watch the old soldier carefully now, would try and gauge just what the man’s motives were and what secret knowledge he was sitting on. Perhaps more dreams would come, would show him the way forward. Even though they were only a couple of days away from Dusty Yen’s camp, he’d have to be patient and see how things unfolded.

Tim shuffled around the wagon then, the scowl once again set hard in his face. “There be still some hours left of daylight. We leave now, we can make it to the muddy banks of the Esopus, the southernmost of the Seven Streams. It be a wide and peaceful river, with trade barges from Lazarus Township passing down it often enough. Maybe you lot can find a barge that’ll take you to the Hud or a small boat you can commandeer. It’ll be a far faster way of travel than riding in the back of me wagon.”

“Ugh, I hate boats,” Solloway said. “But the quicker we can get to Dusty Yen, the better. Let’s go.”

They quickly packed up their things and piled into the back of the wagon. Just as they were climbing up, Brook and Mercer shared a look. He could see by the way her eyes trembled that she shared the same sentiments he did about Solloway.
What is he hiding from us?
Mercer wondered, climbing past the crates and barrels and making his way towards the front end of the wagon.
What are we being drawn into?

Interlude

T
HE BEAR STOOD AT THE ENTRANCE to Indio’s audience chamber, its legs straddling the doorway, as defiant as ever.

“What are you scheming, Ursul?” The Lord Commander thought silently to himself, stroking his strong chin with his spider fingers. There had been a time not too long ago when he could hold long conversations with the bear. Now, he detested its company, its prideful emerald eyes. It reminded him too much of unchecked power, of the myriad cracks spreading through the edifice of his rule. It reminded him too much of Solloway.

From his throne, he could hear the grunts of the silent squires sparring and wrestling in the courtyard outside. These sounds were mixed with the commanding shouts of the overseers, ordering their workers to reinforce the walls, the spikes, the pits. Every defense that the Fort at Kingston had was being bolstered, enhanced. War was coming, and the city had to be prepared, not just for the battle but for what was to come after.

Inside the chamber, Indio was alone with the five fingers of the Fist. The statues were evenly spaced around the room, their eyes on the center of the floor where Indio received his guests. To his left stood the stone statues of agility and wit: Crenshaw the hawk-man, his wings tucked behind him, his hands wrapped around his bow, watched with golden eyes that missed nothing, while Stallos the fox had a thumb on the hammer of his rifle and elaborate plans running through his head. To his right stood Astor the wolf and Bo the horse. The deity of discipline, who Indio felt most akin to, held a longsword in his human hands, unyielding obedience to the tenants of the Fort reflected in his raven-colored eyes. Bo, the largest of the statues, held a large shield in his hand, a symbol to his unending fortitude and endurance.

The four fingers that flanked the room were his allies, but the one that stood furthest from him was not: the bear, Ursul. It was the finger of the fist that the axe men worshipped with fervent abandon. Strength, power, courage, Ursul embodied it all; he saw it shining in the bear’s eyes, felt it emanating from the razor sharp axe in his stony hands. Indio loathed that weapon more than any other and felt threatened by the soldiers who had taken it for their own. They would be the biggest threat to his plans, the only barricade to the future. His future.

They called Solloway Old Bear
, Indio thought.
He even has the same green, staring eyes as the statue. I can still feel the weight of that man, even with him gone for quarter-moons now. Damn him.

The Lord Commander was of average height and thin, with corded muscles from years of swordplay and drills. His face was cut from stone, his brow forever furrowed, as though it were a tent’s tarpaulin heavy with pooled rain. He was a man loved by few and feared by many, sentiments he felt both strengthened and vindicated by. A proper ruler’s life, at least in his view, was solitary and not to be understood by those he commanded. It was one of the reasons he identified most with Astor the wolf, the lone swordsman championed by the silent squires and silent knights, the ranks of whom Indio had climbed to become Lord Commander.

Yet, despite his allegiance to Astor, Indio’s mind worked more like that of the technickers and scions who revered Stallos the fox as their deity. Indio was a schemer, a brewer of cold calculations. Everyone knew it was he who had orchestrated the poisoning of the wells at Ithaca some six years prior. The knowledge had become so widespread that these days Indio didn’t even take pains to deny it. There had been no retaliation by the cosmologists, no firing of great missiles or charge of sprocket knights on the Fort. They had merely retreated further into their domed city, licking their wounds and growing as quiet as a cemetery.

But Indio knew that they were still working on their terrible engine, what his technickers called a
reactor
. Some vile relic from the long ago, a machine capable of splitting the smallest of all things and creating vast amounts of energy and power. Such technologies had been what had made the old cities so great, before the Time of the Great Dying, but also what had led to their downfall. These machines had bled the world, had spread the Blight, and Indio would do anything in his power to keep the cosmologists from doing the same to the Green Lands.

There was a knock at the doors. Indio looked to where the shadowed point fell on the wall, the sun-dial telling him that his guest had arrived exactly on time.

“Enter,” he called, his powerful voice booming around the chamber. The two doors beneath Ursul’s legs opened, four silent squires in step behind one silent knight. The squires walked in box formation, an old man in a black cap and a bright orange suit between them. A bruise the color of spoiled meat ran from the old man’s temple down to his cheek.

“Old Wren,” Indio said. “Welcome to the Fort. So good to finally meet you.” Indio nodded to the silent knight who had led the small group in. “Thank you, Mandrake. You and the squires can wait just outside the door. I’ll call to you when you’re needed.”

Mandrake the silent knight, wearing the traditional white cotton long-sleeves of his station, raised his fist in the air. “For the Fist. For the Fort.”

Indio stood, put his fist in the air. “For the Fist. For the Fort.” The knight called to the squires, and they left the room in double file, leaving Old Wren in the center of the room. The Lord Commander could see the old man’s body trembling within the thin fabric of his suit.

“I trust you’ve been made most comfortable since arriving,” Indio said as he made his way down the steps between his throne and the floor. “You found the prison cell beneath the Fort to your liking? Not much different than the snake’s nests you Black Wings have under the earth, I imagine.”

“You’re every bit the bastard I’ve heard you were,” Old Wren spat. “You killed my people, my family. Elon’s justice will be swift with you, of that I’m sure.”

“Now, now. I didn’t kill
all
the Black Wings. Some got away from my soldiers, miraculously enough.” Indio approached the older man and saw how much four days of little food, light and rest had taken from Wren. His eyes were wild, like two eggs sunken in the sand, and his hands shook like seaweed beneath the waves of Lake Ma’Attica.

“The orange suits you nicely,” Indio quipped, inspecting the Black Wing’s outfit closely, a wolf circling his prey. “Much better than black. You know why we put our prisoners in clothes this color?”

“When those at Ithaca learn of what you did to my people, to my clan, they’ll_”

“They’ll do nothing, Wren. Ithaca is a ghost from the old world, an undead corpse walking in the shadows of what once was but will never be again. I fully intend to put a spike through their head and put them out of their misery.”