“He is young,” Kara said, “but I’ve seen much in these past few days. He has fulfilled much of what the Elders saw in their visions.”
The ancient Nameless grunted, then began to hum with the rest of his people, the sound like bees angrily amassing in their hive. They slunk back into the shadows, going down to their knees and waving their arms at Crow as he passed with Kara and the other three Nameless.
“What are they doing?” Crow asked.
“They welcome you, Skalla Ta. You are the dream that was foretold made manifest.”
“Skalla Ta? Lost raven? What does that all mean?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, Crow. The Elders will explain all.” Once to the open window at the other side of the room, Kara helped Crow up into another canopy. It spanned the river below and ran to the innermost building of the ruins, which also happened to be the tallest. It was crowned with a large steel spire, the entire shaft covered in vines and seagulls. Directly beneath the spire was a circular room which contrasted with the boxish shape of the rest of the building. From the small windows of this room, strange lights could be seen, the gold and lavender of a day-old bruise.
“That’s where we are going, isn’t it?” Crow asked, gesturing up at the circular room. Kara nodded. Her body was perfectly muscled for the sort of climbing they were doing; while Crow was huffing with exertion, Kara’s face was completely serene, her body relaxed but strong.
They entered the central building through one of its bottom floors. Though the Hud churned violently below, the Nameless that had amassed to greet them were humming so loudly that the river was reduced to a static that hung in the air. They waved at Crow with even more vehemence than their counterparts in the building prior, their knees tucked up into their chests as they lay prostrate on the floor before him. He was again reminded of the Black Wings before the statues of Elon, of how his people worshipped the warrior god.
Kara didn’t let him linger, beckoning him into a stairwell, the only light coming from fist-sized holes that had been punched in the wall. They climbed higher and higher, the peeled paint like the scales of a great serpent, intermittent drawings on the walls hard to make out in the low gray light. Finally, they stopped climbing, there being no floors higher than that which they were on. A brown metal door stood before them, under which seeped the same purple and green lights Crow had seen from the other building. The round room must have been through the door.
Kara knocked on the door three times. After the third, the humming of the Nameless, which had been echoing through the stairwell, silenced, leaving only the sound of the Hud’s waters clapping against the buildings below. There was the sudden crack of a bolt being opened from the inside of the door before it slowly creaked open.
“Welcome, Skalla Ta,” a tall, shadowy figure said through the doorway, his voice gentle and kind. “We have been expecting you for a long time.”
The man stepped back from the portal, welcoming Crow inside. The Black Wing hesitated, looking to Kara for reassurance. She smiled at him, her gray eyes twinkling with blooms of reflected indigo light.
“It is okay, Crow,” she said, her voice echoing in his mind. “There is nothing at all to fear. I’ll be waiting for you right here.” Crow took her forearm and squeezed it, thanking her silently. Then he turned and went through the door.
The door clacked shut as Crow walked into the spartan room. It was one large area, the only walls being the concave sheets of plaster separating the room from the outside. Sconces hung from the ceiling by means of gold chains, and it was from these that the green and purple lights shone. A thick smoke hung around the ceiling, dust motes sparkling within the wispy fingers like a million beetles flitting through starlight. Elaborately patterned carpets covered the entire floor, overlapping each other from one end of the room to the other.
In the center of the chamber was a large wooden table, around which were placed four chairs. Two were occupied, though if by people, Crow couldn’t be certain. One of the seated figures had the head of an animal, what looked to be that of a tusked boar, while the other was a gray haired woman with long horns spiraling from her forehead. The man who had opened the door, who now glided past him in a billowing robe, was the only one of the three who appeared completely human. He sat in the chair on the far side of the table, so that he faced Crow directly.
“Come, young Black Wing. Sit. You’ve had a long journey to get here.” The robed man gestured towards the empty chair. Crow walked towards the table, his steps muffled by the layers of carpet beneath his feet. The wood of the chair creaked as it took his weight. Candles crackled, their half-melted, waxy pools congealed on the table’s wooden slats. Large books were stacked in different sized piles before each of the three, some as dusty as if they hadn’t been touched in decades.
“Who are you?” Crow asked, taking them in. The horned woman had no corneas, her eyes milky and gray. She stared off into an indeterminate point in space just above the man with the boar head. Neither of them made any sort of movement or even betrayed having heard Crow at all. The man in the robe, however, smiled.
“We are the Elders of the Nameless, Crow. It was we who sent Kara into the slaver camp to find you, had her be taken captive so she could find you. It was we who commissioned the Boat People to take you here. I’ve seen you many times in my dreams, though not as you appear now, in the waking world. Whenever I saw you, you were Skalla Ta, the lost raven. Blown out to sea, one small bird standing against a tidal wave of blood rushing towards the land.” The man smiled, his teeth spaced wide apart and square. He wore his long black hair tied up in a bun and from his chin hung the gnarled and knotted whiskers of a beard. “I can see you’re confused.”
“Yes, very.”
“That’s quite alright. Those not familiar with the world of dreaming tend to lack the intuition to comprehend it. I was like you, once. A young man who never gave any credence to dreams. Then came the dream I couldn’t deny, a dream which brought me far away from my home in the north to the Ruins of the Nameless. I’ve been here ever since.”
“Who are you?”
“Ah, that is the question, isn’t it? There are many who call me Ma’as Elar, the tongue of the Elders, for I am the most attached out of us three to the waking world, and usually speak on behalf of my colleagues. When I dream, I take on the lives of many others, so that my identity is fluid and my name always changing. But for now, you may call me Alvin. It was the name I had in the long ago, when I was a monk of Jai Lin.”
Jai Lin. The candles on the table flickered when Alvin muttered the name, as though a large bird had just flapped its wings. Crow had never heard the name before, but the way his stomach turned at its mention made him wonder if perhaps he had, and just didn’t remember.
“You are still a monk of the robe, Alvin,” the man with the boar head said. His voice was deep, even more so than DeMontaigne’s, sounding as though it had been mined from the earth, from as deep as the old one’s used to dig, when they would carve out bottomless tunnels beneath the ground in search of the black blood that ran their cities and machines.
“Ah, Tusk, you do me great honor,” Alvin said, looking truly humbled by the compliment. “I will forever be beholden to the oath I took as a monk of Jai Lin, but my job now is to dream and make sense of what is to come.”
“Skalla Ta has come,” the woman with the horns said. Dust actually shook from her body as she creaked to life in her chair. “We must help the lost raven find his way.”
“Yes, Daemona, yes, we must help Skalla Ta find his way. Crow, do you have any idea of why we brought you here?”
“Well, er… you said you saw me in a dream, but that it wasn’t me, not really, just somehow you knew it was me. I’m sorry, my sister is a lot better than I am with this dream stuff.”
Alvin ran his fingers through his beard and flashed his boxy smile. “Yes, Brook. She has a large part to play in all this too. Don’t worry about not understanding this straightaway. It’s al
l a rather confusing business. I’ll just put it to you as bluntly as I can: there is a war coming, Crow. Not just between the men of the Green Lands, mind you. This will be a war between the living and the dead.”
Crow thought of the horde of white bodies he had seen on the shore, how even a mountain of a man such as DeMontaigne had been shaken by the sight. These were dark times, when killim were spreading north without hindrance. Who knew how many innocent people had already been killed, how many villages and families had been torn apart? It had once been the duty of the Black Wings to keep the Green Lands safe, but now they were a peaceful people. They would be helpless against the wave of killim sweeping north through the rolling hills he had always called home.
“The wave of blood you spoke of, with a lone raven standing it down… were you alluding to the killim coming up from the Blight into the Green Lands?”
Alvin nodded. “That is it exactly. Surely you know of who we speak when we refer to the lone raven.”
“You’re speaking of me. I’m Skalla Ta.”
“You are. You have a great task ahead of you, young Black Wing, but it is one that is befitting your people and the warrior lineage you have inherited. You are to defend the Green Lands from Plaguewind and the army of undead he is leading.”
“Plaguewind?” Again, the candles flickered.
“The final horseman,” Tusk groaned.
“The fallen cosmologist,” Daemona creaked.
“The Undead King,” Alvin whispered. “He is a zombie-tongue of immeasurable power, with a most terrible weapon at his disposal. The Sceptre of Jai Lin.” Alvin said this all very sadly, heavy regret weighing down his words.
“What does this sceptre do?” Crow asked.
“It can manipulate aether, Crow, or dark energy. This is the stuff of dreams, which envelops everything in the waking world, connecting it all together in an unseen, dark web. The sceptre can create strong links between different points throughout the aether, giving its wielder full control of whatever it has bound itself to. Plaguewind’s natural proclivity for controlling the dead has been enhanced due to his having the sceptre. He has amassed an army of corpses beyond measure, which will surely destroy all life in the Green Lands if not stopped.”
“What is it you’ll have me do?”
“You need to stand against Plaguewind, to keep him from sweeping across the Green Lands unfettered. There are other pieces in this game who are heavily relying on you keeping the Undead King contained for as long as possible.”
Crow nodded. “If this Undead King is as strong as you say, then how do you propose I stop him? I won’t discount my prowess as a warrior, but ultimately I’m just a man. His power over dark energy will prove too strong for me, if what you say is true.”
None of the Elders responded to Crow’s concern right away. Instead, they began to laugh. First Tusk, in a room-rattling chuckle, then Daemona, her cackles like the clucking of an old hen. Alvin joined in last, his laughter as gentle as the trickling water of a mountain brook. “You think we’d send you against Plaguewind as you are now?”
Crow brushed a loose strand of long hair behind his ear. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“We mean to arm you, to give you a weapon as strong as the sceptre. The Shield of Jai Lin.” Alvin said. The other Elders echoed the weapon’s name in hushed tones, and as they did the room seemed to grow darker. The dust that flitted about in the smoke twinkled like stars in the firmament.
“The Shield of Jai Lin?”
“Yes, Skalla Ta. It is what the Lost Raven needs to make his stand against the wave of blood rushing towards the Green Lands. Come, follow me.”
Alvin pushed himself up from the table and began to walk towards the only windowless part of the round room. There was a bookshelf in the wall, the tomes it contained frayed and mildewed. Alvin touched his spindly fingers to one of the books and pulled it free. While its cover was worn, the book was in fairly good condition. Water had not damaged its pages, mites had not eaten its paper. Alvin opened it up to a page that had been marked by a silk ribbon, and came next to Crow to show him what it depicted.
“Its a map,” Crow said.
“Yes, of all the Green Lands and the places beyond.” Alvin pointed to a place on the page. “Do you know this place?”
“The Karyatim Salt Flats? I’ve heard of it but have never been. The Karyatim Grass Knolls are to the north of it, the Preserve to the northwest and the Blight to the south. Killim roam freely there. I can only imagine how bad it has gotten since Plaguewind has been sending so many dead north.”
“Yes, it is certainly a dangerous place, particularly now. From the Cliffs of the Widow, where the Mountain Road meets the Hud, it is about a half-moon’s march to the place in the Salt Flats that you must go.”
“I’m to go there?” Crow was incredulous. “But why?”
“For it is there that the Shield of Jai Lin lies in wait for you. The book will show you how to find it. You must learn to wield the shield quickly, for Plaguewind is already on the march. While his army of undead precede him, he is not far behind and will soon be in the Green Lands too.” Alvin closed the book and pressed it into Crow’s hands. “Read this, when you can. There is much knowledge in this book that will help you understand why the world is the way it is.”
“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, C
row 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.
The Undead King: The Saga of Jai Lin: Book One Page 18