“We?” Joe asked.
“Better get used to the fact that you and I are going to be spending a lot of time together,” Clive said with a smile. “I need a right hand man and I don’t trust any of these scoundrels. Besides, you had my back with Clement. For that, I am grateful.”
“So, how do you plan to gain more Renegades?” Joe asked.
“I don’t know just yet,” Clive said. “We’ll think of something.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. It was bewildering to think of Joe’s first night among these people and how he was tied up against a tree, ready to be slaughtered by them. Then, almost a week later, he was second in command over them. It was a funny place to be, but strangely enough, and for the first time in a while, he felt safe.
“What do I look like when I come to you from the future?” Joe asked.
Clive let out a short laugh. “Older. A few more scars. More tired.” His eyebrows lowered. “And your head was shaved.”
“I’m bald?”
Clive nodded. “That’s why it took me a little bit to make sure it was you.”
Joe shook his head. “Well, that’s one thing I’m already changing,” he said. “I ain’t gonna shave my head.”
“You might not have a choice,” Clive said with a lifted eyebrow. “There is no way to know what the future brings.” He let out a huff. “Not unless the future comes and visits you in the middle of the night.”
Joe smiled, but it was forced. This whole business was unsettling. He didn’t like it one bit. But could he really argue with it?
“I think our biggest mission is to get The Book of Time as quickly as possible,” Joe said. “I don’t want to wait six years.”
Clive shrugged. “We can only try. We can only try.”
Joe stared at the fire in front of him and sighed, hoping more than ever that Clive was wrong. Maybe the future could be changed. Maybe Joe wouldn’t be here another five years. Maybe they would find a different way to get out of here. But Clive’s words echoed resoundingly in Joe’s mind.
We can only try…
Nate
Autumn, 903 A.O.M.
After Nate killed Levi, Alban and Rachel immediately went to Marum and started dressing her wound. She’d been shot in the ribs, but Alban got the bullet out quickly and was able to stop the bleeding. She had gone unconscious, but her breathing seemed normal and it didn’t look like she was going to die. The two of them sat in the back of the cart with her as Nate took charge of the horse that pulled them forward.
As he sat alone on the bench, he stared at the road ahead, but he didn’t seem to comprehend where he was going. He felt too stunned by what had just happened. For so long, Levi had been chasing him, and now that part of his life was over. Nate was now responsible for wiping out an entire family from existence. That fact numbed him and made him feel like a monster. But he had to remember that he couldn’t be on the run forever. Levi had presented him with choices: kill, be killed, or keep running.
Nate hadn’t forgotten that there was still another man out there looking for them—Devlin, the man he’d left alive in the middle of the woods. Nate suddenly didn’t feel good about that decision as he eyed the forest all around him.
When the wagon turned a long curve, Nate’s heart jolted as he saw a man leading a horse in the middle of the road. Nate pulled on the reins and drew his six-shooter as the man walked slowly forward. He recognized the man as Devlin, but he didn’t shoot him because the man’s weapon was holstered and one arm was in a sling. It didn’t look like he was there to challenge them. Alban and Rachel watched from the back of the cart as Nate stood up, his gun pointed at the man.
“That’s far enough,” Nate said.
“Did you kill them all?” Devlin asked.
“The sheriff and the Ranger are still alive,” Nate said.
Devlin nodded and looked past him down the road as if he didn’t want to go back there to the others. He looked back up at Nate. “Levi’s dead?”
“Yeah,” Nate said.
Devlin swallowed. “I suppose ya’ll are on your way. I don’t guess you want to tell me where.”
His inquiry was met with silence.
He nodded again. “I don’t want no trouble. All I want is my rifle back and you can be on your way.” Nate lifted an eyebrow, but Devlin just held out his free hand. “My Pa gave it to me. It belonged to his Pa too.”
Nate kept his pistol trained on Devlin, but he slowly reached down and grabbed the rifle off the floor. He then reared back and tossed it toward the ranger who caught it with his good hand. He winced as the barrel smacked into his palm loudly. He set the stock against the ground and shook his hand in the air to relieve the pain.
“All right,” Devlin said. “Ya’ll be on your way.”
Nate watched the man as he picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder, then began leading his horse down the road and toward the scuffle that had taken place.
“Oh,” Devlin said, turning around. “Don’t be alarmed if you hear a gunshot behind you. That’s just…uh… Well, I’ll just say it’ll seem a lot more believable that you got away from me if I have a bullet wound in my leg.” The man shrugged and started in that direction again.
Nate looked at Alban and Rachel briefly before shaking his head and slapping the reins another time. The horse lurched the wagon forward and the company was on their way once again.
About a minute later, they heard the echoes of a gunshot followed by a loud scream. None of them spoke of it, for just ahead of them there was a large clearing as they neared the end of the road. They were at the edge of Tel Haven Forest and were about to journey into the open plains of Galamore. There, Alban had said, were many roads, breaking off into many directions. If anyone did pursue them, they’d be hard to find.
But Nate didn’t think anyone would be pursuing them anytime soon. The men who had been following them were either dead or too injured to ride effectively. It seemed, for now, that they were clear to journey onward.
Nate felt a hand on his shoulder as Alban sat beside him on the bench. He looked behind to see Marum sleeping idly and Rachel looking up at him with a smile on her face. It was a reserved smile, but one that Nate understood. It told him that she knew he had done the right thing. He had done what he needed to do.
Now it was time to figure out the rest of it. He had to find Joe. Then he’d need to find Tyler Montgomery and figure out what all this was about.
Nate wasn’t convinced that he was this fabled Keeper of the books, but after all the things he’d seen already, who was he to argue it? Apparently, that was why Alban was taking him to see the Sentinels. Hopefully they would be able to tell Nate what he needed to do to find his brother.
Then, he could go home.
Tell the world what you thought of Keeper of the Books. Please leave a review at your favorite ebook online retailer or on Goodreads. The sequel, The Outlaw’s Quest, will be available summer 2016.
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Books by Jason D. Morrow
Prototype
Prototype D
Prototype Exodus
The Starborn Ascension
Anywhere But Here
Away From The Sun
Into The Shadows
The Starborn Uprising
Out Of Darkness
If It Kills Me
Even In Death
The Marenon Chronicles
The Deliverer
The Gatekeeper
The Reckoning
The following is the first chapter of the next book, The Outlaw’s Quest.
Winter, 903 A.O.M
Nate hadn’t taken a sip of alcohol in more than a month. This was a record, it seemed. The lack of a drink hadn’t brought on the shakes as he thought it might. Perhaps over the years he hadn
’t consumed enough to get to that point. Still, he needed it. Mostly, he wanted it. He liked to think he was made of stronger stuff than the men who fell into ravenous withdrawals, but he knew he wasn’t. He wore his toughness like a hat or a coat—items worn as a shield to block chilling winds that would otherwise freeze his interior. But unlike a hat or a coat, Nate’s demeanor wasn’t something he could easily remove, especially considering his line of work.
He decided to torture himself and sit at the bar away from his companions. This wasn’t to add to his temptation, though it didn’t help. He wanted a better vantage point in case things got hairy. If he had learned anything in the last month of being in Galamore, it was that traveling with a gray elf brought on more trouble than it was worth. Apparently, traveling anywhere north of Dragon Scale Mountain meant coming across people who acted like they had never heard of a gray elf. It was true that the North was mostly made up of men and women (with the exception of the wood elves in the Northeast), and to have any other race traveling through was a thing of mystery, but to see a gray elf was almost apocalyptic.
Alban seemed to think it would be fine to take up lodging this far south. It might have raised a few eyebrows, but the middle of the country, particularly this town, Bathevar, was a melting pot. Even in this tavern Nate spotted a few dwarves, a couple of gnomes. He wasn’t quite certain, but he thought there was a wood elf in the back corner. He’d have to keep an eye on that one. Gray elves and wood elves didn’t like each other, or so he had been told.
Nate had come into the tavern first, bellied up to the bar, and waited for his three companions to come in after him. The bartender had asked Nate what he wanted. Nate swallowed, took a deep breath, and muttered, “water…” to which the bartender scowled, but gave it to him anyway. Part of him wanted to express to the bartender how much the brown bottles behind the bar called out to him, taunting him with promises of an easier night. But what was the point? The bartender would only agree with them.
Nate knew when Alban, Rachel, and Marum walked into the tavern without having to look behind him. The loud and bustling room went quiet. Drinkers looked away from their glasses. A few shook their heads to make sure they were seeing clearly. Eaters dropped their forks, opting instead to rest their fingers on the pistols hanging on their belts. Smokers allowed their fat cigars to smolder in their fingers, holding the smoke in their lungs, waiting to see what might come of this unsettling situation.
Alban led the way to an empty booth with his daughter, Rachel, behind him, and Marum, the gray elf, behind her. Together they formed a short line, their eyes averted from the gazes of seemingly every person in the room. Nate kept his eye on the wood elf in the back corner who stared at his rival with sharp, suspicious eyebrows.
The three of them finally sat, waiting for a server. Nate wondered if anyone would dare approach them. Finally, an older woman, modestly dressed with her hair pulled up into a tight bun (this was a tavern and not a saloon, after all), braved the trek to their table and asked if they wanted food. Alban told her yes, and to bring an extra plate for their friend.
Nate allowed himself to take his gaze off the wood elf in the corner as he scanned the rest of the room. Slowly, each person went back to his drink, plate, or cigar, accepting, or at least trying to forget, that a gray elf was amongst them.
In his month-long journey from Tel Haven, Nate had learned a lot about Galamore. The roads were long, the plains flat and cheerless in the winter desert. They had passed the time with conversations and Alban’s endless history lessons. Nate had found most of this fascinating, though not all the time. But long journeys often presented drawn-out days of tedious travel, accompanied by unending landscapes that refused to change. Alban had made a case for other parts of Galamore—the magical trees of the Sunset Woods, the snow-capped mountains of Dwarf Country, the green hills of Gnome Country—but the center of Galamore was a flat no man’s land, covered now by a sea of endless white. Rachel had told him that the prairie had its merit in the summer and autumn, but the spring brought torrential downpours and treacherous tornados, while the winter hid the roads and threatened to disorient those brave or stupid enough to travel them. Nate and his small band were of those brave or stupid types, and their decision had tacked on an extra week to what they had originally planned. According to Alban, winter had come early, the autumn short as it usually was in this part of the country.
Now, however, they were close to their destination. By day’s end tomorrow they would reach the foot of Dragon Scale Mountain and would hopefully gain an audience with a mysterious group known as the Sentinels. This stop in Bathevar was their last chance to clean themselves up and rest soundly before getting there.
Nate and the others had reservations about coming here. Marum was the most outspoken, but Alban had been insistent. Nate finally came to the conclusion that this stop was more for Alban than the rest of them. The old man probably wanted to sit back and drink a large ale next to the fire or to sleep in a real bed after so many nights of digging trenches in the snow and fighting to keep warm. Nate didn’t hate the idea either, but that didn’t mean this was a smart move.
The group hadn’t been so careless the entire journey. They had come across people on the roads, and had even stopped in a couple of small towns to resupply and take a warm bath, but they had been vigilant in those instances. Alban would usually go in first, talk to the desk clerk and get a couple of rooms. Past that, it wasn’t so hard to sneak Marum in and sneak her out, using the darkness of sundown and predawn.
Traveling with Marum hadn’t been easy at first. She’d been shot in the chest. The wound caused her to lose a lot of blood, but the bullet had missed anything vital. Still, her recovery wasn’t quick and for the first week or two they were constantly fighting off fever and infection. They eventually reached a small settlement and Alban acquired the right medicine to put her on the mend. She still wasn’t at her best, but she moved around decently enough and seemed in good spirits.
Nate looked down at his coat, thinking about the day Marum had been shot—the same day a bullet found him, too. A thick stitch attempted to conceal a hole in his coat that had been ripped open by the bullet, just over his heart. The new thread was a darker color than the tan leather it held together. An unhealthy span of drinking and a less-than-charming habit of placing his flask in his left breast pocket had saved his life that day. When it first happened, he couldn’t figure how it saved him. The metal wasn’t thick enough to stop a bullet, but he imagined it hadn’t been a direct hit. Maybe he had moved slightly, he couldn’t remember. In any case, Nate had been lucky, and the bullet had probably lodged itself into a nearby tree after bouncing off the flask.
Had the plan gone as originally intended, Marum would now be well on her way to Gray Elf Country to rendezvous with her brother, Droman. But as it stood, the party had to get to the Sentinels, and Marum had been in no condition to travel alone. Still, they would part ways with her after staying with the Sentinels for a night.
This was all an assumption on Alban’s part. None of them actually knew if they would be allowed to meet with the Sentinels. They especially didn’t know if they would be allowed to stay within their walls. But Alban was confident.
The Sentinels were a group of five individuals, charged with the task of keeping Galamore held together. That seemed like a tall order in Nate’s mind, considering how big Galamore was. The Sentinels weren’t controlled by any government or outside entity, according to Alban, but Nate was skeptical. He was always skeptical of people in power. Money was a big motivator. He wouldn’t put it beneath any sheriff, president, or any Sentinel for that matter, to take a bribe.
Dragon Scale Mountain was as far south as Marum needed to go before finally veering southwest and on toward her people. Thankfully, the Sentinels weren’t racists and supposedly looked upon all people as equals.
The same couldn’t be said about the people in this tavern. None of them could have been more uncomfortable than if a fat ma
n walked in naked, parked his hairy posterior at the bar, and ordered a cup of tea.
All eyes glanced in Marum’s direction every couple of seconds almost as if to see what she might do next. This was why Nate was at the bar. Any one of these observers might find his bravery buried deep within and decide to do something about her presence. But bravery and stupidity were often confused for one another, and Nate wondered which dimwit might conjure it up first.
Nate reached for the glass of water in front of him and took a sip. It felt cool on his tongue and he found he needed it more than he had thought. It was easy to neglect hydration when surrounded by snow. This was a different terrain than what Nate was used to. Back in Texas, whenever he was on the run from the law, the weather was hot and the ground was scorched by the sun, dry and dusty. Sweat provided a never ending shower on his skin.
Of course, he wasn’t on the run right now. He was still a wanted criminal and was technically fleeing, but as far as he could tell, there was no one actively pursuing him. All that could change, however. Over the course of a month, Nate had learned that letters could travel faster than he could. The employment of birds was the most common means of communicating. Pigeons were the cheapest, but slowest. Hawks were fast and expensive. Nate hadn’t seen it firsthand, but apparently these birds talked back and could relay messages verbally or carry a sealed letter in their talons. By now he had learned all about dull and bright animals, but he had yet to see the difference for himself.
As far as Nate knew, twenty hawks could have flown right into Bathevar and spread the word of a gray elf and a group of three traveling with her. But he also knew that the farther south they went, the less this would be a problem. He just wasn’t sure if they were far enough.
Keeper of the Books (Keeper of the Books, Book 1) Page 31