Read The Undead King: The Saga of Jai Lin: Book One for Free Online

in her life, when she was very young, right after her mother was taken away by slavers. She had seen what the slavers did to her, how they threw her spent body into the Axe Man as if she were nothing but a pile of fish chum, laughing drunkenly as she drowned on the poison water; that vision of the future had been as emotionally draining as this one was of the past. She could feel the tears welling up and her cheeks growing flush.
    “Excuse me.” Brook turned and started to walk away from the water, slower this time, so that Mercer knew that she wasn’t trying to get away from him, only that she wanted to be alone.
    What had just happened there? Mercer wondered. He had seen her eyes go wide, had seen her enter into a trance. It only lasted for a few seconds, but he knew the signs: his younger sister did the same thing years ago, when she was still alive. Nina had visions, Nan would tell him. That was why she sometimes had fits, why she would tremble uncontrollably on the floor and once almost bit off her tongue. She had been able to see the past and future, of what was and what could be. Was Brook capable of doing the same?
    Mercer caught up with Brook and the two walked in silence. Leo was tired from the day’s events and was panting loudly. Now that they were in the Green Lands, they could hear the call of loons and hoot of the night’s earliest rising owls. With no dead men to prey upon them, wildlife thrived. Over the western horizon was a line of pink and purple, the only colors in the otherwise starry night sky. Just as these colors disappeared with the last of the day, Brook and Mercer found the dirt road.
    The road was called 23, though none who travelled it knew why. It was a name left over from the old days, when roads paved in black stone connected every township, every tribe. It snaked westwards through the Green Lands, past the roaring waters of Stag’s Leap, all the way to the Fort at Kingston. If Brook and Mercer followed it back east, they would see it was but one of three prongs that forked from the Mountain Road: Kill Fish Road ran next to the Hud all the way to the Rip in the northeast, while the Mountain Road ran straight north to the Aderon Mountains.
    “Before we get to the Black Wing camp, we have to pass through Young Poe’s Keep. We should be coming upon it soon,” Brook said. “Just past these next few hills.”
    “Young Poe’s Keep? I’ve never heard of this place.”
    “It’s a trading outpost, mainly. It’s so close to the Axe Man and the Hud, as well as to the Mountain Road fork, that they get a lot of travellers passing through with coin to spend. The ruins of an old ghost city are close by it, in the hills. Old Poe’s Keep. Some say there are still treasures to be found in the old shops there, but that they’re haunted by malignant spirits trapped in the city by greed.”
    The beginning of 23 ran close to the Axe Man, so it was a relatively flat and easy going. Still, Leo was panting heavily. “He’s tired,” Mercer said.
    “We should think of resting for the night in Young Poe,” Brook said. “I know many of the traders. The Black Wings do much business with them.”
    “Sounds fine to me.” Mercer was tired too. Slaying as many dead men as he did earlier was taxing work, as was navigating the Axe Man’s River, which he had been doing since early that morning.
    The road was illuminated here and there with soft white lights, technology left over from the old days that miraculously still worked. The lights had black panels atop them and were attached to stakes in the ground, no bigger than one of Leo’s legs. In the middle of the road, two of the lights shining upon it as though they were sentries on watch, was a shapeless pile of meat, maggots thickly squirming in its folds. Leo’s neck bristled and began to growl.
    “By the talons of Elon…” Brook’s mouth fell open once she saw what had made the dog stop and snarl. “That’s… that’s a human leg!”
    Mercer