The Forgotten King (Korin's Journal) (7 page)

Pulling up on Kait’s cloak as I stood, I flipped her onto her stomach.  I pressed my foot against her lower back and tore the cloak off over her head; if it held any more of the metallic objects, I wasn’t about to let her have access to them. 

With her cloak in hand, I dashed for the campfire, its flames dwindling in the absence of Kait’s men to stoke it.  The jingling chime of metal-on-metal sounded from within cloth, vindicating my actions.  Kait’s footsteps squished across the clearing behind me, but I kept moving forward, dropping her cloak onto the fire as soon as I reached it.

Behind
me, Kait’ let out a vicious scream.  I turned just in time to block her fist as it drove forward towards my face.  I hooked a punch into her left flank in reply, immediately dropping into a crouch afterwards to avoid her next swing.  Twisting, I jabbed my elbow sharply into her inner thigh, dropping her down to one knee.  Using my momentum, I spun behind her and threw my right arm around her neck, squeezing my tensed bicep against her throat while pressing her head down and forward with my left arm.

This was more akin to the street-tough brawling type of fighting I previously mentioned, and given that Kait’ had proven to be a formidable
fighter, I truthfully didn’t expect any success with my hold.  Instead of using one of at least five countering moves I could think of off the top of my head, though, she started clawing at my arm, frantically trying to pull it away from her throat in a panic. 

I tightened my grip ever so slightly, wanting only to incapacitate her to unconsciousness without causing any permanent damage.  She continued to claw at my arm, her body flailing wildly below.  Long nails tore my skin through my shirt, but I held tight. 

Kait’s sleeves slid down as her struggling intensified, revealing dark, undulating shapes lining both of her inner forearms.  Firelight played across their shiny skin, hitting me with a sickening realization.  They were leeches.  Blood-sucking, parasitic, slimy, gross, worse-than-slugs leeches.  Trust me, the irony of being freaked out by leeches while fighting a sorceress and being just a few weeks removed from fighting eldrhims and evil wizards hadn’t escaped me. 

Well, at least now I knew where Kait’ had been drawing her magic energy from.  Having such a ready source, I didn’t understand why she wasn’t using magic against me as I worked to subdue her.  Then again, I wasn’t exactly an expert on magic, despite having grown up with a magic talking wizard cat. 

Kait’ finally released my arm and thrust an open hand towards the fire.  My breath caught.  She was wearing a ring on her middle finger.  A metal ring. 

In a flash, one of her metal spheres, glowing with red-orange heat, shot from the fire to her hand, clinking against her ring.  With a stomach-turning sizzle, the smell of burning flesh filled the air.  Kait’ only let out a weak groan in her half-conscious state.  She brought her hand back to my forearm, pressing the heated sphere against my sleeve. 

Let me just say that my woolen sleeve didn’t provide as much protection against the glowing, fire-hot sphere of metal as I’d have liked.

My arm involuntarily jerked away, and Kait stumbled forward, gasping.  With Kait’ down, I stood to attempt another retreat.  I didn’t even take my first step before a sudden burning pain sliced along my right shoulder.  It wasn’t until I saw the arrow tear through the canvas of
one of the tents ahead of me that I realized that been a couple finger-lengths away from having an arrow impaled through my arm or chest.

Whoever had shot the arrow closed the distance between us before I could even turn around, and I felt what I assumed to be their bow whip diagonally across my back, wrenching a scream from my
lungs.  With a quick turn, I caught my black-hooded attacker’s longbow in one hand—mostly by dumb luck—and punched them in the face with the other. 

As my attacker stumbled back, I could faintly make out his features.  He was a thick-bearded man dressed in all black, his torso covered with a hard leather cuirass that prevented me from knowing whether or not he also had a green glow coming from his chest.  There were two dead rabbits tied together by their hind legs hanging from a chain on his belt, making it seem that he’d been out hunting when the night’s ruckus had begun. 

His hand reflexively went to his face, and as it did, I swept a low kick across the back of his knees, tripping him to the ground.  Without looking back, I started running in the direction Til’ had fled, confident that my escape was assured with Kait’ and the bearded man downed behind me.

After a few loping strides, however, I saw the Oreph-blooded glint of one of Kait’s metal spheres arcing down ahead of me.  Oreph is the god of metal. 
Big surprise, right?  Pain shot through the base of my skull.  Darkness followed.

Chapter 9

Briscott to be Kidding Me

I awoke with the sweetly acrid taste of rotten berries in my mouth.  My vision turned the world around me into a collection of shapeless
multi-colored blobs.  If not for the fact that those blobs were static in my vision, I could’ve easily been convinced that I was spinning rapidly in circles, my mind in a constant state of dizziness.

I was sitting on something soft, my hands firmly secured behind my back.  My legs were stretched out in front of me, but I could barely move them.  Apparently my muscles didn’t want to work just yet.  That was just fine; I didn’t feel much like moving anyway.

“Ah, he’s awake,” a friendly male voice sounded from somewhere to my side.  I had no idea who’d spoken, where I was, or what in Rizear’s domain was going on.  I just barely had a grasp on who
I
was.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the only thing that came out was drool. 

“Don’t worry,” the friendly voice continued, “you’re still under the effects of the tashave leaf.  Now that you’re awake, it should begin to wear off.”  As the man spoke, he walked hunched over into my field of vision, a dark shape with a green glow coming from chest.  Something about that last detail tugged at my memory but stayed just beyond my mental reach.

I tried to respond, but my jaw was still hanging open from when I’d first attempted to speak.   I couldn’t get it to close again.

“Poor, blighted bastard,” the friendly voice mumbled.  The blurred man settled into a crouch before me and pulled up on my eyelids one at a time.  He held his other hand above each open eye, blocking the light for a moment before taking it away again.  “Pupils are still a bit sluggish.  Guess we’ll just have to wait this out a bit longer.”  With that, he stood and left my view once again.  I heard some papers shuffling and then silence.

I’m not sure how long I sat there, unable to do much more than breathe, but after what felt like hours, the world around me began to slowly take shape.  I was in some kind of small enclosure, the slanting wall in front of me gray and cloth-like.  Sunlight seeped through a crack between the tent flaps.  Before me was a wooden chest with various glass bottles clustered on one side of its top.  On the other side was a dull metal tray covered with various implements I couldn’t quite make out.

My muscles slowly started to regain some strength.  I was eventually able to close my mouth and swallow back the saliva that had been oozing out.  I bent my knees to test the mobility of my legs.  My feet were bound, and my legs felt about as pliable as a block of wood, but I could at least move them a little. 

The final step of my recovery came in the form of a gradually clarifying mind.  The first major detail I was able to discern was that I was in a canvas tent.  I knew in the back of my mind that meant something.  The second was that pain lanced along my right shoulder.  That seemed like it meant something too.  The third was that my hands were tied to something behind me.  Some sort of cushion was wedged between my back and whatever I was tied to, keeping me sitting upright.

Then, my mind exploded with a cluster of sickening realizations.  I’d been captured by Kait’ and her men.  I was in one of their tents.  The pain in my shoulder was from the arrow that had nicked me.  The green glow coming from the man with the friendly voice’s chest meant that one of Kait’s men was watching over me. 

The man had mentioned tashave leaf, a powerful anesthetic.  Tashave leaf is typically used on animals that need minor medical work, such as stitching.  It can also be used to put them mercifully to sleep.  Mathual, my adoptive father, used it sometimes on his farm.  If I’d been forced to chew the leaf, or drink a tea made from it, it would explain the rotten-berry taste in my mouth and the loss of my ability to think and move when I’d first awakened.  Depending on how much was used, I could’ve been out anywhere from hours to days.  Heck, I was lucky to be alive. 

I questioned that luck as the man with the friendly voice walked up from behind me in a crouch, holding a stack of loose papers.  His black hair was just long enough to tuck behind his ears, his full beard cut short.  Recessed pond-water eyes gave him a weary look and made the curve of his hawkish nose more prominent.  Lines at the corners of his tilted eyes gave him the appearance of a man just short of his middle years.  His complexion was a shade lighter than Kait’s but, along with his eyes, marked him as an easterner as well.  He was dressed in dark browns, the circular green glow shining through the fabric of his laced-up shirt.  There was a purple bruise just under his left eye.

“So, we’ve finally decided to wake up,” he noted with an easy smile, his thick accent similar to Kait’s.  Given my situation, I was understandably suspicious of his affability.  I kept my mouth shut and glared.

His smile widened, revealing straight yellow teeth.  “Can’t say I blame you,” he chuckled.  “Your name’s Korin, right?”  I grunted.  “Nice to meet you, Korin.  I’m Briscott Erlat.  I’m the one who stitched you up.”  His smile wilted then.  “I’m kind of the one who gave you reason to be stitched up.  Sorry about that.”

My mouth opened before my brain had the chance to tell it not to.  “Oh, so you’re the crack shot,” I sneered, my menacing glare betrayed by a slurred voice and a quick slurp to keep from drooling on myself again.  My mouth still didn’t want to move the way it was supposed to.

Briscott smiled again, taking in a deep breath.  “Yeah, not my best shot, huh?  In my defense, if I
had
made a better shot, I would’ve gotten a much worse punishment than having to stitch you up.”  His admission explained the black eye; I’d punched him.  He wouldn’t be getting an apology from me any time soon, though.

When I looked down at my shoulder, I realized I was shirtless, just then noticing how Jilis-blooded cold I was.  Jilis is the goddess of winter.  My thoughts of the cold were abandoned when I saw how shoddy the stitching of the gash across the top of my shoulder was.  The stitches were an uneven mess, and the wound edges weren’t nearly level.  His botch-job attempt at sewing me up was going to end with a nastier scar than necessary.  At least it looked as if he’d washed the wound well.  Hopefully I wouldn’t have to worry about infection on top of my thousand-and-one other concerns.

“Are you sure the stitching was
your
punishment?” I quipped sarcastically, slurring my words and slurping up saliva yet again.

Briscott simply smiled again and waddled over to the chest, picking up a small clay bowl from the metal tray.  “Here, spit in this,” he suggested, holding it below my chin.  I tried and ended up with spit on my chest, cold as ice as it ran down my stomach.  Briscott shrugged, picking up a cloth from the ground and wiping it off me.  “Well, I tried.” 

I closed my eyes and exhaled sharply through my nose, my annoyance at the situation overshadowing the anger and fear that should’ve filled me.  I wanted to ask this man a million questions to find out what was going on, but my mind was still crawling, and I didn’t want to lose my last shred of dignity by drooling all over myself again.

Briscott set his papers on the chest and placed the clay bowl atop them.  He took a cup from the metal tray and held it up to me. 
“Water?” 

I nodded my head the best I could and gulped the water as quickly as he could tilt the cup.  The tangy liquid didn’t quench my thirst, but I felt better.  Briscott set the cup back on the tray and eased himself down cross-legged on the bare grass in front of me.  I looked down to see that I had a bedroll beneath me. 

“So, I bet you’d like some answers,” he offered, his eyes, smile, and voice still friendly.  Was this guy toying with me?  His friendliness, clashing with the bleakness of my situation, made me want to punch him.  I wasn’t typically so violent, but at that moment, his benevolence felt like an insult.  Actually, more like a slap to the face . . . or some salt in the wound that burned on my shoulder.

My mouth—and even my brain this time—wanted to say something snarky like, “No, I just want a bedtime story and a glass of warm milk.”  Instead, I nodded and swallowed back the saliva that wanted to make its way down my chin.  I wanted answers, and given that I was tied up and still affected by the tashave leaf, I figured I may as well just let Briscott tell me
all that he could.

“Kaitlyne and Jefren will be a while yet, so I should have time to fill you in on the basics,” he began, his brow furrowing pensively.  “First, I want to let you know that your little Kolarin friend was never caught, so don’t let that worry you.”

I mentally relaxed, the knot in my stomach loosening.  I’d assumed that Til’ was being held somewhere else in the camp.  Knowing he’d gotten away sparked a tiny flame of hope within me.

Briscott’s expression hardened.  “Regretfully, that means they’ll try to use you to get to him.”  My eyes widened.  “I’ll get to that shortly.  I don’t want to pile too much on you at once.” 

Why did this guy seem to be so genuinely nice?  Was he mocking me?

“Okay, let’s start simple,” he began, rubbing a hand over his beard.  “Kaitlyne, Jefren, and me, we’re all from Gualain.  Maybe some of the only people in the past year to escape that blighted kingdom.  Things have gotten bad there.  Some wizard’s been raising the dead, using them to attack the villages and cities.”

I attempted to raise an eyebrow in skepticism, but my facial muscles were still sluggish.  Instead, I audibly scoffed. 

Briscott chuckled again, but his eyes didn’t share the mirth of his smile.  “Yes, I suppose it sounds pretty blighting crazy.”  He rubbed a hand through his hair, holding it at the back of his head.  “I wish it were nothing but crazy ramblings, but sadly, it’s the Loranis-blighted truth.  Jefren’s own wife and daughter were killed by those rotting atrocities of nature.  It was a pure stroke of luck that kept him from getting one of these.”  Briscott gestured to the green light glowing at his chest.

“Why doesn’t Gualain’s king do something about them?” I asked, still skeptical.  Drool poured from the corner of my lips before I could suck it back.

“Because the king’s the blighted one using them,” Briscott answered soberly. 

I hadn’t expected that.  In my experience, kings didn’t typically use the undead to kill their own subjects.

“So, those things . . . those walking dead monstrosities, they came from nowhere, sweeping through Gualain.  Women and children who stood in their way were killed.  The men were taken, and green rocks were hammered into their chests.” 

At that, Briscott loosened his shirt’s thin leather lacing.  My breath caught when he tugged his collar down to reveal a green gem-like stone embedded in the center of his chest.  The rough gem, no larger than a baby’s fist, looked as if it were just a chunk of a larger stone with its irregular angles and edges.  It was pale green, almost the same shade as Briscott’s eyes, and nothing like any gemstone I’d ever seen.  Free from the confines of the dark shirt, it glowed brightly, even in the daylight.  The skin around the gem folded inward and was a sickly brownish green.

Briscott seemed amused at my shock.  “I probably looked just as you do now when Jefren blighting told me about it.”  Briscott laced up his shirt, focusing his eyes somewhere behind me.  “We were friends once.  Before
he . . . I digress.  I lived two leagues outside the town of Hillaven in Gualain.  Jefren came to me, torn up about his wife and daughter, lucky to have escaped Hillaven alive.  Few others were as lucky.”  Something flickered across his face.  Sadness, maybe.  It was gone as quickly as it had appeared.

It was hard to concentrate on what Briscott was telling me.  I kept thinking about Menar’s claim that Raijom was involved in the brewing war in Gualain.  Raijom was capable of summoning eldrhims and had an apprentice who could do the same.  Were they somehow capable of raising the dead as well?  Were they responsible for the green gems?  Was Raijom controlling Gualain’s king?  I struggled to ignore the compounding questions forming in my mind so that I wouldn’t miss any of Briscott’s
story. 

“Jefren and I put together what few people we could find to fight back.  It was a worthless cause; all of them
lost, a full ten deaths on our hands.  The enemy was too strong.  There were just too many of them.  We were only able to kill one of those blighted creatures.  At least, if that’s what you call a second death.”  Briscott gave another dry laugh. 

His smile quickly fled, replaced by a glower.  “Jefren tore that gem right out of its light-blighted chest with his bare hands, figuring he could sell it to fund a trip to the Wizard Academy.  Those creatures are beyond what normal men can fight.  We decided to go to the Grand Wizard for help.”

I braved drooling on myself to jump in at this point.  “You don’t seem to be on your way to Tahron,” I said with only a minor amount of slurring.  I was starting to get a little more control over my facial muscles, my tongue feeling less bloated.

“You’re no idiot, Korin,” Briscott replied with a wry smile.  He turned his head towards the tent flap, as if to make sure no one was eavesdropping.  After running a hand through his black hair again, he leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially.  “Don’t repeat my words, but Jefren has completely lost it.  We stopped at Yillia, a city quite a hair larger than Hillaven, close to the Gualainian border.  We needed supplies.

“The whole city was occupied not only by those undead creatures, but by men, alive and well.  Only . . . only they had those same glowing rocks in their chests.  I still don’t really know how we got in past the watch they had posted around Yillia’s perimeter.  Any time we were seen by the men, living or dead, they’d come after us with blighting murder in mind.  Jefren killed a half dozen of the living ones.  After that, he wasn’t the same.  I killed two myself.  Don’t know how I stayed sane.”  Yet another dry laugh.  “Actually, I’m not so sure about that anymore.”