“Are you okay?” Grace asked.
Kendel took a breath. His chest did feel even less painful; the healing was occurring rapidly.
“Shaiss was just informing me that I suffered a portion of the injury I gave the man who was here to attack. She said that the way I directed the energy to him, made me, um,” he tried to figure out how to explain what wouldn’t make sense to someone else, “it made me vulnerable to some of the same punishment. And that’s what happened to me,” he finished. “But it does heal quickly because it wasn’t the real attack,” he added.
“Just like that, you were talking to Shaiss?” Vivienne asked incredulously.
“She said I wouldn’t make a very good acolyte for her,” Kendel grinned weakly.
“Your chest is looking much better,” Grace observed. Her fingers began to gently touch the areas that were healing from red to pink to normal skin tone, massaging with delicate strength as they circled sensuously, until she realized what she was doing and blushed as she pulled her fingertips away from his flesh suddenly.
“Well, do we think all the magic and warfare are over?” Elline asked as he poked his head back into the room. “Kendel, is there anything else we can do for you?” the knight asked.
“Nothing that I can think of, my lord,” Kendel replied.
“We’ll leave your four to get a good night’s sleep. I’m sure you’ll be safe if the criminal tells anyone what happened to him,” Elline said. Rachel gave a farewell wave as she picked up her unused bag of medical supplies, and Waxen hollered his good night, then the door closed.
“How does my chest look?” Kendel asked. “It hardly feels any pain at all now.”
“It looks good, as in healthy,” Grace replied. “Shall I close up your garment for you?” she asked, and he felt her fingers tugging his shirt into place before he could answer.
“My lord Kendel, would you like to have my bed, and I’ll sleep on the floor?” Vivienne asked. The question set off a flurry of offers to allow Kendel to sleep in a bed in light of the trauma he had suffered, but after several minutes, they all wound up in the places they had begun in, and eventually all fell asleep.
Just a few short hours later Elline knocked on their door and they all stumbled out of the room to hurry to the dock where the ferry carried their contingent across the foggy river.
“And now we’re in Four Borders,” Weber commented. “Many a guardsman has left the palace over the years to come here to be paid as a mercenary.”
“And many of them never came back,” Elline added. “Life is reckoned cheaply by some folks here, but Kendel tells us we have a safe place to go, and I trust the boy.”
They proceeded to follow the road to the capital city Wiebe, traveling at the pace of the rickshaw and Kendel, as different members of the party took turns leading Kendel or pulling the rickshaw that carried the king. When they approached the city walls at the end of the day, Kendel gave a warning.
“When Agata and Parker came this way, there were spies inside the gate who watched everyone arriving in the city, and they recognized Agata because of the large reward for her return,” he alerted the others. “So, when we’re inside, watch to see if anyone leaves the vicinity in a hurry, like they’re going to report our arrival.”
“You think there could be a reward for us?” Waxen asked.
“There should be for the king, and one for Sir Elline,” Weber replied. “And one for the little girls too,” he added. “They all are missing from the palace, and it looks bad for Beches.”
“How did you know that Agata and Parker came this way?” Grace asked.
“I traveled part of the way with them,” Kendel confessed. It was easier to admit the partial truth than to either tell the whole truth or a total lie. He wouldn’t be able to keep a lie consistent, and the truth wouldn’t be believed.
“A nobleman named Christoph captured them here in the city, but they were rescued by another nobleman, who I hope we’ll get to visit along the way,” Kendel supplied more information. He could hear the sounds of the crowd growing denser around them as they neared the gate structure. He held his staff tightly with one hand and held onto Sheenda with the other.
“Tell me if you think you see trouble,” he whispered to the cook.
“If a situation looks desperate, I’ll warn you, but I don’t want you frying your own body unless it’s necessary to save us all,” she replied firmly, showing that Kendel’s story of hearing Shaiss explain how he was wounded had circulated among the rest of the group.
“There’s no one leaving the gates that I can see,” Weber spoke to Kendel when they were past the guards and in the city. The guard had proven to be a common-sensical, pragmatic man, one who had seen how the world worked, Kendel observed, as he’d listened to the veteran talk with Elline and others along the journey.
“Shall we go and find rooms for the night?” Elline asked, and they began to wander down the streets of the city.
“Tell me if you see any temples,” Kendel mentioned to Sheenda as she held his hand.
“Any particular ones?” the former cook asked. “I’m sure we’ll see a few in a city this size.”
“Shaiss or Miriam,” Kendel answered. He would have preferred Miriam’s, but he felt an obligation to mention Shaiss.
“I’ll step into this inn,” Elline said a minute later. “Kendel, you and Grace come with me, the rest of you wait here.” Kendel felt his hand placed on the back of Elline’s shoulder, and then they walked into the inn.
“Our friends need rooms; do you have any?” Elline asked. “Grace has some friends who she wants to stay with her,” he added, drawing the clerk’s attention to the attractive young noblewoman.
“We can arrange to let a room or two we were holding,” the innkeeper began to reply.
“I want four rooms,” Elline said bluntly. “With all the girls I’ve got waiting outside, I need rooms.”
“There could be a way to arrange four rooms, but it wouldn’t be easy,” the man at the desk answered. “It will be costly.”
“Kendel, could you set this inn on fire with your magic?” Elline asked.
“Yes, my lord,” Kendel was surprised by the question, which was so unexpected and out of character.
The clerk guffawed in disbelief of the ridiculous claim.
“You have to make your staff light up with magic first though, don’t you?” Elline ignored the clerk’s skepticism. “Go ahead, if you can.”
Kendel held his staff out at arm’s length away from his body, and in so doing he thrust his hands into the unprepared Grace’s chest.
“Oh!” she gasped.
“I’m sorry; what did I do?” Kendel asked, unsure of who or what he had touched.
“There is no harm, great magician. Please proceed,” Grace replied as she took an extra step away from him.
He focused his concentration on the energy within. Releasing a portion of the blue energy was the simplest part of his interaction with the power within him. He was glad to do it to fulfill the bluff that Elline apparently wanted to use to spook the innkeeper into giving the group rooms at good rates. Kendel wasn’t sure how much further he was prepared to go if Elline asked him to unleash the green power. Kendel felt an instinctive preference not to handle the energy that had delivered so much pain to him.
He felt the blue energy flowing, and then a group of gasps from around the room. Apparently, there were others in the lobby of the inn beside Elline’s group. Kendel realized he hadn’t been listening and paying attention to his surroundings as he’d walked into the inn. That was a dangerous mistake on his part, now that he could no longer see. He needed to remind himself, he thought in frustration.
Suddenly there was a round of shrieks and cries, and Kendel belatedly realized that his musing had let his control over the energy run freely and unchecked. The green energy was also flowing into the staff, though Kendel wasn’t sure what it was doing.
He hastily refocused his attention and concentr
ated on re-containing the green power, forcing it back into his own body.
“Eh, very nice, Kendel. Can you keep in under control a bit longer, until we find out if this innkeeper can provide us nice rooms at a reasonable price?” Elline’s voice was pitched minutely higher than before.
“I’ll try my lord. It got away from me there for a moment,” Kendel answered truthfully.
“Well keeper, what offer can you make me?” Elline asked.
“You are such an extraordinary set of visitors that it would be my honor to let you have your rooms at no cost,” the clerk’s voice sounded shaken to Kendel, and he wondered what the green energy had shown to the audience to produce such a reaction.
“Thank you, keeper. Grace, find out our rooms and take the sorcerer upstairs while I go fetch the others,” Elline briskly set things in motion.
“You’ll have the rooms with blue doors on the left side of the building,” the clerk informed Grace, who thanked him demurely, then took Kendel by the hand and led him out of the lobby.
“Here are the stairs,” she warned, a moment later, and they were soon in a room, when Grace gently led Kendel to a bed and urged him to sit.
“My lady Grace,” he felt compelled to speak with some formality for no reason.
“Yes, my lord sorcerer?” she replied just as formally, as she took a seat beside him.
“What happened in the lobby downstairs with the green energy? I could not see,” he asked.
“Do you mean you do not know? You don’t know what we saw?” Grace’s voice sounded incredulous.
“I don’t know. I didn’t mean to let the green energy out, but I lost control of it for a moment,” he confessed. “But I did stop it when I heard the reaction of the people around us.”
“It was a monster, a horrible monster, one that was partially a woman and partially something else, something hideous and frightening,” Grace was unable to articulate what she had seen. He felt her hand squeeze his and realized that they were still holding hands from her guidance up the stairs.
His intuition leapt to a conclusion – the green energy had created an image of Hecate, the monstrous entity that Miriam had fought in the cataclysmic battle at Fordham Falls. Kendel couldn’t imagine any more fearsome image possible that the sight of the hateful being who had controlled an army of monsters and fought directly against Miriam.
He told Grace a little of the story. “I think the green power was showing the most frightening thing it could; I think that was an image of Hecate, who fought with Miriam in a city here in Four Borders, not too long ago.”
“It was frightening, whatever it was. I’m glad you forced it away,” she said, and then she laid her head on his shoulder. “This has been such a long strange journey, Kendel. Just a few weeks ago we were all members of the court and life was ordinary and fun, but since then, there has been nothing but change and danger and fear. Will it ever get any better, or will it forever be like this?”
He hadn’t thought about the painful and bewildering life Grace was experiencing, or he had considered it only superficially. He’d let his thoughts in recent days be consumed with anything but the perspective of the endangered ladies of the court. He’d thought about himself a lot, especially since his vision had been removed. He’d thought about Shaiss and Miriam. He’d thought about the band of travelers in a general way, as a unit. But he hadn’t really let himself spend time thinking about how unfair and terrible life must seem to Grace and Vivienne and Sophie.
He hadn’t thought about Flora recently either, he realized.
He hesitantly lifted his arm, and let it circle around Grace, lightly encircling her shoulders as a way to give her a hug, a reassurance of safety. She sighed and let herself rest more heavily on his shoulder.
There was a noise as the door to the room began to open, and Grace instantly jerked upright into a sitting position, then edged away from him.
“Grace, aren’t you bold to be sitting on a bed with a man?” Sophie chided as she entered the room. “Didn’t you suggest it was unseemly when the Princess Agata sat on a bed with Parker?” Sophie asked, then realized that she had brought up Grace’s former boyfriend, and she clamped her hand over her mouth.
“What?” Kendel quickly spoke up, “Is Grace sitting on the bed here? I can’t see – I didn’t even know,” he spoke as he let his hand start to visibly pat the bed searching for the girl on his left side, knowing that she was on his right.
“Whatever the topic is, we want to know what Kendel did down there!” Vivienne spoke up. “We hear he did something that scared the clerk and half the guests!”
“The green energy I carry came out when I wasn’t paying attention, and it made a frightening display,” Kendel tried to make it sound less dramatic that it had been. “I made the green energy stop, and that was that.”
The conversation progressed to the question of who would sleep where, and a surprising decision was made that they all could sleep on the beds by alternating heads at different ends of the mattresses. With that decision made, then were summoned to go out to dinner with the rest of their party. Weber volunteered to stay with the king, allowing Rachel to have a night out about the town with the others.
They were practically at their destination, Kendel knew. With luck, they would arrive the following day, and what would unfold then would be decisive in how the fate of the group was resolved. As he thought the very thought, Elline asked a related question.
“Kendel, we’ve come this far and we’re all alive; you’re the most badly harmed of us all so far, my lad. How far are we from reaching this place you want to be our refuge?” the knight asked.
“I know it’s only about a half day away from Wiebe, and it’s to the northeast, but I don’t know the exact location,” Kendel admitted.
“But I think we can find the estate. It’s large, and they had a notable battle with the monsters, the Mormos that were chasing Agata and Parker. I would think some rumor of the monsters might have reached the capital city here,” he suggested.
They ate dinner at a tavern where a woman sang ballads, and Kendel asked the server if he knew of a large estate held by a nobleman named Lumen but got only a negative response. The others asked merchants in the street, and they asked the clerk at the inn, but no one seemed to know of the mysterious location.
“What should we do?” Gayl asked as they all stood in the lobby of the inn, prepared to go to their rooms.
“We can start in the direction we need to go and see what directions we pick up along the way,” Kendel suggested, unable to see the looks of doubt that the others exchanged.
That night, he lay in his bed, his head resting next to Grace’s feet, while her head was near his ankles, as his feet hung over the end of the too-short mattress.
“Shaiss,” Kendel began a quiet prayer, “my goddess, will you give us guidance to the estate of Prince Lumen tomorrow?” he asked. “Arriving there should let all these friends enjoy a safe place while I try to move on.”
I will give you the guidance you need, Shaiss said. But after that, I’ve decided that you cannot continue to be such a burden on me. I’ll arrange a guide to lead you away from the estate after the others are delivered there.
“Thank you, my goddess,” Kendel replied with satisfaction.
And with that, he fell asleep.
Chapter 17
Kendel awoke to the sound of pounding on the door of the room where he was sleeping. He began to gain consciousness, but then immediately grew awake when Sophie shrieked with ear-piercing loudness.
“What is it? Is he back? Where’s my staff?” Kendel asked in confusion.
“It’s a monster!” Sophie cried.
“Put your glasses on; I’m not a monster. I’m a dwarf, a stone dwarf, and I’ll thank you to respect that, human,” a raspy voice filled Kendel’s ears.
A voice in the hallway sounded an alarm. “I’ve never seen anything like this!”
“What a sheltered bunch of humans!” th
e voice said. Kendel heard the door close. “Father will owe me for this.
“Which one of you is Kendel, the acolyte of Shaiss and Miriam?” the voice asked.
“Kendel!” the bed was shaking, and Grace was grabbing his shoulder with a steel grip. “The monster is talking to you!”
“What’s happening here?” Kendel asked in a mix of confusion, fear, and astonishment.
“Shaiss said you weren’t too bright,” the voice said.
Kendel heard Vivienne laugh.
“What’s happening?” Kendel repeated his question.
The bed suddenly lurched, Grace shrieked and released her hold on Kendel, and unexpectedly, a pair of cold, hard lips kissed him on the cheek.
Kendel swung his fist wildly in the direction of the inhuman kisser, then shouted in pain as his fist hit a solid stone object.
“Shaiss tells my father to tell me to leave my home to come be your guide, and this is how you treat me?” the voice sounded disappointed.
Kendel was vigorously rubbing his injured hand, while he heard the sound of the door opening once again.
“Kendel, tell him to leave us alone,” the voice said.
“What is going on?” Elline’s voice asked sharply. “Kendel?”
“I don’t know,” Kendel answered. “Who are you?” he asked in the direction of the voice next to him in the bed.
“I am Dwad, sent here as a favor to Shaiss, to take you to the estate of Prince Lumen,” the voice said. “Are you all ready to leave?”
“Shaiss said she was going to give us guidance,” Kendel told Elline. “I didn’t know what she meant.”
“You think this is Shaiss’s guide for us?” Elline asked incredulously.
“Dwad,” Grace’s voice sounded from the end of the bed. “What are you?”
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