Kestrel fired two more arrows to slay the last two head officers he saw in the vicinity, then followed Ashby back into the building they had traveled through, and climbed the stairs as fast as possible, while the sound of their pursuers remained close behind. His human legs burned with exhaustion as they rose to the fourth floor, then the fifth floor, then exited onto the roof.
“Stillwater!” Kestrel called. “We need your help!” he threw his knife at the first pursuer who came up the staircase onto the roof, then shot an arrow that sent the second man tumbling backwards.
“Lucretia, return!” he cried in a voice that was high-pitched, as he felt his anxiety growing. He shot another arrow, then caught his knife, and backed up with Ashby to a chimney that offered scant protection at the edge of the roof.
“Canyon!” he called. “Odare!”
Their pursuers sent several men up on the roof in a group; they came up fast, and several arrows began flying from the attacker’s bows.
“Sire!” Ashby cried, as he was hit in the shoulder. Kestrel crouched down and shot his own dwindling supplies of arrows.
“Kestrel! We come!” he heard an imp’s voice, then saw a small armada of imps appear in the sky behind the attackers, and swoop downwards in an ambush of the men who were tormenting Kestrel.
An arrow deflected off the chimney and struck Kestrel’s ribs, shallowly penetrating his lower chest and knocking him down.
The imps saw him go down and redoubled their efforts, as the attacking men began to retreat from the rooftop where they faced the intimidation by opponents they had never seen before. Within moments the rooftop was nearly empty, and Jonson came over to Kestrel.
“Friend warrior, are you alright?” Jonson asked anxiously, seeing the shaft protruding from Kestrel’s side.
“Take us to the tower, to the women,” Kestrel instructed in gasping breaths. Each intake of air was agony, and he took only shallow breaths as he bit his lip. “Take Ashby first, and go tell Wren what’s happened,” he added.
Moments later the imps were back and gathered around Kestrel, then carried him to the tower room, where Ashby was being tended to by Picco and Moorin, as a pair of guards stood nearby, and the women from the harem clustered together and began to wail at the sight of Kestrel’s wound.
“Oh Kestrel! You too! Are you alright?” Picco called out as the imps deposited him on the floor.
“I’ll be okay,” Kestrel gasped.
“Not with an arrow in your chest, you won’t; we need to take you to the healing spring right away,” the girl said, kneeling over him.
“Do you have a skin of healing water?” Kestrel asked.
Picco shook her head as she held his hand.
“Dewberry, beloved, please go,” he began to speak in elvish, then paused and coughed up blood, making Picco cry in alarm, “Dewberry, go to the doctor dearest, go to Alicia. Bring her and skins of healing water here,” he gasped.
“Kestrel heart of hearts!” Dewberry replied. “Let us take you to the spring to be saved!”
“No, I can’t leave. I have to act as though I am the prince of this land while I am in this body. I cannot leave the city while the battle rages, my beloved. They expect their leader to stay where the fight is,” he glanced over at Moorin, who he saw was staring at him. “Go,” he gasped again, then passed out.
When he awoke, he was sleeping in a luxurious bed, in a room darkened by blinds pulled down to cover windows that showed only minute cracks of bright daylight. His chest was painful, and wrapped in tight bandages. He turned his head, and saw Alicia sitting calmly in a chair.
“Alicia,” he said softly in elvish, “you came for me! Thank you,” he told her. “Are we still in Seafare? Are we safe?”
“We are in a royal suite of some type – your apparent betrothed would not allow us to move you back to the actual prince’s suite for some reason she would not explain – in Seafare, and you are going to live, though you would have been better served by going to the spring and soaking in the waters,” she said. She reached her hand out and took his and squeezed it.
“I can’t believe you’re a human, a different human that is. The goddesses knows I’ve seen you as a human often enough!” she smiled as they both thought of the numerous cosmetic surgeries she had performed on him.
Kestrel tried to sit up, then lay back with a gasp and a groan.
“That was stupid,” Alicia said clinically.
“What’s happening? Are we winning?” Kestrel asked.
“You’ve won,” Alicia answered. “If you feel up to it, I’ll let the others come in and explain what happened, but your people are in control of the palace,” she gave a crooked smile that alerted Kestrel to some hidden story.
“And is Ashby okay? Did you treat him?” Kestrel asked about the other man wounded in the battle on the rooftop.
“He’s fine. It was just a shoulder wound, and he’s being doctored to by those human women who were in the tower with you; I think he’d take a wound every night to suffer such nursing again,” Alicia laughed.
Kestrel looked at the elven woman. “It’s good to see you laugh and smile,” he told her.
“It’s good to see you again, and know you’re alive,” she replied gently. She leaned over to give him a tender kiss, just as the door opened and Moorin stepped in.
“I see your doctors have different methods than ours,” she said as Alicia raised her head.
“He’s awake. You may speak with him,” Alicia said coolly, then resumed her seat.
“May I speak with him privately?” Moorin asked pointedly. “We have to keep up the appearances of a happily betrothed couple.”
Alicia wordlessly rose and gracefully glided across the floor to the doorway. “Don’t overtax him,” she said and then was gone.
“So the invincible warrior can be stopped in battle,” Moorin stated as she took Alicia’s seat.
“No man is invulnerable,” Kestrel replied
“No man perhaps, but I’m not sure you’re only a man,” she answered.
“Only a man,” Kestrel echoed. “Truly, I am only a man.”
“Only a man in the base and fickle-hearted sense of one noble lady of Graylee pregnant with your child, one elfish doctor from the Eastern Forest passionately kissing you, and one half elven countess who you’ve also relentlessly pursued, regardless of the other two,” she said heatedly.
Kestrel sighed. “Yet I have been faithful to you since I met you, and I will be faithful to you,” he stopped and paused. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Are they treating you well?”
She too stopped, and recognized his effort to calm the conversation. “Yes, I am well. I am being treated as though I were already the queen. Ruelin is paying special attention to me,” she paused to observe Kestrel’s reaction, as he closed his eyes and threw his head back.
“Of course, since none of the humans speak elvish, they don’t know what’s really happening,” she added.
Kestrel opened his eyes and looked at her.
“What’s really happening?” he asked. “You’ve twisted my tail and got my interest.”
“The Graylee monarch sent soldiers carried here magically by the imps, and when the Eastern Forest got news of your battle and wound, they sent squads of elven archers via the imps, and along with the imps and sprites and the men you had here, you carried the day with the most unlikely alliance ever seen,” Moorin explained. “And Ashby spread the word about how you killed a dozen generals by yourself.
“Oh Kestrel, if I loved you I’d be the happiest woman in the world right now,” she said.
They both sat there in silence digesting the unintended statement Moorin had dropped.
“You mean that, don’t you?” he asked. “You truly don’t love me.”
“No, I don’t feel it, not now. Maybe never. If the only reasons you had for switching bodies with Ruelin were to defeat Uniontown’s influence here and to secretly woo me, then you might as well change back, because Uniontown is
defeated, and you’re not going to sneak up on my heart at this point,” she told him.
“I don’t have any control over the switching of bodies. I don’t know how it happened; I don’t know how to fix it. And I haven’t exactly had time to think about how to fix it lately, in case you hadn’t noticed,” he said in a snippy tone, causing her to raise her eyebrows at him.
“Oh gods,” he said softly, and closed his eyes as he leaned back against the pillows. Just watching the small gesture, the movement of the eyebrows, the mobile features of her perfect face, had reminded him, even in the middle of their domestic squabbling, of why he had fallen in love with her, become so entranced with her perfect beauty. More than once, he knew.
“Moorin, you’re going to be the death of me,” he murmured. He looked at her, and intuitively recognized the stress she was under. “I know this isn’t easy for you. You need to get some rest. We’ll have many opportunities to converse in the future, I’m sure,” he told her.
“If I were in your shoes,” he said softly as he rested his eyes and thought, “feeling like I was shipped off as sold-goods, with a stranger I was giving myself away to, then undergoing repeated attacks while coming to terms with some crazy elf who pursued me to the point of stealing my finance’s body, I wouldn’t have held up as well as you have,” he murmured with real compassion in his voice.
It was true, he realized. She had no one else she could take her uncertainty and frustration and fears out on except him. He couldn’t blame her for her angst, and he knew that her perception of him, especially with the news of Picco’s pregnancy, only painted him in the worst possible light as a partner for life, especially when he was only illicitly occupying the body of the person she had agreed to be married to.
He felt the mattress quiver, and then the covers rustled, and he opened his eyes to see that she was lying down in the bed with him.
“Thank you Kestrel. I didn’t realize you understood. I’m not sure I truly understood myself, not as well as you just stated. If it’s alright with you, I’ll just take a nap here with you,” she spoke in a warmer tone than she had used so far. “I really ought to for appearances sake anyway,” she added.
“But don’t take this as an invitation for you to try any inappropriate business,” she said her last words, then cautiously rolled up next to him and closed her eyes, as her breath began to come in a slow, regular pattern, and Kestrel marveled at the realization that she had been able to fall asleep, just like that.
He lay there quietly, feeling tired and sleepy himself, and knew that his inner calm was shaken by a sudden realization that he truly had no way to know if the girl at his side would remain at his side much longer. The prophetic words of Kere, spoken in the Eastern Forest so long ago, no longer served as a promise that his time with Moorin was still ahead. He had rescued her; he had saved her, and therefore she could walk away from him, his mission accomplished and no further destiny waiting to pull them together.
And there was Picco, sweet, lovable Picco, who was going to bear his child. Kestrel distinctly remembered the words of her mother’s spirit that had said the two of them were not meant for each other. Kestrel was to be the means of introducing Picco to her true love, while he would have a long journey to travel to find the one his heart was meant to belong to. The gods knew it felt like he had travelled a long journey already.
He thought of the gods. They had recently been absent from his adventures it seemed. After regular visits by divinities, Kestrel now felt abandoned without their assistance and guidance, especially in trying to find the way to return to his own body.
You have the ability within you Kestrel. That was my gift to you. It is here, within you, he was startled to hear Kai’s voice speak in his heart.
“My goddess?” He cried out loud, his eyes popping open. “Where is it within me? How do I use it?”
“Hmm?” Moorin lazily asked, not opening her eyes.
“Sssh,” Kestrel told her as he sat upright and pondered the message from Kai. When she spoke of the gift she had given him she had to be referring to the power drained from the Viathins, the power he had used to restore the powers of his knife, Lucretia, the powers he had used to save Picco when she had been threatened by Namber’s forces, the powers with which he had restored the protective sheath within the skin of his own elven body.
How had he managed to use the power at those times? What had happened when the power had burst forth from him? He hadn’t known the power was going to flow, he had only known he needed something at the each particular moment, something that was otherwise beyond his ability to achieve. Somewhere within himself he had triggered the release of the energies in the particular way that had solved his dire need.
He lay back on his pillows as a startling thought occurred to him. He had felt a desperate longing for Moorin; what if his longing for the elven countess had been what had triggered the exchange of his body for Ruelin’s? Could it have been him that made the souls exchange places, and not the activity of the sun during the difficult imp-transportation? He had felt such extreme stress over seeing Moorin leave, he clearly remembered; could his longing for her be the spark that had moved his soul to its new location, a location that had allowed him to remain close to her?
“It is here,” Kai had told him. And where was “here”? He had heard the goddess speak in his heart, in the very core of his soul. Could that be where the power resided? Right there where his desire for Moorin resided as well, where the fundamental constituents of his being were enmeshed with each other?
Kestrel closed his eyes, and took a deep sigh, then gave a sharp grunt in response to a brief stabbing pain in his still healing ribs.
“Hmm?” Moorin sleepily asked again.
“It’s you, my heart,” he spoke in elvish.
“What?” Moorin snuggled closer to him
“You are in my heart. Perhaps you were initially placed there by the goddess, to make me chase after you, but now I know that you’re deep in my heart,” he whispered.
“What are you talking about?” she asked. She opened one eye to look at him.
“I know why I switched bodies,” he reached out to gently stroke her hair. “The goddess just spoke to me, and she gave me a clue.
“You drew me to you. I was so desperate to be with you that the powers within me put me into Ruelin’s body so that I could be close to you,” he explained.
“You did this?” she was looking at him with both eyes open. “You made your soul and Ruelin’s switch places?”
“It was my soul’s longing to be with you, yes,” Kestrel said. “The power within me felt the strength of my love for you, and my misery at seeing you sail away with Ruelin, and the power put me in a place where I could be with you once again.
“There must have been something more, perhaps, but only to the extent of arranging the circumstances, so that I would be with you when the pirates attacked, and I would be with you when you were ready to give yourself to Ruelin, and I chose not to take advantage of the opportunity,” he told her. “And I was here with you in Seafare, as chaos erupted and evil was beaten.”
“Chaos erupted mostly because you provoked it,” she answered as she rolled over on her stomach and rested her chin on her fists, looking up at him. “But you did protect me when it happened,” she conceded.
“So, can you reverse the situation? Can you restore yourself to your own body?” she asked.
“I can, I think,” Kestrel told her. “I believe that if my soul believes I want something badly enough, it will use the power to make it happen if it can.”
“Do you want it badly enough?” Moorin asked.
“I want you to love me, Kestrel, the person, regardless of which body I occupy,” he answered, looking in her eyes. “I have to believe that you can love me when I’m restored – maybe only if I’m restored – to my true body.
“And I think that maybe you can love me,” he told her as his hand continued to gently move across her scalp. “You
may not even know it yourself, but I remember when I fell into the water, when you came running across the surface of the sea trying to save me, willing to put yourself in danger for me. That showed that you cared enough to knowingly risk sacrificing yourself to protect me.
“That tells me you can love me, Moorin. And knowing that, I’m willing to leave the rest to chance, to leave this body and return to my own, and ask you to choose me for your love,” he closed his eyes.
“Kestrel, can you be sure? I just told you ten minutes ago that I don’t think I love you, but I truthfully don’t know. If you try this without certainty, can it go wrong?” Moorin asked. “Can you be sure that you’ll really make the exchange work, so that both of you will be whole and safe within your own bodies?”
There was silence. “Kestrel?” she asked again, then felt the slackness of his hand, as he focused his complete attention within himself.
“Kestrel?” she asked softly. “Please don’t do this unless you’re sure, Kestrel. Maybe I do love you. Whether I do or not, I know I don’t want to lose you, especially not like this.”
There was a sudden flash of light around his body, and a moment of humming resonance, and then silence and the gloom of the curtained windows once again defined the room.
Chapter 3 – Reversal
Two days later, Kestrel and Ruelin awoke in their own bodies. They woke at the same time, just after dawn. Kestrel sat up and stretched, then was struck by the realization that he felt healthier than he remembered – his body was limber and energetic and light. And then he realized the what and why of his newly-felt physical pleasure, and he gave a whoop of celebration.
He lay alone in a plush room, a noble guest suite in the palace, he was sure. He rose from the soft mattress, and stood, naked – undressed by medics – and wondering where he could find some clothes. There was no dresser, no apparent closet, so he wrapped a sheet around himself and stepped out into the hallway, where he found a guard stationed on duty outside of his room.
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 05 - Journey to Uniontown Page 4
