A Marriage of Friends (The Inner Seas Kingdoms Book 8)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “I was as furious with her when I found out afterwards as I was with you yesterday,” the duchess interjected, shaking her head.

  “I went there first thing this morning, while I had my courage up,” Gail continued. “And they let me in, then led me up stairs – oh so many stairs! – to the rooms where Lark is kept. And I met your cousin too! She is so exotically beautiful,” the Langravine complimented Wren.

  “I never thought about that very much,” Kestrel replied, caught off-guard by the description of Wren as beautiful. “She’s one of the best fighters I’ve ever known, though.”

  “Lord Kestrel,” the duchess said reprovingly.

  “Well, it’s true,” he answered stubbornly. “But what’s important is that both the girls are safe and unharmed. What did they have to say to you?”

  “They are bored and mad about being held captive,” Gail said. “And they talked about you, a great deal.

  “You are an incredible hero!” she gushed. “The things they told me about you are unbelievable. I told them what you did for me in that village,” she went on. “Your cousin laughed and laughed and laughed. Lark didn’t think it was funny, but she thought it was poetic justice.”

  “I’m glad they are well. And they’re being treated well?” he asked.

  “Wren said the food is boring. Lark said it’s just what they have to put up with,” Gail answered.

  “My friend, Stillwater, the imp – did you see him?” Kestrel wanted to pump as much information out of the redheaded girl as possible.

  “Lark mentioned the other prisoner, and Wren said that it was unfair that he was treated the way he was. But I didn’t see him,” Gail replied, leaving him unsatisfied. He sat in silence, wondering where Stillwater was. If – or when, he corrected his own silent scheming – he went on a rescue mission, he was determined to set Stillwater free along with the girls.

  “He’s an imp,” Kestrel succinctly explained.

  “Nonsense – those are fairy tale creatures,” the duchess replied.

  “They are bright and loyal and funny and brave warriors. They are small but undaunted. They are crafty and fun-loving,” Kestrel rattled off adjectives. “But they are not fairy tales – they are real. Their kingdom is adjacent to my own estate. I’ve been accompanied by imps on practically every adventure I’ve been on.

  “We held markets in the spring time last year, so that our elves could sell mushrooms to the imps, and the imps paid for them with pearls, then I sold the pearls to the humans from Hydrotaz,” he smiled as he remembered the new economy that had sprung up in his corner of the Inner Seas.

  “They’re small, and blue, and they fly, and when the sun is acting right, they can appear and disappear at will,” Kestrel said.

  “Just wait – when the sun is better, they’ll be the best thing we could ask for, other than the return of the gods,” he had rattled on and on.

  “Lark said that your father is a god,” Gail said tentatively.

  The duchess gave a start, and half rose from her seat momentarily. Her movement caught Kestrel’s eye, and she sat back down.

  “The imps may be true,” she picked her words carefully. “But the idea of a god having a mortal child – that’s an exaggeration, surely,” she tried to sound confident, but her uncertainty bled through.

  “Lark told no tales, none that Gail’s repeated,” Kestrel decided to admit the truth. “My father is Morph, an elven god, as I told Gail before.

  “She probably told you that the four of us plus others traveled to another land to set free my father and Krusima,” he spoke to Gail.

  “Lark did. She told such extraordinary tales about you; she declares that there’s no one else in the world like you!” Gail’s eyes were shining. “She wrote a note, and asked me to give it to you!” the girl exclaimed. She stood suddenly. “It’s upstairs. I’ll go get it now,” she spoke, then strode purposefully across the room and opened the parlor door to run her errand.

  A maid in the hall gave a shriek, and Gail slammed the door shut.

  “I forgot to put on my veil,” she explained in embarrassment. “You two treat me like I’m a normal person, and for a moment I believed it.” She reclaimed her veil, wrapped it around her head, then left the room.

  “Kestrel,” the duchess spoke as soon as the door closed. “Tell me the truth, while the girl is gone.”

  “It’s all true. I’ve lived an extraordinary life so far,” he told her earnestly.

  “And even as great as you are, you’ve been a friend to this ugly niece of mine. Why?” Tyle leaned forward to ask.

  “She’s not ugly to me, you must remember,” Kestrel corrected her in a kindly tone. “And she’s a good person. She deserves to have a friend. I hope that when you arrange her next marriage, Lucius or whoever is as kind as she deserves. You tell them I’ll protect her if they hurt her!” he smiled as he made the mock threat.

  “You’re a hard person to figure out,” Tyle told him.

  “Not really,” Kestrel replied, just as the parlor door opened, and Gail returned.

  “Here’s her note,” the Langravine handed over a small square of folded paper.

  “And here’s a gift I thought might be useful,” she next handed him a small box, one that covered her palm and stuck out slightly.

  “Child! Giving a gift to a strange man!” the duchess called out.

  “He can use it, dear aunt,” Gail replied earnestly, though she blushed. “And he’s practically already engaged to Lark. And he has been very good to me – it’s just a small token.”

  Kestrel wanted to read Lark’s note, see what words she had to share with him, but he resisted the desire to open the note and read it while standing in front of the others. Instead, he tucked it away for later, and opened the small box, then looked at the contents.

  He lifted out a small hinged item that he realized was a pair of glasses, only the lenses were dark, he saw. He opened them up and looked at them curiously.

  “They were going to be a gift for my husband. I had them created, but they weren’t delivered before he passed,” Gail said.

  “I thought you might like to have them, so that they would hide your purple eyes from people,” she explained.

  Kestrel looked at her as she spoke.

  “I think your eyes are pretty,” she hastened to tell him.

  “Child!” the duchess intervened.

  “But I know that everyone is afraid of the Destroyer, and if they see your eyes, they’ll know who you are immediately,” Gail explained. “The glass was made dark to hide Charles’s eyes, but you can see through it from the inside, at least in the day time.”

  “Thank you,” Kestrel said in a kindly tone. He placed the glasses on his face experimentally. He could see through the glasses, it was true. The details of everything around him were masked, but general outlines were clear. The glasses would make a suitable means of covering his eyes.

  “Oh,” he suddenly added. “Did you hear anything about where Fields is keeping the Marquis, the captive husband of the Marquise?”

  “Count Grilt, one of Fields’s allies, holds Thuringa in an estate on the edge of town. There are several lesser nobles, especially from the countryside, being held there. That’s where Fields has all the tribute he collects delivered,” the duchess spoke up. “The circumstances are reported to be unpleasant for the country gentlemen.”

  “Well, I should be going,” Kestrel said. “I’ve imposed on you long enough, but I hope I’ll be able to return again soon.”

  “But you just got here! You can’t leave already,” Gail protested.

  “What shall we call you? How should we address the son of a god, to bid him farewell?” Tyle asked.

  “You should call me Kestrel,” he replied. “My lady, thank you for your hospitality.”

  He turned to Gail, and raised her hand to his lips. “Thank you for delivering news about Lark and Wren. I appreciate your kindness very much. I am in your debt. And thank you for the glasses a
s well,” he added, then turned and left the parlor, to walk back to the fortress of Duke Listay.

  He wore his dark glasses as he walked along the street, then took them off to enter the fortress. He made perfunctory greetings to those he saw, as he rushed up the stairs to his new room, then took out the note from Lark, and sat on his bed to read it.

  Dear Kestrel,

  My heart was filled with joy for the first time in a long time today, when Gail arrived and announced that you were in Uniontown, pledging to assist my father and me.

  You are the one man I believe can make a difference in my life. The news of your arrival is something that I have dreamed of and looked forward to for weeks. And now you are here!

  Please be careful. Be prudent – take care that the Triplets do not catch you. I believe that you, the greatest warrior and most powerful mortal I’ve ever known, can defeat them, but it will be a dangerous battle.

  Wren and I will be ready when you arrive. We will fight with you, and escape with you. We are looking forward to the day when we see you again.

  Give Gail our thanks, and let her carry your plans back here to us.

  With the greatest affection,

  Lark

  It was a warm and friendly note, one that left him inspired and mostly satisfied.

  Lark had said little about her conditions, but neither had Gail said much about them, so Kestrel assumed that the chamber of her captivity was adequate.

  He should have sent a note, he realized. He should have left a note, or at least a message with Gail to deliver to Lark on his behalf. He sat for long moments, wondering if he should return to the estate of the Duchess Tyle, just for the purpose of writing a note, but at last wavered in his decision, and sat on his bed, imagining the conversation he would have with Lark, the embraces and even kisses. It would be a great joy to see her at last, after all he had gone through – the battles in the Eastern Forest, the tutelage in the proper use of power by Medeina, the trip from the east to the west.

  “Ready for some dinner?” Gates poked his head in the doorway, and Kestrel realized that the room had grown dim, as the sun had moved lower in the western sky.

  Kestrel accompanied his companion down to the dining hall.

  “I promised a woman in the northern countryside that I’d rescue her husband,” Kestrel told Gates as they sat down.

  “Oh,” Gates answered politely, focused on his food more than the conversation.

  “I’m told that he’s being held at the estate of Count Grilt, in the countryside. It’s where Fields receives all the supplies he extorts from the country nobility,” Kestrel explained.

  “I’ve heard that too,” Gates agreed.

  “I’m going to go there tonight and set the hostages free,” Kestrel informed his companion.

  Gates stopped eating and looked at Kestrel. “What did you say?” he asked.

  “I’m going to go to Grilt’s estate, and set Thuringa free, along with any other hostage that’s held there,” Kestrel said. “With what I have in mind, I could use some help, if you could spare a few men for a few days.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Gates had turned to look at Kestrel, his attention engaged by the talk of an attack. Kestrel discussed his thoughts, and the two of them spoke at length about carrying out the assault.

  They waited an hour, then recruited a dozen men.

  “We’re leaving the fort with light defenses,” Gates pointed out.

  “Everyone knows the Destroyer has joined us,” one of the participants in the raid pointed out. “No one will try to attack while he’s defending us, not even the Triplets.”

  There were nodding heads, and agreement that the speedy spread of the news that the Destroyer had joined with Listay would be protection itself from assault, and the raiding party prepared to depart.

  They left the fortress through the tunnel under the street, then climbed up into the house across the way. As they prepared to exit through the alleyway door, there was a tremendous explosion, and the sky lit up.

  “It’s an attack!” Gates shouted. “Everyone back to tunnel, now!”

  “It’s a set up!” one of the soldiers shouted in reply. “He tricked us out of the fort so that it would fall!”

  Kestrel caused himself to blaze forth in blue light, both to demonstrate his powers, and to protect himself from any sudden sword thrust in the close corners.

  “Nonsense!” he said heatedly. “They’re just trying to catch us off-guard, when they think we’d not expect an attack.

  “A pair of you go out and start shooting at them from behind. The rest go back to the fortress. I’ll go challenge the Triplets,” he said, as he swung the door open and departed.

  “Good luck Kestrel!” he heard Gates call out as he ran from the hidden exit.

  There was shouting and chaos in the streets nearby. He heard the sounds of the conflict, and he felt anxious as he rounded a corner and got his first view of the battle in the street. He heard a pair of Listay’s men run by him, as they took up positions to pick off the assailants from the rear.

  Kestrel paid little attention to them though, as he looked at the strange glowing formation in from of him. There was a girl standing inside a pink bubble, stationed in the street outside one corner of Listay’s fortified home. The girl was firing blasts of energy at the building’s stone walls, blowing away fragments with each shot.

  A glowing rope of power hung in the air, extending from her position and running in front of Kestrel, going down the street to the farther corner, where a boy stood underneath a glowing red dome, also shooting energy at the corner of the building where he stood. And another glowing rope of power extended further, away from him and past the corner of the building to a location out of Kestrel’s sight, where presumably the third Triplet was standing and attacking the building as well.

  The three were sharing their power, defending themselves as they attacked in unison, and all three were out on the attack, despite what Kestrel had been told, that one of them always remained in a safe place.

  He doused his own energy, fading his protective shield into darkness so that he could stand unobserved as he tried to develop a plan to attack the Triplets.

  The boy was linked to both of the others; he seemed to be the linchpin to their ability to share power, Kestrel concluded. Which meant that the boy in the middle needed to be the first target Kestrel attacked, to try to sever the link among the three of them, so that he could then focus on trying to defeat them one by one. At the least, he hoped to be able to wound them enough to drive them away and foil the attack on the fort.

  Kestrel pulled his bow off his back, and set two arrows to the string. He aimed at the boy, not worried about hitting him precisely, but wanting to use the arrows to deliver a powerful attack. He called his powers forth, and held them at the ready, then released the arrows.

  As the two shafts flew towards the sorcerer, their paths began to diverge, and the distance between them widened from inches to feet. At the same time, Kestrel recollected the lesson Krusima had given him on how to focus his energy by creating an arc. At the time of the lesson it had been a matter of using his two fingertips as the poles whose gap the energy had leapt across; this time, it was to be the two arrows that would channel the flow of energy.

  He sent powerful streams of energy flying after the arrows, following in the paths of the two arrows. Just as the heads of the arrows struck the glowing red dome, Kestrel’s energy reached the fletchings, while the head of the arrow began to incinerate in the energy of the dome.

  The blue energy passed through the arrow, protecting it from burning, and then the blue power began trying to arc through the space between the two arrows. The red dome immediately began to sizzle loudly, and angry streaks of blue energy vied with the surface of the red dome, coursing outward from the two suspended arrows with a writhing, continuous network of tentacles. Kestrel could feel his power attempting to arc, to complete its circuit, and he could feel how nearly successf
ul the effort was, as the sparking snakes reached towards one another, again and again, almost, but not quite, touching.

  The boy inside screamed. “I need more power!” he shouted as loudly as possible. “Help!” there was a note of panic in his voice.

  Kestrel felt resistance building, as the sisters responded by sharing their own power with him. Kestrel glanced over his shoulder, and saw that the girl who was visible to him had hardly any dome about her at all – only a faint half-circle – as she diverted all of her energy to helping her brother resist Kestrel’s attack.

  The blue stains atop the red dome retreated back towards their respective arrows of origin.

  Kestrel did not want to lose. He did not want to fail to defend Duke Listay’s home, and he did not want to fail to defeat the Triplets in his first match against their combined power. He closed his eyes and sought to find more power of his own, enough energy to regain the upper hand.

  He felt the ground beneath his knees, unaware that his legs had buckled as he diverted more of his own power – everything he could find to take from his own body to throw at the sorcerer – but he felt his efforts strengthen. The power from the two arrows was spreading more widely once again, sparking and popping and yearning to complete the circuit of energy that Kestrel expected to disable the Triplets.

  There was a loud explosion, and Kestrel felt his energy recoil back on him. He opened his eyes and saw a brilliant flare of light that rose forty feet in the air. A concussive wave of air struck him and knocked him over, pushing him back into the alleyway shadows, and he lay there in a dazed state. There were sounds. He heard feet running in the street, running towards him. He rolled over and crawled into the shadows, behind empty wooden crates, then leaned against the wall, his head filled with pain.

  As he watched, a girl stumbled up to the mouth of the alley. It had to be the sorceress he had seen. She was undefended, and he wished he felt able to attack her, but his energy was thoroughly depleted. She was in better shape than he was, still able to stand and move around, but as he watched, she bent over, her hands resting on her knees to prop her up.