“It says it is going to its home, but it will be back tonight to lead us through the canyon and beyond,” Wren explained. “It is going to pass among us – you will feel it pass by, but it will do you no harm,” she warned, and even before her last words were uttered she heard a series of murmurs and moans, then felt the icy touch of the mist for only a moment, before it passed by.
“Is it gone?” Stuart asked after several seconds.
“It went past me, and I’m last,” Wren confirmed.
“Everyone put your hands up over your heads,” Stuart said. “Does anyone feel the ceiling still?” he asked.
“No,” Gates said. They heard his clothing and the articles he carried rustle. “I’m standing, and I still can’t touch it.”
The others immediately stood as well, while Wren translated the news to the others.
“I’ll see how high this place is,” Stillwater immediately volunteered in the darkness. “Perhaps it is fifteen feet high,” he reported just seconds later. “That is so little, yet now it seems like so much.”
Wren passed that information along as well, including the imp’s philosophical reasoning, as she heard the sounds of all of them stretching and removing the various items they carried.
Minutes later, as the humans spoke among themselves and Wren spoke to Woven, they all stopped, at a nearly simultaneous moment, as they realized that light was beginning to infiltrate their chamber.
“It is the rise of the blue sun,” Gates spoke first. “There’s the entrance to the cave,” he said as the bright end of their chamber revealed the access to the outdoors.
“We’ll go look at it, to see what is out there,” Gates said, motioning to the other guard.
“If they are going out, I’ll be their scout,” Stillwater hastily volunteered as he noted the movements towards the door in the growing light.
“I’ll translate for you,” Wren said, also moving with them, and soon Kestrel’s body lay unattended in the cavern chamber as the rest of the squad went around a bend in the passage, and up a slope to find a small opening in a cliffside, one that looked out upon a narrow canyon.
The walls of the canyon were steep and high. At the bottom of the canyon there was a small pool of water that snaked along the curves of the canyon floor, with bushes and short trees growing bushier and taller than any plants the travelers had seen up to that point on their journey in the land of the blue sun.
There were no signs of animals or life other than the plants.
“I’m going to go down to the water,” Gates said.
“We’ll all go,” Wren said, “except me. I’ll stay here and watch over Kestrel.”
“You can go; I’ll watch him,” Lark unexpectedly offered. “If there’s a battle or a need to speak, you can do those things better than I can.”
“I’ll stay with her ladyship,” Gates said.
“No Gates, there’s no need to guard me here. Go see what this world has,” Lark insisted. She crouched back down into the cavern entrance, and motioned for them all to go.
The eyes of the remaining guards all exchanged glances, then Stuart gave a nod and started to lead the way down the narrow trail that wove among the irregular features of the cliff. Satisfied that the group was on its way, Lark re-entered the cavern, and wended her way back to the chamber where Kestrel still lay motionless. She knelt down beside him, and began to remove the various articles he carried, trying to make him more comfortable.
“I hope you awaken soon,” she said softly. “We need your strength.
“I remember the first time I saw you, standing in the street of Uniontown. I happened to be looking directly at you when you pulled your bow off your shoulder and started firing arrows as calmly as if you were picking flowers in a garden. I was clinging to my brother, Lister, and I thought we were going to be taken prisoner,” she said as she gently straightened the front of Kestrel’s shirt.
“And your eyes were so beautiful; even if Stuart was frightened by them, I thought they were gorgeous – they made me want to go live with gnomes so I could have purple eyes too,” she told him, and she reached her hand up from his shirt to his face, then she stroked his hair back off his forehead.
She seemed to touch some responsive part of him, either by her touch or her voice, for he moaned down in the base of his throat. Lark immediately removed her hand from his face, and scooted back several inches from him. He moaned again, and the second time the sound was more indicative of pain than of awakening.
“Kestrel,” she said, less gently than she had just moments before, “Kestrel, are you alright?”
“Wren?” he asked in dazed confusion.
“No, not Wren,” the duchess replied.
“Putty?” he still did not know where he was.
“It’s me, Duchess Lark,” the girl clarified, with a touch of asperity in her voice.
“Oh,” Kestrel sighed. He opened his eyes and looked up. He looked at the girl, then looked around the dark chamber. In the darkness he saw two tiny sparks, the brightness of the outside daylight, reflecting off her eyes. “Where are we?”
Lark proceeded to tell him where they were, and how they traveled there.
“The monster of mist is helping us?” he asked. “Is my waterskin close by?” he asked seconds later, before Lark even had a chance to answer.
“I have a terrible headache,” Kestrel said. “Would you pass the waterskin to me?” he had made no effort to rise from his prone position.
Lark squinted in the darkness, located the skin she had removed from Kestrel earlier, and pulled it closer.
“Open your mouth,” she commanded, as she held the skin above his head, then tipped it and poured a large gulp into his mouth.
He placed his hand up to prevent her from pouring more. “That’s enough, thank you.
“You say the others are outside?” Kestrel asked her. “Why aren’t you there?”
“We thought someone should stay with you,” Lark said, “and they told me to, since the others could fight better if there were problems,” she fibbed, caught off-guard by the direct question. She didn’t want to admit that she had volunteered to be with him.
“Can you help me sit up?” he asked, and reached up to hold on to Lark’s hands as she strained to pull him up.
“It’s so hard for me to use my energy,” he tried to apologize. “It really wore me out.”
“Wren says the imp thinks that the blue sun might be interfering with your powers,” Lark told him. He released his hold on her hands as he straightened up.
“How would that be?” he asked.
“The imp says that since the energy you use is usually blue, like the shields you create, maybe the blue sunlight can do something to them,” she understood little else of Wren’s translation of Stillwater’s theory.
Kestrel rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “It might be,” he allowed. “Shall we go out and look for everyone?” he suggested. “You lead the way.” He appreciated the girl’s kindness in staying with him, but he was anxious to see Wren and learn what was happening from the perspective of her honest and battle-tested judgment.
When the pair turned the curve and climbed up to the opening, Kestrel squinted against the bright light of the rising sun. The brilliant blue disk was finally cresting the lip of the canyon, so that its direct rays began to penetrate down into the lower reaches of the canyon. Blinking through the brightness of the warming day, Kestrel saw the other members of their party peacefully examining the shorelines of the small blue waterway below.
Stillwater was floating through the air above the land-bound members of the party, but when he spotted Kestrel he swooped low to announce his discovery, then shot up into the air and came to a stop directly in front of the recovered elf.
“Are you well, Kestrel-warrior?” he asked.
“I’m better, thank you, Stillwater. I had some water from the healing spring, and I expect I’ll only get better. How goes our journey so far?” he asked.
“It is troubling, Lord Kestrel,” Stillwater answered. “We are in a place we do not know, fighting an enemy that is strong, relying on an ally we do not trust. But we have you and Lady Wren, so I know we will win!” he added on an upbeat note.
“We will win,” Kestrel agreed with a smile. He saw that the terrestrial members of the group were climbing up to return to the cavern chamber. With a wave, Kestrel re-entered the cave, followed by Stillwater, while Lark waited outside for the others. Minutes later the rest of the group entered the cool, dim cave, and gathered around Kestrel, who told them all how he felt.
“What are our supplies like?” he asked as they all sat and talked.
“We have what our group had with us,” Wren answered. “The former prisoners weren’t carrying anything.”
“If everyone else is as hungry as I am, we ought to give everyone at least a couple of bites of food,” Kestrel suggested, and he saw the nodding heads around him. Wren spoke to Woven, and the two of them offered portions of their slim food stocks to everyone in the space.
“So we just wait for the mist to come back?” Kestrel asked.
“That is all we know to do,” Stuart agreed. “Is the imp correct, that your powers do not work because of the blue sunlight?”
Kestrel looked up at Stillwater. “The imps have troubles with their travels because of the sun, and strange things can happen,” he thought momentarily of his habitation in the body of Prince Ruelin, an exchange precipitated by spots on the sun and its fluctuating energy. “And we lost most of our party because the red spots on the sun cut our companions off from us,” he thought then of Putienne, and felt a pang of remorse that he had not thought of the girl a great deal since the dangerous pace of their journey had accelerated. “So we know that the sun can affect us; I do not know any more than that for sure,” he said.
“Has,” he hesitated, “has there been anyone else here besides the mist? Have you seen any of the people who made the buildings or lived in this land?” He remembered the voice he thought he had heard while he had been fighting to secure his shield against the murderous insects.
The others in the party looked at one another, and he knew that there was no one else who had heard anything. “Never mind,” he told them. “I just wondered.”
And so they all grew sleepy. The long journey throughout the night began to show its impact, and Kestrel offered to take the first shift of the watch while the others fell asleep.
He watched them all settle into their selected spots, the humans close to one another, Woven by himself, and Stillwater settling in next to Wren. Kestrel crept backwards in the cave, as the tunnel rapidly narrowed, and the ceiling dramatically lowered, giving him an idea of the uncomfortable confines his partners had traveled through, and Woven had pulled him through during the night. There was no sense of the presence of the mist, and for that he was thankful. They were in a difficult situation, he knew. They had few supplies in a hostile environment, with a dangerous ally, and they faced a formidable foe. Kestrel shook his head, knowing that the odds were long against them; everything had seemed so much easier back when they had planned in the lands of the Inner Seas.
He backed up, turned, and went back to the entrance of the cavern, feeling the warmer air of the outside flowing into the front chamber of the cave. He lay down and stared out at the top of the canyon wall on the opposite side across from his small cave opening. The sun was high overhead, indicating midday, letting him know that the others would have a few hours of time to rest and recover before they began their next trek behind the guidance of the frightening mist.
A movement caught his eye, and he saw a pair of Viathins appear at the top of the canyon. They peered intently down into the depths of the depression, and Kestrel ceased all movement, not even daring to breath. The Viathins remained in place for a long time, and Kestrel grew worried, even more so when they began to walk slowly along the top of the precipice, their heads looking in all directions.
He could not call upon his powers to kill them, nor would it be a good idea had it been possible, for it might call attention to their absence, and they seemed to communicate the stress of death to one another over long distances, he recollected. But he longed for some weapon to offer protection if they or others happened to approach the cave.
He cautiously inched backwards, then sprinted back into the chamber where the others were sleeping, and he grabbed his bow and arrow, along with his knife, and crept back into place at the cave entry, and laid back down with the lowest profile he could create. As he watched, the Viathins strolled further along, coming to a spot directly across from the cave, so close that Kestrel could almost imagine he heard their voices rumbling as they spoke to one another. And around their ankles and calves he realized there was movement too, some dark group of objects that followed the Viathins, something that he could not identify as anything he was familiar with.
The Viathins were within easy range of his bow. He could fire his arrow at one and then throw his knife at the other, and the threat would be at an end, for the moment. But the two specific monsters he watched posed no great threat to him and his friends – they were only incidental to the greater problem.
As the time crept on, so did the Viathins; they moved from beyond the spot across from the cavern and eventually turned away from the canyon altogether, disappearing two hours later after walking a long stretch of the canyon rim. With a sigh of relief, Kestrel rolled over to go return his bow and arrow to the chamber with the sleepers, and he was startled to discover that Stuart was squatting nearby awake and observing him.
“What was it?” the man asked.
“A pair of Viathins; they walked a good length of the canyon rim, studying it closely, but I don’t think they saw the cave,” Kestrel answered.
“The mist says that they saw that ball full of murderous bugs you flung away, and that they know that you’re here,” Stuart told him.
“That’s what Lady Lark told me,” Kestrel confirmed.
“The poor young lady is suffering trauma and danger like no one in her family ever has,” Stuart said, stroking his goatee as he spoke. “I’ve served three generations of them now.
“Be kind to her Kestrel, please, for me,” the warrior asked. “She may or may not have much time left to live her life, but I’d like for her to spend it no more upset than necessary. Don’t antagonize her – she’s really just a little girl in many ways, although her body is growing up faster than her father would like. Her mother just died in a fire a year ago, so she’s fragile; she’s not sure about a lot of things right now.”
“I’ll be kind to her, as much as the situation allows,” Kestrel agreed. “I appreciated her taking care of me when I awoke this morning,” he said. “We can get along.”
“Good,” Stuart said. “I was sure you could,” he grinned. “I know you can handle much bigger problems than this.
“The duke would be devastated if he never got his little girl back – he dotes on her,” Stuart said. “What do you think the odds are that he’ll get to see her celebrate her next birthday?”
“If it’s tomorrow,” Kestrel answered, “probably not good. But a few days beyond that, I’m still hopeful,” he said. “We have this guide who seems to be leading us right to where we want to go, and if we can set our gods free to fight Ashcrayss, then our real challenge will be finding a way to get home. So don’t worry about your duchess yet. You’ll get to see her and her father have a happy time together, I’m sure,” he spoke as heartily as he could, wanting to buoy the spirits of the veteran warrior.
“I’m glad you think it’ll be that easy,” Stuart said, and he yawned.
“You go back to get some more rest, Kestrel told him. “I’ll keep watch here; I slept all night while you were traveling.”
Stuart gave a wave, then turned and disappeared back into the cavern, leaving Kestrel alone in the front of the cavern once again.
He hoped he had convinced Stuart that there was hope for their mission. The
veteran warrior probably had seen through Kestrel’s false bravado, but Kestrel had wanted to comfort the man about the chances the group could succeed. Kestrel had doubts – he felt hopelessly enmeshed in uncertainty, with no way to know what to do or worst of all, what to expect. He wanted to plan and anticipate and be able to develop contingency plans, but the lack of information his group possessed prevented him from doing any more than reacting.
Krusima, he prayed softly, we are coming to find you and set you free. Be ready my lord, and know that we will need you, he whispered the prayer, a desperate plea on behalf of his group.
Morph, he prayed to the other captive god, we are in this forsaken world, coming to find you, so that we may set you free. We will fight the Viathins, and take you home, he promised his putative father.
Kestrel, I hear you. Come to me, a tinny voice faintly sounded in his soul. Kestrel waited for further communication, but none came. He prayed for further communication, but none was forthcoming, and so he stopped.
He wondered again about the faint voice he had heard the day before. He had almost dismissed it as his imagination, but the response of this new voice convinced him that the first voice had been real.
He shook his head. They were more uncertainties, but at least they were not negative uncertainties, he was happy to say. The quality of the light in the cave changed as the sun moved across the canyon and disappeared. There were no sounds from the sleepers, and Kestrel felt bored as he sat alone.
He moved back over to the entrance of the cave to look out again, and as he did, a Viathin poked its head into the cave entrance, in such a simultaneous motion that their two heads banged against one another and they both fell backwards, Kestrel giving a startled shout as the Viathin roared. Kestrel’s hand flew to his belt and flipped his knife at the monster.
He scrambled backwards like a crab, and pulled his bow and an arrow up into position. “Wren!” he shouted. “Stuart!” he added, then held his bow in front of him as he backed towards the entrance.
Another Viathin leapt into the entry, and Kestrel released his arrow in unaimed panic, striking the monster in the shoulder. It roared in pain as its momentum carried it forward despite the superficial wound.
An Unexpected Deity (Book 7) Page 17
