The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 04 - A Foreign Heart

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “Every day she wakes up and starts the day younger than she really is, and during the day she ages a good portion of a lifetime, so that by the end of the evening, she’s older than her real age,” his companion told him. “The span of years she covers in her life increases every day that passes, so that this morning she was but a mere toddler, and tonight, well, you see her tonight.

  “The doctors have told the king there is nothing they know to be done to cure her, and they think that someday soon she will age away her life at the end of a day, grown so old that she passes into the other realm,” Lucretia gave a sob. “So this is her birthday celebration, even though her true birthday is still a month away, because they do not believe she will still be with us in a month’s time.”

  Kestrel was horrified by the story. He felt compassion for the princess, and for her parents. Every day would be a terrible burden, to see one’s daughter step so quickly through the ages of life, on her way to an untimely death. He wondered immediately whether he could help the princess – the healing spring was the sovereign cure for all natural illnesses; he wondered if it could save the girl from the strange, unnatural disease that was wasting her away.

  A pair of attendants appeared on the back of the dais just then, and helped the princess leave her seat, as a round of polite applause broke across the audience.

  “I have to go see her,” Lucretia said, rising from her seat. “I’ll see you again soon, I’m sure,” she bent and surprised Kestrel with a kiss on the cheek, and then she was gone.

  Her movement was noted by others in the crowd, however. Kestrel glanced around and saw Exmoor staring at him, and pointing. A man sitting next to Exmoor rose from the table and glided away into the back of the hall.

  There was trouble brewing, clearly. Kestrel looked around to locate the closest exit from the banquet hall. It was to his right; he would have to walk in front of the royal family to get there, but the best thing he could think to do was to escape before Exmoor’s followers had time to draw a bead on him.

  With a sudden decision, Kestrel rose from his table, and stooped low to try to remain discrete as he walked rapidly between the rows of tables into the darker corner of the banquet hall, away from the chandeliers that lit the seating area around the royal family and the favored tables. He reached the corner of the hall where the doorway was located, and rushed through the door.

  On the other side of the door he ran into a waiter carrying a large platter of plates of food, roast venison the aroma indicated. The waiter and the platter went flying, creating a loud, prolonged crashing and clashing sound that was followed by a string of oaths from the waiter, aimed at Kestrel’s back as he muttered a hasty apology and started to run down the interior hall. Kestrel entered the kitchen, a beehive of activity, and skirted around the bakers at the ovens, who were pulling dozens of small cakes from the heated chambers. Beyond the bakers were more doors, and Kestrel went through the doors, into a drafty hallway, one where the breeze promised an open door that would deliver Kestrel to freedom in the out-of-doors.

  He saw the open doorway, a doublewide door through which he imagined produce and meat and goods were regularly delivered to the kitchen. It was the exit he sought, and he sprinted towards it, burst into the open, then stopped. He didn’t know where to go. There was no immediate evidence that he was being followed yet by Exmoor’s henchmen, but he didn’t want to wait for them to find them. Off to his right he saw the cluster of three tree towers, and realized they provided the landmark he needed. He started sprinting in that direction, hurdling over bushes and shrubs and flower beds as he traveled in as true a line as he could manage.

  The tower grew closer, and his path crossed onto a paved path that ran directly to the tower. As he approached the entrance to the tower he heard a shout, and turned to see five elves chasing after him, at no great distance. Kestrel redoubled his efforts, and sprinted straight into the tower lobby, past the startled guard, and to the lifts. He hurled himself onto the first platform that rose through the floor, then felt grinding terror as the wooden platter seemed to climb upward only an inch at a time, slowly, slowly lifting him towards safety, while leaving him exposed to danger for second after second after second.

  A searing pain pierced his calf, and he looked down just as he finally left the vision of the ground floor. There was an arrow securely planted in the meat of his lower leg, and he heard shouts of pursuit as the chasers jumped onto following platforms and began to rise behind him.

  And that made him realize he was actually riding towards a trap.

  There was no escape from the upper floors of the tower. He was riding towards a dead end. He saw the number three on the wall and realized he was passing the third floor, on his way to the eleventh. Would the followers know what floor he was on, he wondered? He timed his ascent past the fourth floor, and then checked it again past the fifth floor. As slowly as the platform had seemed to leave the lobby floor, it now seemed to whiz past the other floors too quickly to aid him in his escape; as he tried to time his passage, he saw no way for him to leap from his platform run to his room, and then disappear inside before the followers reached the floor, saw him, and were able to corner him.

  He passed the ninth floor, trying to conceive of an alternative, but when the bottom of the eleventh floor came into view, he couldn’t muster the courage to abandon the lift for such an entrapment.

  “Lucretia, come,” he called as he rose to the twelfth floor. He would at least have his knife with him when the time for battle came, he told himself, and he hoped that Tewks hadn’t been holding the knife when it leapt to action.

  At the seventeenth floor the hallways felt empty, and the eighteenth floor, wasn’t a floor; it was more like an attic, an empty open space at the top of which he saw wheels and pulleys. Lucretia suddenly arrived, pounding against his unprepared hand, and his fingers desperately snatched it as he jumped into the mechanical space and limped towards a doorway.

  The door had stairs that rose upward, and as Kestrel dove in, a pair of arrows hit the wooden door frame. He hobbled upwards several steps, then turned, and as soon as an elf appeared at the bottom of the steps he threw Lucretia, then turned without waiting to see the results, and climbed higher.

  There was another doorway at the top, one around which the wind whistled through the gaps surrounding the wooden door. Kestrel burst through the door, and found himself in the middle of a small forest of windmills, on the very roof of the tower.

  Lucretia, return,” he called. He gingerly strode to the farthest point he could reach on the top of the tower, the point at which the rounded roof began to curve precipitously downward, and he knelt. The pain in his leg was troublesome, but he could withstand it, full as his soul was with adrenaline and anxiety and bravado.

  When the attack came, it came all at once, a smart move by the men who did Exmoor’s dirty work, whether they realized it or not. Five of them stormed out of the stairwell and spread out, aimed their bows, and fired a volley of arrows simultaneously. Kestrel threw his knife at the man in the center of the group at the same time he heard the twang of bows. And then he felt his body punched by the impact of the arrows striking his flesh.

  One arrow hit him in the stomach, one hit his left shoulder, a third hit him in the thigh. His body jerked backward with each hit, and started to tumble down the side of the tower roof, gathering speed as it rolled and bumped its way then flew into open air, plunging towards the ground.

  “Dewberry,” he thought of the sweet little blue being who meant so much to him, or perhaps he said the name, he wasn’t sure, as he saw a stream of his blood trailing upward behind him, before he blacked out in midair.

  Chapter 13 – The Tournament

  When Kestrel awoke he was lying on Alicia’s bed, while she and Silvan sat together in a corner.

  “You’re lucky to be alive. That sprite loves you very much,” Alicia said.

  Kestrel’s body was sore. Everywhere, it seemed.

  “Did
she bring me here?” he asked groggily.

  “Eventually. She and her friends dropped you directly into the water at the spring, then came and pulled me out of bed without even telling me what was happening,” Alicia said with a smile. “I don’t think Silvan quite knew what to think when our bed got so full, then grew empty.

  “Of course I had to come back to get equipment, and clothes, and then after a few hours, after multiple operations, the blue squad brought us back here,” the doctor told him.

  “Dewberry was so concerned she never even went into the water herself. How do you feel?” Alicia finished.

  “I’m sore. But I’m alive, and I have no right to be,” he said softly, remembering the pain and the confusion he had felt in the last moments he remembered. And he felt anger too. He’d been hunted and attacked for no good reason, except that a wealthy bully had decided to attack him.

  “Where have you been? What kind of trouble are you in?” Silvan asked.

  “Ssh, wait,” Alicia held her hand up to Silvan. “Before you do anything else, you need to call Dewberry and let her know you’re okay,” she directed Kestrel.

  “Dewberry,” Kestrel immediately called. He sat up. “Dewberry, Dewberry,” he repeated. There was a pause for several seconds, as Kestrel looked around the space above his head, and then Dewberry appeared, her hair wet, a robe pulled loosely about her body, as she appeared and then flew like an arrow to plant her body against his.

  “Oh Kestrel nearly dead,” Dewberry moaned against his chest, “I was so worried about you when you were plummeting through the air. As fat and heavy as you are, falling as fast as you did, I knew there were only seconds until you hit the ground. We took you to the other place with no time to spare.

  “Thank you doctor dearest,” she looked up at Alicia. “Thank you for saving him; you are worthy of being my rival for his affections.”

  “You were his true savior, dear sprite,” Alicia said gently.

  “Thank you both,” Kestrel chimed in. He gave Dewberry an affectionate squeeze, then lifted her up as he sat up, and relocated her on his lap. “I see you’ve come to visit me prepared to undress quickly,” he plucked at Dewberry’s robe. “Couldn’t you be more discreet when we have visitors?” he nodded towards Alicia and Silvan.

  Dewberry growled, then popped up into a standing position, athwart Kestrel’s thighs, and swung her small fist at his face, missing as he leaned his head backwards.

  “Perhaps we should have more carefully considered the consequences of saving him,” the sprite said over her shoulder to Alicia, then floated up into the air.

  “I am alive only because you came when I needed you, truest friend. Thank you so much, Dewberry. I am well now, and getting better. You go home and get dressed, and I will call you soon so that you can take me back to the place you found me,” Kestrel told the sprite.

  “I shall return when you call, silly one,” Dewberry replied, and then disappeared.

  Thank you, Kere, he silently prayed, for arranging my introduction to this wonderful sprite.

  I took you to the spring, but her presence there, and your bonding with her, were not my handiwork, the goddess’s voice whispered in his soul, leaving him wondering.

  “Are they always like that?” Silvan asked Alicia.

  “Every time I see them they are,” she confirmed.

  “Now,” she turned to Kestrel, “what’s this about you thinking you should go back to where ever you came from? Didn’t you arrive here with four arrows in your body?”

  “And that was from my friends! You should see what my enemies have in mind,” Kestrel joked, determined to deflate the anxiety in the room. He knew he had to go back. He had a chance to learn more about a Moorin, possibly the Moorin, and he had a chance to try to offer the use of the healing spring to save the life of the princess. And he was prepared now to forego caution and humility, and to bring a set of imps with him as continual body guards if necessary.

  “I was in Kirevee, the capital of the kingdom of the Northern Forest elves,” Kestrel began to explain. “I arrived there yesterday,” he nodded to Alicia, “after you healed us all from the other attack.

  “I was at a banquet, and a rich gold miner who didn’t seem to like me for some reason sent his cronies after me,” Kestrel tried to explain. “The palace at Kirevee has huge towers, very, very huge, with ropes that lift you up and down to the floor you want to visit,” he tried but failed to adequately explain.

  “And there’s a princess there who has a sickness that makes her grow older every day,” he added, rambling on.

  “We all grow older every day,” Silvan interrupted.

  “Yes, yes,” Kestrel said dismissively, “but she is now looking older than her father; she’ll die soon, from old age. I thought maybe the healing spring could cure her.”

  “It seems to cure everything else,” Alicia said supportively. “Why not try it?”

  “And I met the man who might be Moorin’s father. He has the same title the false Moorin said, and he’s a human, just like she said,” Kestrel told them. “So I have to go back.”

  “Let the boy go, Alicia,” Silvan spoke up. “He’s made up his mind.”

  “You could stand to spend a day in bed, or even better, in the spring water, so you’d be fully recuperated,” Alicia rebutted.

  “I think the sooner I get back there the better. They won’t be expecting to see me, since the last they saw I was falling off the roof of a tower with all those arrows in me,” Kestrel gingerly stood up.

  “Are robes like that the typical outfit at the court?” Silvan asked.

  Kestrel looked down. “I don’t think they’re typical, but it’s what they gave me. I saw other men wear them too,” he answered defensively.

  “Hmm,” Silvan replied noncommittally.

  “Do you know they don’t eat crickets in the north?” Kestrel asked.

  “What?” Silvan asked, caught off-guard by the random question.

  “Nothing. Never mind,” Kestrel replied. “Dewberry, Dewberry, Dewberry. Stillwater, Odare, Killcen,” he called out the names of his imps.

  The room filled with flying bodies. “It is wonderful to see you alive Kestrel friend,” Odare spoke.

  “It’s good to be alive. Thank you all for helping me last night. Are you ready to take me back?” he asked.

  “And will you be ready to fight by my side if the situation calls for it?” he added.

  “We’ve been waiting for the chance!” Killcen said enthusiastically.

  “The princess has asked if there’s any word about you,” Silvan said in a voice that was so mild Kestrel knew that much more was inferred.

  “I visit cousin Wren sometimes. She is well in Graylee,” Odare spoke up suddenly.

  “We go to help Philip visit Yulia sometimes,” Killcen joined the commentary. “They like to talk to each other.”

  “I don’t want any more confessions!” Kestrel said, discomposed by the disjointed conversation, as well as his aching body. “I just want to go do whatever I can do in Kirevee. Shall we go?” he asked.

  “The imps gathered around. “Farewell Alicia doctor servant,” Dewberry said, and then they entered the greyness. It was just as cold and dark and numbing as it always was, but as they hung in the infinite nothingness, it felt to Kestrel as though he was being buffeted somehow, as though waves were rocking a vessel, and the time in suspension went on and on for longer than seemed usual.

  And then suddenly they were hanging in the air above Kirevee at an elevation that was level with the middle of the tree tower, and the imps were straining to hold Kestrel in place. “Can you take me to the top of the tower?” Kestrel asked. “Or just put me on a balcony,” he offered an alternative, sensing that the imps were straining to carry him.

  “We’ll go to the top,” Dewberry spoke, and the small group struggled its way within a few seconds to a higher elevation, skimming past the balconies of the towers apartments and landing on the roof outside the area where
the windmills turned.

  “We had some trouble in the inbetween place,” Stillwater told Kestrel.

  “The sun is acting strangely. The very bright people who study such things say it does this from time to time. If it gets worse, our travels may have to be postponed,” he explained to Kestrel, whose feet touched down lightly on the roof as the imps released him.

  “Will you be okay to travel back home now?” Kestrel asked.

  “We will now, and today. But who can say for the next few days?” Stillwater answered.

  “And Jonson can’t do anything about it?” Dewberry pouted. “Why be king if you can’t fix things?”

  “Well, go on now, and safe travels,” Kestrel told them all. “Come see me if you can’t leave, and I’ll understand if you can’t come when I call.”

  The blue people disappeared, Dewberry leaving a peck on his cheek as she vanished, and Kestrel walked over to the doorway for the staircase. He re-entered the mechanical space, limping just slightly, then rode the lift down to the eleventh floor. As he passed the thirteenth floor he looked into the waiting lobby in front of the lifts, and saw Lucretia walking down the hall towards him. There was a startled expression on her face as she recognized him, and then he dropped downward to the eleventh floor, where he stepped off the lift.

  As he started down the hall he saw that indirect sunlight was shining in through an open door, the door to his room. He paused, then muttered softly, “Lucretia, come.” He wasn’t sure where the knife would be; he had thrown it just as he had fallen from the roof the night before. It’s flight back to him might prove startling for someone, might even alert someone to his return and status still among the living, but he didn’t care. He wanted to have the weapon with him as he entered his room.

  “How did you know I was behind you? And who do you think you are commanding me to ‘come’ like I’m a child or a dog?” he heard the voice of Lucretia behind him, and he jumped in surprise. As he turned to see her he saw his knife emerge from the lift tube, and he held out his hand to grab the returning blade.