The young elf kept his eyes closed and his mind clear as he began to prepare himself to call upon the powers of the human gods, asking them to come to his aid to help alleviate the crisis in the forest. Kestrel understood the irony of the situation, that as much as he wished to deny his human heritage, it was that particular heritage that made him so unique among the elves, and gave him his unrealized value to the society of the Eastern Forest elves. If not for Kestrel, the elves would only be able to call upon the lesser powers of their own deities. Beyond Cheryl, Kestrel had never told others about the ability he had. Now though, in the case of the growing fire, Kestrel was sure that he needed to ask for the human gods’ assistance, because he knew that the elven gods did not have sufficient power to suffocate the conflagration.
Kestrel began to create the necessary images in his mind, the vision of stark white surroundings that allowed him to focus on the great deities. He needed to decide quickly which of the human powers he would call upon. His closest, strongest relationship was with the Air goddess, Kai, who reached out to him and touched his dreams on occasion. But Kai’s abilities didn’t seem suited to the task of dousing the fire; that would seem better suited to Shaish, the water goddess. Plus, Kai was paired with her mate, Growelk, the fire god, and Kestrel wondered if she would help him fight her own husband’s element. But the water goddess, Shaish, was distant from Kestrel; he seldom prayed to her, and never knew his prayers to be answered, so to call upon her seemed pointless.
His mother hadn’t taught him to reach the human gods; he had been instructed in the worship of and prayer to the elven entities. But he had been curious about the human gods, the heritage that he wished he didn’t have, and that he was too often reminded of. He had secretly taken the instructions for elven worship and applied them to the human deities, reaching out into the emptiness. He had found no success for the longest time, and would have given up, except that there was no harm suffered from spending his time trying again at random moments when he had nothing else to do, and he felt an intangible pull that urged him to keep trying, to try to find the positive elements of his humanity. Finally, in a lonely dusky hour at sunset, when he had sat alone in his tree and closed his eyes and let his consciousness rise from his physical world, he had felt a brush of divinity upon his mind.
Kestrel had obligingly opened his mind and heart, and promised his humble devotion to the otherworldly entity that was examining him. It had been Kai. She had found his elven mentality exotic, an interesting change from the pure humans that she normally interacted with — toying with them, granting their prayers, punishing their misdeeds. She had accepted his worship and granted him status as one of her own, knowing that he had the potential to play a unique role if circumstances required.
And so, as he confronted the dangerous smoke in the woods, Kestrel had to make a choice. In the end, he decided to rely on Kai, and hope that the air goddess would intervene on his behalf either directly somehow, or as an intercessory with Shaish, persuading the other goddess to use her powers to quench the flames.
“Powerful goddess, answer to my prayers, provider of movement and breath, I beseech your help. You have helped me in the past, and I have felt the warmth of your attention. The flames in the forest threaten my home and my friends; please extinguish this fire. Save the forest where I live — protect us, please,” Kestrel prayed to the air goddess, then repeated his prayer twice, sure that more was better than less when trying to ask a favor of an immortal being.
“You have been faithful to me, and so I will intercede on your behalf. But know that someday, I will ask for a demonstration of your devotion to me in return. There are troubling signs of evil abroad in the world, and I will call upon you to carry out duties for me,” Kestrel was startled to hear the words, implanted in his consciousness in a dreamlike manner. He’d never heard a response from the goddess so directly during his waking hours, and his spirit twisted with a twinge of uneasiness over the prospect of owing a favor to a goddess.
“I will do your work, great goddess,” he whispered in acknowledgement, then began to descend from the height of the tree, dropping down from branch to branch, then landing on the soft forest floor. He began to run through the woods in the direction of the fire, eager to see how Kai would prevent a greater conflagration.
He ran directly towards the fire, directed not only by the smell of the smoke, but also by the unerring sense of direction his elven heritage provided. He stretched his legs as he ran, dodging between trees, cutting along game tracks, startling the smaller inhabitants of the forest as he sped past them. As he ran he sensed that the gloom within the forest was growing deeper, a darkness whose cause he could not detect through the thick canopy overhead until he heard a rumbling, rolling, peal of thunder nearby, followed immediately by another and another. Within the next two hundred yards of his sprint he heard raindrops begin to hit the leaves of the trees.
The raindrops were large and heavy, and the number of them falling increased with extraordinary speed, so that within moments it felt as though the atmosphere contained more water than air. Kestrel’s pace slowed as he began to slip upon the muddy surface of the track he followed, and he resorted to holding one hand cupped over his nose and mouth, protecting himself from drowning in the rain that poured down upon him and every other thing in his sector of the forest.
Kestrel continued to follow his instinct as he skidded in the direction of the fire. He could no longer smell the smoke, nor could he see anything more than a few feet in front of him, and even though he slowed down further, he still was unable to prevent disaster from striking when he fell headlong into a ditch. He saw the ditch only as he took the very step that fell downward into the cavity. The fall was an experience he couldn’t avoid, even as he saw and felt it happening around him, every motion predictable and unavoidable as he landed awkwardly on his arm that he extended too late to break his fall. He felt a searing pain when his arm bent unnaturally beneath his body, and then he felt his body teeter and slide sideways, slipping into the already deep water that was running in the ditch. Kestrel despondently sat up, in the center of the ditch, the current already strong enough to press against him. Now, he was not only soaked by the rain, but covered in mud from his fall, cradling his wounded arm against his chest, feeling nauseating waves of pain reach up to his shoulder and his chest from the damaged limb.
After long moments of holding back tears and curses, Kestrel awkwardly rose, holding his arm carefully against his chest, trying fruitlessly to immobilize it as he regained his bearings.
Once he knew what direction to move in, he climbed cautiously up out of the waterway and began to gingerly trot onward towards the fire. His right hand carefully probed his left arm, finding the location in his forearm that made him wince most strongly from the throbbing pain, while he continued to move towards the fire. As he continued onward, he came to realize that the rain was lessening — he could see farther afield through the trees, and he could breathe more easily.
Several minutes later, as the sickening odor of wet ashes nearly overwhelmed him, he came to a series of blackened tree trunks, evidence of the fire, and a few steps later he stopped, just as the rain stopped. Ahead of him the canopy stopped — there was a steaming, open, blackness — a large, newly opened hole in the heart of the forest. Steam and smoke rose in hellish plumes from innumerable locations within the opening, but nowhere could he see flames burning brightly.
“Remember sweet mortal, you are in my debt, and the price to be paid may be steep,” he heard the words of Kai’s immortal voice — commanding, frightening, yet also enticing — sound within his head, and as their reverberations ceased, the dark clouds overhead thinned and departed with extraordinary speed, so that bright sunshine began to fall upon the forest again. He stood with his mouth hanging open in amazement at the display of raw power the goddess had provided, staring upward at a sky that went from turbulent deluge to cloudless dome within seconds, then he lowered his gaze and looked at t
he world around him.
In the bright sunlight Kestrel could see the full extent of the fire’s destruction. It was painful to see, but not as painful as he had expected it to be when he had first seen the pillar of smoke rising above the forest. There were trees intact on all sides of the blackened glade, showing that the opening was merely an isolated intrusion within the wider ocean of trees, which promised that men would not be likely to quickly move into the space — men would have to come through trees to try to get to the opening, and when men knew elves were nearby, they seldom ventured into trees, he knew.
Was there some relationship between this fire and men, he suddenly wondered. There was no other good explanation for how the fire could have started in such perfect weather. All the men were supposed to have been down south fighting in the great invasion that the other elves had gone to, but perhaps some had been up here at the same time.
He felt another painful twinge in his arm, and looked down at it, having forgotten about his injury momentarily in the double shock from goddess’s message and his view of the scorched parcel. There was an unnatural bend, a wrenching visual confirmation of the terrible pain he felt. He was going to have to leave his assignment in the red stag’s portion of the forest to return to town and have his arm treated by a healer. Mastrin, his commander, would have something to say about abandoning his post, but Kestrel would accept a tongue-lashing in return for relief from his pain. If everything went smoothly, he might even be able to return to finish out his shift.
He took a last panoramic look around the burn site, examining the charred remains and the trees that still stood on the far side of the new opening in the forest, and as he looked, a swarm of sparrows went swooping across the open space, already investigating the prospects for finding something nutritious among the ashes. Kestrel felt better; he knew the birds wouldn’t find anything at the moment, but given just a few weeks, greenery would start to sprout and forest life would begin the process of reclaiming its property.
Kestrel gauged his position, then calculated the direction he needed to travel to return to his elven home, where he could report on the fire and have his arm tended to. Perhaps, by the time he was back on base, there would even be some early reports on the state of the southern battle with the humans, he speculated. He plunged back into the greenery of the unsinged forest, leaving the blackened land behind, and journeyed towards the east.
The trip back to town was not as easy as he had expected. The torrential rains that had extinguished the fire had not only filled the ditch Kestrel had fallen into, but they had filled every brook, stream, swale, creek, and other potential conveyor of surface water, sending torrents of runoff flowing away from the fire site. Black water, loaded with ashes and debris, swept away from the fire, departing rapidly, and raising the level of several small streams so high that Kestrel decided to detour around them rather than try to cross them.
The trip took longer than he expected, so that Kestrel didn’t arrive at the outskirts of the provincial capital of Elmheng, until dinner time; even on the edges of the city the streams were running high, and he observed some homes being evacuated, while some were already deluged with water that had risen out of the stream banks. There were no walls or gates or guards, as he had heard existed around human cities, so he walked unimpeded, except by his pain, to the fence around his base, and then to the commander’s center, where Mastrin’s office was located on the third floor.
“The commander has gone to his home for the evening meal,” the guard at the door, an acquaintance of Kestrel’s, had informed him. “You better get to the medic to have him look at that thing before you do anything else,” Backsin advised Kestrel, looking at the swollen, red arm which still exhibited its gut-wrenching bend.
“I’ll see the doc in just a couple more minutes,” Kestrel agreed with a grimace. He knew he needed to see the doctor, but he felt obligated to make his report first. In so doing he would not only complete his mission to the commander, but would also have a chance to catch a glimpse of the commander’s daughter, Cheryl, under circumstances that might allow him to appear heroic.
He left Backsin and trotted down the street to the officers’ quarters, then walked up the wooden steps to the high front porch that looked down on the foot traffic in the street below. Kestrel hesitated for a long moment as he stood at the door, his hand raised to knock, letting his injured arm hang limp without support. Then he took a deep breath and knocked rapidly for a few seconds, until he stepped back from the door and waited.
Seconds later he heard footsteps inside, heavy boots striding across the floor inside, then watched the door open and Commander Mastrin appeared, a napkin in his hand as he swung the door inward.
“Kestrel?” he questioned, surprised to see the young elf on his doorstep. “What brings you here? Shouldn’t you be on duty?”
“Sir,” Kestrel began. He knew what his message was, but until the moment he faced the commander he hadn’t practiced putting his thoughts into words. At the moment he finally saw his commander, with his mind increasingly clouded by the pain from his arm, he felt at a loss to explain his reason for appearing there.
“There was a great fire in the forest,” he began, knowing that the fire was the focus of his mission.
“It’s been a pretty clear day here,” Mastrin answered. “Was there a lightning storm we didn’t know about? I can’t imagine a fire starting under a clear sky.
“I can believe you had some rain out your way though. We’ve seen that the streams from your sector have risen pretty fast — been flooding out a few ground-dwelling cabins as a matter of fact; hard to imagine a fire with all the rain that must have fallen. Did it get too wet for you to stay on duty?
“What happened? Did you slip and fall out of your tree? That’s a nasty injury — go see the doctor and have it taken care of, then come see me first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll discuss your absence from your post then,” Mastrin told Kestrel, as they both heard the sound of light footsteps behind the commander.
Cheryl appeared, her face looking over her father’s shoulder. Her quizzical expression changed to one of pleasant recognition, and she raised her left hand, the hand closest to the heart, the gesture used by elves to greet those they felt closest to.
Kestrel instinctively tried to raise his own left hand in response, pleased by Cheryl’s use of her heart-hand to greet him in the presence of her father.
Just the very beginning of the sudden movement on his part made the broken bone ends in his arm grate against one another, and he momentarily saw a red haze of pain in front of his eyes. He clutched the arm against him with his right arm, and felt embarrassed as he realized a moan of pain had escaped his lips.
“Daddy, he’s hurt!” Cheryl gasped sorrowfully. “Have someone take care of him!”
“I’ve just told him to go see the doctor,” her father said patiently. “You go back to the table and I’ll join you in a bit,” he dismissed his daughter, who dutifully turned and left, with a last glance over her shoulder at Kestrel and a wave of her fingertips.
“Get on to the doctor, and come see me first thing tomorrow,” Mastrin repeated, then he closed the door and left Kestrel alone on the porch.
The weary elf turned and gingerly descended the stairs down from the porch, each step jarring his worsening arm, and his fatigued journey to the doctor’s office took twice as long as usual. When he arrived at the office, the doctor was absent, eating dinner, but a nurse let him lie down on a bed in an examination room after wrapping the injured arm tightly against his chest to reduce the possibility of further movement.
The doctor returned an hour later, just after sunset, and came into Kestrel’s room smelling of ale.
“You did a number on this,” he murmured as he bent over Kestrel and look at the injury. “You should have come seen me right away. Look how swollen this is; you must have waited hours to have it treated.”
“I was out by the red stag’s woods when I fell, and I had to
return to town,” Kestrel explained.
“You must have had quite a little bit of rain up there,” the doctor said conversationally as he unwrapped the bindings to look at the arm more closely. “The streams are way out of their banks.”
“Here,” he turned and pulled a dark brown glass flask off a shelf, and poured some liquid into a wooden cup. “Drink this, all of it, in one gulp,” the doctor told Kestrel as he handed him the cup, and turned away to pull something else out of a cabinet.
Kestrel couldn’t see what color the liquid was inside the dark cup, but he dutifully held it to his lips and started to swallow, then felt the burning pain in his throat and coughed energetically, setting the half-full cup down, while he tried to clear his throat and catch his breath.
“I said swallow the whole thing,” the doctor said, then turned and looked at him speculatively. “I forgot you’ve got some human blood; it may affect you a little differently that the rest of us.”
“What is it?” Kestrel asked.
“It’s whiskey. It helps kill pain. It does a little more than that for humans though, the way chairstem weed affects us,” the doctor answered. He picked up the cup and handed it back to Kestrel. “Go on, finish it — drink down the whole thing.”
Kestrel looked at the cup in his hand. His throat burned, and his head already felt touched with a feeling of lightness. “Are you sure this is worse than the broken arm?” he asked.
“Drink it,” the doctor gruffly ordered, and with a deep breath, Kestrel obediently swallowed the rest of the whiskey, then gagged for several seconds.
“Now lie back down,” the doctor told him, and he began to attach straps to the sides of the cot Kestrel lay on. The boy felt dizzy and closed his eyes as his head and his stomach reacted to the alcohol in his system.
“Nurse,” the doctor called, and the man from the front office cheerily came into the room with them. “Help me strap him down, and give him that leather bit,” the doctor said.
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