Phew!” Alicia said as she leaned back against the wall. “Who will ever believe this?”
“Alicia, please don’t tell anyone about this,” Kestrel asked earnestly. “Most folks won’t believe it, and Colonel Silvan wouldn’t want more stories about me and sprites circulating around the city, I’m sure.”
Alicia stood straight as she pushed away from the wall, and she walked over to Kestrel. She looked directly in his eyes, and he thought he detected a warmth and kindness that he hadn’t seen her exhibit at any prior time during the day. “I won’t do anything to hurt you Kestrel, don’t worry. Your little blue amoretto was right in saying there’s something trustworthy about you.”
That seemed to break some barrier between the two of them, and they enjoyed the rest of the day, full of banter and pleasure in one another’s company. They went on to see the palace, and walked all the way around the perimeter of the grounds, viewing the towers and the trees from multiple angles.
After that it was very late in the afternoon, and they agreed that they both were famished, having missed lunch, so they stopped at a cafe and ate ravenously. Alicia insisted that Kestrel try a variety of local ales, to sample the flavor of different brews, and she began to lead him from tavern to tavern during the early evening, though she seemed to drink very little herself.
Somehow the conversation seemed to focus on Lucretia and Cheryl. “They were both such good people; Lucretia was gorgeous too, and somehow that’s something I associate with people who have a high opinion of themselves. I never would have expected her to talk to me the way she did after she saw Dewberry,” Kestrel told Alicia as he drank his third ale. “Then she talked, and she was full of questions, and I learned she was such a good person really, someone who just wanted to taste more of life, and see excitement.”
“Was she prettier than Cheryl?” Alicia asked.
In his state of growing inebriation, Kestrel pondered his answer as though his life depended on the answer he gave. “Lucretia was glamorous pretty; Cheryl is warm and friendly pretty,” he intoned solemnly. “No man wouldn’t say Cheryl isn’t pretty, but they’d all appreciate Lucretia more on first glance.”
“What about me? Would you say I’m pretty?” Alicia asked as he sipped more ale.
He sputtered in his mug, then wiped his face on his sleeve.
“I’ll take that as a polite no,” Alicia said laughingly.
“You? You’re very pretty, in an exotic way,” Kestrel answered. “Most men aren’t going to forget those eyes of your once they’ve seen them,” he said, then laughed as she coyly batted her lashes.
“You’re not just saying that because you’ve seen every square inch of my skin there is to see, and had your hands on a fair amount of it too?” she asked with a wicked sparkle in her eyes.
“No, heavens no!” he protested. “Although that may have helped some, for a little while,” he added after consideration.
“No, when I first saw you with that big, impressive uniform, and that hair thing, I didn’t think you were drop dead gorgeous, but even then you were nice to look at,” he explained. “And now, wow!” he looked into her eyes. “You’re something special! Every elf here is jealous that I’ve got you here at our table all to myself, I’m sure,” he said valiantly.
“Why did you wear all that stuff this morning?” he asked.
“I didn’t want men to have the wrong impression of me. I want them to take me serious when I work, so I try not to dress like a pretty maid,” she answered.
“Well, if there are any of them bothering you, let me know before I leave, and I’ll straighten them out for you,” he offered immediately.
“Thank you, Kestrel. That’s very gallant of you,” she said gently, placing her hand atop his on the table, and squeezing it with friendly gratitude.
Kestrel was not used to drinking ale; it was something that he rarely did, and he began to feel woozy as soon as he drank his first mug. Before long it grew difficult for him to easily follow the conversation as Alicia talked to him about Colonel Silvan, and how brilliant the man was.
“I do anything he asks me to, anything!” she said emphatically, as they sat in their fourth tavern of the evening, drinking once again. “He only wants what’s best for elvendom.”
It was the first time Kestrel had thought about Colonel Silvan in hours, the first time he remembered the request that he allow his ears to be butchered.
“I’m afraid he’s asking too much of me,” Kestrel said. “I don’t know if I can do the things he wants me to.”
“You can Kestrel,” Alicia said comfortingly, placing both her hands atop his on the table top. “He wouldn’t ask anything of you that he didn’t believe you could succeed at. And look at all you did today! You single-handedly beat two elves at once, using just a broomstick! You healed me of my wounds, you carried out favors for sprites and imps; you can do so much! You could do great things to help every elf in the kingdom if you listened to Silvan!”
“You think so?” Kestrel asked carefully as another mug of ale arrived at the table. “I’m afraid of what he wants of me.”
“Do you trust me?” Alicia asked suddenly.
“I do,” Kestrel said sincerely, and felt a glow of warmth when she squeezed his hands tightly in appreciation.
“Then trust Silvan. Do what he wants. Let him use you to protect us from these new human tactics,” she urged.
Kestrel closed his eyes, and felt his head spinning. He opened them again, and saw Alicia’s large eyes staring intently at him. “Alright, I’ll do it,” he agreed.
“Good choice!” she replied. “Here drink up your ale,” she nudged the new tankard towards him. “I’ll be right there with you,” she said as he tilted the latest mug of ale upward and threw his head back, letting the bitter brew flow readily down his gullet.
He felt dizzier as he finished the ale, and dropped the mug on the table.
“Here, help me lift him up and carry him out,” he heard Alicia tell someone, and then arms were grabbing him and raising him from the tavern bench.
“You can trust me, Kestrel. I’m the best surgeon Silvan has,” he heard a voice say. He vaguely understood it was Alicia talking to him, and then he knew nothing as he passed out, intoxicated from too much ale.
He slept in a drunken stupor, one filled with nightmares of knives and great pain and voices speaking distantly. But he never awoke completely, intoxicated as he was from the great quantities of ale that Alicia had urged him to drink.
Chapter 14 — A Changed Countenance
When Kestrel awoke he couldn’t see, and he couldn’t move his head, which was enveloped in something that seemed to include a dull cloud of pain. He found that not only was there a wrapping around his eyes, but his head was held immobilized by blocks and straps, and his arms, legs, and torso were all strapped down as well.
“Where am I?” he asked aloud. “Is anyone there? Let me free!”
“I’m here Kestrel; relax, my dear,” he heard Alicia’s voice.
“What’s happening?” he asked, confused by a foggy, incomplete collection of memories.
He felt hands gently touch his head, then fingertips barely tapped his face, until there was a change in the weight of the bandages he felt on his face. The light penetrating to his eyes increased as well.
“You’re in my clinic,” Alicia spoke softly and distractedly. Another layer of bandaging lifted from his face, and then the swaths of cloth on top of each eye were lifted away.
He blinked his eyes open, feeling their crusts give way to his efforts, then suddenly he grunted in surprise as drops of water fell onto his eyes. “What are you doing?” he sputtered.
“Close your eyes,” Alicia said, and then a cloth dabbed and wiped at his eyes.
He looked up and clearly saw her, hovering directly over him. “What’s happening?” he asked plaintively.
She looked down at him with an expression of complete concentration, then delicately removed a bandage from his fore
head.
“Outstanding!” she whispered. “Let’s look at the real challenge.”
Her hands began to remove bandages from the sides of his head. “Alicia, set me free; tell me what happened. I don’t understand,” Kestrel begged. “Please release me. Untie me.”
“I will, sweetie, I will,” she muttered absently as she focused on his head, her face only inches above his. More bandages came away, and she raised her head, smiling down at him beatifically. “This is extraordinary, Kestrel,” she said, her gaze at last moving to his eyes.
“Here,” she did something that removed the blocks from the sides of his head, then unbuckled a number of straps across his chest, then from his arms. He heard a movement behind him, and a man in a uniform suddenly came into his field of vision, carrying a disk.
Alicia thrust her arms beneath Kestrel’s back and raised him up to a sitting position. “Go get Silvan,” she said to someone, then took the disk from the orderly and held it up in front of Kestrel’s face.
It was a mirror, a highly polished disk of metal.
“Look at how well it worked!” Alicia said, one hand holding the disk as the other hand pointed to the features on his head. “Look at these eyebrows!” her finger stroked the nearly horizontal stripes that now replaced the previous rising arches that had framed his eyes.
“And look at these,” her hand gently grabbed his chin and turned his head slightly to the side, then her fingers drew a lingering trail up to his ear on the side if his head, a small ear with a rounded top, devoid of the whorls and ridges that were the classic ornamentation of elven ears. He had human ears on his head, and human eyebrows. She had made him look completely human.
“Does this hurt?” she asked as her fingers gently traced and probed every crevasse and rise on his ear.
“No,” he mumbled, staring at the mirror in horrified amazement.
“It was that spring water! It made the incisions and changes heal overnight! That was so amazing when you took me to the spring. I almost gave away the plan, when I realized what the water would allow us to do,” she spoke directly to Kestrel.
His legs were still strapped to the table but his hands were free. He looked down and saw a tray of knives beside the mat he lay on.
With his right hand he grabbed the mirror out of Alicia’s hand and smacked it hard against the throat of the orderly who stood beside her. His other hand reached out and grabbed her hair, jerking her violently against him, in front of him, while his right hand darted and snatched up the largest knife on the tray and brought it to rest against her bare throat, pressing tightly against the pale white skin.
“What have you done to me?” he wailed in anguish. “You’ve turned me into a monster! I look just like a human now!
“Oh Alicia, how could you do this to me? I thought I could trust you after all we went through yesterday! I thought you would look out for me, the way I tried to take care of you,” he felt tears of anger and sadness falling freely down his cheeks as he resisted the impulse to press and slice with the blade, to empty her body of life in retribution for the damage she had done to his.
“She cares for you so much that she would let no one else do anything at all on the surgery table,” Kestrel looked up at the sound of Silvan’s voice in the hallway, Giardell and another guard standing in front of him.
“Unbuckle the straps on my legs,” Kestrel hissed at Alicia.
“I can’t. The blade is too tight,” she gasped at him.
He slightly released the pressure he exerted on the knife, and twisted her lower down his body, so that she could reach the straps that still held him to the operating table.
For thirty seconds nothing happened until she had set him free, then he maneuvered down off the table, holding her in front of him and holding the knife against her throat, as he backed into a corner.
“Look at that,” the unknown guard said as Silvan and his escort entered the room. “Make him look like a human and he starts to act like a human too.”
“You piece of dung!” Kestrel shouted in fury, and he used his human combat training to flip the blade away from Alicia’s throat, towards the guard who had spoken. The blade whirled momentarily through the air, then landed solidly in the guard’s shoulder, making his scream in pain.
Kestrel wrenched the crook of his elbow up around Alicia’s throat in place of the blade.
“She was as careful and gentle as I’ve ever seen her,” Silvan said, coming a step closer. “She clearly felt very close to you and wanted to make the operation as successful and painless as possible.”
“She tricked me! She was another one of your spies! Another manipulator!” Kestrel shouted back.
“I really care for you Kestrel,” Alicia spoke up suddenly, her voice only a croak as he kept pressure on her throat. “You made yesterday unlike any day of my life. You were not at all what I expected, and you reacted so wonderfully, so thoughtfully and kindly, toward me and towards the sprites and the imps. If I weren’t married, I might have tried to seduce you a time or two!
“I gave you the best opportunity anyone could ever ask for to pass as a human, so that you can help Silvan save us from the next attack,” she pleaded. “I know it seems like a trick, but I did what I could to do everything in my power for you!”
“Let her go Kestrel,” Silvan said firmly. “She’s not the one you’re angry at; I am. This is all my doing. You know that. Let her go. I told you this was my plan yesterday; you know it wasn’t her fault,” he repeated, and Kestrel saw what seemed to be genuine concern in Silvan’s eyes, anguish over the danger he had put his subordinate in.
“He cares for you almost as much as he cares for her,” Giardell spoke for the first time. “Kestrel, I’ve listened to him anguish over this plan, and I know he has your safety high on his list. Let Alicia go, Kestrel, and let’s all work together to move this forward.”
Kestrel gave a great wail of frustration and resignation, then released his hold on Alicia and shoved her forcefully away, into Silvan’s arms, who grabbed her and enfolded her in a tight hug.
“Get her out of here. I never want to see her again!” Kestrel said bitterly, lowering his head and wiping tears from his face.
“Kestrel, please, know that I want to help you. Don’t feel this way, please, my friend,” Alicia broke free of Silvan’s grasp and walked back towards Kestrel, her hands held together in a pleading gesture before her.
Kestrel’s hand shot out and slapped her cheek, the sound as loud as the crack of a whip, and a red handprint immediately forming on her skin. “Get out!” He shouted. “Go away!”
She stared at him in shock, and in sadness, as her hand rubbed her cheek, and tears started to fall down her face. “I’m sorry, Kestrel,” she told him, then turned and walked back to Silvan, who tenderly kissed her before she left the room.
“She’s married to you!” Kestrel said suddenly in a blinding moment of intuition. “You used your own wife to seduce me into being one of your agents!”
“We are married, but if anything, I think you nearly seduced her away from me,” the colonel replied.
“Kestrel, I know how dramatic this is. Your life had just been turned upside down, I know. You’ve had the most eventful past twenty four hours I can imagine any elf living through,” Silvan said, gently perching himself on the edge of the table Kestrel had been strapped to. Giardell hovered very close by, while the guard Kestrel had injured had been taken away by other attendants, leaving just the three of them in the room.
“You know how desperate our situation could become if the humans decide they want to really wipe us out. They could just keep flinging fireballs at our trees, and then advancing and taking our land, and starting flinging more fireballs at us again — over and over and over,” Silvan warned.
“They’ve shown that they’ve got a new weapon that gives them new tactics, new ways to defeat us handily. You’ve already lost friends to them.
“We must find out what their plans are, so that
we can be ready to defend ourselves next time. And try as I have, scratch my head as much as I have, I can come up with only one feasible plan for protecting our people — that’s to send you among the humans to ferret out their secrets,” the colonel spoke passionately as Kestrel slumped disconsolately in his corner, his back sliding down the wall until he was sitting on the floor.
“I’d like to send you immediately back north to Firheng, so that you can finish your training, and we can prepare to transport you to the human lands,” he went on.
“What it I go and decide I’ll just be a human?” Kestrel asked, frustrated by the trap that enclosed him. “I’ll look human, I’ll talk human. I can just live among them and not have to worry about being used by my own people.”
“And not have to worry about Cheryl and Vinetia and Arlen and Belinda. You can forget them all. You can forget Alicia, for that matter, who spent so many hours operating on you, soothing your brow, dabbling the magic water on you to take away the pain, even dripping it into your mouth so you wouldn’t be hung over,” Silvan said a little more sharply.
“For my part, I think she became a little too attached to you through yesterday’s adventure and the operation. I’ve often worried that she made a mistake when she agreed to marry me, someone old enough to be her father. But she is so extraordinary that I couldn’t bring myself to be noble enough to ignore the foolish hero-worship in her eyes,” the colonel continued reflectively, “and so we are married.
“Remember Kestrel, this is not permanent. Your ears will slowly grow back to their natural form. You’ll have the adventure and satisfaction of carrying out this assignment for a few months, and then you’ll have to come back to us. You won’t be able to pass for a human any longer,” Silvan slid off the table and walked over to Kestrel, then slowly knelt, to look at him eye-to-eye.
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