There was a moment of silence. “Friend Kestrel, none of us have ever been to this pantry in the palace that you mention. None of us have ever been to the palace in the big city of the elves, and if we have not been to a place to know its location, we cannot go there.”
Kestrel blinked. He tried to think back to the times he had entered or left the palace at Center Trunk with the help of the imps, during the battles against Viathin-controlled elves. He had actually relied on sprites at that time, he vaguely remembered. He had called upon Reasion often, but that dear sprite had gone off to miraculously become an Albanun princess.
But Dewberry had perhaps been part of the sprite group that had helped him; his memories from the hectic times were too fuzzy for him to be sure.
“May we call upon your queen to see if she can help us?” he asked.
“You and the queen have gone to the palace of the elves together? Does King Jonson know about this?” Mulberry asked.
“Perhaps,” Kestrel answered distractedly, still trying to clear his memories to know who had been with him.
“I will go ask the queen,” Stillwater replied, and he disappeared from the room.
“My lord!” Whyte cried from the doorway. “You’re back, I see.”
“I just came to get a change of clothes,” Kestrel tried to sound breezy and relaxed. “I may be presented to the king this morning, and I want to look my best. We should be gone in just a moment,” he motioned towards the imps who floated nearby.
Stillwater returned to the room. “Her majesty is occupied,” he said with a blush, “but she gave me directions for a place in this elf palace. We can take you there if you wish.”
“Let’s carry on,” Kestrel replied. “Take care, Whyte,” he called, and then the imps surrounded him and they carried him away from Oaktown once again.
Chapter 14 – Betrothed to the Princess
They arrived in a pantry that was nearly empty, containing only a few canvas sacks of walnuts. There was dim light seeping in around the edges of the door, enough for Kestrel to see the interior of the space he was in, with empty shelves on two walls.
“Thank you, friends,” Kestrel told the imps. “You are free to go, but,” he hesitated. “If this goes badly, I may call upon you.”
“Would you like for us to stay in the palace with you? Shall we go get some of the imps in the guard service who carry the pikes?” Mulberry asked eagerly.
“No,” Kestrel pressed his ear against the door and listened for sounds, as he tried to reconstruct the layout of the palace, and his proximity to the audience chambers. “I’ll call you if I need you,” he repeated, as he focused his attention on the silence outside his door.
It seemed safe to go out in the hallway, he concluded, so he gently pressed the unlatched door open, and stepped out into the empty hall.
“Farewell. Call us when you need us,” Stillwater said from inside the pantry, and then the three imps disappeared.
Kestrel pressed the door closed, then began to walk cautiously down the hall, in the direction that he hoped would take him towards the audience halls of the palace. He realized suddenly that he had no knowledge of whether the king would be in a hall, or available to the public, or even out of bed, for that matter.
As he approached a door, he heard a loud flourish of horns, the announcement of the arrival of the king, and he breathed a sigh of relief that he would have an opportunity to catch the monarch before the guard officers reported his activities in Center Trunk. He opened the door and found that the hall already held several courtiers, while a minister was reporting to the king.
To his regret, Kestrel saw the minister introduce Elder Miskel and Major Grenwort to the king, before he could get close enough to pre-empt them. He hurried unobtrusively along the side of the room to reach the front, and he overheard Grenwort reporting to the ruler of the land.
“Your majesty, we are sorry to report that the renegade elf Kestrel has run away, but we have a large number of guards out searching for him,” Grenwort began.
“I’ve hardly run away, and I’m hardly a renegade!” Kestrel called out stridently, as he jostled past the front row of observers and inserted himself into the officer’s presentation.
Grenwort whirled in shock. “Guards!” he screamed in a high voice. Kestrel saw a motion out of the corner of his eye, and looked to see an unarmed, non-uniformed guard, a man who appeared only a handful of years older than Kestrel himself, step out of the watching courtiers, then stop.
“There’s no need for guards,” Kestrel replied mildly, turning forward again to face the throne and the guard officers working hard at trying to maintain a calm demeanor. He bowed to the throne, then turned.
“Elder Miskel, it’s good to see you again,” he saluted the leader of the armed forces.
“Kestrel, it’s good to see you too. Such a strange combination of tales have been told about you, it’s good to have you here in person to finally tell all that is happening,” the senior officer said in just as calm a state.
“Sir, this human-mixed mongrel is a threat to the king! Guards!” Grenwort shouted again.
There was a stamping of boots, and a half dozen of the castle guards came from the left and the right and from behind the throne, to form a protective shield in front of the king, and his daughter the princess, who Kestrel realized was seated on the dais as well.
“Are you a threat, Kestrel?” Miskel asked.
“I’m less of a threat than the bad manners of some of your junior officers,” Kestrel answered, surprised to realize that he took no offense at Grenwort’s language. “I am here to serve the best interests of the king, as I ever have.”
“He’s a traitor! He attacked me!” Grenwort reinserted himself into the conversation. “Sire,” he added belatedly.
“I only sought to remind you that an officer should be a gentleman,” Kestrel spoke, a level of heat entering his voice.
“Lord Kestrel,” the king called, “what is this about?”
“He used strange powers to rip my shirt off of me, then he turned into a giant!” Grenwort answered immediately.
“How can that be?” the princess spoke up for the first time, and Kestrel saw the unarmed man, who had stepped forward earlier, edge closer again.
“I am,” Kestrel paused. He wasn’t going to admit that he was potentially a demi-god, that his father was Morph.
“I have powers left from my adventures during the war against the Viathins,” he explained instead.
“Is that how you created the statue in Hydrotaz that the ambassador reports about?” the king asked.
“Your majesty, perhaps we should retire to chambers to hear Lord Kestrel’s report,” Elder Miskel suggested.
“What about his punishment?” Grenwort said. Then he caught a glance of the expression on Miskel’s face. “I withdraw the question.”
The King stood, his face conveying no sign of his feelings, and there was a shuffling of feet throughout the audience chamber.
“The Elder makes a suitable suggestion. Guards, stand aside,” he motioned to the men who had taken protective positions around him. “We’ll retire to the green chamber. Please put the rest of our day’s activities on a delay,” he noted to the minister who stood nearby.
He started to walk across the dais, and the princess followed her father.
“Come along,” Miskel motioned to Kestrel, and started to follow as well.
Before Kestrel could take his first step, he noticed that the stranger was advancing as well, and then he was surprised when the guards accommodated the elf by stepping aside to allow him to pass, as he followed the king. Kestrel hurried forward, and the guards moved to permit him as well. There was a sound behind him, and he glanced back to see that Grenwort had been blocked by the guards and was not able to follow.
With a smile, Kestrel increased his pace, and caught up with the others as they left the audience hall and entered a narrow passageway. They walked in single file and followed the kin
g for several steps to a new room, one that was painted green, with trees growing profusely just outside the windows. The room was small, and once the king was seated at the head of a small conference table, and the others sat down around the table, there was room for very few others.
“Now, Kestrel, thank you for appearing at court, unorthodox though your arrival may have been,” Elder Miskel opened the conversation.
Kestrel glanced away from the Elder to look at the princess, who sat next to her father. She still possessed the indefinable quality that made him want to examine her face, but now he noticed that around her eyes there was a hint of hardness.
“We’ve all seen the report you sent describing your adventures in the west. We’re pleased to know that the threat of the monster-lizards, the Viathins you called them, has been eliminated. We haven’t had any reports of them for several months, which is good. But I think we’re all astonished to read your claims about finding a nation of elves in the south,” Miskel said.
“Is it possible that they were just humans with some unusual appearance?” the unknown interloper asked.
Kestrel looked at the elf disdainfully. “I know elves; I know humans; I even know gnomes, imps, and sprites. I can tell the difference. They speak the elvish language. They were forest-dwellers until the Viathins burnt down their forest – their entire forest. Now they live in mountains near gnomes. But they are elves.”
“Of course,” Miskel said soothingly. “It’s just such a revelation, is all.”
Kestrel paused. Throughout his journey, he had fought to defeat the Viathins, to protect the land that all the people of the Inner Seas shared, as well as to protect the people themselves, and their gods. That had been the great war, and defeating the Viathins had been an immeasurable victory. But the elves of the Eastern Forest with their insular and parochial knowledge of the world, were unable to appreciate how important that victory had been. The Eastern Forest, the very lives of the people around the table had been saved by the battle in the mountains south of Uniontown, but all the elves there cared about was the discovery of the southern elves.
“I know their ruler. I rescued him from the hands of the Viathins,” Kestrel said. He thought about Lake for a moment, and then he thought about Moorin. He gave another inward sigh. So much of his soul had been consumed by the passion of his pursuit of the elven-human beauty, and when his battles with the Viathins had ended, he had found that she wished to go in a different direction, with Lake and the Southern Elves.
“I know their queen, the Tyndall Shail. She is from the Northern Elves,” he added.
“It’s interesting that you mention the Northern Elves,” the king spoke up.
“We have been eager to see you, Lord Kestrel, to recognize you for the great battles you have fought, and to hear your story from your own mouth. It is a pleasure to see you again,” the king said graciously.
“But we have also discovered that we have other goals we wish to achieve on behalf of our people. And one of those goals is to establish a closer relationship with our cousins the Northern Elves,” the king said. “My recollection is that you have traveled to their land and have some familiarity with them?”
Kestrel thought about Moorin, and he thought of Lord Ripken, whose colors he had worn in the tournament, and he recollected the delight he had felt when he had healed Princess Aurelia of the aging disease she had suffered. Moorin’s father, Count Stelten, lived in the Northern Forest, and was hopefully reconciled with the king. Lucretia, the bad girl of the court and Tewks, the irrepressible page, were more friends he had left behind in the north. He had handled some issues well in the north, and other issues not so well, but he had had a profound impact on the kingdom during his short stay there, and he had made friends.
“I am fairly familiar with the land, the court, and the people,” he agreed with a grin.
“That is most encouraging to hear,” the king replied. “For we wish to send you there on a royal mission.
“We wish to establish better relations with our cousins in the north. You have demonstrated the value of reaching out through your encouragement to have an ambassador in Hydrotaz,” Kestrel noticed a flicker of a reaction cross the face of the princess as he mentioned the Hydrotaz ambassadorship, “and placing your good friend there.
“So we wish to place an ambassador at the court of the northern elves, at Kirevee. And you seem to be the perfect elf to help us with this mission,” the king explained.
Kestrel raised his eyebrows in surprise. He had not ever anticipated that he might be called upon to act as the ambassador to the Northern Elves. It was an intriguing concept. His immediate reaction was to say yes, to agree. He would enjoy the company of the more worldly and cosmopolitan elves in the Kirevee court. The drawback was that he would be removed from Oaktown, where he was working so hard at improving the lives of the elves of the Western Marches, but with the help of the imps, he would be able to travel back and forth frequently, to help keep the activities in Oaktown on track.
This visit to Center Trunk was going to prove to have a much better outcome than he had expected.
“Thank you, your majesty, for your trust,” Kestrel said, bowing his head in acknowledgement.
“Therefore, I would like to immediately send you on a journey to Kirevee, to assist with the establishment of an embassy there,” the king said. “We wish to send Hampus to the Eastern Forest king to exchange the treaty documents to allow for ambassadors. You will be his guide on the trip.”
Kestrel blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to digest the strange turn of circumstance.
“You want me to be the guide to the Eastern Forest? Who will be the ambassador? Who is Hampus?” he asked abruptly.
Princess Elwean gave a wicked smile, and she touched her father’s hand. “Allow me, father dear,” she spoke up.
“This is Hampus,” she motioned and smiled at the previously unnamed elf who had joined the small group around the conference table. “He is the great hero of the elven nation. Last year at this time, he set out with a band of other members of the Guard to go as far east as they could, past the edges of the settlements of our people, to try to find the centaurs that live beyond our borders.
“The group went farther than any other elves have ever gone, into an unknown territory. They found plains, and mountains, and more. When they started to climb the mountains, they suffered tragedy, and all were killed in a landslide except Hampus, who made the epic trip home all alone, to report back on the fate of their mission.
“He will have plenty of time to enthrall you with his stories while you carry out your mission to the north,” the princess said. “So I will not give you my hasty version. I know you will enjoy his story.
“I did. I have grown to admire his stories so much that I have accepted his proposal of marriage. He is engaged to be my consort,” she looked directly at Kestrel and gave an indecipherable smile.
Kestrel could not comprehend what he had heard. “He is going to marry you?” he asked in befuddlement, all the rest of the discussed issues dismissed from his attention.
“Kere has smiled on me,” Hampus spoke up.
Kestrel looked at the elf, then looked at the princess. He had come to the capitol thinking that he would face pressure, or at least questions, regarding becoming the consort of the princess. He did not wish to be her consort – he felt no love for her. But he had not anticipated that his place as the potential mate for Elwean would be so readily supplanted. He was relieved that he had been spared his expected embarrassment of having to reject the union with the royal heir, but at the same time he felt unsettled by having been cast aside so casually, without a conference of any kind.
He looked from the smug princess back to the smug hero of the east.
“So Kestrel, will you agree to take Hampus to the Northern Forest, as his guide?” the king asked.
What reason could he find to make him feel motivated to want to lead someone he didn’t know on the long journey to the No
rthern Forest? Kestrel felt no desire to travel with the Hampus person who sat across the table.
“Well Kestrel, will you do this for your monarch?” the king repeated, a faint note of dissatisfaction in his voice.
Miksel’s foot slid beneath the table and urgently tapped his.
He could go to the North Forest; he could take Hampus there, but then he could see his own friends, and renew acquaintances. He could even send Hampus home after the mission was complete, while he would go on, perhaps to Seafare to see Picco and Ruelin and his daughter. And then, after that, he could go on to Graylee again, or he could go south to see Moorin and the Southern Elves. The trip to the Northern Forest could be simply one stage of a longer trip, a trip that would ultimately be enjoyable and rewarding.
“Of course, your majesty, I would be happy to go to Kirevee, and introduce Hampus to my friends. The Princess Aurelia and the King Winche would welcome anyone I vouch for,” he threw out a jab, to let them know of his own prestige in the kingdom of the Northern Forest.
Even the journey to Kirevee offered opportunities, he realized.
“Well said, Kestrel,” Elder Miskel spoke up first. “I expect the king will need a day or two to allow his ministers to prepare the treaty that Hampus will carry north, and I am sure that our hero will need a day or two to prepare himself for the upcoming trip.
“Why don’t you and I go now to the guard base and begin to plan the best route to follow to reach the North Forest?” the military leader proposed.
“With your permission, majesty?” Miskel sought permission to depart.
“Certainly, Elder. Lord Kestrel, it’s so good to see you back with us. I hope you’ll not deprive our court of your company for so long after your next return,” the king told the pair. Miskel stood, and Kestrel followed his lead as they bowed, then exited through the door.
“Follow me,” Miskel said, and he started walking at a quick pace, through the palace halls and then out into the grounds.
The Guided Journey (Book 6) Page 13
