“Come on Putty, jump in the water!” he called encouragingly.
The yeti held back as it recollected the difficult swim through the river waters to reach the boat just a few days earlier.
“Go on. I’ll get in too,” Raines said, as her dress slipped off and she suddenly became a light blur in the night shadows by the side of the water.
The yeti continued to hesitate, so Raines slipped into the water ahead of her, then slowly backstroked into the water’s center.
“You’re right, this does feel wonderful,” she said lazily. “Why is that?”
“It’s enchanted. The water helps you to heal and feel better.” Kestrel answered. “This is what we gave Orren after he escaped from the evil of the mine, when he was all bruised and battered.”
“It feels so fabulous when you soak in it,” the miner commented.
“What are the imps doing over there?” Orren asked.
“They fall asleep and dream wonderful dreams,” Kestrel said. “It must be like kissing a girl and drinking wine and eating cake all at once,” he tried to speculate.
And that’s when an angry red glow suddenly burst forth on the shoreline, a fuzzy, ill-defined figure of a person, standing on the grass, emanating a feeling of hatred. It appeared as though it had risen from the ground, though not completely, as if its legs below the knees still remained subterranean.
“Elfling,” the voice of the figure hissed. There were no visible features, nor even a true face, only a head atop a torso, which sprouted arms without hands, and legs without feet.
Raines screamed, and climbed out of the spring on the opposite side of the water, near the imps, then ran to seek safety among the rocks where the men were sitting.
Kestrel bolted upright. “Lucretia!” he called his knife from where it lay on the ground with his clothing.
The weapon shivered its way free of the encumbering cloth that covered it, then flew through the air towards Kestrel. As it flew though, the red entity raised an arm, and a beam of deep red energy stretched across the water to intercept the flashing, tumbling knife, and then slowly draw it towards the being across the water.
Kestrel looked on in profound dismay, as the knife struggled to escape, to resume its course towards him. Despite its efforts, the knife was drawn back to shore, and dropped, inert, upon the ground where the strange entity stood.
“Elfling, I know you. You will meddle in my domain no more,” the raspy voice, slightly familiar, and yet not so, spoke.
The figure raised its arm again, and another beam of energy shot out, aimed at Kestrel. The energy engulfed him instantaneously, then lifted him into the air, before he was even aware of what was happening.
In shock and panic, Kestrel distantly heard screams. He looked as he was twisted and swiveled through the air, and caught a glimpse of Putty charging recklessly at the red energy being, only to be flung backward. And then Kestrel was plunged headfirst into the water, and held beneath the surface.
He was stunned. In only a handful of seconds the idyllic evening at the spring had turned into a frightening, dangerous struggle. He tried to thrash about, to return to the surface, but the burning red energy held him tightly below the surface.
He had taken no deep breath, and his lungs were already begging for an influx of new air. The power that was attacking him felt irresistible, and Kestrel clung to the edge of panic.
He needed to call upon his own powers, he realized in a moment of intuitive relief. Kestrel took a moment to compose himself, felt distracted by the growing urgency of his need to take a breath, then refocused on using the power that was within him.
He called it forth, and felt it blossom. Kestrel imagined a bright blue shield of energy pressed against his body, ready to expand exponentially and drive the red chains of energy off of him. His shield materialized, and he mentally shouted with relief, then he pressed the shield outward against the red power.
The red energy did not buckle. It was stronger than he was, and he gasped at the terrible discovery, taking in a mouthful of water that made him begin to cough. His situation was dire, and he realized that his life was coming to an end.
Kestrel, use the spring. There is great energy all around you, Kere’s voice sounded in his mind.
The calm tones of the goddess gave him hope, and his panic ebbed.
He did not understand how, but he knew the water held power. The goddess’s words made sense, and he let his shield of energy evolve, becoming not a tool to keep weapons away from his body, but instead, in an extraordinary manner, he flipped it around, so that it also began to absorb energy from the spring.
And there was an overwhelming fount of power coming through the spring waters, he felt and realized. He felt the power flowing into the shield, and flowing into him, giving him more energy than he expected, a gentle, calming energy. He understood why the spring water healed, as he felt the characteristics of strength and wholeness and renewal that it carried.
Kestrel created a thrust of energy beneath himself, and lifted himself upward. The red energy retained its hold on him, but could not restrain him, as he drew upon the energy all around him, and he stretched the red chains longer and thinner and weaker as they were dragged in his wake up to the surface.
He felt his head break through into the cool night air and he burst his mouth open to exhale and inhale, while he found that the energy he was consuming from the water continued to lift him so that his chest, then hips, then knees also breached the surface of the water. He stopped rising when his ankles felt air, his position allowing him to retain contact with the spring water and continue to rely upon the wonderful-feeling energy that it supplied. It was a position that curiously mimicked the red entity’s own posture within the earth.
He flexed the muscles of his arms, and the energy within him enabled him to stretch them, stretching the red energy strands that were wrapped around him. The encircling power was shattered by his efforts, and the beam of power that stretched from the entity on the shore towards him evaporated, while the strange being there seemed to stagger backwards.
“What are you?” Kestrel asked. He was free of constraints, and he erected a new shield around himself, outside of the original shield that had turned into an energy-gathering net. The new shield glowed with a preternatural brightness that lit up all the area around the spring; the power from the spring fed him, allowed him to send extraordinary energy into the shield, making it stronger than any display of power he had known since he had used Kai’s own borrowed powers in his battle with Ashcrayss, the dead god of the Viathins.
He stepped forward across the water, approaching the entity. He then fired a beam of his own power at it, but the redness moved with surprising speed, racing several yards to the right to avoid entanglement. Kestrel fired again, once with each hand, in two different location on either side of the red energy. His efforts succeeded, as the left hand bolt struck the darting target, wrapping it in Kestrel’s grip. He struggled as he tried to control it, just as it had struggled to hold onto him.
“Now is not the time, elfling,” the voice of the apparition rumbled.
Kestrel felt the insubstantial thing begin to disappear from within his wrapping.
“It is the time!” Kestrel shouted angrily, unwilling to let the threat escape. He commanded his power to change its phase, to become a force that would continue to hold the red power within his grasp, so that he could destroy it. His energy flickered, matching the changes of the monster, and prevented it from finding the route to escape.
“Who are you?” he shouted at it, as he felt his power – drawn and augmented by the healing spring – react in some fashion that accomplished what he wanted, and insured that the deadly creature’s presence remained tangible.
“You want to know who I am?” the unidentifiable entity asked. “I’ll tell you, I am Death, waiting to embrace you,” it said slowly. Kestrel felt it test his powers, straining against them, and then it began to break free, walking towards him, r
aising its arms and then firing bolts of energy from both its right and left sides at point blank range, bolts that struck his brilliant blue shield and caused an explosion so loud and intense that Kestrel felt himself shaken from his position despite the shield.
Then, amidst the confusion of the energy and noise and light of the explosion, the red entity disappeared, while Kestrel was thrown into the water and knocked unconscious.
The area around the spring was suddenly once again enveloped in night time darkness, a darkness that seemed impossible to penetrate as the eyes of the others failed to adapt quickly enough.
“Kestrel!” Hampus shouted, his eyes reacting to the darkness more quickly than the humans. He dimly saw Kestrel’s body floating in the center of the pool, and ran atop the water to reach it; he stopped, sank down, then pulled Kestrel back to the shore and dragged him up onto land.
“Step aside,” an elderly elf woman said authoritatively to him as soon as he had Kestrel ashore. The two humans were stroking through the water in their haste to reach Kestrel as well, as their eyesight improved.
“Who are you? Where did you come from?” Hampus asked in astonishment.
“Never mind,” the woman said. She knelt next to Kestrel, peering at him intently, then she placed her hand over his heart, and when she did, her hand and his whole body began to glow with a pure, white light.
His eyes popped open, he stared at her intently, and the glow faded away.
“My goddess,” he said softly.
“You can think of me as your aunt if you want to,” she smiled at him gently.
“Thank you for being here. Thank you for your help,” he told her.
“You did the work yourself,” she replied.
“What was that thing?” he asked her.
“I don’t know, my child,” she answered. “I don’t know,” she repeated. “This must have something to do with the silence of the human gods. If they’ve stirred something up and haven’t told us, there’s going to be a heavy bill to pay,” she muttered angrily.
“You be careful. It came here looking for you. It got more than it bargained for though, I’d wager,” Kere told Kestrel. “We will stay in touch,” she told him. She reached her hand over and squeezed his, then vanished from the side of the spring.
“Impossible!” Raines said, as she climbed out of the water, her eyes focused on Kestrel, her own nakedness forgotten, of no importance in the extraordinary moment. “Was that a goddess?” she asked.
“It was,” Kestrel raised himself up onto his elbows, and looked around. The imps were still in the water, oblivious to the events that had just occurred. Putienne lay unconscious on the ground nearby, a victim of the strange entity.
“Let’s carry the yeti over to the water,” Kestrel suggested, feeling surprisingly good after having just fought the challenging battle with the otherworldly opponent.
“What’s happening?” Hampus asked. “Was that Kere, our goddess?” he asked.
“That was Kere,” Kestrel agreed.
“We are in a dream or a nightmare,” Orren said. “Yetis, imps, and now monsters and elven goddesses – I never thought I’d know anything like this. I’m not sure I want to,” he added, as he rose and followed Kestrel to help put the yeti in the healing water.
“I never thought I’d meet a goddess,” Hampus said wonderingly, as he too helped move the heavy creature to the waters of the spring.
They wrestled Putienne into the water, and then Kestrel sat on the shore beside the unconscious yeti, letting his body respond to the fear he felt at being hunted by a powerful, supernatural enemy. He shivered, then felt Raines place an arm around his shoulder. She had discreetly pulled her clothes on, and now was trying to comfort him.
“You fought that thing!” she said. “You used great powers – you’re more than just an ordinary man, or elf,” she thoughtfully appended.
“No one better could have saved us from the evil in the mine,” Orren agreed, sitting on Kestrel’s other side. “Was this the same evil power? Was it Krusima after all?”
“I don’t know Orren. I couldn’t tell. This was much stronger than the evil in the mine,” Kestrel considered the question. “I don’t think I really beat the evil this time, and I had the power of the spring to help me here. I couldn’t have fought like that on my own. I don’t have that much power.”
“But you do have powers, Kestrel,” Raines reminded him. “Great powers, plus an enchanted knife, a yeti and imps and I don’t know what else. Oh, and a goddess who watches over you personally!”
Putty started to revive at that moment, raising her head and looking about, wild-eyed. She flailed an arm and stood up in the water, ready to fight the opponent that had attacked her.
“Putty, calm down!” Kestrel urged her as he and the others scrambled back from the water, seeking a safe distance out of the yeti’s reach. “The fight is over!”
The wet creature stared around, then gave a plaintive sound.
“You did well. Thank you for helping,” Kestrel told her.
“We should go wake up the imps and leave this place,” Kestrel told the others. For the first time, the spring no longer felt like a safe haven, a retreat he could always go to for comfort and rest. That atmosphere of security had been shattered by the arrival of the red entity.
He went across the spring and raised the numerous imps from the water.
“Kestrel-friend! I had such dreams about you fighting!” Mulberry said, the first imp Kestrel roused. “I had many good dreams, but then the dreams changed suddenly to show you fighting a monster, right here at the spring! Never have the spring waters given me such terrors before,” she told Kestrel with agitation in her voice.
“Those were more than dreams, Mulberry-friend,” Kestrel replied. “A thing of evil came here and attacked me. The spring gave me the power to fight it, but the evil one was terrible, and I do not know what it was, or where it went.”
Other imps reported the same unpleasant experience as they awoke, and Kestrel came to realize that the spring had broadcast his story to all the imps who had been present and resting in the water.
“We fear for you, great warrior,” Stillwater said, as the last of the imps began to recover from their time in the water. “That enemy we saw is one that we do not understand. We see that it has terrible power, but we do not know its weaknesses.
“Our own god spoke to us! He told us to be your strength. What does that mean?” Acanthus asked.
“I’m not sure,” Kestrel said. “But it sounds comforting. Your people have been my greatest strength before,” he gave as much of a smile as he could.
“He spoke to me too,” Mulberry said. “He said that the evil one was looking only for you; he could feel it’s hatred for you, and it’s fear of you.”
“Do you not know why it was hunting you?” the imp asked.
“I do not, my friend,” Kestrel replied. “I will watch out and be careful, and ask the gods for help and information,” he said reassuringly. “They have always been my friends.”
“And rightly so,” Stillwater said.
Minutes later, the group of travelers was assembled together, and the uneasy imps circled overhead, looking about in the darkness for any sign of further danger.
“Where do you wish for us to take you, Kestrel-friend?” Stillwater asked.
Kestrel looked around at the group.
“Hampus and I have to go to Kirevee, in the Northern Forest, to see the elves there; there’s no point in traveling any further by foot or boat, so I’d ask you to take us directly there. I want Putienne to come with us,” he spoke, knowing that he would have to deal with the issue of the yeti’s presence at the court and the complications it would cause.
“I cannot speak for the humans,” he told the imps. “Let me ask them what they wish to do.”
He repeated his report to Raines and Orren. The two humans looked at one another.
“May I travel with you to this elven kingdom?” Raines asked.
“There’s nothing for me to go back to in Narrow Bay.
“Is there harm for me to travel to the elven kingdom with you?” she asked.
“There will be no harm. The Northern elves see humans as often as folks in Narrow Bay see elves, I imagine. You will not know the language,” Kestrel slowly advised. “It may not be the best place for you to stay in the long term, but for the next few days, it would be good.”
“If Raines is going, may I go too?” Orren asked. “That way she will not be the only human there. It would be better for her to have someone who she can talk to, I think.”
Kestrel smiled. “Of course you may come as well,” he said.
He relayed the report to the imps that all would be traveling to the Northern Kingdom, and the imps descended to surround their passengers, as Kestrel closed in on Putty to travel with the yeti once again. Moments later they left the dark, quiet setting of the healing pool, where the twinkling stars reflected silently off the surface of the waters that had been troubled by the appearance of evil.
Chapter 25 – At Kirevee
The group arrived atop the roof of the tall apartment building that Kestrel had stayed in during his previous visit to Kirevee.
“Where are we?” Raines asked loudly, as the steady winds at the high altitude whispered in all their ears and the windmills slowly turned.
“Stillwater, thank you to you and all your companions for the assistance tonight, and my apologies for the troubles that interrupted your dreams,” Kestrel said formally to the imps, preparing to release them from their service.
There was a murmur among the imps.
“We do not hold you responsible for the evil, of course, friend Kestrel,” Stillwater replied.
“Though I have no doubt we could find something you are guilty of,” Mulberry’s voice sounded from the back of the floating pack.
“You will be careful, and call us if you need our assistance, I’m sure,” Stillwater said.
“If you don’t, I’ll come punish you myself,” Mulberry said.
“She really does care about me, doesn’t she?” Kestrel asked the assembled imps, drawing a ripple of appreciative titters.
The Guided Journey (Book 6) Page 25
