“So what happened?” Kestrel asked.
“See that smoke?” the shop keeper pointed to the column of dark smoke.
“That. She killed them. Had them burned at the stake as a lesson, the way those two easterners told her to. Now the rest of the army’s fighting to get in and get revenge, but they’re not doing so well,” the man pointed at the dismal battle again.
“Kestrel! What are you doing?” a voice called from behind him. He turned in surprise, and saw that Lim and all the others were approaching, guided by the imps who flew in front of them.
“Got some friends too, do you? Are they from Firheng? They don’t look like humans, except the two pretty ones – are they mother and daughter, or sisters?” the shopkeeper asked Kestrel.
“Great trees and lightning! What’s that?” he shouted, as a swarm of imps came dropping down out of the sky to arrive at Kestrel’s location, just as the reset of his entourage arrived.
“Well Kestrel?” Hampus asked as they joined him in front of the shop.
“I found out that Alicia is gone. I’m going in there to set her free – her and everyone else. The princess is burning the officers from the army that attacked Firheng,” he told the others grimly.
“Burning? That’s revolting!” Hampus said angrily. “We’re going in with you. I know the palace layout. Get us in there now.”
“Medeina, can we help those guards?” he asked, pointing to the desperate guards who were not giving up their attack on the palace, despite their losses.
“Who’s Medeina?” Remy asked.
“I am,” the goddess said simply. “Here, do this,” she placed her hand on Kestrel’s, then projected a thought into him consciousness.
“But your name is Moorin,” Putienne protested.
“Ah,” Kestrel said, as he examined the goddess’s plan. She showed him the concept and the way to make his energy serve as a shield for the entire force of soldiers who were desperately shooting up at the protected palace guards atop the palace walls. The protection was like a vast umbrella, larger than he had ever created before, but she showed how to even out the use of his energy to make it uniformly strong, not strong enough to resist all the missiles that flew down from the ramparts, but powerful enough to slow them to a non-lethal speed.
“Now,” he released his own personal shield, and formed the new one, a brightly glowing level of energy in the air, even with the top of the palace walls.
There were shouts of surprise from the war zone around the palace.
“And what if we?” he suggested to Medeina, showing her an image of the energy bridge that Morph had created in the land of Skyes. He imagined such a bridge structure of energy built into his protective shield, leading from the window of a nearby building, over to the palace walls.
“What’s happening?” Hampus asked.
“Yes,” she agreed. She gave him a boost of energy, a share of her own powers that flowed easily into his own.
“Let’s go enter the palace,” Kestrel said to the others. “Thanks for the information,” he told the shopkeeper, before he began to trot along the street.
“Captain! Captain Lim!” a pair of voices called from the forces on the street.
“What is this?” they pointed upward, as a set of arrows from the palace dropped feebly to the ground after penetrating the protective shield.
“Do you know them?” Kestrel asked, as he stood in front of an empty building facing the palace.
“They were in one of my squads. They’re good soldiers, forced to follow orders,” Lim said.
“Bring them with us; we’re going into the palace now,” Kestrel told him, as he stopped and pushed a door open.
“This way, fall in,” Lim spoke in the crisp tones of an officer, as he and the others followed Kestrel and Medeina into the building.
Inside, a woman holding an infant screamed, but Kestrel only asked where the stairs were, then followed her pointing finger and led his troop upstairs.
Moments later, Kestrel stepped out onto the blue floor in the sky, the translucent protective shield that had ended the slaughter of the elves below. One of the guards on the ramparts shot at him as he exited the window frame, leaving the warmth of the house and returning to the cool winter air.
Kestrel raised his hand and deflected the arrow away as he raised the shield in front of him quickly, then lowered it again as he threw Lucretia at the archer.
“Follow in Kestrel’s footsteps,” he heard Medeina say from behind him as he advanced across the bridge he had reinforced in the midst of the shield.
“Lucretia, return,” he called as the guard who had shot at him fell forward and toppled over the wall with a knife in his chest.
Many of the other guards inside the palace were fleeing from the sight of the new set of invaders who were magically crossing over the air to reach the top of the palace wall. Kestrel paused and looked behind himself, where he saw that numerous soldiers from the street below were seizing on the opportunity to enter the palace by the extraordinary new route that had opened up.
As he watched, he saw one of the new followers step to the side, and start to fall, only to be hauled back onto the beam by the elf following him.
Sobered by the incident, the others in the group watched ever step Kestrel took, and placed their feet as nearly in the same locations as possible. The remaining guards atop the walls, astonished and fearful of the strange force they faced and seemingly could not defeat, deserted their posts at last, running from the approaching invasion of the palace grounds.
Kestrel smiled in thankfulness at the sight of the fleeing opposition. He had no wish to use his power against other elves, especially those who might simply be following orders in defending the palace. And he was starting to feel the beginning hints of weariness from the extended use of his powers. He reached the top of the palace wall, the walkways empty, and he hopped down, handed Medeina down, then stepped aside as the others crowded onto the ramparts as well. When all were safely delivered, he looked back at the blue platform that spread across the open space above the street, and he released his use of his energies, causing the shield to wither away.
Lim took the lead and ran down the stairs, his troops, Kestrel, and his friends all following quickly. They started moving rapidly through the palace grounds, as Kestrel called to Lim, “We need to find the prisoners in the cells and release them first.” Kestrel wanted reassurance that Alicia was not being mistreated.
At a crossroads on the palace grounds, Kestrel was taken aback by Lim’s decision to go right, when Kestrel expected to turn left, to journey to the prison cells where he had found Alicia held before, and liberated her.
“They have a special set of prison cells, one they created after the new advisors from the east arrived,” Lim explained, and he led towards an ordinary-looking storage shed set among the working buildings of the palace operations. When he pulled open a large door, a trio of startled guards took one look at the new arrivals, then ran through a door and down a dark set of stairs.
“Hurry! Before they do any harm to the prisoners!” one of Lim’s soldiers shouted, and the whole group rushed forward, Kestrel and Medeina moving into the lead, as they leapt over crates of stored goods and ran past stacks of barrels to get to the stairs.
The stonewalled passage down was dark, and Medeina created a green glow around herself as she followed directly behind Kestrel going down the stairs. They heard shouts from the level below as they descended, causing Kestrel to recklessly plunge down the steps, then bounce off a wall at the bottom and redirect his momentum to strike a wooden door forcefully. The door frame splintered and the door burst open.
Beyond the door, Kestrel was the first of his group into the underground detention area, where a number of cells were poorly lit by smoky lanterns hung from ceiling hooks. The space was filled with screams and shouts, as a number of guards with knives were entering multiple cells at once, bearing down on the prisoners and seeking to take their lives.
Unbidden, a memory came to Kestrel a remembrance of an event, and his action, in Kirevee during the previous summer. It was the only way he imagined he could protect all of his threatened friends at once.
The others from his group were thundering down the steps, but he paid no attention as he prepared to exercise his powers immediately.
“Kestrel, what are you doing?” Medeina asked as she sensed him beginning to call upon his abilities.
He didn’t answer, but raised his hands, then fired forth streams of glaringly bright gray energy, while he pointed fingers in each of the cells, waving his hands and sending his powers flowing across every occupant of every room, friend and foe alike. As the energy struck them, they became petrified, frozen into stone statutes that carried out no further attacks.
The drain on his powers was significant, and weakened him further, after the heavy use of energy at the battle in front of the palace walls. He slowly crumpled, falling to his knees, while Putienne cried out in fear.
Medeina placed her hand on his shoulder, then spoke aloud to him. “That was interesting, and perhaps the only thing to do. Wisely done, Kestrel, though you could have saved yourself some energy by doing it properly.”
“Who are you? What do you know about him and his powers?” Remy asked.
“She is,” Kestrel started to say, when the entire room shook violently, as a rush of exploding noise preceded by a split second the arrival of upheaving tremors in the floor of the underground chamber. A cloud of dust and smoke shot down into the prison from the stairwell, laced with debris that struck the assembled rescuers like shrapnel.
Kestrel nearly planted his face in the dust as the floor shook him from his kneeling position, while many others were knocked to the ground. He watched as one of the stone prison guard figures toppled over and shattered into fragments.
A rush of debris – large chunks of rock, pebbles, and dust – came pouring from the staircase, blocking any thought of passage back to the storage space above.
Several of the lanterns were extinguished by the gust of sulphurous smoke that blasted into the prison area, so that the lighting in the dusty atmosphere was mostly the green light of Medeina’s glow, adding to the ghastliness of the scene.
“Those barrels!” Medeina shouted angrily. “We ran right by them. Do you know what they were? More of the evil mixture we faced in Firheng! It is blasphemous to use the elements of the earth in such a wicked, destructive way!”
“How do we get out of here?” Hampus asked. “Is there another way to leave?” He looked at Lim’s guards who had led the way to the new prison.
“We don’t know. I knew they took prisoners into this building, but I was never in here,” one of them said after looking at Lim.
“Too bad they can’t talk,” another guard motioned over to the petrified figures in the closest cell.
“They can,” Kestrel said calmly. “I’ll be able to return them to flesh, after I rest a bit and recover.”
“Here Kestrel, let me help you up,” Putienne said, stepping over next to him. She lifted him gently, helping him to his feet, after which he dusted himself off.
“There is a way to remove all this debris,” Medeina told Kestrel. “But it will take both of us working together.”
“Who is she really, my lord?” Remy repeated his earlier question.
“She is a visitor, and my guest,” Kestrel replied.
“There’s no point in hiding this anymore, dear,” Medeina spoke up. “The child knows I am more than I’ve seemed, and I long to return to my own shape, anyway.” And as she finished speaking, her body shimmered, and she shifted into her Parstole shape.
Medeina’s change produced a round of shouts and drawn knives, as the elves in the prison – other than Kestrel – were shocked by both the change, and the strange new form their companion took.
The shouts from the group rose in pitch a second later, and the members of the squad began to scramble away as Putienne responded to Medeina’s metamorphosis by changing herself into her yeti form, ready to attack the frightening new appearance of the red being.
“A changeling!” the goddess gasped in surprise.
Putty charged towards the new form of Medeina, and the red goddess raised her hands to deliver a strike of her power.
“No! Stop!” Kestrel shouted, and despite his weakened state, he was spurred by fear of the harm the two would do to each other, and he threw up a blue shield between the two protagonists.
Putty charged into the shield, and rebounded with a yelp as a sharp shock of energy sparked upon her contact, while at the same time Medeina shot a bolt of energy that struck the shield and was absorbed by it.
“Don’t fight each other,” Kestrel gasped, and he collapsed again, re-weakened by his hasty use of power.
“Kestrel!” Medeina called and she slipped around the end of the blue shield to reach him.
Putienne transformed back into her human form, and swept across the floor to Kestrel’s side as well.
“It’s good to see the two of you together peacefully,” he said with a wisp of a smile, as he rubbed his hand across his head.
The two women glared at one another, but said nothing.
“Help me to my feet,” he instructed, and each of them lifted him under an arm.
“Now, take me to Alicia and Miskel,” he requested. “We’ll see if either of them knows of another way out of this tunnel.”
“Which one first?” Medeina asked.
“He will choose the female doctor lover first,” Mulberry spoke to the other imps.
Kestrel looked up near the low ceiling and grinned at his blue friend.
“Let’s go to Alicia first,” he laughed.
The doctor was a statute in her cell, her attacker approaching her with his knife held in his hand high over his head, frozen in place before he could plunge it down into his victim. She was huddled down in a corner, arms held above her as protection from the attack that had not yet fallen upon her.
Kestrel knelt next to her hard, stone body, thanks to the help of the two women assisting him, each of them still holding his shoulders.
The effort to reverse the petrification was a subtler use of power than the process had been to change Alicia’s flesh into stone in the first place. He placed a hand on the crown of her head, and began to release a weak stream of his energy into his target.
This way, Medeina silently instructed him, showing him once again how to improve the use of his powers.
Thank you, he replied, as he followed her direction.
“What are you two doing?” Putienne asked in an accusing voice, her eyes narrowed. “I heard you talking to each other, but you didn’t move your lips!”
She is in contact with you, and she is a very sensitive being, highly attuned to you, Medeina communicated.
Putty, we can communicate like this when we are touching, that is all. Medeina has such great powers that it is possible, Kestrel tried to calmly explain.
“Will you marry her? Are you two so close?” Putienne asked.
Medeina laughed out loud, then answered. “Marry? No, no, no, no,” she spoke in a staccato fashion.
“He is much more amenable to you, and you to him, as evidenced by your ability to detect our communications. But there is a bride waiting for him, in a land far away, and once he faces his three challenges, he will find her prepared to go to the altar with him,” Medeina spoke.
“Now, stop embarrassing and distracting the boy, and let him focus on his duty at hand,” Medeina admonished Putty.
“Who is she?” the girl asked Kestrel in a mournful wail.
“She’s a visitor from another land, one of the
lands I came through when I returned to the Inner Seas a few weeks ago, after beating the Viathins,” Kestrel admitted part of the truth, without revealing that Medeina was actually a divinity.
“And when this adventure is done, our friend Kestrel will take me back home,” Medeina added. “Now Kestrel, get along with your work here,” she admonished him.
He scowled at her, then turned and faced Alicia once again, and resumed working to restore her to flesh, using his power in a more subtle, organic manner than he had before, in compliance with Medeina’s directions. Alicia’s skin color slowly turned a warmer shade, and her hair dissolved from a hard stone mass into pliant individual strands beneath the palm of his hand, while he could see the texture of her skin grow soft and warm. Her eyes took on color seconds later, and she suddenly gasped, then swiveled her head and stared at Kestrel, terror still evident in her eyes.
“What?” she shouted.
“Kestrel!” she screamed next, before he moved his arms to engulf her in an embrace.
“You’re okay; you’re safe,” he told her. “We’re here now and you’re not under attack.”
“Kestrel!” she repeated, breathless with shock. “I was going to be killed, and now,” she left the rest of her sentence unfinished, then reached up cautiously and pressed a fingertip against the stone figure of her interrupted attacker, as the threatening statue hovered over her.
“You did this?” she asked breathlessly.
“He did, all on his own,” Medeina spoke.
Alicia’s eyes shifted from the statue to Medeina, and grew wide, then shifted to Kestrel.
“This?” she couldn’t form a suitable question.
“This is my companion, Medeina,” Kestrel rocked back, bumping Medeina and Putienne back as he opened a space for Alicia to stand. He struggled to his own feet, and offered a hand to Alicia, who grabbed it and nearly pulled the weakened hero down as she stood up, then embraced him tightly.
“Thank you, thank you,” she told him, as she looked over his shoulder at the strange scene beyond – the dusty air, the dim light, the others who stood outside the cell.
A Marriage of Friends Page 14
