A Marriage of Friends

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “It’s like the chest; the scars will fade. There’s some swelling that will go down as well,” the doctor told him.

  “Until he can go to the healing spring,” Wren said confidently. “Then he’ll be good as new.”

  “And all the pretty girls will want to pamper him again, as they always seem to,” Stillwater affirmed. “The Rishiare Estelle should end within the next few weeks, and I will call an army of imps to carry our hero away to be healed.”

  Lark turned away, and Wren turned with her. The doctor picked up the gauze and carried it away, while Gail moved to the bedside and gingerly placed her hand in Kestrel’s.

  “It could be worse,” she told him. “You could have red hair.”

  She was trying to lighten his mood, he realized, and he appreciated the effort.

  “It doesn’t bother me, really,” he told her. He squeezed her hand gently to emphasize his message.

  “What can we do to help?” the Duke asked the doctor. “What do you need? I’ll send my men anywhere to retrieve any remedy you need.”

  “There is nothing else I can do,” the doctor said matter-of-factly. “The Destroyer suffered terrible injuries, but he has survived. For a being with his abilities, appearances are of little consequences, really,” the doctor waxed philosophically. “After all, look at how we tolerated the Viathins among us for so many years.

  “Good day to you all,” he said, picking up a leather satchel. “And you too young hero, as well. Thank you for all that you’ve done to make Uniontown a better place.” With that comment and tip of his hat, he went out the door and out of sight.

  “May I look in a mirror?” Kestrel asked quietly, after the doctor was gone and an uncomfortable silence filled the room.

  “There are none here in the cottage,” Gail told him.

  “We’re in the cottage? Your aunt’s cottage?” he asked in surprise. He had thought he was in some airy chamber of Duke Listay’s home.

  “It’s what you asked for,” Wren told him, coming over closer to him. “When you finished the fight at Fields’s fortress, you were lying in the street, burnt, bloody, and nearly incoherent. You kept mentioning Duchess Tyle and Gail, so some of the other freed prisoners and us brought you here. Fields’s men weren’t following or fighting. Seeing you destroy another of their Triplets, put the fear in them, let me tell you! They were deserting in droves.”

  “How long have I been here?” Kestrel asked.

  “About two weeks,” the Duke answered. “You’ve been kept heavily sedated to allow you to heal. When the doctor first saw you, he said you wouldn’t live, but we told him that wasn’t the right answer.”

  Kestrel tried to grasp all that they told him.

  “What of Fields and the Triplets now?” he asked.

  “Fields is fled,” the Duke said. “He took his people he had left and he went east to his stronghold out on the plains. He doesn’t have many loyal men left, and no one speaks up for him publically or privately. When the new king is chosen, there’ll be time to deal with him.”

  “And the Triplets?” Kestrel asked.

  “The one you fought last, when you rescued Lark,” he looked over at his daughter, who stood looking out a window, “is still here, but the other two are gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?” Kestrel asked.

  “We can’t find them, or any trace of them,” the Duke replied.

  “What does the captive one say?” Kestrel asked.

  There was a pause.

  “She’s not dead or alive,” Lark spoke from her spot. “She doesn’t talk.”

  Kestrel looked at the Duke, puzzled.

  “She is not alive, or dead, just as Lark said. Her flesh is cool, not warm; her heart doesn’t beat. But she doesn’t change; she just lies still. Is it something you’d understand?”

  “I’ll go examine her when I feel better,” Kestrel said. He suddenly felt very tired.

  “I’d like to rest now,” he said.

  “Of course,” the Duke said. “And we have affairs to attend to as well, now that we know you’re on the mend.”

  Lark came back to his bedside, and took his hand as she looked at him with warmth now evident. “Thank you for rescuing me. I haven’t even told you that yet. I’ll come back tomorrow to talk to you. I want to find out what you did after we parted in the land of the Skyes.”

  “There’s a lot to tell,” Kestrel said.

  “I’ll be ready for a long story. You rest easy, my hero,” she said fondly. Her father put his arm around her shoulders. “Are the rest of you coming now too?”

  “I’ll stay with Kestrel for a little while more,” Wren said.

  “As will I,” Stillwater quickly agreed.

  “And I’ll run to Aunt Tyle’s house in a little while,” Gail joined with the other two.

  Kestrel watched the Duke and his daughter depart, then he closed his eyes.

  “How bad is it?” he asked quietly.

  “I think my red hair was worse,” Gail responded.

  Kestrel smiled. “Then I must be very handsome.”

  She smiled back, leaned over, and pecked his forehead, then picked up the now-familiar straw and bottle of green syrup. She gave him a dose, and he quickly fell asleep.

  The next day, Lark came back in the middle of the morning. Stillwater and Wren were with Kestrel at the time, and he ended up giving them his story of what happened after their group departed from the land of the Skyes, telling them of the battle with the Kovell, the black mist, and then his journey with Medeina through her land.

  He enraptured them with his stories of the battle for the Eastern Forest. Stillwater and Wren were familiar with his Oaktown and Firheng venues, and all three of them were astonished by the news of the exploding powder that the twins had used as a deadly weapon.

  “So she taught you more about how to use your powers?” Wren asked keenly. Though Kestrel had not expressed himself so bluntly, she understood his meaning. “Medeina spent all that time with you showing you how to be more powerful?”

  “She showed me how to be more effective with what I have,” he tried to summarize his experience with the itinerant goddess.

  “We’re going to a ball tonight!” Lark blurted out.

  Kestrel looked at the women in surprise.

  “There hasn’t been a ball in years, not since the first years the Viathins started to arrive,” Gail said. “I’ve never been to one before. My aunt says that young women think about them too much.”

  “Wren’s been to balls; she’s the one who’ll tell us what to do,” Lark said confidently.

  Kestrel laughed at the notion of his warlike cousin being the model of decorum at a ball, but he stopped snickering when she shook a fist at him.

  In the afternoon, the girls left, and Stuart came to sit with him. With the guardsman and Stillwater as his only companions, Kestrel was easily able to persuade them to allow him to rise from his bed and walk about for the first time. His legs were startlingly weak, after numerous days in bed, and he found that the walk from his room, out of the cottage, to a bench in the garden of Duchess Tyle, was enough to tire him. He sat with Stuart and Stillwater in the garden, enjoying the warm sunlight that filtered down through bare but budding branches, and listening to birds singing mating songs of spring.

  “Has the first day of spring arrived?” he asked Stillwater.

  “Next week, friend Kestrel!” the imp replied gaily. “And not too long thereafter, the Rishiare Estelle should start to fade away, and life will be better! We will travel as we want, and eat mushrooms, and see other imps again!”

  Kestrel smiled at his friend’s enthusiasm.

  “What is happening with Duke Listay, now that Fields is gone?” Kestrel asked Stuart.

  “He’s everyone’s presumed new king,” the guard said. “There’s lots of maneuvering and scheming going on.

  “The old lady here,” he motioned to Tyle’s mansion, “is playing a pretty shrewd game bargaining for marrying her
niece to Lucius,” he referred to Listay’s son. “The old lady and the duke enjoy sparring with one another in the negotiations. If she were younger, I think the duke would bargain to marry her instead of his son marrying her niece!” the man laughed, and Kestrel laughed with him, trying to imagine the formidable duchess as an object of romance.

  “How bad do I look?” Kestrel asked Stuart.

  “I’ve been through battles, and I’ve seen ugly things, things no man wants to see. So I’m hardened. You’re not pretty, but you’re alive,” the guard told him candidly. “You shouldn’t go out a lot,” he added a warning. “Folks will be upset.”

  Kestrel nodded his head. He raised his hand and finally did what he had considered doing for over a day; he transformed a patch of air into a reflective sheet of energy, and looked at his slightly distorted image in the mirror in front of him.

  There were mottled patches of red and brown and pink across his chest, shoulders, neck and jaw. The skin was puckered in many places, stretched tight and shiny in others. It was unpleasant, he knew. But the healing spring would provide the remedy he needed, he also knew.

  With a wave of the same outstretched hand, he made the mirror dissolve.

  “My lord,” Stuart said, “it’s extraordinary! I’m surprised no one’s suggested that we make you the king!”

  Kestrel laughed. “What a title that would be – King Destroyer! I don’t think it would create much comfort, would it?”

  “No,” Stuart agreed. Minutes later, after sitting and talking quietly, he helped walk Kestrel around the garden for several minutes to exercise his legs, then took him back into the cottage.

  That evening, shortly after sunset, Kestrel and Stillwater were sitting together in the cottage parlor, alone, when there was a knock at the door, and then a pair of servants arrived with large trays, followed by the Duchess Tyle.

  “Since my niece has left me for the evening, I thought I’d see if you gentlemen would allow me to dine with you,” she said.

  The servants proceeded to lay out three settings at the table, averting their eyes from Kestrel as much as possible, and then exited, leaving the three to enjoy their meal.

  “These girls, this whole generation, have never had such a thing as a ball to dance at,” Tyle said. “Thank you Kestrel, for giving them the chance to have such a thing.

  “Thank you for giving us all a chance to have a normal society again,” she told him.

  The conversation turned to the garden in the spring time, and the flowers that would bloom in the coming days and weeks.

  Kestrel grew stronger every day thereafter, walking in the garden for exercise. He remained in seclusion on the Duchess’s property, his location known to only his small circle of friends in Uniontown.

  Wren announced that she was going to leave, to return to Seafare to reunite with Creata. “I hope I’ve made him suffer with desperate longing,” she joking told Kestrel. “But the truth is, I long to see him.” She caught a berth aboard a riverboat the next day, with assurances from Duke Listay that she would always be welcome to return to Uniontown as a noble member of his own household.

  “When will I see you again?” she asked Kestrel.

  “It’s hard to say,” he shrugged. “There’s so much going on here, Lark and I seldom have time to talk seriously. I’ll want to go back to the Eastern Forest when the imps are able to travel again, and then return here, I imagine.” He thought the scenario seemed realistic and likely, and so he parted with Wren in good spirits on both their accounts.

  Lark came to walk with him every day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, talking with him about all that was going on in Uniontown’s newly burgeoning social scene, and some of what was happening in the political scene as well. Her father’s ascension to the throne was widely assumed, leaving her and Lucius in position to have to represent him at many places, and to be looked upon and called upon to provide a pseudo-royal presence on many occasions. She grew so busy that she soon cut her visits with him back to only one per day.

  Gail visited him every day as well, strolling from the manor to his cottage at all times of day to spend time with him. She was walking with him on the afternoon when Stillwater came swooping down in front of them, so fast, so close, and so unexpectedly, that Gail clutched tightly at Kestrel’s shirt in surprise.

  “It is now Spring!” the imp pronounced dramatically. “I just felt it! Spring is here!

  “If the Rishiare Estelle were not in place, we would be flying to the healing spring right now!” he crowed.

  “Not much longer, Kestrel joy-giver! How many imps can you put in the spring at once?” he laughed

  Kestrel burst out laughing as well. “Let us count down the days, and when it comes, we will go to Oaktown to pack a picnic basket so that I can remain at the spring around the clock. I know the imps and sprites will come in shifts and waves to enjoy the water.”

  Stillwater flew off exuberantly, and Kestrel explained the healing spring to Gail with relish.

  “We’ll take you there someday,” he promised.

  Not long afterwards, a day came when Lark did not arrive to visit. Gail later explained that the princess-in-waiting had been requested to join an important noble family at their estate.

  Lark stopped by for lunch the following day to apologize in person for her absence. “This family is the most important landholder on the west bank of the river,” she explained. “Lucius is very good friends with the heir, and so they wanted to meet me as well.

  “It was a lovely time at their estate, but I’m sorry I didn’t see you,” she leaned down to kiss the top of his head. They spoke for a bit more, until she had to leave for another event.

  The duchess came to see him the following day, the first time she had visited him since their dinner.

  “The city has grown calm, but the gossip remains centered on the question of where is the Destroyer and where did the Triplets go,” she told him as they strolled along a path in the garden. The ferns had sprouted luxuriant new fronds, and flowers were blooming from the honeysuckle bushes

  “I know where the Destroyer is of course, and it takes all that I have to refrain from laughing at my friends as they guess this or that or the other,” she told him. “But I’m curious to know what you did with the Triplets.”

  “My lady,” Kestrel protested vehemently. “I’ve done nothing with the Triplets. I’ve not seen them since the battle with the girl that did this to me,” he gestured towards the scars across his upper body. “What happened to her?”

  “Her body was gone one morning, disappeared from the morgue where it had been kept. No one knows what happened to it, and all assumed that you had taken it,” she assured him.

  He shook his head, contemplating the strange disappearance of an undead sorceress, but reached no conclusions.

  Gail came to have dinner with him that night. “Don’t you have a ball or dance to go to?” he asked.

  “I begged off,” she said easily, but Kestrel could see that her eyes were troubled.

  “You’re kind to spend so much time with me,” he complimented her. “Look at how much Lark has to do in society.”

  “She,” Gail began, then stopped. “After all the time you spent with me while my hair was red and I was unfit for view, I owe you a hundred dinners and visits,” she told him.

  “You know,” Kestrel spoke reflectively, “I don’t really mind not seeing many other people. This is calm and peaceful, and gives me time to relax and think. Maybe being banished isn’t so bad. Once the Rishiare Estelle is over and I can travel to the healing spring, maybe I won’t have these scars healed, just so I can continue to be isolated.”

  “Do you truly believe that this spring of yours can heal those scars? That seems impossible, Kestrel dear,” she told him. “The doctor thought you were lucky to have lived at all; it seems impossible to imagine those being healed after such severe damage.

  “Not that I really even notice any more,” she added hastily.<
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  The next morning, Gail arrived in mid-morning, her eyes looking reddened and bloodshot.

  “Kestrel, are you available for Lark to come see you?” the girl asked in a tremulous voice.

  “Of course, of course. What a silly thing to ask,” Kestrel grinned at the girl.

  “She’ll be here to speak to you in a minute,” Gail said, then fled from the cottage with undue haste.

  A minute later, Lark entered the cottage parlor, and stood standing by the door. She was pale, and nervous.

  “My lord Kestrel,” she began in a formal tone, one that sent a chill down Kestrel’s spine.

  “With your injury and appearance so greatly altered, I find that I admire you no less. But the role that I am going to have to carry out will be one of constantly living in the public eye, and you will not be able to join me.

  “You are truly a great hero, one who has saved multiple worlds from destruction. And you’ve saved me personally many times,” she said in a softer tone.

  “I’m sorry Kestrel. I’m really sorry,” she began to grow teary-eyed.

  “Are you telling me that you’re leaving me because of the way I look?” Kestrel asked incredulously. “I’ll look completely different in just another month or so,” he told her.

  “The only reason I came to Uniontown in the first place was because of you. I thought you had feelings for me,” he said emotionally.

  “Kestrel, I did. I still do. I’m very fond of you. But you can’t be a prince when you can’t ever go out into the public with me,” she told him. She rushed over and awkwardly hugged him, as he refused to return the embrace, then she stepped back.

  “I have to go. But we will still be friends, good friends, I hope. Good bye, Kestrel,” she told him, tears running down her face, and she went out the door.

  Kestrel stood in the cottage, stunned by the revelation. He had not expected it, had not foreseen it at all.

  “Kestrel, may I come in?” Gail stood at the still open door, studying him.

  “I’d prefer to be alone, please,” he told her.

  “I understand,” she said sympathetically. “Please send for me – send Stillwater to come fetch me if you want to talk to someone or just have a friend in the room.”