The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 01 - The Healing Spring

by Jeffrey Quyle

  The monster demonstrated that despite its injury it could cover ground quickly. Kestrel had time for only one more arrow shot he realized, and he strung a new shaft, took aim at the open mouth that was screaming furiously, and let the arrow go.

  Just as he released the shot, Arlen jumped at the beast, cracking his staff against its head, trying to distract it from Kestrel. The yeti’s head jerked in response to the strike, and Kestrel’s arrow feebly scratched its cheek before dropping to the ground.

  Arlen backed up quickly, as the yeti turned towards him, but in the process he somehow tangled his feet, and fell backwards. The yeti kicked at the fallen elf, punting him several yards away, but was diverted from further attack when Artur threw a rock that hit the back of the monster’s head.

  It turned and ran towards Artur, but stopped when Kestrel fired another shot that penetrated its cheek. Confused by the multiple sources of attacks, enraged, and in pain, the yeti abruptly changed direction to run at Kestrel, who panicked and climbed a tree to escape the charge, rising above the monster that stood at the base of the trunk,. In response, the yeti grabbed the trunk of the tree and began to shake it wildly, causing Kestrel to hang on fearfully, sure that he was going to be dislodged.

  Arlen arose from his prone position on the ground, and flicked two knives simultaneously at the yeti. One bounced off the monster’s back, while the other weakly penetrated the skin of its buttocks, doing no great harm, but causing pain that distracted the creature from its pursuit of Kestrel, and motivated it to lumber back towards Arlen once again.

  Kestrel jumped down from his tree haven, dropped his bow and pulled his sword free, running to help Arlen, but not as quickly as Artur did, who emerged from the darkness with his staff, and thrust it between the running monster’s legs, tripping it up and causing it to fall.

  The force of the yeti’s fall snapped Artur’s staff as easily as if it were a toothpick, and when the monster rose again, the linguist was defenseless as it pounced upon him with a blow to the chest that made him crumple to the ground with a pitiful moan.

  Arlen jumped on the monster’s back at that moment, and Kestrel reached it as well. The yeti screamed triumphantly at the defeat of one of its feisty opponents, and reached back over its shoulders to rip the second one away, when Kestrel placed both hands on the hilt of his sword and ran at the creature, thrusting his blade deeply into its groin. The yeti gave a scream, and swung its arms forward, backhanding Kestrel with a powerful blow as it tried to reach the weapon that had dealt it a mortal wound.

  Kestrel flew several feet through the air and hit the ground hard. His head flew back and hit a stone, stunning him for seconds, as the flames from the shed fire luridly lit the scene, and the yeti screamed in agony. Kestrel finally looked up to see the monster down on its knees, then he watched as it fell on its side and moaned with decreasing volume. Arlen was off the monster’s back, kneeling over Artur, and Kestrel braced himself to rise and walk over to his companions.

  “Get your blade out of the yeti and go check on the family,” Arlen said as Kestrel approached him.

  “How’s Artur?” Kestrel asked.

  “He’s gone on to the next realm,” Arlen answered, keeping his head down as he held his dead companion’s hand.

  Kestrel walked over to the nearly dead yeti, which moaned periodically while his limbs quivered randomly. Cautiously, Kestrel stepped in and placed both hands on the handle of the sword, then pulled the blade, giving a mighty heave to draw it free of the monster’s body. He skipped back a step as the yeti’s arms flailed weakly, then looked up, away from the immediate scene and took in the rest of the vicinity.

  The woman was kneeling over the inert figure on the ground near the burning shed, and the two children were clinging to her skirts. He walked over to her, feeling pain in several spots on his body, and light-headed from the contact with the stony ground. He reached the small family tableau and dropped his sword, then crouched down by the woman. Her hands were holding the hands of the man on the ground, and one look at the gaping rip in his torso showed Kestrel that the man had died.

  The woman looked up, her face tear-streaked, and she said something to Kestrel, something he couldn’t translate. “Say that again, and speak slowly. I didn’t understand you,” Kestrel told the woman.

  He was studying her features, the first human woman he had seen.

  “He’s dead, my Youkal is dead, and we would be too if you hadn’t saved us,” the woman said between sobbing gulps. “Thank you.”

  Kestrel saw the pain and shock in her eyes, and he saw the tiny figures that shrunk away from him, trying to hide themselves in the folds of the skirt they clung to.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Kestrel replied. “Is anyone else hurt?”

  “No, there are just the three of us,” the woman answered, her words and accent growing more intelligible to Kestrel as he listened. “What’s happening over there?” she nodded with her head to the mounds in the darkness at the edge of the fire’s illumination, the lumps that were the dying yeti and the grieving Arlen sitting over Artur’s body.

  “The yeti is dying, and one of my partners is dead,” Kestrel replied. He looked down again. “Why don’t you take the little ones back to the cabin? We’ll help start preparing a burial plot for your man,” he suggested.

  The woman obediently rose, and ushered her children away from their father’s body.

  “Do you have a shovel?” Kestrel asked as they walked away.

  “In here,” the woman replied as she entered the broken cabin. Kestrel trotted over, as the woman picked up the shovel from the spot where she had dropped it. She had been using it as a weapon, Kestrel realized. He took the implement from her, looking at her face in the firelight.

  Her face was more angular than an elven maiden’s face, he realized. The lower part was more prominent, and her cheekbones were more pronounced. She reacted to his scrutiny by unconsciously sweeping her hair behind her ear, and he stared at her ear, her human ear, for a long second, before he broke from his immobility and turned away with the shovel in his hand.

  He walked back to where Arlen was standing, still looking down at Artur.

  “What’s the shovel for?” he asked.

  “I told her we’d bury her husband,” Kestrel replied.

  “That’s good. Go get a bucket first,” Arlen told him.

  “Why?” Kestrel asked, surprised by the request.

  “We need to save the yeti blood. The healers in Estone think that yeti blood gives strength and virility to people who drink it. The woman is going to need some money to recover from this,” Arlen said, looking up from Artur at last. “We can collect some of the blood, and cut off the head and,” he paused, “other things. She’ll be able to take them to Estone and make a good amount of money.”

  Kestrel dropped the shovel and obediently walked back to the cabin. The fire in the shack was dying down, and the scene was growing darker around the farmstead, but the woman had a lantern lit inside the cabin, where she sat on the side of a bed and softly stroked the hair of the two little children who were snuggled together under a cover.

  “Do you have a bucket?” Kestrel asked as she watched him approach.

  “We have two, but they’re both in the shed where we kept the cow. They were our milk pails,” she finished her sentence and began to cry, pressing the back of her hand against her face to hide her emotion.

  “I’ll try to get them, you just stay here and watch the wee ones,” Kestrel said sofly.

  He walked out to the remains of the shed, hot embers all around the burnt carcass of the cow that had died there, and he spotted the pails. He got a long tree branch from the forest, and fished the pails out of the ruins, then carried them over to where Arlen waited.

  “We’ll need a rope to do this,” Arlen said. “I’ll go back to the campsite and get our horses. We’ve got rope there, and we’ll need the horses anyway. You stay here and honor Artur,” he commanded Kestrel, then turned a
nd was gone.

  Kestrel gave a sigh, in physical pain and in shock from the events of the battle, then sat cross-legged beside Artur, and began to recite the good things that he remembered about his instructor, and called upon the gods to hurry his soul to the other realm. “Give him peace, Kere, and let all of us here who remain also accept his loss with peace,” he finished up his devotions just as Arlen returned.

  “He was a good man. His wife will be heart-broken when we return,” Arlen said as he led the horses into the clearing.

  “Here, tie this rope around the yeti’s feet,” Arlen told Kestrel who stood up.

  “Wait just a moment,” Kestrel replied, as he went to his horse and pulled a water skin off. It was one of the skins from the healing spring, and he knew there was never a time when its effects would be more welcome.

  “Here, take a drink of this,” Kestrel instructed Arlen, shoving the uncorked skin at him.

  “What is it?” Arlen asked as he held the skin.

  “It’s water from a special spring. It will help heal any wounds you may have gotten,” he explained.

  Arlen held the skin upward and took a drink then handed it back to Kestrel. “I’m going to give some to the family. I’ll be right back,” Kestrel said, and crossed the yard again.

  “Here, this water is from a healing spring. Take a drink,” Kestrel urged the woman.

  She obediently raised the skin and took a drink. “It tastes refreshing,” she commented.

  “Do the children need any?” Kestrel asked.

  “No, they weren’t hurt. Their bodies weren’t,” she replied softly.

  Kestrel held the skin up high and took a long drink for himself, a draught that left the skin half empty. He hoped it would help soothe the headache that pounded in the back of his skull, and take away the pain in his ribs that increased with every deep breath.

  Without further word he returned to where Arlen already had the rope tied around the yeti’s feet. “Throw the other end of the rope over that tree branch,” Arlen directed. He had his small lantern open to provide feeble light that helped the stars and the crescent moon illuminate their actions, now that the shed fire was nearly gone.

  Kestrel threw the rope, then tied it to the saddle of his horse as Arlen directed, and they raised the dead yeti four feet off the ground, its fingers nearly touching the dirt below. Kestrel was horrified by the butchery that followed, but obeyed every command he was given. He felt disrespectful; the yeti had only been a monster, but it was too elf-like, with two arms and two legs, not to find the process of harvesting its parts distasteful.

  They finished their work around sunrise, and in the red morning glow, Kestrel liked the looks of his work even less. He had found additional buckets, and they had gallons of blood, the hairy head, and numerous body parts stacked in a pile.

  “I’m going to take Artur back to Firheng,” Arlen announced as Kestrel began to lower the yeti.

  “I want you to stay here. you need to bury the human and the yeti, then I want you to take the woman and her children to Estone. Find a human trader named Castona there, and tell him what you have, and that you want to sell it all into the market to give the widow money to live on,” Arlen explained as Kestrel listened in astonishment.

  “You can tell Castona you were with me and Artur, but don’t tell him you’re really an elf; you have to keep that secret, you understand?” Arlen said intensely.

  “You’re going to leave me alone to do these things without any help?” Kestrel asked in fear.

  “Yes,” Arlen said. “I want Artur to be treated to the ceremony of our own people, so I need to hurry his body home. And I know you’ll do fine – you’ve killed a yeti, you’ve given us all some secret healing potion that works, and you and the widow will make a good team on this journey,” he said.

  “When all that is done, come back to Firheng, and Cosima will have some new assignment for you, I’m sure,” Arlen told him as the two of them hoisted Artur’s body onto his horse, and Arlen strapped it in place.

  “That woman may only be human, but she needs someone right now, and you’re the only someone available,” Arlen added as he climbed onto his own horse. “She’s just lost her husband and her home. Isolated like this, he was probably her only friend; be good to her.”

  The sun was fully risen, and Kestrel could see the haggard sense of loss in Arlen’s face. The armsman had lost a close friend himself, and had missed a night’s sleep.

  Arlen held his hand down, and Kestrel clasped it. “I’ll see you in Firheng,” he said insistently.

  “Yes,” Kestrel pledged.

  “Don’t have any second thoughts; don’t be tempted to stay among the humans and live with them, just because you look like one now,” Arlen continued to hold firmly to Kestrel’s hand as he spoke, seeming to read some of the musings in the back of Kestrel’s mind. “You must come back. We need you.” He released his grip and sat up, gave Kestrel a sad smile, then turned the horses and began to walk away, back into the forest.

  Kestrel stood and watched as the two horses stepped into the shadows of the trees, then grew faint and disappeared. He was suddenly alone in the human world.

  Chapter 17 – Recovery from Disaster

  “Mister,” the woman’s voice called behind him, and Kestrel turned to see the woman outside the cabin, walking towards him, the children standing uncertainly at the edge of the ruined wall.

  Kestrel began to walk towards her, and met her in the middle of the yard.

  “Are your friends leaving?” she asked.

  He sighed heavily. “They are,” he confirmed.

  “Were they,” she paused. “Are they elves? They kind of looked like it from the cabin.”

  Kestrel paused, as he struggled to adjust his point of view. He was now officially seeking to pass as a human, and he had to adopt that perspective. He was now officially thinking as a spy.

  “They are elves. One of them died fighting the yeti, and the other one will take his body back to their land for their ceremonies for the dead,” Kestrel explained.

  “I’m going to stay here for a bit to help you. By the way, don’t let you children come out of the cabin yet,” he instructed. “I haven’t buried your husband, and I want to get the yeti carcass buried too. They don’t need to see a sight like that,” he explained.

  “I’ll explain more later,” he told her. “You go on back to the cabin and feed your kids some breakfast, okay?”

  “I will,” she agreed. “First, tell me your name.”

  “Kestrel. My name is Kestrel,” he repeated.

  “My name is Merilla, and I am in your debt for all that you’ve done,” she told him. They exchanged a momentary frank stare, then she left to return to the cabin.

  “Where do you want your husband buried?” Kestrel asked as she walked away.

  “Beneath that elm tree,” she pointed at a prominent patriarch of the forest that was growing on the western edge of the clearing. “He loved to sit under that tree and sing songs to us.”

  Kestrel nodded, then grabbed the shovel and began to dig in the soft soil beneath the tree. He spent three hours excavating the shallow grave, then returned to the cabin.

  “Do you have a blanket we can wrap your husband in?” he asked Merilla.

  “Yes,” she answered, looking haggard and drawn, before she went to the back of the cabin and brought out a bright, colorful quilt. “This was our wedding night cover,” she explained as she accompanied Kestrel to her husband’s body. Together they lifted the body into the blanket, then trudged across the yard to the grave site, and lowered the body into the bottom of the grave.

  “Do you mind waiting a moment?” Merilla asked as Kestrel prepared to cover the body. “I want the children to say good bye.” She reached down and folded back a corner of the blanket to reveal the dead man’s face, then ran to the cabin and brought the two small children, both boys, Kestrel thought, over to see their father’s face for the last time.

  Merilla
let the boys clamber down into the grave to kiss the cold gray face farewell, then she kissed him as well, and folded the blanket back to cover him once again. Kestrel allowed the boys to throw the first fistfuls of dirt atop the blanket, then he told Merilla to take them away while he finished the chore.

  When he was done he leaned against the shovel handle, exhausted. He heard a noise, and turned to see Merilla and her boys bringing out a wooden pitcher and a covered platter. “You’ve been up all night and worked all morning,” she told him. “Rest your bones and have a bite to eat.”

  “Thank you,” he replied gratefully. “I will as soon as I tend to my horse. He’s had a long night too, he gestured over to where the horse stood near the yeti carcass. “I’ll feed and water my horse, then eat a bite, then bury that thing. That may be about all I’ll get accomplished for you today.”

  By late afternoon he had carried out his plan of work, allowing him to walk his horse up to the cabin and tie it in place.

  “You look exhausted,” Merilla said. “I can’t thank you enough for saving our lives and all your help.”

  She paused. “There’s a spring in the woods behind the cabin, if you feel you want to go clean yourself up. You can use Youkal’s towel if you want.”

  Kestrel looked down his front, where dirt and yeti blood were liberally smeared. “I’ll get a change of clothes if you would fetch the towel,” he offered, looking up.

  She nodded in agreement, and he turned to dig through his saddle bag and pull out cleaner clothes, while she rummaged in the cabin and returned with a towel.

  Kestrel strolled back along the path in the trees and found the spring, its cold waters bracingly refreshing. He scrubbed himself, and soaked his clothes, achieving some success in scrubbing them cleaner, then dried and returned to the cabin.