The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 03 - Road of Shadows

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Down at the far end of the valley he saw movement, and realized with shock that it was a group of blue beings, imps or sprites (he wasn’t sure which), walking in a slow shuffling manner, surrounded by larger beings who appeared to be escorting or guarding the sprites, though whether in a friendly or unfriendly manner he couldn’t tell.

  The sprites usual bluish color was more of a purple tint under the red suns, but the escorts’ color was bright red. They were disturbing to look at – they seemed to be the very real personification of the monsters that all elf children had grown up fearing. The escorts had long tails with pointed ends, and small horns jutting from their foreheads. At the front of the group walked a member of a third race, a very large being with muddy-colored skin, and few other distinguishable features that Kestrel could detect at the distance between them.

  The imps had obviously been met or caught almost immediately after leaving the cave entrance, and Kestrel wondered if the cave was kept under observation to allow any traveler to be instantly intercepted. He cautiously tried to observe the surrounding area in the near-vicinity of the cave mouth, to see if any guards stood ready to pounce, but most of the nearby terrain was simply unviewable without leaving the cave.

  He studied the apparent hillside below the cave. “There are two guards directly above the cave entrance,” Growelf told him, the god suddenly appearing in the cave.

  “My god!” Kestrel squeaked, his voice rising in startlement from the unexpected appearance of the deity. “Are you here to help me? Are the sprites with friends or enemies?”

  “I cannot help you in this world,” Growelf said. “I am pressing at the boundary to be able to stand this close to the cave entry. But I do bring you two gifts that will help you during your journey here. Stand still,” the god commanded. “This will hurt momentarily, but do not flinch or touch it.”

  “What will hurt?” Kestrel asked, just as he suddenly felt a great deal of heat near his neck, and then suddenly his ear lobe felt a painful jab. He started to raise his hand to his ear.

  “I said do not touch it!” Growelf roared out, and Kestrel held his hand still, despite the pain, then lowered his hand as the pain in his ear began to subside.

  “That’s better,” the god sounded placated by Kestrel’s restraint.

  “What have you done?” the elf asked.

  “I have placed a stud in your earlobe, a small metal bar that pierces your flesh, and will remain in place,” the god said. Kestrel thought of Graylee city, where he had seen many men and women wear ornaments in their ears – jewels, rings, and dangling things. It was a custom that was foreign to elves.

  “On the front of your stud is one of my stones, a ruby, into which I have placed a small part of my powers,” Growelf continued. “With this stone by your ear, you will be able to understand any words that are spoken, no matter what language they are spoken in. And if you place your finger on the stone, you will be able to speak in the language of the one you are with.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” Kestrel immediately appreciated the value of the gift. He had seen Alicia’s linguistic confusion under friendly circumstances when she had been among the humans of Estone for only a few hours. He grasped how disorienting it would be to not understand the languages of this new world, and how much valuable information he might not gain without understanding the words that were spoken in the lands.

  “And here is your other gift, as demanded by Corrant,” Growelf gestured, and suddenly Kestrel saw a gnome standing in the cave, where no gnome had been before. “The gnomish god decided that one of his own people should be a part of this expedition since it passed through his domain.”

  Kestrel looked at the gnome, who was studying him just as closely. He appeared large by gnomish standards, just a few inches shorter than Kestrel, but he was no one that Kestrel knew from his time spent in Amethysaquina.

  “Thank you my lord. The gnomes are good hunters. I believe he could be a good companion,” Kestrel told the human god cautiously. He meant what he said; the gnomes had extraordinary abilities to throw stones with great precision, making every rock a potential lethal weapon, and they could shoot bows well too. The personality and temperament of the gnome were the only elements that Kestrel questioned, and those would eventually reveal themselves under the test of the upcoming journey; but he would have to accept the unproven abilities of the gnome, for there was no way he could tell one god he was refusing to accept the gift provided by another god.

  “I leave you now, and will not see you again unless and until you return to your own rightful world. Do not come back empty-handed; help these sprites and imps find the solution they need to battle against the southern monsters. The weapon they find will also serve you as well, perhaps even better than it will directly serve them,” Growelf advised him, and then the god was gone.

  Kestrel looked at the empty space the god had occupied, then looked at the gnome, whose own gaze was focused on him. “Greetings,” Kestrel began, speaking his simple gnomish. “I am Kestrel. I am told your god selected you to be my companion on a quest. What is your name?”

  The gnome stood in silence, studying Kestrel, then spoke at last, after several seconds, in a voice whose tone was controlled and calm. “I am Tableg, of the Crysquarz village. I was having a dream, when my god appeared in the dream and commanded me to go on a quest.

  “I rose from my bed, and kissed my wife farewell, then prepared for a journey, and suddenly I was standing here. Where are we, and why are we here? What does Corrant plan for us to do?

  “How do you happen to have the eyes of our race?”

  “I was sent here by Growelf,” Kestrel began.

  “Who is that?” Tableg asked.

  “He is one of the gods of the humans,” Kestrel explained.

  “You humans have your own gods? Different from our gods?” Tableg asked.

  “There are many sets of gods,” Kestrel explained. “The humans have gods, the elves have gods. There is an evil force of humans from south of the Inner Seas, and they have their own set of gods too, powerfully evil gods. I lived in a village of gnomes last winter, but I never learned about the gods of the gnomes. Perhaps the sprites and imps have gods as well.”

  “How could you have lived among gnomes? What village?” Tableg asked.

  “I was in the mountains, and saved a pair of young gnomes from a yeti. Their village gave me shelter in return for the service I provided,” Kestrel replied. “It was Amethysaquina.” He wanted to get going, but knew that he had to take time to establish a relationship with the gnome if they were going to be companions during the upcoming efforts that were about to commence.

  “I’ve never been to that village,” Tableg said thoughtfully. He looked at Kestrel. “What is our mission here?”

  “We’re here to rescue sprites,” Kestrel answered, finding his gnomish language skills coming back. “Come here and look outside,” he gestured Tableg to look out at the land below.

  “What place is this?” Tableg asked, looking up at the double red suns.

  “It is another world. It is connected to our world by a portal in a cave that is protected by Corrant. That is why he is involved in this mission, and why you are a part of it now,” Kestrel answered. “A group of my sprite and imp friends came to this land many months ago, to try to find a weapon they could use to kill the monster lizards that have invaded their land. They never returned. Now a new group has come here to try to find the first group. As you can see, they have been taken captive by another group.”

  “Who are the captors?” the gnome asked.

  “I don’t know. I was just about to go out and start working to save the imps when you arrived,” Kestrel answered.

  “By yourself? There look to be a dozen of those red guards down there,” Tableg checked.

  “Well, now it won’t be so uneven,” Kestrel told him. “First, we have to take care of the guards that are watching the mouth of the cave. There are two of them up above the opening. What we
need to do is rush out of the cave, then attack the guards immediately, before they realize we’re here. Then we can go down the valley and ambush the red captors to set our friends free.”

  “And then what?” Tableg asked. “Bring them back here to safety in the cave?”

  “No. We find out if they know where to go to find the first group of sprites, and hopefully go to their rescue,” Kestrel answered.

  Tableg began picking at the wall of the cave, and pulled a pair of fist-sized stones free with a grunt. “Where are the guards above us? Left, right, or center?”

  “We won’t know until we get out there; wherever they are, you take the right one and I’ll take the left one,” Kestrel told him. He was anxious to begin; the group of captives would soon turn the corner of the valley and be out of sight. Together, Kestrel and Tableg both edged up to the lip of the cave opening. On the count of three they both sprinted out of the cave, Kestrel holding his knife, and Tableg holding a stone. As soon as they turned, Kestrel saw the pair of red-skinned guards who sat negligently on a stone ledge above the cave.

  He immediately threw his knife at the guard on the left, before the attendant even seemed aware that new arrivals had emerged from the cave. The guard on the right looked down at them, then stood up and began to raise a weapon as he unleashed a loud, undulating shout of warning. Tableg hurled one of his stones with the same uncanny accuracy that Kestrel had watched other gnome hunters use, and the red guard abruptly ceased his shout as the stone struck him in the face and knocked him to the ground.

  Kestrel turned and looked down the valley. The departing group appeared to have stopped, potentially alerted to trouble by the cut-off call of the guard. “Let’s get up there and get them out of sight,” Kestrel urged, and the two went around and up along the sides of the cave opening. They reached the bodies of the guards, and Kestrel immediately started dragging the body of the guard he had killed into the trees, out of sight. Tableg observed what Kestrel was doing and immediately began to drag his victim out of sight as well.

  Once they were in the forest together, Kestrel peered down the valley. The group was no longer moving, and appeared to be reduced from its size before; several of the red guards were not in sight.

  “Do you think they’re on their way back here to investigate?” Tableg asked.

  “That’s what I’d wager,” Kestrel agreed. “Let’s try to circle around them and get down to the captives. We might be able to set the imps free while there are fewer guards at the scene.” He led his gnome companion deeper into the forest, and they began to cautiously flit from tree to tree, both of them keeping their sharp eyes open as they both watched carefully for the red guards they anticipated running into.

  “Can you climb trees?” Kestrel asked the gnome when they were at the foot of the hillside where the cave opened. “There are two of the hunters coming this way.” The red movements were a few minutes away, but clearly headed in their direction.

  Tableg looked dubiously skyward. “I never have before.”

  Kestrel had never seen a gnome climb a tree while he had been in the mountains, so Tableg’s answer came as no surprise.

  “I could stay down here and you could climb a tree. I’d be the bait in the trap, if you could close the trap. Can you close it?” Tableg suddenly proposed.

  “Elves love shooting arrows from trees. I can close it,” Kestrel assured the gnome. He looked at the terrain around them. “You go over there,” he pointed to a pair of large boulders that had fallen down the hillside at some point in the past. “Let them see you there. I’ll climb these trees, and it will be an easy shot.”

  “So you say,” Tableg said with a forced grin, and then he turned and began to trot towards the rock structure Kestrel had indicated. His willingness to place himself in such a position earned Kestrel’s admiration; Kestrel began to trot in the opposite direction, to reach a tree with a particularly broad trunk that he wanted to climb into. He lifted himself up into the tree, and stayed close to the trunk and the ground. He pulled his bow off his back and loosely strung his first arrow, then listened for the sound of the approaching guards.

  The noise of steps on the crunchy leaves that topped the ground was the first thing Kestrel heard. Then he heard their voices.

  “The master says that there is something dangerous in whatever came through the portal cave. He’s sending a messenger to the center to alert them,” one voice said.

  “If it’s so dangerous, then why are the two of us out here trying to find it?” another voice responded.

  “Relax, there are two others across the valley, and everyone still with the small blues,” the first voice answered.

  The sounds of steps passed directly beneath Kestrel, and he looked down to see the two red figures whose voices he heard.

  “Look!! There by the rocks to the left!” one voice said excitedly. “You go out left to get an angle on it; we want to try to take it alive,” the voice said in a loud whisper.

  Kestrel raised his bow and released a shot, then pulled out another arrow and shot the second, just as one of them started to turn away from the other. At the short range that separated him from the guards, the shots hit almost instantly, and he climbed back down the tree, then ran towards Tableg, who saw him and hopped down from the rocks he had posed on.

  “I see you successfully used me for bait,” the gnome said cheerfully, dropping a stone from each hand as he reached Kestrel.

  “You were better than cheese,” Kestrel said with a grin, as he examined the bodies on the ground and clapped Tableg on the back. “Now, let’s go down by the captives. I heard the two guards say that there’s a runner who’s been sent out with a message about new arrivals – which would be us. We need to hurry.”

  They began to run towards the end of the valley where the captive sprites were being held. They stayed on the lower slopes of the hills that formed the valley, and their going was slow, for they found no game trails to follow through the foliage and undergrowth.

  They stopped after ten minutes. “You get some stones, and start to sneak down towards the group from this side. I’m going to go farther and try to get in front of them so I can attack from the other side. We should be able to defeat the guards here, and then hustle the sprites up into the trees out of sight, and find out what their status and their plans are. There will still be a pair of guards here in the valley we’ll need to watch out for though,” Kestrel explained.

  They separated as Kestrel moved on, swinging wide around the outside of the curve in the valley in order to get to his intended position.

  Minutes later he arrived at the approximate location he wanted to reach. He crept to the edge of the trees that lined the open waterway and its fringes in the center of the valley, then climbed a tree, with a specific objective in mind.

  When he reached the upper branches of the tree, he edged out on a branch from which he could survey the landscape. His position was on the outside of the curve in the valley; he looked down and to his left, and saw the small group of sprites standing captive among their guards. He then looked right, and saw that the valley continued on, and opened into a broad plain, a wide open space through which the stream appeared to flow. Far out on the plain, past the mouth of the valley, Kestrel spotted a small red figure running away from the valley. It was the messenger who carried away the tale of new arrivals from the cave, he was sure, and he had to prevent the message from giving away any advantage of surprise the sprites and Kestrel might have for the time being.

  “Help me, Lucretia,” he whispered softly, as he pulled the knife from the sheath on his hip. He kissed the blade, then reared his arm back and tossed the knife. He didn’t need to throw the knife with all his might because of its divine powers, he knew, but the great distance to the runner, a distance he couldn’t really hope to cover through his own strength alone, irrationally compelled him to throw as hard as he could anyway, and he watched the knife dwindle to a small dark spot, then disappear from view as it pursued
its quarry.

  Kestrel breathed a sigh of relief; he had worried that the powers of his weapons might not work in this strange land with the two red suns, but the flight of Lucretia showed that he still had the use of the tremendous supernatural abilities to rely upon. He remembered Growelf’s explanation that Kai had surrendered a portion of her own divine powers to the knife and the staff, sacrificing her own strength to increase Kestrel’s strength. “Kai, my goddess, I thank you so much,” he whispered a brief prayer.

  He kept an eye on the small red figure on the plain, and decided that it was no longer moving.

  “Mighty Crogan!” he heard a bellow from the valley below.

  “Lucretia, return,” Kestrel called softly.

  He looked down at the group below, and saw the large dark creature shove one of the red guards. Lucretia smacked into the palm of his hand and he closed his grip on the knife, then shoved it back in its sheath and began to climb back down the tree to a lower branch, closer to the group that was his target.

  There were five imps, he saw as he inched out onto the low branch that brought him within earshot of the group. He had a pair of arrows ready as he lay along the branch and prepared his bow.

  “There’s something hunting us!” he heard the dark creature say. “The messenger is dead, two of the men going up the valley are dead. I’ve called the others back. Be alert!”

  And with that, Kestrel fired his first arrow. It struck one of the red guards directly in the chest, knocking the creature to the ground, as Kestrel’s second arrow also began to fly towards his second target. One of the other red guards started to turn to see what was happening, as the dying guards hit by his arrows groaned in their death throes. As the guard turned, a heavy stone came flying through the air and crashed into its head, throwing the creature to the ground.

  “Kestrel friend! Beware! The great creature will seek to control your mind! Slay it!” Kestrel heard one of the imps cry out.

  Kestrel heard the warning from the imp, astonished at its perception that he was the one there to save it. The words of the warning confused him, but he automatically adjusted the aim of his next arrow to fire at the large creature that seemed to be the leader, and aimed at its thick neck, then released his shot, just as one of Tableg’s large stones unexpectedly came crashing into the tree branch Kestrel was on. The heavy projectile barely grazed Kestrel, but struck and cracked the branch, making it droop, and causing Kestrel to unexpectedly fall to the ground.