The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 03 - Road of Shadows

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “We are going to take a break in our journey,” Kestrel told her as he climbed down from the horse first. “We’ll wait here until the rain stops, however long it takes. Take everything we have into the house, and we’ll build a big fire in the fireplace to dry everything out,” he told her.

  “I’ll go gather some wood and be back,” he added, then went to the nearby woodlot and gathered up tree limbs while looking for food items he could come back to collect. Several trips later he had a large stack of firewood and a fire crackling in the kitchen fireplace, as well as both the buckets he found then filled with water from the well. Moorin was hanging items of clothing from every available projecting element of the kitchen, and seemed happy to be occupied, as Kestrel took the horse out to graze in the pasture while he gathered their dinner.

  When he came back an hour later the fire was blazing away brighter than ever, throwing warmth to every corner of the kitchen, and Moorin had their damp bedrolls laid out by the hearth, watching tendrils of steam gently rise from the material. Kestrel quickly walked through the house, only four rooms in size, and saw nothing of concern or value.

  “Here is something that Philip kindly packed away for us, and I think tonight is a good night to drink it,” Kestrel said, pulling a liquor flask from the leather saddle bag he carried in. He placed the leather bottle to one side, then piled up the fiddlehead ferns and the mushrooms and spring tubers he had found, added a pile of delicate greens that offered seasoning, and then untied the two rabbits he had shot and skinned along the verge of the woodlot.

  As Moorin watched, Kestrel cleaned out the lone pan that had remained in the kitchen, then added some water and all his collected food in the pan, then placed it near the fire to let it warm. As he did he saw Moorin uncork the liquor bottle.

  “Be careful,” he warned her, “that stuff can burn all the way down.”

  “If it warms us up, so much the better,” Moorin grinned, then placed the bottle to her lips and took a hearty swig, showing a disregard for needless ladylike, gentile restraint that Kestrel found charming. She started coughing as soon as she lowered the bottle, then gasped desperately as Kestrel brought a bucket of water to her and lifted his cupped hands with water to her lips.

  Several seconds later she was choking less violently, and her first words came out in a raspy whisper. “Kestrel, your friend is trying to poison us!”

  “It’s not that bad!” Kestrel disagreed with a grin. “Since I’m only one quarter human it hardly affects me at all. You being half human, it may have more impact on you,” he warned.

  “Let me see you take a long draught of that, mister impervious!” Moorin demanded.

  Egged on by her manner, Kestrel took the bottle and drank a long swallow, then casually put the bottle back down. “Some of us have the ability to handle it, Lady Moorin,” he grinned at her, then turned to stir their dinner stew.

  “Well Lord Kestrel, some of can learn to handle it,” she replied defiantly, and took another drink herself, carefully placing the bottle back on the ground after she swallowed her drink.

  Just then Kestrel saw two crickets wriggle out of the bark of a piece of wood lying by the fireplace, and his hand flew out to nab them both. He’d not eaten a cricket in nearly a year, he reckoned, and he relished the idea of the delicious nutty taste that the eastern elves craved so dearly.

  “Want one?” he asked Moorin, holding the insects out to her.

  “No thank you,” she said politely, her body slightly swaying.

  Kestrel popped one of the crickets into his mouth and happily munched away.

  “Fire in the forest! What did you just do?” Moorin demanded. “Did you just eat that bug?”

  “Sure! They’re delicious. We eat them all the time in the forest; don’t you?” he asked.

  “No,” she answered vehemently. “Absolutely not.

  “Now how do you expect me to imagine kissing those lips, knowing that they just ate a bug?” she asked him immediately.

  He froze and looked at her, wide-eyed.

  “That’s right, don’t play the shocked gentleman elf lord,” Moorin said. “All alone in front of a romantic fire, a home-cooked meal, and liquor; you’re clearly planning a seduction, and until I saw you eat that bug I wasn’t sure I was going to resist,” she said.

  Kestrel reached for the bottle of liquor in shock, and took a quick swig.

  “I may logically be the only real suitable mate for you, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?” Moorin asked, taking the bottle from him. “You don’t get along so well with the elves or the human societies you mix in as you’ve told me, so why not pick another mixed race person?”

  She took a drink from the bottle, and Kestrel hastily turned and stirred the dinner pan, as the room darkened from the setting sun. Moorin’s face grew more mysterious and alluring as the light from the flames became the only illumination, and Kestrel wondered if she was truly speaking thoughts that his mind hadn’t brought to maturity yet. Her logic did make sense in a way, he decided.

  And she was here, with him and no one else, in this moment. They were friendly, and had been friendly along the course of this trip; they got along well together. And she was beautiful; so stunningly beautiful that he felt his breath immobilized inside his chest sometimes, his muscles unable to move as his brain could only tell his body to do one thing, gaze upon her profile when some new element of her beauty was revealed.

  He turned back to Moorin and stared at her, unable to believe that the conversation was taking place, then he leaned towards her, closed his eyes, and began to kiss her. She kissed him back for a long moment, then withdrew her lips from his. “Not so fast, Lord Kestrel,” she murmured. “I think you owe me a dinner before you persuade me to succumb to your charms.”

  Her kiss tasted just the way an elven maid’s kiss should taste, he thought to himself. There was a freshness like the scent of a forest in the morning, crisp and inviting. He thought of Margo, who he had longed for so long, who he had never kissed, and he wondered what she would taste like if their lips would ever meet. Should he even think about her at this moment, or should he just accept the magic that was taking place, throwing him together with this beautiful woman, as they both loosened their inhibitions under the influence of Philip’s bottle of liquor.

  And at that moment, he heard his horse whinny in terror in the barn.

  Puzzled, he pulled slightly away from Moorin and looked toward the doorway. “I’m going to go check on the horse. I’ll be right back,” he promised as he stood up.

  From the doorway he looked across the weeds in the abandoned barnyard, and saw an indistinct movement within the barn. He pulled his knife free, when he heard Moorin softly call, “Kestrel.”

  He returned to her. “Did you see anything?” she asked.

  “Something moved out in the barn. I’m going to go check on it,” he told her.

  “Be careful, Kestrel,” she warned him, then gave him a quick kiss on the lips.

  He smiled, then went back and crouched down in the doorway, examining the barnyard again. There was no sign of movement, and he began to stealthily slink across the yard, when a tremendous blow hit him in the left shoulder, knocking him to the ground and jarring away his knife that he had held in his left hand. He stumbled upward, and saw an arrow protruding from his shoulder, in a spot that had previously been protected by the great tattoo the goddess had given him.

  He heard a scuffling noise coming from the barn, and turned in time to see a man run at him, just before the man tackled him and knocked him to the ground. “What do we have here?” the man asked rhetorically.

  Three other men emerged from the barn, leading Kestrel’s horse. “There’s just the one horse,” one of the men said. “He must be traveling alone.”

  “Who are you? A deserter, like us?” the first man asked. The rain had stopped, but the murky clouds let no moonlight or starlight through, and Kestrel could see no clear details of the men’s faces.

&nb
sp; “What do you have in the house? Some food, I hope,” another man said. “I’ll go see what he’s got for us,” the deserter said to his companions as he started to step towards the farmhouse.

  Kestrel shook his head and raised it up to look at the man, trying desperately to find a way to prevent the men from finding and harming Moorin. As his mind raced ahead, he saw the walking man suddenly fall backwards, and then one of the other men on his right shouted and fell as well. Both men had arrows in their chests.

  “What the?” asked the man who was holding Kestrel. Kestrel swung his right elbow back sharply, driving his arm into the man’s midriff and knocking him down. Kestrel dove to the ground and wrapped his fingers around his knife, then flung it at the fourth man, the one who had been holding the horse’s lead, and was trying in a fit of panic to climb onto the animal and ride away to safety.

  Another arrow whizzed through the night air and struck the man Kestrel had elbowed. Moments later, Moorin was at his side, still holding his bow in one hand. “Are you okay Kestrel? Is the arrow the only injury you have?” she asked with concern as she knelt next to him.

  “I think it’s enough of an injury,” he said with a tight smile. “I don’t want any more, if it’s an option.

  “Who knew you were such a marksman?” he added as he lay back in her arms.

  “Who knew the man who is my hero and rescuer would be so prone to injuries!” she laughed. Kestrel winced at the comment. “Really Kestrel, when I first met you, you were injured, and I added to it. Now you’re injured again just a few days later. What am I going to do with you?”

  “Now that you’ve rescued me, you could help me get this arrow out after we get back into the house,” he answered as he gingerly rose. Moorin took his hand in hers as they went back through the doorway and settled down on the floor in front of the fire.

  “Here give me your knife,” Moorin commanded in a tone that brooked no refusal after she stripped his shirt off him. “Now, hold still,” she said as she firmly but gently tilted his body to provide the angle that placed the greatest amount of the fire’s illumination on Kestrel’s shoulder. “This will hurt,” she warned, then slipped his knife along the shaft of the arrow and gently wiggled the arrow as she tried to widen the opening in the flesh with a minimum of pain.

  “There,” she pulled the head of the arrow free from his arm as a muffled gasp escaped from his lips, then she held the arrow in front of him to show him his new trophy, “I believe this is yours now. Save it as a lucky arrow.”

  “What’s lucky about it? It hurts like the dickens,” he replied.

  “Here,” Moorin held the bottle of liquor to his lips, then tilted it up, causing him to hurriedly swallow the fluid that flowed into his mouth. “There – that’s lucky,” she answered. “And it didn’t strike you from the front; if it did, you’d be dead,” she added. “So that’s lucky.”

  “You know, it is,” he agreed, as the new infusion of the fiery liquor began to course through his blood. “You shot those arrows very well,” he repeated his earlier compliment. “Did you practice a lot in the North Forest?”

  Moorin put his knife down. She started to dip his shirt in a bucket of water in hopes of making it cleaner, then looked over at the pan of food by the fire, and raced over to the pan and used the shirt to pull the boiling stew away from the flames.

  “Once it cools, it might be okay,” she said doubtfully, poking a finger into a chunk of rabbit meat. With a sigh, she set the pan down.

  “Bring that other skin of water over here, please.” Kestrel asked, pointing with his right hand at the skin of healing water.

  “Yes, oh lord and master,” Moorin answered, clearly in exuberant spirits in the aftermath of the short, victorious battle she had waged against the army deserters.

  She came back and sat down behind Kestrel, then gently pulled him backward, so that his head rested in her lap, as she dribbled a few drops of the healing water on his shoulder.

  “What do we do now?” she asked as she put the water skin down on the floor.

  Kestrel closed his eyes. “We rest,” he replied. He thought of the feel of her lips, and the taste of her kiss, and he thought of Margo, and then Picco too, for some reason. And then, as the full influence of the liquor hit him, he began to breathe with the even gentle rhythm of someone who had fallen asleep.

  “This isn’t right,” Moorin murmured. “I saved your life, and I’m entitled to the spoils of my victory, and you choose to fall asleep on me, mighty warrior.” She carefully slid out from beneath his head, and spread one of the now dry blankets over him. Then she added more logs to the fire, pulled the pan of doubtful food over next to her, and sat back against the wall of the room with a blanket pulled up over herself.

  She picked out choice tidbits of mushrooms and rabbit meat to devour, while she watched the flames dance as she thought about the fact that it was the very evening that had been scheduled to be her wedding night, and that if her ship had not been pirated, she would be wearing an extravagant gown in the palace at Seafare, swearing her eternal love to a man she had never met.

  All things considered, she decided, she was strangely happier where she was with Kestrel than she would have been in the palace with the prince. And with that, she fell asleep.

  When Kestrel awoke in the morning, he was stiff from sleeping on the hard floor, and his shoulder hurt from the arrow wound. His head had a gentle throb, the result of the liquor he had drunk, though ameliorated by the healing water that had been sprinkled on him. He saw Moorin asleep against the wall, her head back and her lips ajar, with a tiny spot of moisture glistening at the corner of her mouth.

  Even in a state as unkempt and disheveled as she was in now, asleep in an abandoned farm after a battle with ruffians and days on horseback, she was still a remarkable beauty, with the structure of her high cheek bones and slender face cast in subtle shadows. And he was pleased with the quick fortitude she had shown in scrambling to join the fight in the barnyard, as well as her clear ability with a bow. He flexed his wounded shoulder, which was healing quickly through the arts of the healing spring water; if it was at all possible, he would take Moorin to the healing spring and let her soak in the water to feel the wonder of immersion in its glorious powers.

  He felt a pang of hunger, and looked over at the pan by Moorin. He quietly crawled over and pulled the pan back to his spot, then threw a pair of small logs into the bed of coals in the fireplace, and watched tendrils of smoke begin to rise. The remnants of the meal were not appetizing to look at, but Kestrel’s hunger led him to eat those charred bits that he would have otherwise turned his nose up at.

  The sun was rising, casting reddish rays of light that slanted through the doorway into their kitchen. The red light reminded him of Albanu, and the extraordinary moments he had experienced there when the goddess Robaske had lifted away from his chest the tattoo given by Kai, and the energy stored in it. It would be claiming too much credit to say that he had played a role in resurrecting a goddess, but he had certainly witnessed her return to involvement in the lives of her people. He hoped that the efforts by Allgain and Reasion to begin to win back their land from the Viathins was going well, and he hoped the two were finding their new bodies and new lives and new relationship to be joyous changes.

  He missed Reasion, and he always would, he suspected; her quiet and loyal friendship had been more important than he realized. And he missed Dewberry, especially when he knew she should be available for friendship as well as assistance. He would have to head towards Oaktown as quickly as possible after leaving Hydrotaz, in order to set affairs right with the apparently-senile king of the imps. And he hoped Moorin would accept that roundabout addition to their itinerary.

  The sun rose higher, and the rays of sunlight moved across the room as they grew orange, then yellow. The direct light reached Moorin, shining upon her torso, the top of the square of direct light hitting the exposed triangle of skin where Moorin’s shirt was unbuttoned at the top
, and Kestrel saw the light sparkle of some object that lay there. She wore a necklace, he realized, a piece of jewelry that he hadn’t noticed before.

  And there was a smudge of dirt on her skin behind the sparkling jewel. The dirt reminded him of one of his original intentions in stopping at the farmhouse; he had hoped to find a bath tub or a water trough big enough to be a bath tub, so that he could heat buckets of hot water at the fire, then fill the tub to give Moorin a hot bath. After the days of cold, wet riding, it seemed like the best gift he could offer her.

  The square of sunlight was moving on, leaving Moorin as the sun shifted higher in the sky, and suddenly Kestrel’s eyes widened, and his head whipped around, for the sunlight in the room outlined the shadow of a man, standing in the doorway.

  Kestrel reached for his knife and then exploded upward, staring into the sunlight, but only seeing the outline of the man’s form with the sun behind him. Kestrel charged at the doorway and flew in a flying tackle at the man, seeking to knock him down and knock him away, but instead he flew unimpeded through the spot where the man had stood – he landed in the mud of the barnyard and rolled on his injured shoulder, then rose to his knees and looked around.

  Suddenly, there standing in front of him was the man he had seen, who he discovered was not a man. Growelf, human god of fire, rose over him, giving off heat as though he were burning with internal combustion. He emitted a sense of concern and pride and need as well, Kestrel sensed.

  “My lord,” Kestrel said, uncertain of why the god was visiting. “I am honored by your presence.”

  “You are,” Growelf said. “I have come to retrieve the boon I gave to you, Kestrel,” he said immediately. He reached down to Kestrel’s left ear, as the elfling knelt perfectly still, feeling the nearness of the god’s fiery heat on his cheek, and then there was a tug and a sting, and the fingers of the god moved back, revealing the ruby stone that had been on the end of the stud in Kestrel’s ear.

  “The energy within this must have served you well. I understand the sprites and imps are safely back, as are you,” Growelf said, and then pressed the ruby against his forehead, and to Kestrel’s amazement, the stone sank into the flesh of the god. There seemed to be a flicker in Growelf’s existence, and then everything was as it had been before, except that the god seemed slightly more tangible in some inexplicable, immeasurable manner.