The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 03 - Road of Shadows

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “The stone’s ability made the success of the journey possible, and not only did I bring the sprites and imps back, but we found a means to contribute to the defeat of the Viathins, both in our world and in the land we traveled through, Albanu,” Kestrel eagerly reported.

  He paused, then changed subjects. “My lord, the tokens and tools that the gods give, they carry a portion of the god’s own powers, is that correct?” he asked.

  “Not in all cases, but in your case, yes,” Growelf answered. “The gifts that Kai and I have given are endowed with our own energy. In her case, great quantities of her own energy. Since you are finished with the tool I provided, I have taken the energy back so that it is not wasted on a mortal.”

  “Would Kai want me to give her back the energy she has given me?” Kestrel asked.

  “She is a generous and loving goddess, and she holds you high in her favor. And she believes that you need all the assistance you can get on this perilous journey you are pursuing,” the god answered. “She would say no. If I were answering for her, I would say that she needs the energy, especially as her temples and followers have not been restored to reenergize her yet.”

  “The goddess of the distant land we visited, she lives no more because the Viathins destroyed so much of her cult,” Kestrel said hesitantly. “Could that happen here?” he asked carefully.

  “If it does, it will not be entirely your fault,” Growelf answered.

  Kestrel stopped, and knelt in silence, as he considered the possibility of the goddess of air no longer living. He imagined the winds blowing without inhibition, a world where there was no one to pray to for gentle winds. He felt a tear form in his eye.

  “Your companion is in the doorway, so I will leave you now. She would not be good for you to marry; she follows Krusima, the god of earth. You wouldn’t want to be tied down to tending a garden all your life with her, as she settles down to domestic peace at home, would you?” Growelf asked. “You’ll always want to go out and find some new adventure – you’re meant to be a person of constant movement and good fortune; that’s why your goddesses have decided to put so much faith in you,” the god surprised Kestrel by foretelling, and then he was gone, leaving Kestrel stunned and thinking.

  “Kestrel! Kestrel? What was that?” Moorin called loudly a moment after Growelf was clearly gone. She walked over and knelt next to him, placing her hands around his.

  “That was the human god, Growelf,” Kestrel answered.

  “Why was he here? Are you an acolyte of his? Did he have an assignment that he gave you?” she asked. “I’ve never been so close to a god before!” she exclaimed. “Sometimes the god Krusima speaks to me in my dreams. You wouldn’t believe what he promises me I’ll be able to do someday!”

  “Work in a garden?” Kestrel asked faintly.

  “Yes! Has he spoken to you too?” she squeezed his hands with joy.

  “No, but Growelf,” he paused, realizing what the god had said was not what he wanted to tell this girl.

  “But what?” Moorin prompted. She looked at Kestrel and seemed to realize there was something he didn’t want to say.

  “But what?” she repeated. “What did he say? Was it about me?” she guessed.

  “He said you would not be good for me to marry; that Krusima would keep you settled down in a home gardening all day, while Kai and Kere will keep me moving about seeking adventures,” Kestrel blurted out.

  Moorin threw back her head and laughed. “Kestrel! That’s priceless! Did you tell the god that you were going to propose to me? Is that why we’re down on our knees?”

  “Would you say yes if I did ask you to marry me?” Kestrel asked the question, without meaning to, without knowing why.

  The look on Moorin’s face changed. The color drained away, leaving her even paler than usual, her skin so porcelain white that Kestrel thought she looked like a marble statue. Her lips were slightly parted, and he could see the tip of her tongue slowly moving back and forth across the tops of her teeth. Her eyes though, were staring directly into his, probing his soul’s depth to an unnerving degree.

  “You don’t really mean that,” she said finally. “We met each other, what, ten days ago? You have a mean sense of humor,” she told him.

  Kestrel hung his head, and tried to understand what he had done, and why he had said it. He hadn’t exactly directly asked her to marry him, but he had certainly asked a leading question with a clear implication. And she hadn’t really answered him.

  But she was right – they had only known each other for a few days. She was extraordinarily beautiful, gorgeous to the point of distraction, as her mixed heritage blended the best of both races. She had a bright personality, and she wasn’t afraid to fight, clearly. If his life was a blank slate and he tried to write a description of a perfect bride for himself, she would have every attribute that Moorin had. Plus, the girl was a member of a noble family, had even been twice engaged to men of royal blood.

  Margo, Lucretia, Alicia, Merilla, Cheryl, and even Picco were all women, women of both races, who he thought of in the sense of a past or future romantic liaison. He’d never reached the point of thinking that he was ready to propose to any of them though.

  He looked up at Moorin again, and saw the concern in her eyes, and perhaps even some hidden evidence of pain. She had, he realized, been the victim of an unfaithful romance once already in her life, in the very recent past, and then been nearly thrown into a marriage with a man she’d never met.

  “If I had any idea of what was good for me, I’d propose right now,” Kestrel said, as his brain suddenly engaged his mouth. He had no idea what he was going to say.

  “You are everything a man could desire in a bride and a wife. But I don’t deserve you; Growelf is right – I am not a stable, settled person,” he said. “I can’t offer a real home right now, and I don’t know when I will be able to. If I thought I could give you the home you deserve, I would ask you right now.”

  Moorin looked at him, studying and evaluating him, making him nervous as their eyes locked. “Take off that ring, Kestrel, and let me see the real person you are,” she told him.

  He obliged her, and she stroked her fingers lightly along his cheek. “You look so nice,” she murmured.

  “Kestrel, that was one of the most confusing proposals I’ve ever heard, and remember, I’ve had my share,” she smiled in a self-deprecating way at her own misfortune. “And we are kneeling in the mud of a farmhouse. Here,” she stood up and held a hand down to help him up. “I’m going to make this interesting, because – by-the-leaf! – it hasn’t been interesting enough in the past few hours, has it? I’m going to accept your proposal to become engaged, but not yet to get married.

  “There is something between us, something deep-seated, I think. It’s more than a hunch, but I’m not sure what it is. And,” she added, “given the intimate nature of our time together, day after day in one another’s company, it would protect my reputation to some degree.

  “And I think that there was something more than that bottle of liquor behind that kiss we shared last night,” she wrapped up her brief soliloquy. “So unless you say otherwise, we are now officially engaged, and we’ll work out the surprises as they come, provided my father agrees, when the time comes that you may ask him for my hand,” she finished, completely in control of the situation, leaving Kestrel with his head spinning in surprise.

  Kestrel nodded his head in astonished agreement.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Well what?” Kestrel responded, sure that he must be overlooking something obvious.

  “Aren’t you going to kiss your betrothed?” Moorin asked. She leaned in to him and kissed him chastely on the lips. “Now, what are your plans? Should we be packing to go?”

  Kestrel didn’t answer immediately, as he tried to collect his thoughts. “Actually, I was going to look for a bath tub, and offer you a hot bath this morning,” he finally remembered. “If not a bath tub, I thought I might find a t
rough or something large enough for you to soak in.”

  Moorin’s eyes widened in a look of genuine affectionate surprise. “You really are a sweet-hearted boy,” she told him. “A bath would be a wonderful luxury! And so much appreciated! I feel so dirty.”

  “I thought it would be worth spending a little extra time here for a bath. I didn’t see a tub in the house though. Let me go check the barn for a trough,” Kestrel proposed, and he walked away from her towards the barn.

  Deeper inside the barn, inside a large stall, he found a perfectly-sized trough, one that appeared sound enough to hold water. “Let me clean it out, and then you’ll have your own private bathhouse, in a stall,” he laughed.

  Back inside the house Kestrel threw the last of the wood on the fire, then filled the buckets and pan with water, and began the slow process of heating up enough water for the trough. An hour later and after several trips across the yard, Kestrel poured the last bucket of hot water into the horse trough, and stepped back to see Moorin watching him closely.

  “You’re very kind to be doing all of this for me, Kestrel,” she told him with a sudden smile on her face as she saw him watching her.

  “I’ll go pack up the things in the house. Shout if you need anything,” he told her, then stepped away from the stall and gave her privacy as he walked through the barnyard and discovered that the sun had come out from behind the clouds, shining brightly on the countryside. He spent the next several minutes dragging the bodies of the dead assailants from the previous night around the corner of the house, out of sight.

  With the sunshine and the cleaned up barnyard, Kestrel thought the farmstead looked homey and comfortable. It must have been a good place for some farmer’s family, he thought as he went into the house and started to roll up the blankets and dried items spread around the kitchen.

  He thought about Moorin as he entered the barn and led the horse out to graze in the pasture near the barn. He shook his head in amazement at the thought that somehow he found himself seemingly in a relationship with her. It didn’t make sense to him, and he tried to replay his memories of their conversation. They were engaged, or at least he thought they said they were engaged.

  It didn’t make any sense. But he knew that as much as he found it odd, incomprehensible, and foolish, he didn’t wish to undo it. Something inside him drove him to accept it and want it – both the oddly limited engagement and the promise of something more. He wondered if he could talk to Moorin about his confusion; would she understand, would she listen patiently, would she think he was trying to undo the commitment he had made to her in the barnyard?

  The horse grazed placidly in the sunshine, and a fresh breeze brought the smell of growing things. Kestrel took his bow and arrow off the horse’s back, and went afield a little way, then shot a pheasant that they could eat for their next meal as they rode through the countryside. He led the horse back to the house and set the pheasant pieces on spits in front of the fire, then re-entered the barn to tell Moorin it was time to go.

  “Come in here, Kestrel,” she called in reply, and he cautiously stepped into her stall. She still lay back in the trough, immersed in the water that he had carried in for her.

  “The water’s cooling off,” she said, “so it is about time to leave it. Would you scrub my back for me first?” she asked. “I couldn’t reach it,” she threw a sopping wet cloth at him that he hadn’t realized she had, then flipped herself over in the water.

  He knelt on the dusty straw by the tub, and reached into the water, letting his hand rub the cloth across the wide expanse on her back between her shoulders, moving in a circular motion down to the narrowness of her waist, and back up again.

  “That feels so good,” she sighed, as he kept his hand in motion.

  “Are we moving forward today?” she asked.

  “I have most of our things bundled up and ready,” he answered.

  “What about our hearts? Are they neatly bundled up too? Are they going to go forward?” she asked gently. “I don’t know what we were thinking in the barnyard.”

  “I’ve been out with the horse, wondering the same thing,” Kestrel said with relief.

  “What advice did the horse have?” she twisted her neck to look up over her shoulder at him.

  “The horse seemed to think the new shoots of grass were best,” he answered.

  “Horses are smart; new shoots are tastiest and tenderest. They’re also the easiest to uproot,” she agreed. “I’ve thought about how the things we said seem so improbable, but I find that I like the idea of being engaged to you,” Moorin told him.

  “I don’t know why I said some of the things I said last night, but I don’t want to take any of them back,” Kestrel agreed. “I don’t really know you, and I don’t exactly know what we agreed to, but Moorin, I think I’d like to try to get to know you better and find out if we have stumbled into something right for us or something crazy.”

  ‘Kestrel, you’re the third man I’ve become engaged to in the past three months,” Moorin said. “I don’t know how I managed to mismanage my life so badly. You may come to conclude there’s a reason I can’t establish a stable relationship,” she told him with a self-deprecating smile.

  “I think I’ll come to find the third time’s a charm,” Kestrel tried to cheer her up.

  “You’re so gallant! Now, much as I hate to say it, please stop rubbing my back, and go out so that I can get dressed, then we can be on our way to Hydrotaz and whatever you plan to accomplish there,” Moorin answered.

  Kestrel gave her neck a gentle, affectionate squeeze, then he rose and left the stall, and went out to the yard and started tying their belongings to the saddle, so that by the time Moorin arrived, her clothes clinging to her damp body, they were ready to depart.

  “My lady,” Kestrel said gallantly, offering a hand to help her up into the saddle, though he knew she needed no help.

  “Thank you, my lord,” she replied with a dazzling smile that cheered his heart, and with that exchange of pleasantries they resumed their journey. Kestrel angled their journey farther north, adding time to the trip, as the route took them farther from their destination, but also clearing their path around the armies and deserters near the battlefront. They entered Hydrotaz over an unmarked border, and then turned south, riding along the same road that Kestrel had ridden in part before, the road from Trace to the capital city.

  Five days after their engagement, they rode up to the gates of Hydrotaz, where guards were stationed. They had been discreet on their journey, staying in inns, but hiding their identities as much as possible, and keeping to themselves. Despite the affection they felt for each other, and the desire they each felt to better know and understand one another and their relationship, they spoke little during the journey, while they felt confused, embarrassed, and tired.

  Kestrel carried food up to their room each night, and spent only a little time in the bars and taverns, learning what situation they faced in the city. The news he learned was that Yulia’s hold on the throne was precarious, as factions in the nation jockeyed for power and wealth, and supporters of the former regime plotted within the capital.

  They arrived at Hydrotaz City in mid-morning of the day that began their third week together. Kestrel wore his ring on his right hand, giving him the look of a human, and Moorin rode behind him, wearing a hat pulled low over her ears, with her face pressed against Kestrel’s back.

  “What is your purpose for entering the city?” A guard at the city gate asked after they waited in line to approach the entry.

  “I come as a friend who wishes to visit Greysen and Ferris of the palace guard,” Kestrel announced. “I’m an old acquaintance of theirs.”

  “Do you have proof?” the guard asked.

  “No,” Kestrel replied simply.

  “Where will you be staying?” the other guard asked.

  “I don’t know the city to know the options. Where would you recommend?” Kestrel countered.

  “Stay a
t the Golden Seat, on the main square. And bring back a note tomorrow from Greysen or Ferris confirming that they know you, or you’ll have to leave the city,” the first guard decided after a momentary glance at the figure of Moorin, hiding behind Kestrel.

  “We won’t tell your wife about your girlfriend!” the second guard joked in a friendly manner, believing he understood why Moorin was so circumspect.

  “My fiancée has no idea what all I do,” Kestrel laughed along, and the horse moved on into the city.

  “Ow!” Kestrel grunted moments later, as Moorin softly punched his kidney.

  “Perhaps your fiancée knows all too well what you’re about,” she said in his ear, making Kestrel remember that she had broken off one engagement because of an unfaithful husband-to-be.

  “I apologize,” Kestrel said simply, both annoyed that she would take offense at an obvious effort to go along with the guard, as well as sorry that she felt so vulnerable. But she was in a precarious situation he realized, with no friends at all within hundreds of miles other than him, the man she was so dependent on.

  They arrived at the Golden Seat, a luxurious hotel, on the main city square, within fifteen minutes. Kestrel rode around to the stables and left the horse there as he carried their goods in on one shoulder, and squeezed Moorin tightly against his other shoulder. He used coins from his stash of gold that Philip had given him, and reserved a room for the evening, then delighted Moorin by asking that a tub of hot water be delivered for his lady’s bath. The pair of them went into the dining room and isolated themselves in a corner to eat while the staff carried the tub and hot water to their room.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to see your friends?” Moorin asked him as they ate a simple meal.