The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 03 - Road of Shadows

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “What’s your name, and where were you stationed?” Kestrel asked, as he turned and walked back up to the altar. His ring and knife were still there, no longer carrying the magical powers that Kai had instilled in them, but precious to Kestrel nonetheless. He picked them up and carried them back as he listened to the sergeant answer.

  “Mitchell,” the leader of the squad answered. “Sergeant Mitchell of the Palace Guard.”

  “Here, help me get this uniform off this man,” Kestrel said, as he stooped to begin undressing the dead officer. Kestrel changed into the dead man’s clothes as he began to explain his plan to the squad of men who respectfully circled around him. Minutes later they all trooped out of the remnants of the temple, leaving the dead officer and the dead Viathin lying on the floor of the sanctum, their bodies growing cold and stiff.

  Chapter 18 – Yulia’s Cure

  Kestrel and his squad circled around the palace to the gate by the stables, where Mitchell recommended they would have their easiest means of entering the palace. Boldness and surprise, Kestrel had decided, were the best way to handle the situation at hand, and the sooner he could act, the better the chances were that the Viathins would not be prepared to react to his victory over their champion.

  Mitchell led the squad into the palace grounds, while Kestrel mixed in among the guard members, hiding his now visible elven features. The squad split into four smaller, discrete groups to avoid arousing attention. They wandered through the palace grounds along separate routes, and quietly reassembled inside the palace, on the second floor, in a small ballroom just below the princess’s quarters.

  Kestrel explained that he wanted to capture the princess, unharmed. With a drop of her blood, he would be able to use the gift given to him by the gods (he didn’t explain which set of gods) to begin to break the evil influence the Viathins were exerting in Hydrotaz. A quartet of guards went to the back staircase that provided access to the princess’s suite, and once they were on their way, Mitchell, Kestrel, and the rest of the squad went to the main stairs, then rushed and overpowered the guards who were stationed at the bottom of the staircase.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, another set of guards opened fire upon them, shooting arrows that pinned Kestrel’s rebels in place until Kestrel used his own elven archery skills to drive the defenders back into Yulia’s very suite. Minutes later Mitchell led the rush into the suite, and emerged quickly carrying the struggling Princess Yulia of Hydrotaz out into the hallway, screaming in rage.

  “You?!” she shouted when she saw Kestrel. “I thought we were rid of you! You’re an abomination! Someone do me a favor and remove this elf from our world!”

  Kestrel calmly grabbed her left hand in his, then pulled out his knife. “Stop him! He’s going to slit my throat! Won’t anyone help me?” Yulia scream loudly, and Kestrel heard voices speaking urgently at the bottom of the staircase.

  With a quick prick, Kestrel pinked Yulia’s finger, pulled the stopper out of the precious skin of water that he had carried so far, and held her finger over the opening. “Watch this, everyone,” he called.

  The drop of blood fell from Yulia’s finger into the dark opening; immediately, the bag began to shake, and steam vented out of the opening, as the bag took on a green glow for several seconds. Then the steam trailed off and the glow faded, and Kestrel held the steady bag.

  “Now Yulia, take a sip of this,” he said, grabbing her jaw, as a look of terror overtook her eyes, and he held the spout up to her mouth and forced a gush of the water into her mouth, then clamped his hand over her mouth and nose and forced her to swallow the water.

  Yulia’s body trembled in a horrific momentary seizure, and then grew still. Kestrel slowly removed his hand from her mouth, and he signaled to Mitchell to have his men release the princess.

  Yulia looked deeply into Kestrel’s eyes as she stood silent, while the circle of guards around her watched nervously. “Kestrel,” she spoke at last, “thank the gods you’ve come to save me again!”

  Kestrel knelt in front of her, and motioned for the others to do the same.

  “We recognize you as the rightful ruler of Hydrotaz, and we pray to Kai to thank her that you have control of your own will once again,” Kestrel said, then he stood and embraced the lean girl in a fond embrace.

  “Here,” he handed the water skin to one of his guards, “take this and make the guards you overpowered inside drink from it,” Kestrel instructed as he motioned towards Yulia’s suite. The sounds from below were growing louder.

  “Go to the top of the stairs and instruct everyone to cease all activity, and to line up,” Kestrel said to Yulia. “We’ll bring down the water skin and make everyone take a drink,” he explained.

  Throughout the night as the watch shifts changed, and as guards in barracks were awakened and told to drink the water from the skin, Kestrel set his rapidly growing force of men to work erasing the influence the Viathins had within the palace. Shortly before dawn Ferris, the head of the palace guard, was seized in his bed in the officers’ quarters and brought to the location in a small garden where the water bag was centrally located.

  “You filthy elf – we should have killed you when we had you. We should have burned down every tree we saw in your precious forest!” he snarled at Kestrel, before a gush of the ever-renewing water was forced down his throat, and he was cleansed of the malevolent influence of the Viathins.

  Once the sun rose, and after every leader in the palace was confirmed to have drunk from the skin, Kestrel led a group of archers into the pool house where the monster lizards were kept. The water was frothy red with blood, as the Viathins turned on one another in their rage over Kestrel’s coup in the palace, and only one large, growling lizard was left alive in the water when the archers surrounded it and fired their arrows repeatedly.

  Exhausted, Kestrel was thinking of asking for a bed to sleep in when a messenger appeared to summon him to a meeting with the princess and her advisors. Kestrel wearily followed the messenger to a meeting where two dozen high ranking officials were gathered, in the very ballroom that Kestrel and Mitchell and their small band had congregated in at the start of the evening’s campaign.

  As Kestrel entered, Yulia startled everyone present by rising from her seat at the head of the table. Ferris began to clap in appreciation for the elf, and those around the table looked around, saw that Yulia was following his lead, and began to applaud as well. Kestrel looked around in shock, then grinned in appreciation of the irony of the situation.

  “Kestrel, we are told that the goddess Kai appeared last night in front of a score of witnesses, and proclaimed you to be her champion,” Yulia said. “And that you defeated a great and treacherous foe in single combat, before you came to the palace and freed so many of us from the toxic enchantment that was harming us. Without your assistance, we would have taken our people down a road to oblivion, and we thank you and Kai for saving our nation with your work last night.

  “What would you tell us now?” she asked.

  “I came here to see my friends, those who I respect,” Kestrel began, when he heard the door open, and turned to see Greysen trying to quietly enter the room. “And when I found that my friends were in trouble, I was fortunate that Kai was with me. She saved me, and enabled me to help all of you,” Kestrel said. “But your troubles are far from over.

  “You know that you have a loyal group of guards,” Kestrel began. “But you know that if there are any of the monster lizards, the Viathins, in the vicinity, then you are not safe from any of your people they infect. Send your best hunters out to hunt up and down the rivers and streams to make sure there are no more of the monsters nearby.

  “And please do me one favor, one great favor,” Kestrel began, then stopped.

  “What do you seek, Kestrel?” Yulia asked.

  “Peace for my people. Stop fighting with the elves. We mean you no harm. In fact, knowing that you face another war with Graylee, I will offer to return to the Eastern For
est immediately to bring as many elven archers as I can back with me to help your own army fight for your freedom,” he proposed.

  There was a murmured rumble around the room. “I believe that we can trust you, but our nation just let a foreign army onto our soil recently, and you know what happened,” an officer at the far end of the table said. “Our people will not allow us to do that again.”

  “That is fair,” Kestrel said. “What if I bring just a battalion of archers as a token of neighborliness, from my own lands down in the south? It would be the first step of the journey towards friendlier relations between our people.”

  “Are you a nobleman, Kestrel?” Yulia asked.

  “Yes, I have been since last fall, after I left you, and fought the Viathins in my own nation,” Kestrel said. “I am the Warden of the Marches in the south of the nation.”

  “Then we must accept your noble offer of friendship. By all means, call your battalion to come join us, and we will treat them as allies,” the princess said firmly.

  “I will deliver the message myself, as quickly as possible,” Kestrel said. “I have a pressing engagement; I must go make peace with my neighbors, the imps of the Swampy Morass,” he listened to the buzz of whispered comments around the table. “They are real, and they are my friends,” Kestrel said loudly. “And they have suffered from the invasion of the Viathins as well. They led the way to discovering this divine water that protects us from the Viathins’ evil,” he explained.

  “Would you like an escort across the countryside?” Ferris suggested mildly.

  Kestrel immediately realized Ferris was offering protection to him. “That would be most appreciated. If Sergeant Mitchell and a few others could accompany me, I would feel comfortable.”

  “You’ll take Mitchell, will you? He was one of my men on that first assignment to the forest,” Ferris replied, and both of them grinned again at the realization of how closely they had been tied together by the first Hydrotaz effort to start a forest fire in the Eastern Forest.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go rest this morning, and prepare to leave this afternoon,” Kestrel said at last, feeling his exhaustion growing at an exponential rate, weighing on him more and more heavily.

  “Greysen, would you show Lord Kestrel to the guest quarters upstairs?” Yulia spoke. “And make whatever arrangements he requests. We’ll cover a few more items here, and then dismiss everyone to freshen up after our eventful evening,” she added. “Be sure to see me before you leave,” she spoke directly to Kestrel.

  Kestrel and Greysen talked feverishly as they climbed the stairs, and Kestrel asked Greysen to have someone retrieve his abandoned horse from the stables at the Golden Seat. He gave Greysen the water skin of cleansing water and told him to put it to use while Kestrel slept, dosing city and army leaders who were near the palace.

  Minutes later, in a luxurious suite in the royal residence, Kestrel fell asleep. His sleep was troubled, filled with dreams of Moorin turning into a monster, over and over again – sometimes in the temple, sometimes while at their wedding, sometimes in more horrifying settings. He was glad to hear a knock on the door that awakened him in the early afternoon, as Yulia arrived carrying a tray of food, with his water skin returned to his possession. “I thought you might appreciate a snack,” she said as she set the tray on his oversized mattress, then leaned back against his pillows. “Thank you Kestrel, for everything,” she said. “You’re a better human than most of us!” she grinned. “You don’t make mistakes.”

  “That’s far from true,” he said. “I made one huge mistake on this trip,” he said, and gave a quick summation of the false Moorin he had travelled with.

  Yulia reached over and stroked his shoulder in sympathy. “I did leave Philip alive and well and free in Graylee,” he said to change the subject, not wanting to linger on his vulnerable heart any longer. “He said to tell you hello, and that he thinks of you,” Kestrel passed along the message. “I know he’d like to see you again.”

  “And I’d like to see him too,” Yulia said. “I hope there’s a way to get together peacefully.”

  “Perhaps after I return we can figure out a way to take the water skin to Graylee City, now that your drop of blood has brought its powers to life,” Kestrel said.

  “But first, I need to get going east. Do you know if my companions are ready?” he asked.

  “They are downstairs, with your horse fetched and waiting,” Yulia assured him.

  Chapter 19 –Return to the Forest

  Mitchell and a half dozen other guard members from the unit that Kai had dedicated to Kestrel arrived at the edge of the Eastern Forest along with Kestrel as the sun set the following day. Kestrel paid for them to stay at an inn located in the last village in Hydrotaz, and promised to return within a month if possible. They all agreed that it was better to not try to take the humans into the forest – the humans feared for their safety, entering the forest so near where the false attack had been located two years earlier, while Kestrel wished to avoid the political drama of being seen in the company of humans while he began his work in the forest.

  Kestrel assigned Mitchell and his men the duty of notifying every resident of the area to expect to see a battalion of elves come out of the forest and march to the village. The humans needed to know that the elves were coming in friendship, Kestrel insisted, so that they would not think they were being invaded from the east. While the guards grumbled about the assignment of knocking on every door and talking to every farmer, they also appreciated having some activity to keep they occupied.

  He left his horse with the humans, remembering the problems his last horse had caused for him among the parochial elves in the north of his homeland, and began running the long road to Center Trunk. He ran well into the night, then slept in a tree for the first time since his last visit to the forest, and ate a cricket, for the first time since he had offered one to Moorin, when they had camped in the empty farmstead.

  The memory of that night haunted his dreams again as he slept in the tree, and he groggily rose from the tree branches when the birds began to herald the arrival of dawn. He preferred to be awake and moving over the alternative of letting his soul endure nightmares about the half-elf girl who had shaken his soul. He began running again, and passed through his first elven village, deep in the forest, just as the sun rose.

  He stopped in the market place that was opening up, and bought bread from the bakery, then ate as he ran further. There were no large cities along his route to Center Trunk, and Kestrel chose to keep moving. He didn’t want to face any suspicions over his human features, and he didn’t want to delay his journey with any confrontations. He kept his feet moving, and by the third day of his trip he realized just how large the Eastern Forest was compared to the human kingdoms of the Inner Seas. His journey from the border to Center Trunk was significantly farther than his journey from Graylee to Hydrotaz. And coming up he would have to face the long journey from Center Trunk back down to Oaktown and the Swampy Morass, to finally face the imps and try to make peace with their king.

  The long journey gave him time to think. His mind was shifting, gradually leaving behind the focus on the terrible events of the recent past, as he began to think about his mission ahead; the environment of the forest, with the calming presence of the trees, soothed him to a greater degree than he had expected, making it possible for his racing mind and heart to begin to become more objective once again. He would have a delicate time explaining the incredible truth about the Viathins and their ability to control people. He knew that he would have to start with a visit and several long conversations with Colonel Silvan. Silvan would understand and believe, and would help Kestrel explain the dangerous conditions to the palace and the Guard leadership.

  But he didn’t know if even Silvan would accept Kestrel’s belief that the elves needed to ally themselves with the humans who were battling against the Viathin invasion. It was a difficult case to make, though aided to some degree by the m
emories of the attempt to kill Princess Elwean and kidnap the king, which might be explained away by those who didn’t want to help any humans. He could already anticipate that the counter argument he would face would be one in favor of letting the humans go to war and kill as many of themselves as possible, and Kestrel wasn’t sure he had the subtlety to counter that with his vision of establishing peace across the Hydrotaz border, and reminding all that the Viathins were the common enemy that the elves needed to fight in every theater that was reasonably available, including in human lands.

  Elder Miskel, the commander of the elven army had seemed willing to listen to the idea when Kestrel had raised the concept before he last left the capital, but now Kestrel was ready to ask for a first, concrete commitment to the notion, and he didn’t know whether to expect to see words successfully translated into actions.

  At a more personal level, Kestrel wanted to ask Silvan about the elves of the Northern Forest. He wanted to know if the false Moorin had simply made things up, or if that culture did interact with their human neighbors in a more open manner than the Eastern elves did. And at the most personal level, Kestrel foresaw himself unfortunately unable to avoid being caught in the relationship quagmire among Silvan, Alicia, and Giardell. He was still too shell-shocked by the revelation of the false Moorin to feel any desire to open up the thin layer of protection that separated him from becoming intertwined with the drama that had existed among the three people he worked with and had depended on, but he knew that his exposure to the troubled dynamics of his friends was inevitable.

  And so it was in a somber and pensive mood that Kestrel arrived in Center Trunk at mid-day of his fifth long day of travel. There were only two places he could go – the guard base, or the palace, and he knew that in reality he must go to the guard base first. He needed to talk to Silvan, and just as importantly, listen to Silvan’s assessment of the situation in the Eastern Forest in order to know how to proceed.