The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 03 - Road of Shadows

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “Oh injured friend,” Dewberry said as she sat up. “We saw the worst thing I have ever seen. One can expect treachery from enemies, but I never thought to see such betrayal from any of the blue folk, let alone our own royal family.”

  She reached over and began to stroke Jonson’s face as she cooed in his ear until he also awoke. He went through a similar reorientation of shock and dismay as he accepted the situation. “What can we do for you, Kestrel ally?” he asked, motioning towards the dart that stuck out from his flesh.

  “Can one of you cut this out for me?” Kestrel asked. “The water will heal it.”

  The sprite and the imp looked at one another. “We’ll go fetch your doctor lover to come take care of you,” Dewberry said. “Don’t go anywhere.” And without even standing up, they both were gone. Kestrel laid back on the turf and sighed; he’d gone a long time without having to rely upon Alicia for surgical care, whether cosmetic or medical necessity, and he hadn’t expected to resume his doctor visits with her, especially not immediately, for injuries given by imps. He considered whether he should talk to her while they would be together, to let her know that Giardell would be with him as he headed into Hydrotaz. It was something better left unsaid, he concluded, not to be brought to her attention needlessly.

  “And just like that, it’s ‘call on good old Alicia’ to heal me because I stepped in front of another deadly weapon” he heard a woman’s voice say, and he opened his eyes to look up into her face bent over him, examining his shoulder.

  “I’m just as comfortable seeing you here as I am back in Center Trunk, I think,” Kestrel replied, as Alicia opened her bag and pulled out instruments. Dewberry, Jonson, and another imp fluttered in the background. He turned his head and looked away as he felt the pain of her knife enter his flesh, and then the pain diminished as she withdrew the arrow.

  “So tell me what happened,” she instructed him as she removed his shirt from his torso, then wrapped white linen around his shoulder and laved spring water over the wound. Kestrel began to recite the confusing story of the sudden attack, as she listened and stared at his chest, then tentatively placed her hand upon the spot where the raised scars of Kai’s handprint remained, left behind when Robaske had lifted away the tattoo-shield on his chest.

  “Her hand and mine are the same size,” Alicia murmured. “So how do you explain this?” she referred to Kestrel’s story as she spoke up in a more conversational tone, and turned to look at Jonson.

  “I have tried and tried and tried, healer friend, to understand, but I do not,” Jonson said.

  “Jonson, your father appeared to need others to carry him away from the throne room,” Kestrel interjected. “When they left, the four advisors gathered around him and then they translocated away. Does that seem right?”

  Jonson sat silently, until Dewberry spoke up. “I haven’t seen your father make movement through space on his own since we returned, dear heart.”

  “Well, surely he’s,” Jonson started to protest. “I don’t know,” he started again, after a pause. “What could it mean?”

  “What do we do now?” Kestrel looked at each of the blue people present.

  “We have to go back right away, and let our people know, and try to set things right,” Jonson said.

  “Before we go, would you take Alicia back to Center Trunk, and when you come back here, bring every weapon that Alicia can procure for me – elven bow and arrows, a bandolier of knives, if there are any to be had in the armory,” he looked at Alicia.

  “Of course, I’ll tell Silvan to write an order immediately,” she confirmed. She removed her hand from his chest at last, and started to stand. “You be careful, Kestrel,” she added, then bent and kissed his cheek. “I like to see you, but it needn’t always be when you have to be healed!”

  The imps gathered around her and disappeared, leaving Kestrel alone again by the spring. He sat there in puzzled dismay until his friends returned minutes later, carrying an assortment of weapons that he was pleased to see, especially a staff. “I didn’t even bother to ask – I was sure we wouldn’t have a staff in the armory!” he said gleefully. “I’m ready to go,” he said moments later as he strapped the bandolier of knives over his still painful shoulder.

  “We will take you back to the place where we first saw you in the city towers,” Jonson said. “Dewberry will remain with you, while I will go round up and alert others who need to know, so that we can plan a way to address this problem. I do not know exactly what to do,” the imp admitted sadly.

  They proceeded to return to the tower chamber Kestrel had been in when Jonson had met him, and they were immediately surrounded by a flock of imps anxious to listen to stories about what had happened, as rumors circulated wildly throughout their community. Kestrel and Dewberry went back to the sleeping chamber Kestrel had occupied earlier, and sat down against the wall, while Jonson promised to return quickly once he had a plan in place.

  Kestrel pulled a knife from his bandolier and held it in his right hand, ready to throw quickly if needed. “Kestrel-bravest, I am so sorry this has happened,” Dewberry said as she leaned against him and the wall. “The father-king, Ingyld, was always a warm-hearted person. He was different when we returned from the other place, but we just thought that was due to the stress of our disappearance for so long.”

  As she finished speaking, Mrs. Divers suddenly appeared. Kestrel’s arm cocked back, ready to throw at the startling arrival, but he stopped his arm’s forward motion as he recognized the unusual dimensions of the chamberlain.

  “Heavens! Please don’t throw!” she squealed in a surprisingly high voice as she saw the knife in Kestrel’s hand.

  “Thank you,” she said moments later. “I came in search of you, to find out if you were all right after that battle, that horrible battle.

  “I’m not sure it is proper for the two of you to be here alone like this,” she suggested moments later as she floated over next to Kestrel on the side opposite from Dewberry, and settled to the floor. “For your highness’s sake, I will stay here as a chaperone,” she announced as she too leaned against Kestrel.

  He looked at her and nodded politely as he smiled at her, then suddenly whipped his arm forward and tossed his knife, then grabbed another and threw it as well as two imp guards appeared overhead carrying pikes, and dropped, thrusting their weapons forward towards the trio on the floor. Kestrel’s daggers flew true, and struck the two attackers in their torsos, knocking both of them from the air, so that they hit the floor and skidded forward, stopping just short of Kestrel’s feet.

  Divers let out a belated scream, one that lasted so long and pierced Kestrel’s brain so painfully that he clamped a hand over her mouth to stop the noise. With the scream a dozen other imps suddenly popped into the room, and Kestrel hurried pulled out another knife as he scanned the crowd and determined that none carried weapons.

  “We are safe, my friends. The great warrior has won again!” Dewberry stood up and announced loudly.

  “Why are they attacking him?” someone asked from the crowd.

  “We don’t know,” Dewberry replied. “It started without warning. There was no explanation for why they attacked my fervent, devoted admirer,” she added to a round of titters.

  And at that moment, a dozen guard members arrived to attack Kestrel. They found themselves intermixed among the other arrivals, much to their confusion, and the crowd started to attack the guards immediately, impulsively, sending some guard members fleeing, while others fell to the floor, wounded or unconscious.

  Kestrel whipped his bow off his shoulder and notched an arrow, ready to fire at any clear target he could find among the attackers, but the shifting kaleidoscope of activity prevented him from shooting any good arrows until half the guards were subdued. Kestrel shot two of them, and the rest fled in disarray.

  “Jonson’s in a battle back at the main royal chamber!” a new imp announced as he arrived, causing shouts of concern. Half the imps immediately disappeared
.

  “We’ve got to go help!” Kestrel shouted. He picked up his supplies and ran out of the room, then lunged up a set of stairs and sprinted to the balcony that faced the other tower with royal chambers, leaping again into the open space between the towers, and letting his elven legs and weight carry him across the chasm. He landed on his feet and kept running, going straight to the doors of the chamber he had been in before.

  As soon as he opened the door he saw the pandemonium within, where imps battled imps in a fierce contest that filled the room from floor to ceiling. Kestrel knelt and pulled his bow off his shoulder again, then began shooting at targets, particularly aiming at the noble counselors he recognized who had supported the king during the earlier audience and melee in the room. He brought down three of the four counselors he spotted, and fired arrows at other targets, until he came under attack from a trio of imps, and had to use his new staff with a desperate flurry of blocks and jabs that barely kept him whole until Jonson came to his rescue and helped him defeat his attackers.

  “Thank you!” Kestrel shouted.

  “I’m happy to finally return the favor!” Jonson shouted back with a smile, and then he was off to another corner of the room.

  The momentum of the battle shifted in favor of Jonson’s force. Kestrel continued to take shots at the king’s forces where he saw clear opportunities, but otherwise stood back and scanned the battlefield that rose and fell as much as it flowed left or right. As much as he could, Kestrel kept his eye on the king, who was present and standing on the dais shouting encouragement to his forces. Kestrel felt constrained to not shoot his own arrows at the royal target, knowing that the imps had to handle their king in their own way.

  As it became apparent that Jonson was going to win the battle in the receiving room, the king grew shriller in his shouts, but did not depart, Kestrel saw. When at last Jonson’s forces had command of the area, Jonson himself floated over to stand in front of his father, who still had one of his advisors alive and standing beside him.

  “What has happened today, father?” Jonson asked in a sad tone. “What has happened to you? Why did you attack our friend?”

  As Jonson spoke, Kestrel started to walk towards the front of the room, stepping over dead bodies on his way. As he walked, he watched the king and the advisor while Jonson asked his questions. The advisor began to hurriedly reach into his cloak, and Kestrel suspected there was a weapon hidden within, providing a last second means of assassinating Jonson. Kestrel ripped a knife off of his bandolier and threw it at the counselor.

  The throw was too late however, but the results were so shocking that Kestrel didn’t realize later what he had intended and what had happened. His knife had flown at where he expected the advisor to be as the imp lunged to attack Jonson. Though Kestrel had intended to protect his friend, it turned out to be unnecessary, as the counselor pulled out a long-bladed knife and attacked not Jonson, but the king instead.

  “I’ll help our people!” the advisor shouted, as he pushed his blade unexpectedly into the king’s chest, just as Kestrel’s own knife arrived. Kestrel had aimed for where he expected the counselor to move to, so the knife did not hit the counselor squarely in the chest above the heart, but instead hit the killer in his right chest, causing him to collapse while his own hand was still holding the knife that protruded from the king’s chest.

  Kestrel stared in horror at the situation, as Jonson gasped, and reached out to his father.

  But instead of falling to the floor, the king shocked everyone still alive in the room, and made Jonson step back in horror. The king reacted to the fatal knife stabbing by shuddering horrifically, and then his face and the body began an extraordinary change, one that Kestrel recognized within seconds, and felt sickened by. The skin grew darker and scaly, while the hair shriveled away. The face became a snout and beady eyes, while the legs shortened and the body lengthened. Within moments Kestrel was looking at the same creature he had seen in the cave on Albanu, the same type of monster that Moorin had turned out to be.

  The king of the imps had not been the true king, but had been an imposter, a Viathin playing a role!

  “You may win this small battle, but the war is far underway, and we will win. We will conquer and ravage and consume your soft world,” the scaly creature said as it fell to its knees. It grinned an evil leer at Jonson, turned to look at Kestrel, and then collapsed to the floor, dead.

  Jonson looked down at the body in utter shock, then began to cry a heartfelt wail of pain and grief that struck Kestrel’s soul in its profound expression of loss. “Where is my father?” Jonson cried.

  The remaining imps in the room were flying about in uncontrollable panic and fear, unable to comprehend the scene that had opened before them. Kestrel reached up into the air and grabbed the ankle of a guard that was flying by sobbing inconsolably.

  “Go find Jonson’s brothers and sisters and bring them here. Then go find his best friends and bring them here. We’ve got to bring the leaders of the imps together immediately!” Kestrel directed the guard.

  “Yes, my lord,” the guard replied, seemingly glad to have some direction to follow.

  “Dewberry, Dewberry, Dewberry!” Kestrel called, summoning the wife of the bereft prince.

  “Kestrel! You’re alive!” Dewberry arrived immediately, and she grabbed Kestrel tightly in a fierce hug, one in which her small arms failed to reach completely around his shoulders.

  “Dear heart,” Kestrel murmured, “thank you for coming. The king is dead; the king was not the king – he was a Viathin monster imposter who is dead now, and Jonson is at a loss. Go comfort your groom. He needs your love,” Kestrel urged, directing Dewberry to where Jonson knelt on the dais in the front of the room.

  With a cry, Dewberry left Kestrel and physically ran to Jonson, who she embraced with a hug that he fiercely returned, while tears continued to stream down his cheeks.

  Chapter 22 – Oaktown Reunions

  Three days later, Kestrel left the capital city of the imps, after attending a memorial service for King Ingyld, whose body was never found. Jonson had been quietly installed as the ruling monarch of the shocked nation, and had declared that his highest priority was to hunt down and kill every monster lizard that could be found among the rivers and swamps of the Morass.

  He had also granted Kestrel an extraordinary favor – a personal guard of four imps who would accompany Kestrel through his campaign against the Viathins, and fetch more imps and sprites as Kestrel might feel he needed in cases of conflict. The imps paid immediate dividends to Kestrel by teleporting him to the edge of the Swampy Morass, saving him two days of travel through the swamp, and they convivially floated along in his wake as he ran back to Oaktown to prepare his forces to depart from there to go to Hydrotaz. Unfortunately, his companions had never been to Oaktown to know the way there, so they were traveling the roads back to the town that Kestrel now called his home.

  Kestrel was still in shock from what had happened in Blackfriars, and the day that he spent running back to his manor was an opportunity for his mind to mull what he had seen. Thrice now, he had seen these new versions of the Viathins, the chameleon-like ones that changed and flawlessly adopted the appearance of some other being. The imitations were flawless, and Kestrel wondered how many more might exist. The new question of identity would be a troublesome one to address.

  Kestrel considered the ways that could be used to detect such imitators – the water that he had carried with him from Decimindion might provide a way to test a suspect. No Viathin should be able to stand to drink the water, he reasoned, but the thought of making the people around him constantly drink from the water skin seemed absurd. There would have to be an answer, and Kestrel would talk to others – perhaps Silvan would have advice, he decided, then remembered that his new imp companions had not been to Center Trunk to know how to travel there, ending his hope of going for a quick chat.

  Kestrel took joy in one thing that had happened after the battle; he
had recovered the first knife he had thrown, the knife he named Lucretia. In the confusion of fighting and fleeing from the initial outbreak of battle in the throne room, he hadn’t expected to find the blade again, but it had turned up in a pile of scavenged weapons, and he had been happy to place it in the sheath on his hip again, a sentimental favorite.

  After a long day of travel and thought, Kestrel and the imps arrived after sunset at his manor in Oaktown. The imps caused a considerable stir in the manor, and Kestrel saw numerous members of the staff peering in at any given time to catch a glimpse of the unusual visitors, as he and his small companions ate an informal meal in the kitchen. He then left the imps alone in a pair of rooms he had assigned to them, and walked through the darkness outside to find the campsite where his battalion of archers had been assigned to await him, some in tents, some in trees.

  Guards were posted around the perimeter, Kestrel was pleased to see, and he was escorted to the tent where Giardell was sitting on a cot with a travel desk in his lap, working by candle light on paper work needed for the soldiers under his leadership. He stood up, momentarily annoyed at the interruption of his work time, until the guard at the tent flap spoke. “Lord Kestrel to see Captain Giardell,” at which Giardell’s eyes lit up and he dismissed the guard, then grasped both of Kestrel’s hands in his in a firm and fervent clasp. It was a sign of his appreciation, Kestrel knew, a silent means of communication more powerful than any words.

  “Kestrel, you can’t imagine how much I appreciate this,” Giardell finally said.

  “Giardell, I appreciate having the one Guardsman in Center Trunk I have absolute faith in. There’s no one who I know who will do a better job of controlling this outfit on a very difficult assignment,” Kestrel answered, as they released their grips and sat down.

  “I don’t really think it’s that hard,” Giardell replied. “They’re all on pins and needles, excited and frightened to be serving in your cause. You’re the warrior who works for the gods, kills the yeti, travels with the sprites, has eyes like a gnome, and lives among humans! They’re determined to live up to your expectations, or die trying.”