The Blinded Journey

by Jeffrey Quyle

  They wandered to a tavern near their inn and ate a hearty stew as they drank wine and listened to a singer, then took another bottle of wine with them back to their room, where they drank until Kendel fell asleep, and Flora tucked him in.

  In the morning they awoke and shopped at a market, then left the city and began walking eastward into the rising sunlight of the yellow sun, as the green sun hid behind the larger star.

  Chapter 38

  “Do you think they’ll have any problem returning to Lumen’s estate?” Flora asked Kendel as they awoke the next morning.

  “It depends on how close the coach route is to Lumen’s place,” Kendel answered. “The less they have to travel after their coach ride, the better they’ll be.”

  Flora climbed out of the bed and began to stretch, practicing her yoga movement for the first time in many days.

  “This feels good,” she sighed. “I won’t make you stretch with me since you have that shoulder wound.”

  Kendel lay in bed and lazily watched Flora’s graceful movements until her activity was done. Then the two packed up and went to a market to start buying supplies for their trip.

  “It’s too bad we can’t let Lumen know that Agata and Parker are on their way,” Flora commented. “He could keep an eye out for them.”

  Kendel shrugged. The idea was valid, but impossible.

  With their shopping at the market soon finished, they followed the road that led to the eastern gate of the city, which lay next to where the great River of the Lands flowed into Chacer, entering from the east. Kendel stared at the river, and thought of Fontaine, who he had never actually seen.

  And he realized that Fontaine offered a possible way to send a speedy message to Lumen’s estate, to forewarn the prince’s household to be on the lookout for the arrival of the wayward Princess of Palatenland.

  “Let’s get out of the city,” he urged Flora, taking a quicker step forward. “I have an idea I want to try when we’re outside the gates.”

  “What’s the rush?” Flora asked.

  Kendel explained his idea as they approached the gate. Then at the gate, they found themselves being watched closely by the guards.

  “Your eyes are unusual,” a guard said as he lowered a pike in front of Kendel and Flora as they were about to leave the city.

  “We can’t let you leave,” the guard said. A foursome of other guards gathered loosely around. “You need to step into the guard house ant wait for an officer to come talk to you.”

  One of the nearby guards unexpectedly threw a bag full of powder into the air directly above Kendel’s head, catching him off guard. The powder dropped, and Kendel suddenly was in the midst of a sneezing fit, bent over and repeatedly sneezing painfully forceful blasts,

  Flora gave a scream, and then a club struck Kendel in the back of the head as he continued to sneeze.

  “Kendel! Help! Let me go!” Flora shouted. Kendel heard a solid smack of flesh against flesh, and a man grunted in pain, then Flora screamed again.

  Kendel was down on his knees, his right arm still in a sling, his shoulder a painful throb, and the back of his head throbbing. With his left hand he released a flow of energy into the staff and continuously streamed it outward, without regard to the targets he hit as he began to twirl the staff, blindly pointing it in all directions around him, repeatedly sending the energy out at whoever or what ever happened to be within range.

  He heard oaths and shouts and the sounds of people and objects falling to the pavement, but he continued to swing the staff around until the only sounds he heard were coming from a distance – the shouts of those who had fled as they witnessed the mowing down of guards and civilians and bystanders. A loud bell began to ring violently.

  He awkwardly crawled on one hand and his two knees to get away from the sneezing powder that continued to plague him, then bumped into a wall. He wiped his face with his shirt as his sneezing subsided, then managed to barely open his eyes into narrow slits that allowed him to look around.

  Bodies were everywhere, but his sight immediately found Flora, lying on the ground between two guards. He staggered over and bent down, then lifted her over his good shoulder and shakily stood up, leaning heavily on his staff to rise to his feet.

  Flora’s slow breathing sounded gentle. She was alive but unconscious, as Kendel expected everyone to be. He hadn’t sought to kill, only to disarm, and he had succeeded.

  He sneezed again violently three times, then started to stumble down the road away from the gate. He knew that he was going to be pursued, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to hurry his pace until he felt better and Flora was conscious.

  He noticed the river off to his right, not far down a sloping bank, where occasional earthen ramps provided access to the edge of the water. Kendel stumbled down one of the ramps, letting gravity ease his journey, then he lay Flora on the damp grass and awkwardly removed his pack and shirt and his sling. He knelt by the water, and dunked his head into the slowly-flowing river, scrubbing away the awful dust that had overcome him.

  “Fontaine!” he called as he raised his head and wiped the water from his eyes. “Fontaine, I need help,” he said loudly.

  He heard sounds above him and saw over his right shoulder that a squad of soldiers with bows and arrows were hurrying along the road in his direction. The sight triggered a memory of his escape with Elline and the others when they’d run away from Sunob and had to fight a confrontation at the gates there as well.

  Kendel raised his staff and waved it across the air overhead, spreading a wide swathe of his green energy that became a wall across the road and the riverbank, the land beyond the road, and even across a portion of the river. The archers were blocked – unable to attack or draw close.

  “Fontaine!” he called again as he carefully turned back to the river. He cupped his mobile hand and ladled a portion of the cool river water onto Flora’s face, making her eyes twitch and her nostrils flare in reaction.

  “Fontaine!” he called one more time, as he used his hand to clumsily raise Flora up into a sitting posture, leaning her against himself, as he stroked his hand upon her scalp.

  “Flora, we need to get going. Can you wake up?” he asked. “I’m sorry my energy stunned you along with the others, but I couldn’t see my targets – I just had to spray the power everywhere.”

  “She’s a woman, not a dog. You don’t need to pet her head,” a voice said next to him, making him jerk around in reaction, to find a stunning blue woman crouched down beside him.

  “Are you Fontaine?” he asked. In his time with the water nymph, he’d been blind, and he’d tried to imagine what she looked like. His mind’s eye had seen a dozen variations of her appearance, but none of them matched the stunning appearance she actually carried.

  “You’re gorgeous,” he breathed.

  “Yes, I am Fontaine,” she answered. “And your words are very kind,” she added with a mischievous grin. “Did you call me here just to tell me that? Why would you need to flatter me when you have this beautiful mortal non-human at your side?

  “Is she ill?” Fontaine asked, examining Flora. The nymph reached one of her flowing blue hands down and touched it to Flora’s cheek, gently stroking the unconscious girl.

  “I hurt her,” Kendel said. “I didn’t mean to; I was using my energies to put an end to an attack, and she happened to be one of the people my energies touched. It wasn’t a harmful attack; she should be okay with a little time.”

  “Do you have time?” Fontaine asked. She looked up at the company of archers, a group that was growing larger as more soldiers responded to the alarm raised at the gate. “Is that your work holding them back?” she asked.

  “It is,” Kendel confirmed. “It will last a few minutes I think.”

  “Impressive, my tanithear,” Fontaine’s hand stopped stroking Flora, and instead reached over to tousle Kendel’s hair.

  The word triggered a memory. “The creature in the cave, it called me that. Well, it ac
tually said I wasn’t a true tanithear,” he admitted.

  “What new story is this?” Fontaine asked. “You are full of stories, always so entertaining to be with.”

  “The cave you took me to, it led me to the other world that I come from,” Kendel began.

  “And when I came back to this world, with Flora, there was a green monster in the cave, at the place where the two worlds come together. Even though I was blind, I could see it, and I had to fight it so that we could get through,” he explained.

  “And it told me I was not a true tanithear; it said,” he remembered for the first time in a while what the guardian had advised, “it said I needed to learn to use my own power.”

  “Its counsel sounds wise,” Fontaine agreed. “Your own power will suit you best.”

  Kendel nodded, though not sure he agreed. The blue and the green powers worked fine; they’d gotten him through many frightening encounters. And they were powerful, whereas his own energy was relatively weak.

  “I am glad to see you, glad to know that your vision has returned,” Fontaine said. “And glad to know that you approve of my appearance,” she playfully added. “But tell me, why did you call me?”

  “Oh!” Kendel exclaimed, reminded of the mission he hoped the nymph would complete for him.

  “Flora and I found the Princess Agata and her squire Parker, and we’ve sent them on their way back to Prince Lumen’s estate. We want Prince Lumen to know, so that his guards might be able to find Agata and Parker and protect them along the way,” Kendel explained. “I hoped you could tell your brother Dwad, who could tell Lumen,” he suggested hopefully.

  “For you, I will do this. But you will owe me a favor someday,” she told him.

  “I already owe you a favor for taking me to the cave in the first place, don’t I?” Kendel asked.

  “If you think you do, then it must be so,” Fontaine playfully agreed. “You will owe me two favors, and your debt may be more than you realize,” she warned.

  “But first, let me do one other thing for you,” she looked up at the barrier Kendel had constructed, and Kendel’s gaze followed her view. The barrier was beginning to fray, growing weak and changing colors as it suffered a continuing assault of arrows fired at it.

  “Let me give you a journey along the river away from this mob,” Fontaine said.

  A paper-thin sheet of water rose up out of the river to Kendel’s surprise and swept beneath he and Flora and their packs. Kendel gave a startled shout as the water suddenly lifted the group up and spirited them out onto the surface of the river, without sinking them into the water. Fontaine moved with them, her legs disappearing in the river waters while her torso and head extended upwards.

  “Away we go,” she directed, as the men on the road shouted and howled in astonishment at the sight.

  The group on the river began to move upriver at a rapid pace, putting distance between them and Chacer while they passed occasional boats upon the water. Within minutes they were several miles upstream, and Flora began to moan, regaining consciousness while floating gently atop the water, splashed by occasional waves in the river.

  “Kendel?” she opened her eyes and looked up at him. “Where are we?” she asked as she became aware of the motion and the feel of the water beneath her.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, as she turned and saw Fontaine. “It’s you again.”

  “It’s good to see you awaken,” Fontaine replied. “I see you’ve taken good care of our tanithear. His vision is restored. You are truly a great non-human, whatever race you are.”

  Flora looked at Kendel in confusion, who was reminded of Fontaine’s claim that Flora was a non-human.

  “She calls me a tanithear, which I think is a male version of the second-sun witch,” he explained. “Her brother is Dwad the dwarf, and he claimed that I was a non-human, because I could use these powers I have.

  “But I don’t know why Fontaine calls you a non-human,” he told Flora.

  “She is like you, though different too,” Fontaine spoke up. “I see it when I look at her, just as clearly as my brother saw it in you. She is a non-human. But the manifestation of her unique abilities has not emerged. It still slumbers within her, like a butterfly in its cocoon.”

  “Kendel?” Flora turned to him for an explanation.

  He hunched his shoulders to indicate his lack of comprehension.

  “You look human to me, though maybe prettier than a human girl has a right to look,” he told her.

  “Ah,” Fontaine said delicately.

  “What?” both Flora and Kendel asked.

  “Nothing. Now is not the time.” The nymph suddenly altered course and slowed her speed, as she brought her two passengers over to the riverbank where they disembarked.

  “You are far ahead of those who hunted you, and you will be safe, at least from them. I will go now to carry out the mission that you ask,” Fontaine told Kendel. She rose from the water and stepped up onto the land.

  “Good luck my lady. You have great adventures ahead of you,” she told Flora as she took her hand. “There are revelations coming.”

  “And you,” she turned to Kendel. She took his hand, then sighed. “You must learn to use your own true power if you wish to succeed.” She leaned in and kissed him on each cheek.

  “I go now, and will bring success to your friends, I hope,” she told them. Fontaine stepped to the edge of the river, and made a looping dive into the water, liquefying into an elegant flow of fluid herself as she flew through the air and entered the river without a splash.

  “Kendel, what have we gotten ourselves into?” Flora asked softly, as the pair turned from staring at the spot where Flora had vanished to looking at one another.

  “I think it’s more than we expected,” he answered.

  Flora nodded. “We better be on our way then,” she said. She helped Kendel put his pack over his injured shoulder, then slipped her own pack on, and the pair began to climb up the slope to the road that they intended to follow east.