“It must be daylight outside,” Kestrel finally said. “I’m already losing the ability to reach my energy,” he told the others as they reached the top of the staircase. His light was dim, sputtering, on the verge of extinguishing, and he knew he would soon have to let it go out.
So you’re telling us that if we need for you to use your powers, you’ll be unable to do so until nightfall?” Krusima asked.
“Yes,” Kestrel agreed.
“What good are you then?” the human god snapped.
“At this point, I’m still better than you,” Kestrel answered without thinking.
Krusima’s face was covered in an instant scowl.
“My lord,” Stuart interjected, “you say there is a tower we could climb to see the surrounding terrain? Perhaps we should go there and see what our route is going to be.”
Kestrel heard the last of the Skyes reach the place where the impromptu conference had occurred, as the small creatures finished their laborious climb up the long staircase they had ascended.
“Yes, let’s move there, and we’ll wait for the appropriate time to go on,” Krusima glanced briefly at Kestrel, then asked Wren to translate the new need for directions.
Chapter 16
Several minutes later, Kestrel stood at the foot of the stairs, holding his staff and his knife ready, as he, Lark, and the Skyes waited for the others to return. The Skyes had led the group to the Tower, an unguarded edifice, where a circular staircase disappeared above their heads as it wound its way to the chamber that Krusima said was in the top of the structure. The stairway was illuminated by a window that was just out of sight around a curve, providing both light by which Kestrel could see his surroundings, as well as evidence that the harsh blue sun was up in the sky, lighting the world and diminishing Kestrel’s powers.
Climbing the stairs had not seemed necessary for the Skyes, and Kestrel had volunteered to remain behind to guard the bottom of the stairs, and to keep the Skyes company, though he admitted that his conversation with them would be very limited. Lark had surprised him – and Stuart – as she volunteered to stay at the base of the steps as well.
They listened to the rest of their companions climb the steps, as Lark sat a few treads above the floor where the Skyes were all quietly congregated, and where Kestrel stood, leaning on his staff. He felt weary; he did not know how many hours had passed in their course of their adventure, but he had used his energy liberally, and the strain was playing on his body. He longed for a chance to sleep, and he let his mind mentally wander as it considered the best places he could go – his own bed in Oaktown, the hot waters of the healing spring, even the bed in the guest room he had occupied while staying at Creata and Picco’s house in Graylee, where he had felt so comfortable in the guise of a human friend of the young nobles of the princedom.
He heard Lark’s steps as he vacantly stared at the Skyes, and then he flinched in surprise as he felt her hands on his shoulders, kneading his muscles.
“You look tense,” she said in a sympathetic tone, “my lord,” she added awkwardly.
“I imagine we all are tense, after all we’ve been through,” Kestrel responded. He wasn’t sure he actually enjoyed the girl’s efforts to massage his back, but he didn’t want to offend her by stopping her.
“We had no idea you were the son of a god,” Lark told him. “No wonder you’re able to do everything you want, and achieve the impossible. You are the greatest hero of the Inner Seas.”
“You might say that, and I might even think it, but most others would disagree. I’m sure Wren would laugh at the notion,” he replied.
“Your cousin says that you’re the greatest warrior and leader she’s ever seen or heard of,” the girl responded. “When we talk about you, she is your biggest fan.”
Kestrel mulled over the unlikely notion that Wren would have complimented him.
Lark noisily took in a deep breath, just behind his head. “If you would come to Uniontown with us, when this is over, and help my father, I would do anything you ask to repay you,” she spit the words out rapidly, in a rush of nervous energy.
“I’ve heard his men speak when they thought I wasn’t awake, or didn’t know I was around. They say that Duke Fields has more men and is going to win eventually. My father needs something to give him an advantage,” she spoke with great emotion, her attention no longer focused on her hands, so that her fingers were painfully digging into the muscles along Kestrel’s shoulders. “If you don’t come help us, I’m afraid my father will be killed, and my brother too,” she began to cry, and her hands left their clutching of Kestrel’s shoulders to cover her face.
Before Kestrel could awkwardly turn around, the Skyes all began clacking wildly, and as he looked down, he saw them taking their positions to begin climbing the stairs.
“Go upstairs, Lark, and tell the others there’s trouble down here,” Kestrel stared at the passage in front of him as he craned his neck backwards to direct his words towards the girl behind him.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“I’m going to stay here to see what happens,” he began, before the sound of a distance Viathin bellow came echoing up the cavern passage, “and I need to give the Skyes time to start climbing the stairs,” he explained. “You go now, and I’ll be up soon.”
“Be careful Kestrel,” she said, and he heard her boots climb up a half dozen steps, then turn, and come back down. She wordlessly leaned over his shoulder and kissed his cheek, then ran back up the stairs and kept going.
Kestrel stood in astonishment, momentarily unaware of the sounds of the Skyes climbing atop one another to climb the stairs.
An arrow suddenly flew at him from the darkness of the passageway and nicked his hip, then struck the stone wall beside him, and ricocheted downward to weakly strike his booted foot.
Kestrel crouched and pulled his knife, waiting for some sign of the approaching attacker. The Skyes were rapidly climbing, as the last of them reached the top of the first step, turned, and pulled up the two that had provided the steps for it to climb upon. He saw a flash of some metal ornament gleam dimly down the hallway and he threw his knife at the target.
He had his staff held at an angle in front of him, hopeful that it might miraculously deflect other arrows that might appear out of the darkness, and he wished with all his soul that the Skyes would hurry so that he could start to retreat upwards around the curving staircase, out of the line of fire of the Viathins.
An anguished shout sounded from the darkness, and Kestrel called for his knife to return. He rose one tread up the staircase, and caught his knife as it returned.
He heard the whisper of an arrow in the darkness, and instinctively threw himself to his left, in time to avoid another arrow that struck the steps and then clattered back down. The Skyes climbed another step, giving Kestrel the chance to climb up one step too, almost to the point of starting to see the potential for some protection from the curvation of the thick column of stone in the center of the tower.
The next thing Kestrel knew, there was a screaming wall of Viathins charging at him from the darkness, five wide in the vanguard as they rushed at him with swords swinging wildly. He flipped his knife forward at one, then began using his staff in a desperate battle to defend himself from the other blades that tried to take his life.
The Skyes squealed and seemed to find some way to quicken their pace, allowing Kestrel to begin to back his way up the steps one tread every few seconds, while he continually flipped the ends of his staff left and right, up and down, occasionally thrusting the end of the staff into the face of a Viathin to knock the monster back, which created a short-lived moment of relief as the falling creature pulled two or three fellows with it.
“Lucretia!” he shouted, and when the knife returned he flung it into the face of a Viathin that was so close Kestrel could feel its breath. The staircase narrowed, cutting the number of enemies that he faced at any moment, but the battle continued to drag on, as he
slowly retreated.
His arms began to grow weary, and the blades of the monsters began to find his flesh with regularity, nicking him in his thighs and ribs so that his shirt and pants grew red. Kestrel knew that his advantage of being on the high ground of the stairs was slipping away in his growing weakness and tiredness. The sun was setting, and he thought about the gloomy conditions he would suffer by falling in battle as night fell. The weak beams of light that fell into the staircase through the window were a deep green, about to become black.
And then he realized that the darkness meant that his powers might be within reach. He reached inside himself and found the power available, and a moment later he threw a shield up across the staircase, then let himself slump to the stony steps and lay in dazed pain, watching the enraged monsters foam and snarl at him from a distance of only a few feet.
“Kestrel friend!” Stillwater’s voice called abruptly, and the imp came zipping down to land next to Kestrel. “Are you okay? Oh, Stillwater, what a foolish question!” the imp chided himself. “Can you hold your great magical protection while I go get help for you?” he asked Kestrel.
“You go, Stillwater, and I will be fine until you and the others return,” Kestrel gasped.
“I go!” the imp trumpeted, and he launched himself up the steps with a reckless abandon, while Kestrel was heartened and sat up straighter.
Within a minute Stillwater was back, holding the waterskin of enchanted protection that Tullamore had presented to them.
“Release the shield, and let me spray them away,” the imp shouted to Kestrel.
Kestrel looked up and saw that Stillwater had the spout open, and he was in position to begin his assault. With relief, Kestrel released his use of the power to create the shield, and the Viathins began to roar in exultation as they prepared to rush forward, only to begin to scream as the water from the sacred skin started spraying out upon them, making them scream in pain and fall backwards, smoking holes in their hides evidence of the power of Stillwater’s weapon.
“Kestrel!” Stuart and Woven each called in their languages as they came running down the stairs to assist him.
“You’re a mess, my lord,” Stuart said, looking in shock at Kestrel’s bloody attire.
“Here,” Woven reached for and took Kestrel’s staff, then leaned it against the wall before he positioned himself behind Kestrel and lifted him beneath his arms. He nodded to Stuart to grab Kestrel’s feet.
Stillwater was satisfied that he had chased the Viathins back far down the stairwell, and he turned his water skin towards Kestrel, then proceeded to spray a liberal amount up and down the elf’s body in hope of treating his cuts as well as rinsing some of the gruesome blood away, while the stymied Viathins howled and screamed from not far away.
“That’s a good idea; the duchess would have conniptions if she saw what a mess you’d made of yourself,” Stuart said as he grabbed Kestrel’s staff and then grabbed his feet.
It suddenly occurred to Kestrel that his three rescuers came from three different races with three different languages, and none of them knew how to talk to the others. All things considered, he felt lucky to be receiving such effective treatment from them, he concluded.
Minutes later they reached the top chamber, just as the Skyes were also arriving.
“We found him lying down, ready to go to sleep, I think,” Stuart joked as they laid Kestrel flat on the floor of the room at the top of the tower. The walls and the floor gave a sudden faint vibration as the others gathered around him.
“Good lord, Kestrel!” Wren said as she knelt next to him. “Couldn’t you have just run away? We could have helped you if you’d gotten up here.”
“The Skyes weren’t going to be so fast,” Kestrel answered.
“Ah,” she said softly, then turned and began to speak to the natives in their own language. There was another faint vibration in the stone around them.
“What do we do now?” Stuart asked.
“We’ve seen what we needed to; we know where we have to go,” Krusima answered. “It’s time to start on our way,” he said as he motioned out the window.
Kestrel stood up, then wobbled slightly as the tower vibrated again.
“What is that feeling?” he asked.
“I will go look,” Stillwater said, and he darted down the stairs.
Kestrel looked out the window, and saw the dark landscape that stretched out far below. The shades of gray and black were illuminated only by dim hints of green from the last of the sunset, and by the few small points of light that were Viathins moving about in the landscape. Off in the distance a collection of pinpoints of light were stationary.
“Is that the temple we have to get to?” he asked pointing, as the tower vibrated again, more vigorously.
“It is,” Morph agreed from where he stood next to Kestrel.
“They are knocking the tower down!” Stillwater shouted as he flew up the stairway and re-entered the chamber. “They have great, giant Viathins with sledges, and they’re knocking stones out of the walls one by one.
“They shot arrows at me so that I couldn’t get close enough to spray the good water on them,” he told the others.
Kestrel and Wren began to translate the gist of the message to the humans and to Woven.
“We’ll have to fight our way down to stop them,” Krusima growled.
“No, there may be a better way,” Morph said, looking at the human god, then at Kestrel.
“What could be better than a battle?” Krusima asked scornfully.
“A clever escape that makes the Viathins think we are dead, so they will not harass us on our way through the temple,” Morph retorted. The humans were hanging on to every word the two gods spoke, Kestrel suddenly noticed, as was Stillwater, and Woven too for that matter. The races shared no language in common, yet they all seemed to understand the speech of the gods, and as he thought about it, he realized they had all understood the gods in the previous conversations as well.
“What do you have in mind?” Krusima asked, in a tone that indicated he could be persuaded.
“It will require a painful sacrifice from Kestrel,” Morph answered.
“What sacrifice?” Kestrel asked.
“You are my son, and your powers are a successor of my own powers. I can take your energy from you, and use it to re-ignite a greater portion of my own, and with that, I can create a bridge in the sky that will allow us all to run from here to the temple,” Morph explained.
“You want to take my powers from me?” Kestrel asked incredulously.
“He’s not doing it for himself – he’s doing it to save you, you and all your companions!” Krusima thundered at Kestrel. “Restoring his power is the only way we are going to live on to escape and be victorious! Now don’t be a stubborn mortal!”
“Your powers will grow back – this is not a permanent robbery,” Morph answered in a gentler tone. “I will drain you of your powers in order to have enough to start a portion of my own, but then you will begin to start regenerating your energy over time.”
The tower shuddered again, this time in a more noticeable fashion, so that everyone’s feet staggered momentarily.
“Alright,” Kestrel said reluctantly. “Take my powers to save us.”
“Give me your hands,” Morph said.
“Thank you, Kestrel,” Stuart patted him on the back.
Kestrel reached out his hands, holding them for his father to take them.
The elven god grabbed hold of each hand tightly, then locked his eyes on Kestrel’s. “Here we go,” he said softly.
And Kestrel felt a wrenching pain begin.
Somewhere deep within him, he felt an explosive reaction occur, as Morph delved into his soul and found his source of power. An incredible withdrawal of energy began, and it seemed to not only take away his power, but it threatened to pull the very core of his identity with it as well. He felt his memories become dislodged and jarred by the force of the activity that was pillagin
g the center of his identity. He suddenly understood that in some way, the power he held had always been a part of his sense of who he was, even long before he had ever had a glimmer of recognition of his potential.
The pain was mental, it was spiritual, and it was physical. He realized he was crying, and he vaguely felt the tears streaming down his cheeks. He felt Morph within him, and he felt a sense of the overwhelming eternal life the god had maintained, a vast reservoir of experience and knowledge. Morph was full of humor and laughter and skittish pranks, yet there was depth and a solid foundation beneath those elements, and it overwhelmed any ability Kestrel had to plumb those depths during his fleeting exposure to his father’s hidden substance.
The pain went on, and then suddenly it was over. Kestrel opened his eyes, and saw that he was lying on the ground once again, Morph’s hands still holding his, as Wren and Lark both knelt over him and Stillwater hovered above.
“Did it work?” he heard Krusima’s voice impatiently ask.
“Oh by Mother Moon and Father Tree, it worked! I feel it!” Morph answered. “It’s not like it was before my powers were stolen, but I can do things once again!” he crowed.
“Perhaps I should attempt to regain my powers too, to help in the battle,” Krusima mused.
“The boy isn’t in any shape to go through that again,” Morph immediately answered. “And it only worked because he is my son, and our powers are compatible.”
“Here, this is what we’ll do,” he leapt lightly up onto the ledge of the window that faced the temple’s twinkling lights. He waved a hand, and then stepped off the ledge, making the others in the chamber gasp in momentary fright.
The building shivered once again, and dust fell down from the mortared cracks overhead.
“What are you doing?” Krusima asked impatiently.
“I’ve created a bridge in the air, a black bridge that cannot be seen at night from the ground, and it leads all the way to the temple. We’ll just walk through the air over to the temple while they think we’re trapped in this soon-to-be-destroyed tower,” he explained.
An Unexpected Deity (Book 7) Page 22