“He cares for you almost as much as he cares for her,” Giardell spoke for the first time. “Kestrel, I’ve listened to him anguish over this plan, and I know he has your safety high on his list. Let Alicia go, Kestrel, and let’s all work together to move this forward.”
Kestrel gave a great wail of frustration and resignation, then released his hold on Alicia and shoved her forcefully away, into Silvan’s arms, who grabbed her and enfolded her in a tight hug.
“Get her out of here. I never want to see her again!” Kestrel said bitterly, lowering his head and wiping tears from his face.
“Kestrel, please, know that I want to help you. Don’t feel this way, please, my friend,” Alicia broke free of Silvan’s grasp and walked back towards Kestrel, her hands held together in a pleading gesture before her.
Kestrel’s hand shot out and slapped her cheek, the sound as loud as the crack of a whip, and a red handprint immediately forming on her skin. “Get out!” He shouted. “Go away!”
She stared at him in shock, and in sadness, as her hand rubbed her cheek, and tears started to fall down her face. “I’m sorry, Kestrel,” she told him, then turned and walked back to Silvan, who tenderly kissed her before she left the room.
“She’s married to you!” Kestrel said suddenly in a blinding moment of intuition. “You used your own wife to seduce me into being one of your agents!”
“We are married, but if anything, I think you nearly seduced her away from me,” the colonel replied.
“Kestrel, I know how dramatic this is. Your life had just been turned upside down, I know. You’ve had the most eventful past twenty four hours I can imagine any elf living through,” Silvan said, gently perching himself on the edge of the table Kestrel had been strapped to. Giardell hovered very close by, while the guard Kestrel had injured had been taken away by other attendants, leaving just the three of them in the room.
“You know how desperate our situation could become if the humans decide they want to really wipe us out. They could just keep flinging fireballs at our trees, and then advancing and taking our land, and starting flinging more fireballs at us again – over and over and over,” Silvan warned.
“They’ve shown that they’ve got a new weapon that gives them new tactics, new ways to defeat us handily. You’ve already lost friends to them.
“We must find out what their plans are, so that we can be ready to defend ourselves next time. And try as I have, scratch my head as much as I have, I can come up with only one feasible plan for protecting our people – that’s to send you among the humans to ferret out their secrets,” the colonel spoke passionately as Kestrel slumped disconsolately in his corner, his back sliding down the wall until he was sitting on the floor.
“I’d like to send you immediately back north to Firheng, so that you can finish your training, and we can prepare to transport you to the human lands,” he went on.
“What it I go and decide I’ll just be a human?” Kestrel asked, frustrated by the trap that enclosed him. “I’ll look human, I’ll talk human. I can just live among them and not have to worry about being used by my own people.”
“And not have to worry about Cheryl and Vinetia and Arlen and Belinda. You can forget them all. You can forget Alicia, for that matter, who spent so many hours operating on you, soothing your brow, dabbling the magic water on you to take away the pain, even dripping it into your mouth so you wouldn’t be hung over,” Silvan said a little more sharply.
“For my part, I think she became a little too attached to you through yesterday’s adventure and the operation. I’ve often worried that she made a mistake when she agreed to marry me, someone old enough to be her father. But she is so extraordinary that I couldn’t bring myself to be noble enough to ignore the foolish hero-worship in her eyes,” the colonel continued reflectively, “and so we are married.
“Remember Kestrel, this is not permanent. Your ears will slowly grow back to their natural form. You’ll have the adventure and satisfaction of carrying out this assignment for a few months, and then you’ll have to come back to us. You won’t be able to pass for a human any longer,” Silvan slid off the table and walked over to Kestrel, then slowly knelt, to look at him eye-to-eye.
“Come on. The shock is over. You’re strong enough to do this. And you’re still the only elf I know with a personal relationship with two sets of gods and friendship with one of the lesser races – maybe two of the lesser races if I understood Alicia to say that you took care of water imps too.”
Silvan stood, then reached his arm down and held his hand out to Kestrel, waiting for long moments as the humanized elf looked at the hand, then pressed his palms against the floor and pushed himself up without assistance.
“Giardell will take you to get a cowl you can wear on your trip back to Firheng. Keep the hood up and keep away from folks and you shouldn’t have any problems along the road,” Silvan told him, also standing erect. “We can give you an escort, if you’d like to have an elf or two with you to help vouch for you along the way. That might not be a bad idea. Would you like for your friend Vinetia to travel with you again? We can have her ordered over here in less than an hour.”
“No,” Kestrel said sharply. “I don’t want her to see me like this. I don’t want anyone to see me this way. I’ll wait here for the hood, and a sack of supplies,” he answered.
“I’d like to wait alone,” he added, as the others stood silently observing his anguish.
“Good luck Kestrel,” Silvan said, walking towards the door. “I’ll send orders up to Firheng for you in a few weeks. I know you’re going to help us, all of us. And when you come back with your ears regrown to their usual elven shape, who knows, you may find out you’re so good at this work that you’ll be willing to go back sometime.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Kestrel muttered as the Colonel and his guard left the room. He sat on the table, then reached for the mirror he had used to disable the guard, and held it up to carefully study his new features. Alicia had done a superb job, he agreed. He saw no trace of elven heritage in his face, and he wondered at how quickly it had been erased by the woman who had duped him into passing out for his own operation.
Giardell returned minutes later, and Kestrel hastily dropped the mirror. He took the cowl and sack of supplies without comment. Giardell had brought Kestrel’s own bow and quiver of arrows as well, somehow fetched from his room, and he put them on as well.
“I’ll walk you out,” Giardell told him when Kestrel appeared ready.
It only took a few moments to reach the doorway, where Kestrel discovered he was in the very building that held Silvan’s office, the building where he had first met Alicia just the morning before. He wordlessly took Giardell’s offered hand and shook it, then began to walk alone down the road, his hood pulled up over his head, presenting a forlorn image as he trudged away on his lonely journey.
“He’s such a good boy,” Alicia told Silvan as they watched him from the window of the colonel’s office on the fourth floor. “I hated to do that to him, to go through all those charades; the cold character, the fake assault in the apartment, pretending to be unconscious. In the end, it was the things we didn’t try to set up, the atmosphere set up by the sprites and the spring, that made him trust me.”
“You know how important he is, how important his mission could be,” Silvan told her, draping his arm around her shoulder to comfort her. “And you did such beautiful work on him. He’ll appreciate someday how realistic you made his human visage.”
“I hope so,” his wife responded. “I’ll miss him if he doesn’t give me a chance to be his friend again someday.”
Silvan gave her shoulder a silent squeeze, then they walked away from the window, and Kestrel walked on to his uncertain future.
Chapter 15 – Belinda’s Tale
Kestrel didn’t talk to another elf along the journey to Firheng. He avoided villages, and slept in trees. He ate the supplies he had been given, along with crickets and game he caug
ht along the way, and he stewed in bitterness and regret.
He had lost all sense of identity and hope. He had been raised as an elf, among elves, and only thought of himself as an elf, despite the human heritage he carried and was taunted for. But now, Alicia had erased the physical ties that bound him to elfdom, and set him adrift. He contemplated what to do. He was unescorted, free to do what he wanted, and while he ran along the road he carefully plotted scenarios in which he just disappeared, never arriving at Firheng at all. He could disappear in the forest, and leave all the elves and the humans behind, he realized. He had his bow and arrows; he had the skills he had learned at Firheng. He could easily survive in the wilderness. Or he could take his human identity and just head straight to the human lands, and live among them, not as a spy, but just as a displaced person – someone forced to go where his identity allowed.
But he knew he would do neither, nor would he reverse course and go back to Center Trunk and force Alicia to reverse the operation she had performed on him, though he thought about that too. He thought about Alicia, cold, then warm, then deceitful, and ultimately, unobtainable Alicia, married to the man who had ordered her to seduce him and mutilate him. He cried at night, silent tears of sorrow and longing for Cheryl and Lucretia and Alicia, as he wished the world was a different place.
Finally, on his third night of traveling, as he settled into a nest high in a tree, he called out to Kere, the elven goddess of fortune.
“What can I do for you, grandchild?” the goddess was suddenly present, sitting on the branch above him, faintly visible in the moonlight and the starlight as an elderly woman, the same visage she had used when she had greeted him in the village inn weeks before, back at the beginning of his adventure.
“Can you take me back in time and give me an opportunity to do things differently?” he asked.
I am the goddess of fortune, not chaos,” she replied scornfully. “You should not wish to change any significant thing in your life, elfling Kestrel,” she added. “When you look back on all of this, it will look obvious and necessary and valuable.
“Embrace your opportunities Kestrel,” Kere told him, reaching down to pat the top of his head. “You have things you must do for your people, our people, the elves. And you have things you must do for me. I suspect that your other deities even have expectations of things you will do for them,” she added, alluding to the human gods.
“So go to Firheng, and do everything they tell you, learn everything they teach you, and follow every one of the orders they give you. That will lead you to your fortune, and a future that will satisfy you,” Kere told him. “Be at peace, grandchild,” she added, and then touched his head again, giving him a feeling of contentment, before she disappeared.
With that holy command ringing in his ears, Kestrel doggedly walked through the rain all the following day, his hood up again to both protect and hide his head. He reached the gates of Firheng in the early evening, and walked to the training base, where he entered Cosima’s office and found Belinda at work at her desk.
“I’m here to see Commander Cosima,” he told her, keeping his hood up and extended so that his features were hidden in deep shadows.
Belinda looked up from her desk, and studied the dark opening in the cowl, studying the dim features within closely. “Kestrel? Is that you?” she asked in a quizzical tone.
“Hello Belinda,” he replied, dreading the reaction he expected when she saw his features. “Yes, it’s me. I’m back to finish my training.”
“Well, let me see you!” she urged. “You’re inside out of the rain now; pull your hood down.”
He hesitated. “I’m different now, Belinda,” he warned her.
“Oh, you sound the same, like the same modest young guardsman we met before,” she dismissed his concern.
He raised his hands and pulled the hood back, feeling drops of rainwater become displaced and tumbling downward as he revealed his features. Belinda looked at him intently as the exposure revealed the new, humanized, Kestrel.
She slowly stood as she gazed at him intently, then silently walked around the desk to stand directly beside him, carefully circling from his right side to his left, her eyes only inches from his head as she examined him. “Magnificent!” she breathed at last.
“What an extraordinary job they did on you! your surgeon did the finest work I’ve ever seen; you could walk down any street in any human city, and not draw a second glance, except from the girls who thought you were so handsome,” she told him. “May I?” she asked, raising her hand to touch him.
He nodded in confusion, and her fingertips gently began to trace the contours of his eyebrows and his ears, then she raised up on her tip toes and began to gently kiss his ear lobes.
There was the sound of a door latch, and she drew back, as Commander Cosima came out of his office, looking down at some papers in his hand. “Belinda, could you?” his question stopped, unfinished, as he looked up and saw Kestrel’s human features.
“Is this our returning agent?” he asked rhetorically. “I almost don’t recognize you, yet of course I do.
“Welcome back Kestrel,” he said. “You’ve had a short trip, but clearly a profitable one.
“How extraordinary,” he breathed softly as he walked up beside Belinda and made Kestrel uncomfortable with his close scrutiny. “Who performed the operation?” he asked.
“Alicia, Silvan’s wife,” Kestrel answered, as his two inspectors bent so close that he could clearly hear them both breathing.
“You should give her your most profound thanks,” Cosima told him. “Her work is going to make your life very secure among the humans; no one will ever suspect your loyalties.
“It’s been years since we’ve had anyone so perfect, hasn’t it, Belinda?” he asked.
“Perfect,” she softly agreed. “Yes. It’s been years.”
“Well, go take your old quarters; they’re still available. Report to training tomorrow at the usual time,” Cosima advised Kestrel. “And of course, for your sake, I’d advise you to stay within the base as much as possible. Don’t go out into the city without your hood up or at least a hat – and only after dark.
“We look forward to preparing you,” Casimo told him, then turned to Belinda, to begin to go over the papers he carried from his office, as Kestrel left under Belinda’s watchful gaze.
The next day he nervously returned to his training, but was immediately put at his ease by Arlen’s cheerful greeting. “I didn’t realize I had trained you so well you’d start to look like a human! I must be the best arms trainer in the kingdom!” Arlen had said as he greeted Kestrel with a warm hug, and then immediate resumption of training.
“So, did you use any of your training on your little pleasure trip” Arlen asked him as they fenced with one another.
“A time or two,” Kestrel said, then briefly explained using a broom stick as a fighting staff to save a woman under attack.
“A pretty woman?” Arlen asked with gleaming eyes.
“Yes, she is,” Kestrel immediately answered.
“Was she thankful for your great service? Did she succumb to your charms and reward you with her virtue?” Arlen pressed him.
“No. She was married,” Kestrel replied.
“And she didn’t even have a sister to introduce you to? What a tragic waste of valor! You’ll have to achieve better results next time!” Arlen told him, and asked no more questions, as their sparring activity increased in intensity.
His weaponry skills improved to the point of drawing praise from Arlen, and they moved on to more difficult tasks, such as the use of weapons from atop the back of a horse. In the meantime, Kestrel’s language skills continued to improve, but not to the degree that his physical abilities did. His instructor even began to sleep in Kestrel’s quarters with him as the intensity of his training mounted, and Kestrel found that the expectations for him were highly discussed among the staff of the training facility.
“You’ll be going out on
an assignment, a test run, next week,” Casimo announced a month after his return. “We’ll see how you put everything together.”
“Where will I go? How long? Will anyone else go with me?” he bombarded the commander with questions.
“All in good time, Kestrel. Just keep practicing,” Casimo replied.
The next night his language instructor was ill, and didn’t come to Kestrel’s quarters after dinner. Kestrel sat on his small porch, resting, relieved to have the unexpected window of a few hours of relief from the constant training, when he heard a noise within his room. He stepped inside to investigate.
Inside his room, sitting on his bed, were Dewberry and Jonson. “You are never alone!” Dewberry scolded him, as Jonson inspected him closely.
“You look just like a human!” Jonson pronounced.
“I’m supposed to look like a human. And they never leave me alone because they’re trying to train me to be able to go spy on the humans,” Kestrel explained. He sat down on the thin mattress with his two blue guests.
“Why are you here?” he asked. “Is everything okay?”
“We will be getting married the day after tomorrow,” Dewberry announced.
“Congratulations!” Kestrel spoke sincerely, while wondering what relevance that could have to him.
“And we want to go back to the healing spring and soak in the water again one more time before our wedding. Would you come be our assistant and protector?” Dewberry asked with such a pleading tone and posture that Kestrel knew she was hamming it up.
“I will,” Kestrel immediately agreed. “On one condition.”
“A condition? How preposterous! Don’t you know that it’s the female’s duty to set conditions!” Dewberry grew suddenly mock combative, striking a fighting pose and beginning to swing punches at Kestrel, causing both he and Jonson to laugh.
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 01 - The Healing Spring Page 17