The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 02 - The Yellow Palace

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “It appears you’ve gotten us to land, sir,” Reynolds said, standing atop the bow, easily holding his balance as the boat rocked and thrust through the water.

  “You see land?” Kestrel called in surprise and relief.

  “Just about half an hour out, if this breeze stayswith us,” Reynolds estimated. “And depending on what kind of shore we’re approaching – beach, or bluffs, or reefs in between here and there.” He clambered to the back of the boat, and took back control of the tiller, then steered them into land.

  They landed on a stony beach, and Reynolds pulled the boat up high, so that Kestrel disembarked in water that only reached up to his knees, cold frigid water, and he waded up to shore as Reynolds hauled the lightened vessel higher up onto the beach. Their first order of business was to gather driftwood and start a fire far above the high tide line. Once they were sure the tinder had caught, they carried their possessions from the boat. Kestrel had saved his staff and his bow and the knife on his hip. His pack and his sword and his intended supplies were somewhere at the bottom of the sea. Reynolds had the clothes on his back, and the contents of his pockets, and nothing more.

  The sun was well on its way to setting when they finally lifted their dead companion from the boat and carried his stiff body to a small promontory behind the beach. Their progress was slowed by Kestrel’s gait, but they reached a spot where they scooped a shallow grave for the body, then covered it with every sizable stone they could find in the vicinity.

  Kestrel stumbled in the darkness on the way back to the campfire, and was weary and relieved when they sat down at last, next to the crackling flames, and felt the heat of the combustion warming and drying them.

  “So where do you think we are, Reynolds?” Kestrel asked after holding his hands to the fire long enough to thaw the stiffness away.

  “Well sir, there’s a vast no-man’s-land between Estone and Narrow Bay, and I’d say we’re smack dab in the center of it,” the sailor answered. “It’s a long way back to Estone, and a long way forward to Narrow Bay. Graylee’s probably closer than either of them, as the bird flies.”

  “That’s where I want to go,” Kestrel said quietly.

  Reynolds looked at him with a momentary glance of disbelief. “The Water Mountains are between here and there, sir. In the summertime no one can make it through the Waters – they’re rugged, and the gnomes and yeti will hunt down anyone they find. In the winter the mountains are even worse. That’s why goods ship all the way out to the Great Sea and back – it’s impossible to cross those mountains.”

  Kestrel sighed, and bit into his biscuit. “Will we be able to walk all the way to Narrow Bay?” he asked.

  Reynolds involuntarily glanced at Kestrel’s leg. “It’ll take us a month sir, if we’re lucky.”

  Kestrel nodded thoughtfully. “You go to sleep Reynolds, and I’ll take the first watch. We’ll see what we think sounds best tomorrow morning when the sun is up.”

  Reynolds accepted the suggestion, and laid down upon a bundle of sticks that served as his mattress, while Kestrel piled more drift wood onto the flames. He sat and silently brooded about what to do. He looked up at the stars, and thought about how Merilla and Alicia and Arlen and Silvan could all look up into the sky and seem the same constellations, and he wondered how they all were.

  He wondered what Silvan thought about the message he had sent with all the extraordinary details about the revelations that the Uniontown ambassador had given. He wondered if Silvan knew about the note that Alicia had sent back, upon the cusp of the period when Dewberry would not carry messages for them. Her note had been tender, congratulating him on success, warning him to be careful, chastising him for being too modest, according to Dewberry, and urging him to come back safely, telling him that his safety was more important than any particular mission.

  And even as he glowed in the warmth of the note’s words, a cynical portion of him wondered if Silvan was behind the note, urging his own wife to bind Kestrel’s loyalty with such caring phrases.

  The note was gone now, underwater and dissolved by the violence of the ocean. And Kestrel was sitting on a remote and empty beach, facing a bleak winter’s journey to safety somewhere.

  He grew sleepy in the warmth, and watched the stars imperceptibly circle in the sky overhead. He rose after a while to get away from the bright light of the fire, and slowly hobbled in a wide circle around their campsite, looking off into the blackness, as he listened to the waves hit the rocky shoreline nearby with a soothing, regular sound. There were no other lights besides the stars, no homesteads or villages or even camp fires from the other lifeboats, and Kestrel realized that he and Reynolds were truly alone.

  When he judged the stars had circled high enough to mark the length of his turn, as the gibbous moon was starting to rise, he woke Reynolds for the second watch, and fell asleep, exhausted, on the rough bedding the sailor left behind. He slept a deep sleep, without memorable dreams, and awoke to a sun that was already half above the horizon, as Reynolds chewed on a biscuit.

  “Good morning sir,” the sailor greeted him, then placed a pair of new logs on the fire to produce more heat for Kestrel. “How’s the leg feel?” he asked.

  Kestrel sat up, then rose and gingerly stretched the leg, thinking it seemed slightly better. He had undoubtedly lost strength by keeping it immobilized for several days, but he was sure that the journey ahead would rebuild that strength quickly.

  “I’m good today; better than yesterday morning!” he grinned. “And how are you?”

  “I’m wishing we could catch that walrus,” Reynolds pointed a slight distance down the coast, at some large rocks.

  “What walrus? What’s a walrus?” Kestrel asked.

  “Shai! Don’t you know what a walrus is?” Reynolds asked in astonishment. “But I suppose you are a land man, aren’t you?” he spoke rhetorically. “A walrus is a sea creature about the size of a cow. That’s one down there at the foot of the big gray rock.”

  Kestrel looked at the gray rock, as big as a small cottage, where waves dashed right up against its food. There was a slight movement, and he realized that the walrus was the dark lump below the rock, one he had taken for another piece of stone,

  “Why would you want to catch it?” Kestrel asked.

  “Food,” Reynolds said laconically. “We could butcher it, grill some meat and dry more of it here by the fire, and carry a load of it with us on our journey.”

  Kestrel reached for his bow and arrow. “I think I can hit it from here,” he said, drawing a bead.

  “Can you? Really? If you hit it, I’ll bring the meat back over here and you can start getting it ready,” Reynolds offered. “But that’s a tough shot.”

  “I’ll only need one,” Kestrel grunted as he released an arrow and watched it fly towards his target. The arrow struck the walrus in the neck, and the great creature bellowed for several seconds before succumbing, and slumping to the ground.

  “That was a great shot!” Reynolds said enthusiastically. “Maybe you folks from the land are useful after all!” he grinned at Kestrel, as he rose, long knife in hand, and began to trot over to the carcass.

  Kestrel set his bow down and began selecting sticks he could use as spits to expose the walrus meat to the smoke and fire. He was busy snapping a stick in two when he heard Reynolds scream in horror, and whirled around to see a cougar atop the sailor at the site of the dead walrus.

  “Reynolds!” Kestrel screamed, grabbing his staff and hurrying towards the bloody scene. The lion grabbed the loose strip of flesh Reynolds had cut free from the walrus and disappeared with its bloody prize hanging from its mouth, skirting around the far side of the large gray outcropping.

  Kestrel moved as fast as he could manage, feeling his leg strain with the effort, and then squatted by Reynolds in the bloody water next to the walrus. His companion was dead, his neck snapped by the lion’s attack, and Kestrel moaned softly in sadness. Reynolds had been such a stalwart companion during their f
light to safety after the boat sank, Kestrel had been ready and willing to rely on the man, and to help him in any way he could so that they would both survive their loss in the wilderness. Yet tragically, after surviving the rigors of the trip in the small boat, Reynolds had died while safely on land.

  Kestrel looked around for any sign of the lion, and saw none. The great cat had taken its food and vanished in the nearby scrubby bushes and trees that were along the edge of the beach and the dunes. He carefully hoisted Reynolds’s body on his back, then began to slowly walk back to the campfire, where he laid the man down and tried to consider what to do.

  He looked up at the small hill where the other sailor was buried. It would be a chore to carry Reynolds there, but he didn’t think there was any other option to consider. He grunted as he hoisted the sailor again, then slowly made his way up to the rocky cairn that marked the first grave, and spent the next few hours giving Reynolds a similar resting place. “Please watch and guide his spirit, goddess,” he said softly as he stood over the finished burial. It was already slightly past noon, and he was alone on the beach.

  With his staff in hand, Kestrel returned to the walrus carcass and cut away strips of meat all afternoon, cutting the meat and placing it on spits to dry and cook. He piled more driftwood on the fire, and had to slowly work his way up and down the beach combing it for more wood as he depleted the supply nearest the campsite. By the time sunset arrived, he was exhausted from his labors. He sat and chewed on a piece of the walrus meat he had cooked thoroughly during the day, concluding that it was not his favorite meat.

  Despite worries about predators, he slept soundly beside the fire that night. When he awoke in the morning, part of the walrus was gone, taken during the night by the cougar or some other carnivore. He took that as a sign that he should not remain stationery in the location his camp was in, and despite the discomfort in his leg, he decided that he needed to break camp and start moving.

  He had no good option, he knew, with a long, rough journey in any direction he chose to go. If he was going to travel alone, he would try to go the shortest way, he decided, through the mountains, in the hope that he might reach Graylee much sooner than by attempting to reach Narrow Bay. He packed his belongings, such as they were, the meat he had cooked in a leather pouch from the lifeboat, the remaining sea biscuits in another pouch, and his pair of water skins, plus all his weapons – knife, bow, and staff, and he began to go south, across the dunes and into the brush beyond.

  By noon he could no longer hear the waves breaking on the beach, while he walked through a forest of pine and oak trees, following a game path along a stream. The land was rolling, but not yet rugged – he knew he would have to cross the Water Mountains, but they were many miles inland, and he hoped his leg would be better healed by the time he reached the challenging part of that barrier.

  He chose to stop moving before sundown, and climbed high into an oak tree, hoping to find safety where elves traditionally felt most comfortable, even though climbing with his stiff leg was a chore. He settled in among the branches and ate a little of his food supply, then rested and dozed uneasily throughout the night. The air was chilly, and he missed the warmth of a campfire, but trusted his safety on the ground too little to risk starting a blaze below. When the sun began to rise, and he could see the branches well enough to slowly climb downward, he moved to the ground and began his journey again.

  Kestrel walked for five days in a similar fashion, over rolling hills, along shallow valleys, crossing game paths and stream, always heading south, always climbing into trees at night, always dreaming of warmth. Despite the strain he put on it, his leg slowly grew stronger and more flexible, so that on the seventh day of his trip, as he finally saw the tall Water Mountains ahead of him, he no longer needed to lean heavily on his staff, or move so slowly among the branches of the trees as he climbed them.

  The mountains filled the horizon from east to west, and their appearance was far more daunting than Kestrel had expected. They all held snow caps that reached far down their sides, suggesting that if there was such snow and ice stretching very far south into the range, Kestrel was faced with the prospect of climbing and passing through a tremendously treacherous landscape. He had experienced some snow in the Eastern Forest during his time growing up, but nothing as formidable as what he conceived to potentially lie ahead.

  He needed to try to find a sizable river if possible, some waterway that would penetrate the mountains and make a natural trail for him to follow south. He decided to move forward and climb into the foothills of the mountains, to see if he could find a river valley. By the time nightfall came, he had reached the first substantial foothills and decided to stop for the night. The next morning he saw the glint of rising sunlight reflecting off a distant river in the east, and headed that direction throughout the morning.

  His food supply was dwindling, Kestrel reflected as he ate one of his last biscuits and walked eastward. He wasn’t sure what he would find in the mountains in the winter, and he added nourishment to his list of worries just before he reached the banks of a substantial river at noon.

  The river was large enough to still flow freely in the center of its channel, despite the ice that covered the shallows. Kestrel looked at the dark water that flowed north, and he shivered as he thought about how cold the water would be, but he was glad to see the valley that seemed to stretch far south in a straight line, like a knife that had breached the body of the mountain range. At last he had his trail that he could follow on his way towards Graylee.

  For the next week Kestrel followed the river on a relatively easy journey that slowly climbed with the altitude of the mountains; he bogged down only once when a fierce snow storm caused him to spend most of the day in a pine tree, slightly sheltered from the fierce winds. Throughout the journey he was surrounded by snow-topped mountains on all sides, but the snow fields appeared to start at a higher altitude than he traveled in, and as he moved further inland, away from the moisture of the coastal plain, he was relieved to see that a diminished amount of snow fell around him. His food supply ran out that week, and his lackluster speed of progress slowed even further as he began to spend parts of each day hunting for food, or on one particular day, doing nothing but preparing food for his trip, after he shot a small deer and had a meat supply to smoke and dry at a camp fire.

  The end of his uncomfortable but relatively easy journey came on a day when he rounded a wide sweeping curve in the diminished – but still powerful river – and confronted a high waterfall that created a vast, obscure plume of freezing fog in the river valley. Kestrel took two days to find a way to climb up a narrow gorge on the west side of the valley, and then rejoin the river atop the escarpment it fell over.

  He tried to remember how many days he had been away from Estone, and reckoned that he was about three weeks out of the port; if all had gone according to plan, he would have been around the Great Sea and into the Inner Seas waterways by now, he mourned to think. He was three weeks removed from seeing Merilla, who he had thought about so much as he walked; the human woman who he had been thrown into close companionship with, and become deeply, and mutually, infatuated with, but who the gods seemed determined to keep him apart from. As the days of his journey passed, he grew to accept it with resignation, as he realized Merilla was probably formally engaged to Hammon the leathermonger at that point.

  Above the waterfall the river had a different character, as it continued to ascend. It flowed through a narrower, faster, rockier channel, one that confined the waters as they moved along, making them angry in their tight boundaries, causing them to roar and complain as they hit boulders and kept moving. His days were always cold, usually hungry, and often spent beneath gray skies, except for rare occasions when a sunny day broke the monotony and lent a stark beauty to the desolate land.

  One night Kestrel found a cave that seemed unclaimed by any other occupants, and he slept in relative warmth, not concerned whether a bear or lion might be slee
ping further within the dark recess.

  Then the next day, he awoke to the day that proved to be the most fateful day he’d spend in the mountains.

  Chapter 2– Another Yeti

  Kestrel left the cave that morning, hungry more than anything, even hungrier than he was cold. He spotted a large rodent among the rocks above the river, and shot it with an arrow, then built a fire and roasted the carcass, a process that took all morning, but provided enough food for two or three meals. Shortly before noon, he began to travel in earnest, trying to cover as much ground as he could in the short amount of sunlight that was allotted to the winter days of the north.

  As sunset began to approach, he reached a rare stretch of level ground, a plateau high in the mountains that the now much smaller river flowed through, with scattered tall trees featured on the plain. Then, as he caught his breath in the thin air, Kestrel heard a scream that chilled his heart – the scream of a yeti. He knew that he had been exceptionally fortunate to have seen no dangerous animals since the cougar that took Reynolds, and he cursed the luck that ended that streak.

  Then there was another wail, a cry of pain that was not the yeti’s voice. It has strangely high pitched, yet guttural too. Both screams were somewhere nearby, and Kestrel reacted by running towards the sounds as his mind registered that somehow, in this desolate spot in the midst of the otherwise empty mountains, he had encountered someone badly in need of help.

  He found the site of the tragic encounter with the yeti behind a small sand hill in the river’s shallow valley. The yeti was standing above a small huddle of figures, when Kestrel released his first arrow; he took aim at the monster’s’ head, hoping to sink an arrow in one of the few vulnerable spots on the creature. The shaft flew straight, but because the yeti’s back was nearly turned completely towards Kestrel, it only grazed the monster’s cheek as it made contact.