The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 02 - The Yellow Palace

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “There’s no saving that elf,” Ferris said, looking at the severity of the wound. “Better to be merciful and kill him now, to save him the pain.”

  “I forbid it,” Yulia said in a loud voice. “This elf has been the most faithful follower I’ve had. We’ll save him by any means possible.” She knelt next to him again and poured water from the skin onto his wound, then dripped some into his mouth.

  “What is your name? you’re Greysen’s father?” she asked as she knelt by the elf.

  “I am commander Ferris, of the Hydrotaz army,” he replied. “Greysen is my son, a hostage, or former hostage, apparently.”

  “What happened here?” she gestured around at the dead bodies that were being carried away.

  “We were a mixed force, some Hydrotaz and some Graylee men. When I saw Greysen I knew that he would be in trouble as a runaway hostage. Our Hydrotaz forces have a signal for executing the Graylee forces among us in the event of some unimaginable event, so I decided this was the unimaginable event,” Ferris explained.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “We were told by the Graylee forces that you were dead.”

  “Kestrel came to the palace we were held in one night. It was the night I was supposed to be executed. He set Greysen and me free, and then he took us to a group of his friends in Graylee who are fighting against their prince. After that he brought us back to Hydrotaz, and we were on our way to the City when we were attacked this morning.”

  But why are you here? What are you going to do in Hydrotaz?” Ferris asked her.

  “I’m going to fight to set my country free,” she said simply, rising to stand. “Will you and your men help me?”

  “We will help you!” Ferris answered, feeling an enthusiasm he hadn’t felt in months. Since his nation had fallen, his son had been taken, and his wife had died, he’d felt only an emptiness inside, and a willingness to stay alive. Now, suddenly, his son was returned to him, and his nation had a reason to hope for and fight for its freedom again. “As soon as the dead are buried we’ll call the men together and let them know what’s going to happen next.”

  “And what will that be?” Yulia asked quickly.

  “We’ll go back to the nearest town, Trace,about a half day’s march south of here. We’ll be able to ambush the next mixed squad that comes into town to wipe out their Graylee men, and we’ll send runners to all the nearby towns telling the Hydrotaz men to kill the Graylee officials in their locations,” Ferris explained, speaking as he thought about what steps were possible and practical, remembering the steps of the coup that he had imagined and planned in his head many times in recent months.

  “In three days we can have every Graylee man within thirty miles wiped out, and we’ll start calling our men together in Trace. You’ll have your own army within a week, ready to fight to set the nation free,” he summed up.

  “And then what?” Yulia asked.

  “That depends,” Ferris answered. “We’re going to want to either occupy the capitol quickly, before winter sets in, or we’re going to want to set up a siege and trap the Hydrotaz forces in the city and not let any of the fall harvest enter the city.”

  “We’ll starve the city? Starve out the Hydrotaz forces and our own people?” the princess asked.

  “There have been a lot of our people leave the city in the past year as Graylee took over,” Ferris answered. “There are many left there, but probably half the people in the city are Graylee people now. If we can besiege the city from the land side, they can try to supply it from the harbor, but they won’t be able to send enough food by ship to feed everyone. They’ll have to abandon it. And there aren’t any large garrisons anywhere else in the country– they’re spread out thin all over the land, like a nasty infestation.”

  “What are you going to do with the elf?” he asked with a rude gesture towards Kestrel.

  “You mean the man who rescued your son?” Yulia asked with a cold stare.

  Ferris didn’t respond.

  “Ask Greysen what he thinks of Kestrel. Ask him about helping clean up the bodies of the sixteen Graylee guards Kestrel killed when he went berserk,” she added. “We’ll treat Kestrel like any other great soldier when he recovers, and I’ll hope that he agrees to stay and help us. If he wants to go back to Graylee to fight there, or go home to the Eastern Forest, we’ll wish him a safe journey.”

  Men were returning from the burial duty, and circling around them.

  “But all of that is less important than putting our forces in motion to win the battle to set our nation free,” she closed her comments, and flashed a smile that reminded Ferris of her brother, the dead prince, and her father, the old prince.

  There was no doubt that this girl was of the royal blood, not that Ferris had questioned Greysen’s assertion. But she would have to tone down the defense of the detestable elf and focus on being a symbol for her people to unify around.

  “Men, today the gods have brought us a gift. The princess Yulia has escaped from Graylee and returned to Hydrotaz. You know what we did just now; that same thing is going to take place over and over and over again all around Hydrotaz now,” he told them.

  “We are going to turn around and return to Trace, and from there we will send many of you out as runners to the other towns and villages and tell them what has happened here,” he announced.

  “Thank you all for your loyalty,” Yulia surprised him by stepping up next to him and speaking suddenly. “Our nation was beset by treachery. You who have remained here have seen the pain first hand. With your help we are going to scourge these Graylee forces from our nation. We will go to Hydrotaz, and we will recapture the city, and we will hunt down Nicolai, so that we can hang him from the highest pole in the public square in Hydrotaz City, and all our people can see that we have gotten that much revenge on his black soul for the evil he did to our nation.

  “And I tell you what,” she paused with a momentary breath of drama, “we have friends in Graylee who know the harm their blackhearted prince has done. When we finish fighting our war here, any of you who want to go to Graylee to keep fighting can join an army we will send to Graylee, so that their evil prince can see Hydrotaz uniforms in his own nation helping his countrymen to bring him down.

  “How will that be for sweet justice? How many of you want to go back to Graylee with me to watch their prince hang?” she asked.

  There were cheers and hoots of appreciation, but Ferris thought it was more polite that real emotion. These men had survived bad times by keeping their emotions in check and hidden away, he knew. He had served with some of them since before the Graylee occupation had begun, and he knew they would be cautious to reveal themselves to a girl who appeared out of nowhere with an elf and claimed to be ready to lead them to easy, great victories – they knew better. “What about the elf?” someone in the squad yelled out.

  “Who asked that?” Yulia’s head whipped around to look to the side where the question had come from.

  There were no volunteers.

  “Your Commander Ferris, he told me we ought to kill the elf,” she said, and listened to the murmurs of assent.

  “Let me tell you, when I was held as a hostage in Graylee, this elfcame into my prison, and he set me free,” she told them. “How many of you have seen the monster water lizards that these Graylee evil men use?”

  Most of them raised their hands. The monster lizards had followed Graylee into the country, and had frightened the population as they killed and ate victims.

  “He fought and killed a lizard to help us escape. He got bit by one. And then he had to fight an entire squad of the Graylee guards, and slaughtered them all. He brought me here because he says the goddess herself told him to,” she said. “Take his shirt off of him and look at the mark the goddess herself put on him. He is an elf, but he is my guardian, and our friend.

  “Who here would tell me I should do anything to harm him, the man who saved my life?” she asked, and listened to the chastened silence.
“No, I wouldn’t either.

  “I know you’re not used to being with an elf, but wait to meet him when he recovers. He speaks our language, he fights with our weapons, he battles our opponents,” she assured them. “Now Commander Ferris, tell us what we need to do to reclaim our land.”

  That time, Ferris thought, she had struck the right tone – she had talked about loyalty, and these men understand that. They respected it.

  “Let’s pack up and head to Trace. How do you propose to move your elf?” he asked.

  “Why don’t you put me in a saddle?” a voice behind his spoke, and Ferris turned to see the elf’s eyes open – clouded with pain – but open.

  “I’m afraid your insides will fall out of that gash in your stomach,” Ferris answered.

  “If you make a litter for him that a horse can pull, I’ll carry the back end,” Greysen spoke up.

  Ferris looked at his son, as Kestrel watched them both. “He means something to you?”

  “He does. He’s been good to the princess and me and the humanfolks we’ve met along the way. I didn’t trust him at first, but I do now,” the boy answered.

  “You’ve made a couple of supporters out of these two,” Ferris told Kestrel.

  “I don’t know about supporters,” Kestrel answered, closing his eyes and laying back down, “but I’m comfortable and happy to say they are my friends.”

  Greysen helped create a litter with canvas and poles as the soldiers packed up their camp, and Kestrel was transferred to his conveyance as the group turned around to head south, and marched towards the intended center of their revolutionary operations.

  When they reached the town of Trace, Kestrel was taken to a private home that was hastily and brutally emptied of its Graylee administrative staff, and assigned to a quiet room where he stayed shielded from the eyes of most of the humans in the growing insurgency that was organized from other parts of the home. He stayed isolated in the room where he rested and healed while Ferris and Yulia unleashed their first wave of messengers to initiate the overthrow of Graylee’s governance in north central Hydrotaz.

  On the third day after his wound, he told Greysen, who had looked after him, that he felt ready to leave the room, if the humans of Trace and Yulia’s budding war cabinet were ready to see an elf among them.

  “Let me tell Yulia and dad,” the boy answered, and left the room.

  He returned within two minutes. “The princess says to bring you directly to her,” Greysen reported. Kestrel picked up his staff and put his knife on his belt, then followed Greysen downstairs to the largest room in the building, though still not a large one, where a dozen men and Yulia were seated at a table.

  “Kestrel, come here,” the monarch-in-waiting ordered him.

  “This is Kestrel,” she announced.

  “Is he your slave?” one of the men asked.

  “No,” she answered coldly.

  “Well, he should be. Make him a slave, or kill him,” the belligerent man, a very thin man with large ears spoke in a cutting tone.

  “Kestrel has fought against the guards of the Prince of Graylee, and he is the man who came to my prison and set me free. He is here as my personal guard, and I want you all to know that I trust him,” Yulia answered just as coldly, in a tone that Kestrel admired, as she finished her comments by looking directly at the man who had spoken up.

  The meeting proceeded – stiffly– as Yulia received reports on the number of towns and villages that had been cleansed of Graylee administrators, and reports on the number of volunteers for her army who had come into Trace to join her campaign, as well as logistic reports on the food available and the road conditions and numerous other items. Kestrel stood quietly in a corner, listening and observing.

  “The one in the red hat,” he told Ferris later, “isn’t trustworthy. He was most interested in how many men he could have under his personal command, not how he could help Yulia.”

  “I don’t trust him either,” Ferris agreed. “But we have to go through his town on our way to Hydrotaz City, so we need to stay in his good graces until we’re past his choke point.”

  The next day the whole unwieldy, unorganized complex of leaders, soldier, quartermasters, and hangers-on all left Trace and began to move south, to be closer to the capitol city. Kestrel rode on a horse directly behind Yulia’s steed, keeping an eye open for all things that might threaten her. That night, he wrote a note that explained what was happening – wrote it in Elvish – and called upon Reasion, who appeared silently and enjoyed a happy reunion with Kestrel, hugging him tightly and sitting contentedly with him for some minutes, and was relieved to only have to carry a message, not his entire body. The message was to Alicia, telling her of all that had happened, and that appeared likely to happen. Reasion left and never returned with any response, leaving Kestrel to wonder what Alicia or Silvan thought about his veiled suggestion that there was an opportunity for an alliance between the elves and Yulia’s forces to fight against the Uniontown allies.

  The day after that was the day an assassin tried to kill Kestrel. The procession was riding along the highway when an arrow shot forth from the soldiers along the road side, and struck Kestrel in the left side of his chest. The force of the arrow nearly knocked him from his seat, to his consternation, but did not harm him, to the shock and regret of many of those who witnessed the attack.

  Kestrel said nothing, and no perpetrator was ever revealed by any of the witnesses who must have seen who shot the arrow. Both the attack and the subsequent silence were telling indicators to Kestrel of how unlikely he was to be of any help to Yulia.

  That night, Ferris came to see Kestrel. They stood in the dim light inside the small room that was assigned to Kestrel, and Ferris’s eyes had a guarded look that immediately put the elf on alert. “You need to leave. You’re a distraction and you make the people distrust the princess,” Ferris said bluntly. “I know the princess trusts you, and as a matter of fact, I do too now. But there are hundreds of others who don’t trust any elf, and Yulia needs to make sure everyone is behind her and has faith in her judgment in the upcoming battle for the city.

  “We’ll win this easily, if there are no pointless problems like people doubting Yulia’s suitability to rule her own people,” he told Kestrel.

  “I think you’re right,” Kestrel finally voiced what he had seen and felt over the previous two days. “Do you have a suggestion on how I can leave here in a way that best serves her and that keeps me alive?” he asked with a crooked smile.

  “We can give you a bag of supplies, a fast horse, and a pass signed by the princess giving you freedom to travel the kingdom,” Ferris said. “If you’ve got a better way, let me know.”

  Kestrel thought about the sprites. Without Dewberry they had clearly grown reluctant to come into the world and do as much for him as they had done in the past. He could travel overland and, if necessary, could call upon Reasion to come to his rescue, he concluded.

  “That will do,” Kestrel told him. “Do you want me to leave tonight?”

  “I’m not that cold-hearted,” Ferris replied with a slight smile.

  “You should have a chance to say good bye to the princess tomorrow, and spend your first day riding in daylight,” he said. “And tell Greysen you’re going too. He thinks a great deal of you; you’ve spoiled my son,” Ferris smiled again.

  He’s a good boy; a little headstrong until he’s sure of himself, but I’m glad we had him along for the trip,” Kestrel told Ferris. “Be a good dad to him, and protect Yulia, that’s all I ask.”

  “I’m not going to let the girl out of my sight,” Ferris replied. “I told her I’m the first member of her palace guard, and when all this is over and we’re settled in to the city, Greysen will be my lieutenant.

  “I almost wish you could stay, Kestrel. I won’t think the same of elves after meeting you. I tried to start a fire in the forest once, back before Graylee invaded, when we thought that gaining new land was our biggest challenge,”
he said.

  “A fire in the forest? One that was put out by a storm from the goddess?” Kestrel asked, his eyes suddenly gleaming.

  “Yes; how did you know about that fire?” Ferris asked.

  “I was the one that prayed to the goddess to help put the fire out. I was there serving watch duty that day,” Kestrel said.

  The two stared at each other wordlessly.

  “It’s a small world,” Ferris said.

  “I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll have things ready for you,” he said, then turned to go.

  “I’d like to have the same horse I’ve ridden from Graylee. He’s a good friend,” Kestrel requested, as Ferris left the room. Once the door closed and he was alone, he lay down on his bed, and stared at the ceiling.

  Leaving Yulia was the right decision for her, he knew. He was a distraction and a point of contention; and at the same time he was offering her no additional protection or support. She seemed well on her way to victory in winning the campaign to retake Hydrotaz; Graylee was spread too thin in trying to consume Channelport while it occupied Hydrotaz and also had to turn itself into a police state that sent soldiers to fight against its own citizens. She could realistically expect to expel the Graylee forces from her land, and then even hope to turn her attention to helping Philip and his friends in their fight to purge Graylee of the Uniontown influence.

  He felt uneasy about making the decision to head back to the East Forest, and that troubled him. He felt torn – a great part of him wanted to go back to Graylee, to return to the manor by the mountains, so that he could protect his companions there, and to feel the warmth of the friendship that had blossomed so fully with Margo and Picco. Another part of him wanted to go to Graylee City and join Philip, though he knew his elven features would be as much of a problem there as they were in Hydrotaz. A part of him even wanted to go back to Estone. No part of him felt called to return to the forest now, except his sense of duty, and his pragmatic knowledge that he had to have his ears trimmed once again.