The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 03 - Road of Shadows

by Jeffrey Quyle

  After an hour of walking through the city, Kestrel arrived at the gate to the guard base. His mind was adjusting to the continual use of the Elvish language taking place all around him, another part of the cultural shock he found he must adjust to. He found it hard to think of Center Trunk as a city, he realized with a start. He had been too exposed to the cities of the humans, and even the cities of other lands, of the Parstoles and the Albanuns, to think of the open, relatively low-density settlement of Center Trunk as a city. It had seemed so massive to him on his first arrival, he remembered, and he was still grinning at the memory of how naïve he had been when he reached the guards at the gate to the base.

  “Kestrel, reporting for duty. Here to see Colonel Silvan,” Kestrel told the pair of guards at the gate house. The guards watched him, but didn’t seem to be on especially high alert status.

  “Kestrel?” repeated the attendant who came out to him. “I don’t recognize you, and you stand out in the crowd,” the guard said. “Who are you here to see?” he asked.

  “Colonel Silvan,” Kestrel replied.

  “Let me send a runner to get confirmation. You’ll need to wait here,” the guard motioned to a bench by the wall, indicating that Kestrel could take a seat and wait.

  Kestrel watched the runner leave the gate, then sat down to wait. Silvan’s building wasn’t far from the gate; if the runner got the attention of Silvan quickly, Kestrel expected he wouldn’t have to wait long. He leaned against the wall behind him, then closed his eyes, and tried to calm himself.

  Minutes went by and then suddenly he heard feet scuffling on the crushed stone surface of the gateway, and his nose detected a fragrant whiff that triggered a deep emotional response spontaneously. His eyes flew open and he stood up from his seat just in time to embrace Alicia in a tight, profound hug that was silent except for a choked sob from each of them.

  “I am so glad to see you,” Kestrel said, realizing that beyond all the complications, he fundamentally was simply glad to hold her in his arms.

  “We thought we might not ever see you again; it’s been months since we heard anything! The palace kept asking about you for the longest time, and then even they gave up hope, but Silvan and I kept telling each other that the gods had too many plans that depended on you to let you slip away,” the complex doctor said. “Come inside, please,” she said softly in his ear as they parted, “before the local wags start making up new stories about me. Silvan can hardly wait to see you!”

  Together, the two of them passed through the gateway without comment from the guards, and walked together to the same building that Kestrel always associated with Silvan and Alicia and Giardell. “He’s upstairs, in the same office,” Alicia told Kestrel as they stopped at the foot of the stairs inside the building. “I’ll return to my clinic,” she gestured toward her old set of rooms. “Silvan said we should all plan to have dinner together tonight; you don’t have any other plans yet, do you?” she asked.

  Kestrel shook his head, and she smiled. “Good – it’s settled!

  “I’m so glad to see you again!” she gushed as she started to walk backwards away from him. “You go on up and see Silvan. His new guard is named Chion,” she said, then finally turned to walk away.

  Kestrel took a deep breath, trying to recover from the burst of emotional energy, then turned and climbed the stairs. Outside Silvan’s office door on the top floor he found a young guard standing with the same rigid posture that Giardell had always adopted. “Who approaches?” the guard asked.

  “It’s me, Kestrel,” he said, sure that the guard had been directly or indirectly informed by Silvan or Alicia. “You must be Chion,” he added in a friendly tone, holding out his hand to shake.

  “Please wait here,” Chion answered without acknowledging the gesture. “I’ll announce your arrival.” He turned his back to Kestrel and entered the office immediately after a quick knock, but immediately returned and held the door open. “Colonel Silvan will see you now,” he announced with the faintest trace of reproach in his manner.

  Kestrel strolled past him, and closed the door without comment, then looked at the desk that he had always considered Silvan’s, even when the traitor Strab had temporarily usurped the position of spy chief away from its rightful owner. Silvan was coming around the corner of the desk, his eyes shining with emotion, and Kestrel felt his own eyes start to water. There was no one else in the world who he could talk to so openly about so many aspects of his life, and for months, he suddenly realized, he had longed for the opportunity to unburden himself of all the information and speculation and emotional extremes he had gathered over the long months of his odyssey through the many battlefields with the Viathins.

  “Kestrel, seeing you walk through the door looking healthy and whole is the greatest event of the summer!” the colonel said as he grasped both of Kestrel’s hands in his own firm two-handed grip. “I’m so glad to know you’re okay. How have you been? What have you learned?” the officer released his grip on Kestrel’s hands and moved over to the pair of chairs by the window, then motioned for Kestrel to be seated.

  They sat, with the warm sunlight shining on Kestrel, and Silvan paused to stare intently at his face. “You still have those violet eyes! They are so extraordinary. They were a story to tell about! Do you have any tales that can top spending the winter among the gnomes?”

  And with that, Silvan committed himself to spending hours sitting in fascinated rapture as Kestrel spewed forth an unceasing stream of exposition, telling his adventurous tale in a mostly straight-forward fashion. The sun moved across the sky, and the sky outside the window grew dark. Alicia quietly entered the room, and sat down on the floor as she joined Silvan in raptly listening to the extraordinary series of adventures their compatriot had lived through. Kestrel was so caught up in the cathartic release of his tale that he didn’t even know she was present until she audibly gasped as he revealed the true nature of the Moorin he had traveled with.

  “Let’s take a break,” Silvan suggested at that point. “We can go get a bite to eat and you can finish your story. Can you finish your story tonight, or is there too much more to tell?”

  “There isn’t much more,” Kestrel replied as he followed Silvan’s example and stood, then extended his hand to help Alicia rise from the floor. She was light, light with the thin, slender body mass of a fully-elven woman, and Kestrel felt suddenly inappropriately aware of her femininity as his hand gripped hers. Her eyes met his for just a moment, then flinched away, and he hastily released his hold on her and turned towards the door.

  “Where shall we go to eat?” he asked. “I haven’t eaten elven food in months.”

  Silvan suggested a café that Alicia agreed with, and Kestrel followed the pair as they led him out of the building and off the base, to a nearby café where they sat in a corner and Kestrel finished the last chapters of his story between bites of food and drinks from the bottle of wine that he and Alicia shared.

  “Tomorrow morning, I want you to come back to my office first thing, and we’ll go over the whole thing again,” Silvan told Kestrel as he sat back in his chair next to his wife. “My mind is swirling with everything you’ve told me. Then, in the afternoon we can go to the palace to see Miskel and try to evaluate the options that are before us.”

  “I’ll be glad to,” Kestrel said, as he sat back on his side of the table. “But I can’t stay long; I have to get down to see the imps and make peace with their king in the Swampy Morass, and then I’ll plan to lead a set of archers back to Hydrotaz.”

  “Don’t be in such a hurry, my boy,” Silvan said fondly. “We may need some time to persuade the leaders in the palace to come around to your way of thinking.”

  “After they nearly lost control of the palace just last year? Almost lost the princess and the king? They shouldn’t have to think twice,” Kestrel replied. “At the very least, we just need to get them all to agree that everyone in the palace and every officer of the guard should drink from the water s
kin, and every archer should be sent along the banks of the river to hunt down every Viathin that might still be alive.”

  They stood from the table and returned to the base.

  “You have kept me up past my bedtime,” Silvan told Kestrel affectionately, “but I wouldn’t have missed a moment of hearing your story. Be sure to come by tomorrow morning and we’ll start to get serious about the next things to do; I don’t know that we can move as quickly as you hope, but we’ll try to set things jumping!

  “I’m going to go on to bed now,” the older man looked at Alicia. “If you want to walk Kestrel to his quarters, I’ll see you in a bit?”

  “I’ll be right along,” she agreed. “Let’s go see what we can find for you,” she said to Kestrel.

  “I left my things in Silvan’s office,” he told her as he watched the colonel walk away. “I’ll need to go get them.”

  They walked to the office, then walked over to the same building where Kestrel had stayed in the past. “Here, let’s find you a place up high,” Alicia said, as Kestrel prepared to look into the same ground level room he had used in the past. “We have more room now, with fewer guards on the base, so there should be a better room for you,” she suggested. They found an upper floor room immediately, and Kestrel unloaded his belongings in a pile in the corner with relief.

  “I hope you get things squared away with Dewberry and the imps quickly,” Alicia took a seat in a chair, and Kestrel threw himself down on the bed. “I miss seeing her, almost as much as I miss seeing you.

  “So your ring from Kai doesn’t change your appearance anymore? You’ll be coming back to have surgery on your ears before you go back to the humans?” she asked.

  “No,” Kestrel drew out his one word answer into a long, significant response. “I’ve decided I’m not going to bother with that again. At least in Hydrotaz, they all know who I am and what I am. I’m not going back to be a spy this time – I need to let them see me as I am, so they know that they have friends among the elves, so that maybe their habits towards us will start to change.” It was a decision he had made for himself while running through the forest on his way to Center Trunk. He had the false Moorin to thank in part for the decision; he realized that he didn’t want to deceive or mislead anyone any longer. He knew who he was; he knew what his mission was, and he would go forth straight away, without pretense or skulking or spying any longer. He wanted to not have to focus on living any lies henceforth.

  “I want you to be safe,” Alicia leaned forward. “Don’t do something noble and brave and dangerous just to make a point. I’ve missed having you unconscious and in my control while I hold a sharp knife,” she joked.

  “What happened to Giardell?” Kestrel asked.

  “He’s at the palace,” Alicia said sadly.

  “He had to go somewhere else. It just couldn’t work for him to stay on the base so close to us; there were too many memories. Silvan has been so good to me, like trusting me enough to send me off tonight to spend time with you, here, but we all felt uncomfortable being around one another in the same building when we got back, so Giardell transferred to the palace and watches over the princess now,” she explained, and Kestrel lay on the bed and listened as she unburdened her own soul of all that she was unable to tell Silvan. The wine, her pleasure in seeing Kestrel again, and her long time spent without a close friend to talk to combined, and soon she was crying as Kestrel held her and listened to all the heartache that remained within her after and since her liaison had caused so much grief.

  “Thank you for listening Kestrel,” she told him an hour later, as she sat up. “I needed to tell someone everything, someone who understood,” she smiled sadly.

  “I felt the same way when I saw Silvan this afternoon,” Kestrel said. “I understand that sometimes you just have to empty everything out,” he told her comfortingly as he sat up too.

  “Can I see? Your chest? I mean where those foreign gods took your champion’s mark away?” she clarified, and with a shrug, Kestrel accommodated her. “Just remarkable – incomprehensible and remarkable. To think that your body literally carried around the power of a god.” She seemed contemplative.

  “Thank you Kestrel. Thank you for coming home,” she told him as she stood. “Come pop your head in my office to say good morning tomorrow.”

  “I’ll pop my head in if you promise not to cut any parts of it!” he laughed, then watched her leave, as he lay back on his bed and thought about the day. It had been one of the best days he could remember, a good day mostly because he had felt secure and safe with friends. Only this day, and a few days in Creata’s home in Graylee – with Margo and Philip and Picco and Creata – stuck out in his mind as days in recent life that felt complete and memorable in such a hazily, satisfactory way.

  If Lucretia had been there as well, the day would have been truly complete, he told himself, as his eyes closed, and he faded off to sleep at last.

  Chapter 20 – Elven Assignments

  The next morning Kestrel ate a meal of basic foodstuffs from the canteen across the way, and he relished the satisfaction of good, plain hearty food like he had been raised on for so many years. He casually listened to the conversations around him, the soldiers discussing the everyday activities of their lives, and he smiled as he thought about how important those same types of events had seemed to him several months earlier. Then he left the canteen and walked back to Silvan’s building, where he stopped first at Alicia’s office and opened her door to say hello.

  “Good morning Kestrel,” she said warmly. “How did you sleep last night?”

  “Like a log!” he laughed. “I was sound asleep. How about you?”

  “The same; I felt so relaxed after just talking and listening with you last night. Thank you dear,” she rubbed her hand affectionately on the back of his neck. “Silvan complained that I didn’t want to wake up this morning!

  “So you’re off to the palace today?” she asked.

  “That’s what he says. Maybe in the light of day he’ll decide the whole thing sounds too preposterous to believe,” Kestrel grinned.

  He shut the door and climbed the stairs, where he found the same somber guardsman standing outside Silvan’s door. The guard opened the door for Kestrel without comment or prompting, and Kestrel walked into the office. “Our epic story teller has returned,” Silvan said with a smile. He picked up a pen and a pad of paper. “You sit right there, and start telling your story again. I remember some parts I want to take notes on,” he explained, holding up the pen.

  Kestrel settled into his seat and began his story again. He was more focused on the strategic elements this time, his soul no longer burdened by the personal traumas and questions that had accumulated during his trying sojourn. He advanced rapidly through the story, until he finally asked the questions that still troubled him.

  “How much of what the monster said about the Northern Elves is true?” he asked Silvan. “Do they really ride horses and turn their noses up at crickets? Is there really a Moorin who is from a noble family there?”

  “I do not know if there is a Moorin,” Silvan replied. “I do not know the other answers you want either. It’s odd, now that I think about it, but we pay much less attention to the Northern elves than we try to pay to the humans in Hydrotaz and Graylee, and other than you, few of us really know anything about those neighbors even. We’re quite an insular nation.

  “The northern elves, and the alleged western elves, are far from us and do little to reach out to us,” Silvan began.

  “It doesn’t appear to me that we try very hard to reach out to the rest of the world either,” Kestrel observed mildly.

  Silvan paused. “I can well believe that the northern elves interact with their human neighbors more than we do,” he agreed. “We don’t make an effort, but look at the fact that we only have humans on two sides of us, and one of those is very hostile, while the other is really only a small nation. We’ve got the imps and the wilderness for much of our bound
aries.

  “Perhaps we should be a less isolated nation. I’ll have to think about that,” Silvan added. “But we manage to live in peace for the most part, and we’re very self-reliant, so perhaps there’s no reason to go out and see the world.”

  Kestrel went on with his story, and at the end, Silvan sat in silence for more than a minute.

  “So it seems to me, and I’m thinking out loud with you about this,” he said, making Kestrel feel a sense of accomplishment to be a part of Silvan’s decision-making instead of just the recipient of his wisdom, “it seems to me that we have three messages to take to the palace.

  “The first is that we need to make everyone at the palace and in the guard chain of command drink this water that you have brought, to prevent them from being controlled by the lizard monsters,” he looked at Kestrel, who nodded his head in agreement.

  “The second is that we must let you go to the imps, and seek to make peace with their leader, because you need their help, and we want to be on good terms with that neighbor. And you could offer assistance from our nation if they need any to help them hunt down the monster lizards that live in their waters.” Kestrel agreed with that as well.

  “And the third point is that you wish for us to be allies with Hydrotaz, and you even want permission to take a group of our archers to help them fight against Graylee. Is that correct?” the older officer looked at Kestrel.

  “Yes, although I don’t know if I need their permission or not. I’ll recruit my own archers if I have to,” Kestrel disputed Silvan’s last point.

  “Let’s not put it that way, Kestrel,” Silvan advised with a roguish smile. “It’s always better to let the other side feel that they have power in the relationship, especially when you know you can do what you want anyway. We’ll let them gnash their teeth and debate in anguish, then come to the conclusion it’s what they want to do.”