An Unexpected Deity (Book 7) (31 page)

Chapter 19

Kestrel awoke with a start, looking up at a green sky overhead.  He felt a momentary confusion, and a sense of pain and anger, until he remembered that he was in the land of the Skyes, and the green sky overhead meant that it was either dusk or dawn.

”Kestrel?  Power? Godhead?” a voice spoke nearby, clattering and clicking its words.

He was pleased to hear the voice, and to know that he was not alone.  Then he wanted to snarl with hatred for the odious creature.  Then he berated himself for such a thought, and he felt confused.

He sat up, looked around, and saw that Tullamore was there, with dozens of Skyes sitting in the vicinity, while a pair of Skyes were close to and apparently watching over him.  As he sat up, Tullamore stopped speaking to the crowd, and came over to see him.

“How do you feel, my fearsome, fortunate, unfortunate friend?” the god of the Skyes asked.

“I feel pain,” Kestrel replied.  He studied Tullamore, who he thought of as both a friend and an enemy now.

“You are in perilous danger, Kestrel,” Tullamore said.  “Here, have a drink of this water,” the god advised, as it lifted the waterskin high and suddenly began to pour a stream of liquid down upon Kestrel’s face, drops of it splashing upon his clothes and face, as well as into his open mouth.

He felt indignant at the insulting treatment, and he began to reach for his power, to teach the Skye god a lesson, as he instinctively swallowed the water that fell into his mouth.

Suddenly his mood lightened, and he wondered where his anger had come from.

“Do you feel better?” Tullamore asked.

Kestrel nodded his head.

“Here, take a good drink,” Tullamore advised.  “Drink heartily,” he emphasized, as he dropped the water skin down into Kestrel’s hands.

Puzzled by the advice, Kestrel obediently drank the water.  It tasted good, and it felt extraordinarily refreshing.

“You feel better now, do you?” Tullamore asked, as Kestrel pulled the skin away from his mouth.

“Yes, strangely, much better,” Kestrel agreed.

“You are in mortal danger, Kestrel friend,” Tullamore told him.  “You have been attacked by the Kovell.”

The name triggered an alarm in Kestrel’s soul momentarily.

“The mist,” he said slowly.

“Yes, it is a mist.  A most dangerous entity – a poisoner of souls, a destroyer of love, a killer of all life – it is the worst threat this land ever faced.  I had it sealed away once, in a dark prison cell where it could not reach anyone or do any harm,” Tullamore said, and Kestrel distantly heard a snarl of hatred,

“But in my weakened state, as the Viathins killed my people, destroyed my land, and weakened me, my power was not sufficient to keep the Kovell and the other dangers I had locked away in their cells.  Those dangers have escaped, and you have run into two of them already, the Kovell and the Kinst,” Tullamore said.

“It is imperative that we seek to remove the infection in you; a portion of the Kovell managed to attach itself to you; I can feel its anger and hatred within you.   The water from the skin helps to temporarily tamp it down, but soon it will begin to rise again, to attempt to control you.

“So we must begin to do our work fast, before you start to go through your internal battle once again,” Tullamore explained.

Kestrel looked inside himself.  He closed his eyes, and let his senses penetrate within his own soul.  To his horror he found the fragmentary black vapor intertwined with the elements of his own essence; it had penetrated and clinched a tight grip on his ability to reason and love and react.  The calming energy of the enchanted water from the skin had shrunk the size of the vapor, and made it pull back within itself, but as he observed, Kestrel could see it starting to reassert itself, tiny tendril by tiny tendril.

“Can it be removed?” he asked Tullamore.

“Yes,” the god said hesitantly.  “Eventually.  But it will take some effort, and we must do something else first.”

“What do you want to do first?” Kestrel asked.

“I want to give life back to my people and my world,” Tullamore said simply.  “Come, help me.”

The god turned away from Kestrel and strode back over to the spot where he had stood when he had addressed the crowd of Skyes.  “Come and join me here,” he told Kestrel.

Kestrel stood, and found that his left foot remained injured, still weakened by the attack of the Kovell mist in the cave.  He dragged the foot behind him as he walked over to where Tullamore stood.  The Skyes parted to open a path for him, and all spoke encouragingly as he arrived.

“We thank you, lord Kestrel,” many said.  “We praise you, god of two legs,” others chanted, while others made different comments and references.

“From here,” Tullamore explained, “you can see the two sides of this valley.  This is where two rivers once came together to make a mighty stream that flowed to one of the seas.

“You and I are going to raise a dam across this valley mouth, so that we can start the formation of a might lake behind the dam, and then the water will be able to flow steadily down to the empty sea,” the god continued.

“Where will the water come from?” Kestrel asked.

“That will come later,” his divine companion replied.

“Now, observe,” the many-legged god told Kestrel.  The god pointed a leg at the ground beside himself, and released a stream of energy.  There was a slight trembling of the earth, and then the ground began to furrow upward where he pointed, as the soil and stone on either side of his chosen spot began to push itself towards the center, creating a mound in the center with two depressions on either side.  Tullamore kept his focus concentrated on the single spot, making the mound continue to grow higher and wider, and the crowd watched it continue to grow.  The pile of earth rose above Kestrel’s head, and continued to grow more.  The earth on either side continued to churn, throwing up a cloud of dust, while the mound grew to twice Kestrel’s height, then four times, and it also widened.

Tullamore, Kestrel, and the crowd of Skyes backed away, and continued to back away, as the ditch between them and the mound grew wider, threatening to engulf them all.  After a minute’s work, with a massive pile of rubble thrown together, Tullamore changed his focus slightly, moving it towards the far river bank, and his massive mound of dirt finally began to lengthen.

“I will work my way all the way to the far side of the valley, while you match my efforts going in the opposite direction, to the opposite side of the valley,” Tullamore shouted to Kestrel in order to be heard over the roar of churning dirt.  “We’ll meet back here in the center when our work is done.”

“And then you’ll fill all this valley with water somehow?” Kestrel asked wonderingly.  He looked at the wide and long valley, and tried to comprehend the vast volume of water it would take to create such a lake.  Even a mighty river or two would take weeks to accomplish such a thing, he told himself.  But with a shrug, he pointed his finger at the ground next to the side of Tullamore’s mound, and he compelled the earth to begin to rise and mix and move.

After several long seconds of work, he began to move his working spot, and began to step away from Tullamore.  The two of them began to drift apart, as each focused their energies and their efforts on their diverging tasks.

Kestrel let his mind go blank as he slowly stepped along, a stately pace that provided time for the long mound construction to progress away from the center.  He felt the hot blue sun in the sky overhead, and he slowly began to find his mind wandering as the process of pointing his finger, releasing his power, and walking forward became a mechanical activity.

Why, he asked himself, was the ridiculous god of the bugs telling him what to do?  The idea of a dam, built for non-existent water, was a waste of time, and he wondered if it was meant to be an effort to drain his own powers away, so that he could be overcome and defeated by Tullamore.

“Kestrel with two legs,” a Skye suddenly spoke from behind him, having approached him unheard, “I bring you this, which Lord Tullamore asks you to drink from.”

It was the water skin once again.  Kestrel looked back over his shoulder, and realized that he and Tullamore had separated so far apart that they were no longer within sight of each other.  With his free hand he took the water skin and swallowed a mouthful of the liquid, appreciating the relief it provided from the heat of the blue sun.

His day continued over a long course of building the mound, while being periodically reminded by his Skye companion to drink water.  He finished his construction in the midafternoon, when he reached and climbed over a few foothills before ending the dam and anchoring it in the rising cliff face that defined the valley’s boundary.

As they finished, Kestrel and his Skye companion each turned and started to walk back along the dam.  As they did, they each heard Tullamore speak to them from a distance.

Head up the valley, to the hill that separates the two valleys from each other.  I will meet you there
, Tullamore told them.

The pair reached the foot of the hill under the green sky of the sunset, a complete day devoted to their labors.  Upon arrival they found Tullamore and the crowd of the other Skyes already climbing the hill, and they joined the party when they reached the top.

“What happens now?” Kestrel asked.

“You and I must work together to create the flow of water that will fill this new lake,” Tullamore explained.  “We will go up towards the headwaters of that river, and start its flow.  We’ll need to travel for the next two days to reach our goal.”

“And then what?” Kestrel asked.

“Let us wait for that,” Tullamore answered, and said no more on the subject.  He summoned a group of Skyes, who came bearing the same leaf and root foodstuffs that Kestrel had eaten the day before with his friends.  He sat and ate sparingly, as he thought about the fact that all those he had journeyed with were on another world, had spent an entire day in the land of the Inner Seas once again.  He hoped they were safe, and close to reaching their respective homes.  He hoped that Wren would somehow manage to send a message to Putienne, through Stillwater perhaps, to let the girl know that he was still safe, and still thinking of her.

The next two days were grueling ones for Kestrel as the group of travelers trudged up the edge of the dusty, hot valley.  Though Kestrel drank from the water skin constantly, he felt his soul grow weary and tense from the constant besiegement by the fragment of the Kovell that had taken up residence within him.

They stopped their advance on the morning of the third day of the trip.  They had climbed up a steep trail to reach the top of a tall, empty waterfall.  The empty riverway had grown narrow and deep.

“The river here was once a beautiful, fast stream.  There were glaciers in the mountains above us,” Tullamore gestured further up the river valley.

“This is where we will restore water to our land,” Tullamore said.  “Take a deep drink of the water skin,” he directed Kestrel.

Once Kestrel drank his fill, Tullamore spoke again.  “Now, you and I must merge our powers together, to create a field that will create infinity within a limited space.” The god held out one of his legs for Kestrel to hold.

The circumstances seemed odd.  The god had grown suspiciously non-specific in his comments and explanations during the trip, and Kestrel felt uncomfortable.  Yet he knew that his suspicions could be the product of the manipulative parasite inside him, and he continued to hesitate.

“We can bring a world back to life!” Tullamore urged, and he waved his clawed leg gently in invitation.  “Just hold on and trust me.”

Kestrel closed his eyes.  The journey through the strange land had accomplished everything he had set out to do, and more, yet now it seemed to be going off towards something that he could not comprehend.  He had somehow achieved godhead, yet he had also compromised it through falling prey to the Kovell, and he had never sought the divine power in the first place.

He wanted the confusion of the strange blue-sunned world to end.  He wanted to go home.

With resignation he reached out blindly; he felt the mist within him protest, and then he felt his hand make contact with the claw of Tullamore.

There was a jolt of power, and his eyes flew open.

He felt connected to the Skye god, aware of the perception the Skyes had of the world – an awareness of the soil, a closeness to the earth, a need to look upward at everything.  The world was a place that was low, and wide.  Mountains were of little note, debris on the ground was significant.

The memories, the racial memories were abundant, making Kestrel gasp as he experienced them, sorted through them, and patched them together.   He saw the city he and the others had first walked through after leaving the portal; he saw it as it had once been, teeming with Skyes, green with growing plants – a vibrant city of life.

That was what Tullamore remembered, and what the god dreamed of seeing again.  Kestrel realized it was the motivation that Tullamore had, the vision of restoring prosperity and comfort to the dwindling race of Skyes who were left in the desiccated lands that had been liberated from the ravenous Viathins.  The god dreamt of giving a better life to his followers.