An Unexpected Deity (Book 7) (34 page)

“And right over here,” she led him down the bank, and around a protruding boulder, to show him a tunnel opening that was wide and broad enough to walk into, “is the entrance to the portal.

“I was afraid that the Viathins would discover it and use it, which would bring more of the filthy monsters into my land, so I closed it over early in the invasion.  A group of them came and examined it, but went no further before Decimindion developed his remedy for the problem,” she explained.

“If you wish, we can open it long enough for you to squeeze through, and be back in your own world once again,” she told him, as they walked into the cave and stood before a wall of stone.

“I would like that very much,” Kestrel said with emotion.  In truth, he found that he was already comfortable with the wilderness goddess, and leaving her would leave a small void; in the short time they had traveled together he had found her to be a delightful figure.  It did not occur to him that simply her ability to shift her shape to virtually resemble an elf, simply by possessing two legs and two arms and facial features he recognized, had warmed his heart to her more than it would ever warm to Tullamore, despite all the good that the round god had done.

“Stand right here, and place your hand on the wall,” Medeina instructed Kestrel.  She stood right behind him, her body pressed up against his, and placed her hand on top of his, sandwiching his hand between hers and the wall.  “Now, when you feel my power rush through your hand, contribute your own energy to it,” she told him.

He felt her body pressed against him, and then he felt her divine energy flow into his hand, and through it, into the cold stones he pressed against.  The energy made his hand feel the texture of the stone, and then he added his own power to it, to help the energy react with the stone.  He felt the two powers, her greater energy and his lesser energy, mingle as they began to interact with structure of the stone wall.  The stone seemed to welcome the energy, as though it were a dry sponge absorbing water; and just like the rehydrating sponge, Kestrel was astonished by how the stone became pliable.

“These are special stones; I treated them to behave this way,” Medeina seemed to read his thoughts and understand his surprise. 

His hand began to sink into the stone, and then the wall began to peel open, creating an orifice that was rounded.  “Go through, now, quickly!” Medeina urged, as the stone they touched slid to the side.

Kestrel raised a knee and stepped into the darkness on the other side of the wall.  Medeina’s fingers were still interwoven with his, pressing firmly against the stone, as he stepped his other foot into the newly exposed chamber.

“There!  You are home,” she smiled triumphantly.  “Good luck, my almost-divine friend.  You know the secret of the wall; come back and visit me some day,” she told him.  “Now, step back,” she commanded.

“Good bye, Medeina, and thank you,” Kestrel answered.  Her fingers squeezed his tightly for just a moment, then she pulled her hand away, and the orifice snapped shut, sliding beneath Kestrel’s unprepared hand.  The last thing he saw was Medeina’s visage, giving him a smile and a broad wink, and then they were separated, and he was in a different world.

Chapter 22

He was in his own world!

Kestrel was so stunned by the hasty parting with Medeina that it took a moment for the fact to register.  He was somewhere within reach of the Inner Seas!

Within a few days or weeks he could see people he knew once again.  Possibly within hours he could eat a meal of food he recognized and enjoyed once again.  He could pray to gods he knew once again!

He raised his hand and set it aglow, using the more efficient means of power consumption that Krusima had shown him in the prison where he had set Krusima and Morph free.  He found that the place he had passed into was not a natural place.  There were stone walls whose stones were cut and set in place, and the floor was level.  He cautiously walked forward, away from the blocked portal, and saw a staircase.  With eager but cautious steps, he climbed up the stairs, and found that there were more stone walls and flooring in the structure.

Kestrel saw a faint glimmer down a hallway, and he cautiously walked towards it, then through a door, and he stopped to look around.  He knew exactly where he was.  Precisely.  He’d been there before, and felt glad to be back.  He looked up at the familiar star patterns in the night sky overhead, and saw the crescent moon that he knew so well.

“Thank you Medeina!  Thank you!” he said out loud.

“Hello Mother Kere!  I’m home!” he said that aloud as well.

Kestrel was back home, back in the Eastern Forest.   He was even back in his own domain, in the Marches where he was lord, and held sway.  He was in the little hamlet of Cedar Gully, the remote village of elves he had once visited to treat the victims of a plague.  He had arrived through a portal that came out in the basement of a house that was purported to be haunted.

Life was too good to be true.  He was only a few short hours away from seeing Putienne.  And of course he would see Whyte and Remy and all the others in Oaktown as well.  He’d be able to sleep in his own bed by the next night at the latest, and eat all the foods he craved.  Within a week he could be done with checking on accounts at the manor, could have passed through Hydrotaz, and boarded a ship to take him to Uniontown to help Lark’s father, and to see the girl herself!

Happy beyond expression, Kestrel stepped off the porch of the haunted house, and began his journey home.

Watch for the continuation of Kestrel’s adventures, as he returns home to the Eastern Forest and encounters trouble he never expected to see.

Kestrel wasn’t sure which way to go when he reached the river.  He made the decision to go left, and was rewarded when he spotted a trio of imps slowly flying in the same direction, pulling ropes attached to a collection of crude floating rafts upon the river.

“Hello imps!” he called ecstatically

Two of the imps dropped their ropes immediately, and darted towards him, spacing themselves apart to approach him from different angles.  They drew knives as they took positions and hovered on either side of him.

“Who are you?  What elf dares trespass in our kingdom?” the imp on his right spoke.

“An elf who is a friend and neighbor,” he replied immediately.  “I am the Warden of the Marches in the Eastern Forest.  My name is Kestrel; perhaps you’ve heard of me?” he said with false modesty, certain that his name must be known to all imps after his spectacular series of adventures with and on behalf of the imps.

The two small beings looked at him suspiciously.

“I set up the mushroom market in Oaktown,” he added in exasperation a few moments later.

“You were the one who did that?” the left imp said excitedly.  “Can you get more?  I didn’t get any mushrooms!”

“I got some,” the right imp said smugly.

“You always get the good things!” the left imp complained loudly.

“I hope we can set the market up again next season,” Kestrel interrupted the brewing battle.  “l know the king and queen would be happy to talk about that, if I could reach the court.  Can you direct me in the right direction?” he asked.

“Follow us,” both imps simultaneously responded.

“Gladly,” Kestrel replied.  “Will it take long?” he asked.

“Another few hours; we should arrive around sunset,” one of the imps said.  “Will you be able to keep up?” he asked.

“I saw how slowly you were going,” Kestrel laughed.  “The question is really whether you can keep up with me?”

He saw a look of set determination cross the imp’s face.  “You won’t find us being the laggards!” the imp declared.  He turned and zipped back to the center of the river, where he dove to the surface and plucked his abandoned rope out of the water.  “Can you believe the cheek of that elf?” Kestrel heard the imp say in a low voice to his companion who had remained with the small barges.  “We’ll show him who can and can’t keep up!”

And so began the journey that was really a race.  The imps pulled their boats with great vigor, creating a rippled wake upon the river as they vigorously headed upstream towards Blackfriars.  They generally found, to their disgust that Kestrel could easily leap from tree limb to tree limb with no problems, letting him outpace the imps.  But when his riverbank route was interrupted by the mouth of some tributary stream, he would have to divert away from the river, allowing the imps to catch up with or pass him.

Two hours later, a short pier came into view on the river bank, and a horn sounded loudly.  The pier was on the opposite side of the river from Kestrel, and the imps angled their barges towards the pier, chortling triumphantly.

“What a race!” Kestrel heard one of them say.  “I’m glad we won; can you imagine the shame of losing to an elf?

“Elf slow one,” he turned and shouted across the river as the barges pulled up next to the docks, where a crew of elves tied them fast to the piers. “We appreciate your sporting ways; you made things interesting, though of course we won, as an imp might be expected to.”

Kestrel stewed momentarily, then shrugged the comment off.  “So can you send a boat over to give me a ride across?” he asked.

“What? The mighty elf can’t cross the river?” one of the imps hooted, making the whole crowd laugh.

Provoked by the frivolous attitude of the imps, Kestrel turned and disappeared back into the forest that bordered the river bank, making the imps smirk with delight, until Kestrel reappeared ten seconds later, running at his fullest elven speed.  He stepped out onto the surface of the river and proceeded to kick up a small rooster tail of foamy water in his wake as he ran across the river and leapt up onto the river bank.  He turned and looked at the stunned crowd of imps.  “Oh, do you still have to unload the cargo?  I’ll go ahead and tell the king you’ll be along…eventually,” he smirked, as he turned again and started walking along the road that led from the river to the city.

He felt good, energized by having won the petty battle at the docks, so good that he whistled as he walked along.  He saw imps floating high overhead, and then he followed the turn in the path and suddenly faced the sight of the high towers of Blackfriars, the city of the imps.

“Odare!” he shouted.  “Killcen!  Mulberry!  Where are you all?” he shouted.  He repeated the names, cupping his hands around his mouth to project his voice high up into the sky.

Imps started streaming out of the doors and windows of the towers.

Kestrel watched with satisfaction, pleased to see the stir he had raised, but he grew concerned when he saw a small cadre of imps come plummeting down from the sky, heading directly towards him.  Just before the numerous imps reached him his concern turned again to joy, as he recognized that the approaching imps were the friends he knew, the very imps who had been stranded apart from him when the
Rishiare Estelle
had disrupted the plans they all had made to travel together to fight the Viathins and free the captive gods.

The first two imps struck him simultaneously, Odare from the right and Mulberry from the left, driving him to the ground with the impact of their reckless regard.  He felt numerous things going on all together in a welter of impressions.  He felt imp after imp seem to strike and add to the pile of small blue bodies that rested upon him in a squirming mass of affectionate friends, as kisses and pinches and shouts of glee rained upon him for a string of minutes that stretched out.

He felt his own eyes fill with moisture, and then spill tears of joy at the happiness of the reunion.  There may be no place in the world where I could be more exuberantly welcomed than here with the imps, he found himself thinking, and he knew he took great pleasure in the thought.

“What ruckus is this that disturbs the royal nap?” a shrill voice called.

The imps that were piled upon Kestrel began to immediately untangle themselves and float up away from him, so that within a minute he could see the sky above once again.  The sun was setting he realized, and then, against the backdrop of the reddening sky, he saw Dewberry hovering directly overhead.  The queen of the imps was large with child, and her face glowed with a radiance born of both her physical state as well as the joy of seeing Kestrel alive and at her home.

“I might have expected to see you upon your knees to greet me, Kestrel-always-traveling, but laying on your back is a novel way to greet your favorite untouchable beloved.  Is this some new custom you’ve learned in some exotic locale?” she asked, and then she plummeted down to kiss him and be engulfed in his gentle embrace.

“My queen, I could not imagine living another day without seeing the great, very great, make that very, very, very greatness, that you have become!” he replied.

She bit him laughingly on the shoulder, then floated up away from him.

“Because I hold you in such high esteem, I will ask the guards to place you in the nicest prison cell we have for making such mean comments!” she scolded him.  “Come up, come up!  We will have a dinner with you, and hear your news.  We are so sadly cut off from the world because of the
Rishiare Estelle
conditions; we want to hear everything you have to say.”

And so a half dozen imps gathered around him, and physically lifted him to a balcony in the royal tower.

“You are very light, Kestrel friend,” Mulberry told him as they set him down.

“he looks very thin,” Killcen agreed.

“He has pined away from a broken heart, without an appetite, because he could not see me during all these past weeks,” Odare declared.  “It is touching that he is here to see me now.”

With such ongoing joking and laughter, Kestrel was escorted to a large banquet hall, where Jonson sat at a table set upon a dais, with many other tables set on the floor just below.

“Come sit with me, friend Kestrel, hero of the imps, and tell us what you have been doing.  We need to give the cooks time to prepare the unexpected banquet they now must provide, and I trust that your story will be exciting – we don’t ever expect to have boredom when you are around!” the king said.

Kestrel stepped up to the table, and after a hearty welcome from Jonson, he was made to stand and tell his tale, speaking to a room that started with a crowd, and grew more crowded as he spun the extraordinary tale of much that had happened since the fateful day when the
Rishiare Estelle
had disrupted the plans of all involved.  He judiciously pruned parts of the story, including references to his own temporary divinity, aware of how raucously the story would be received and treated.

“And so, my friend, I am here to ask for your help, again,” Kestrel told the king as he ended his story with his return to the land of the Inner Seas, while Jonson sat upon his throne.

“You have great powers, while we are still suffering from the
Rishiare Estelle
,” Jonson replied.  “I would never say ‘no’ to you, for we owe you all the help we owe to our brothers.  But I wonder what we can do for you.”

“The Eastern Forest has fallen into a civil war, and my friends are in trouble.  I need a squad or more of imps with pikes to help me help my companions,” he replied.

“You are asking us to go to war with the elves?” Jonson asked in astonishment.