An Unexpected Deity (Book 7) (18 page)

They heard another Viathin roar, closer than before, though not uncomfortably close.

“How can it lead us?  What route?  Will we be safe?” Stuart quizzed.

Wren curtly nodded her head as she listened to his questions, then turned and repeated them in the language of the mist.  It replied, and she turned to the others.

“The captive gods are in a prison in another city.  There are caves and canyons that will take us there, but it will be two days journey.  The way will be dangerous, but if we trust it, it will deliver us inside the gates of the city,” Wren said.

“And we must promise not to help any other gods,” she added.  She spoke to the mist, and it responded, its cloudy substance moving with greater agitation.  “We absolutely must not help any other gods, or it will punish us for betraying it.

“It says it will hunt and slay Kestrel,” she said solemnly.

The Viathins roared again, and a responding roar came from the other side of them, out in the desert wilderness they had planned to travel through.

“We have no choice,” Gates said.

“What does it get out of this deal?” Stuart asked.  “Why is it helping us?”

Wren translated again.  “It says Ashcrayss and the Viathins are killing the world.  Soon there will be nothing left.  They have taken the water, they are taking the lives, soon they will consume everything, unless our gods can kill Ashcrayss,” she gave the answer of the mist.

“That is just how Kestrel has described the other worlds that he saw the Viathins plunder,” Wren added.

“My lady,” Stuart looked at Lark, “I recommend that we accept this unholy offer of help, and we follow this creature to some place of safety, and then to the place where the gods are held captive.

“Kestrel will know the rest of what we need to do when he awakens,” Stuart asserted.

“We’ll do it,” Lark agreed.

“Let me talk to my companions to see if they also agree,” Wren spoke up, and she began to speak in the language of the gnomes, explaining the proposal to Woven, as the mist moved back and forth across the road like an impatient child.

“We cannot trust this thing, but we have no choice,” Woven replied, and Stillwater had a similar answer after Wren told him.  “But I hate the thought of going into caves again,” he added.

“Woven, you pick up Kestrel and carry him,” Wren told her gnome companion.

“We’re ready to go,” she told the others, then told the mist.

“We have to bring Jaxom’s body with us,” Lark said, as the humans gathered together.

“My lady, it will be a heavy burden to carry for two days,” Stuart spoke up.

“He was my body guard, and I will not allow him to be left behind like this,” Lark said heatedly.

With a sigh and a gesture, Stuart signaled for the other guard to bring the dead man along, and as the mist started to move back towards the city, the small group began to follow along.

“Why are there so few Viathins around here?” Wren asked the mist as they heard one roar up in the high hills beyond the city.

“They only come here to use the cave that you arrived from.  There are not many of them, and they do not like this city otherwise,” the mist answered.  “They are afraid of me; I have killed a few of them.”

“They may stop using the cave soon,” Wren said.  “Kestrel closed the other end in our world, so they will no longer be able to use this passage between the worlds.”

“He is a great power?” the mist asked.

“He is,” Wren answered.

“What are you talking about?” Lark asked as they trudged back towards the town.

“The mist asked if Kestrel is a great power in our land,” Wren told her.  “I said that he is.”

“He is, and we didn’t even know about him, really,” the girl agreed in a pleasanter tone than Wren had expected.  “Except the Viathins spoke of ‘The Destroyer’ like some kind of mythical adversary, but I expected The Destroyer to be so much more frightening.”

The group crossed the boundary again and re-entered the city.  They stalked along the broad central road in the path of the mist, until it turned aside at a particular building and entered the low door.

“Stop,” Stuart said, “Wren you wait and stay with the duchess, in case anything happens, I want you to be with her to translate, and take care of her.  I’ll go in first,” and so saying, he drew his sword, then stooped very low and entered the dark building.  The guard carrying the body of his companion grunted as he also stooped low, finding the burden to be an awkward one to maneuver with.  Stillwater flew in, then Woven dragged Kestrel behind him, and the two females entered last.

The interior of the building was completely dark, and they all moved at an extremely slow pace, until there was a shout from the front.  Moments later, Stuart’s voice drifted back, “Watch out for these steps going down,” he warned.

After half an hour of travel, they were only a little beyond the bottom of the stairs, and Wren called out to the mist in the front of the group.  “Why is this so slow?” she asked.

“We are waiting on the pace of all of you.  I would be much farther along if I traveled alone,” the mist told her.

“Stuart, why are our people so slow?” she called forward.

“It’s because of me,” the guard interrupted.  “I can’t do more than spare one hand to drag Jaxom along, and it’s slow going,” he explained.

“Lark,” Wren spoke up, deliberately choosing not to use a title.

“I know,” the nobleman’s daughter answered.   “We have to go faster, but it seems so cold to leave a friend here, where he’ll have no burial or respect.”

“You can respect his memory, and honor him in the afterlife,” Wren answered.

“Leave him, and move on,” Lark’s voice was emotional as she gave the command.

“Woven, how are you doing?  Any signs of Kestrel awakening?” Wren asked a few minutes later, as they all began to crawl along at a faster pace.

“He’s not said or done anything so far,” Woven answered.

“We’ll want to take a break sometime,” Wren called forward to the mist.  “Will there be a good place to do that?”

“We can go farther, and reach a canyon before the great light in the sky arrives,” the mist answered.  “You can rest there.  We must go faster though,” it added.

Wren passed the information along to the others, and listened to the groans as they heard the news, but they continued on with their journey.

It was long and slow and grueling, as the various races from the Inner Seas moved through the low-ceilinged passages of the land of the blue sun, but after painful hours they reached a spot where the mist began to hiss and seethe.

“It says we can stop here to rest.  The sun will come up soon, and then we can walk through the canyon to the next set of caves,” Wren told them all.

There were groans of relief as all the members of the group settled down onto the ground.  As they did, the mist spoke to Wren briefly.

“It says it is going to its home, but it will be back tonight to lead us through the canyon and beyond,” Wren explained.  “It is going to pass among us – you will feel it pass by, but it will do you no harm,” she warned, and even before her last words were uttered she heard a series of murmurs and moans, then felt the icy touch of the mist for only a moment, before it passed by.

“Is it gone?” Stuart asked after several seconds.

“It went past me, and I’m last,” Wren confirmed.

“Everyone put your hands up over your heads,” Stuart said.  “Does anyone feel the ceiling still?” he asked.

“No,” Gates said.  They heard his clothing and the articles he carried rustle.  “I’m standing, and I still can’t touch it.”

The others immediately stood as well, while Wren translated the news to the others.

“I’ll see how high this place is,” Stillwater immediately volunteered in the darkness.  “Perhaps it is fifteen feet high,” he reported just seconds later.  “That is so little, yet now it seems like so much.”

Wren passed that information along as well, including the imp’s philosophical reasoning, as she heard the sounds of all of them stretching and removing the various items they carried.

Minutes later, as the humans spoke among themselves and Wren spoke to Woven, they all stopped, at a nearly simultaneous moment, as they realized that light was beginning to infiltrate their chamber.

“It is the rise of the blue sun,” Gates spoke first.  “There’s the entrance to the cave,” he said as the bright end of their chamber revealed the access to the outdoors.

“We’ll go look at it, to see what is out there,” Gates said, motioning to the other guard.

“If they are going out, I’ll be their scout,” Stillwater hastily volunteered as he noted the movements towards the door in the growing light.

“I’ll translate for you,” Wren said, also moving with them, and soon Kestrel’s body lay unattended in the cavern chamber as the rest of the squad went around a bend in the passage, and up a slope to find a small opening in a cliffside, one that looked out upon a narrow canyon.

The walls of the canyon were steep and high.  At the bottom of the canyon there was a small pool of water that snaked along the curves of the canyon floor, with bushes and short trees growing bushier and taller than any plants the travelers had seen up to that point on their journey in the land of the blue sun.

There were no signs of animals or life other than the plants.

“I’m going to go down to the water,” Gates said.

“We’ll all go,” Wren said, “except me.  I’ll stay here and watch over Kestrel.”

“You can go; I’ll watch him,” Lark unexpectedly offered.  “If there’s a battle or a need to speak, you can do those things better than I can.”

“I’ll stay with her ladyship,” Gates said.

“No Gates, there’s no need to guard me here.  Go see what this world has,” Lark insisted.  She crouched back down into the cavern entrance, and motioned for them all to go.

The eyes of the remaining guards all exchanged glances, then Stuart gave a nod and started to lead the way down the narrow trail that wove among the irregular features of the cliff.  Satisfied that the group was on its way, Lark re-entered the cavern, and wended her way back to the chamber where Kestrel still lay motionless.  She knelt down beside him, and began to remove the various articles he carried, trying to make him more comfortable.

“I hope you awaken soon,” she said softly.  “We need your strength.

“I remember the first time I saw you, standing in the street of Uniontown.  I happened to be looking directly at you when you pulled your bow off your shoulder and started firing arrows as calmly as if you were picking flowers in a garden.  I was clinging to my brother, Lister, and I thought we were going to be taken prisoner,” she said as she gently straightened the front of Kestrel’s shirt.

“And your eyes were so beautiful; even if Stuart was frightened by them, I thought they were gorgeous – they made me want to go live with gnomes so I could have purple eyes too,” she told him, and she reached her hand up from his shirt to his face, then she stroked his hair back off his forehead.

She seemed to touch some responsive part of him, either by her touch or her voice, for he moaned down in the base of his throat.  Lark immediately removed her hand from his face, and scooted back several inches from him.  He moaned again, and the second time the sound was more indicative of pain than of awakening.

“Kestrel,” she said, less gently than she had just moments before, “Kestrel, are you alright?”

“Wren?” he asked in dazed confusion.

“No, not Wren,” the duchess replied.

“Putty?” he still did not know where he was.

“It’s me, Duchess Lark,” the girl clarified, with a touch of asperity in her voice.

“Oh,” Kestrel sighed.  He opened his eyes and looked up.  He looked at the girl, then looked around the dark chamber.  In the darkness he saw two tiny sparks, the brightness of the outside daylight, reflecting off her eyes.  “Where are we?”

Lark proceeded to tell him where they were, and how they traveled there.

“The monster of mist is helping us?” he asked.  “Is my waterskin close by?” he asked seconds later, before Lark even had a chance to answer.

“I have a terrible headache,” Kestrel said.  “Would you pass the waterskin to me?”  he had made no effort to rise from his prone position.

Lark squinted in the darkness, located the skin she had removed from Kestrel earlier, and pulled it closer.

“Open your mouth,” she commanded, as she held the skin above his head, then tipped it and poured a large gulp into his mouth.

He placed his hand up to prevent her from pouring more.  “That’s enough, thank you.

“You say the others are outside?” Kestrel asked her.  “Why aren’t you there?”

“We thought someone should stay with you,” Lark said, “and they told me to, since the others could fight better if there were problems,” she fibbed, caught off-guard by the direct question.  She didn’t want to admit that she had volunteered to be with him.

“Can you help me sit up?” he asked, and reached up to hold on to Lark’s hands as she strained to pull him up.

“It’s so hard for me to use my energy,” he tried to apologize.  “It really wore me out.”