An Unexpected Deity (Book 7) (2 page)

Chapter 1

“I plan to leave tomorrow,” Kestrel announced at dinner.

“Tomorrow?  Don’t you think we should have more advance notice?” Creata asked in alarm.  “I’d appreciate more time to prepare for my betrothed’s departure.”

“I’m certain that you’ve been more than able to declare your love for her these past few days, brother dear,” Picco said.

Even Putienne’s face was creased with a smile; though she was sometimes unsure about human society and humor, she understood the sarcasm of Picco’s comment.  Creata had extravagantly pronounced his devotion to Wren’s welfare, and repeatedly offered to accompany the small band of war-bound travelers, all of whom were actually very satisfied to hear Kestrel finally, publically declare their departure date.  No one doubted that Creata had filled Wren’s ears with his assurances that he was devoted to her, and his offer to join them in order to protect her from any assault.  Considering that Wren was acknowledged to be a better fighter than Creata, the offer was considered sweet, and irrelevant.

They all felt a thrill of excitement at the prospect of finally leaving Seafare to begin their divinely-ordained journey, dangerous though it was expected to be.

The three who were prepared to leave were the much-loved Wren, her cousin Kestrel, and his friend and ward, Putienne.  All three appeared to be of mixed elven and human heritage, but the similarities were not as great as they seemed.

Wren was a superbly skilled combatant, mostly human, with a strong elven heritage evident.  She had left her home in the human nation of Estone to become a fighting spy for the elves of the Eastern Forest.  Her sense of superior fighting skills and rebellion against authority had made her a difficult student at the elven training camp at Firheng.  Only Kestrel’s timely arrival there had prevented her from being rejected from the training program.  And even in Kestrel’s company, she had at first been inclined to challenge him, instead of saving her hostility for the expected human targets.

Putienne appeared to be a younger girl, one still in adolescence, a beautiful girl who was half human and half elf.  In fact, she was a considerably different being.  Through the use of Kestrel’s great magical powers, she had been transformed from her original self, a large, young yeti monster of the Water Mountains.  A ring given to her by the human goddess Kai endowed Putty with the ability to easily and quickly change her shape from human-elf to yeti.

The ring was a still-new gift whose novelty had not yet disappeared, and Putienne had taken great delight in shocking the palace guard by momentarily appearing as a yeti, then hiding around a corner and returning to her smaller form.

Her appearance was an exact, though younger, duplicate image of Moorin, a renowned human-elven beauty.  Kestrel had sculpted the look Putienne wore, unintentionally imprinted the look of the woman he had pursued and unsuccessfully wooed.  She was striking to look at, and a promise of greater beauty soon to bloom, but she was also a reminder to Kestrel of the obsession he had felt for the true Moorin, before she had decided to marry the prince of the southern elves.  Yet the magically imprinted friendship between Kestrel and Putty was so strong, the painful resemblance of the girl could not shake his affection for her or his devotion to her.

Kestrel himself was the most elven in appearance of the three adventurers.  He was one quarter human heritage, one quarter elven heritage, and extraordinarily enough, one half elven deity heritage.  His father was the elven god of speed, Morph.  Kestrel had never known Morph or felt any unmistakable blessing from his father, though he was able to run at elven speeds in excess of what his partial-human heritage should have allowed.

He had been given the use of divine energy lent to him by various elven and human gods and goddesses, and the use of those energies had sparked his own latent powers.  He was still struggling to understand how to control and manipulate his newly-discovered abilities, and he fervently hoped that he would understand them well enough to meet the difficult challenges he expected to arise in his path.

The three adventurers were to be accompanied by a party of ten imps.  The race of imps had entered into an unprecedented alliance with Kestrel personally, it seemed, after Kestrel had struck up an unlikely friendship with their queen, Dewberry.  Kestrel’s titled domain in the lands of the Eastern elves was adjacent to the kingdom of the imps, and during his short term as the Warden of the Marches, he had established trade and friendship between elves, imps, and humans such as had never been seen before.

A pair of the imps were floating in the air of the royal dining room in the palace at Seafare, where the Kestrel had made his pronouncement about the pending departure.  The imps had decided to assign a pair of their party to be with Kestrel at all times, ready to call the rest of their company to join when their services were needed.

“We will have our squad ready at the appointed time,” declared Odare, the senior imp in the room, a feisty personality who never failed to confront Kestrel with outrageous banter whenever the two of them verbally bantered.  Her companion was an imp new to Kestrel, one who Kestrel had not previously served with.

“And so, has your love life grown so settled and boring that you choose to leave Blackfriars and accompany me once again?” Kestrel asked Odare.  She had just rejoined him that week; Odare had not been part of the group of imps that had traveled with him all summer during his long trek along the backbone of the Water Mountain chain, though she had been assigned to be part of his personal guard unit during the more perilous wartime duty of the previous year.

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, I could say, Kestrel-antagonizer, though perhaps I find that turns out to not be the case when returning to serve your needs,” she answered, and discreetly stuck her tongue out at him.

“And Killcen shall be serving with us in any case,” she added primly, referring to her fellow imp guard with whom she had developed a budding relationship.

“So you need no ship at your service?” Ruelin, the prince of Seafare asked politely.

“We have the imps to provide transportation to a spot that puts us hundreds of miles closer to our objective,” Kestrel affirmed what they all knew.  “Thank you, but we’ll be ready to go without a visit to the docks.”

“Who have you sent to scout out our destination, Kestrel friend?” Odare asked.

Kestrel looked at the imp blankly.

“Kestrel!” Wren chastised him.  “Since you know where we’re going, surely you’ve sent a scout to make sure the site is safe and secure.”

“Let’s discuss this further after dinner,” Kestrel said sheepishly.

The meal progressed enjoyably, and after it ended, Kestrel and Odare conferred in a corner, regarding a scouting inspection of their destination in the south.

“I’ll go look at the place of sorrow,” she told her larger companion as they bowed their heads together and spoke.

Kestrel sympathetically rubbed her back.  The two of them had been together the previous winter in the field outside the cave, among the denuded ruins of the Southern Forest.  One of their companions, the imp Canyon, had been tragically killed by a mistaken ambush launched by the southern elves against Kestrel’s group

“We’ll remember our friend,” Kestrel commiserated with her.  “And be careful,” he added.

“Of course, Kestrel-friend,” she smiled, then disappeared.

“Did you send her, just like that?” Wren asked, coming over to the corner.

“She’s on her way.  She’ll be back in just a few moments, I imagine,” Kestrel answered reassuringly.

Odare did return as he finished his comment.  “There are no beings there, Kestrel leader.  The hillside and the cave hold nothing but mice and birds.”

“Thank you Odare.  We’ll check again in the morning to make sure no one arrives overnight,” Kestrel said.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go spend some time with Merea,” he bid farewell to the two, and hurried through the halls of the Seafare palace.

“Kestrel,” he heard Putienne call his name as he passed an intersecting hall.  He looked and saw the girl standing in close proximity to one of the court pages, and he halted.

“This is Gilbert,” she introduced the boy to Kestrel. “He’s invited me to go to the candy shop on the town square with him.  May I go?”  The girl asked with an unintentional display of the genuine sweetness that constituted her personality, and which came across so clearly in her human-elf form.

“You won’t be out late?” Kestrel asked, focusing his gaze on the nervous boy.

“No sir,” the boy said earnestly.

“And you’ll come see me in my room when you get back?” Kestrel asked.

“Yes, Kestrel dear,” Putienne answered.

“Go and have a good time,” Kestrel granted the request with a smile.

The boy exhaled in audible relief, as the two of them turned and hurried down the hall.

“Odare,” Kestrel called immediately.

“Yes, Kestrel friend?” the imp answered moments later as she appeared in the hallway crossing.  A passing maid gave a brief shriek of surprise as the small blue personage popped into view.

“I think some of the folks here may be happy to see us go,” Kestrel laughed.

“My friend, would you do a favor for me?” Kestrel asked.

“I always do.  Always.  Do you even need to ask?” The imp answered acerbically.

“This is slightly different,” Kestrel replied.  “Young Putienne is going on a date with a boy.  Would you fly overhead and keep an eye on them?” he asked.

“Kestrel!” the imp replied in shock.  “Let the girl have some privacy.”

“But she’s so young,” Kestrel said worriedly.

“And she has fangs, claws, and impenetrable hide when she wants to, Kestrel-worrier,” Odare contradicted him.  “Plus, I think there is a certain reputation that goes with being your protégé, and she will be handled with appropriate care,” the imp comforted him.

“Go on and play with your other daughter, and have no worries about this one,” she told him in a sweet tone.

The imp was right, Kestrel conceded, and he went on his way to the nursery, Odare now accompanying him.

Picco, the mother of his daughter, and the princess of Seafare, was already in the nursery, tenderly rocking the baby.

“May we have a turn playing with her, Picco-mother?” Odare asked when they entered the room.

“Odare, how do you play with the baby?” Picco asked.  She turned the baby around and watched Merea grin a toothless smile as she spotted the imp.

Kestrel winced in anticipation of Picco’s pending reaction to discovering the game that Odare and he and Merea had developed in their time together, a game he was sure the imp was about to reveal to the baby’s mother.

“Watch!” Odare blithely told Picco.  “Come on, Kestrel,” she urged, as Merea gave an awkward clap of joy.

Kestrel silently sighed, and took the baby from her mother.

“Do you need to go anywhere to do anything else?” he hopefully asked Picco.

“Kestrel,” Picco growled, wrinkles forming on her forehead.  “No, I specifically made arrangements to be here with you and Merea,” she told him.  “Which Ruelin wasn’t completely happy about, but he understood you’d be leaving tomorrow,” her voice trailed off.

“Ready Odare?” Kestrel asked.  It was too late to hope for a reprieve.  He held Merea in his arms and laughed with her, as she anticipated what was to come, and then he threw her high into the air, ten feet above his head in the majestically-ceilinged palatial nursery, and watched as Odare swooped to catch her at the apex of her flight, then gently descend with the laughing baby held securely.

The imp returned the baby to her father.

“Kestrel,” Picco spoke in a low, deadly voice.  “How many times have you used our daughter to play fetch with the imp?”

“Oh, not that many, really,” Kestrel stuttered.

“But we did this for an hour yesterday,” Odare protested.  “Show her the long throw we did.”

“No!” Picco said sharply.  “I don’t need to see the ‘long throw’,” she nipped the proposal in the bud.

Merea raised her hands in the air with a sudden squeal of delighted demand for another flight.

“You’ve ruined her for us,” Picco scolded Kestrel.  She gave a sigh, and sat back down in her rocker.  “Now she’ll want to be tossed about all the time.

“Go ahead and play your game tonight,” she conceded.  “And make two promises to me.”

“Sure, absolutely,” Kestrel gave a small grunt as he answered, as he launched the laughing baby into the air again.

“Promise me there will be no baby-tossing games when you two get back,” Picco said, as her eyes intently watched the imp in the air intercept her flying child.

“I promise,” Kestrel said sincerely.

“And promise me you’ll come back safe and sound,” Picco added earnestly.  “I had a few glimpses of you in Graylee after the prince’s henchmen beat you, and I know you think you’re indestructible – but you’re not!  So take good care of yourself.

“You take good care of him Odare,” she instructed the imp, as her daughter was handed back in preparation for the next flight.