An Unexpected Deity (Book 7) (25 page)

“You want to take my powers from me?” Kestrel asked incredulously.

“He’s not doing it for himself – he’s doing it to save you, you and all your companions!” Krusima thundered at Kestrel.  “Restoring his power is the only way we are going to live on to escape and be victorious!  Now don’t be a stubborn mortal!”

“Your powers will grow back – this is not a permanent robbery,” Morph answered in a gentler tone.  “I will drain you of your powers in order to have enough to start a portion of my own, but then you will begin to start regenerating your energy over time.”

The tower shuddered again, this time in a more noticeable fashion, so that everyone’s feet staggered momentarily.

“Alright,” Kestrel said reluctantly.  “Take my powers to save us.”

“Give me your hands,” Morph said.

“Thank you, Kestrel,” Stuart patted him on the back.

Kestrel reached out his hands, holding them for his father to take them.

The elven god grabbed hold of each hand tightly, then locked his eyes on Kestrel’s.  “Here we go,” he said softly.

And Kestrel felt a wrenching pain begin.

Somewhere deep within him, he felt an explosive reaction occur, as Morph delved into his soul and found his source of power.  An incredible withdrawal of energy began, and it seemed to not only take away his power, but it threatened to pull the very core of his identity with it as well.  He felt his memories become dislodged and jarred by the force of the activity that was pillaging the center of his identity.  He suddenly understood that in some way, the power he held had always been a part of his sense of who he was, even long before he had ever had a glimmer of recognition of his potential.

The pain was mental, it was spiritual, and it was physical.  He realized he was crying, and he vaguely felt the tears streaming down his cheeks.  He felt Morph within him, and he felt a sense of the overwhelming eternal life the god had maintained, a vast reservoir of experience and knowledge.  Morph was full of humor and laughter and skittish pranks, yet there was depth and a solid foundation beneath those elements, and it overwhelmed any ability Kestrel had to plumb those depths during his fleeting exposure to his father’s hidden substance.

The pain went on, and then suddenly it was over.  Kestrel opened his eyes, and saw that he was lying on the ground once again, Morph’s hands still holding his, as Wren and Lark both knelt over him and Stillwater hovered above.

“Did it work?” he heard Krusima’s voice impatiently ask.

“Oh by Mother Moon and Father Tree, it worked!  I feel it!” Morph answered.  “It’s not like it was before my powers were stolen, but I can do things once again!” he crowed.

“Perhaps I should attempt to regain my powers too, to help in the battle,” Krusima mused.

“The boy isn’t in any shape to go through that again,” Morph immediately answered.  “And it only worked because he is my son, and our powers are compatible.”

“Here, this is what we’ll do,” he leapt lightly up onto the ledge of the window that faced the temple’s twinkling lights.  He waved a hand, and then stepped off the ledge, making the others in the chamber gasp in momentary fright.

The building shivered once again, and dust fell down from the mortared cracks overhead.

“What are you doing?” Krusima asked impatiently.

“I’ve created a bridge in the air, a black bridge that cannot be seen at night from the ground, and it leads all the way to the temple.  We’ll just walk through the air over to the temple while they think we’re trapped in this soon-to-be-destroyed tower,” he explained.

“Here, climb up here,” he gestured to Krusima.  “Lead us to the temple.”

The human god scowled, but obediently climbed up onto the window ledge, then hesitantly stepped out on to the difficult-to-see bridge, a narrow span without rails or protection.

“It truly works; perhaps you’re not as unreliable as the other gods say you are,” he joked.

The tower shuddered again.

“Everyone get on the bridge as quickly as possible,” Morph directed, “and walk carefully.”

Stuart jumped up, then helped Lark climb up onto the bridge.  Gates went next, then Woven.

“Help me,” Wren grunted, before she started to click and speak in the language of the Skyes, while lifting one of the creatures up onto the bridge.

Kestrel stooped and also picked up one of the surprisingly heavy creatures, then pushed it onto the bridge, as the other members of the troop started to cautiously walk away from the tower, on their furtive journey to the temple they hoped to invade.

Five minutes later, the last of the Skyes were on the black energy bridge.  Stillwater hovered in the air outside of the window.  “Come along Kestrel friend and Wren,” he urged.

The tower reverberated with a sharp cracking sound, and shuddered precipitously.

“Hurry!” the imp urged.

Kestrel and Wren jumped up on the ledge together, then Kestrel motioned for Wren to step out in front onto the dark, black bridge, and then he stepped on behind her.  For Kestrel, who had been raised in the elven culture of climbing and traveling among trees branches, the prospect of walking at a height along a narrow bridge at night was only mildly intimidating.  Wren had been raised with much less integration into elven culture and customs, and so she stood staring at the distant lights ahead.  The dark Skyes were invisible in night, and the rest of the travelers were out of sight as well.

“This looks like a challenge,” she mumbled as the two of them stood together.

“Let’s start moving,” Kestrel suggested, and he took the lead as they stepped out onto the three foot wide path.

“I’ll follow you,” Wren said, “but don’t go too fast.”

They began to walk along, when they heard another loud crack, one that wasn’t a single sound.  It began as a crack, then turned into a grinding sound that became a rumble.  A gray, billowing cloud of dust roiled upward with dramatic speed, and the tower began to shudder, then start to tip and tumble in the direction of Kestrel and Wren.

“Come on!  Run!” Kestrel shouted.  He reached back and grabbed his cousin’s hand, then began to pull her away from the tilting tower as quickly as she could follow.

“Slow down, Kestrel!” she called, as they began to plunge forward into the darkness.

A piece of roofing tile flew past them, and the billowing dust from the demolition below rose up to engulf them.  A shower of pebbles rained upon them, but they continued to run away from the tower.  Large chunks of masonry struck the magical power of the bridge and produced bright flashes of light that were smothered by the clouds of dust.

“Kestrel!” Wren screamed, as Kestrel felt her hand wrenched away from his.

He spun around and began to swing his staff outward, to offer the girl something to grab hold of, only to see to his horror that she was already teetering over the edge of the bridge and beginning to plunge downwards.  He felt his arm muscles strain as he altered the course of his staff and sent it downward towards Wren.

Her feet fell off the bridge, and she started to disappear, just as his staff reached her.  Her right hand grasped the wooden pole as the small hooks built into the end of the weapon snagged the material in her sleeve.

“Hold on!” Kestrel shouted, just before he felt her full weight come to bear on the staff, and nearly wrench it out of his hands.  He fell flat on the surface of the bridge, feeling stones fly and strike him liberally.  Wren was completely below the bridge, and to his horror, Kestrel realized that he was sliding off the narrow surface, unable to stop himself from following her down into the unseen depths.

And then he felt hands on his shoulder, securing him in place.  “You’ll be okay now,” Morph told him, as the god adjusted his position and reached over to lift up the desperate Wren and return her to the bridge.

“Oh my God!” Wren cried as her feet touched the bridge surface.  The last of the rubble from the tower had passed beyond them as the ruins collapsed down to the ground, and they stood amid the chocking dust.

“I hope I am,” Morph said playfully.  “Now we know we won’t be seen with all this dust to hide us.  Come along and catch up; it won’t take you long,” he informed them, then disappeared once more into the cloud.

“Well,” Kestrel said, “it’ll be easier on the rest of the trip, I’m sure,” he said as he turned to start walking forward.

“You better make that a promise!” Wren told him, and they began trotting carefully forward until they reached the end of the parade of Skyes.  Minutes later they emerged from the dust that swirled in the air in the aftermath of the tower’s collapse, and saw the long distance they had to travel to reach the lights of the temple at the end of the bridge.

“It’ll take all night,” Wren exclaimed.

They could faintly see the backs of the others as they walked, and Stillwater came floating back to join them.  “I do not think the humans like this bridge, but their god is speaking to them roughly, and they move on,” he told the two elves.  He floated up and down the length of the procession, and also dropped down closer to the ground to observe any Viathin activity below.

“There are no signs that anyone is watching or following us on the ground,” the imp reported three hours after they had left the tower.  The temple was visibly closer, and Wren began to express belief that they would actually reach their goal intact and alive.

An hour later, Morph sent Stillwater ahead to scout out their arrival at the temple, to make sure there would be no guards waiting to ambush the group.  Kestrel and Wren cautiously moved forward among the group, carefully passing others on the narrow beam as they approached the walls of the temple, so that the two warrior elves could be in the forefront of any confrontation that might break out.

“It’s good to see you lad,” Stuart said as they passed him.  “When we get back to Uniontown we’ll sit down and drink all night long to tell these stories to the other lads in the Duke’s guard, and no matter how drunk we make them, they won’t believe a fraction of our tale,” he grinned.

“Not stories about magical bridges that are miles long,” Gates agreed.

“And we do want you to come back to Uniontown with us,” Lark added emphatically.  “I want you on our side with us.”

“What was that about?” Wren whispered moments later when she and Kestrel moved on past the humans and then past the gnome.

“Lark says her father needs extra fighters to help him survive the civil war in Uniontown, and she wants me to help,” he replied.

“Is that all she wants?” Wren asked with a knowing inflection in her tone.

“Of course,” Kestrel snapped.  “She’s just a child, you know,” he told Wren.

“A child who’s only a couple of years younger than you and me, you mean,” Wren corrected him.

Kestrel said no more, knowing that Wren was right.

Stillwater returned a moment later, sparing him the need to respond.

“There is no sign of trouble ahead,” the imp told the two gods, as Kestrel and Wren listened closely.

“Is the roof flat?” Krusima asked.

“There is a gable, and a closed door,” Stillwater answered.

“Morph, you go ahead with your boy and secure the door; the rest of us will come along,” Krusima said peremptorily.

Morph appeared ready to protest against Krusima’s command, but Kestrel stepped forward abruptly, driven by a shove in the back from Wren.  Momentarily distracted by the movement, Morph looked at Kestrel, then spoke.

“We’ll go do the tough work,” Morph shot back, beckoning to Kestrel.  “You bring your folks along as quickly as you can.”

Krusima scowled once again, as Kestrel and Morph moved past the others.  Morph began to sprint, and Kestrel ran behind, catching up with his father when they reached the end of the bridge.  They faced a short climb up an angled gable roof to reach a large, dark window, one that was shuttered closed.

“I’ll run up and open the window, so that you can come up and stand guard while I see what’s inside,” Morph directed, then he sprinted noiselessly up the slate roof without awaiting an answer.  Kestrel watched in the dim light as the god’s fingers shook the frame of the shutter so rapidly that its latch vibrated open, and then Morph’s figure was gone from view.

Kestrel scampered up the steep slope, then dove into the window.  The roof had been slick, and he knew that others would need help to climb it.  He rose to his feet and looked around inside the temple, marveling that once again the small band from the Inner Seas had managed to reach another extraordinary milestone on their journey.

He looked around.  The room was a long narrow one, dark with a glimmer of light at the opposite end.  Morph was out of sight, but a noise outside the window made him turn to look.  The rest of the party was arriving at the end of the magic bridge.  Kestrel leaned out the window as Gates came up the angled roof first, and he helped pull the man into the attic chamber.  Lark came next, and Kestrel helped pull her up as well, conscious of the feel of her hands in his as he lifted her to the window.

“Kestrel, come down and help us lift the Skyes,” Wren called hoarsely as she stood at the foot of the gable, a Skye pressed partway up the rood.

In response, Kestrel reached down with his staff and hooked the end around one of the legs of the creature, then pulled it upwards, and worked with Gates to lift it into the attic.  They repeated the maneuver several times, Kestrel’s arms tiring, until the entire cadre of the natives were inside the temple, clicking and clacking among themselves.  Krusima entered the room without assistance, just as Morph returned.