The Guided Journey (Book 6) (38 page)

“What a beautiful place!” Raines commented as they strolled through the halls.

“This is even nicer than Lord Ripken’s manor,” Orren agreed.

When they reached a series of rooms, Orren and Raines each followed a servant carrying their bags into their respective rooms.  Kestrel was left in the hallway to talk to Putienne, who had remained mostly silent throughout the visit to the palace.

“We have to sleep in separate rooms,” Kestrel insisted.  “Your room will be right here, across the hall from mine, so you know that I’ll be close.”

“I have to?” the girl asked disconsolately.

“Yes, in this place, we have to,” Kestrel told her.  He secretly felt a tinge of the same emotional regret she felt, as the magical friendship bond between them pulled them together, but he also felt a sense of relief at the prospect of having more private space as well.  “You go rest for a little while, then come see me when it’s time for dinner.”

Putty looked at him with a pouting expression, then opened her door and walked inside, then closed it.

“What is this all about?” Wren was speaking to him.

He turned, startled, not aware that his cousin was nearby.

She was speaking to him in the elvish language, he realized, so that only the two of them would understand.  She stood in the center of the hall facing him, waiting for him to answer.

Kestrel sighed, but he didn’t know if he was sorry to be asked, or glad.  He was going to tell her, he was sure.  She was someone he could trust to be discreet, and it would be a relief to tell the story.  She would even enjoy it, in parts – might even be mad that she had missed some parts of the battles

“Come into the room with me,” he opened the door and motioned for her to enter, then followed her in, and they sat on the bed, side-by-side.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” he stated, looking straight forward as she looked at his profile.

“I would hope not Kestrel.  She’s young enough to be your daughter!” Wren told him.

“She is not!” he said heatedly, his neck twisting to allow him to stare at her.

“Well, close enough.  She’s way too young for anything except being a girl with a first crush,” Wren backed away from her accusation.

“She’s not what she seems,” Kestrel tried to begin.

“She’s definitely not something.  There’s something about her; I just can’t figure out what,” Wren replied.

“She’s a yeti,” Kestrel found himself blurting the truth out.

“What do you mean?  Does she fight a lot?” Wren asked.

Kestrel rose to his feet, and started pacing back and forth in front of Wren.

“Hampus and I were hiking across the Water Mountains,” Kestrel began.  “He is an elf I had to lead to Kirevee.  We were in the mountains when a yeti attacked us, and I fought and killed it.

“Then I found its cub, a little orphan, and Kai told me to use my powers to make it my friend, so I did.  Now we’re friends, strong friends, but not more.  And I found that having a yeti follow me around,” he paused as he saw the expression on Wren’s face.  “What?” he asked.

“Powers?  Didn’t you say last time that you lost all that in the great battle with the Viathins?” Wren clarified.

“It turns out there are some things I can still do,” Kestrel said.  “And Kai told me to be friends with Putty, so the two of us are friends.

“And people in cities are afraid of yetis, so I had to disguise her.  I tried to make her look like a girl, and she came out looking like Moorin, which I hadn’t expected,” he finished the short version of one portion of his story, not even the most interesting portion from his point of view.

“You made a yeti turn into Moorin?” Wren unconsciously rose to her feet and started pacing as well.  The two passed one another as they moved back and forth.

“But that’s not the interesting part,” Kestrel told her, making Wren stare at him, before he proceeded to reveal many of his adventures of the recent week.

“Oh Kestrel,” she spoke in a hushed voice.  “This thing has been hunting you?  That sounds bad.

“When are you going to go to Kai’s temple to learn more?” she asked.

“Soon,” he said simply.  “In the next day.  And then,” he left the sentence unfinished.

“You’ll see what she tells you?” Wren finished the sentence for him.

The door opened as she spoke, and Putienne cautiously crept into the room.

“We’ll see,” Kestrel agreed.

“I don’t know those words,” Putty spoke.

Kestrel switched from elven to human.  “Most elves speak a different language, a different set of words, from humans.  Wren and I know how to speak like elves, and we know how to speak like humans.  Not many others can speak both ways,” Kestrel said.

“Why are you speaking like elves?” Putty asked.

“We wanted to talk about things that the humans didn’t need to know,” Wren answered.  “It was a private conversation just for us.”  She stared, and continued to stare at the girl, more fascinated than ever after having learned that Putty was really a yeti.

There was a knock at the door, and a servant entered.  “Dinner is served, if I may show you the way?”

They agreed, and joined by Raines and Orren, they followed the man to a sizable dining room with a table set for over a dozen, where they joined Ruelin and the others, as well as a few members of the court.  Raines and Orren were subdued, overwhelmed by the nobility of the company compared to their own humble origins.

“How are things in Graylee?” Kestrel asked Creata, who sat next to him.  Wren was on Creata’s other side.

“Philip is doing as well as possible, considering how terribly the country was treated before,” Creata replied.  “He’s going to be brilliant.  He’s established good relations with Seafare, obviously, and with Hydrotaz as well.”

“I’m sure Kestrel knows about Hydrotaz, from what we heard about the temple there,” Wren commented.

“What’s that?” Creata asked, confused.

“The temple of Kai that everyone is taking pilgrimages to visit?  You know who created the mystical
statue inside, don’t you?  It was our very own golden boy,” Wren lectured him.

“Really?” Creata’s head swiveled from Wren to Kestrel.  “I hear it is tremendous!”

“But that’s all beside the point, because when Kestrel asked how things were in Graylee,” Wren spoke up again, “he really meant to ask how Margo is doing?” Wren spoke again.

“Isn’t that what you meant?” she asked Kestrel in elvish.

“Perhaps,” Kestrel grinned as he replied in the same language.  “But I did want to hear about Philip too.  I don’t really get to see Yulia that often to hear any news from her, let alone news about Margo.”

“She’s doing well,” Wren reverted to speaking the human language.  “She had her baby.”

“I knew that,” Kestrel interjected.  “A little girl.”

“And she stayed
up in the manor house; her husband doesn’t really like to travel to the city the way Margo’s family always used to,” Wren said.

“We did see Yulia a few weeks ago; she came to visit Philip in Graylee.  The two of them got along famously, I’d say.  We were only with them for a week before we had to return here, but I think Philip returned the favor and went to visit Hydrotaz last month, didn’t he?” Wren asked Creata.

And so they gossiped among themselves, for several minutes, eating their food, as Kestrel watched Putienne, sitting next to Raines on the other side of the table.  The girl carefully followed the older woman’s lead.

“It’s rare to have so many of elven heritage in the palace at one time,” the man on Kestrel’s other side spoke to him, as he nodded to Putty, along with Wren and Kestrel himself.

“It’s nice to be able to travel among the human nations,” Kestrel replied.  “Hopefully we’ll all be able to do this more often.

“We had some human traders in my town in the Eastern Forest this spring,” he added.

“What were the traders selling to elves?” the man asked with interest.

“Well, really, they were probably there more as buyers.  We had a number of little white pebbles called pearls, and we wanted to sell them to the humans.”

“Pearls?” the man’s eyes widened.  “How did you come to have pearls?”

“The imps traded them to us, and we have no use for them.  The imps get them from shellfish in the rivers and swamps where they live,” Kestrel explained.  “But the traders from Hydrotaz didn’t have enough money to buy all the pearls we have; still, it was nice to sell some of them.”

“You have more of these pearls?” the man asked with greater interest.  “I deal with jewelers here in Seafare.

Kestrel reflected momentarily.  Perhaps he could ask an imp to deliver some to Seafare, he decided.

“Would you like to see some?  I could show them to you tomorrow,” he suggested.

“Yes, yes, by all means,” the man eagerly agreed.  “I’ll be happy to come back to the palace tomorrow to look at a sample, if you have some.”

“How many are you interested in?” Kestrel asked, and they proceeded to work out the arrangements of an unexpected business meeting to be held the following morning.

After dinner, as the crowd moved out of the dining room, Kestrel moved to Putty’s side, and walked with her.

“Did you enjoy the dinner?” he asked.

“The food was good, but the only thing the people did was talk and talk,” she complained.

Was that the view of a teenager, Kestrel wondered, or of a yeti, a personality more used to action than the passive activity of life in a palace.

Come to me Kestrel.  Come visit my temple now
, Kai’s voice sounded in his head.

“Now, my goddess?” he asked.  “Right now?”

Now, Kestrel
, the goddess affirmed.

“I have to go on a mission,” Kestrel told Putty.  “You go to your room, and I’ll come see you later.”

“Can I be with you?” the girl asked.

“No,” Kestrel replied.  “Not this time,” he tried to soften the firmness of the answer.

“Are you still my friend?” Putty asked.  She looked at him with large eyes, moisture starting to brim within them.

“Yes, Putienne!  Yes, we are still such good friends,” Kestrel took both her hands in his, willing reassurance to transfer to her, or wishing that he could.  “You are my special friend.  I will not leave you; I just have to go make a visit,” he explained.

“Now go wait for me.  Wait in my room if you want, and I’ll be back soon, I promise,” he said, then released his grip on her hands and turned away.  He walked rapidly, then turned to look over his shoulder, and saw that Wren had gone to the girl’s side, and was comforting her, for which Kestrel felt grateful; he had a command from a goddess, and he felt compelled to obey.

He slipped out of the palace grounds, into the dark streets of the city, then proceeded on the short trip to the temple that Kai’s followers had erected in the ancient beginning days of the city.  The door was open, and Kestrel walked into the sanctum, where a hooded figure stood alone, head bowed in contemplation.

Kestrel kept his distance, and circled around to the far side of the worship space, and stood expectantly.

“I’m here, my goddess,” he said softly.

“So am I Kestrel,” the hooded figure replied in her vibrant voice from across the open space.  She raised her hand and pressed her hood back, revealing the extraordinary features of Kai, clearly visible to Kestrel even in the dim interior of the temple.

“Come to me,” she said, beckoning him towards her spot.

“You look good, Kestrel,” the goddess told him appraisingly when he reached her.  “You survived.  That’s good, so very good.”

“I’m pleased to see you my goddess.  Thank you for saving me in Hydrotaz.  I would not have survived without your help, and Kere’s.”

“We need you Kestrel.  And we love you too, of course,” the divine features smiled.  “And, strange as it is to say to a semi-mortal, we are in your debt.

“But right now, there is a dire problem, and we are turning to you to find the answer,” Kai told him.

“Is it the Viathin?  The return of the monsters we thought were gone?” he asked.

“It turns out that it is that, though we started out believing there was a different problem.  That is what so preoccupied us this summer, until this recent unpleasant discovery,” she told him.

“Krusima disappeared several weeks ago,” Kai revealed.  “Not long after you disappointed him.  “We came to realize that he no longer answered our calls, and when we searched for him, we could not detect his presence.  We were worried, so worried that we reached out to the other gods and asked them to help us find him.

“That’s when we found out that your father was missing as well,” she revealed.

“Morph?  Morph is missing?” Kestrel was shocked.  “Not that I could tell,” he added with quiet bitterness.

“They both have left our land, and after the battle and the revelation of the Viathin, I have begun to understand the chilling truth of what we face.  Our companions – two divinities of our land – have been captured by the god of the Viathins in some distant land, and the monsters have found a way to use Krusima’s and Morph’s powers as if they were their own when they return here,” she explained.