An Unexpected Deity (Book 7) (26 page)

“There is a hallway, and a set of stairs, and then a balcony that circles around and looks down on the ceremonial hall of the temple,” the elven god explained.  “There are several guards there right now.”

Woven climbed up, helped as Kestrel extended his staff to provide assistance, and then Wren came in, and Stillwater hovered just outside the window.

“I think I know that place you speak of,” Krusima said.

“It’s the spot where they stole my powers,” Morph said in an emotional voice.

“I know the place you speak of too; it’s where I was robbed as well,” Krusima answered.  “I’ll go see it and be back.”  He moved down the hall, and he and Morph exited together.

“What do the rest of us do?” Lark asked.

“We wait for the gods,” Wren said, “same as we always do, except for Kestrel, who makes them wait for him,” she laughed softly.

Kestrel grinned in the dark, while Wren began to translate for the Skyes, telling them of the gods’ plans.

The group remained in the dark attic hallway for several minutes, as the air grew stuffy within, then the door opened suddenly, making all the occupants raise their weapons hastily, as dim light and a fresh breeze entered around the shadows of the two returning gods.

“We have a plan,” Krusima said.  “It will be dangerous for all, but moreso for some,” he looked at Kestrel and Wren.  “We overheard the guards talking, and there is to be a ritual sacrifice of some of the local natives as a ceremony to honor Ashcrayss; it will begin soon.

“We need two types of distractions to allow Morph and I to get close to Ashcrayss,” he continued.  “We want some of your natives to be down on the ground floor.”

“They are immune to control by the Viathins because of the water you put on them, correct?” Morph asked.

“That’s right,” Kestrel agreed.

“The Viathins will become concerned when they find they cannot control these natives, and so there will be confusion and distraction taking place,” Krusima explained.  “Then, we want Kestrel and Wren to begin to attack the Viathins from up here, in the balcony, to draw guards away from Ashcrayss.

“They will counterattack, and you will face danger,” he acknowledged.  “But we will then come out of hiding near the throne, and make contact with Ashcrayss.  Morph will use the powers his boy has given him to force the terrible god to restore our powers to us, and then we will find the way to return to our own land.”

Wren and Kestrel’s eyes met.  “Will our positions be defensible?” Kestrel asked.

“Not for long,” Morph admitted.  “We will have to act fast if we’re going to protect you.  But we will try our best.”

“We’ll do our part, and we’ll count on your help,” Wren said.

“Let us help to ambush any attackers against the elves,” Stuart spoke up.

“The elves are better equipped to fight and escape than you are,” Krusima said bluntly.  “Perhaps the gnome could help you distract the counterattack though,” he mused, as he looked at Woven.

“I certainly will help these humans,” Woven agreed, having understood the words of the god, if not the words of the humans.

“Follow us,” Morph said, stepping out of the attic hall.   The others began to troop after him, and the two gods led the way for the various parties to be covertly located where they were needed.  The humans and Woven were first shown to a shadowy alcove in the upper floors of the temple.

“From here you can see which way an attack will go towards our archers, and you can distract the Viathins, then flee back there,” Krusima instructed Stuart and the others, as he pointed at the passageway in the back of the alcove. 

The front of the alcove looked across a large open area, one that had a circular, narrow track, a balcony and walkway of sorts.  From that walkway, one could see down to the floor of the temple chamber that was far below.

“You wait here,” Krusima instructed the quartet assigned there, then led the way around the curving catwalk.  “This will be your spot,” Krusima told Wren.

“Look down there,” he pointed at the floor below.  As they looked, the keen elven eyes of Wren and Kestrel picked out the lurid details of the worship space.  There was a large, luxurious throne at one end, golden in hue, and a pair of steps below it.  Towards the center of the worship space there was an open fire pit, where flames burned, releasing a narrow, oily plume of smoke.  In front of the fire pit was a large, flat table, on which rested a number of wicked-looking blades.

Two rows of pews ran along either side of the fire pit and table, and a large, ornate door was closed at the opposite end of the chamber from the throne.  Torches burned atop stands that circled around the walls of the room, and a dozen Viathin guards stood at attention in pairs spread around the circular walls.

“Come along, Kestrel,” Krusima called as he began to move to the next spot.

“Wait!” Wren called softly.

The others turned in surprise.

“Tell me what the Skyes are supposed to do, so I can give them directions now, and send them on their way,” she told the gods.

“There,” Krusima pointed at the doors that sat at the opposite end of the oval room from the throne.  “I want them to create a diversion there, the first diversion.  Then when the guards start to react to it, you and Kestrel will start killing the guards that react, drawing attention further away from Ashcrayss.  That’s when we will launch our ambush,” the god explained.  “How soon can they be down there and ready to go, once the evil one is in place?”

Wren knelt and spoke to the Skyes, pausing as several of them approached the edge of the walkway and peered down at the floor below.  They conversed with one another for several seconds, until interrupted by the sound of a deep-toned gong.

The doors opened and a dark light flooded into the room.  The Viathin guards all knelt at their various stations, and then pure darkness moved into the room, a bulky absence of light that crossed the floor between the doors and the throne.  It paused in front of the throne, either shapeless, or simply too absolutely black for a shape to be discerned.  Then, without a pause or transition, the blackness was replaced by Ashcrayss sitting on the throne.

The monster god of the monster race was smaller than when Kestrel had seen him as a dragon flying above the lake in the mountains.  He did not appear to have the wings that had carried him through the air as he had attacked Kestrel so brutally.  But he was still oversized, still covered in scales, still possessed of a snout filled with numerous teeth.

“We have to hurry,” Morph interrupted Kestrel’s mesmerized examination of the evil god below.

Kestrel looked up; Krusima was starting to walk away on the catwalk, while the Skyes were parading along behind one another going in the opposite direction.  Kestrel looked at Wren, who was watching the Skyes, tears brimming in her eyes.  He reached over to squeeze her arm.

“They know they’re going to die, but they’re willing to make the sacrifice.  They told me thank you for being their friend, and bringing them to this great victory,” she turned her head to look into Kestrel’s eyes, her sentimentality catching him off-guard.

“Hurry along, Kestrel,” Morph urged from further along the catwalk.

“You take care – you’re not going to be a sacrifice,” Kestrel told his cousin as he impulsively hugged her tight.  “I’ll see you when we’re done here, and we’ll go back home together.”

“I’ll count on it,” she said softly, forcing a smile.

Then Kestrel turned and ran down the catwalk to catch up with the gods.

“Stillwater,” he called softly.

“Yes, Kestrel friend?” the imp floated down to his shoulder.

“When the fighting starts, and things get dangerous, I want you to go protect Wren.   Make sure nothing happens to her,” Kestrel ordered.  “I can take care of myself, you know, but she may need help.”

“I will do as you say, my lord,” Stillwater answered.  “I do not wish to see either of you harmed, nor any of the others in our party.”

Here Kestrel,” Krusima said as Kestrel walked up to the spot where the two gods stood at the gloomy darkness of the catwalk.  “This is your spot.  When things start breaking loose, you just kill every Viathin you can.  Once we take our powers back from Ashcrayss and destroy him, there will be no further trouble.”

The gods began to walk away, on their way to their own part of the dangerous scheme.  Morph stopped and turned.  “Good luck Kestrel, and be careful,” his father told him with a smile, and then he turned away again and followed Krusima around the curve of the catwalk to another catwalk that led into the gloomy darkness of the temple’s upper floors.

And then Kestrel was alone.

He vaguely saw Wren standing nearly halfway around the catwalk, and he thought he detected Stillwater, already in place in the darkly shaded spaced above the partly-elven girl, ready to offer her help.  Kestrel looked down at the floor of the temple’s inner sanctum below, where he saw a trio of Viathins enter the room and approach the throne of their god.

Kestrel stood alone, and knew that he was in a dire situation.  Though he had told Stillwater that he could take care of himself, the fact was that he could not grasp his powers – he had not recovered them after being drained of energy by Morph.  Kestrel had an enchanted knife, and he had a few arrows left with his bow, and he had a staff and plenty of battle experience, but he had no great ability – no energy or power with which he would be able to protect himself.

His mind wandered to thinking about Putienne, and he imagined her as a yeti, standing with her thick, resistant hide beside him, fending off attacks and defeating foes in close combat.  And then he thought of her as the half-elf beauty he had last seen her as, the girl whose friendship with him was imprinted by a divine spark.

There was a noise below, and Kestrel turned his attention down, hastily pulling his bow off his shoulder as he did, expecting to see the first stage of the assault begin with the Skyes entering the room.  Instead, he saw that the Viathins were reporting to Ashcrayss, and he listened intently to the faint words from below.

“The enemy has been destroyed, my lord,” Kestrel heard one of the monsters report.  “They were trapped in the top of a tower, and we toppled it to the ground, killing all of the invaders and their filthy little assistants.”

“That pleases me,” Ashcrayss slowly rumbled.  “What of the way to return to their world?  How will we begin to plunder the softness and delicious richness of their lands?”

“The way to the lake remains sealed, and we cannot force it open from the inside of the cave.  We will have to use an army of slaves from that land to open it from the outside,” another Viathin answered slowly.  “But there are other ways to return to that land to resume our conquest,” he added hastily to forestall Ashcrayss’s displeasure.

“But in the meantime we cannot build our strength by consuming the Inner Seas,” Ashcrayss said with anger.

“There is another way to that land, a direct connection, and we are working to develop it.  The portal is some distance from here, and its outlet in the Inner Seas is on an island.  You may wish to move your temple in this land to be closer to the new portal,” the Viathin answered.

“And what of the third portal you have found?” Ashcrayss asked.

Before his Viathin followers could answer, there was some occurrence that Kestrel could not hear that made all the occupants of the temple chamber turn their heads.  It was the arrival of the Skyes, Kestrel realized.  They were throwing themselves into the fray, making the sacrifice of being the first fodder the Viathins and Ashcrayss would consume in the battle that was about to erupt.

Kestrel’s heart filled with emotion at the thought of the Skyes, and he was goaded by the memory of the tears he had seen brimming in Wren’s eyes.  He put his staff down, pulled out a arrow from his nearly empty quiver, and fired the first shot at one of the Viathin guards near the door to the chamber.

The monster fell with the arrow in his chest, and pandemonium broke out in the chamber.  Kestrel pulled his knife and threw it at the other guard closest to the door, then fired another arrow at a third Viathin guard.

“Lucretia, return!” he called, and he held out his hand to capture the returning weapon.

Just as his fingers closed around the haft of the knife, a paralyzing ray of energy shot forth from Ashcrayss’s clawed hand and struck Kestrel, enveloping him in a dark red halo of energy.  The beam stayed locked upon him as it lifted him off the catwalk and lowered him to the table by the firepit.

He felt a horrible sense of needles stabbing every inch of his skin as long as the ray held him in its control.  When he was above the firepit, and the energy ray ceased, he dropped several feet to the flat surface of the heavy stone table and landed in a heap, then lay there gasping in pain.  A trio of angry Viathin guards came rushing over to Kestrel, and raised their spears threateningly.

“Stop!” Ashcrayss bellowed.  “Let me see this foolish mortal.  I thought we had killed all the invaders.”

As he spoke, there was a sudden noise at the door, and the Skyes came scuttling in through the open door; he realized that he had started his actions too fast.  He had misinterpreted the movement of the Viathins, and his hastiness had upset the schedule of the whole planned ambush.  Whatever happened henceforth, it would not go as planned.