The Guided Journey (Book 6) (25 page)

Chapter 24 – Danger at the Spring

As soon as Kestrel and Putienne arrived, the yeti gave a loud cry, and shivered and shrugged her muscles in an effort that sent the imps flying off of her.

“Kestrel friend, for that we deserve extra time in the water!” Mulberry said insistently.

“All of you imps go over to the usual spot, and I’ll be right over,” Kestrel told the hovering flock, though those most familiar with the spring were already floating in the direction of the grassy sward where they customarily gathered.

Kestrel sat down and removed his boots.

“That was frightening!” Raines said.  “We don’t have to do that again, do we?” there was a pleading note in her voice.

Kestrel stood up and took off his shirt, then dropped his pants.

“Oh gods!  What are you doing?” Raines screeched, turning and hiding her face in Orren’s shoulder.

Kestrel dove into the water without answering, delighted by the wonderful sensation of the energetic, warm water running along his body.  He stroked over to where the imps waited in the darkness, and looked up at the bright stars that twinkled brilliantly in the moonless sky, including a pair of red and blue stars that shone brightly, stars he had never noticed before in the middle of the familiar constellation of the centaur.  Under such a majestic sight, he found it hard to believe that the horror he had encountered in the mountainside mine could truly exist.  With such peace and beauty abundant overhead, such evil should be impossible to survive.

“Come into the water!” he turned and shouted to the others.  “It feels wonderful.  Swim over to those rocks over there and relax,” he pointed, then turned his attention back to the impatient crowd of imps.  He began to lift them each, one at a time, and packed them into rows of resting, dreaming little bodies that gently absorbed the small waves and ripples that broke upon their sleeping bodies.

Acanthus
, one of the imps who had been assigned to be on his own particular squad, paused before his watery immersion to chat with Kestrel.

“The mushroom season in Oaktown is almost over,” he said mournfully.  “There will be only one more of the markets this season, one more chance to trade with the elves and the humans.

“All of our kind have enjoyed the market you set up for us.  Will you do it again next year, please?” he pleaded, as Kestrel held him above the water.

“I think the market is something we should have every year during the mushroom season,” Kestrel agreed.  “And perhaps next season we can find even more things to trade, more items that we can share with one another, all year long.”

As Acanthus was dowsed in the water, only one imp remained awake and impatient.

When he finished by putting the petulant Mulberry into the water – “You should put me in first,” she insisted – he turned and saw that Hampus had done as suggested, and was settling into a comfortable position among the rocks.  Orren was sitting on the edge of the pool, his boots off, his pant legs rolled up, and his feet soaking in the water.  Raines stood behind him, looking at the water with an expression that was a cross between longing and embarrassment.

Kestrel recollected when he had first brought Wren to the pool, when she had still been so rebellious and headstrong.  His cousin – the relationship unknown to him at the time – had been just as shy about undressing to enter the water.

“Why don’t all the men come over to the rocks, so that you can undress yourself and enter the water privately?” he suggested as he floated over towards the two humans.  “The water is a tremendous experience.  You’ll be sorry you missed it.”

“It does feel good on my feet,” Orren reinforced Kestrel’s message.  “If you’ll just turn away, I’ll pop into the water and go over there too,” he offered.

A minute later the man came
splashing over to join Kestrel and Hampus, making up for a lack of swimming finesse through his vigorous flailing of his arms.

Standing indecisively on the shoreline was Putienne, looking intently at where Kestrel reclined with the other men.

“Come on Putty, jump in the water!” he called encouragingly.

The yeti held back as it recollected the difficult swim through the river waters to reach the boat just a few days earlier.

“Go on.  I’ll get in too,” Raines said, as her dress slipped off and she suddenly became a light blur in the night shadows by the side of the water.

The yeti continued to hesitate, so Raines slipped into the water ahead of her, then slowly backstroked into the water’s center.

“You’re right, this does feel wonderful,” she said lazily.  “Why is that?”

“It’s enchanted.  The water helps you to heal and feel better.” Kestrel answered.  “This is what we gave Orren after he escaped from the evil of the mine, when he was all bruised and battered.”

“It feels so fabulous when you soak in it,” the miner commented.

“What are the imps doing over there?” Orren asked.

“They fall asleep and dream wonderful dreams,” Kestrel said.  “It must be like kissing a girl and drinking wine and eating cake all at once,” he tried to speculate.

And that’s when an angry red glow suddenly burst forth on the shoreline, a fuzzy, ill-defined figure of a person, standing on the grass, emanating a feeling of hatred.  It appeared as though it had risen from the ground, though not completely, as if its legs below the knees still remained subterranean.

“Elfling,” the voice of the figure hissed.  There were no visible features, nor even a true face, only a head atop a torso, which sprouted arms without hands, and legs without feet.

Raines screamed, and climbed out of the spring on the opposite side of the water, near the imps, then ran to seek safety among the rocks where the men were sitting.

Kestrel bolted upright.  “Lucretia!” he called his knife from where it lay on the ground with his clothing.

The weapon shivered its way free of the encumbering cloth that covered it, then flew through the air towards Kestrel.  As it flew though, the red entity raised an arm, and a beam of deep red energy stretched across the water to intercept the flashing, tumbling knife, and then slowly draw it towards the being across the water.

Kestrel looked on in profound dismay, as the knife struggled to escape, to resume its course towards him.  Despite its efforts, the knife was drawn back to shore, and dropped, inert, upon the ground where the strange entity stood.

“Elfling, I know you.  You will meddle in my domain no more,” the raspy voice, slightly familiar, and yet not so, spoke.

The figure raised its arm again, and another beam of energy shot out, aimed at Kestrel.  The energy engulfed him instantaneously, then lifted him into the air, before he was even aware of what was happening.

In shock and panic, Kestrel distantly heard screams.  He looked as he was twisted and swiveled through the air, and caught a glimpse of Putty charging recklessly at the red energy being, only to be flung backward.  And then Kestrel was plunged headfirst into the water, and held beneath the surface.

He was stunned.  In only a handful of seconds the idyllic evening at the spring had turned into a frightening, dangerous struggle.  He tried to thrash about, to return to the surface, but the burning red energy held him tightly below the surface.

He had taken no deep breath, and his lungs were already begging for an influx of new air.  The power that was attacking him felt irresistible, and Kestrel clung to the edge of panic.

He needed to call upon his own powers, he realized in a moment of intuitive relief.  Kestrel took a moment to compose himself, felt distracted by the growing urgency of his need to take a breath, then refocused on using the power that was within him.

He called it forth, and felt it blossom.  Kestrel imagined a bright blue shield of energy pressed against his body, ready to expand exponentially and drive the red chains of energy off of him.  His shield materialized, and he mentally shouted with relief, then he pressed the shield outward against the red power.

The red energy did not buckle.  It was stronger than he was, and he gasped at the terrible discovery, taking in a mouthful of water that made him begin to cough.  His situation was dire, and he realized that his life was coming to an end.

Kestrel, use the spring.  There is great energy all around you
, Kere’s voice sounded in his mind.

The calm tones of the goddess gave him hope, and his panic ebbed.

He did not understand how, but he knew the water held power.  The goddess’s words made sense, and he let his shield of energy evolve, becoming not a tool to keep weapons away from his body, but instead, in an extraordinary manner, he flipped it around, so that it also began to absorb energy from the spring.

And there was an overwhelming fount of power coming through the spring waters, he felt and realized.  He felt the power flowing into the shield, and flowing into him, giving him more energy than he expected, a gentle, calming energy.  He understood why the spring water healed, as he felt the characteristics of st
rength and wholeness and renewal that it carried.

Kestrel created a thrust of energy beneath himself, and lifted himself upward.  The red energy retained its hold on him, but could not restrain him, as he drew upon the energy all around him, and he stretched the red chains longer and thinner and weaker as they were dragged in his wake up to the surface.

He felt his head break through into the cool night air and he burst his mouth open to exhale and inhale, while he found that the energy he was consuming from the water continued to lift him so that his chest, then hips, then knees also breached the surface of the water.  He stopped rising when his ankles felt air, his position allowing him to retain contact with the spring water and continue to rely upon the wonderful-feeling energy that it supplied.  It was a position that curiously mimicked the red entity’s own posture within the earth.

He flexed the muscles of his arms, and the energy within him enabled him to stretch them, stretching the red energy strands that were wrapped around him.  The encircling power was shattered by his efforts, and the beam of power that stretched from the entity on the shore towards him evaporated, while the strange being there seemed to stagger backwards.

“What are you?” Kestrel asked.  He was free of constraints, and he erected a new shield around himself, outside of the original shield that had turned into an energy-gathering net.  The new shield glowed with a preternatural brightness that lit up all the area around the spring; the power from the spring fed him, allowed him to send extraordinary energy into the shield, making it stronger than any display of power he had known since he had used Kai’s own borrowed powers in his battle with Ashcrayss, the dead god of the Viathins. 

He stepped forward across the water, approaching the entity.   He then fired a beam of his own power at it, but the redness moved with surprising speed, racing several yards to the right to avoid entanglement. Kestrel fired again, once with each hand, in two different location on either side of the red e
nergy.  His efforts succeeded, as the left hand bolt struck the darting target, wrapping it in Kestrel’s grip.  He struggled as he tried to control it, just as it had struggled to hold onto him.

“Now is not the time, elfling,” the voice of the apparition rumbled.

Kestrel felt the insubstantial thing begin to disappear from within his wrapping.

“It is the time!” Kestrel shouted angrily, unwilling to let the threat escape.  He commanded his power to change its phase, to become a force that would continue to hold the red power within his grasp, so that he could destroy it.  His energy fl
ickered, matching the changes of the monster, and prevented it from finding the route to escape.

“Who are you?” he shouted at it, as he felt his power – drawn and augmented by the healing spring – react in some fashion that accomplished what he wanted, and
insured that the deadly creature’s presence remained tangible.

“You want to know who I am?” the unidentifiable entity asked.  “I’ll tell you, I am Death, waiting to embrace you,” it said slowly.  Kestrel felt it test his powers, straining against them, and then
it began to break free, walking towards him, raising its arms and then firing bolts of energy from both its right and left sides at point blank range, bolts that struck his brilliant blue shield and caused an explosion so loud and intense that Kestrel felt himself shaken from his position despite the shield.

Then, amidst the confusion of the energy and noise and light of the explosion, the red entity disappeared, while Kestrel was thrown into the water and knocked unconscious.

The area around the spring was suddenly once again enveloped in night time darkness, a darkness that seemed impossible to penetrate as the eyes of the others failed to adapt quickly enough.

“Kestrel!” Hampus shouted, his eyes reacting to the darkness more quickly than the humans.  He dimly saw Kestrel’s body floating in the center of the pool, and ran atop the water to reach it; he stopped, sank down, then pulled Kestrel back to the shore and dragged him up onto land.

“Step aside,” an elderly elf woman said authoritatively to him as soon as he had Kestrel ashore.  The two humans were stroking through the water in their haste to reach Kestrel as well, as their eyesight improved.