An Unexpected Deity (Book 7) Read online

  Wren was bringing up the rear of the squad, when she gave a scream as she fell to the ground.

  All the others in front of her instantly turned, and saw an extraordinary sight; a blackness was crawling along the floor of the cave from behind them, and a tendril of it wrapped itself around one of Wren’s feet. It appeared to be insubstantial, but as she kicked her foot wildly it remained attached to her, and tiny wisps continued to climb up along her leg.

  “It hurts! It’s attacking me!” she said as she ineffectively sliced her sword at it. The blade passed through the dark shadow without inflicting any visible damage.

  “The torch!” Gates shouted, taking the handle of their torch from the man who held it. He bravely dashed forward and thrust the flaming end of the brand directly into the larger body of darkness behind Wren, which was still approaching slowly along the floor.

  In reaction, the black mist sent a new tendril of its insubstantial-self shooting out towards his feet, and as it made contact he was jerked down too, sending the torch to roll back along the floor after he dropped it.

  “It’s alive! It’s going to eat my soul!” Gates shouted in terror.

  Shocked by the horror unfolding before him, Kestrel desperately reached for the energy within himself, and called it to come to him.

  He found it and sensed that it was present, but his ability to grasp it was tenuous – something seemed to create a barrier that he could hardly surmount. With great focus, he managed to pull a weak thread of the energy out, and focused it in his hand, then threw it as a blue ball of energy directly into the black mist.

  The energy landed inside the mist, and then the mist closed over it, hiding it from view, foretelling that Kestrel’s attack had been fruitless.

  Fantasy Series by Jeffrey Quyle

  The Inner Seas Kingdoms Series

  The Healing Spring

  The Yellow Palace

  Road of Shadows

  A Foreign Heart

  Journey to Uniontown

  The Guided Journey

  An Unexpected Deity

  The Ingenairii Series

  Visions of Power

  2. At the Seat of Power: Goldenfields and the Dominion

  3. The Loss of Power: Goldenfields and Bondell

  4. The Lifesaving Power: Goldenfields and Stronghold

  5. Against the Empire

  6. Preserving the Ingenairii

  7. Rescuing the Captive

  8. Ajacii and Demons

  9. The Caravan Road

  10. The Journey Home

  Alchemy’s Apprentice Series

  The Gorgon’s Blood Solution

  The Echidna’s Scale

  Scarlet from Gold

  The Southern Trail

  Also by Jeffrey Quyle

  The Green Plague

  For more information, visit the Ingenairii Series on Facebook, www.facebook.com/ingenairiiseries

  An Unexpected Deity

  The Inner Seas Kingdoms Series

  Book 7

  Jeffrey Quyle

  Index

  Chapter 1 Page 1

  Chapter 2 Page 8

  Chapter 3 Page 18

  Chapter 4 Page 26

  Chapter 5 Page 42

  Chapter 6 Page 54

  Chapter 7 Page 60

  Chapter 8 Page 69

  Chapter 9 Page 91

  Chapter 10 Page 96

  Chapter 11 Page 106

  Chapter 12 Page 115

  Chapter 13 Page 142

  Chapter 14 Page 148

  Chapter 15 Page 162

  Chapter 16 Page 172

  Chapter 17 Page 197

  Chapter 18 Page 213

  Chapter 19 Page 218

  Chapter 20 Page 228

  Chapter 21 Page 235

  Chapter 22 Page 243

  List of Characters

  Kestrel, Warden of the Marches in the Eastern Forest

  Picco, member of Graylee nobility, Creata’s sister, Ruelin’s wife

  Creata, Graylee Duke of the East Seashore, ambassador to Seafare

  Stillwater, Odare, Killcen, Acanthus, Mulberry, imps assigned to Kestrel

  Dewberry, sprite, queen of the imps

  Moorin, of the Northern Elves, Tyndall Shail of the Southern Elves

  Ruelin, Prince of Seafare

  Wren, cousin to Kestrel, betrothed to Creata

  Remy and Pont, young elves of Oaktown

  Whyte, Steward of Kestrel’s manor

  Captain Lim, officer at Center Trunk

  Aurelia, princess of the Northern Forest

  Putienne, a yeti of the Water Mountains

  Bernie, Cook at the Oaktown Manor

  Duke Listay, nobleman of Uniontown

  Stuart, chief guardsman for Duke Listay

  Gates, guardsman for Listay

  Hermes, guardsman for Listay

  Lark, daughter of Duke Listay

  Bradstree, southern gnome

  Woven, southern gnome of Proetec’s village

  The Human Deities:

  Kai – goddess of the air Growelf – god of fire

  Krusima – god of earth Shaish – goddess of water

  The Elven Deities:

  Kere – goddess of fortune Norvell – god of light

  Tamson – god of force Were – goddess of sound

  Morph – god of speed Powson – god of weight

  Tere – goddess of size

  The Gnome Deity:

  Corrant

  The Skye Deity:

  Tullamore

  The Parstole Deities:

  Decimindion & Medeina

  Prologue

  Kestrel had saved the world. A young elf, he had been plucked from obscurity, and sent on a mission. At first, he had ostensibly been an elven spy, watching the intrigues of the humans, but his greater role had been to act as the agent of the gods.

  Goddesses from the humans and the elves, with cooperation from others, selected and assisted Kestrel in a greater challenge – the battle to defeat the invading race of reptilian Viathins, and their god, Ashcrayss.

  Kestrel had gone through a grueling series of adventures in his battles, and his travels had taken him across more nations than any other elf of the Eastern Forest had ever traveled. He was able to make the journeys in part because he was part-human himself, and able to be made to look human, unlike the typical full-blooded elves of the forest, who looked down upon his racial ambivalence.

  He also succeeded because of his fortunate friendship with the sprites and imps. Both races had been reclusive to the point of seeming mythical, but a chance occurrence caused Kestrel to perform a favor for the royal family, and a rare and deep friendship developed, placing the particular talents of the imps at the call of Kestrel.

  When his battles against the Viathins finally ended, Kestrel made a long journey home to the Eastern Forest, and retired, he hoped, to live a peaceful life as a nobleman, the Warden of the Marches, a title and an estate granted to him by the king of the Eastern Forest elves.

  But the royal family of the Eastern Forest called upon him to escort an emerging favorite of theirs to the Northern Forest elves, to establish formal relations between the two kingdoms. As he carried out that journey, he met and befriended a young yeti, Putienne, and he was repeatedly attacked by a mysterious, powerful force.

  The human goddess, Kai, broke a long silence to speak to Kestrel at last, telling him of dire problems, and assigning him to fix them. And so his adventures continue.

  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 betrot
hed’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.