The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 04 - A Foreign Heart Read online

  “These friends of mine are hungry,” Namber said. “Poma, come forth,” the prince called, and the ambassador from Uniontown came up, riding his horse to a position next to Namber’s. The ambassador’s arm was in a sling, and the side of his face was bruised and scraped, a result – Kestrel was sure – of the battle at Hydrotaz.

  “The foul half-breed you allow to soil our land is hostile towards our pets,” Namber pointed at Kestrel, “so Poma, please protect them while they have a small snack,” the prince ordered.

  Poma made a motion with his arm, and a hazy red dome formed over the open plaza, covering the Viathins, the prince and the ambassador, and several troops. It was the same type of dome Kestrel had seen before, when he had fought against another champion of Uniontown, in Estone.

  “Now, allow our pets to see what they will have for their snack,” Namber spoke, his voice sounding hollow as it penetrated outward from the interior of the red dome.

  “No!” Kestrel shouted, as he saw a woman’s body roll down from the same wagon the Viathins had been in. The woman had strawberry blonde hair, and an athletic build. She was bound by ropes around her hands, legs and torso, with a gag around her mouth. It was Picco, the fun-loving younger sister of Creata, a positive, cheery companion who he cherished as a friend.

  “Goddess help us!” Philip moaned in an anguished voice, as he watched Picco’s body squirm, while the lizards began to shuffle around the vicinity of the girl.

  “If you surrender now, the girl will be spared,” Namber spoke loudly.

  “No!” Kestrel shouted, he pulled his knife from his hip and hurled it towards the Viathin closest to Picco. The blade flipped through the air, traveling along its enchanted path, until it struck the red dome, and stuck to the surface of the protective cover, unable to penetrate it.

  “Weak! So weak!” Poma cackled.

  The Inner Seas Kingdoms Series

  1. The Healing Spring

  2. The Yellow Palace

  3. Road of Shadows

  4. A Foreign Heart

  5. Journey to Uniontown (forthcoming)

  The Ingenairii Series

  1. 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

  Also by Jeffrey Quyle

  The Green Plague

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

  A Foreign Heart

  The Inner Seas Kingdoms Series

  Book 4

  Jeffrey Quyle

  The wonderful cover artwork was created by Donna Harriman Murillo.

  Index

  Chapter 1 –False Starts Page 1

  Chapter 2 – Firheng Surprise Page 15

  Chapter 3 –Wren Page 30

  Chapter 4 –Graylee Conflict Page 37

  Chapter 5 –Kai’s Gift Page 54

  Chapter 6 – Picco’s Departure Page 82

  Chapter 7 –Interlude at the Seaside Page 96

  Chapter 8 – Return to the East Forest Page 102

  Chapter 9 –The Channelport Campaign Page 114

  Chapter 10 –A Journey to the North Page 120

  Chapter 11 –Through the Water Mountains Page 138

  Chapter 12 –Visiting Kirevee Page 164

  Chapter 13 –The Tournament Page 194

  Chapter 14 – The Real Moorin Page 225

  Chapter 15 –Things Go Astray Page 229

  Chapter 16 –The Perfect Bow Page 238

  Chapter 17 –Saying Farewell to Moorin Page 251

  Chapter 18 –Kestrel’s Injury Page 257

  Chapter 19 –At Sea Page 259

  Chapter 20 –Strange Identity Page 265

  Chapter 21 –Moorin Saving and Saved Page 267

  Chapter 22 – Another Pirate Page 275

  Chapter 23 – Arrival at Seafare Page 283

  Chapter 24 – In the Palace of Pain Page 285

  List of Characters

  Kestrel, Warden of the Marches in the Eastern Forest

  Philip, Graylee nobleman, leader of rebellion

  Margo, Philip’s sister

  Picco, Margo’s friend, Creata’s sister

  Creata, heir to the Duchess of the East Seashore

  Stillwater, Odare, Killcen, Canyon, imps assigned to Kestrel

  Dewberry, sprite, queen of the imps

  Jonson, king of the imps

  Alicia, Center Trunk surgeon

  Silvan, spy leader of the Eastern Forest elves

  Princess Yulia, ruler of Hydrotaz

  Ferris, Hydrotaz squad commander

  Moorin, Countess of Grey Fjord of the Northern Elves

  Ruelin, Prince of Seafare

  Wren, cousin to Kestrel

  Ripken, North Forest nobleman

  Tewks, North Forest palace page

  Lucretia, lady of the court at Kirevee

  Aurelia, princess of North Forest

  Stelten, Moorin’s father

  Malindaree, North Forest lady of the court

  Squire Huff, militia leader for Margo

  Namber, fallen prince of Graylee

  Poma, Uniontown ambassador to Graylee

  Probst, Uniontown ambassador to Seafare

  Elise, servant at Creata’s home in Graylee

  Treybon, butler at Creata’s home in Graylee

  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

  Prologue

  In “The Healing Spring” we met Kestrel, a young elf whose heritage was one quarter human. Kestrel was a rarity among the elves in the Eastern Forest; there were few residents who had ever seen humans, let alone had any human bloodlines, and Kestrel suffered discrimination as a result of his heritage.

  Yet somehow Kestrel was chosen to be a special champion by deities from both the human and elven pantheons of gods. And as a reward for his special status, the human goddess Kai created a rainstorm at Kestrel’s request, in order to put out a great forest fire and save the elves’ forest from destruction.

  Impressed by Kestrel’s ability, his superiors in the elven guard sent him to the capitol city, Center Trunk. On the way, Kestrel visited a hidden spring where the water has magic healing properties, and at the spring he met and rescued, Dewberry, a member of the mythical race of sprites.

  In Center Trunk, Kestrel was assigned to learn all the skills needed to spy upon the humans who are at war with the elves, and then he was tricked into accepting cosmetic surgery that made him look like a human.

  Despite his misgivings and distrust of the elven leadership, Kestrel went along with the plan, and went out on his first mission. He met a human family in the forest, and saved them by slaying the yeti that attacks them. He then escorted the survivors back to the human city of Estone, where he maintained his false human persona. Disturbingly, he came to find that he was comfortable as a human, and had strong feelings for Merilla, the pretty human
widow he had rescued from the yeti’s attack.

  Kestrel traveled back and forth, from the human to the elven cultures, trying to determine where he fit in. The decision wasn’t an easy one to make, as he began to rise in the eyes of the humans, with whom seemed to fit in more comfortably than he did among the elves.

  But his comfort in the city of Estone was shattered when he confronted the evil of Uniontown, a distant, malevolent human kingdom attempting to infiltrate Estone with alien gods and hostile culture. Kestrel faced the ambassador from Uniontown in a fatal clash at the royal palace of Estone. He won the battle, but learned that Uniontown was a force of great evil, and that the goddesses expect him to devote all his future efforts to defeating the threatening alien culture of the southern land.

  In the second book of the series, “The Yellow Mansion”, Kestrel suffers a setback when the Estonian ship he was on sank in the wintery North Sea, and Kestrel was forced to trudge across the treacherous Water Mountains, where he was befriended by a village of gnomes and lived among them through the winter.

  When springtime came, Kestrel left the mountains and emerged in the northern reaches of Graylee, the human kingdom he originally sought to reach. Kestrel entered the lands of a noble family, and through a heroic service he provided to the younger generation, became a companion to Philip and Margo, the heirs to the estate, as well as their visiting friends Creata and his sister Picco, whose family owns an estate in southern Graylee.

  Kestrel traveled to the capitol with his new friends, still posing and passing as a human, but at their residence in Graylee City he was horrified to learn that his elven friend Lucretia, presumed dead in the war, was alive and mistreated as a slave in the same house he was staying in. Kestrel secretly liberated Lucretia, who was injured in body and soul, and sent her home to the Eastern Forest.

  His friends, Dewberry and Jonson, left to go on a quest in a strange land, where they hoped to find a weapon that would defeat the monster lizards that have moved into the Swampy Morass, and Kestrel no longer had the unlimited assistance that he had previously received from his blue friends. He thereafter went on a quest of his own, directed by the gods, to set free Hydrotaz humans held captive in Graylee, and did so, then accompanied the freed captives back to Hydrotaz, but found that the humans there remained prejudiced against elves, even one who had done them a favor.

  Kestrel finally journeyed back to the Eastern Forest, and was nearly victimized by treachery there; he finds that Silvan and Giardell are banished, and Alicia is imprisoned, while Lucretia remained emotionally paralyzed by her experience in Graylee. Kestrel took on the forces of evil in Center Trunk and won, setting the princess free in a pitched battle in and around the palace. As a reward, Kestrel was named the Warden of the Marshes, and given the honors, lands, and riches that go with the noble title, then directed to go back among the humans and carry on his campaign on behalf of the elves.

  Kestrel then began a journey to return to Graylee, which was abruptly when he was seized by the human god of fire, Growelf, and transported to a distant land, assigned to rescue Jonson and Dewberry’s lost questing party, in a strange, foreign land of different races, languages, and gods, but a place that was just as subject to attack by the monster lizards, whose name Kestrel learned was the Viathin race. The Viathins are a parasitic race that drains and destroys lands to support and grow themselves.

  On his journey Kestrel not only set his sprite friends free, but discovered a way to immunize the humans and elves of his land from being controlled and influenced by the Viathins. When he returned to his own land, he went back to Graylee and helped set Philip and others free from the prison of Prince Namber, then he fled with a beautiful half-human, half-elven maiden named Moorin, the girl he believes he is prophesized to help and rescue, and who entrances hi,.

  He falls in love with Moorin as they travel to Hydrotaz, then discovered that she is an imposter. Despite the treachery, he succeeds in working in Hydrotaz to forge an alliance of humans loyal to Yulia and elves from the Eastern Forest, and together they win a battle against Namber’s invasion from Graylee.

  Chapter 1 – False Starts

  Kestrel and the imps were holding a spirited conversation, or rather, Kestrel was the bystanding subject of a spirited conversation among the imps. Kestrel had invited Dewberry to come to Hydrotaz so that the sprite could instruct his imp companions on directions to a number of locations in Graylee and elsewhere, locations that Kestrel wanted to travel to. Among the sprites and imps there existed a means to transfer knowledge of destinations, and Kestrel wished for Dewberry to give the other imps her knowledge of places she had previously traveled to with or on behalf of Kestrel. He also wished that the conversation was a more straight-forward recitation of facts, and only facts.

  Dewberry was commenting vociferously about the particular locations that Kestrel mentioned, and about the motives she ascribed to Kestrel’s interest in those locations, as she and Kestrel went back and forth in front of Stillwater and the other imps assigned to accompany and assist Kestrel in his battle with the great evil force that had crept into the world.

  “There can be only two reasons that our beloved elf hero wishes to go to the large Graylee humans’ home by the mountains,” she insisted repeatedly. “Either he goes there to see one of the human floozies that throw themselves at him, for he has met some there, or he goes there so that he is closer to the mountains, where he cherishes the memory of a previously unmentioned gnomish maiden whose heart beats with unrequited love for him.

  “In both cases, he is going to the house by the mountains because he is still devastated over my rejection of his advances, and he hopes to drown his sorrow by engaging in these tawdry affairs. The first time I met him, he tried to take me to his bed, you know,” she explained in a false whisper, her voice lowered in some fashion that nonetheless allowed it to be heard throughout the room.

  Kestrel had tried at first to dispute her extravagant claims and outlandish tales, but as he saw the grins on the faces of the imps, he knew that they were having too much fun urging on their sprite companion, officially their queen, to continue to give her colorful interpretation of Kestrel’s motives. He was limited however, in how completely he could deny her stories or counter them with tall tales of his own, even if he had wanted to be as outrageous as Dewberry was, by the fact that there was an element of truth to her claims, and so he mostly listened with humor and good grace, and occasionally blushed at the elements of truth she wove into her mythology.

  He had no good reason to go to the manor house in the Graylee foothills of the Water Mountains, none that was vitally important to the cause of fighting against the evil from Uniontown, the Viathins that were overtaking the kingdoms of the Inner Seas. Through the Viathins, horror, death, and destruction were being spread in nations and cities where vast numbers of people lived. So far, it seemed that only Kestrel had managed to rally and lead successful battles against Uniontown’s efforts. And Kestrel knew that his success was due solely to the divine intervention of the gods that had chosen him to be their champion, and the assistance provided by extraordinary allies such as the imps and sprites.

  The only reason he wanted to go to the home of the Baron of the Northern Marches was to see the sister of the current Baron. He vividly remembered talking with Margo in the manor house on the first day he had met her. It was when he was still so focused on being a spy, on looking and acting like a human, wanting to fit in among the foreign race. He thought he was completely indistinguishable at that point, and had been startled – and worried – when Margo had made an off-hand comment that he projected an air that was vaguely elfish.

  He had come to eventually, many weeks later, admit to Margo that he was truly an elf. It had been a heart-wrenching admission, one he had made because he wanted to be completely honest with the lovely, calm and compassionate girl. He couldn’t bear to keep a secret from her, to try to live a lie that made him feel dishonest with her. He had told her, even though he
knew that the ancient prejudices the residents of Graylee felt towards elves had to exist even in her gentle heart, and he had expected his admission of his true nature to drive her away from him.

  But she seemed, when they parted several months ago, not long after his confession to her and shortly after he had fought a grim and bloody battle on behalf of her family, to not only accept his racial identity, but to hint that some type of relationship between them – something more than friendship – could not be discounted. She had spoken at a time when she had been emotionally traumatized: her parents had been killed violently, and killed by the man she had been in a relationship with, Clarce, who she thought was a partner with her brother in the rebellion against the prince of Graylee. And Kestrel had slain Clarce along with all of his followers who had participated in the massacre at Margo’s family’s baronial manor in the foothills of the Water Mountains.

  And so now here Kestrel found himself, months after their parting, still thinking of Margo, and wondering not only how she was doing, and how safe she was, but wondering what condition her heart was in, whether it was healed and open to exploring a new affection.

  “It’s not just to Margo’s house, the manor house, that I want them to learn to go,” Kestrel insisted. “I want them to be able to take me to see Alicia if I need medical care, or if I need to return to Center Trunk to talk to the elven leaders.”

  “This Alicia,” Dewberry drew the name out into multiple, distinct syllables, “she is one of his elven beauties, another means to try to wash away the longing he feels for me, knowing that I am forever beyond his reach,” Dewberry told the small blue audience sotto voce.

  “And I’ll need to go to Graylee City, back to Creata’s home,” Kestrel decided to try to plunge on past Dewberry’s narrative.