The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 02 - The Yellow Palace Read online

  Kestrel is in Graylee, hoping to quietly infiltrate and learn the humans’ secrets, but it turns out his arrival is not a secret…

  “Well, well, how touching,” a man’s voice spoke from nearby. “What do we have here, a tender moment between lovers?”

  Both Kestrel and Picco looked down the road, where two men on horses sat watching them. Both men were dressed completely in red. Both wore an air of menace that set Kestrel’s senses on edge.

  “The gods told us that there was some mysterious trouble up north last fall, but then, they thought, a convenient storm seemed to erase the problem, and we all were happy to go on with our lives. We mourned the loss of our friend Amyrilon in the north, but since his…problem…was presumed to be gone, we thought no more about it,” the man said, slowly walking closer.

  “Stay where you are,” Kestrel said, standing and moving away from Picco, now that he knew she was not the target of the men. He felt a burning sensation on his chest, and realized with shock that this was one of those deadly confrontations with the forces of Uniontown that the goddess was warning him of– one of the battles she expected him to fight.

  “What’s happening here?” Picco asked. “Who are you?”

  “We’re acolytes of Poma, the Uniontown ambassador,” the one on the horse said.

  “We were told that the menace that had disappeared in the north last fall had somehow sprung back to life, right here in the north of Graylee. Our master gave us a tool that locates the threats to our gods,” he held up a small round box, “that would lead us to the problem, and we were assigned to come and find the problem,” the man with the sword said, “And resolve it, permanently.”

  As he said the word ‘permanently’ the man on the horse shot his arrow at Kestrel, the bolt hitting his chest with full force. The shaft fell to the ground as it knocked Kestrel back against his horse, and Picco screamed. Kestrel reached for his knife and flipped it towards the man with the bow, even as he staggered backwards from the force of the arrow. Kestrel used his staff to regain his balance as he managed to set his feet beneath him, then saw the man on the horse topple to the ground with Lucretia in his chest.

  The Inner Seas Kingdoms Series

  1. The Healing Spring

  2. The Yellow Palace;

  3. Road of Shadows (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

  The Yellow Palace

  The Inner Seas Kingdoms Series

  Book 2

  Jeff Quyle

  The wonderful cover artwork was created by Donna Harriman Murillo.

  Index

  Chapter 1 – The Shipwreck Page 1

  Chapter 2 – Another Yeti Page 13

  Chapter 3 – Life with the Gnomes Page 20

  Chapter 4 – The Outlaw Band Page 29

  Chapter 5 – Hydrotaz Trampled Page 56

  Chapter 6 – The Healing Page 59

  Chapter 7 – Lucretia Lives Page 71

  Chapter 8 – The Tournament Confrontation Page 101

  Chapter 9 – Arrest Page 120

  Chapter 10 – Betrayal Page 129

  Chapter 11 –Rescue from the Palace Page 136

  Chapter 12 – A Night at the Inn Page 148

  Chapter 13 – Within the Yellow Mansion Page 162

  Chapter 14 –Departure from Ressel’s Page 179

  Chapter 15 – Finding the Horror Page 183

  Chapter 16 – Wreaking Revenge Page 186

  Chapter 17 – Reunion in Hydrotaz Page 203

  Chapter 18 – The Road to Center Trunk Page 217

  Chapter 19 – Rescues in Center Trunk Page 242

  Chapter 20 – The Last of Invisibility Page 284

  Chapter 21 – The Kingdom Saved Page 290

  List of Characters

  Kestrel, Elven guard in the Eastern Forest

  Philip, Graylee nobleman, son of Paul

  Margo, Philip’s sister

  Picco, Margo’s friend, Creata’s sister

  Creata, heir to the Duchess of the East Seashore

  Clarce, Graylee nobleman, friend of Philip and Margo

  Sleek, Graylee nobleman, Uniontown sympathizer

  Brace, friend of Sleek

  Poma, Uniontown ambassador to Graylee

  Paul, Baron of the Northern Marches of Graylee Celina, Paul’s wife

  Backsin, Elven guard at Elmheng

  Cheryl, daughter of Mastrin

  Malsten, shopkeeper, suitor to Cheryl

  Dewberry, princess of the sprites

  Reasion, Dewberry’s sprite friend

  Lucretia, Center Trunk guard archer

  Alicia, Center Trunk surgeon

  Elwean, Elven princess of the Eastern Forest

  Castona, human trader in Estone

  Moresond, herald at Doge’s palace in Estone

  Princess Yulia, heir to the throne of Hydrotaz

  Greysen, son of Ferris of Hydrotaz

  Ferris, Hydrotaz squad commander

  Nicholai, seneschal of Hydrotaz

  Grees, orphaned gnome boy

  Bolt, brother of Grees

  Greta, gnome village maiden

  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

  Tamson – god of force

  Morph – god of speed

  Norvell – god of light

  Were – goddess of sound

  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 who lived in their kingdom 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.

  Nonetheless, Kestrel was chosen to be a special champion by deities from both the human and elven pantheons of god. 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 visits a hidden spring where the water has magic healing properties, and at the spring he meets and rescues a member of the mythical race of sprites.

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

  Despite his misgivings and distrust of the elven leadership, Kestrel goes along with the plan, and goes out on his first mission. He meets a human family in the forest, and saves them by slaying the yeti that attacks them. He then escorts the survivors back to the human city of Estone, where he has to strive to maintain his human persona. Disturb
ingly, he comes to find that he is comfortable as a human, and has strong feelings for Merilla, the pretty human widow he has rescued from the yeti’s attack.

  Kestrel travels back and forth, from the human to the elven cultures, trying to determine where he fits in. The decision isn’t an easy one to make, as he begins to rise in the eyes of the humans, where he seems to fit in most comfortably.

  But his comfort in the city of Estone is shattered when he confronts the evil of Uniontown, a malevolent kingdom who is attempting to infiltrate Estone with its alien gods and hostile culture. Kestrel faces the ambassador from Uniontown in a fatal clash at the royal palace of Estone. He wins the battle, but learns that Uniontown is a force of great evil, and that the goddesses will expect him to devote all his future efforts to defeating the threatening alien culture of the southern land.

  Chapter 1– The Shipwreck

  Kestrel was afraid he was going to drown. The small lifeboat he was in was being heaved beyond control by the wind and the waves, and the sailor who attempted to control the boat was looking wild-eyed and frightened.

  The Estone cutter they had been aboard, The Difference, had sank earlier that day, a victim of the vicious winter storm the ship had been sailing through for three days on its way to North Harbor. Aside from a few dispatches and trading goods, the primary cargo of the ship had been Kestrel himself. He mourned to think that men had lost their lives because of him, but most of his mind focused on the question of whether their lifeboat was going to stay intact and above the surface of the water.

  The third person in the boat was another sailor, Cragle, who was unconscious or worse. As Kestrel had staggered and tumbled into the lifeboat, he had reached out and dragged the body of one of the young sailors with him. The two other lifeboats onboard The Difference shoved off at nearly the same moment that Kestrel’s boat did, each carrying five people, which seemed to account for everyone left aboard the ship at that point.

  As soon as their small boat was free of the ship, they lost sight of the other lifeboats. Kestrel, his leg still stiff and immobilized, and his body weak from seasickness, was of no use in trying to steer the lifeboat to safety, leaving only Reynolds to man the rudder that hopefully directed them to safety. And all credit to him, Reynolds had kept them afloat for five hours or more, with the sun still above the horizon for another hour or so.

  “I think we’re going to make it,” Kestrel was amazed to hear as he held on to the ship’s side for dear life. “The wind’s coming around now. We’re on the back side of the storm. If we make it much past sunset we should be okay for the night,” Reynolds shouted.

  “You’re doing good work Reynolds, keeping us alive,” he shouted to the sailor at the back of the boat.

  “Thank you, my lord,” Reynolds replied, then ducked his head as another wave crashed over the stern and doused him.

  Kestrel weakly picked up his bailing bucket and resumed his work of sloshing water back out of the boat as quickly as he could. Somehow he had managed to keep even with the amount of water– the untold amount of water– that had been thrown at them, but the chore was never-ending, and was all that he was good for.

  Kestrel looked over at their unconscious passenger, the boy he had rescued, who was tied into the boat across from Kestrel. He was pale, and the unconscious movements of his body were so stiff that Kestrel had real doubts whether he was alive or not.

  He half-filled his pail and sent it overboard, and thought about the preposterously bad timing he had suffered in his relationship with Dewberry the sprite. They could all be safe and dry by now if not for a quirk of the calendar, one that he hadn’t realized existed, until Dewberry had come to visit him on his last day in his suite at the palace in Estone.

  “The solstice is today,” she had told him solemnly, with as serious an expression as he had ever seen on the usually happy face of the sprite.

  “Is that a holiday for the sprites?” he asked. “You don’t seem happy about it.”

  “It’s the day we can no longer travel,” she answered.

  Kestrel took several seconds to digest her meaning. “You mean you cannot appear or disappear from places?”

  “Yes,” Dewberry replied. “The sun does something at the solstice, and for the three months of winter we cannot use our powers to travel. We’re as earthbound as humans and elves.

  “The spring equinox is the day the sun lets us travel again: it’s the greatest holiday of our people, when we get our freedom back! You’ll have to come to the celebration and see it someday,” Dewberry told him.

  “So I’m not going to see you for three months? I’ll miss you,” he told his small blue friend.

  “I know you will,” she answered seriously, “and I’ll miss you too.”

  Kestrel considered the loss of Dewberry’s sunny disposition and unpredictable appearances. His mind raced on. “Dewberry, I was hoping you would carry more messages from me to Alicia; I guess that’s not going to be possible for a while, is it?”

  “Love letters to your elf lover? No, I won’t be able to carry any for you,” she replied, then began to reach into her dress.

  Kestrel knew there was no point in arguing that the letters were not love letters; they were reports he wanted to send back to Alicia’s husband, Colonel Silvan, the head of the Elven nation’s spy apparatus. Dewberry would say many outrageous things like that, but she was a loyal friend, and together he and she had developed an extremely unusual but deep reliance on one another, a friendship unlike any previously known between their races.

  “Here,” Dewberry pulled a folded paper from a pocket in her dress. “I already went to the pretty elf to tell her I cannot travel. She sent this note to you.

  “I must go now friend Kestrel. Be safe and good, and do not let your heart be broken!” Dewberry hugged him fiercely, then allowed him to kiss her cheek.

  “Good bye, Dewberry. Take good care of Jonson. I want to see him walking again the next time you can travel,” he replied.

  The sprite smiled, then disappeared.

  A wave hit Kestrel in the face, drawing him away from his memories, back to the reality of bailing water from the boat. He thought the wind felt slightly less vicious, but kept the optimism to himself as he ducked his head at the sight of more foam heading towards him. He was cold, as he was sure the others were too, those in his boat and those in the other lifeboats, as the North Sea beat at them unrelentingly.

  The sun set, and they were left cold and wet and blind to their surroundings as well. “It feels better, sir,” Reynolds said encouragingly, and the motions of the boat did settle down, while waves ceased to smack Kestrel’s face with bruising energy. Half an hour later Reynolds spoke again. “There’s stars visible up there,” he said about the sky. “The storm’s over; it’s past us and breaking up.

  “Such a storm,” he mused. “There shouldn’t have been one that vicious this early in the winter; that was more of a late winter or early spring storm,” the sailor mused. “I don’t remember ever hearing tales about a storm like that when the season’s just begun. But we’ve survived, and we’ll go on. Now we just wait until sunrise and set a course for land.”

  Kestrel saw the stars overhead, and felt a great sense of relief. He began to bail with renewed strength, and kept it up until he fell asleep, and uneasily dozed for a few hours. When he awoke with a start the water was relatively gentle, and Reynolds was raising a small post and setting a sail in place.

  “Glad to see you’re awake, sir,” the sailor spoke as he raised a heavy tan canvas up the post. “If you could come take the rudder for a while, I’ll get the biscuits and water out and then catch a nap for myself.”

  “Gladly,” Kestrel slowly maneuvered himself, pivoting around his sore leg and then moving to the back of the boat, and grabbing the wooden handle from Reynolds.

  “Now just keep the sunrise on your left and we’ll keep heading south. I think land is closest in that direction. What kind of land and what we do once we get there are be
yond me though,” Reynolds commented as he nimbly scrambled to the front of the boat. He stopped and checked on their third passenger. “He’s dead sir. What should I do?”

  “If we bring him along with us, could we bury him when we get ashore?” Kestrel asked.

  “We could if we had a shovel, which we don’t, I’m afraid,” Reynolds answered. “But we could pile rocks on top of him,” he suggested.

  “Let’s take him all the way with us then,” Kestrel agreed, wanting to show some respect to the young man.

  “These lifeboats have skins of water and a waterproof bag of dried biscuits, enough for five men to live for three days on short rations,” the sailor spoke as he knelt down and opened a small storage locker in the bow of the ship. “Here we go,” he pulled out a pair of leather bags, making Kestrel suddenly realize how thirsty he was for fresh water, as he sat in the middle of the salty sea.

  Reynolds threw one of the skins to Kestrel, then pulled out another bag and opened it. “Ready for breakfast sir?” he called as he tossed a biscuit back to Kestrel.

  They both felt better minutes later as the water and hard biscuit revived them, then Reynolds lay down and fell instantly asleep, leaving Kestrel to maintain the boat’s southward course. He watched the sun rise from the horizon to high overhead, as he pointed the bow to the south, and marveled at how pleasant the sailing experience had become. The brisk wind behind them made the boat cut through the water fearlessly, and only the chill of the wind prevented the sunshine from making the day feel wonderful. But the scenery before him never changed– water, always water on the horizon and nothing else to break the monotony of the view, except for a rare fish that broke the surface of the water momentarily.

  Reynolds woke abruptly, sitting up and looking around. “Anything happening sir?” he asked, still speaking as deferentially to Kestrel as all the members of the crew of The Difference had during the voyage. The stories of Kestrel’s battle with the ambassador from Uniontown – the red dome, the miraculous knife, the appearance of sprites – had endowed Kestrel with the reputation of a supernatural being, and the crew wished to avoid upsetting him. In Kestrel’s opinion they seemed to blindly overlook the fact that he had been so badly injured by the battle that he could walk only with difficulty, but he had not been able to talk them into treating him as an ordinary passenger.