They looked at one another. “We are ready,” Alec spoke.
“Then show them the way, Alec. I imagine you have it memorized by now,” John Mark said, as he began to make a sign of benediction.
“Wait!” Alec uttered.
John Mark looked at him in surprise. “I just want to say, thank you. I know you love us all, and, and thank you for this journey,” he stammered to a close.
“Go in peace, and serve the Lord,” John Mark said, looking at each of them, but seeming to give Alec a special smile, as he faded away from sight.
The two girls looked at Alec. “Show us the way, since John Mark said this is your territory,” Bethany said.
“We can do something else important here first,” Alec told them. “Bethany, this is the Cave of John Mark, where Rief and I received our healer powers. Would you like to become a healer ingenaire as well?”
She looked at him in stunned silence. “I wouldn’t have to give up my water ingenaire powers, would I?” she asked.
“I don’t think I gave up anything,” Alec pointed out.
“Even if I did give up my water powers, I think it would be worth it. Then Rief and I can elect a new master healer to sit on the Council, and designate you as junior member of the house,” she laughed.
“Let’s go down stairs to get started then,” Alec said, ignoring the threat.
“You’re sure we get to climb down this time?” Rief checked.
Alec looked at the window behind them, “I’m pretty sure,” he commented laconically, then received an elbow in his ribs.
When they opened the door, the long endless stairway descended into the darkness below them.
“I have to climb down there to do this?” Bethany asked, dumbfounded.
“And then turn around and climb back up,” Rief answered.
“And then climb back down again,” Alec added.
“And it will be totally worth it,” Rief concluded.
Bethany looked at the two of them, shook her head, and wordlessly began to descend.
Rief and Alec walked behind her, looking at the information transcribed on the walls. “Alec,” Rief asked after a great deal of descent, “could you touch up our legs?”
Alec reached down to her thighs and touched them lightly, releasing healing powers to take away the tiredness and pain, then did the same to Bethany and for himself. “That’s just like what you did for saddle-soreness when we rode to Bondell,” she commented.
They continued walking down to the bottom. “Oh, this is so energetic!” Bethany exclaimed as she beheld the water that dripped, flowed and cascaded throughout the chamber they stood in. “It’s so pure, and powerful, and something else I can’t even find words to describe.” She stood with her eyes closed and face tilted upward, a look of ecstasy on her face. Alec stood and looked at her, drinking in the beauty of her profile, and Rief watched Alec look at Bethany.
“What do we need to do?” Bethany asked.
“We need to go outside, through that water and the door,” Alec pointed. He walked forward and into the water, feeling that still-stunning sense of chill, holiness, and cleanliness. He reached forward after many moments and opened the door. Rief came behind him, and Bethany slowed followed in their wake as they stepped out onto the mountainside ledge.
“Oh Alec, everything else in the world pales beside this,” Bethany looked at him with open affection, her heart clean and pure.
“Where are we?” she asked a moment later as she looked down the steep valley to the river far below.
“We’re in the Pale Mountains,” Alec reminded her. “Are you ready to go back in and become a healer?” he asked.
She nodded, and Alec opened the door behind them, then ushered the women inside. They all entered, and Bethany gaped at the now-legible information on the walls that had been invisible to her before. “We climb upward now,” Alec waved his arm, directing Bethany’s attention as she stood in the state of amazement that Alec and Rief had also shared when they first experienced the Cave.
The three began climbing up the staircase that hugged the wall. “I don’t know why I’m climbing up all these stairs again,” Rief muttered in a low voice. “Well, I do know. I’d do it a dozen times a day for the experience.”
No one else commented as they saved their breath for the long climb.
When they reached the top of the stairs, all three had pounding hearts, both from the exertion and the anticipation. “You should go in there, alone at first. We’ll be right out here behind you,” Alec told her.
“Why am I going in alone?” she asked with concern.
“You will be the one to receive the powers by going in first. You will be blinded momentarily, but we will be right behind you and with you,” Alec assured.
Bethany looked at him, looked at Rief, who nodded, then stepped to the door. “If you wanted to get rid of me, I’m sure you could have done it before now, so I might as well trust you,” she said with her sunny smile that Alec recognized so well as a sign of good spirits. She opened the door, the usual blinding flash of light occurred, and she called out in surprise, “Alec!”
He stepped up behind her and placed his right hand on her hip and his left on her shoulder, making sure she stood steadily upright. “You’re going to be fine. Just pause a second. Your body, especially your vision, needs to adjust to your new abilities,” he told her softly. He felt her hand on top of his, then she spoke.
“Yes, I can make out some light now,” she stepped forward, away from Alec, and towards the window. Rief stood beside him and held his hand. “I admit I feel so glad for you and her to have this,” Alec said. “But I feel a little jealous too about sharing something as special as this.”
She looked up at him and smiled. “What? The great leader able to have a flaw?”
“So many flaws,” he responded immediately. “Let’s go in with Bethany.” They walked in with her and stood in front of the inexplicable window, staring out at the landscape.
After many silent minutes, Alec spoke. “We need to get going. We at least have to leave the cave and climb down to the river valley, and if we make it fast enough, we’ll be able to ride Walnut upriver a little ways.”
Both girls remained for a minute longer, looking wistfully out the window at the forested mountain valleys, then turned and followed Alec on the trip down the stairs. Bethany again paused in the cleansing chamber, drinking in the powers of the water, literally and figuratively.
“Where do we go now?” Rief asked when the three of them stood on the small ledge outside the chamber door.
“Down,” Alec said laconically, only to have a bucket of water fall on his shoulders.
“She did that to me the very first day she saw me, before I even knew she existed!” Alec exclaimed to Rief, pointing a finger at Bethany.
“And you cut my favorite skirt!” Bethany replied.
“I didn’t cut the whole thing, just the part right back here!” he reached out and spanked Bethany, leaving her with a look of complete surprise.
Alec began to climb down the stony ladder in the cliff face, then directed encouragement to the women to find the rungs and take their time. When all three were down, Alec began to lead them through the opening that led back to the dell in the mountains. “Oh Alec! What does that mean?” Rief asked, looking at the lacerta skeleton near the other end.
“He was a guard who was chasing me, and I killed him,” Alec said thoughtfully. “Then I was so crazy with fear I started running, and wound up where we just left.” He led them out through the dell, into a warm afternoon in the mountains. “Now it’s just straightforward climbing downhill,” he assured his companions. They continued down, and as they approached the river valley, Alec heard Walnut whinny to greet him; the horse was happy to have company again after a night and a day alone.
“Should we start moving out?” Bethany asked after Alec had spent a few minutes socializing with his steed.
“We can,” Alec looked up. “We’re
going to have to go through the ruins of Riverside. It’s a little less than a half day away. It’s just superstition on my part, but I’d rather not spend a night there; I have too many memories. So we can just stay here, which is a good camping spot, or we can travel north for a while, and find another spot between here and Riverside,” he left the option hanging.
“Let’s walk some,” Rief said. “I don’t want to just sit around here.”
“I agree,” Bethany said.
“That’s good for me,” Alec agreed. “I think Walnut will be able to carry two of us generally, while one walks. But no one has to ride him now,” he conceded, seeing the set looks on their faces. He took their bags and strapped them on Walnut, then untied the horse from the branch, and began leading them north along the east bank of the rippling waters of the young Giffey River.
The sun was starting to set when they came to another mountain stream that had carved a shallow valley into the ridge they were following. “Let’s camp here,” Alec suggested. “I’ll go collect some fire wood if you want to set up a fire pit.” The two girls looked uncertain. “Or you can collect fire wood and I’ll set up the pit.” He gathered stones and arranged a pit in the earth, with a pair of large logs pulled near to provide seating, as the girls returned with their arms full of tinder and tree limbs. Alec unloaded Walnut, then led him down to drink from the stream. When he returned, the two girls were looking at him.
“What’s for dinner, mighty leader, oh protector of the crown?” Bethany asked.
“We bought some food back in Frame, for it’s not enough to last very long,” Alec said. “I don’t have a bow and arrow or even a knife, so we can’t do any game hunting. There are edible plants all around us, as I’m sure your health vision can tell you. Why don’t you go find a few plants up the valley, and I’ll go down by the river to get some tubers,” he suggested, not thrilled with the idea of roast tubers again, after eating too many on his last river journey.
“How are we going to eat crossing the prairie?” Bethany asked, when they came back with some wild celery and other plants.
“I hope that in Riverside’s ruins we’ll find some hunting goods, like a bow and arrow, that we can use out there,” Alec said. “The town has been in ruins for two years, so there won’t be anything edible.” He began striking his flint, and soon had the fire burning. “These can be tolerable,” he said as he cleaned and placed tubers on a thin flat stone that he placed in the flames.
As they sat and cautiously ate their meal a few minutes later, Alec suggested they take turns keeping watch, and he gave Rief the first assigned watch, with himself in the middle, and Bethany last. He gave Bethany the blankets that he had rolled up on Walnut, while he and Rief used the items they had purchased in Frame, though not intended as night blankets. Before the sun had even set, Alec had his eyes closed and was falling asleep.
Alec served the middle shift, then went back to his blankets and slept further. He awoke suddenly to find John Mark beside his bedroll in the middle of the night. Bethany sat awake on the other side of the fire pit, while Rief remained asleep. “What are you doing here, master?” he asked
“In your bag Alec, you will find one more jar of dust from my cave,” John Mark told him. “There is likely to be a time when you will want to come back to my cave once again, and this dust will make it possible. Keep it with you. You will know when you need to return,” he spoke directly, then touched Alec’s forehead, who fell immediately back to sleep.
The next morning Bethany woke Alec after the sun rose; he said nothing to her or Rief about John Mark’s visit, but checked his bag to confirm that the jar was there. He was groggy from the interrupted sleep of the middle watch, but gamely rose and piled his makeshift sleeping roll onto Walnut. They each ate a small nibble of the travel bread Alec had purchased, then resumed following the game trail that led them north in the shadowy bottomlands of the river valley.
A very short time later they saw the Riverside bridge. “It’s so strong looking! How did the people of Riverside build something like that?” Bethany asked.
“They didn’t,” Alec said. “I think Ari told us it was a remnant of the ancient civilization that used to rule these mountains. The people of Riverside built their town here because of the bridge, and where ever the ancient road goes to in the mountains in the east, I think that’s the way the lacertii came when they ravaged the town.” He led Walnut up and around the slope of the levee and arrived at the approach to the bridge. As he crossed it, he looked down to the weedy river bank below, where he and Noranda had been reunited with Aristotle following their flight through Riverside. He thought about Ari, and Noranda, each, he hoped, sitting comfortably in their respective cities of the Dominion.
The lacertii had not held the town after ransacking it, or at least not held it recently. Weeds and creeping vines hid much of the face of the burnt buildings, and as they walked along the main street, they came to the remains of Richard’s traveling carnival, still sprawled along the middle of the town.
“This is where I saw Ari perform an ingenaire feat for the first time,” Alec narrated. “And in there is where Noranda killed a lacertii. That,” he pointed to a burnt wagon, its roof gone but traces of paint still clinging in small strips to its sides, “was where the dancers usually rode, but I invited Natalie to ride with us that afternoon, and so she is alive.” He realized that tears were starting to well up in his eyes, and he knuckled them to clear his vision. He thought of the many people he had known in the caravan. They had been a family for him as he traveled – the performers, the workers, Richard, the owner and leader. He had not thought of them for a long time, and he felt consumed with the memories.
A movement startled him, and he saw a dog trotting across the street cautiously watching the three travelers. Alec bent, held out a hand, and called gently to the animal. It stopped and sat on its haunches, its ears erect with attention, but it would not come any closer, despite Alec’s attempts. “I wonder what it’s lived on for the past two years?” he asked out loud.
“It’s a dog. They know how to hunt,” Rief replied
“That reminds me,” Alec said as he stood. “We ought to try to find some weapons we can use to hunt with for the next few weeks, like maybe some throwing knives, or a bow and arrow, and I’d be comfortable with a sword.” He began to look into the doors of houses as they passed, and carried out a bow and arrow from one, and two knives from another. The other houses he examined were empty of weapons but he was satisfied he had enough to secure wild game for their meals.
“This was Ari’s wagon,” Alec said, stopping by the last pile of wreckage in the street. “We were always the last wagon in the caravan. Ari wanted it that way.” He looked into the charred rear of the wagon, and pulled out a blanket that was covered in soot. “This was mine,” he explained as he held it up.
“Let’s get moving on out of here,” he said at last, as he realized how long he had been lost in contemplation. “They were all good people, may their souls rest in peace,” he said of his dead companions, and Rief and Bethany bowed their heads in prayer.
Alec carried the two knives in his belt as they walked along the road out of Riverside. Even after two years without use, the trail was easy to follow, and by early evening they had climbed up onto the ridge that provided a view down at the Giffey River valley.
“Let’s take a break,” Bethany suggested, and neither of the other two gave a hint of opposition.
“Let’s spend the night up here. We’re just a couple of minutes away from where the carnival camped,” he gestured forward, and they walked to the spot where the road entered an opening among the trees. Alec took the bow and the few arrows along with it, and went into the forest to hunt some game for dinner. When he returned, all three of them looked at the deer carcass he was dragging, and they realized that none of them knew how to dress it or prepare it. Both girls agreed that Alec had shot it and had the knives, and so he therefore deserved the honor of preparing t
he meat while they went in search of plants, tinder, and stones for a fire pit.
“What will the mountains be like?” Rief asked that night as they sat around the fire eating their meal.
Alec thought. “Based on the carnival’s trip into here, I’d guess we’ll be walking through the mountains for three or four days. It’s rugged, but there’s no one out here at all. There might have been a miner or trapper at one time, but after the lacertii came through, they’ve probably all been cleared out.
“There are cabins out at the edge of the mountains where some folks may still be living. We’ll have water and food in plenty while we’re in the mountains, but once we get to the true prairie, things get scarce and dry,” he told them.
Against the Empire: The Dominion and Michian Page 30