The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11)

by Jeffrey Quyle

The woman responded by pulling a hidden knife from the folds of her sleeve, and pressing it against Kecil's throat. "You got lucky with the boys, or something, but I'm still in control of this situation, stranger," the woman's voice was harsh and flat as she spoke. "Now you go away and leave this girl and me alone or she'll get hurt."

  "And then what?" Alec asked.

  "And then neither one of us will get any use out of her," the woman snarled.

  "I'm going to back away, "Alec surrendered. He heard the men behind him struggling to their feet as he raised his hands to demonstrate his peaceful intentions, and began to step sideways away from the scene.

  "Go on if you know what's good for you," the evil woman snarled, acting as though she were gaining control of the dangerous situation, while Kecil looked at Alec with a pleading expression on her new human face.

  Alec looked up, and there was suddenly a bright light overhead.

  As the procuress and her henchmen stared up in surprise, the light disappeared, and then a moment later, so did Alec. When the captors looked back around their own environs, their eyesight diminished by the bright light, they could not spot Alec.

  An invisible force suddenly grasped the knife-wielding hand of the woman to wrench it away from Kecil's throat, and the woman was forcefully flung away from her captive as she shrieked in angry astonishment. Before she even stopped her momentum, Alec appeared again, standing by Kecil as he placed a protective arm around her shoulders.

  "Now, take your filthy business far away and don't let me catch you in this neighborhood again," Alec commanded.

  One of the men responded by throwing a knife at him, which Alec caught in mid-air, feeling his connection to the energy realm beginning to sputter. He tossed the knife to the ground.

  “The next knife you throw at us, I’ll throw back at you,” he threatened. “Now go!”

  The ruffians responding by turning tail and retreating, their spirits broken by the sight of the knife caught in mid-flight.

  The woman looked up hatefully from where she lay in a heap on the ground, then she rose to her feet and ran off behind her accomplices. “Come back, you cowards!” she screamed in a voice that faded as she distanced herself from her unsuccessful effort to capture a new victim.

  “Thank you again, Alec!” Kecil cried. “That was frightening! What was she going to do to me?”

  “We won’t talk about it now,” Alec said grimly.

  “I brought us here because there used to be a mission nearby where I thought we could be safe. Let’s hope it’s still here,” he said wearily, lifting the packs of belongings to his shoulder. “Come with me,” he turned her to face in the opposite direction, then started to slowly walk down the street, and around the corner.

  They stopped in front of a doorway after only two score of steps.

  “At least it appears to still be here,” Alec said with relief. He stepped up and tried the door, but found it locked, so he pounded loudly upon it.

  “Who knocks?” a voice called from inside the building.

  “We come to request hospitality and refuge, in the name of John Mark,” Alec called. “We seek the peace of the Lord for this night.” He tried to make the strongest possible appeal to the inhabitants of the mission.

  There was no response from the other side.

  “We are travelers who have had troubles, and would appreciate the kindness of the followers of Christ,” Alec called after waiting patiently for several seconds.

  They heard a bolt and a latch thrown, and then the door opened partially.

  “Please come in and tell us what bothers you,” the voice spoke, and a hand appeared in the gloomy interior of the building beckoning them in.

  Alec stepped in front, with his hand extended behind him to hold Kecil’s hand, and pull her along up the steps and through the door, into the sanctuary.

  As soon as they entered, the door was closed behind them, and they saw two elderly women holding a candle, looking at the new arrivals with curiosity and concern.

  “Thank you sisters,” Alec said politely. “We are travelers. This is Kecil, and I am her friend Alec. We were accosted on the streets and sought shelter in this mission. Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “We seldom receive visitors anymore,” the closer of the two answered. “And it seems dangerous to open our doors after dark, but you spoke as though you were a believer, and we didn’t wish to ignore your plea.”

  “I am a believer,” Alec said gently, with a smile. He thought of the founding of the mission, many years prior, during the early years of his term as Caitlen’s consort, when a missionary had somehow managed to cross the continent to arrive in Vincennes with a stated mission of spreading the Gospel. Alec had quietly assisted the missionary, Brother Frewwer, within the limitations of the non-political, non-religious role that a consort seemed limited to in the Avonellene Empire, and the small mission had grown steadily, if not dramatically.

  “I believe in the message that John Mark delivered, and the salvation the Savior provides,” Alec professed his faith to the women. “And we thank you for giving us a safe haven where we may spend the night.”

  “Well, come with us, and we’ll show you to rooms; we have plenty of them available,” the second nun spoke up, turning with her candle to lead the way into the interior of the building.

  They moved down an empty hall, and despite the dim light of the single candle, Alec could see the cobwebs that hung in the corners and from the rafters. It was a melancholy place, and he felt sad that his hopes of seeing Jesus’s message flourish in the mighty city had fallen on such hard times.

  The small group climbed up a set of wide stairs. On the second floor they saw a number of doorways, a few of which might have shown dim light shining from within, but there was no pause, and the two women led Alec and Kecil up a narrower staircase to the third floor.

  “You can have your pick of any rooms up here,” the woman with the candle offered. “We’ve not had any one up here in a decade.”

  Alec reached out his hand, and carefully sent a limited trickle of the Healing energy into the hand of their guide.

  “Thank you for these rooms,” he said. “May we also have a fresh set of clothes, and night clothes if you have them, for Kecil?” he motioned towards the girl to call attention to the scanty covering she wore.

  The woman looked at him with one eye squinted, appraising him.

  “She can come down with us and we’ll provide her with a few togs,” the woman suggested. “You stay up here.

  “She’ll have to climb back up here in the darkness though; we don’t have a spare candle to offer her this evening,” she cautioned.

  Alec nodded his agreement, and gently took his hand from the woman’s and placed it on Kecil’s back to prod her to follow the others.

  “I’ll arrange a room for us, and then meet you back here at the top of the stairs,” he offered her.

  She looked at him and wordlessly nodded, then waited and followed the two women back down the stairs at the same slow, deliberate pace they had used to climb up.

  Alec went midway down the hall, and opened a door at random. He took a deep breath, and once more pushed his waning abilities and called upon the Light energy to produce a dim globe of illumination that showed him an unremarkable room with a window, and single bed, and nothing else to offer. He called the light to follow him and he looked in the room across the hall.

  The second room had much more character. It had two windows; both were gables. There was a bed, a desk and a chair, and a cranny that disappeared around a back corner of the room; it was a larger room as well. Alec stepped inside and saw that the cranny was a narrow hall that led to a third gabled window.

  Satisfied that the room with the gabled windows was more appealing, Alec went back across the hall and pushed and prodded the bed from that room through the doorway and into the hallway, then stopped his labors and took his dim light back to the top of the stairs to wait for Kecil’s return.
/>   As if on cue, she came tromping up the stairs, wearing a vastly oversized robe, and carrying another in her arms.

  “Thank goodness for your light,” she said with relief as she reached the top of the steps. “I wasn’t sure I would know when to stop climbing.”

  Alec took the clothing from her arms; it was heavy wool, and it smelled musty. “I found a room I thought we could sleep in,” he said, nodding his head and starting to walk down the hall.

  He heard no sound behind him, and he turned to see Kecil standing in place in the dim light, a resolute look on her face. He let the light fade, took a deep breath, and let his Spiritual energy weakly reach out to gather any sense of her feelings.

  She was chary of him, suspicious of his intentions, he realized. He dropped the Spiritual energy and immediately relit his small globe of light.

  “I’ve just been moving the second bed into the room so that we can each have our own, but I thought it would be more comforting to have a companion on the first night we sleep in a strange place,” he offered casually. “I can go sleep in another room if you prefer.”

  Kecil began to move forward, and Alec resume walking with his back to her, not waiting to see the expression on her face. She couldn’t know that he had no interest in her physically; she wasn’t aware of the wife he had so recently lost, and the uniquely close relationship they had shared, far beyond any physical coupling that a man might contemplate with a young woman such as her.

  “I,” she finally stammered, “no, I think it would be good to share a room,” he heard her agree.

  He turned into the room with the gabled windows, and threw her clothing down on one of the beds.

  “In the morning we’ll go out and get you something better to wear,” he promised. “Now, I’m going to sleep over here, and you can sleep there. Is there anything you need before I turn out the light?”

  She was sitting on the bed, he saw, and she shook her head silently.

  Relieved, Alec released his hold on the energy and let the light extinguish. Then he pulled off his boots and his shirt and he lay down on the lumpy mattress, exhausted and ready for slumber.

  He heard the sound of Kecil rustling cloth on her bed, and then she spoke in a small voice.

  “Alec,” she said softly, “thank you for everything today. You saved my life.”

  He smiled, and fell asleep.

  Chapter 7

  When Alec awoke the next morning, the sun was well above the horizon, and Kecil was standing in the window, looking out at the city. She was standing, her back to him, wearing no clothes at all – neither the tatter rags she had worn upon rescue, nor the scratchy wool garment the sisters of the house had given her.

  Alec politely cleared his throat.

  “Can you change me back to my own form?” she asked, turning and walking casually over to him, then sitting next to him on his cot.

  He was conscious of her feminine form, he found. Despite the truth that he had told himself the night before, when he had been exhausted, in the clear morning light he found he had to carefully focus his attention so that his eyes did not wander in an unseemly manner.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” she added. “I shouldn’t have doubted you, but it was dark and late and I was so confused and exhausted.

  “It’s funny, now in the daylight, when I see us each in these human forms, I can’t really imagine coupling like this. There’s nothing attractive about these human appearances.

  “Not that I don’t doubt that to one another you look attractive,” she hastily added. “Perhaps I even do; I can’t judge such things.”

  “Yes,” Alec gulped.

  “Yes, I can change you back to your own form. Any time I’m not too tired or I haven’t used my powers too greatly,” he assured her.

  “Would you do it now for me?” she asked plaintively. “Just for a little while? I know I can’t remain natural, but it would just feel good to be myself, a regular lacerta again. I’m not used to this,” Kecil confessed.

  Alec could feel the loneliness and isolation the girl felt; her emotions were palpable to his Spiritual senses, and he felt himself shed a tear for her, before he raised a hand and gently placed his fingers under her chin, lifting her face so that he could study her human features for just a moment before he granted her wish and gave her a short restoration to her natural state.

  And at that moment there was a brief knock on the door, and with his back to the door, Alec heard the hinges start to noisily swing open.

  He dropped the Healer energy he had just begun to call upon, and instead called upon the Light energy, then cast a bubble of invisibility around the pair on the bed, as he raised his free hand to his own lips with a finger pressed in a shushing motion.

  Both Kecil and Alec held their breath as the door opened, and one of the sisters stepped into the room, looking about curiously, unable to spot the two guests. “That’s curious,” she muttered, then pulled the door too and stepped out of sight in the hall.

  “We’ll have to wait to change you until tonight, okay?” Alec asked softly. Kecil nodded agreement.

  “Put one of those robes on, and we’ll go out this morning to buy something nicer for you,” he suggested. The girl nodded again, then rose from his cot and went back to her own bed, and pulled a robe over her head, just as Alec released the Light energy, and just as the sister looked into the room once again.

  “Gracious! You’re here!” she exclaimed, as she saw the two people in the formerly empty-appearing room. “I was sure I looked in here,” she began to add, then checked herself.

  “Will you pull a shirt on, please?” she asked Alec.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked a moment later, as Alec immediately complied with her request to protect her modesty.

  “We did,” he replied before Kecil might say anything. He had the glimmer of an idea, and he wanted to develop as positive a relationship with the sister and the other residents of the decaying mission as possible, so that his proposal might be favorably received.

  “We’d like to offer a favor in return,” he told the sister. “I am a traveling healer, and I’d like to offer my services to you and the others of this house to thank you for your kind hospitality. Would you allow me to do so?” he asked.

  “That’s very kind of you to offer,” the woman said. “I will ask my sisters if they are interested, and we’ll let you know.”

  “In the meantime, we’d like to go out to the market to buy a few things. May we bring you some eggs and sausages?” Alec threw another tempting offer to the woman.

  He saw her eyes light up at the prospect of such a meal.

  “We would be very grateful if you would,” she immediately acceded.

  Alec stamped his feet into his boots, then stood up. “Shall we go, Kecil?” he asked his companion. She nodded in agreement, and together the pair picked up their packs, said farewell to their hostess, then went downstairs and out the door.

  “What are you going to do?” Kecil asked.

  “Kecil,” Alec replied, as they stood on the walk outside the building, “I think we could stay here for a few days. If you don’t need to be back in your own land until your year has passed, we need to delay a little while. And staying in one place for a week or so will let us get used to each other, and let you get used to the changes you’re going through.

  “And I think we can help these people,” he waved his hand at the crumbling building behind them.

  “Alec, my lord, I am dependent on you; I have to do what you want. I don’t object to resting in one place for a few days at all. After all I’ve been through, it would please me greatly.

  “It will please me even more if we really get some more comfortable clothes,” she grinned, and in her grin Alec saw that somehow, despite her human form, she managed to smile as though she were still a thin-lipped, sharp-toothed lacerta. “But, how can you help them?” Kecil asked.

  “I can do things like this,” he focused on finding his access
to the Stone energy, then leaned back and placed his hand on the exterior of the brick and stone building. He let his energy flow into the structure, so that it began to strengthen the loosened mortar, subtly realigned the rows of bricks, healed the cracks in the foundation stones, and otherwise improved the superstructure of the building, stabilizing and revitalizing it. They listened to the low, throbbing sounds of the improvements taking place, and Alec could feel vibrations tremble through the building as it accepted his repairs.

  He removed his hand from the building after a minute, and just before the door opened.

  “It’s an earthquake!” one of the women in the building said fearfully, as she led the procession of sisters out of the doorway, hobbling and flying down the steps as quickly as they could manage.

  “It’s not an earthquake,” Alec assured them, raising his voice. “The building just settled a little, but it seems pretty stable now,” he said comfortingly.

  “These are the young people who stayed as our guests last night,” one of the women spoke up. “The young man is a Believer; he knows all about the Christ and John Mark.”

  “This is my companion, Kecil,” Alec introduced.

  “She seems a bit young for him,” Alec heard one of the women murmur to another.

  “Are you married?” another asked directly.

  Alec paused, wondering how to answer, afraid that the prospect of residing in the mission might be jeopardized by the wrong answer.

  “We hope to be married today, here in your home,” Kecil spoke up, catching Alec by surprise.

  “They even slept in separate beds last night,” said the sister who had visited their room, to a round of approving murmurs.

  “You want to be married? Here? How wonderful!” another said. “Alene! Mother Alene! You will get to preside over a wedding!”

  Alec heard the women talking, but their words didn’t register, as he turned to look at Kecil in disbelief.

  She felt his gaze, looked up, then raised her arms and hugged them around his neck tightly, as she whispered in his ear.

  “It seemed like the easiest thing to do to make these women happy; you don’t mind, do you?”