The two travelers ate their food, then Alec grabbed a small sack of dried fruit and nuts, which he handed to Kecil. “In case we’re out in the wilderness for a while,” he explained, and then added a pair of wine skins that were filled with water from the Healing Spring. He led her to the compact armory that was attached to the palace, and armed himself with a bandolier of throwing knives, and a length of rope that he looped over his shoulder.
“What’s that for?” Kecil asked.
“I can’t explain it; I just felt like it might be a good idea to have it,” Alec answered, and then he gathered his guest in his arms, and transported the pair of them back to the alleyway in Gallop.
It was earlier in the morning, with few if any people evident on the streets.
“Let’s do one last thing,” Alec said. He continued to hold onto Kecil, and switched to using his Healer energy to alter her appearance again, returning her to human form for the first time since they had entered John Mark’s cave.
“I was beginning to think I might hold onto my natural form for a long time,” she said in disappointment, then followed Alec out into the street. They walked north. They rapidly reached the city stockades and passed them, then went out along the road, between strips of farm fields that lined the road. The landscape was gently rolling, though black mountains were visible on the northern horizon. Beyond the wide strip of farmland, heavy forests were universally present. With the stories of missing people and deadly clouds on the ground, Alec found the darkness in the distance to be foreboding.
There were a few farmers working in their fields in the miles that were closest to Gallop, but as they walked during the morning, evidence of occupants in the homes and cabins grew thinner and less evident.
“How far are we going to walk this morning?” Kecil asked after two hours. “Why didn’t you just use your powers to make us land out here?”
“I’ve never been here before,” Alec answered, “and I can’t really travel to a place without knowing what it’s like, so I couldn’t travel to this place.
“We’ll walk until we either see something or we decide we’re not going to see anything,” he added. “The people who have been disappearing have mostly been settlers moving into the wilderness, so we’ll have to get closer to the wilderness to find the kinds of places where the troubles have been happening.”
He began to relate the stories that Anslow the bartender had passed along the previous night, giving Kecil a sense of the danger that had planted the seeds of fear in his heart.
“You’ve fought worse than this before though, right?” Kecil said encouragingly. “It’s just that you don’t know what this challenge is yet.”
“You’re very wise for someone so young,” Alec agreed. He reached an arm around her shoulders to squeeze her in an appreciative hug.
“So tell me about them. What were your greatest battles?” the lacerta shaped as a human girl asked.
“Fighting Hellmann in our second battle was the worst, because he possessed Andi’s body when we fought,” Alec immediately answered, and he began to tell tales of memorable battles as they walked along the road.
Kecil peppered him with questions, as they walked, and he only faltered in his story-telling when the road entered a patch of forest. The fields they walked past were unoccupied, and then came to an end as the road grew narrower, and passed beneath the canopy of the untamed forest of the wilderness. Alec grew attentive, and adopted his Warrior energies to heighten his awareness of the movements around them as they walked into the dimness beneath the leaves.
They passed out of the woodland after twenty minutes, then found smaller fields along the road, sometimes on both sides, sometimes on only one, as they reached a region that hadn’t been completely settled and claimed by newcomers.
Alec told more of his stories, but he was slower to tell them, as his attention was diverted to watching for trouble.
“I’m hungry,” Kecil finally pronounced as they left another shady passage of the road through the forest.
“Let’s eat some of those supplies,” Alec suggested, and as Kecil unpacked the food he had given her, they munched and drank their water from the Healing Spring.
“It does make me feel better. I can feel the energy in it,” Kecil marveled. “It’s a wonderful thing you did.”
“I didn’t try to do it. It just happened,” he admitted, as he thought of the spring he had created later, in Boundary Lake. In that case he had deliberately manipulated his use of the energy to create a fountain of water with healing properties, in order to save a city that was being decimated by plague. Creation of the fountain had been a painful ordeal, but it had saved thousands of lives ultimately, and he was glad of the results.
They began to exit from the woods, into a patch of open pasture. No crops had been tilled in the open space along the road, but the tree stumps that littered the pasture showed that the hand of man had downed the trees. The view of the open sky showed that they had grown closer to the mountains, which loomed larger on the horizon above the trees ahead.
“I feel something,” Alec said suddenly, interrupting his story. He thrust an arm out in front of his companion to abruptly bar her progress, and then he backed up into the shadows of the forest they were leaving, pulling Kecil with him into the protection of the shade. He slid behind a tree, and maneuvered the girl behind him, as he peered out into the sunlight.
“What is it?” Kecil asked, her fingers unconsciously clutching his shirt tightly.
“Something powerful, and evil, and angry, and, and familiar, somehow,” Alec answered. “I feel it with my Spiritual powers.”
The darkness emerged suddenly, bursting out of the trees at the point where the shrinking road passed from the pasture to the woods once again. It appeared too solid to be a fog or cloud, though it moved with the fluidity of either. There seemed to be roiling contention within the large entity as a portion ballooned outward, and then suddenly figures emerged, shooting out as if ejected – three of them at too great a distance to really see details of the people who stumbled and rolled away from the blackness.
One of them stood up and held a sword defensively, a futile gesture against such an unlikely opponent, it seemed to Alec, and his heart went out to the overmatched fighter.
“Stay here!” he told Kecil, then he stepped out into the road, where he had an open view of the terrifying cloud. He dropped his other powers and called forth his Light abilities, then aimed his hand at the cloud and fired a beam of focused light energy.
Alec’s energy struck the outside of the cloud and splattered off of it in all directions, but the cloud reacted by pulling back and turning its attention in the direction of Alec instead of the escapees.
The small band took advantage of the distraction caused by Alec’s attack to stumble into the forest alongside the road and disappear from sight. At the same time, the darkness began to advance towards Alec, while attempting to evade the impact of his beam of light. It swerved and staggered back and forth as it relentlessly moved across the pasture opening.
“Do more Alec!” Kecil cried.
Alec redoubled his efforts, attempting to capture even more sunlight to use as a weapon. He stepped forward from the shadows of the trees to find more of the sun, and he made his beam stronger, and more intense. He felt his use of the energies growing tenuous, as he pressed against the upper boundaries of his abilities to use the Light power, but the greater strength of his weapon seemed to cause pain to the darkness.
It managed to cross half the pasture’s width, then stopped, and Alec thought that he could see his beam of brilliant light beginning to penetrate the surface of the cloud, sinking into and dissolving away its substance. The darkness appeared to rear up, growing higher and more ominous, but then it shrank back down, and beat a hasty retreat. It rolled back along the road and into the forest portion that it had sprang from, and it disappeared from sight.
Alec immediately released his hold on the Light energy, and
dropped to his knees in weakness and pain. He had used the Light power with greater intensity than ever before. It was not one of his own original abilities, but one that he had immersed himself in and adopted by physically traveling through the energy realm via the axis mundi. He’d had no formal training in the use of the power, but trial and error and need had led him to manage to accomplish what he needed, when he needed.
And he’d apparently managed to accomplish the task of driving the darkness back, but he had used his energies at an extremely high level, and he felt the equivalent of tremors in his muscles racing through his soul as he knelt in the dust.
Kecil’s hands touched his back, rubbing and massaging him comfortingly.
“How can I help?” she asked anxiously. “Is this how you do it?” he felt a weak stream of her Healing energy entering his body, offering strength and a quicker recovery.
“Pray to John Mark and Jesus when you use your powers; it helps,” Alec advised, grateful for her support. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, while letting the comforting stream of energy smooth over the rough spots, the frayed elements of his being.
“You’re doing amazingly well at using the power for your first time,” he complimented her.
“I’ve been thinking about all the times you have healed me or changed me, and how it felt,” she replied. “It gave me a guide to try to follow.”
Alec opened his eyes. “You can stop,” he told her.
“Ow!” she exclaimed. “Oh! Look! My arm is marked!” She turned her forearm over to reveal the caduceus symbol that marked a Healer ingenaire.
“That’s proof that you were able to use your powers,” Alec told her. “You’re an ingenaire now. Welcome to our race.”
“So I’m a human, a lacerta, and an ingenaire?” she asked with a sly smile. “I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“You’ll figure it out,” Alec assured her. “In the meantime, thanks to you, I feel well enough to go on.”
“Go on where?” Kecil asked in alarm. “You’re not going to go hunting that thing, are you?”
“I,” Alec paused, “no, but I want to go see if those other people need help,” he found a suitable reply.
“We’ll be careful,” he assured her.
They cautiously crept along the road, Alec using a fraction of his Warrior energy once again to boost his senses as he surveyed the trees ahead. When they reached the edge of the tree shadows, Alec stopped. “I don’t sense anything – not the black cloud, nor any escapees,” he said.
“Where did those people go? Did the cloud capture them again?” Kecil asked somberly.
“This isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before,” Alec told her. “I don’t know; I don’t have any answers.” There might have been some vague, second-hand sense of a familiar element present in his memory of the cloud, but it was so indeterminate that he could say nothing more.
“I don’t know,” Alec said. He shook his head, then made a decision. “I’m going to take you back to the palace to keep you safe,” he told Kecil. “I’ll gather up some other ingenairii, and come back here tomorrow to search for the black cloud further,” he said.
“If you need ingenairii, shouldn’t you bring me along?” Kecil challenged him.
“Let’s go back to Oyster Bay,” Alec answered, “and we can talk about it later.”
He wrapped his arms around her, and before she could protest, he took a deep breath before he weakly engaged his Traveler energies, and they were removed from the dangers of the northern wilderness.
Chapter 13
Alec took them to the residential wing of the Oyster Bay palace, the suite of rooms that had been reserved for Andi and himself and their family in the decades that he had ruled over the Dominion.
“Where are we?” Kecil asked, looking around at the ornate and elaborate decorations of the room they arrived in.
“We are in the palace at Oyster Bay, the capitol of the Dominion,” Alec told her. “It’s like Chanradala.
“Come look out this window to see the city,” he urged her, as he walked to a balcony that looked south towards the river.
“Why are we here?” Kecil asked.
“We will talk to the regent and her advisors, and we will talk to the ingenairii about this problem, to tell them what we saw,” he said.
“You’ve decided you’re going to fight that cloud, aren’t you?” Kecil asked.
“I think we need to,” Alec agreed. “It’s dangerous and evil.
“But in the meantime, I think I may take you back to Vincennes, and let you continue to work on healing at the mission with the sisters,” he braced himself for the response he expected.
“You can’t seriously tell me you plan to drop me off with the old ladies and leave me alone there while you go fight a horrible monster?” Kecil objected strenuously.
“Your majesty, it’s so good to see that you’ve returned,” Karalee, the steward opened the door and greeted Alec, alerted by the staff that noises were coming from the sitting room.
“Stay out of this! We’ve got something to settle here!” Kecil imperiously ordered the woman.
“You’d best do as the lady says, Karalee,” Alec said mildly. “Would you tell the regent I’m here, and send a request for the head of the Ingenairii Council to come to the palace?”
“As you command, sire,” the steward politely nodded to Alec, then to Kecil, then departed from the doorway.
“I healed you!” Kecil pointed out. “Just like that! You need me a much as you need anyone else,” she tried to reduce the passion in her voice.
“Come with me and listen to our discussion about this threat, then you and I can talk further about this. But I think the sisters are going to need us back soon to resume healing, so that they maintain their new credibility in the neighborhood,” he made another subtle effort to persuade her to consider returning to Vincennes.
“Now, let me introduce you to my great-great-grand-daughter and the others,” he said, and he led her from the room and through the halls of the palace. Servants bowed as Alec passed, and he took time to speak to those that he recognized, before they eventually arrived at a sitting room where he expected to find Olivia and the others.
There were a half dozen in the room, and they rose to greet Alec as he and Kecil entered.
“I expected to see you earlier today,” Olivia said in a calm voice.
“We took a little journey up north first, to have a look around. We saw the evil force with our own eyes,” Alec replied.
“I’ve summoned Nicholas as the Convener of the Ingenairii Council to join us for this meeting, so I’ll wait until his arrival before we begin the discussion,” he continued. “And in the meantime, let me introduce my most unusual protégé, Kecil.
“I met Kecil in the Avonellene Empire while I was on my personal pilgrimage.
“She’s really a lacerta,” he told the room, making heads swivel and eyes open wide as the gathering stared at the brunette girl. “I altered her appearance so that she would be safer among humans.”
“She must be very grateful for the improvement you’ve given her,” one man spoke up.
“What improvement is that?” Kecil blurted out.
Alec bit his lip to maintain a neutral expression.
“Well, your improved appearance, of course,” the court official responded.
“As a lacerta, I must tell you that these human bodies are not as solid and stable as our good lacerta frames are. Not to mention there is this surplus of hair, which is forever getting in the way,” she said as she pulled a tress from in front of her face and tucked it behind an ear. “And if I ever have any hopes of making a suitable match, well, I’ll have to find a male who is blind, and perhaps has no fingers to feel this squishy human flesh,” she finished her assertion smugly, satisfied that she had laid out her case.
“I was a lacerta once,” Alec spoke up to forestall the confrontation that he knew was about to erupt. “And so was Olivia’s great-
great-grandmother,” he added. “We were traveling across the entire width of the lacerta nation, going from Boundary Lake to the Pale Mountains, and it just seemed much easier to blend in with the crowd instead of standing out.
“It seemed like we ran forever, and we spent the nights in the wild – where ever we could find a secluded place to rest. We were both Warrior ingenairii of course, so we had quite a bit of stamina. I’ll never forget that run,” he said with a fond smile.
At that moment the door opened, and Nicholas of the Ingenairii Council arrived.
“So good to see you, my friend,” Alec welcomed him.
“You’ve come to take back the leadership of the Hill, I hope?” the man said with a smile, after he bowed to Alec.
“No, oh no,” Alec replied. “I’ve come to ask if the ingenairii will work with the leadership of the Dominion to battle a terrible threat that has appeared on the northern frontier.
“Kecil and I have been up there today exploring, and we’ve seen the enemy,” Alec spoke.
He let the room come alive with interest and murmured comments.
“You’ve already defeated it, haven’t you?” Olivia asked. “Who could possibly withstand you in battle?”
“I managed to give it a bit of a fight, but it withdrew, and I’m glad it did; I couldn’t have fought anymore,” Alec said. “I needed healing from my new ingenaire friend afterwards.”
“What is this monster? What did you face? Was it an entire army?” one of the officers, wearing his uniform, asked.
Alec took a deep breath. “I can’t exactly describe it.” He looked at Olivia. “We heard it described as a cloud, and that comes close to telling you what it is – a black cloud. Except it has more substance, and it felt evil. And when I attacked it with lethal force, it withstood the attack pretty well before it withdrew.”
“So you want me to ask all of our Warrior ingenairii to join you on a trip to the north?” Nicholas asked expectantly.
The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11) Page 14