The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “No,” Alec surprised everyone but Kecil with his reply. “Maybe a Warrior would be good to have along, but I really want every Light ingenaire you have who can focus his energy into a deadly beam. That was how I tried to fight it, and it seemed to do some damage.”

  “That is a most unusual request, majesty,” Nicholas replied.

  “I’m not so sure it wouldn’t hurt to have every ingenaire from every house up there,” Alec replied. “I don’t know that my light beam really harmed it, but it did withdraw. I don’t know what will work best against it – water, fire, light, stones, arrows. Maybe the Spiritual ingenaire would be useful for all I know.

  “But it is evil, and it is substantial, and we need to go up there and defeat it to protect the people of the north,” he spoke with a compelling fervor.

  “Should we send the army with the ingenairii?” Olivia asked. “It would be good to protect the marked ones, and it might give reassurance to the population of the north to see the uniforms in the region.”

  “I think an armed escort would be good, as protection against other possible problems. Please work with one another to make plans to arrange everything. Shall I return tomorrow? Will you have things worked out by then?” he asked.

  “Of course, your majesty,” Olivia immediately answered. “We will have a plan prepared for your examination by dinner tomorrow, won’t we?” she asked as she turned and stared meaningfully at her advisors.

  “Of course, your ladyship,” the man in the uniform answered for the group.

  “And you can stay afterwards to join us for a banquet to celebrate your return to the palace,” Olivia continued. “The court will be delighted to have the king taking up residence in Oyster Bay again. It’s been such a long time since you lived here.

  “And we’ll all want to meet your companion, of course,” she added as her eyes shifted to Kecil for a moment.

  “Thank you all. You’re dismissed,” Alec said. “Except you, Olivia, my child,” he added in a sterner voice. “I’d like a moment with you.”

  The room emptied quickly, so that only Alec, Kecil, and Olivia remained.

  “I am not here to take up residence in this palace, not any time in the near future that I know of,” Alec told Olivia, “so you can stop trying to plant that rumor.”

  “It’s only natural. I feel like I am a failure as a leader compared to you, with all that you can do,” the regent spoke in an emotional voice. “A threat shows up in the north, and what can I do? Nothing,” she answered her rhetorical question.

  “But a monster shows up in the north, and what do you do? You fly up there, you fight it, you come back, and you take command of the ingenairii to go finish it off,” she rattled off her answer with a staccato rhythm. “I can’t do anything like that.

  “You need to be back here. Now that you’ve had the time to properly mourn the Queen, and you’ve gained a young new companion, you don’t have to live in exile out at the Healing Spring – you can be right back here where we all want to see you,” she finished.

  “Kecil is not my companion, not in the way that you imply or think,” Alec shot back.

  “I thought she seemed young for you,” Olivia replied mildly.

  “We will return tomorrow, but not to take up residence,” Alec answered curtly. “Come here Kecil,” he commanded, and as soon as the girl joined him, he leapt through space, back to his own private space in the far off palace that he called home.

  Kecil’s mind was full of thoughts and questions, but she decided to ask only the one that most interested her.

  “Why have you done what you did?” Kecil asked, as they returned to the Healing Spring palace. “Why would the most powerful human in the world walk across the land alone, and then risk his own life to save a strange lacerta girl?” she asked. “I am growing more grateful with every day that passes, and every new fact that I learn about you, but I cannot imagine that any prince of my land would have ever done such a thing.”

  “I am old, Kecil,” Alec told her. He led her to a pair of chairs on the terrace, and they sat down. “I am far older than anyone else alive. In the long years of my lifetime, I have already done the things and seen the things that mattered to me when I was younger.

  “Different things matter to me now – things like letting other people rule the land, and having time to visit the places I remember fondly from my past, and especially helping to fight cruelty and injustice, as my Lord expects me to. He expects us all to fight those things of course, but I have been closer to him than most, and I know his expectations for me better than most,” he gave a small smile.

  “So when I saw a girl being tortured and put to death for the horrible reason of entertaining others, I had no doubt that saving you was the obvious thing I had to do,” he told her.

  “And I’ve seen your actions demonstrate your heart to be just as good, and I’m sure you would make the same choices that I would, in such circumstance,” he added.

  “I hope so,” Kecil said thoughtfully, just as the door opened and the butler appeared with a tray that held two mugs of water from the Healing Spring.

  They sat in silence and drank the water.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to indulge myself in a guilty pleasure before dinner. I’ll come fetch you for dinner,” Alec said as he stood and offered to walk Kecil to the door.

  “What can be a guilty pleasure of the most perfect human in the world?” Kecil asked with a smile.

  “I’m going to take a bath in water from the Healing Spring,” Alec answered. “Even with your healing, I still feel the after-effects of that encounter this morning,” he replied. Kecil understood she was dismissed, and she took her leave.

  “Have a pair of barrels of water from the spring brought up here,” Alec asked a servant he intercepted in the hallway. Minutes later the two barrels arrived.

  “Wait here a moment,” Alec directed the men who had heaved the barrels up to the residential floor. Alec removed the lid of one barrel and directed a stream of focused light into its contents for several minutes, until the water began to steam.

  “Take this to Kecil’s room, and tell her I advised a bath for her as well,” he instructed. When the men left with the barrel, he heated the water that remained behind, and carried it on currents of air, then poured it into his own tub and gratefully settled into the water. He laid with his eyes closed, and thought about the innumerable times he had heated the water and filled that very tub for Andi in recent years. She had appreciated the baths, and she had benefited from the water’s properties.

  It was relaxing and restorative. He felt the water instill its virtues upon him, giving back to him the very energy that he had deposited within the spring so many centuries prior.

  Those days had been so extraordinary, he sighed. He didn’t long for youth, but he longed for the open-heartedness of his youth, and the comparative ordinariness he had been swaddled in. Once he’d gotten to Ingenairii Hill, he’d just been one of dozens of apprentices, and no one had seen him as anything particularly out of the ordinary – nobody but Bethany and Kinsey, the Spiritual ingenaire apprentice, who had somehow been attuned to his spirit, and had seen something special in him before anyone else.

  He hadn’t seen her since they had traveled together in the Pale Mountains, at the time of his first adventure in Michian, and in his later lives he’d never learned how she had fared, except when her ghost had briefly risen while he’d been in the Birnam Forest, in the region of the Twenty Cities.

  “My lord?” a man’s voice called.

  Alec opened his eyes and turned to look. The water was cooler. He’d lost track of time as his mind had wandered.

  “Is it time for dinner?” Alec asked. “I’ll be there shortly.”

  “Yes, my lord,” the servant replied, and left.

  Why had he thought about the Spiritual ingenaire from so long ago, Alec wondered. Was it related to the black cloud at the heart of the northern problem? Alec suspected that it
was. He stewed over the matter as he got dressed, and left his room.

  He had felt evil and complexity in the cloud, but he’d not understood it any better. Perhaps he needed a well-trained, more perceptive Spiritual ingenaire, or even more than one, to go on the expedition to the north, along with the Light and Warrior ingenairii. A Spiritual ingenaire, better trained in her craft than Alec was, would be able to analyze and understand the evil nature of the cloud better than Alec. And any clues they could derive from such a study could help them better understand how to fight the entity.

  He reached Kecil’s room and knocked on the door, without an answer. At length, he opened the door, and discovered the room was empty. He went down to the dining room and found the girl there, already seated, wearing a pretty new gown that flattered her appearance.

  “That bath was extraordinary,” Kecil greeted Alec. “I hadn’t been feeling well, to be truthful,” she admitted. “But I feel refreshed now.”

  “The discomfort was probably the price of earning your mark; you’re lucky to have had such a mild dose,” Alec explained. “And now you’re dressed and look like you’ve always been a princess!”

  “Teena laid this on my bed for me,” she mentioned the housekeeper. “It seems awfully nice for wearing to a simple dinner like this, but perhaps I don’t understand human customs,” Kecil seemed to blush faintly.

  “It is a,” Alec paused as he searched for the word, “dress that attracts attention,” he decided to say. “If you want to court any humans, that dress will work! That dress would get you married here in the Dominion in addition to your marriage in Vincennes,” he chuckled.

  “The lady’s married?” a servant blurted out the question, caught by surprise by the conversation.

  The two diners looked at one another.

  “In a sense,” Alec answered. “But not in the true spirit of marriage, perhaps,” he tried to evade revealing that the two of them had shared the ceremony at the Vincennes mission. “It’s a private matter of hers,” he added to cut off further inquiry, as the servant nodded acquiescence.

  “We will return to Oyster Bay tomorrow to organize the assignment of ingenairii and guards to go north,” he changed the subject, and addressed Kecil. “Then, when that is in order, you and I will go back to Vincennes to assist the sisters there.

  “The ingenairii brigade won’t get to the north for several days, so we’ll have some time to work in Vincennes before we return to the Dominion and join the investigation in the north,” he said. He hoped, but didn’t expect, that Kecil might decide to remain in Vincennes, safe from harm.

  “If you promise I’ll get to practice my healing work, I’ll go back with you,” she agreed.

  They slept in their rooms that night, and the next morning, Alec Traveled with his passenger back to the palace at Oyster Bay.

  “My beloved Regent, we’re here to go to Ingenairii Hill and speak to the ingenairii about the importance of their participation in this journey to the north,” he said.

  “You’ll go speak to them personally?” Olivia asked. “I thought you were going to let Nicholas extend the invitation.”

  “I decided to let the ingenairii see my personal interest in this,” he explained. “I haven’t been active in their society very much in recent years.

  “And Kecil hasn’t seen Ingenairii Hill,” he added. “I thought it would be worth showing her a whole society of our race.

  “Would you like to go with us?” Alec asked.

  “I never feel comfortable there surrounded by so many people who can do so many things,” Olivia replied hesitatingly. “I’ll stay here at the palace – I have so many things to do while the king is absent,” she said slyly. “My duties are never-ending.”

  “I’m sure the king appreciates your joy in taking on the duties of the throne,” Alec glibly replied. “We’ll be on our way, and we’ll be back to let you know how readily the idea is accepted.” He touched Kecil on the arm, and led her on a stroll through the palace halls, then out into a plaza, where they stopped.

  “Don’t tell me,” Kecil said, as she looked at a stony monolith that rose on one side of the plaza. “Another of your signature fountains?

  “Do you just make them when you have nothing better to do?” she asked facetiously.

  “This one was a little different,” Alec said in a softer voice. He stood, momentarily lost in memory, recollecting the events of the day when he had gone in pursuit of an imperial niece, and ended up carrying Jeswyne back in time to an uninhabited era, where the two of them had lived together and fallen in love. “It was different altogether.

  “I was fighting three demons at once,” he recounted the memory aloud. He hadn’t thought of it in years; during his decades of shared consciousness with Andi, he’d done his best to not remember his previous wives. And as a result, the memories that had been repressed for so long came flooding to the surface – bits and pieces of experiences and moments he had shared with Jeswyne in the present case.

  “What is it, my lord?” Kecil asked, as his memories absorbed his attention, and his silence stretched across a series of moments.

  “Oh, I was just thinking,” Alec replied, shrugging off the reverie.

  “Three demons at once? That is impossible to believe,” Kecil answered.

  “I’m sure it is,” he nonchalantly agreed. He started walking again. “And at the foot of Ingenairii Hill, you’ll see another one. I think you and I are the only people to have ever visited every one of my fountains.

  “No, wait,” he checked himself. “You haven’t seen the Boundary Lake fountain, have you?” he asked.

  “If I did, it was only in passing,” Kecil agreed. “That’s about where I was taken captive.”

  They walked through the streets of the city, unrecognized. Alec had receded from the public eye so thoroughly over such a long period of time that the populace did not recognize their king among them, and so they reached the entrance to Ingenairii Hill without trouble.

  Alec pulled up his sleeves as he reached the gates of Ingenairii Hill. The guards at the gate looked at the marks that he displayed, a collection of colors and shapes and meanings greater than any other ingenaire had ever been known to carry, and the two men stood at stiff attention after opening the gate, aware of whose presence they were in.

  Alec thanked them, then walked into the grounds of the Hill and led Kecil along the paths.

  “This building is where the Water ingenairii live,” he pointed out, with a fleeting recollection of Bethany, gone from the world for so many centuries, the woman who would have been his wife, and who had been his queen while he had been absent from the world.

  “Over here is Nicholas’s office. We’ll tell him what I have in mind,” Alec said as they strolled towards a large cottage, where Alec did explain his plan to address all the ingenairii within the ancient hall where the apprentice ball and many other events were hosted.

  “We’re going to walk around the Hill. We’ll be at the hall in two hours, if that will give you time to send out a notice to each of the Houses,” Alec instructed Nicholas.

  “It is such a beautiful place,” Kecil spoke a few minutes later as they walked up the paths that passed through the meticulously landscaped plots of land around the hillside. They were climbing towards the top, and Alec was pointing out the various Houses of ingenairii.

  “This is the Spiritual house,” he said as they passed one. “It may be the most useful House in some ways,” he said thoughtfully. “I didn’t always believe that, but now sometimes I think it may be.

  “I had a friend once who came from the Spiritual house,” he began to describe Kinsey, who was present in his thoughts again. “But that was a long, long time ago,” he cut himself short.

  “And up here are the Warriors’ quarters,” he said after they had climbed to the balcony of the building that Alec still thought of as Rubicon’s house, at the top of the Hill.

  “What a beautiful view!” Kecil said enthusiasticall
y. “I’ve never seen so much water!” she exclaimed, as she looked out over the ocean. “How far does it go?”

  “No one knows,” Alec told her. “Somewhere out there, if you went far enough, I think you might actually sail to the lands of the Avonellene Empire. But that’s just my guess.”

  “What in blazes are you doing here? Who are you?” a voice called out from behind them, as they stood on the balcony and looked out at the western view.

  “We’re just visitors, enjoying the view,” Alec replied. He turned to see a burly man glaring at them.

  “We’re not a tourist stop,” the man barked, clearly not aware of who Alec was.

  “And you’re not very civil either,” Alec replied coolly. The man’s needlessly hostile attitude provoked him. “Why are so many Warrior ingenairii so prone to poor manners?”

  “Gleese, Pranger, get up here!” the man bellowed. “I want you to watch this!”

  “We’ve got a couple of apprentices,” the antagonist turned back to Alec. “I’m going to put on a little clinic for them, courtesy of you.”

  Alec seized his Air powers, and lifted the man off the balcony, then swung him in a wide semicircle that ended when the shocked Warrior found himself hanging in the air several yards away from the edge of the balcony, the stony hillside far below his feet.

  The two apprentices came lazily climbing up the stairs, unaware of the reason for their summons. They reached the level of the balcony, saw Alec and Kecil, then saw their trainer suspended in the air, his face turning beet red.

  “Which of you is Gleese?” Alec asked, as the boy and the girl slowly stepped across the balcony towards their instructor staring with fascinated horror at the man’s predicament.

  “What should we do, master?” the girl asked.

  “Kill him!” the airbound captive shouted.

  “You really need to consider the consequences before you act,” Alec said mildly, coming over to stand next to the apprentices. “For example, if you harmed me, you’d cut off my use of the Air energy. And if you cut off my use of the Air energy, do you know what would happen?” Alec asked.