Alec watched the weapons approach, then reached out through the ability of his heightened Warrior reactions, and grabbed the arrows in the air before their struck him.
He returned to the trail and disengaged his Air powers, then spoke to the trio of Ajacii.
“Would you like to have these back?” he asked the two attackers, extending the arrows towards them.
“I am Alec, the Duke of Valeriane, and the opponent of Hellmann. I have come to speak to the leaders of the Ajacii. Will you escort me to see them?” he asked.
“We will fight you to the death to protect our people,” spoke the woman, who was in the center of the spread out trio.
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Alec said. “And I’m sure it won’t happen. There is no battle needed.”
“How did you arrive here? How did you pass our sentries?” asked the man on the left.
“I did this,” Alec replied, as he switched his use of powers, gaining access to the Traveler energies, and propelling himself to a spot fifty yards behind the defenders.
“I’m back here now,” he told them, as he saw their befuddled postures while they stared at the spot he had left. The three whirled around and ran towards him with uncanny speed, swords drawn.
“We can play this game some more, or I could simply transport myself into the village, but I do not want to make you look bad in front of the Council of Three,” he told them. “Be my escort, and we may all stroll peacefully to the village. Otherwise,” he paused, and used his Traveler power to move a hundred yards closer to the village.
The trio of guards approached him again, defeated expressions on their faces.
“What are your names?” Alec asked, and so, as they all began to walk, he learned that the female was Resa, and the two men were Carle and Aspe. He was escorted to the Council building, and sat in the front chamber as the members of the Council were hastily called to the building to meet him and hear his report. Within minutes they were satisfied as to his identity, and the conversation turned to substantive topics.
“I have been in Vincennes, and met Thyne, one of your companions. He is concerned that because of my abilities, I might be the evil power the Lokasennii have warned you about. I wish to let you know that I am not. I have been among the Lokasennii in their secure fastness in the mountains, just as I have come here to speak to you,” Alec explained to the Council members.
“Do you need our assistance?” one of the Council members asked. “The stories tell us that you once needed a great many Ajacii to help you in a battle against Hellmann.”
“I did, and their valor made that victory possible, though a high cost was paid with the blood that was spilt by so many of them,” Alec gratefully agreed. “There may be a time when I will ask for your help again, but for now, I do not believe that the skills of the Ajacii are what are needed to fight the new threat.” He thought about his spat with the Warrior ingenairii; if they continued to be non-cooperative, and if there came a time when he did need assistance along those veins, he might choose to call upon the Ajacii to provide the fighting power he would need. It was something to remember.
There was little remaining conversation after that. The Council agreed to send a message to Thyne, to assure him that he need not battle Alec. Alec knew that it was an empty victory; he wasn’t likely to return to Vincennes again. His plan for the future was shifting rapidly with each new revelation. He wasn’t likely to take Kecil on a long, leisurely trip across the continent. The discovery of the evil in the north of the Dominion, and the pronouncement of his own inexplicable connection to the evil were forcing him to reconsider what he was going to do.
He was reconsidering whether he should even continue to take Kecil along with him. She was in the peaceful and tranquil valley of the lokasennii; it was a better location than being carried by Alec to fight the mysterious evil of the north in the Dominion. How Kecil would respond if he suggested such a ploy was difficult to predict though; she might insist in continuing their partnership. They had certainly spent a considerable amount of time together, and her companionship had helped to fill the void in his soul left after Andi’s death.
She was not close to a complete replacement, of course. She was friendly, and over the course of her exposure to his abilities she had grown to be a booster, but she had nothing remotely approaching the connections and the intimate interactions that Andi had shared, nor even the psychic sympathy that Andi had given him.
He fleetingly pondered such matters as he bid farewell to the Ajacii, then astonished them by exercising his Traveler powers, and departing from the Council room at the end of the conversation. He returned directly to the path among the springs in Warm Springs, and strolled back to the home of the grendasteur.
“You don’t take long, do you?” Hope asked. She was sitting in her dining room with Kecil, sharing a meal.
“Do you know, it was in this very room where we first met, so many years ago,” Alec pointed out.
“That’s true. Bauer was with us, and Ailse, bless her spirits, was presiding,” Hope recollected.
“And you did not want to go with me on a journey out into the world,” Alec remembered.
“I did not appreciate all that you had to offer,” Hope gently corrected him. “No one had told me.”
“I bring that up, because I’m about to begin another journey,” he looked at Kecil. “And it is liable to be a dangerous one. Kecil, if you would choose to remain here in Warm Springs among the lokasennii, you would be safe while we face the evil cloud in the north. And afterwards, I could return to you, and we could take you back to your own land whenever the time was right.”
He saw Kecil’s jawline grow taunt and he knew the argument was lost before it had begun.
“Are you tired of having me around? Did you save my life so that I could be your plaything, and now you want some new toy to entertain you?” she asked in a low, dangerous tone.
“I’m not tired of you,” he replied. “I just wanted to give you the option of safety, and there is no place in the world that I know that is safer than Warm Springs. If you know that you want to remain with me, then we will stay together,” he replied.
“But do you want me with you?” Kecil asked. “I don’t want to be an unwelcome companion.”
“My wife died just a few weeks ago,” Alec answered. “And I miss her; I think about her often.
“But having you as a companion has helped to take away some of the pain of that loss. I will be happy to have you continue to travel with me,” he answered.
You handled that about as well as possible after the mistake of starting the conversation, Hope commented silently.
You would think that after centuries of life, I would know better than to stumble into that, he agreed wryly.
“So you might as well spend the rest of the day and the night here,” Hope said out loud. “Will you stay as our guests?”
And so they did. That night they went to one of the warm spring pools where there were no mists, and they looked up at the stars overhead in the clear night sky, then returned to the cabin set aside for them and fell asleep. The next morning, after breakfast and conversation with a few of the lokasennii, Alec decided it was time to return to the Dominion.
They teleported away from Warm Springs, and went first to Ridgeclimb. Alec spent a half hour walking about the settlement that had grown into a substantial village on the mountain trading trail. A caravan of traders from the west arrived while Alec and Kecil were present, and Alec briefly watched the commerce of the visit take place, before it was time to move on. They went to a valley in the mountains, and then to Woven.
“This is the city where Hope lived among the mortals,” Alec told Kecil, as they briefly walked among the city streets.
“There are so many humans!” Kecil exclaimed. “In Vincennes and in the Dominion and here in the Twenty Cities; we lacertii are surrounded and outnumbered.”
“But usually at peace with your neighbors,” Alec po
inted out. “There are no wars with the lacertii now, are there?”
“No,” she agreed.
The pair Traveled again, to Boundary Lake. From there they made the long jump to Chanradala, and then, after a moment’s pause, they went to the abandoned ruins of the city in the Pale Mountain, and finally, they went to the palace at the Healing Spring.
“That’s enough Traveling for today,” Alec said when they arrived and ungrappled from one another. “We’ll rest here tonight, and go north tomorrow.”
The staff at the palace was delighted to see their arrival and provided the high level of service and hospitality they always gave. “Don’t get used to this,” Alec told Kecil as they left the dinner table. “After we leave here we won’t have anything like this for a long time to come.”
Chapter 18
“It’s time for us to go north,” Alec told Kecil as they ate breakfast together the next morning.
“You’re not going to try to leave me behind here, are you?” the girl asked with an intense stare at Alec’s eyes.
“No, that issue is done. You can’t get away,” Alec retorted. “We’re going to go to the Healing Spring and get bags of water, then we’ll Travel north and wait for the ingenairii to arrive. We can go explore the countryside and try to discover more about our adversary while we wait.”
The couple went to the spring with several empty water skins which they filled quickly, then carried back to the palace. They said another round of farewells to the staff at the palace, and Alec translocated them to the northern settlement, Gallop, once more.
The store fronts showed less vitality than they had on the last visit. There was no evidence of residents in the empty streets, and as Alec led the way from their alley-arrival spot towards the guard outpost, he saw that a few of the stores were boarded closed. Only the tavern with the garrulous barkeeper was open in one stretch of the street.
When they arrived at the gates of the guard post, Alec and Kecil were quickly admitted.
“Why is Gallop so empty?” Alec asked the sentry who attended the gate.
“Because Death is coming closer,” the guard said. “People are disappearing from farms less than a mile outside the city now.”
Alec and Kecil looked at one another. “Have people spotted a black cloud?” Alec asked.
“Aye. If you hear screaming in the countryside, it usually means the cloud is coming to get someone, and it won’t go away until it has caught a victim or several,” the guard explained. “There’s hardly anyone left; we’re about ready to abandon this post, thank the spirits.”
“We’ll go talk to the officers,” Alec said. He gave a nod to the guard and left in search of the leaders he had met during his earlier visit.
The female lieutenant he had met during the previous visit rose from her seat, then knelt when she saw who had entered the command room for the outpost.
“You’ve come back to even more perilous times, my lord,” she said.
“Help is on the way,” Alec reassured her as he gestured for her to rise. “A whole collection of ingenairii are on their way from Oyster Bay, and should arrive in just another two or three days.”
“What can the ingenairii do against a cloud?” she asked. “Arrows and spears and swords are no use in the fight against that thing.”
“Call together the other officers and we can discuss the upcoming campaign,” Alec suggested.
“There are no other officers left, my lord,” the woman said with a tremor in her voice. “They’ve all gone and tried to lead battles against the Cloud…none of them came back.”
“So you’re the commanding officer?” Alec tried to keep the conversation focused, as it saw it on the edge of spiraling down to disaster. “In that case, I want you to come with us and show us the last location where the cloud was seen. We can talk while we walk out there.”
“If you so wish, my lord,” the lieutenant resolutely answered, though Alec could see that she had no desire to approach any location where the cloud had been.
“I fought the cloud once before,” Alec reassured the officer. “And we lived to tell the tale. Do not think that this is a hopeless trip.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she replied, as Alec turned and led the way out of the building. They said farewell to the guard, and then paced through the empty streets.
“What’s your name?” Alec asked. “And where are you from?”
“I’m junior lieutenant Dale, my lord, from Red Water,” she replied as they passed the last building on the north end of the settlement.
“I’m giving you a promotion to full lieutenant from now on,” Alec told her. “You’re not a junior lieutenant any longer.”
“Thank you my lord,” the woman said, a note of pleasure in her voice.
“We’ll approach the closest sighting of the cloud when we round that bend up ahead,” she motioned towards where the road disappeared behind a grove of trees.
“It’s very close to the village now,” Kecil commented. “It was much farther away just a few days ago when we were here before.”
“You’ll have to evacuate everyone left in the village,” Alec agreed. “At this rate of progress it’ll be among the buildings in no time. When was it last seen here?” he asked.
“Just yesterday morning,” Dale answered.
They walked in tense silence then, as they rounded the curve and looked at the road that slanted towards the northeast.
“There it is, my lord!” Dale suddenly whispered, as she grabbed his arm while she pointed into the forest.
The darkness rolled towards them from the dark depths of the forest, and Alec immediately raised a hand and fired a bolt of intense Light energy at the roiling mass. The cloud appeared to slow down its progress where the beam struck, but other parts continued to advance.
“We need to run back to the settlement!” Kecil shouted.
Alec turned and released another deadly bolt of energy at the cloud in another spot, and then another, slowing the darkness in each spot but only in those immediate areas.
“It’s too late,” Dale answered. “It’s going to get around us! We need to retreat into the forest on the other side of the road.”
“The cloud is already flanking us,” Alec said through gritted teeth as he turned to see the edges of the cloud silently slide across the road both before and behind them. He responded by releasing another half dozen bolts of energy, fired at random spots in the cloud, while it united its out flung arms in the forest behind them.
The trio was encircled, and Alec slowly spun around, releasing energy at any portion of the inky darkness that bubbled and churned as it slowly crept closer and closer to the trapped humans.
“My lord, I am so sorry to have led you here,” Dale apologized with tears in her eyes.
“We aren’t in trouble yet,” Alec said glibly. He burned the cloud in several more spots, continuing to force it to keep its distance, even as it slowly reduced that distance on every side. “But we probably ought to leave before this does become trouble,” he added.
“Dale, Kecil, come to me,” he held one arm out and pulled Kecil into a hug, while still shooting sparks of energy at the encroaching cloud.
Kecil instantly understood and complied, pressing herself against Alec, while Dale stared in non-comprehension.
“Dale! Get over here right now!” Alec barked, while Kecil beckoned. The woman reacted with instant compliance, and as soon as she did, Alec folded his outstretched arm around her. The cloud sensed that his attacks were finished, and it rolled towards its trapped victims with startling speed, but not quickly enough, as Alec engaged his Traveler powers and transported them back to the safety of the main street through Gallop.
“Oh, my lord! You are a truly great one,” Dale moaned more than spoke the words as she staggered out of his grasp. “You saved our lives!”
“Will that cloud come into the village?” Alec gasped out the question. He felt exhausted from having used so much energy fighting the c
loud and then escaping as well.
“It hasn’t come into the village yet, even when it’s been that close,” the lieutenant replied. “Do you think we should officially abandon the post?”
“I think we should pull back and wait until the ingenairii arrive so that we can strike the cloud with all our power at once,” Alec responded, not wanting to actually admit to abandoning the settlement. “Get your squad to work and knock on every door to order people to pack up and evacuate immediately.
“I’ll go back to the edge of town and watch for the cloud. If it starts to approach, I’ll send a warning,” he added.
“I’ll go with you,” Kecil quickly spoke up.
“Get everyone moving south,” Alec directed Dale. “Tell them there’s no time left.”
The lieutenant immediately dashed into the small guard post, and Alec heard her voice loudly shouting out orders, while he and Kecil began to walk up the road.
“What will you do if the Cloud starts to come to the village?” Kecil asked.
“I’ll try to fight it,” Alec said resolutely. “And I’ll send a shaft of light up into the sky as a signal,” he added. “And I’ll probably grab you and transport away again. There’s not much more that I can do right now,” he said.
“Once upon a time, long ago, I used to just heal people, and swing a sword,” he muttered to Kecil as they arrived at the edge of town and took up their position, scanning the vicinity for signs of the arrival of the deadly cloud. “Things seemed so much simpler then,” he sighed.
“You sound like my grandmother,” Kecil said sharply. “Everything was always better when she was young.”
Alec grinned in spite of himself, and said no more for the moment, until they arrived at the edge of the village. He stood with eyes that scanned from left to right, looking for any evidence of the next attack by the dangerous foe.
The attack came, a half hour later, just as Alec was estimating that the evacuation of the village should have been completed, and he and Kecil could withdraw from their station. The Cloud came tumbling out of the forest on the far side of the fields around the village, and streamers of the darkness crept forward ahead of the main body.
The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11) Page 19