The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “I used to think about you sometimes, wondering how you and Amane were doing,” Alec admitted. “Andi used to tease me, and ask me if I wanted to go climb a tree,” he told her.

  The sky outside the inn had grown dark, and the dining room had filled with other patrons.

  “So will you make me happy and sing for the crowd, so that I can hear your lovely voice again?” he asked with a smile.

  “My old voice is hoarse and cracked. I never sing any more – it would be too embarrassing,” Aja told Alec, as a slight flush made her cheeks turn rosy.

  He reached across the table and laid his hand on top of hers, then let his healing energy surge through the touching flesh, reinvigorating her vocal cords, strengthening her lungs, and taking away a few of the fine lines that circled her lips and eyes.

  “I expect you’ll sound just as good as ever,” he said softly.

  “I felt that again; I remember that feeling, that essence of Alec flowing into my body,” Aja breathed. “You didn’t have to do that, my friend.”

  “Apparently I did, if I want to hear you sing!” he smiled at her. “Shall we go take the stage?” he nodded towards the empty corner of the inn.

  “Why not? How many more times will we have the chance to do this?” Aja threw caution to the wind and rose from her seat, as Alec stood too, and they moved to the corner of the room.

  It was like a return to youth, Alec thought wistfully an hour later, though youth was a relative term.

  Aja had sung with her clear, compelling voice, and captivated the audience of the inn’s dining room. She hadn’t sung the songs about apprentices or mischievous plots gone astray, though, as she had so often done in the times many decades past. Her songs had been gentle ballads about love and friendship, some filled with longing for days gone by, others telling of the gentle passion of a long relationship.

  “Thank you everyone for listening,” she said at last, as the room filled with gentle, appreciative applause after she took a bow.

  “Oh, that was marvelous! I feel so alive!” Aja told Alec as they left the inn and stepped out into the open square in the center of the city. She took both of Alec’s hands in hers and began dancing energetically, laughing warmly.

  “You’ve made me feel a hundred years younger, my lord,” she said as they stopped drawing amused glances and ceased their impromptu dance.

  “I feel two hundred years younger just seeing you have such a good time,” Alec told her.

  “Oh Alec, why don’t you come move to Exbury and make me feel young every day?” she asked. “Instead, I have to grow old and boring and stay respectable.”

  Alec, their hands still grasping one another, let loose a stream of healing energy into Aja, cleansing her veins, rejuvenating her muscles, adding density and strength to her bones, and plumping her skin to restore its youthful appearance.

  “What have you done now?” Aja asked, sensing changes within her body.

  “I’m giving you a little bit more time to enjoy being youthful for a while,” he replied.

  “Where’s a mirror? I want to see what you’ve done,” Aja cried tremulously.

  Alec exercised his light powers and created a pair of floating light orbs overhead, while also creating a shining disk of reflective light in the air, a mirror-like surface into which Aja stared. She released her grip on Alec’s hands and slowly touched her cheeks.

  “It’s like the very first time we met. I was blind,” she breathed the words softly. “And you gave me vision for the very first time, then you created a mirror just like this, so that I could see myself.”

  Alec felt a tear suddenly trace down his cheek, as he watched the lovely woman examine herself closely.

  “Are you ready to return to Exbury?” he asked.

  “No, I’m not, but I suppose you’re going to take me there, aren’t you?” Aja asked wistfully.

  Alec hugged her affectionately, then dismissed the Light functions that were calling attention to them. He grasped the Traveler power, and they disappeared from Boundary Lake, leaving a small group of startled onlookers to gasp and chatter about the unlikely event.

  They returned to the garden of Lord Smaille’s house, and stood in the darkness for a moment, holding their loving embrace, before they walked towards the door to the house.

  “I hope there’s still a carriage here to carry me home,” Aja sighed, as she walked with her head resting on Alec’s shoulder.

  “My lady?!” a servant exclaimed. “You’ve changed! You look so young!” the man exclaimed. His manner was polite, though his appearance was haggard. “Did the great one do this to you?” he looked at Alec as he asked.

  “My friend did this for me, yes,” Aja confirmed.

  “Could you heal illness, just as you’ve cheated Father Time?” the man asked Alec, staring at him with a beseeching appeal in his eyes.

  “I can,” Alec replied simply. “In most cases,” he added cautiously.

  “Would you come look at my son?” the man’s eyes were starting to fill with tears. “He’s in such pain.”

  “I can come right now, if you wish,” Alec answered. He felt taxed because of his use of the Traveling energy, and after having treated Aja, but he felt sure he had enough energy to lessen a boy’s pain. “You’ll excuse us,” he said to Aja.

  “Certainly. I’ll see you tomorrow, won’t I? You’re not going to run off to some other city, are you?” she asked.

  “No, I think we’ll stay here a bit longer. I’ll count on seeing you tomorrow,” he promised, and then he motioned for the servant to lead him to the ill boy.

  The servant whispered in the ear of a housekeeper, telling that he was leaving the mansion, then the man led Alec from the home and out through the streets of Exbury, on the way to his own humble apartment.

  “Jodie?” he called as soon as he opened the door, with Alec following in his wake. “I’ve found someone who can treat Rainer.

  “Jodie?” he called into the silence, as he stood at the threshold, then he walked down the dark, narrow hall and disappeared into a room, from which Alec heard a sob.

  “Come quickly, my lord!” the servant’s head leaned back out of the room, into the hallway, so that the man could see his visitor.

  Alec called upon his Light energies, and brightened the hall, then strode into the small room, where a woman was seated on the floor, stooped over a small huddled body on a pallet.

  Alec stepped over and knelt, then used his Healing energy to examine the boy, ignoring the exclamations of the parents as he placed his hands on the boy and began his treatment.

  He was just in time, he realized. The pulse of Rainer’s heart was growing feeble and irregular, until Alec released his Healing energy. The boy had both a congenital weakness in his heart, as well as an obscure fungal infection in his lungs. Together, the two maladies were too much for the pre-pubescent boy’s body to overcome.

  Alec sent energy to the boy’s heart to strengthen it, and to begin the complex matter of repairing the damaged valve Rainer had been born with. It required a delicate threading of the streams of energy he focused, as he kept the heart pumping and the blood moving, while manipulating and growing the muscle parts at the same time.

  “His color looks better already,” Alec distantly heard the voice of the mother who knelt next to him. He continued to focus on the minute details of the work on the organ for several long minutes, then switched to the less onerous task of removing the infection in the boy’s lung. He followed that at last by adding final boosts of strength to Rainer’s chest to make his upper body stronger, and finally concluded that he’d done enough to allow the boy to grow up strong and healthy.

  He removed his hands from his patient, and turned to see that the man was stooped over, his arms around his wife, watching the boy intently.

  “He’s going to be fine,” Alec assured them. “He was very ill, but those problems are over.”

  “He is breathing so much better,” the mother said with heartfelt
joy.

  “My lord, you are the greatest man to ever live!” the father reached forward and grabbed Alec’s hand in both of his, shaking it heartily. “We couldn’t ask for any greater gift in all of life than this! Our friends will be so amazed at this miracle that has come into our lives.”

  “They’ll be jealous,” the mother added. “So many of them have illnesses they cannot cure, and now this impossible healing is here.”

  “What can we do to repay you?” the father asked.

  “Just two things,” Alec said, a sudden plan forming in his mind.

  “You can take me back to Lord Smaille’s home for the night,” Alec told him. “And then, perhaps tomorrow, you could introduce me to your friends who need healing. Lady Kecil and I might be able to help some of them with their aches and pains. I believe we could stay here in Exbury for a few days to take care of your friends,” he explained, thinking that the prolonged visitation would give him an excuse to stay longer and see Aja for an extended time.

  “Come with me,” the servant told Alec. “I’ll take you directly back to Lord Smaille’s, and we will alert all our friends tomorrow that a miracle-healer is among us.”

  When they returned to Smaille’s mansion, Kecil and Coeur were just returning from their own tour of the city.

  “I can hardly wait to see everything in the daylight,” Kecil told Coeur. “Will we be able to stay here long enough for me to go out on a daylight tour?” she asked Alec.

  “Not just one tour – many tours!” Coeur interjected. “It will take a month of tours to show you the wonders of Exbury!”

  “I don’t know about a month, but I do think we’ll stay here for several days,” Alec satisfied the two young people.

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he added to Kerles. “And I’m going up to my room to sleep,” he bid them all farewell, feeling worn out by the uses of his energy during the day.

  Minutes later, as he was laying drowsily in his bed, he heard the door open.

  “Coeur is scandalized by the thought that I would sleep in the same room with you,” Kecil said softly as she entered the room, “but we’ve been doing this for months now, and it feels perfectly suitable.”

  “You’re welcome to come in any time,” Alec told her, and he turned over to fall back asleep.

  Chapter 26

  The next morning, Alec told Kecil about healing the young boy, and the opportunity to start healing others in the city.

  “That will be wonderful!” she enthused. “Healing and garden tours with Coeur! We might just stay here forever!” she laughed.

  They went to the market early in the morning and purchased items and goods they thought they would need to attend to the medical needs of the residents they expected to meet in Exbury. Upon their return to the mansion of Lord Smaille, as they sat down to eat the breakfast prepared by the kitchen staff, a note was delivered for Kecil.

  “It’s an invitation from Coeur to go on a garden tour,” she told Alec, with an amused shift of her eyes as she glanced sideways at him.

  “We could go try healing in the morning, so that your calendar is clear to go garden-hopping in the afternoon,” Alec suggested. “I’m sure the staff can provide paper and a pen for you to send a note back to your early morning invitation.”

  He asked for writing supplies, then spoke to the staff while Kecil penned her response.

  “I helped treat Kerles’s son last night, and we’d like to go treat other ill or injured people in his neighborhood this morning,” Alec began to explain.

  “I heard that he left suddenly last night; is his boy okay?” the head matron asked.

  “The boy is going to be fine, but he was very ill,” Alec explained.

  “Can someone lead us to Kerles’s apartment so that we can start our service there? I’m not sure I can find the way back on my own; it was dark when he led me there last night,” Alec asked for a guide.

  One of the servants agreed, and after Kecil finished her note, the two visitors followed their guide through the city. The trip to Kerles’s home was relative short, but it left the main street of the city and passed through a more ordinary-appearing district, bereft of the elegant house and plantings that the Old Ones maintained.

  “His home’s on the ground floor here,” the servant began.

  “I know, on the left,” Alec finished the directions. “We’ll find our way from here, thank you,” he shook the kind man’s hand, releasing a trace of healing energy.

  That morning Alec and Kecil proceeded to use the front stoop of the apartment building as their impromptu healing clinic, providing better health to a number of patients who were summoned by Kerles to be healed of a variety of ailments.

  “It’s nearly noon; perhaps we better return so that I can go on the daylight garden tour,” Kecil suggested as the line of patients began to diminish.

  We’re finished for the day,” Alec spoke loudly to the crowd. “But we’ll come back tomorrow,” he promised, as he looked questioningly at Kecil, who nodded her affirmation while the crowd groaned at the loss of the medical care.

  “Come to me,” Alec directed Kecil, and when she did, he waved farewell, then hugged her and made the crowd gasp in surprise as he engaged his Traveler energy and transported the pair of them back to the garden behind Lord Smaille’s home.

  “That was certainly a quick trip home,” Kecil smiled. “And it will give the crowd something to talk about. Do you think they’ll be afraid to see us tomorrow?”

  “They’ll just want to be healed all the more, now that they’ve seen such an amazing thing,” Alec answered. He felt mildly fatigued as a result of the use of his powers throughout the morning followed by the Traveling.

  “You run off and enjoy the gardens. Remember to tell Coeur that your favorite color is green,” he teased her. She responded by sticking her tongue out, then entered the home and was gone from view.

  Alec strolled over to take a seat in a shaded bower and rest, enjoying the quiet solitude of the garden for several minutes, until Lord Smaille left the house and walked over to see him.

  “I’m anxious to see my mother,” he began abruptly, as soon as he reached Alec. “I understand you’ve had some influence on her, and I’m concerned.

  “She shouldn’t be shaken out of her respectable and cautious life,” the nobleman lectured Alec.

  “I believe she is capable of making her own decisions about how she chooses to live her life,” Alec replied. “I met your mother a long time ago, and she is a vivacious and lively personality. If she wants to go about and see the world and laugh once again, I would be the last person in the world to stop her. It’s in her nature; it’s who she is.”

  Smaille’s face grew red. “I don’t want to see her getting hurt by trying to recapture her lost youth,” he told Alec, “and I don’t like to see some stranger come in to woo her to get access to her fortune.”

  Alec began to laugh.

  “What do you find so humorous?” Smaille demanded.

  “Money is the last thing in the world I need or want. Your mother may ask me for money if she needs any, but otherwise, that is not a topic we are ever likely to discuss,” Alec said haughtily, tired of the foolish pettiness of the conversation. He rose to his feet, but as he did, a servant called Lord Smaille to return to the house.

  “I’ll see my mother this evening, and we’ll discuss this matter personally,” Smaille asserted, and then he turned and left the garden.

  Alec shrugged and watched the man walk away. After two minutes, he walked into the house himself, and went up to his empty room, where he laid down for a nap, and dozed through the afternoon.

  A murmur of voices from elsewhere in the house roused him from his slumber in the late afternoon, and he went downstairs to find Aja being confronted by the astonished Lord Smaille.

  “How can you possibly be my mother?” Smaille was demanding of the youthful appearing Aja. She stood in the hallway wearing a green gown made of a shimmering material that
draped itself elegantly upon her figure, and was cut to display décolletage that made Alec’s heart momentarily flutter.

  “I begin to wonder that myself,” Alec said from atop the stairs. “She is so warm-hearted and full of laughter and kindness. Would you say those describe your nature, my lord? It’s hard to find evidence of the relationship between the two of you.”

  “Alec!” Aja castigated him as he descended the steps. “Be nice to my boy. He’s dealing with a shock to his expectations.

  “I imagine it’s hard for him to realize that his stodgy old mother was once a limber young woman,” Aja explained.

  “How could you possibly be my mother and look thirty years younger than I do?” Smaille asked.

  “Alec used his powers to rejuvenate my body,” Aja answered.

  “She looks the way I remember she looked, when she and I traveled together across the land, long, long ago,” Alec added.

  “If you can make her look so young, while don’t you make yourself look young, instead of middle-aged?” Smaille asked triumphantly, sure that he had found a flaw in the claims that Aja was his youthful mother.

  The taunt was like a challenge that Alec couldn’t resist. It reminded him too much of the too many times he had been told he was too old to travel with Kecil.

  “You mean like this?” Alec asked, as he focused his Healing energy inward, and began to intentionally rejuvenate himself. His body had mended and tended itself for centuries, causing him to age at a fraction of the rate of an ordinary person, but he’d never tried to deliberately add youth to his own physical status before.

  “Great heavens!” Smaille exclaimed loudly. His face turned pale as he watched Alec’s age appearance creep rapidly in reverse.

  “That is what I did for your mother,” Alec said moments later. “Now do you believe her?”

  “Even seeing it with my own eyes, I don’t believe it,” Smaille said in a hushed voice filled with astonishment.