“Please just call me Alec,” he requested, before the three stood and reported while he got cleaned and dressed with the aid of a palace servant, who like Rander seemed at home with royalty in the palace. Alec wondered at the return of servants to the palace so quickly, and suspected that it reflected the city’s longing for a return to normalcy.
With all the details arranged for the procession to the cathedral and the expected recognition there as rightful protector of the crown, Alec next heard the much less certain plan for approaching Ingenairii Hill to confront the rebellious powers in residence there.
“When we arrive there, let me proceed to meet them first,” Alec told the others.
“Talking to them will do no good. Those still alive and in charge aren’t the type to talk, especially under those circumstances,” Rubicon replied vehemently. “Don’t put yourself at risk.”
“I will not do anything risky,” Alec replied, feeling pressed by the compulsion to act that Natalie had implanted in his mind. He couldn’t tell what the details of his fated action were, but he knew it would unfold when he confronted the ingenairii on the hill. The set of his face warned the others from any further argument, and they all went to the kitchen for a bite before departing.
In the bright morning light, Alec climbed into his saddle, attired in regal clothes suitable for his investiture in the cathedral. As they rode out, Aristotle rode close to him.
“Do you have a plan for what you’ll do on Ingenaire’s Hill?” the plainly-robbed ingenaire asked without subtlety. “Rubicon is worried that we’re no more than going to have you in control than you’ll be lost to us. He doesn’t want that for your sake, and neither do I, Alec. You’ve meant a great deal to me since we met at the carnival in Frame.”
Alec looked at Aristotle with deep affection in his heart. “Ari, you’ve been the most important person in my life since we met, and it means a lot to me to hear you say that.
“I have to do something on Ingenairii Hill; Natalie’s spirit visited me last night. I don’t know what will happen, but I am obligated to do this, and then…” he trailed off, not wanting to talk about the trip he would have to take to Stronghold to save Natalie’s life.
Ari looked at him but did not probe further, not comprehending the compulsions Alec was under. They rode together silently in the noble procession down the smooth gray surface of the wide boulevard to the cathedral. Alec observed the large crowds along both sides of the road, men, women and children standing respectfully as the mighty procession rode by, men doffing their hats as Alec came within sight. Again he wondered about how quickly word had spread through the city regarding the events of the last twenty four hours, and this reminder of how greatly the populace now desired to have a stable, honorable regime, commanding the city from the palace. For the people of the city, a calm and steady leader on the throne was the only way to hope to stop the threatening mayhem and the draining uncertainty that was clouding their lives.
At the cathedral Alec was received by the prelate, who was flanked by Cardinals en masse, notably Cardinals Humano and Divino, who Alec recognized from their early encounter in Goldenfields. The long and symbolically rich ceremony of investment continued for more than two hours, as the church placed its official blessing on Alec as the new and rightful, albeit temporary, ruler of the Dominion. The shafts of sunlight that reached the floor of the cathedral were visibly moving through the holy spaces as the hymns were sung and the various priests delivered the ornaments of power. Alec’s attention wandered while he followed the edge of one circle of sunny brightness, as it lit up one new face after another, often gleaming from newly illuminated jewelry pieces, while other faces were left behind as when the bright attention left them, often leaving them grateful they no longer had to squint from the blinding ray that impaired their vision.
At the end of the ceremony Alec turned, now carrying fasces and wearing his robes.
He knew some words were expected of him, and paused, standing silently as he faced the crowd in the long nave that stretched away from him.
“Rander, of the Palace Guard, shall be my steward, who shall help set the lands aright and govern in my absence,” he began abruptly. “For matters of warfare and battle, I shall rely on Rubicon’s advice,” he continued. Alec knew that such mundane matters as naming his advisors was hardly a speech that would be remembered, but he knew it was important that people believe order was restored. “I would have named Aristotle as my chief advisor, but I know that by the end of the day he will once again be in charge of Ingenairii Hill, and his time will be fully needed there to put the place back in right order!”
A cheer came from the back of the room and rolled forward through the crowd.
“I may be the protector of the crown, but you are the people of the Dominion, and your welfare is what I am called by God to protect, and your wounds are what I am gifted to heal. We must work with all the lands of the Dominion and serve the interests of the Commonwealth. My first intention when the city is under control is to send word to the Duke of Goldenfield that an army is ready to march to his assistance in battling the lacerta forces that threaten his duchy and the Dominion,” Alec said.
Not knowing anything else to say, he waved to the crowd, then turned to see where the Prelate was, and walked back to stand by him. Together they left the dais and disappeared into the offices in the back of the cathedral.
Alec thanked all the priests and functionaries, then impatiently directed that his forces be assembled to move east to the gate of the ingenairii’ compound. He sensed some ominous welling up of capacity and potential beginning to stir within him, and a deep fear began to grow as his horse rode at the head of the column moving towards Ingenairii Hill.
“Will you tell us now what will happen here?” Aristotle asked as he and Rander pulled up on either side of Alec.
“I only know that when we arrive at the gate I will walk alone to the gate and ask for all the leaders of the rebellion to come parley with me; and they will be compelled to come, just as I am compelled to approach them,” Alec said haltingly, his face screwed up in concentration as he tried to ferret out the knowledge that had been driven into his brain.
When they reached a point 100 feet from the gate Alec held up his hand and directed the procession to stop. “Don’t follow me and don’t begin to take control of the Hill until it is obviously the time to do so,” Alec said, looking at Aristotle. “Even when it looks like I’m in trouble, I’ll be protected. This is being orchestrated by a greater power than us, and I’m just the clay that is being shaped by the potter.”
“Trust me, and thank you for all you’ve done,” Alec said, with a fatalistic heartfelt feeling that he was not going to see any of these people again for a long time. “Rander, you’ve seen what a King must do. Use your judgment for the good of the Dominion if the need arises.”
They both looked at him soberly, as he dismounted and walked towards the gate. A contingent of armed men was visible across the formerly friendly pathway that Alec had walked through countless times when he was a student on the Hill. Faces became distinguishable, and among the score of men in the open, Alec recognized many he had known previously on peaceful terms.
“I am here to parley with your leaders, to assert to them that the rightful protector of the crown expects their immediate oath of allegiance, and so that justice may be dispensed. Tell them all to approach immediately, and let no one fail to come,” Alec said, feeling as if he was only the mouthpiece for a divine power; the words had no real meaning for him, but their deliver was a step taken that caused another step to be taken as a consequence, each step leading closer towards whatever climax was going to occur on the spot.
A word of protest began to come from one of the men on guard, but it was silenced as a tall man stepped past him and approached Alec. He was one of the ones Alec recognized, an apprentice warrior ingenaire. As Alec looked at his disdainful expression he saw another man step out of the gateway, Fallion, head of th
e Fire Ingenairii.
“Who is this alleged king we are supposed to bow down to and allow to condemn us?” the warrior asked.
“I am the Protector of the Crown of the Dominion, seated in Oyster Bay to bring unity and peace to the lands between the mountains and the sea,” Alec said calmly.
Fallion rudely laughed at Alec’s assertion. “You’re a trumped up charlatan healer in over your head and being pushed and pulled as desired by Aristotle over there,” the Fire leader said. “Aristotle had his time to control the ingenairii, and that time is over.”
More members of the ingenairii’ ruling class were emerging, coming out onto the cobblestone plaza at the entrance to the Hill. Their brightly trimmed robes provided a vivid panoply of colors, signifying the strength of the power opposed to him. Alec counted twelve present so far, and felt sure more were coming.
“I answer to a greater power than Aristotle,” Alec replied. “I am here to put an end to the division in our ranks, and to pull together the ingenairii who will support the Dominion, along with the church and the army and the nobles and the people, who all want the peace and freedom they lost during these troubled times.”
Nearly two dozen were now present, probably all that really mattered for leadership purposes. “Is this all your leadership?” he asked. “Where are the leaders of the ingenairii who returned from exile in Goldenfield?”
“They didn’t have anyone who provided to be an effective leader,” Fallion said in a cold, emotionless voice.
“You mean they didn’t have anyone who acceded to treachery, murder, greed and destruction as the best use of ingenaire powers, don’t you?” Alec rephrased.
“How dare you stand here and insult us! We can lay our hands on you, harm you, bind you, kill you, far faster than any of the rabble back there can do anything for you,” the warrior ingenaire reminded him.
“There is nothing you can do to me. My actions alone will decide the fates of any of us gathered here,” Alec told him. “Just as I decided the fate of one of your fire ingenairii back long ago in Goldenfields when he tried to hunt me down,” Alec said to Fallion, attempting to goad the fire ingenaire to attack.
“I suspected! I never had proof, but I suspected! You deserve death for such an attack by a mortal upon an ingenaire,” Fallion said angrily.
“Once upon a time you could have killed me, but I am beyond you now. You should have tried when you could,” Alec replied.
Without another word Fallion raised his hand and pointed at Alec, releasing a stream of incandescent fire that shot straight at the young leader. As he saw the beam begin its instantaneous strike towards him, Alec realized he was supposed to treat this energy just as he had treated the fire energy Belman had attempted to kill him with back on the lonely road to Goldenfields; he absorbed the energy as it struck him, letting it do no harm to him but gathering it within himself. He was in an almost trancelike state now, feeling the compulsion shaping events within and around him, preparing the reaction, and guiding a crescendo to completion.
Gasps and shouts from the assembled ingenairii were faintly echoed by the reaction of the royal procession Alec had left behind. A metal ingenaire attacked Alec by sending fluid coils of steel through the air to wrap around him, but they too disappeared as they touched him, absorbed into his body. A stone ingenaire made the stones of the ground around him erupt violently and shoot through the air at him, but Alec allowed them to bounce off him and fall around his feet. Other attacks were mounted against him now too, as the ingenairii panicked at the notion that their adversary might be impervious to their previously unstoppable powers.
All the energy being thrown at Alec built up within him, and Alec now knew what he was supposed to do. Acting by instinct, he relived a flashing memory of the process of coalescing and then releasing the power from other ingenairii that was stored in him. He imagined that he felt the warmth and saw the glow again, and struggled to maintain his consciousness because of what he knew he had to do next.
A hum built up around him and now visible bands of color began to glow and mingle as they rapidly grew brighter, shimmering in the air. Alec sensed that the explosion was about to happen. A new instruction erupted upon his awareness from Natalie’s compulsion. The boy-ruler-ingenaire gasped at the unfolding scenario, and he prepared himself for the final step of this great act.
Aristotle would have quite a mess to clean up, and Rander would feel as shocked to become a ruler as he had felt, Alec was certain. Oyster Bay would shudder in uncertainty after today. But he would have lived up to the commitment thrust upon him in Bondell, be free of his royal duties, and could undertake the ordained trip up to Stronghold to finally cure Natalie, without interruption or distraction.
As he felt the power start to burst from him, he had a sudden memory of the fountain of healing water he had created upon the distant bank overlooking the Giffey River. That would be a nice touch to give to Oyster Bay he thought, something to clean away this mess. And then he concentrated.
Alec made a leap through time as a thunderous boom erupted around him and power was unleashed from him. He disappeared from that day of coronation just as the wave of energy swept out from his body, searing away the group of rebellious ingenairii who had been compelled to stand around him. The guard shacks flanking the gate to Ingenairii Hill were burst apart, as was a length of the stone wall that had existed along the outer boundary of the ingenairii domain. The men from the palace and the cathedral, still seated 100 feet away in obedience to Alec’s command, were knocked from their saddles, and their horses screamed in alarm at the explosion.
Windows in building within a quarter mile were shattered, walls cracked, and the ground shook violently. The whole city was alerted to the cataclysmic event at Ingenairii Hill.
No survivors remained from the Ingenairii party, neither the leaders nor their armed men who had begun to take positions to defend the gate from a conventional attack. Aristotle slowly sat up, then rose to his feet and peered through the dust and smoke that filled the air. He gathered a dozen men with swords, and they dashed across the uneven surface of the damaged plaza, shouting for Alec.
As they penetrated the smoke they saw something standing where the explosion had occurred, where Alec had stood. It was a tall, bright stone monolith, from which spouted upward a jetting spring of water. The water was spraying down to the rubble-strewn ground, and where it touched and began to run in rivulets, it carried away the grime and filth of the explosion’s aftermath, cleaning up the mess, just as Alec had cleaned the corruption from the ingenaire community in his last moment that day.
A preview of Book Four of the Ingenairii Series, The Lifesaving Power: Goldenfields and Stronghold…
“Shouldn’t we wait for Brandeis?” Alec asked Circh loudly.
“Oh, he’ll know where to find us,” a nearby man said.
“Where did you lose him?” another asked Circh.
“Oh,” she rolled her eyes, “you know perfectly well. He’s been gone for four days and needs to go visit her. It gives me the creeps,” she added.
“You don’t think he opens it up and sees her, do you?” asked a girl sitting on the other side of Alec.
“I doubt it. That would raise such a ruckus if he got caught, and he’s already been told to leave her alone,” the first man in the conversation answered
Alec sat in silence as the gossip began to flow around him. He had assumed that Brandeis’s warm personality and quick wit would have made him a favorite of this crowd of party-goers. Instead they just seemed to gossip about him behind his back; he’d seen the likes of it before with other people in the orphanage and in the carnival, and he knew it was an inevitable part of human nature. As he sat pondering this unseemly behavior, a comment caught his attention, and riveted him back to the words flying around him.
“I’ll bet she still glows blue,” another girl said.
“I don’t think that’s true. That’s impossible to imagine,” Circh answered as she shuddere
d so violently Alec felt it.
“Why did she have a closed casket then? No one ever saw her,” the girl answered.
“She died in Oyster Bay; her body took weeks to get here. Of course they had a closed casket,” the man replied. “Of course that would surely put an end to him going to the catacombs if he opened the tomb and saw her remains now.”
“Can we stop this?” Circh asked. “I just want to have fun, not talk about corpses.”
“There’s Brandeis now, coming in the door anyway,” another man nearby said. “Let’s go down to Schama’s.”
“But I just got here and have had nothing to drink,” Brandeis commented as he walked up to the table. “You wouldn’t want to deny me the right to have a famous Coldlake brew here at the Oak Table after spending weeks in the wilderness without any sustenance, would you? If Circh and Alec hadn’t persuaded me to join them in cannibalism we all would have died,” he said straight-faced as he held up a finger for the serving girl. He slid a leg over the bench across from Alec and squeezed into place. Alec sensed again the feeling of melancholy and joy he had first sensed earlier in the day while at the woodlands camp. It was Brandeis who carried the feelings, and at the moment the melancholy was much stronger than it had been. Alec saw no tears, although it felt as if the man was crying on the inside.
“What’re you having?” he asked Alec. “Please tell me you didn’t start with the ale? It’s brewed from fermented floor sweepings,” he said in a loud, conspiratorial whisper.
“He hasn’t ordered anything yet; he’s too intoxicated with my beauty as it is,” Circh replied for Alec, leaning against him and draping her arm across his shoulders.
“If it’s your beauty, then yes, he’s intoxicated, at any rate,” Brandeis said with understatement that brought a laugh from the crowd and a face from Circh. Alec drank a glass of redberry juice while the others finished their drinks, then followed them out the door towards the next stop.
The Loss of Power: Goldenfields and Bondell Page 39