Ajacii and Demons: The Ingenairii Series

by Jeffrey Quyle

  His work would be imperfect, but he suspected that the Ajacii would not notice, at least not immediately. He counted on people only seeing what they expected to see, and overlooking obvious imperfections.

  Alec labored on, satisfied he was doing well enough, until he came to the need to check his work. He sat back momentarily, then caused a ball of light to flare overhead. His work looked satisfactory. There, lying unconscious on the ground in front of him was a copy of Caitlen. He began to remove the man’s uniform, checking to make sure that the body appeared appropriately female. As he looked, he was satisfied that it would pass visual inspection; no one here was going to perform the delicate examination needed to detect the surface gender change Alec had performed.

  “What’s that light, Alec?” Bethany asked him softly. “Who’s that on the floor?”

  He looked up and saw both women’s eyes staring through the small windows in their prison doors. “This is your jailer. He’s unconscious for the moment. I’ve made him look like Caitlen.

  “The light is a new talent I have. I don’t handle it well, but I have the powers of a Light ingenaire now. It allows me to manipulate light in many ways, such as drawing energy together to form a light source,” he explained.

  “Do either of you know where the keys are kept?”

  “He puts them in his shirt pocket,” Caitlen observed. “How do you go out and just gain new powers to do miraculous things?”

  “I’ll explain after we do this,” Alec grunted as he felt the man’s shirt, finding a metallic bundle of keys. He tried each key in Caitlen’s door until one fit in and opened it, releasing the princess to tumble outward into Alec’s waiting arms. She was disheveled looking, and unwashed, but Alec noticed none of it as he held her in his arms and kissed her passionately.

  “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you,” he murmured.

  “You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Caitlen assured him.

  “This is all touching, but could you stay focused on the matter at hand?” Bethany asked. “I’d like to leave my humble home if you’ll just unlock the door.”

  Alec grinned at Caitlen, then released her to fumble through the keys to open Bethany’s door. He embraced her as well, then got down to work as both women circled the ball of light that illuminated their space, examining it with wonder.

  “Help me drag him – or her – into Caitlen’s cell,” Alec told Bethany.

  “That doesn’t look anything like me,” Caitlen protested. “I’m skinnier than that!”

  “Yes dear, but I can’t really make him any skinnier than he started out,” Alec winked at Bethany.

  They carried the unconscious jailer into the cell, then exited and pulled the door shut.

  “When the replacement shift comes down we’ll knock him unconscious, and make him look like Bethany,” Alec explained. “Then I will use my Light power to make myself invisible.”

  “You can do that?” Bethany asked in astonishment.

  “I can bend the light around me, making a kind of bubble that lets me stay invisible,” he answered. “And if each of you stays right next to me, I think you’ll stay invisible too. That should let us escape without detection.”

  “And when the next guards come down they’ll think that we’re still in our cells!” Caitlen exclaimed.

  “Exactly,” Alec agreed. “At least for a while we’ll go without pursuit. I hope.”

  He separated himself from the two women and picked up the broken lantern, then placed it on the desk, and focused on directing his ball of light into the lantern. He turned the illumination down until it was similar to the glow the lantern had previously provided. That done, he gave each woman an examination with his Healer powers, treating the minor aches and injuries they had suffered during their captivity.

  After that they talked, each telling the other what had happened since the day Alec had taken his group of young people out into the country. They spoke in low tones and explained their respective histories until they heard a distant sound.

  “Both of you go wait in Bethany’s cell,” Alec instructed them. As they went to their location, Alec sat at the guard desk with a hat pulled low to hide his face and the light in the lantern turned down even lower than usual. Seconds after everyone was in place, the door on the far side of the dungeon hallway squealed open, then clanged shut again.

  “Robb, why do you have it so infernally dark down here?” the new guard asked. “Would you turn that lantern up so I can see you?”

  Don’t look out here; shut your eyes, Alec mentally warned Caitlen and Bethany, as he rose from his seat, then closed his own eyes while he made the light flare up into a virtual miniature sun for three seconds, before turning it down to normal illumination.

  “What happened? I can’t see!” the new guard shouted. “Did the lantern explode?” he asked just before Alec reached him and knocked him unconscious. Alec knelt next to him and began to reshape the man’s face, and to darken his hair, making it lengthen slightly.

  “Can we look now?” Caitlen asked.

  “Yes. Come on out,” Alec grunted as he began the more challenging part of altering the man’s physique.

  “Do you really think I’m that buxom?” Bethany asked minutes later. Alec realized that both women were leaning over his shoulder monitoring his transformation of the jailer. “I’m flattered, sir.”

  Alec blushed so intensely that Caitlen laughed. “Even the back of your neck is turning red!” she told him.

  “Let’s get him into Bethany’s cell,” Alec said brusquely. He and Bethany carried the former jailer into the cell, and removed his uniform from him.

  “My legs aren’t that hairy,” Bethany commented in a clinical tone. Alec reached down and made the legs defoliate.

  “Princess! You should see how easy it is for him to remove the hair from legs! This man is a keeper,” she said affectionately, patting his back as she passed him.

  “You two carry the uniforms,” Alec told the as he went to remove his ball of light from the lantern. “We can dispose of them after we leave town.

  “From now on, you have to walk this close to me,” he bumped his body against the back of Caitlen to demonstrate. “I can’t make the invisible space very large, and you have to stay in it.”

  They reached the door of the prison, ready to walk up the stairs. “Alec, of course I trust you, but would you make yourself invisible, just so we can see how it works?” Caitlen asked.

  Alec turned and looked at her over his shoulder, understanding her nervousness. He stepped away from her and cloaked himself in invisibility, then circled around behind them, and reappeared.

  “You startled me! That really works,” Caitlen commented, her heart racing from the sudden appearance. “I’m ready to go,” she looked at Bethany, who nodded as Alec retook his place in front of them and established his invisibility.

  “Alright, we’re going, and it’s going to be slow for a long time. Don’t talk unless it’s a matter of life or death,” he warned. “I love you both,” he added for good measure, then extinguished the ball of light that had hung above them, and slowly opened the heavy wooden stairwell door.

  The door creaked, and he opened it only an inch at a time, then stepped up onto the first step. Is it okay if we talk like this? Bethany asked in the recesses of his mind.

  I forgot we could do that, Alec replied to both of them sheepishly, provoking gales of silent, nervous laughter.

  He continued up to the next step, then the next. Close the door behind us, slowly, he told Bethany on his right side. Once he heard the door close he resumed the methodical step-by-step ascent in the darkness to the door that was closed at the top of the staircase. He listened intently, then dropped his Light powers to use his Spiritual powers, sensing any person in the stairwell beyond. Finding the stairwell empty, he resumed the use of his Light power, and began to press the doorway open. A crack of light appeared, evidence that a torch still burned at the landing, and making A
lec nervous until they had begun to ascend from the landing and closed the door behind them.

  When they reached the top of the staircase, Alec turned right in the main hallway, and faced the front of the building. No one else was present in the building, and the window above the front door was dark with the night sky. Continuing to shuffle carefully, Alec went to a front window and looked out, to where he could see two guards in front of the building across the street, the building where he had been drenched in dirty water hours ago.

  If he opened the front door, the two guards would surely notice. That meant they would have to find the back door or some other undetectable way to leave the building. Alec silently informed his two shadows of the change in plan, and he began to lead the way to the back of the house, where a kitchen had a doorway that seemed to be unobserved as it gave access to a very narrow alleyway. Alec spread his Spiritual powers out wide, but found no one in the near vicinity of the doorway, so he slowly opened it, then took his tiny entourage out onto the back steps.

  Once the door was closed behind them, they stepped down into the dark alleyway. Alec stopped after ten yards as he heard a soft splash. It was me, sorry, Caitlen apologized. They resumed moving without further comment, and then turned right at the first opportunity, emerging into the virtually empty main street of the village.

  We’ll pick up the pace slightly, Alec warned the girls as they began to move down the nearly empty road. Whenever another person drew near, Alec would freeze in place until they were past, and then resume the journey to freedom.

  By the time they reached the turn in the road, leading to the start of the long climb up the canyon side, Alec estimated they had spent an hour traveling over a distance he would have normally walked in five minutes’ time. The whole of the ascent up the mountainside was before them, and he worried about their stamina.

  We won’t let you down, he heard Caitlen softly encourage him.

  I know you won’t, he replied with a mental smile. And he began to lead them up the hillside. Two hours later they had risen several hundred feet above the village, and the quarter moon was setting beyond the mountains.

  “We’ll stop here,” Alec spoke aloud, and he released his use of the Light power, then squatted down to rest. “Here,” he said after two minutes, “let me treat your legs,” and he applied his Healing power to both girls’ legs as well as his own.

  “Since we’re above the village, for now I’m not going to cloak us in invisibility. I’ll cast a dim light on the road in front of us so we can see where we’re going. It’ll help me save my strength for later,” he told them, and a dim patch of light appeared beside them, and began to move up the roadway as Alec stood to resume the journey.

  Alec, do you have any food? Caitlen asked an hour later. We haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and it wasn’t good.

  I’m sorry, Alec said contritely. He gave each of them a roll and a piece of sausage he had brought on the trip, though they continued to walk for another hour. He stopped and soothed their legs again, thinking of the times he had climbed the stairs of John Mark’s Cave with Rief and Bethany, refreshing their legs as well after hours of climbing the steps in the darkness.

  After another two hours Alec could tell they all were struggling with the climb and the lack of rest. He called a break, gave both the women doses of refreshing Healing energy, and doused his light on the road surface; he needed the break from the constant use of his energy, as he found it harder and harder to maintain his contact with the energy realm. The only sound was the noise of the wind blowing through the trees and rock formations around them. The sky to the east seemed to Alec’s eye to be showing the beginning of dawn breaking.

  “I wanted to be at the top of the canyon by dawn,” Alec explained, “so that we could find a place to hide and rest during the day. We’ll have two or three days of travel to get to Valeriane after that.” He stood and led them on the way again, once again traveling slowly as he resumed using his power of invisibility to shield them from detection.

  Two hours later, with bright sunlight shining on the weary group, they mounted the crest of the first ridge and began walking back to Valeriane. Minutes later, Alec saw a small glen beside the road, and he cautiously edged the girls into it with him, wincing as he saw bushes sway from their passage, until they were several yards off the road and screened by heavy foliage.

  We will rest here, Alec told them silently. I am going to take the first watch and maintain the invisibility cloak around us, while you two sleep. When my watch is over and I go to sleep, we’ll be visible, so I want the two of you to be alert to anyone who passes.

  They both fell asleep without argument, and Alec sat complacently, listening for the sounds of men passing on the nearby road. The sun continued to rise, and Alec’s expectations grew. Shortly after what he judged was noon, he heard the hasty approach of two men from the direction of Valer. Alec gently eased himself away from the sleeping girls, and crawled out to the side of the road. The men were in a hurry, not paying much attention to the roadside, and Alec guessed that they were messengers sent out to spread the alarm to the sentries that the prisoners had escaped. It was not an alarm Alec wanted raised, so his arms released a number of daggers that silently toppled the two men.

  Alec lifted their bodies and carried them deep into the woods, then used tree branches to hide the evidence of their footprints for several hundred feet along the road.

  He wouldn’t sleep himself today, he wearily decided as he rousted Caitlen and Bethany. We need to go, he told them silently. They already are sending out the alarm that you escaped.

  The two woke up, slightly refreshed from a few hours of sleep. Alec gave them each some bread from his dwindling supply, turned himself invisible, and led them out onto the road surface again. He gave each of them branches and told them to wipe away any footprints they left behind, then set them moving at a plodding rate. That evening, shortly before sunset, they reached another roadside wooded area where Alec decided they could pull aside to rest. They had not seen anyone else on the road during the day, but no sooner had they left the road than they froze as a squad of four men strode past them headed towards Valeriane.

  Alec watched closely, and after they passed he exchanged his Light ingenaire powers for his Spiritual powers to monitor the Ajacii, but he only detected them confidently striding towards Valer, unaware of any troubles.

  “Bethany, you take the first watch, and wake me immediately if you see or hear anyone, or even if you feel jumpy,” he commanded. “Caitlen, you take the second watch, and use your Spirit powers to try to feel anyone else who might be passing on the road. Wake me for the third watch,” he said, and within minutes he was soundly asleep, worn out by the long, continual use of his powers.

  Caitlen awoke him, seemingly just moments later. “It’s your shift dear. I love you so much,” she told him softly as she kissed him tenderly, then rolled a blanket around herself and fell asleep.

  Alec blinked sleepily and sat upright, then yawned before he extended his Spiritual energy outward, searching for anyone who might be approaching. The road was clear for now. Yet four hours later, as he prepared to awaken his two companions, the road was no longer empty; it grew dangerously full as a quartet of men coming from Valer met a squad that was returning.

  He engaged his invisibility, and crept nearer the road.

  “What brings you up from the valley, Reaver?” asked one of the larger squad.

  “Haven’t you heard? Our prisoners escaped,” the man from Valer replied.

  “Seriously, why are you out here? You never make the climb,” the first man answered, disbelieving the notion that escape from the Agacii was possible.

  “Seriously, the prisoners escaped. We’re on patrol to try to find them,” Reaver from Valer persisted.

  “How could two little slips of girls escape from Valer?” asked the first man skeptically.

  “Raj, we don’t know. Most think that he came to town and took t
hem. The guards were changed into women who looked just like the hostages,” Reaver answered. “Who can do that?”

  “How could the Demonslayer get into town undetected, free the hostages, change men to women and get out? Did he take them back to Vincennes? I thought he couldn’t make himself move through space any longer,” Raj asked. Alec could sense the level of tension growing among those who were returning to the village.

  “We don’t know. They say he can’t do that traveling through space, but he made it into and back out of the prison, and he took the prisoners with him. We found traces of women’s footprint climbing out of the valley and maybe another set as well, so they didn’t just fly out. We’ve lost a pair of messengers, so if it’s him, he’s still fighting. But I take it you haven’t seen them on your way down the road?” Reaver’s frustration was evident in his voice.

  “So what do we do? Turn around and go back to the palace in Vincennes and capture the Princess again? Send a whole squad there to kill the Demonslayer? If a demon can’t do that, and a whole village of Ajacii can’t catch him, what do we do?” Raj responded, and there was a trace of murmured ascent.