Visions of Power

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Ryder looked at Alec with approval. “So Inga gave you a workout today, did she? You won’t have a better teacher to learn from, especially when she’s healed and up to full strength. Pay attention to her footwork in particular; she gets a great deal of thrust from her legs when she needs it.”

  “So where do you want to go, back to your shop again?” the colonel addressed Alec’s request.

  “If there is time, that would be nice, but I’d like to go to the cathedral this time,” Alec said. “I’d like to attend services led by a priest.”

  Ryder looked at him, only a raised eyebrow revealing any reaction. “That will be fine. Go ahead and clean yourself up, and Ellison will meet you here when you’re ready,” Ryder said and walked away to attend to his duties. Inside the infirmary, the Duke asked Alec how practice had gone, and talked about the advantages of being left-handed.

  Alec left him after a brief conversation and washed up in the back, enjoying the hot water he used. When he came back out, he found Inga, Ellison, and the Duke talking together. Their conversation stopped when he entered the room.

  “We’re to go to the cathedral this time, am I right?” Ellison asked as they went down the tunnel to the mainland. “I’ve gone there several times myself to attend holiday services. It’s a beautiful building.”

  Several minutes later they came out in the tavern in the city again. At Ellison’s suggestion, they ate a quick meal of stew and bread in the tavern, then began walking towards the cathedral, which was visible over the intervening buildings.

  They soon passed through one of the ornate gates in the walls of the grounds and arrived at a large plaza in front of the cathedral. “There are a dozen different chapels inside the cathedral and its grounds, and I’d guess there’s probably a service underway at one or another. Let me ask one of the docents where we can attend a service.”

  Alec stood with his hat on and his collar drawn up to reduce any potential for recognition, as he had done throughout their journey. Ellison returned with news. “In the riverside chapel there is a service in remembrance of sailors on the river. Let’s go to that one.” They walked to the left once they passed within the main gate of the cathedral grounds, and walked around the grounds to a building that stood on the very edge of the bluff overseeing the river, with windows in both directions showing the river bending away for miles in each direction.

  As they stepped across the threshold of the chapel, Alec felt a sense of peace pervade his soul. Unspoken, his mind formed the words ‘in te, Domine, speravi’. Alec knew that coming here was the right thing to do.

  The small chapel was more than half full, and Alec and Ellison wound up with seats near the front of the chapel. They removed their hats, just as a priest entered. The two visitors joined in singing an opening hymn, and participated in the responses calling for mercy for the souls of those who had died on the river, and salvation for those who yet worked on the water.

  When the priestly touch of grace began, Alec saw the priest’s eyes widen as Alec arrived at the front of the line. There was no explanation Alec could come up with for the look, but he quietly murmured it to Ellison as they sat in their pew.

  After the service they had to wait for those in the back of the chapel to exit first. The priest was waiting outside the door when they returned to the sunshine. “Excuse me sir, but you seem familiar. Would you step back into the chapel and wait for me to return in a few minutes so that we might have a brief word?” the priest asked Alec in a pleasant tone.

  Alec sensed Ellison drawing closer. He turned and looked at the guard. This priest was not anyone he could ever remember having met. Yet the sense that he had been destined to come to the church grounds remained with him, and he sensed no evil intent from the priest.

  “Yes, we’ll wait briefly, if you can join us quickly,” Alec replied.

  “As quickly as I can, I promise,” the young priest said.

  Alec and Ellison stepped back up into the chapel and sat by a window facing north along the river towards the heart of the city. “I don’t recognize that priest at all, Ellison, but my heart tells me that I should be here,” Alec told his guard. “There’s no ill will that I can feel while sitting on these grounds.”

  Ellison shrugged. “You’re awfully young but very bright, so I’ll trust your judgment on this. We should have little to fear here at the church grounds. The people in the city know there is a little corruption in the church, but less than in most other institutions and there is no one who believes the church still practices its old ways of meddling in politics.”

  “Well, to be believed we’re not the worst we can be is hardly a glowing endorsement, but we must at times take what we can,” a voice laconically commented.

  Alec jumped; the voice sounded like it came from right next to him. He turned and saw the priest and three others standing at the far end of the chapel, near the doorway. “How did you do that?” he blurted out.

  “You did it for us, my young scholar,” one of the priest’s companions replied as they strode towards Alec and Ellison. The priest still wore his black robes. Two of his companions wore black and red stoles over their robes, while the fourth member of the group Alec recognized as the bishop who had led the sacred healing chants in the Duke’s chambers.

  “Thank you for remaining here so that we may talk,” the bishop said. “I am Theodore, Bishop of Goldenfields Duchy and City. These are Cardinals Jure Divino and Jure Humano, who happen to have arrived in our city last night. They came here specifically in hopes of meeting the Duke and meeting you, young healer.

  “Your presence here on our grounds, and the fact that you are recognized by one of the twelve priests you invited to perform rites in the Palace,” he nodded to the priest who had just performed the services for sailors, “tells me that the will of God brought us all together.”

  “We wish to chat with you. Would you give us some of your time and let us know more about you and your miraculous and mysterious ways?”

  Alec looked at Ellison. There was no indication one way or the other on his face of what he thought, and Alec still felt that his own heart intended him to speak to his church. He took a deep breath, noticing how the dim interior of the chapel helped to calm the atmosphere. “Tell me how you heard us and spoke to us from the far end of the chapel,” Alec said.

  “You’re standing at the end of an arched portion of the roof of the chapel. The shape of the arch causes the sound at one end, even a whisper, to echo and echo and echo again so that it travels to the other end of the arch, which in this chapel is located at the vestibule. It’s just a simple architectural trick. Watch in large public spaces for arched or curved ceilings. There’s a chance that two points will be the ends of an echoing arch, and some architects even know how to calculate heights and angles and distances to create them, usually as novelties.

  “It was completely a coincidence that you happened to move to such a spot to talk before we arrived,” Bishop Theodore explained.

  A sound at the doorway drew their attention to the entrance of a servant bearing a tray with pitchers and glasses and a plate of cheese with crackers. “Thank you,” the bishop said, and then all were silent until the servant left and closed the door behind him.

  “Three things have drawn us to you, young healer. One of these, perhaps the least, is that you have healed the Duke of wounds that we all believed he could not survive. In fact, the rumors among some elements in town claim that there was poison on the blades used to wound the Duke, a poison for which no antidote is known.”

  Alec observed Ellison’s eyebrow raise.

  “We are friends and supporters of the Duke, qualis rex, talis grex, we believe. We are pleased for all that the Duke is healthy. Yet the health of the Duke is in some ways not as intriguing to us as the healing and the healer,” the bishop said carefully.

  “The second is that you not only called upon the church as a partner in healing, but you specifically asked for a church tradition that is anci
ent and forgotten to almost all in the realm.”

  Softly Alec chanted, “Ex Deo nascimur, in Jesu mortimur, per spiritum santum reviviscimus.” The words had whispered themselves in his heart as he had examined the Duke on his deathbed, and he had known that they would call down the favor of the Lord to save the Duke’s life.

  The two cardinals exchanged glances with one another. “You understand those words?” Divino asked.

  “From God we are born, in Jesus we die, by the Holy Spirit we live again,” Alec replied.

  “Those words are only taught as an ancient chant to a few priests in particular sacred music classes,” the Cardinal said. “It seems unlikely you would know them at all, much less know the disused tradition of relying on them in extreme healing cases for royalty. Yet you called for them exactly correctly.”

  Alec said nothing in response.

  “Finally, the third intriguing item is that you have just appeared in our midst as an itinerant healer, unknown and given your age, untrained by any college or master doctor. Within a week of appearing you have completed two impossible cases of healing. Where you came from is unknown, and in fact we do not even know your name. Your friends at the palace are doing a very good job of clamping down on any information about you, by the way.”

  “Tell me about the relations of ingenairii and the church,” Alec responded. He knew that he wanted to talk to these men, but he didn’t know how to begin, so he stalled for time by asking the questions that danced in his brain. “Shouldn’t ingenairii rely on prayers and the power of God to perform their actions, or at least some of them?”

  The bishop and the cardinals all exchanged glances. Cardinal Humano responded. “There was a time when ingenairii were in fact part of the church, for the exact reason you mentioned. But over the centuries, they came to rely on things they could do that were not reliant on holy power, things that have an even older tradition among them. Eventually, there were two camps of ingenairii, the sacred and the profane, and as time passed, there came to be fewer and fewer of the sacred ingenairii, until there are almost no sacred ones left.”

  “I wonder if there is a sacred ingenaire named Aristotle,” Alec asked.

  “There is only one sacred ingenaire in the past century, and his name is Aristotle,” Humano responded. “Aristotle is trusted by the church and relied upon by the church, though he is not directed by the church.”

  “He also is very involved with the council of ingenairii. Aristotle can wield influence in both circles, the only such person today,” the cardinal finished. “And the fact that you know his name is a fourth point of interest now.”

  Alec had been debating what to say. His fear of capture by the ingenairii had extended to a lesser extent to fear of the motives of the church as well, yet the peace in his heart gave him faith. He decided to tell at least a part of his story. “I worked in a caravan for many months with an ingenaire named Aristotle. He took me under his wing and taught me many things. I loved him for his good works and his good soul.

  “He told me stories about the mountain lands; that ancient kingdoms had stood in places where Walnut Creek and another settlement were. He especially interested me when he told me that our Savior had walked and taught in those lands. Were those things true?”

  Cardinal Divino seemed to relax at Alec’s explanation. “Yes,” he replied, “Aristotle told you things that most folks don’t learn, although the church leaders do remember.

  “Our Savior arrived in the mountain kingdoms centuries ago, when he was a young man. He traveled and preached and taught and performed miracles, and converted us to the worship of the One God during his five years here. There are many holy sites in those mountains we would wish to reclaim and visit and restore as sites for pilgrimages. Our records tell us that many miracles were attributed to such sites and shrines in the old times.”

  “Before the Lord left us, he prophesized that we would learn more in the future. Nearly thirty years later, in another portion of the mountains, Saint John Mark came to us, in the same mysterious way from the same unknown land that was home to our Lord. He lived among us for twenty years, and traveled through many kingdoms, including some of the lands we live in today. Stronghold, for example has a cathedral on the spot where John Mark died,” the Cardinal explained. “And his crypt is believed to be under the cathedral there.”

  “John Mark told us the story of what happened to our Lord in that other land where he was born, how he became a great teacher there, just as he had here, and how he came to be sacrificed, and saved us all through his death and resurrection. John Mark brought order to our church as well, establishing the governance we still use today.”

  “The lessons you and all of us learn in church are from Jesus directly, or from St. John Mark’s accounts of his life after being in our land. That is more than you asked, but it is so reassuring for churchmen to recount the story that we never grow tired of telling it again,” Divino smiled.

  Alec felt inspired by the story he was hearing. He had not heard it delivered before, although living in the orphanage and attending church often had made him familiar with the lessons and morals Jesus delivered.

  “I would tell you something that Aristotle told me,” Alec began to confess. “But I fear how I’ll be treated for having such knowledge. Can you promise me that the things I say will be protected, and that I won’t be identified to anyone as the source? I don’t want to be a captive, of the ingenairii or the church or the Duke, just for the sake of people draining every last shred of information out of my mind,” he said with emphasis.

  “We have the tradition,” the bishop began after a brief consideration, “of the sanctity of the confessional, of course. We could perhaps treat this as an extraordinary confession?” He looked at the two cardinals for confirmation, and waited until both had nodded agreement.

  “Will you kneel at the altar and pledge to not reveal who told you the things I am about to tell?” Alec asked, wanting some tangible proof.

  A few minutes later, with the four churchmen and Ellison all arising from the altar, Alec began his tale. He mentioned his orphanage roots, followed by a recounting of the caravan’s trip into the mountains, and then the shocking arrival at Riverside, the attack and escape, and finally he described his fateful trip up the canyon and stumbling into the cave where he had his miraculous experience. Words failed Alec as he tried to describe the sublime feelings that had possessed him and the astounding location he had visited. He held back any mention of the cryptic undertaking the cave had imposed on him; it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps he had healed the crown by saving the Duke. But there was no sense or acknowledgement of accomplishment, and his intuition told him that he had not yet achieved his goal.

  The bishop began to wipe tears from his eyes at Alec’s imprecise description of his otherworldly experience in the cave. “Your feet stood in the spot where John Mark stood, when healing powers are raised to levels beyond humanity,” he cried. “Now we understand why you have such miraculous powers. A thousand clergy would die for the opportunity to do what you did.”

  Alec continued telling about his healing of Aristotle, and then the trip to Walnut Creek. Leaving out Leah’s request to end her pregnancy, he told how he and she had been in the woods and seen the lacertii attack the city, and watched the boatload of refugees float away to safety.

  “I saw Natalie, the girl I was traveling with from the caravan, on that boat. I assume she was one of the survivors who made it here, but I haven’t had a chance to look for her yet.” He looked at them for some clue of her whereabouts.

  “There was no such girl I knew of on the boat from Walnut Creek, at least none like your description,” the young priest said. “Most of those who survived were adults. There were one or two younger ones, but other than the Stronghold trader girl, I don’t think anyone sounds like your friend.”

  “I did have a chance to talk to the trader girl myself a time or two, Alec,” the bishop said with some concern in his
voice. “She is the girl you’re looking for.”

  Alec felt his heart leap for joy.

  “Her real name is not Natalie. She is Noranda Locksfort, daughter and heiress of a powerful trading clan from Stronghold. To escape an unpleasant situation in Stronghold, she had run away from home and joined the circus, and kept her identity a secret.”

  “Her tale is virtually the same as yours, until the point in Walnut Creek, and of course she did not tell about the cave and miraculous cures. She and the ingenaire were in the town by the pier buying passage down river when the invasion came crashing down right into the town. Aristotle put her on the boat while he used magic to battle the lacertii, and allowed the boat to escape.

  “She did not know if he made it out alive or not, but she knew that the story he wanted told needed to be passed along to the ingenairii and the church. She mourned your loss greatly, with a great deal of genuine grief, because she presumed you were lost in Walnut Creek. She spoke of your healing skills. I should have put the two together myself.”

  “Is she still here?” Alec asked with a sinking certainty that he knew she was not.

  “The Stronghold girl, Noranda, was taken to the capitol by Areley a few days ago. The ingenairii were desperate to get their hands on someone who could tell them the tale of what was happening in the mountains,” the bishop continued.

  Alec remembered watching the river as a boat with the court physician Areley was paddled swiftly down river. He had seen the cowled figure standing beside the court physician on the boat. It had been her, and he’d not even known. The stricken boy felt tension wrap his stomach in a knot at the notion he could have seen Natalie again. He felt stunned to learn that she was not Natalie at all, but a wealthy girl who had run away from home. There was no way he could easily reconcile the two notions quickly. And he wondered that she had kept her background hidden from him as they had grown so close after Riverside.

  The others in the room remained respectfully quiet while Alec tried to digest the stunning news he had just heard. They too were reflecting on the story they had learned. “What will happen to her?” Alec asked after long moments of silence.