Alec the Wanderer: Generations of Eredwynn #4 (5 page)

Carol laughed out loud as steaming water came from the showerhead. She asked, “Would it be all right if I bathed in here?”

I smiled and tossed her a towel. “That’s what it’s here for, but you’re going to get spoiled to it very quickly. Trust me, I know, because it’s happened to all of us.”

I checked my closet and found two robes that had ties at the waist. I knew that my robe would swallow her, but it would be warm and comfortable after her shower. I stripped off my clothes and started to put on my robe, when I heard a contented sigh come from the shower. I decided that a shower sounded like a very good idea. I walked into the water closet, naked, with the robes over my arm. “Excuse me, my lady, but would you like some company? I could wash your back for you.”

“Get in here, my husband, and you’d better do more than wash my back!”

As our marriage was consummated in the shower, I knew that I’d made the right choice.

Chapter Five

I
woke the next morning with a beautiful young lady in my arms. We were both lying in the middle of the huge bed, wanting to be close. I kissed her gently and woke her. “Would you like to get dressed and try learning a few more spells this morning?”

She stretched adorably and exclaimed, “I think you’ll have to show me where the kitchen is first so I can fix you breakfast. I’m sure that you’re as hungry as I am after all the energy we burned last night.”

“You’re so right! Or maybe I should find something for us and you could stay in bed. We could eat and then burn off some more energy.”

She snickered. “Young man, you should know that there is more to life than just making love. I can’t think of a good example right now, but I’m sure there is.”

We got up and had just finished dressing when there was a light tap on the door. I opened it and a maid brought in two plates for us. I thanked her; she curtsied slightly and closed the door behind her. Carol just stared at the table and finally asked, “I suppose this means I don’t have to fix breakfast this morning?”

I laughed. “The castle has a huge kitchen staff and a couple dozen maids. I don’t think that a single member of my family remembers how to cook. While we’re here, you can relax and learn your new magic. I know there is one thing that I’m really interested in knowing. Come here and sit on the bed with me.”

She stuck out her tongue. “You don’t have to try to trick me into bed. If you want me there, I’ll come willingly!” She walked over and sat by me.

I took her hands in mine. “My brothers and sisters can talk to each other just by touching and talking straight mind to mind. I want to see if you can, too. It might startle you if it works, so I wanted to warn you what I was going to try. If it doesn’t work, then there was nothing lost.”

“All right, Alec, you know that I trust you.”

I smiled and reached for her mind with my own. I smiled when I felt her through the link and I softly thought, “
Hello, my beautiful wife; you have a lovely mind, too!”

She gasped and then relaxed, thinking,
“I knew I’d never feel alone again when I married you. Now we can share everything, even each other’s thoughts. I love you, Alec!”

I stood and helped her to her feet, led her to the table and pulled out her chair. We sat and ate in silence until Carol spoke, “What are we going to do after breakfast?”

“I think we should go on the roof and I can teach you to
shield
yourself. Then we can go to the range and see what level spells you’re able to pick up on. Usually one of the psi users would come out while you were doing level three spells and monitor you, so your magic didn’t drop too low. Running out of spirit magic will knock a wizard unconscious, sometimes for days. None of us can see your magic, so I don’t know how we’ll do that.”

“Maybe you can do that mind connecting thingy and show me what I’m supposed to look for? I don’t know how any of this works, but that’s just an idea.”

“That’s just a very good idea; give me your hand and we’ll see.” She placed her hand in mine and for the first time, I noticed callouses and scars from the farm work she’d grown up with. I ran a healing spell through her and smiled as the skin smoothed and the scars faded away. I connected with her mind again and found the inactive ‘caster’ section and inactive psionic section there. I then located something I’d never found in any of my siblings minds. A section of her mind appeared similar to the magic sections, but instead of having the white light of spirit magic, there was a swirling mist or cloud. I didn’t feel that I had the exact words to describe it. The nice thing about mind-to-mind communication is that images pass even more quickly than words. I showed her where I thought she should look and what it would look like. She signaled that she’d located it and we broke contact.

Instead of studying the mist in her mind as I would have done, she looked at her hands. “A farm girl marries a prince and gets the hands of a princess in two days. It makes me wonder what tomorrow will bring!”

I kissed her and said, “I suggest we let tomorrow take care of its self. Let’s go onto the roof and learn a bit of magic.” She nodded excitedly and we walked to the roof. “Now I want you to try to duplicate the
shield
that I put around you yesterday. Do you remember how if felt?”

“I think I’ve got it. Let me try and if not, you can show me again.” She stood perfectly still for a moment then smiled. “I have it now; what’s next?”

I scanned her and couldn’t see any
shielding
whatsoever. I looked around for something to toss against her, but on the roof, there was nothing. I cast a tiny signaling
sparks
spell and smiled in amazement as it glanced away from her
shielded
body. “Well, it seems that you remembered that part perfectly, so let’s try to
fly
for a while.”

She nodded excitedly. “So far, that is my favorite thing to do. The other stuff is fun and impressive, but not nearly as fun as flying. Can we do more than just fly down from the roof?”

“We can fly where ever you’d like. Today is your day to learn about magic and my day to learn about
your
magic. Start slowly, lift off and I’ll follow. Take your time and make yourself light….” She was hovering ten feet above the roof with a cocky smile, as my instruction was cut short. “Well, since you don’t seem to need a refresher course, we’ll just get on with it then.” I
shielded
and joined her, taking her hand. “Lead on, fearless Lady.”

She took off straight up so quickly that I almost lost my breath. She was dragging me behind her as we passed three thousand feet. She stopped there and looked around. “How high can we go? I’ve seen birds that I thought were this high but I feel we could go higher!”

“When we go above a mile it starts getting cold. That won’t be a problem if you can heat your
shield
. Over two miles, the air starts getting thin and we won’t be able to breathe as well as we should. Much higher than that, I guess you’d pass out, and that’s a long drop to the ground.”

She nodded happily. “Can we try going higher?”

I laughed. “I said that this was your day to learn; if you want to test your flying limits, then by all means, let’s do it.”

She took off skyward like a shooting star in reverse. Her flying speed straight up impressed me and I heated my
shield
as the cold started sinking in. She didn’t slow and I knew she must have heated also, because she wasn’t shivering. That’s when trouble began for me. I started seeing bright spots in the corner of my vision and my breathing became rapid. Worried, I called out, “Carol, we have to stop. The air is too thin and I can’t breathe. Much higher and we’ll black out!”

She stopped and hovered in front of me. “I don’ have any trouble breathing. Maybe it’s ‘cause of that air magic? Can I try somethin’?”

I smiled at her willingness to experiment with her new magic and the way the excitement affected her speech. I nodded, and suddenly I was warmer and could breathe! My vision cleared and my wonder grew. “Carol, what did you do?”

“I just made my
shield
bigger so it would go around both of us. Did it help?”

I nodded, amazed that my novice wife had thought of that on her own. “I’m fine now. What are we going to do?”

She grinned. “I bet we can go higher and I want to see!”

I shrugged. “All right, but if you start feeling funny, you let me know. If you pass out up here, I will, too. I don’t think Father will like the mess we’d make if we landed on the castle.”

She grinned and took off again. I watched the world recede below us and still we climbed. To the sides, I began to make out the curve of the world and knew if my eyes were better, I could see both oceans from here. We finally began to slow and I looked up at Carol. She was staring in rapt amazement at the stars above us that were visible even though it was early morning. She pulled me close and kissed me. She whispered, “These can be the stars that will guide our future together. We’ll know that they are always here, day or night.”

I hugged her tightly. “Thank you for showing me this. I thought that I’d show you the wonders of magic, but you’ve shown me.” We began descending.

“This is as high as I can go, so that must mean it’s time to go back. I’d like to learn
healing
and some combat spells, just in case. I do want to learn how to
stun
someone, too. In my past, it might have come in handy and with the clothes I had Aunt Isa order for me, I might need it.”

“That reminds me, you’re a student of Wizard’s Castle now, for all intents and purposes. You could wear the uniform, if you’d like.”

“The clothes that I’m getting are in that style, but the color is that green that you said you liked on me. I’m not going to be staying at the castle; I’m going to be staying with you. For the school trainees and the instructors the uniform is fine, but I’m not sure that we’d always want everyone to know we were magical. We might go places where magic isn’t welcome and that could cause problems. Besides, I wouldn’t want to wear that one lightning bolt novice patch.”

I laughed. “Trust me, my dear; you wouldn’t be wearing a novice patch. You’ve already graduated to Adept and I’m sure that with a few more spells, you’ll be Apprentice.”

She smiled happily and we finally found the ground again. We landed near the Apprentice end of the range and talked while we waited for a few young ladies that were working on the targets.

After a few minutes, Carol suddenly gasped. “Your mind glows!” She looked up and down the row of trainees that had gathered for their morning practice. “All of their minds glow, too, except it’s different and Aunt Alba is in the middle of that group over there. I can’t see her, but I can feel her!”

I smiled. “It seems like now that Aunt Alba has showed you the way, your mind is discovering the magic on its own! Maybe that was what Della meant when she said air is the symbol of knowledge. Perhaps it teaches itself and that would be amazing, just like my bride.”

…

Over the next week, Carol continued to amaze us all. She was picking up on level three and four skills just by walking by and seeing them done. Since hers was a nature type skill, she surpassed my nature magic ability in one afternoon spent with Aunt Gwen. Her mornings were often spent with Aunt Della, because she was our expert on most forms of magic. Being a Naiad, she had a lot of information that she could pass to Carol. Aunt Della had recently made up with her father after two decades apart and he’d taught her the magic that had driven them apart. Her father had given his permission to teach the Naiad skill of ‘
telepathy
’ to the family. Carol and I were taught how to use it, in case we were ever separated in our travels together.

Our evening meals were taken in the kitchen with Father. Carol was fascinated by the other realm and couldn’t hear enough about life there.

Carol seemed uncomfortable at dinner one night and finally managed to say what was on her mind. “Father, before I met Alec, I was afraid that my only option was being a working girl in a pub or inn. Do they have those types of things where you come from?”

Father nodded. “They do, but the legal ones are few and far between. Girls have to be eighteen to legally work in those places. You know as well as I do that girls often find themselves in the street much younger. Those girls are preyed on by men who force the girls to work and then take their money to keep them dependent on them. They also will get them hooked on drugs that they then have to have or they’ll get sick. It’s just another form of control.”

Carol was shocked. “People know this happens and they let it? Don’t the guards step in and help these girls?”

Father gave a humorless laugh. “Usually the girls are the ones punished when they are caught plying their trade. The ‘guards’, that are called ‘police’ there, will throw the girls in jail. They will usually be released to the man that has the girls working, and the cycle just continues.”

Carol shook her head. “Those girls shouldn’t have to be subjected to that! No one should! I still can’t understand why they let that happen.”

Father shrugged. “Things there aren’t like they are here. For one, the population of the country that I came from is over three hundred million people. I doubt there are that many in our whole world here. The job is just too large and not many want to take it on.”

Carol sighed. “If just
some
of them could be helped, and I could do it, I’d have to try.”

Father gave an understanding smile. “I think you need to have your husband take you to visit Seth and Tabitha. They are our humanitarians. They run a huge women’s shelter that was created to keep the girls who don’t want to do that type of work off the stairs. There are some girls that do enjoy that type of lifestyle and I feel they have the right to do it. I don’t want some of the things that Seth’s reported happening in my kingdom. That’s one of the reasons that I support their work.”

Carol gave me that look. “Husband of mine…”

I laughed. “Yes, my dear. I’ll take you to Starford Stronghold as soon as you’re ready.”

Father chuckled. “It sounds like my stories may have sent you on a mission, son. The good news is, west of Starford there are wide open plains without people. Della tells me that it might be time for you and Carol to be away from folks for a while.”