Rescuing the Captive: The Ingenairii Series (25 page)

“
He really did it! Bodie, Saynge, he really heals!” the amazed robber shouted. “If you heal all of us, you may pass on your way,” he told Alec.

“
Let me touch you,” Alec said to the other two. The sun was falling towards the horizon, and he wanted to get on his way before night fell.

“
Oh no, not just the three of us,” Bodie, the man coming from in front of the scene said. “You’ll need to come with us to heal every member of our society. “We can’t accept payment just for ourselves.”

And so Alec ended up following a narrow, mountain-hugging trail to the entrance of a cave. Inside the dim cavern were twenty-some men gathered out of the cold, living among casks and crates of food and drink they had confiscated from passing travelers during the good weather season when the traders came by.

“
Linnie was kind to you,” the chief of the bandits told Alec. King Raspute, as he called himself in the third person, struck Alec as a cruel and sadistic person. Alec reached out to his hand as the first of those he healed in the cave, and he drove away lice, removed venereal disease, and healed fractured bones in the man’s hand. He puzzled over a strange condition in the man’s digestive tract, but because he couldn’t identify it, he did nothing to change it.

“
If it had been me out there instead of Linnie, you would have been killed and your carcass robbed afterwards without bargaining. But Linnie got it right this one time with his soft approach it seems,” Raspute said. “Men line up for your miracle healing. What type of wizard are you?” he asked Alec.

“
I am an ingenaire,” Alec replied.

“
I’ve heard the name, but thought they were just myths, stories among the barbarians,” Raspute said.

“
Really? You’ve heard of my kind?” Alec said in amazement.

“
I used to work in the caravan crews that went west to the barbarians and wilderness in the west. The wild tribes out there told of ingenairii who lived among great mythical cities even further west of west, but I never believed any of it,” Raspute acknowledged, even using the correct plural form of the word. “And your accent is certainly strange enough to be from some far away land we don’t know.

“
Now show what you can do so you can earn your right to keep living,” he ended on a flat and threatening note, and walked away, as a dutiful line of men formed before Alec.

The first man stepped up, and Alec noticed that he had the same strange conditions in his gut as Raspute. He also had a number of bruises, and a severe cut on his shoulder. Alec healed those, and sent the man away. A second man in line had been stabbed in the thigh, and also had the stomach condition of the other two. Alec worked slowly through the line, hobbled by his long exertions during the journey; after an hour he had only treated half the men in line.

All of them shared the strange stomach condition, and all suffered signs of recent battle, with cuts, bruises and stab wounds prevalent. Alec asked to take a break, and his obvious success in healing the men earned him the opportunity to sit in the back of the cave for a few minutes to ponder what he found.

“
Help me,” a voice called in a whisper. Alec looked up, his senses alert. He closed his eyes, and chose to try to use his Spiritual power instead of his Warrior power to find the source of the voice. Unpredictable though his ability to control the Spiritual abilities was, it engaged immediately, and he was assailed by the awareness it provided. The cave was full of evil, hatred, self-loathing and rancor. The men around him were evil men in every regard.

But there was one entity that was different, in a way he had no comprehension of. There were tendrils of anger, but also compassion, and great suffering. Yet it didn’t feel fully human to him, however that was possible.

He dropped the use of his Spiritual energy and looked behind him, to where he had felt the unusual psyche. A tall box, with fine mesh-covered small windows, was a shadow in the darkness at the back of the cave.

“
I’m in here,” the voice called from the box.

Alec extended his healer energy to diagnose the person in the box. The results were stunning. A woman was trapped in the box, one who had been subjected to torture and horrible abuse. He felt abysmal at the thought that he was helping these people who could do such things to the woman.

But his evaluation revealed a strange network of small, inexplicable organ-like objects throughout her body. The organs were connected to one another by what seemed to be a secondary, network of nerves, or some similar type of tissue. The woman was like no one he had ever met before. He poked a finger in through the mesh screen; his finger touched her, and he let a blaze of healing energy reduce the pain she felt, softening the worst of the injuries.

“
Please set me free,” she called in a soft voice, pleading.

Alec took a deep breath. He knew that if he set her free the two of them would be trapped together in the recesses of the cave, and he knew he didn’t have the energy to fight all the men he would face.

They aren’t going to let you live anyway. Set me free and I will go get help
, the woman’s voice spoke inside his head, as though she too were a Spiritual ingenaire.

He was astonished by her ability.

“
And I am astonished by yours as well,” she spoke out loud. “You’ve heard my spirit voice, and you’ve analyzed me in at least two ways that no one else in this land could do.”

“
Are you an ingenaire?” he asked quietly, bending down to the box and speaking though the grill.

“
No. I am a lokasenna,” she spoke a word he had never heard before.

“
You are doomed if you don’t set me free. I am your only hope,” she urged.

“
Healer, it’s time to get back to work. Where are you?” a rough voice asked.

“
They’re cannibals,” the woman told him.

Suddenly, he understood the strange condition of the stomachs of the men he had treated. Their diet consisted of the flesh of other men, causing their digestive systems to adjust to the meat; he gagged at the thought of consuming human flesh. Drawing his sword, he engaged his warrior powers and brought his sword down powerfully on the angle of the clasp that held the box closed. The woman immediately pushed upward and the lid flew open.

“
What was that noise? Healer come out here now,” a voice spoke in a demanding tone.

Alec sheathed his sword and placed an arrow on his bow. He was watching the shadows carefully now. He diverted his attention for a split second to look at the woman in the box; she was gone.

I won’t abandon you. I will bring back help. Thank you for freeing me
, her voice was in his mind again, and then it was gone, and he was alone.

“
What are you up to healer?” Raspute appeared before him, holding a torch above his head. “What happened to the lokasenna?” he asked. Alec raised his bow. “Do you realize what you’ve let loose on the world?” Raspute screamed, as Alec released his bow, letting the arrow fly to the gang leader’s heart.

Raspute fell forward, and his torch lay on the floor, its flame flickering unsteadily while Raspute lay still.

“
What’s happening back there?” another voice shouted, and a man’s head appeared behind the corner of a barrel. Alec shot another arrow quickly, and the man screamed briefly.

“
The healer…” he heard a conversation begin, but he scrambled backwards, further into the recesses of the cavern. The flame from Raspute’s torch was steady, showing no noticeable movement of air through the cave, indicating that Alec was backing into a dead end, just as he had already backed into a deathtrap and a mystery.

What had happened to the woman he had set free? And who was she? She was able to detect his use of ingenaire powers, and had used the same ability herself, or something similar. She had disappeared, absolutely disappeared. And Raspute had been thrown into fear by the thought of the woman at loose. Alec was at a loss as to what he had done, and could only pray that anything disliked by someone as evil as Raspute had to be a good thing in the world.

There was a sudden burst of flame in front of him, as someone threw a pail full of oil onto the rocks around Raspute’s torch, and the whole affair lit up brilliantly in front of Alec. He squinted and dodged behind a new boulder, in a part of the cave where he had to crouch slightly to fit. As he moved an arrow flew at him, careening off the stony floor and ricocheting upwards to strike his calf.

He rolled his eyes in astonishment at his bad luck, until the pain reached his brain, and he stifled a yelp. The arrowed had not penetrated his flesh deeply, and he pulled the arrow out, then sprayed three arrows of his own in front of him, striking at least one more antagonist.

An armful of wood had been thrown into the blazing puddle of oil, and now thick coarse smoke was beginning to rise to the ceiling and roll across it in all directions. Alec coughed, and realized the intelligence of the bandits’ method. They were going to smoke him out of his crevice in the back of the cave. More wood was thrown on the fire, setting off an eruption of sparks, and a thicker, darker smoke began to rise and spread.

“
Dear Lord, please take care of Caitlen and her princess,” he said a quick prayer. “Please take care of Bethany and Ari and Noranda and Appel and Cassie and Rander, and all my other friends in the Dominion.” He steeled himself to jump through the fire. He would have some advantage – the bandits would be momentarily blinded from looking into the flames. He’d suffer the same affliction, but he knew that all he had to do when he was through the flame was to run towards the entrance. It seemed plausible that he might get out; the distance from the fire to the outside was little more than thirty yards, he estimated.

He jumped upward and outward, his head grazing the stony top of the cave, then he took another huge bound, and closed his eyes as he entered the flames. He heard the crackling roar of the fire around him for just a second, a passage that was painful and yet somehow purifying.
She told me she loved me
, he suddenly remembered Caitlen’s words when he had lain wounded in her arms on the floor of the restaurant in Eckerd. He hadn’t processed the words when she spoke them weeping over him as he lay with his terrible injuries, approaching the darkness of death.

He landed on his left foot as he emerged from the fire, ready to sprint away, only his right leg collapsed as he took the next step, the muscle torn by the deflected arrow. He rolled, and felt another arrow strike the back of his shoulder.

Alec felt great pain, he rolled behind an empty crate, and felt his warrior energies flicker away. He blinked his eyes and rubbed them, then saw that there were bandits between him and the exit, and others maneuvering around to get a clear shot at him.

Hold fast, hold fast, friend. Help is here,
a faint voice, the voice of the captive woman, sounded in his mind again. He ducked as a shower of splinters pierced his face where an arrow had hit the crate in front of him. Another arrow pierced his right ankle, which was unprotected behind the small wooden box he crouched behind.

He was hallucinating, he realized, imagining voices talking to him. Suddenly there was a roaring sound at the entrance to the cave, and the light in the cave dimmed as an enormous shadow blocked the faltering sunlight from outside.

Chapter 17 – The Lokasennii

A bear charged into the cave, followed by another and another and another. A parade of the ferocious animals wallowed into the cavern and began to attack the bandits, batting at them, swiping huge claws through their flesh, biting with vicious force. None of them came towards Alec, who held his sword up in front of him to try to protect himself from the huge animals now in the cave.

The screams of the bandits quickly subsided, and the bears began to withdraw from the cave. The only sound inside was the still crackling roar of the fire and the panting of the bears as they padded quietly out.

“
No Baltasar! You and Barret stay here and help my savior,” Alec clearly heard the woman’s voice speak, and her silhouette appeared in his field of vision, bending over him, judging his wounds. “You’ll be safe now ingenaire. We’re going to take you to our home and tend to your wounds.”

Alec watch in astonishment as two bears turned and ambled towards him while the rest of the clan left the cave. And then the two bears became men, it seemed to Alec, and he passed out in astonishment and pain and exhaustion.

Alec was aware of movement. His body jostled roughly as someone carried him in the cold mountain air. Above him the crystal clear stars twinkled by the thousands, mesmerizing him. All my friends are all looking up and seeing the same stars I am, he thought. His ankle and his face, his shoulder and his calf all hurt, but he felt comfort in sharing the view with his faraway friends, and he dozed uncomfortably as the hard slab he was tied to continued to move through the mountains.

When he awoke again, he was still, and inside a dark building, he could tell only by the absence of wind and the absence of the stars above. “Sshh, now, rest,” his female companion spoke. “This is going to hurt, but then you’ll be able to make yourself feel better. You have such a wonderful skill,” she soothed him, and then his ankle was ablaze with pain. “There, the arrow is gone. I’ll wrap it and we’ll look at it in the morning. Then we can tend to your face.”