The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11) (19 page)

He hadn’t seen her since they had traveled together in the Pale Mountains, at the time of his first adventure in Michian, and in his later lives he’d never learned how she had fared, except when her ghost had briefly risen while he’d been in the Birnam Forest, in the region of the Twenty Cities.

“My lord?” a man’s voice called.

Alec opened his eyes and turned to look.  The water was cooler.  He’d lost track of time as his mind had wandered.

“Is it time for dinner?” Alec asked.  “I’ll be there shortly.”

“Yes, my lord,” the servant replied, and left.

Why had he thought about the Spiritual ingenaire from so long ago, Alec wondered.  Was it related to the black cloud at the heart of the northern problem?  Alec suspected that it was.  He stewed over the matter as he got dressed, and left his room.

He had felt evil and complexity in the cloud, but he’d not understood it any better. Perhaps he needed a well-trained, more perceptive Spiritual ingenaire, or even more than one, to go on the expedition to the north, along with the Light and Warrior ingenairii.  A Spiritual ingenaire, better trained in her craft than Alec was, would be able to analyze and understand the evil nature of the cloud better than Alec.  And any clues they could derive from such a study could help them better understand how to fight the entity.

He reached Kecil’s room and knocked on the door, without an answer.  At length, he opened the door, and discovered the room was empty.  He went down to the dining room and found the girl there, already seated, wearing a pretty new gown that flattered her appearance.

“That bath was extraordinary,” Kecil greeted Alec.  “I hadn’t been feeling well, to be truthful,” she admitted.  “But I feel refreshed now.”

“The discomfort was probably the price of earning your mark; you’re lucky to have had such a mild dose,” Alec explained.  “And now you’re dressed and look like you’ve always been a princess!”

“Teena laid this on my bed for me,” she mentioned the housekeeper.  “It seems awfully nice for wearing to a simple dinner like this, but perhaps I don’t understand human customs,” Kecil seemed to blush faintly.

“It is a,” Alec paused as he searched for the word, “dress that attracts attention,” he decided to say.  “If you want to court any humans, that dress will work!  That dress would get you married here in the Dominion in addition to your marriage in Vincennes,” he chuckled.

“The lady’s married?” a servant blurted out the question, caught by surprise by the conversation.

The two diners looked at one another.

“In a sense,” Alec answered.  “But not in the true spirit of marriage, perhaps,” he tried to evade revealing that the two of them had shared the ceremony at the Vincennes mission.  “It’s a private matter of hers,” he added to cut off further inquiry, as the servant nodded acquiescence.

“We will return to Oyster Bay tomorrow to organize the assignment of ingenairii and guards to go north,” he changed the subject, and addressed Kecil.  “Then, when that is in order, you and I will go back to Vincennes to assist the sisters there.

“The ingenairii brigade won’t get to the north for several days, so we’ll have some time to work in Vincennes before we return to the Dominion and join the investigation in the north,” he said.  He hoped, but didn’t expect, that Kecil might decide to remain in Vincennes, safe from harm.

“If you promise I’ll get to practice my healing work, I’ll go back with you,” she agreed.

They slept in their rooms that night, and the next morning, Alec Traveled with his passenger back to the palace at Oyster Bay.

“My beloved Regent, we’re here to go to Ingenairii Hill and speak to the ingenairii about the importance of their participation in this journey to the north,” he said.

“You’ll go speak to them personally?” Olivia asked. “I thought you were going to let Nicholas extend the invitation.”

“I decided to let the ingenairii see my personal interest in this,” he explained.  “I haven’t been active in their society very much in recent years.

“And Kecil hasn’t seen Ingenairii Hill,” he added.  “I thought it would be worth showing her a whole society of our race.

“Would you like to go with us?” Alec asked.

“I never feel comfortable there surrounded by so many people who can do so many things,” Olivia replied hesitatingly.  “I’ll stay here at the palace – I have so many things to do while the king is absent,” she said slyly.  “My duties are never-ending.”

“I’m sure the king appreciates your joy in taking on the duties of the throne,” Alec glibly replied.  “We’ll be on our way, and we’ll be back to let you know how readily the idea is accepted.”  He touched Kecil on the arm, and led her on a stroll through the palace halls, then out into a plaza, where they stopped.

“Don’t tell me,” Kecil said, as she looked at a stony monolith that rose on one side of the plaza.  “Another of your signature fountains?

“Do you just make them when you have nothing better to do?” she asked facetiously.

“This one was a little different,” Alec said in a softer voice.  He stood, momentarily lost in memory, recollecting the events of the day when he had gone in pursuit of an imperial niece, and ended up carrying Jeswyne back in time to an uninhabited era, where the two of them had lived together and fallen in love.  “It was different altogether.

“I was fighting three demons at once,” he recounted the memory aloud.  He hadn’t thought of it in years; during his decades of shared consciousness with Andi, he’d done his best to not remember his previous wives.  And as a result, the memories that had been repressed for so long came flooding to the surface – bits and pieces of experiences and moments he had shared with Jeswyne in the present case.

“What is it, my lord?” Kecil asked, as his memories absorbed his attention, and his silence stretched across a series of moments.

“Oh, I was just thinking,” Alec replied, shrugging off the reverie.

“Three demons at once?  That is impossible to believe,” Kecil answered.

“I’m sure it is,” he nonchalantly agreed.  He started walking again.  “And at the foot of Ingenairii Hill, you’ll see another one.  I think you and I are the only people to have ever visited every one of my fountains.

“No, wait,” he checked himself.  “You haven’t seen the Boundary Lake fountain, have you?” he asked.

“If I did, it was only in passing,” Kecil agreed.  “That’s about where I was taken captive.”

They walked through the streets of the city, unrecognized.  Alec had receded from the public eye so thoroughly over such a long period of time that the populace did not recognize their king among them, and so they reached the entrance to Ingenairii Hill without trouble.

Alec pulled up his sleeves as he reached the gates of Ingenairii Hill.  The guards at the gate looked at the marks that he displayed, a collection of colors and shapes and meanings greater than any other ingenaire had ever been known to carry, and the two men stood at stiff attention after opening the gate, aware of whose presence they were in.

Alec thanked them, then walked into the grounds of the Hill and led Kecil along the paths.

“This building is where the Water ingenairii live,” he pointed out, with a fleeting recollection of Bethany, gone from the world for so many centuries, the woman who would have been his wife, and who had been his queen while he had been absent from the world.

“Over here is Nicholas’s office.  We’ll tell him what I have in mind,” Alec said as they strolled towards a large cottage, where Alec did explain his plan to address all the ingenairii within the ancient hall where the apprentice ball and many other events were hosted.

“We’re going to walk around the Hill.  We’ll be at the hall in two hours, if that will give you time to send out a notice to each of the Houses,” Alec instructed Nicholas.

“It is such a beautiful place,” Kecil spoke a few minutes later as they walked up the paths that passed through the meticulously landscaped plots of land around the hillside.  They were climbing towards the top, and Alec was pointing out the various Houses of ingenairii.

“This is the Spiritual house,” he said as they passed one.  “It may be the most useful House in some ways,” he said thoughtfully.  “I didn’t always believe that, but now sometimes I think it may be.

“I had a friend once who came from the Spiritual house,” he began to describe Kinsey, who was present in his thoughts again.  “But that was a long, long time ago,” he cut himself short.

“And up here are the Warriors’ quarters,” he said after they had climbed to the balcony of the building that Alec still thought of as Rubicon’s house, at the top of the Hill.

“What a beautiful view!” Kecil said enthusiastically.  “I’ve never seen so much water!” she exclaimed, as she looked out over the ocean.  “How far does it go?”

“No one knows,” Alec told her.  “Somewhere out there, if you went far enough, I think you might actually sail to the lands of the Avonellene Empire.  But that’s just my guess.”

“What in blazes are you doing here?  Who are you?” a voice called out from behind them, as they stood on the balcony and looked out at the western view.

“We’re just visitors, enjoying the view,” Alec replied.  He turned to see a burly man glaring at them.

“We’re not a tourist stop,” the man barked, clearly not aware of who Alec was.

“And you’re not very civil either,” Alec replied coolly.  The man’s needlessly hostile attitude provoked him.  “Why are so many Warrior ingenairii so prone to poor manners?”

“Gleese, Pranger, get up here!” the man bellowed.  “I want you to watch this!”

“We’ve got a couple of apprentices,” the antagonist turned back to Alec.  “I’m going to put on a little clinic for them, courtesy of you.”

Alec seized his Air powers, and lifted the man off the balcony, then swung him in a wide semicircle that ended when the shocked Warrior found himself hanging in the air several yards away from the edge of the balcony, the stony hillside far below his feet.

The two apprentices came lazily climbing up the stairs, unaware of the reason for their summons.  They reached the level of the balcony, saw Alec and Kecil, then saw their trainer suspended in the air, his face turning beet red.

“Which of you is Gleese?” Alec asked, as the boy and the girl slowly stepped across the balcony towards their instructor staring with fascinated horror at the man’s predicament.

“What should we do, master?” the girl asked.

“Kill him!” the airbound captive shouted.

“You really need to consider the consequences before you act,” Alec said mildly, coming over to stand next to the apprentices.  “For example, if you harmed me, you’d cut off my use of the Air energy.  And if you cut off my use of the Air energy, do you know what would happen?” Alec asked.

The Warrior in the air suddenly screamed, as he began to plummet downward.

Alec watched passively as the man dropped fifty feet, then one hundred feet, then two hundred feet, falling with increasing speed.

“Save him!” the boy apprentice shouted at Alec.

Alec re-applied his Air energies to the support of the Warrior, and arrested his descent, then began to calmly lift the man back up to the level of the balcony.

“What did you intend to show these apprentices?” Alec asked as he maneuvered the man over the balcony railing and gently landed him on the stone patio.  Despite knowing that he shouldn’t taunt the man, Alec couldn’t help himself.  The Warrior’s discourteous behavior had merited the treatment, he told himself.

Knowing that some display of belligerence was likely to explode next, Alec released the Air energies and grasped his own Warrior energies.

As soon as the Warrior felt his feet touch the ground, he reached for his knife and threw it at Alec.  “I’ll show you what…,” the man’s angry outburst stopped mid-sentence as Alec caught the flying knife in midair.

“We only came up here to enjoy the view.  Perhaps you should turn around and look out at the peaceful scene, and ask yourself if there was any reason for you to try to murder someone over such a trivia matter,” Alec told him.   He reared his arm back and threw the knife with all his might, causing it to fly high out over the hill and the beach and the water, where it eventually landed with a white splash.

“We’re going to leave now.  I hope you two have learned the lesson that was taught here, even if it wasn’t the lesson this man intended you to learn,” Alec turned to the two apprentices.  “Be humble, kind, and gracious whenever you can.  You’ll be a better person.”

Alec embraced the Air energies once again and created a protective curtain of air around himself, then walked with an unconcerned stride back over to Kecil.  “We need to move on,” he told her, and the two of them left the patio.

“You don’t usually show such an aggressive response,” Kecil said once they were down the Hill and safely away from the patio.

“I don’t usually face such boorish behavior,” Alec answered.  “I can’t stand bullies.  That’s why I ran down and saved you!”

“I’m not complaining,” the transfigured lacerta grinned.

“Let’s go in here,” he gestured to the building they were passing.

“Is it going to be friendlier than the last house we visited?” Kecil asked.

“I think they will be.  This is the Healer house.  They should welcome two members to the house,” he replied.