The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11) (23 page)

“Who could examine you?” Hope asked suddenly.  “Is there someone who knows you so well they could detect any evil that was secretly clinging to you?  Perhaps there is some hidden evil that is feeding off of you, like a parasite?”

“There was Kinsey,” Alec blurted out the first name that came to mind.  The Spirit ingenaire had had an uncanny ability to read him.  And she was suddenly, constantly, popping into his thoughts.

“Who is she, Alec?   Did we meet her in Oyster Bay with the ingenairii?” Kecil asked.

“No,” Alec answered softly.  “You didn’t meet her.  Kinsey left this world long before any of you were born.  She was a friend in the days of my youth, one who was able to sense me and even track me, without any of the actions or tricks I learned to use later in life to bind others to me,” he said as he thought of the practice of sharing his ingenaire blood with others, something he had done on many occasions.  “She was not a parasite or negative power in any way.  Quite the contrary, she was a genuinely good person.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Hope said.  “I thought that perhaps she was someone who could simply examine you and examine some of the places you have been to determine if there are any clues to explain this mystery.”

“What about your wife?  You and she were so close?” Kecil asked.  “Can you talk to her spirit somehow?  She hasn’t been gone very long.”

She looked at the incredulous stares the lokasennii gave her.  “Well I don’t know what his limits are!” she defended herself.  “I’ve seen him do so many things I thought that perhaps he could talk to the dead.”

“I have,” Alec said hesitatingly.  He recollected the time of his madness, when he had raised the spirits of the dead, in the years of debilitating loneliness that had followed Jeswyne’s death.

“I won’t ever do it again,” he said in a voice so soft that the others could barely hear him.

“Well, we don’t need anyone to tell us that Alec is not evil, or carrying any evil,” Kecil stoutly defended him.  “It’s just plain as day.”

“I agree with you, my friend,” Hope spoke up.  “I’m sure there is something to what Curess and Elilie have experienced, but it is beyond our ability to understand.  And in the meantime, there is still the fact that the world is feeling an evil presence.  We have felt it here, and you say your own faraway lands are experiencing something directly.

“Do you wish to call upon an army of Ajacii again, to help you fight it, as they did in your last battle with Hellmann?  We can help you request the assistance of our cousins,” Hope offered.

“I’ll speak to the Ajacii myself,” Alec assured his friend.  “If you’ll show Kecil the hospitality of the valley for the rest of the morning, I’ll go talk to them now,” he said.  “You relax and enjoy yourself here; I’ll be back soon,” he turned to Kecil and told her as he squeezed her arm in a friendly gesture, then he released his grasp, and disappeared.

Chapter 17

Alec stood at the base of the stony trail that rose from the bottom of the valley where the Ajacii village of Valer was hidden.  Many decades had passed since Alec’s last visit to the village, and that visit had come decades after his first visit.  He had come to have a friendly relationship of mutual respect with the warriors of Valer, a race of men and women whose fighting skills were the equal of most Warrior ingenairii of the Dominion.

But a generation had come and gone in the time since Alec had last been to the village, and he knew from the reaction of Thyne in Vincennes that the Ajacii were likely to view his appearance with suspicion.  He stood on the elevated trail for a minute, giving the residents of the village time to spot him before he stepped towards the settlement, then he began the five-minute walk along the path.

His Warrior energies were engaged, a defensive step he took to allow him to survive any unannounced attacks that might be launched against him.  And the need for the preparation was compounded by his distracted state of mind as he walked to the village.

The claims by the two lokasennii women troubled him and made no sense.  He had never claimed to have been free of guilt; he knew he had made the same thousand little sins of commission and omission that every other person had committed in their lives, and he knew that in his lifetimes of warfare and battles he had taken numerous lives.  But he could not imagine anything that would have enclouded him with an aura of evil.  There was nothing, he was sure.  The lokasennii were detecting something, perhaps, but what it was would need to be properly investigated.

And in the meantime, he saw figures moving in the village, and a trio – a pair of men and a woman – walking steadily towards him as he approached Valer.  They would initially see him as an outsider who deserved punishment for encroaching upon the isolated community, and then they would demand to know how he had breached their defenses, he was sure.  It was likely to take some time to overcome their prejudice against him and to have a productive conversation, unless he could do something at the outset to overcome their resistance to him.

He gave a half smile, then engaged his Spiritual energies, followed by his Air energies, and then his Warrior energies.  Prepared, he created a platform of high pressure air that lifted him from the ground and caused him to float above the trail at a height of several feet as he floated towards the greeters.  The trio responded instantly to the unanticipated maneuver by splitting apart and spreading out into three separate locations, from which two of them simultaneously fired arrows at Alec.

Alec watched the weapons approach, then reached out through the ability of his heightened Warrior reactions, and grabbed the arrows in the air before their struck him.

He returned to the trail and disengaged his Air powers, then spoke to the trio of Ajacii.

“Would you like to have these back?” he asked the two attackers, extending the arrows towards them.

“I am Alec, the Duke of Valeriane, and the opponent of Hellmann.  I have come to speak to the leaders of the Ajacii.  Will you escort me to see them?” he asked.

“We will fight you to the death to protect our people,” spoke the woman, who was in the center of the spread out trio.

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Alec said.  “And I’m sure it won’t happen.  There is no battle needed.”

“How did you arrive here?  How did you pass our sentries?” asked the man on the left.

“I did this,” Alec replied, as he switched his use of powers, gaining access to the Traveler energies, and propelling himself to a spot fifty yards behind the defenders.

“I’m back here now,” he told them, as he saw their befuddled postures while they stared at the spot he had left.  The three whirled around and ran towards him with uncanny speed, swords drawn.

“We can play this game some more, or I could simply transport myself into the village, but I do not want to make you look bad in front of the Council of Three,” he told them.  “Be my escort, and we may all stroll peacefully to the village.  Otherwise,” he paused, and used his Traveler power to move a hundred yards closer to the village.

The trio of guards approached him again, defeated expressions on their faces.

“What are your names?” Alec asked, and so, as they all began to walk, he learned that the female was Resa, and the two men were Carle and Aspe.  He was escorted to the Council building, and sat in the front chamber as the members of the Council were hastily called to the building to meet him and hear his report.  Within minutes they were satisfied as to his identity, and the conversation turned to substantive topics.

“I have been in Vincennes, and met Thyne, one of your companions.  He is concerned that because of my abilities, I might be the evil power the Lokasennii have warned you about.  I wish to let you know that I am not.  I have been among the Lokasennii in their secure fastness in the mountains, just as I have come here to speak to you,” Alec explained to the Council members.

“Do you need our assistance?” one of the Council members asked.  “The stories tell us that you once needed a great many Ajacii to help you in a battle against Hellmann.”

“I did, and their valor made that victory possible, though a high cost was paid with the blood that was spilt by so many of them,” Alec gratefully agreed.  “There may be a time when I will ask for your help again, but for now, I do not believe that the skills of the Ajacii are what are needed to fight the new threat.”  He thought about his spat with the Warrior ingenairii; if they continued to be non-cooperative, and if there came a time when he did need assistance along those veins, he might choose to call upon the Ajacii to provide the fighting power he would need.  It was something to remember.

There was little remaining conversation after that.  The Council agreed to send a message to Thyne, to assure him that he need not battle Alec.  Alec knew that it was an empty victory; he wasn’t likely to return to Vincennes again.  His plan for the future was shifting rapidly with each new revelation.  He wasn’t likely to take Kecil on a long, leisurely trip across the continent.  The discovery of the evil in the north of the Dominion, and the pronouncement of his own inexplicable connection to the evil were forcing him to reconsider what he was going to do.

He was reconsidering whether he should even continue to take Kecil along with him.  She was in the peaceful and tranquil valley of the lokasennii; it was a better location than being carried by Alec to fight the mysterious evil of the north in the Dominion.  How Kecil would respond if he suggested such a ploy was difficult to predict though; she might insist in continuing their partnership.  They had certainly spent a considerable amount of time together, and her companionship had helped to fill the void in his soul left after Andi’s death.

She was not close to a complete replacement, of course.  She was friendly, and over the course of her exposure to his abilities she had grown to be a booster, but she had nothing remotely approaching the connections and the intimate interactions that Andi had shared, nor even the psychic sympathy that Andi had given him.

He fleetingly pondered such matters as he bid farewell to the Ajacii, then astonished them by exercising his Traveler powers, and departing from the Council room at the end of the conversation.  He returned directly to the path among the springs in Warm Springs, and strolled back to the home of the grendasteur.

“You don’t take long, do you?” Hope asked.  She was sitting in her dining room with Kecil, sharing a meal.

“Do you know, it was in this very room where we first met, so many years ago,” Alec pointed out.

“That’s true.  Bauer was with us, and Ailse, bless her spirits, was presiding,” Hope recollected.

“And you did not want to go with me on a journey out into the world,” Alec remembered.

“I did not appreciate all that you had to offer,” Hope gently corrected him.  “No one had told me.”

“I bring that up, because I’m about to begin another journey,” he looked at Kecil.  “And it is liable to be a dangerous one.  Kecil, if you would choose to remain here in Warm Springs among the lokasennii, you would be safe while we face the evil cloud in the north.  And afterwards, I could return to you, and we could take you back to your own land whenever the time was right.”

He saw Kecil’s jawline grow taunt and he knew the argument was lost before it had begun.

“Are you tired of having me around?  Did you save my life so that I could be your plaything, and now you want some new toy to entertain you?” she asked in a low, dangerous tone.

“I’m not tired of you,” he replied.  “I just wanted to give you the option of safety, and there is no place in the world that I know that is safer than Warm Springs.  If you know that you want to remain with me, then we will stay together,” he replied.

“But do you want me with you?” Kecil asked.  “I don’t want to be an unwelcome companion.”

“My wife died just a few weeks ago,” Alec answered.  “And I miss her; I think about her often.

“But having you as a companion has helped to take away some of the pain of that loss.  I will be happy to have you continue to travel with me,” he answered.

You handled that about as well as possible after the mistake of starting the conversation,
Hope commented silently.

You would think that after centuries of life, I would know better than to stumble into that
, he agreed wryly.

“So you might as well spend the rest of the day and the night here,” Hope said out loud.  “Will you stay as our guests?”

And so they did.  That night they went to one of the warm spring pools where there were no mists, and they looked up at the stars overhead in the clear night sky, then returned to the cabin set aside for them and fell asleep.  The next morning, after breakfast and conversation with a few of the lokasennii, Alec decided it was time to return to the Dominion.

They teleported away from Warm Springs, and went first to Ridgeclimb.  Alec spent a half hour walking about the settlement that had grown into a substantial village on the mountain trading trail.  A caravan of traders from the west arrived while Alec and Kecil were present, and Alec briefly watched the commerce of the visit take place, before it was time to move on.  They went to a valley in the mountains, and then to Woven.

“This is the city where Hope lived among the mortals,” Alec told Kecil, as they briefly walked among the city streets.

“There are so many humans!” Kecil exclaimed.  “In Vincennes and in the Dominion and here in the Twenty Cities; we lacertii are surrounded and outnumbered.”

“But usually at peace with your neighbors,” Alec pointed out.  “There are no wars with the lacertii now, are there?”

“No,” she agreed.

The pair Traveled again, to Boundary Lake.  From there they made the long jump to Chanradala, and then, after a moment’s pause, they went to the abandoned ruins of the city in the Pale Mountain, and finally, they went to the palace at the Healing Spring.

“That’s enough Traveling for today,” Alec said when they arrived and ungrappled from one another.  “We’ll rest here tonight, and go north tomorrow.”

The staff at the palace was delighted to see their arrival and provided the high level of service and hospitality they always gave.   “Don’t get used to this,” Alec told Kecil as they left the dinner table.  “After we leave here we won’t have anything like this for a long time to come.”