The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities Read online

  He had a vision of how he was going to manage this event, to create the tool that would help heal a city and end the horrible suffering he had seen. He would call forth his Healer energy, and he would do the same with his Water and Stone energies, so that he developed a tremendous energy pressure within himself. Then, when he found himself losing control, he would channel the three energies together and direct them into the earth, creating the stone channel, calling forth the water, and embedding the healing energy at the site.

  And then he would have to survive. He took another deep breath and closed his eyes, then began call upon the Healer energy. It was a fragile feeling from the very beginning of the effort; his Spirit abilities were strained in their ability to insulate so many other power capacities, and he felt the bumping and churning of the energy, all bottled up within the energy realm, being called forth but not released.

  “Alec! What are you doing Alec? Stop, you’re killing yourself,” he distantly heard Andi’s voice calling him. “This feels wrong. It feels dangerous, Alec. Please stop,” she spoke from somewhere far away.

  The pressure of the energy was building greater within him, and he refocused himself on the restraint of the power, trying to keep it continually dammed as it piled more and more power upon itself.

  Alec!” his body shook violently, and he opened his eyes to see Andi standing in front of him, shaking his shoulders, as others stood watching her confront him.

  He felt the dam he had built start to rupture as his focus was distracted. Andi was literally with him, in danger of fatal injury from the explosion that was about to occur, he could tell.

  With a desperate surge of effort, Alec thrust his arms forward, hitting Andi in the chest and driving her away from him. He saw the startlement in her eyes, and the sense of pain and rejection from his abrupt gesture, but he had no time to apologize as the energy conflict within him built to a crescendo. Then he released his Spirit power and seized his Air power. He let the blockage of all the powers dissolve, and he sculpted his Air power into the form of a narrow tube, one that placed him in the inside, and everyone else on the outside.

  Even as he did that, his energies went firing into the ground below him, explosively punching a tube through the stone, and powerfully calling the water forth, while his Healer energies infused the area with the components of their nature. The ground buckled in a mighty flash of power, and even the tube of compressed air Alec had erected could not protect those in the square from feeling some fraction of the force of the explosion, as they all were knocked violently backward.

  Alec felt himself lifted upward with material blowing his body and violently propelling him into the sky above the site of his efforts. He passed out, and felt nothing of the violent impact when he fell back to earth.

  The Ingenairii Series

  1. Visions of Power

  2. At the Seat of Power: Goldenfields and the Dominion

  3. The Loss of Power: Goldenfields and Bondell

  4. The Lifesaving Power: Goldenfields and Stronghold

  5. Against the Empire

  6. Preserving the Ingenairii

  7. Rescuing the Captive

  8. Ajacii and Demons

  9. The Caravan Road

  10. The Journey Home: Beyond the Twenty Cities

  Also by Jeffrey Quyle

  The Green Plague

  For more information, visit the Ingenairii Series on Facebook, www.facebook.com/ingenairiiseries

  The Journey Home:

  Beyond the twenty cities

  The Ingenairii Series

  Book 10

  Jeffrey Quyle

  Index

  Chapter 1 –The Resurrection of Alec Page 1

  Chapter 2 –The Missing Memories Page 5

  Chapter 3 –The Rangers of Exbury Page 17

  Chapter 4 –Trial by Fire Page 31

  Chapter 5 –Saving the Village Page 36

  Chapter 6 – Meeting Aja Page 38

  Chapter 7 –Traveling with a Tree Page 47

  Chapter 8 – Aja’s Daylight Page 67

  Chapter 9 –Healing an Old One Page 75

  Chapter 10 –Despair in Boundary Lake Page 86

  Chapter 11 –Rescuing the Captives Page 95

  Chapter 12 – Healing Boundary Lake Page 101

  Chapter 13 –Boundary Lake’s Salvation Page 115

  Chapter 14 –The Loss of Andi Page 127

  Chapter 15 –Racing through Lacertii Lands Page 130

  Chapter 16 –Escape from the Lacertii Lands Page 147

  Chapter 17 –John Mark’s Cave Page 155

  Chapter 18 – The First Visit to Oyster Bay Page 174

  Chapter 19 –Sabotage in Michian Page 184

  Chapter 20 –Stronghold’s hostages Page 192

  Chapter 21 –Deadly Sorceresses Page 198

  Chapter 22 –The Battle in Stronghold Page 208

  Chapter 23 –Andi’s Disappearance Page 215

  Chapter 24 – Stripped of Power Page 234

  Chapter 25 – Alliances in the East Page 262

  Chapter 26 – Ajacii versus Ingenairii Page 267

  Chapter 27—Hellmann and Andi and Ajacii Page 271

  Chapter 28 – The Great Victory Page 275

  Chapter 29 – The Last Chapter Page 279

  List of Characters

  Alec, Duke of Valeriane

  Bauer, former sorcerer, guest of the Lokasennii

  Hope, Grandesteusse of the lokasennii

  Kriste, farm girl at Ridgeclimb

  Andi, Black Guard warrior

  Mr. Alfred Graze, Grean’s brother-in-law

  Salem, exile from Woven

  Kane, Salem’s son

  Jody, Salem’s daughter

  Hellmann, legendary entity of great power

  Amane, Exbury plant Old One

  Tarry, Amane’s brother

  Celty, village witch

  Aja, tree nymph

  Duke Remton, ruler of Goldenfields

  Lady Tonshire, daughter of Duke Remton

  Pegot, daughter of Lady Tonshire

  Kinset, prophecy ingenaire

  Lady Gwendolyne, deposed Stronghold Locksfort clan member

  Linnear, deposed Stronghold Locksfort clan member

  Chair Woodbine, deposed Stronghold Locksfort clan leader

  Roslyn, Michian trader

  Tred, Ajacii squad leader

  Malia, Ajacii squad leader

  The Journey Home

  Chapter 1 – The Resurrection of Alec

  Andi sat in the chair between the bed and the window, reading a book she had selected from Amane’s family library. The library was different from most libraries in Exbury, Amane’s brother Tarry had told her; half the books were about plants and gardening, while half the books were about everything else. Not many families had so many non-gardening books, Tarry said with sincere pride in the family’s scholarship, and Andi believed him.

  She had danced with Tarry the night before at a ball in the home of another family of Old Ones, and during a break, Tarry and Amane had both taken her to the host family’s library and let her search at length before she finally found the single shelf of books that were not related to gardening. They had laughed at her disbelief, and reminded her that it was Exbury, and they’d be happy to take her on another garden tour the following day if she’d like proof. All three of them had laughed together at that joke; Andi had been on an estimated thirty garden tours in the twenty days she’s been staying in Exbury

  She smiled softly as her eyes flipped from the pages of her book to the face of Alec, lying in the bed. His
face was calm; the word serene came unbidden to Andi’s mind as she looked at him, then looked at the angle of the shadows out the window. It was time to roll him over, so that he did not develop bedsores as he lay in his long coma. The book went down on the table beside her chair, and she spent several minutes, tenderly adjusting Alec with her best efforts to keep him comfortable.

  She sat back in her chair and began reading again when the door opened and Amane entered the room with a tray. He placed it on the table beside her, then sat in the other chair there and removed the cloth that covered the contents. There was a pot of green tea and two mugs, as well as breads and fruits and some bacon.

  Andi thanked her host and the two sat quietly chatting for several minutes as they ate the meal in the quiet room. Amane reminded Andi that the nurse would arrive at noon to assume the watch over Alec’s unconscious body. “Would you like to go to the archery range this afternoon and see Tarry and the other Rangers carry out their final practice?” he asked.

  “I’d love to,” Andi answered, “But I have to go on a garden tour with one of your sister’s friends, and her brother.” She smiled at the notion; it was a cliché of her brief life in Exbury that someone wanted to take her on a garden tour in the city. There was usually a young nobleman or scion of an Old Ones family involved in the tour, a reminder that, with no effort on her behalf, Andi had become perceived as the most eligible unmarried young lady in Exbury high society. The young men were brazen in their attentions to her, considering she was staying in a house with Amane and Tarry, and known to be the companion of Alec, the sleeping warrior. But still the invitations came, and so she went on new tours of gardens, and amazingly enough, she still continued to learn about new and different gardens with each tour.

  “Maybe you’ll have fewer tours after tomorrow,” Amane said sympathetically. He was referring to the rescue mission that was leaving the city the following morning, a group of more than a dozen young men from the city’s elite families; the departure of the Rangers, as they were called, would mean the exit of some of the potential suitors who had exhibited interest in Andi while she had stayed in Exbury. The Rangers were setting out on the road to pursue the Ingenairii kidnapping crew that had come through Exbury three weeks earlier. The prince of the city had demanded that his stolen citizens, several young girls, be returned to safety with their families, and the Rangers were the expected means of meeting his demand.

  Initially, Andi had insisted that Alec would awaken and take up that rescue mission, one that the mighty ingenaire had steadily pursued across mountains and through the Twenty Cities already. Alec had been injured in his battles with the kidnapping crew, but had inflicted some damage to them in exchange, and shown that he could fight them evenly. Andi had inflicted further real damage upon the kidnappers when she had burst into an ingenaire-energy attack upon the unsuspecting group, provoked by the wound that she witnessed delivered to Alec.

  Alec’s skull had been pierced by an arrow the kidnappers had shot at him during the battle in Exbury. His body had died momentarily, but Andi had run to him, and somehow, driven by shock and despair, made contact with his departing spirit. Her communication with him had drawn him back, had drawn him into possessing the use of her body and powers, as well as the even more extraordinary use of Amane’s powers, to heal the frightful injury and restore life to the body.

  The event had given Amane and Andi a sense of shared awareness. They felt a closeness with one another. Amane had been entranced by the girl’s beauty already, before they had mingled their powers, and he had only fallen into a deeper infatuation with the girl, while Andi had felt comforted and buttressed by the closeness with Amane at the time when Alec was beyond any contact at all.

  When Andi had entered Exbury, it had been with Alec, already in an intimate and evolving relationship of shared memories, feelings and awareness, a commingling of identities that had begun after another miraculous healing following a terrible wound, when Alec had saved Andi’s life by restoring her body and pulling her spirit back to earth.

  “Shall we plan on the archery range tomorrow?” Amane asked, his hand resting atop Andi’s to emphasize his hope that she would accept his offer. “After we see the Rangers off?”

  “Yes, that would be delightful. It gives me an excuse not to accept any garden tours tomorrow if any are offered,” Andi agreed.

  “Very good!” Amane was delighted with the prospect of taking Andi out. As her host, he wouldn’t even have to arrange the polite fiction of his sister to be chaperone for a visit to the family’s own archery range, letting him enjoy time alone with the beautiful blond, and helping distract him from thoughts of his brother’s departure.

  “Thank you,” he stood, then bent down and kissed Andi’s cheek, thrilling to the feel of her skin under his lips as she turned her face for him. He picked up the tray, whose contents had been ravaged by their repast. “I’ll take this back to the kitchen, and fetch another pot of tea.”

  With that he was off, and Andi’s eye’s tracked his figure as he went around the bed and to the door, then left the room. On some level she enjoyed the obvious manner in which he was smitten by her, and the attention he paid, which bordered on smothering without ever quite getting there. Her eyes shifted a degree further down, and she saw that Alec’s eyes were open, and staring at her.

  Andi let out a scream of shock that brought Amane and two servants running to the room. When they burst through the door they found Andi on her knees at the side of the bed, her forehead pressed against Alec’s.

  She looked up at the arrivals, her eyes full of moisture and her voice hoarse with emotion. “He’s awake!” she announced simply.

  Chapter 2 – The Missing Memories

  “How are you Alec?” she asked, placing her hands in a tender cradle around his face. I have missed you so much, my love.

  He blinked his eyes, then croaked, “Water, water, please.”

  Andi looked at the jug of water on the table, then moved her hands beneath Alec and raised him to a sitting position, supported by pillows she plumped-up behind him, before she stepped to the water and poured a tumbler of the clear liquid.

  She saw that Alec was staring at the men who stood still, watching in the doorway. “May we have a few minutes of privacy, please?” she asked apologetically, causing Amane and the others to duck away immediately and close the door softly.

  Andi held the tumbler up to Alec’s lips, letting him sip the water slowly into his mouth, as Andi watched his face.

  He pulled his head back, and a splash of water fell on his chest, causing him to raise his hand and brush it away. Alec closed his eyes, then opened them and looked around at his luxurious room. He glanced at the door, then looked over at Andi.

  “Has he proposed to you yet?” he asked. “You’ve made quite a conquest.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, blushing. You’re teasing me already! I wasn’t sure how you would come out of this; I’m glad you have your sense of humor, she added gently.

  “I opened my eyes and saw the way he was looking at you, holding your hand, placing that kiss on your cheek,” Alec smiled wanly.

  “I imagine that will stop after I move in here, now that you’ve awoken,” Andi replied with another smile.

  “A Black Crag guard needing protection? Especially against a dandy like that?” Alec asked. “I’d think you could fend him off in about thirty seconds if you didn’t want his attention.

  “Or for that matter, I think about Mulvane and her squad of guards from Black Crag, they would have taken that man if they wanted him, and chewed him up for dinner, then spit out the bones in the morning when they’d gotten all they could out of him, I imagine,” he closed his eyes as he recollected the Black Crag guard squad who he’d worked with to protect Caitlen when he’d first arrived in Vincennes.

  He opened his eyes, still smiling as he looked at Andi, until he saw the expression on her face. She had slightly pulled back from him, no longer within his personal sp
ace. “So where are the others? Where are we, as a matter of fact?” he asked, suddenly appreciating the fact that he had no idea of his location.

  “Which others?” Andi asked, disturbed by the conversation that made no sense to her. Are you feeling alright, Alec? Do you want me to give you some quiet time to recover your wits?

  “Jasel, Hope, Bauer, Stacha, Salem – the rest of our crew,” he explained who he was referring to. He tried to recollect where they were, and how they had come to such extravagant lodgings.

  They wouldn’t have, they couldn’t have taken up residence in such splendor anywhere in the mountains, he realized, and began to comprehend that something had gone amiss. “What happened to me Andi? Why am I lying here in bed?” He started to swing his legs to leave the mattress, then realized he was nude, and stayed in place while the girl was watching him.

  “We fought those miners, and I had shared my blood with Jasel, and,” he stopped. “That’s the last thing I remember.”

  Andi stared at him in shock. “Oh, surely you remember more than that,” she said.

  He studied the look of horror on her face; she was not faking that expression – that look of sick fear was genuine, he was sure.

  “What is it Andi? Are the others okay? Are you in trouble? Are we in trouble?” he asked.

  Tears started to drop from Andi’s eyes, and her face contorted with profound emotion.

  Alec, please answer me Alec, she cried. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.

  There was no answer. She had heard no spirit messages from him yet, she realized, and her cries broke into deep, gulping sobs of loss.

  Alec pulled the blanket off the bed to cover himself as he slid off the bed and took a step to reach her and embrace the girl in a comforting hug. “Andi, you’re going to be okay. This is a safe place, and I’ll take care of you,” he said soothingly, desperate to say anything to stop her tears.