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  Richard listened attentively, then thought for a second.

  “Let’s get a crew out front to inspect the road to make sure we can go forward, since we can’t go back now. Alec, will you take Jonso to go as far as you can in the daylight?” Alec and the clown looked at one another, then headed toward the road. Ari shook his head, and walked back to his wagon.

  As Alec and Jonso walked rapidly along the road, they came past a half dozen places where large trees were down across the trail, but saw nothing else like the damage Alec had seen. In an hour’s time they made it down to the bottom of the ridge as the sun set.

  “It’ll take twice as long to climb back to the top,” Jonso complained. “Do you think we should just wait here for the wagons to pick us up tomorrow morning?”

  Darkness fell before they were a third of the way up, and the sliver of a crescent moon in the sky gave virtually no light. They slowed their pace to make sure they stayed on the road, and kept up a lively chatter, consisting mostly of jokes on Jonso’s part, to keep them in touch with each other.

  “Let’s stop for a breather,” Jonso said halfway up the mountain, breathing heavily.

  Alec obediently stopped, slightly ahead of his companion. After a minute he called, “Jonso, are you ready to go?”

  There was no answer.

  Alec called again, and walked back several steps. In the darkness he couldn’t see anything, and he resorted to shuffling back and forth, trying to locate Jonso as he called out. Alec grew unnerved, and stopped calling.

  He didn’t hear a thing. Not even any animal noises were carried on the wind to him.

  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

  The Inner Seas Kingdoms Series

  1. The Healing Spring

  2. The Yellow Palace (forthcoming)

  Also by Jeffrey Quyle

  The Green Plague

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

  Visions of Power

  The Ingenairii Series

  Book 1

  Jeffrey Quyle

  Index

  Section 1 Finding The Vision – The White Mountains

  Chapter 1 – Arrival in the Mountains Page 1 3

  Chapter 2 – The Hunt for Jonso Page 1 4 7

  Chapter 3 – Ambush at Riverside Page 2 0 3

  Chapter 4 – A Night w W ith Natalie Page 2 4 7

  Chapter 5 – Departure from Riverside Page 28 31

  Chapter 6 – The Rising Stars Page 3 2 5

  Chapter 7 – The Cave of Healing Page 3 6 9

  Chapter 8 – Leah in Walnut Creek Page 6 1 5

  Chapter 9 – Surviving Walnut Creek’s Fall Page 7 0 4

  Chapter 10 – The Raft and the River Page 7 3 7

  Section 2 Finding the Power – Goldenfields

  Chapter 11 – Annalea in Goldenfields Page 86

  Chapter 12 – A Visit f F rom An Angel Page 98

  Chapter 13 – The Shop on Bakers Street Page 101

  Chapter 14 – The Duke’s Palace Page 121

  Chapter 15 – The B b odyguard Page 129

  Chapter 16 – The Palace Guard Page 131

  Chapter 17 – The Awakening Page 136

  Chapter 18 – Recovery in the Palace Page 140

  Chapter 19 – The Duke Makes Plans Page 148

  Chapter 20 – The Chapel by the River Page 157

  Chapter 21 – Reflections on a Note Page 169

  Chapter 22 – The Pain of Training Page 173

  Chapter 23 – Dinner at Natha’s Page 176

  Chapter 24 - Alec Returns to the River Page 184

  Chapter 25 – The Challenge of Healing Lewis Page 189

  Chapter 26 – An Unhealthy Sleep Page 198

  Chapter 27 – The Healing Power Page 203

  Chapter 28 – Lewis Revives Page 206

  Chapter 29 – The Camp by the River Page 215

  Chapter 30 – Chase through the Wilderness Page 219

  Chapter 31 – Pursuit by Ingenairii Page 226

  Chapter 32 – Ingenairii Politics Page 229

  Chapter 33 – A Captain and Ingenaire Page 233

  Chapter 34 – Merle’s Test Page 239

  Chapter 35 – Merle’s Proposal Page 247

  Chapter 36 – Where the Power Resides Page 253

  (Index, continued)

  Chapter 37 – Grasping the Energy Page 265

  Chapter 38 – A Night on the Town Page 268

  Chapter 39 – Terror at the Shop Page 274

  Chapter 40 – Consequences of Power Page 276

  Chapter 41 – The Healing Water Page 280

  Chapter 42 – Learning about Healing Page 293

  Chapter 43 – A Mark of Power Page 299

  Chapter 44 – Return to the River Page 304

  List of Characters

  The Caravan, Riverside and Walnut Grove

  Alec, carnival worker

  Jonso, carnival clown

  Richard, carnival owner and leader

  Suellen, Walnut Grove shop keeper

  Natalie, carnival dancer

  Leah, Walnut Grove resident

  Aristotle, powerful ingenaire

  Goldenfields

  Annalea, ill daughter of trader Natha

  Helen, Annalea’s mother

  Natha, leading trader and businessman

  Toulon, Duke of Goldenfields

  Colonel Dearborn Ryder, Goldenfields Guard

  Inga, Goldenfields Guard officer

  Lewis, Goldenfields Guard officer

  Ellison, Goldenfields Guard officer

  Merle, Goldenfields ingenairii

  Abraham, Goldenfields army officer

  Antonio, army chaplain

  Ellen, healing shop servant

  Fayette, apprentice ingenairii

  Section 1

  Finding The Vision –

  The White Mountains

  Against The Empire

  Chapter 1 – Arrival in the Mountains

  “We may be able to see a long way, but we don’t know where we’re going,” the gray-haired man on the wagon seat mumbled as the sun set in a red haze behind them. His traveling companion, a youth with eyes glazed from a long day of crossing the featureless prairie, felt the words resonate in his foggy mind.

  “What do you mean, Ari?” The teenager wasn’t sure why the comment intrigued him, but he felt compelled to understand its meaning. After fifteen years at the orphanage, these recent months with Ari represented the closest he’d come to a family relationship, and Alec was determined to keep that relationship open, always listening and occasionally asking questions in his shy way. Alec wasn’t certain how the other carnival workers perceived him, a runaway who had joined the carnival and now shoveled manure and tended to the least desirable chores, but he knew that Ari always treated him with dignity and kindness. “We can see for a hundred boring miles out here, and there’s nothing but the horizon. What view do we need beyond everything in sight?” asked Alec.

  “I’m not talking about vision with your eyes, youngster,” the older man said as he pulled his hat lower. “The vision we need is something that even your sleepy mind can provide when you exert yourself,” he explained as the corners of his mouth turned up to show the humor intended in his comment.

  “Richard up in the front wagon is leading
us towards the mountain towns because he’s heard there’s money to be made by a traveling carnival like ours; no entertainers have ever crossed the open lands to the frontier. But he’s so driven by his greed that he won’t think about all the bad things that can happen in those mountains. Rumors about some of those valleys would chill the flesh off your bones. We shouldn’t be taking a load of acrobats and dancers and carnival hustlers out there; we ought to be taking a regiment of soldiers and a few ingenairii to discover what’s happening.”

  “Don’t you think Richard listened to folks in the river towns before he led the caravan towards the eastern range? I heard lots of folks back in Sandyfork say that there were buckets of mining and timber money being made in the mountain towns. There’re folks living in cabins and tents making fistfuls of cash with nothing to spend it on in the mountains. There are lucky folks pulling in money hand-over-fist without even trying. Richard must have heard that a dozen times,” Alec responded, sitting up straighter now as the conversation engaged.

  “You probably heard every conversation Richard had about the eastern range if you heard that,” Ari replied.

  “Well, I didn’t hear them myself, but some of the other grooms say they heard about the folks talking,” Alec admitted. He often joined the other menial workers in the carnival, usually listening and sometimes chiming in.

  “It may be rumor, but it’s probably a fairly accurate description of what Richard let the city folks tell him,” Ari said with a wry expression, and his eyes focused on the sky momentarily, as he remembered other times rumors had been far from the truth.

  “The problem is that Richard only listened to small town merchants. He heard what he wanted to hear, and he didn’t try to hear anything else. Those bakers and dry goods merchants spoke jealously about things they don’t really know. They all want to be rich, and they imagine that some folks get rich just by being in the right place at the right time and letting gold shower down on them.”

  Then Ari grew even more earnest. His eyes stared directly into Alec’s as he spoke. “I’ll tell you about luck. There are two kinds of luck. There’s the luck you make for yourself, by working to be in the right place, working to be at the right time, working to be doing the right things with the right people. It’s not really luck; it’s hard work and planning. It’s what happens ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Then there’s luck that seems to drop down on you unexpectedly. That’s not luck; it’s fate. That’s the work of some higher power. Fate doesn’t step into ordinary folk’s lives very often. Most of the luck regular folks have is their own making. If they’re hard-working, bright, honest folks, they bring good luck on themselves.” Ari continued, his voice rising and his hands showing animation as they held the reins.

  “Those miners and timbermen have endured cold and wet and discomfort. They’ve suffered disease and pestilence and hardship. A lot of them worked long hours with no apparent return, then when they earned their dues, less hardy folks call it ‘luck’.”

  “And despite all this moralizing I didn’t intend to inflict on you, the truth of the matter is that while there is some money going to those mountain folks to pay for all they’ve wrestled from the mountains, there are plenty of dark rumors about other things happening there. Cabins found empty and their occupants never seen again. Screams that chill the bones and have scared some folks out. Rumblings and flashes of light that aren’t priests performing benevolent rites. There are old dark forces that have spent centuries in the mountains and never left. Every time people enter the mountains, the dark powers snap them up. If they find a chance, those fell powers will try to leave the mountains and attack the towns and countryside of the Dominion.”

  “We’ve forgotten the history of the times before our great-grandsires, but many ingenairii were called upon in the past to fight the evil that has taken refuge in the mountain valleys. We may have forgotten too much, and we may pay for our ignorance.”

  “Those who are ignorant of history think there’s a blank canvas out there, and Richard in his mind has painted a picture of easy profit. He doesn’t have the vision to ask questions that might bring answers he doesn’t want to hear. He just sees what he wants to see, and as a result he’s blithely taking our whole troupe to a very dangerous area. We may make it through without any problems. Or we may get caught up in horrors that none of us can handle.”

  Alec sat mute, moved by the sermon he’d just listened to, wondering where such talk had come from. In his months with the caravan, he’d never heard Ari speak so plainly to him about magic and power. Nor had he ever heard the old man pass judgment in such a stern way. He felt as though he’d just heard a prophet’s pronouncement of ill-bodings.

  And then as quickly as it began, the aura of importance seeped away from the wagon driver, and his hands fell back to their passive position in his lap. The lecture ended, and he once again seemed to be just a kindly carnival magician, the man who amused Alec while gently offering lessons through examples of kindness and patience.

  Alec still didn’t understand, but he no longer felt such an urgent need to fathom what he’d heard. He was bewildered by the fact that Ari could so easily speak with a voice that imbued so much power and importance in every syllable. And the boy felt that whatever the magician was saying, it was over his head to really understand.

  He mused about Ari’s definition of luck. Alec didn’t think he’d worked hard enough to deserve the chance to run away from Frame when the carnival had come to town. If hard work hadn’t earned such good luck, the boy reasoned that maybe Fate had stepped in to provide this friendship with the man sitting next to him. Alec wasn’t sure what to call the luck that had landed him as an infant in an orphanage, except bad luck. He’d never known anything about his parents, and never had a chance to learn. Only one Sister had known any of his history when he was received in the institution, and she’d never told him anything before she was assigned to another convent far from the city of Frame.

  He tried to shake off the disquiet Ari had created, and as the wagon wheels continued to turn and squeak, Alec fell gradually into a comfortable sense that something had blown over. He decided everything was going to be okay, and at the end of the trip Richard would turn out to have made a lot of money for the whole circus to share, even the lowly laborers like him.

  Alec recognized the familiar desire that grew while he listened to the wagon wheels squeak, as they had all day long. “How much longer until we stop for dinner?” he asked, his stomach grumbling.

  Before Ari answered, a long whistle came faintly from the front of the caravan, arrived at their wagon, and then traveled to the empty western horizon of the vast prairie behind them.

  “Oh, I’d say any time now,” Ari murmured with a straight face, his mouth an uncurved slit in his fastidiously trimmed beard and mustache. Alec decided to ignore the blithe reply.

  As the rear wagon drew closer to those already circling, Ari pulled on the reigns to slow the wagon horses. Although much shorter than Alec, Ari had the strength in his solid build to control the team that pulled their home on wheels. Alec knew his tasks, and jumped out to loosen the harnesses, then led the horses over to the picket line being set up by the other carnival wagoneers.

  He decided to take the long way, as he often did. His shy face was studiously blank, not revealing any thoughts or emotions. Alec was pleasant looking, but seldom looked at twice. His ears might have been slightly too large, but his shaggy brown hair hid that fact from general observation. His wide set light brown eyes were almost golden in bright light, and drew attention away from his mouth, which was generous, and likely to brighten into a frequent smile.

  He was tall, and he straightened his back as he drew close to the most colorful wagon in the caravan. He shifted his eyes to sneak a glance, but was disappointed not to see anyone stepping out of the dainty contraption, even though he could hear voices inside. Three girls raised and lowered their animated voices as they recounted a story Alec couldn’t hear clearly
. One laughing voice particularly caught his attention, but try as he might he couldn’t catch the details that caused giggles to rise and fall. Deflated by the non-appearance of the dancers, Alec passed by and resumed his usual slouch, unaware of the eyes that peered through the shutters as he passed the wagon.

  “Will she ever notice me?” he asked the patient horses as he began to water and brush them. “Those girls sit up in the front of the wagon train and don’t even know I exist. When we stop in town they perform in the big tent, while I muck about at every task no one else wants,” he continued. The horses remained wisely silent, and as the other circus workers approached with their animals, Alec decided to pay attention to getting his work done. He’d not worked up the courage to ask Ari for advice about girls yet. Back at the orphanage he’d known girls as well as boys, but there had been no opportunity for relationships to develop before the older teens were made to leave so that room opened up for younger children to enter.

  The apprentice returned to his wagon and took on the next task of setting up camp. Ari had already placed the blocks under the wagon wheels. With the horses taken care of and the wagon secured, Alec carried cooking supplies to the cook’s wagon, where the oven was being set up to slow-bake overnight, so they’d have fresh bread for following days. With no trees visible anywhere, Alec didn’t have to collect wood for the fire, one of the tasks he usually enjoyed because it allowed him to walk in the woods alone. But the dwindling amount of remaining firewood told him they would be eating cold food soon if they didn’t find a new supply.

  The sun was below the western horizon when the dinner bell rang. Alec joined the line of hands and waited for his portion of the stew, bread, and fruit. He took a mug of the lukewarm water, watching the older laborers take their customary beer. As he looked for a place to sit he noticed the dancing girls sitting alone by their wagon. For several seconds he watched Natalie eating her food, with eyes glued to her friends telling a story.