The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11) Read online

  “How are you going to prove it to win the bet?” the other servant challenged the first one.

  They passed into the hall, and the answer to the question was lost to Alec and Andi.

  “How will he prove it?” Andi asked with a smile, as Alec rearranged the plates in front of each of them according to what he knew Andi would and would not eat.

  “He could ask one of us,” Alec suggested.

  “They won’t do that; they never do,” Andi said, as she speared her fork into the relish tray and then daintily popped a piece of cauliflower into her mouth.

  “No they never do,” Alec agreed.

  “I’m ready,” Andi casually stated.

  Alec looked at her, puzzled by the abrupt comment. He saw that she was staring at him with a direct expression, then he sensed her feelings, and his heart sank.

  “Andi,” he said softly, extending his hand across the table to her. She placed her slender, translucent fingers upon his palm.

  “Look at you, and look at me,” she said. “We can’t argue about this. I sense how hard you work to not think of it; Alec, you’re kind to try to spare me your thoughts, but the reality of my condition can’t be denied. I’m ready to go, and I ask that you grant me the favor of letting me do it on my own terms.”

  You want to go all the way back there? He asked in astonishment as she emotionally composed her request.

  I have loved spending one hundred and fifty years with you here in the Dominion; I wouldn’t trade a moment of it away. But I want to die in the village where I was born. I want to hear the sounds of my native language and smell the breeze blowing in from the port. I want to go see my mother’s grave, she told him wistfully.

  “You could stay here and live for many more years,” he pointed out, as he fingers gently squeezed hers.

  “I have to take four baths a day in your healing water now, plus drink it with every meal, in order to stay alive,” she pointed out just as gently.

  At this rate, if I want to stay alive much longer, I’m going to have to live in a tub of the spring water day and night, her thought was projected into his mind in a tone that conveyed no pain or bitterness.

  And you shouldn’t spend all these years locked away in this isolated place because of me, when you could be out in the world doing so much good, she added.

  You forget where I was when we first met, Alec reminded her as they ate their meal. I was living in a village in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, with fewer people around its vicinity than there are here at the spring every day.

  But you were active there. You helped hundreds of travelers on the caravan road. You gave that mountain village a better life than it ever had before you settled there, Andi rebutted.

  “Let’s sleep on it,” Alec replied in a troubled voice. He sensed the strength and passion of her decision, and he knew it was one he could not dissuade her from. But it was one he could not easily accept either.

  “Yes, I’m ready for bed,” she agreed.

  Alec came around the table and offered his hand, then maintained a worried, loving embrace of Andi as they walked into the bedroom. As they went to bed, he fell into an uneasy sleep, disturbed by the proposition that his wife had broached.

  When he awoke the next morning, Alec sensed the satisfaction Andi felt from having spoken her opinion, and he knew that she had emboldened herself to continue the conversation. And as he thought about how he expected the dialog would continue, he found that he could not muster a sufficient objection to her decision. He was going to take her home to the Avonellene Empire, to the distant land where she had been born and raised, so she could fall asleep for one last time.

  Chapter 3

  A month later, under a red sunset sky, Alec stood outside the village of Riberte. He was facing a tall wooden column, the Tale of Remembrance of Andi’s family. Andi had brought him to the relic behind the village temple during their first week in Riberte.

  The wooden column was twelve feet tall, one of many that together recorded the lives and deaths of the people who had lived in the village. Names and birthdates, relationships, and dates of death, were all carved in a winding stream of figures that circled around and around and around the exterior of the wood.

  “There, that’s me,” Andi had pointed at a name that was two and a half lines above the most current names included in the family record. Her name and date of birth had been carved, just after her sister and her mother’s name, with her father’s name trailing after hers. Or rather, her father’s name trailed after the small blank spot that followed her birthdate.

  Alec was keeping his promise to her, and was carving the date of her death into the column, showing a life span that impossibly stretched over the length of five generations.

  When his task was done, he touched her name tenderly one last time, then walked back to the modest inn in the village. Kale the cook and the cook’s wife, Kora, were waiting there for him, waiting for him to transport them back to the far distant Dominion once again.

  They had come with Alec and Andi, to provide care for the elderly woman once she left behind the water of the Healing Spring. They had come to Avonellene lands, where the language was one they did not know at all, and they had relied on Alec and Andi to provide translation services in the foreign land.

  Alec had carried them, one at a time, and Andi as well, each journey taking a day by itself as Alec jumped from spot to spot to spot with his Traveler ingenaire ability.

  The small group had stayed together as they traveled around and saw the sites that Andi remembered from the previous century, memories than no one else alive shared with her. Andi had grown reinvigorated at first, full of new energy and pep, as she was revived by the return to her childhood home.

  “Thank you for this,” she told Alec, speaking in the language of Avonellene.

  “I’m glad you’re finding so much pleasure,” he replied rustily in his heavily-accented reply. He’d never learned to speak the language fluently, despite his own long residence in the empire during his marriage to Caitlen, and he’d not even been in areas that spoke the language in the previous fifty years.

  After the first week of activity, Andi had grown tired. Without the use of the water from the Healing Spring, she placidly grew less active and quieter. Kora, the wife of Kale the chef, had sat with her when Alec hadn’t, so that the elderly adventuress queen had constant companionship until the end.

  The highlight of Andi’s active days had been discovering the descendants of her own family, grandchildren of her nieces and nephews. She’d not mentioned the relationship to any of them of course, but after meeting them she’d spent hours with Alec going over which of them looked like some family member she remembered, with the eyes or the nose or the forehead of some ancestor she had known personally during her youth.

  And when his wife peacefully passed away, Alec had been with her, their joined consciousness letting him find peace as he felt her slip into the comfort of the afterlife. He’d cremated her body in the tradition of that part of the Avonellene lands, a puzzle to the local people as to why the foreign strangers had come to their small village to tend to the passing of an old lady.

  After he finished adding Andi’s details to the Tale of Remembrance column, Alec returned to the inn.

  “Are you ready to go back to the Dominion?” he asked Kora and Kale. The visit to Riberte had been limiting for them, since they did not speak the local language.

  “I’m ready,” Kora had replied quickly.

  “What are your plans, my lord?” Kale had asked before forming his own answer.

  “I think I’ll take the two of you back to Goldenfields, and then I may return here and make the journey back over land, the humbler way,” Alec answered. He’d been considering the thought of a personal pilgrimage to see the past locations of his own life and the places he shared with Andi on their first encounter, when they’d traveled the vast distance overland together, or in pursuit of one another. The long trip would
be an opportunity to reflect and heal and adjust to Andi’s absence from his existence.

  “Would you like to have a companion?” Kale asked unexpectedly. “That’s a long journey. If you took Kora back to her mother’s home, I could remain here and wait for you, then travel with you to serve you on the longer journey.

  “You wouldn’t mind spending time with your family, waiting for me, would you?” he asked his wife.

  “How long would you take to return?” she asked, dubiously.

  “About two weeks,” Kale replied with a guess.

  “About three months,” Alec replied with a more realistic estimate.

  “Three months?” Kora. “You want to spend three months away?”

  “No,” Kale answered gently, and carefully. “I want to be with you all the time. But I would be happy to be the king’s assistant and companion for,” he paused, “a little while.”

  Alec looked back and forth from one to the other. He didn’t need an assistant, he knew. But the young man wanted to satisfy his hero worship, and more importantly, Alec wanted to do anything that would fill any part of the void he felt. His extraordinary union with Andi had not only filled his heart with love, but it had filled his mind and soul with the elements of the joint awareness the two of them had shared. There was presently a huge, yawning chasm in his consciousness. He lacked the feeling of Andi in his mind; he lacked Andi’s voice speaking to him; he lacked the acuteness of Andi’s emotions and reactions to things in her world.

  Having Kale along, in need of assistance and translation, asking questions and observing the journey with his fresh set of eyes, would provide a useful distraction. It would let Alec both embrace the prospect of the long journey across the entire breadth of all the known lands, and also provide the duties of watching out for the youthful traveler.

  “If your wife would be happy staying in Goldenfields while you travel with me, she and her family could stay in the palace there,” Alec offered. “I’d enjoy having you as a traveler with me.”

  Kora’s eyes widened and lit up.

  “I would love to stay in the Palace!” her voice rose so far with excitement that she nearly squealed. “And my mother could come stay in the palace too?” she asked to confirm.

  “Yes, she may,” Alec agreed. “I’ll take you back to Goldenfields so that you can ask her.”

  Kora hastily listed off the things she would have to do, speaking to herself while the others listened, and within five minutes she stood ready to go, giving her husband an excited kiss, then turning to Alec with sparkling eyes.

  “I’m ready to go,” she pronounced, hoisting her bag of belongings into her arms and holding them tightly.

  “I’ll be back in a couple of days,” Alec told Kale, and then he wrapped his arms around Kora, and they disappeared from their room. Alec took the young woman through the series of translocations that provided the best route across the globe – to Vincennes, then Black Crag, then the Twenty Cities, then Boundary Lake, on to Chanradala, the capital of the lacertii, then on to the ruined city at the edge of the Pale Mountains, and finally to the palace at Goldenfields, a large wealthy duchy on the periphery of the Dominion.

  “Your majesty,” a staff member passing by in the hallway happened to spot them as soon as they arrived. “We’ve missed seeing you. Is everything well?”

  “The queen has left our world,” Alec answered softly. “As she wished to. I don’t know anything else in the world now, other than that fact, and that I wish to see the Duchess.”

  “Come right this way, your majesty. I’m so sorry to hear about the queen,” the man’s eyes were moist, and Alec sensed the sincerity of his sympathy. Like every other mortal in the Dominion, the man had never known any sovereigns except for Alec and Andi; the idea that one of them could pass away was an earthshaking revelation.

  “If you’ll follow me to the Regal Parlor, we’ll have refreshments sent, and the Duchess will arrive as quickly as she can,” the man explained as he led them down the hall to an elegant waiting room.

  “And who shall I say your guest is?” he asked hesitantly.

  “This is Kora, formerly a resident of Goldenfields,” Alec said simply.

  The servant left the two of them in the Regal Parlor, the room specifically designed for visits from Alec, who had often come to Goldenfields during his reign.

  “This room is gorgeous!” Kora gushed. “It’s so much nicer than your palace,” she blurted out.

  “My apologies, your majesty,” she added a moment later as she blushed and curtseyed to Alec, who had exercised modest tastes in decorating the small palace at the spring.

  “No offense taken,” Alec assured her.

  There was a sound at the door, and an official of the duchy entered.

  “Your majesty, this is a great and unexpected pleasure. Our apologies that we weren’t prepared to receive you in the proper style. The duchess is on her way at this moment,” the man apologized.

  “We should apologize to you for showing up without warning,” Alec replied. He was beginning to feel tired, as the after-effects of carrying out the long journey began to impact him, and he stifled a yawn. “My companion is Kora, a servant from my home at the Healing Spring. She’s originally from Goldenfields though,” he began to explain, just as the Duchess of Goldenfields arrived.

  “Your majesty,” she said pleasantly as she entered the room and curtseyed to Alec. “My apologies for my delayed arrival.”

  “You owe me no apology,” Alec repeated. The Duchess Toumoona was a woman in the prime of her adulthood, the descendant of the noble hostage that he had rescued from captivity by the Michian forces occupying the Dominion at the time Alec had returned while in pursuit of Andi. She was a strong personality who overshadowed her consort, but who still carried her family’s ancestral gratitude to Alec for what he had done to save the family and the duchy. And she was mindful that the immense wealth of the duchy was due in part to the presence of the Healing Spring within its boundaries, bringing commerce and tax revenues to her coffers.

  “I am here to ask a favor,” he began.

  “There is nothing that you would ask for that I would refuse, I’m sure,” the Duchess quickly assured him.

  “Kora is a former resident of Goldenfields. Her husband will be accompanying me on a journey for the next few weeks, and I have taken the liberty of offering her and her mother the hospitality of your palace while she is separated from her spouse,” he explained.

  “I would even offer up my own suite in the palace to be hers,” he added, referring to the rooms that had been given to him centuries earlier, and preserved for only his use over the years.

  “There’s no problem with giving the young lady space in the palace,” the Duchess assured him.

  “We look forward to your company,” she graciously turned and said to Kora.

  “Thank you ever so much, your Grace,” Kora replied, awed by the company she found herself in.

  “Will you stay for dinner, your highness?” Duchess Toumoona asked Alec.

  “I must apologize for so rudely dropping in and then leaving again, but I need to return to Oyster Bay to let the palace there know of my expected absence as well,” Alec replied. “Thank you all for your assistance. Kora, I’ll look forward to seeing your reunion with Kale upon the completion of our journey,” he turned and said to the young lady, and then he surprised them all by immediately transporting himself out of the palace.

  “He’s in a bit of a hurry,” Toumoona said in wonder.

  “He’s just seen his wife pass away,” Kora spoke up, eager to provide a dash of information that would raise her importance in the eyes of her new hostess.

  “The queen? Dead?” the chamberlain asked in shock.

  Alec missed the conversation, as he transported himself to the palace at Oyster Bay. Upon his arrival, he knew that it was his last trip of the day, as he felt the weariness multiply within himself, though the last trip had been less taxing since he had covered a
relatively short distance, and had carried no passenger with him.

  “Your majesty,” said the first servant who spotted him, when he strolled down the hall towards his room in the palace. “It’s so good to see you again,” the woman said with aplomb, as though Alec had not neglected the palace for a month’s time.

  Karalee was his steward, and it was a strange stretching of the odds that she should happen to be the first staff member to see him in the palace.

  “Thank you dear,” he said absent-mindedly. “Is there anything available for dinner?” he asked. His stomach was operating in a time zone several hundreds of leagues to the east, where sunset had come and gone long since.

  “We can certainly provide something. Would you like to dine in the hall, or shall I have a tray sent to your quarters?” she asked.

  “Quarters, please,” Alec replied. He was just down the corridor from the rooms that he and Andi had shared for over a century, the very same rooms that his children with Jeswyne had occupied once upon a time in the past, and the same royal suite that his own ancestors had lived in when Alec was a youth and before. It was a comforting place with the continuity it reminded him of. But it was also now a sadder place, as it reminded him that Andi would never be in those rooms again. He imagined he heard her voice in his head, telling him of some preposterous trouble their children had caused.

  “Majesty? Is everything alright?” Karalee asked, as Alec stood still with a wistful look on his face.

  “Things are as well as they can be,” he replied after a moment, not quite ready or able to utter the words that he needed to say, to admit that Andi was gone. “I’ll go to my quarters now to receive my meal,” he said, and walked away.

  “Will you want reports delivered to you?” Karalee asked.

  “In the morning,” Alec responded over his shoulder.

  “No,” he changed his mind as he stopped walking. The reports might provide a distraction. “Have them delivered with my meal,” he said, then resumed walking without further discussion.