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  What had Ari done back there, Alec wondered to himself yet again, and how did I never know he could do such a thing? Alec had seen a number of small magical tricks and illusions performed by his mentor, but never anything so dramatic. Can I learn to hold those kinds of powers, he wondered, and daydreamed of himself as a mighty ingenaire battling warriors and monsters to become a hero in a powerful dukedom, though Ari had never said anything to hint that Alec could be trained in such things.

  Alec knew that there were not many ingenairii across the Dominion, but there were some who traveled through the cities from time to time, performing deeds requested by the princes, dukes, and cities. No one he knew had ever claimed to know a ingenaire directly or indirectly, and most folks in the carnival had assumed that Aristotle only used clever sleight of hand and other unseen tricks to accomplish his act with the public. Now Alec knew otherwise, and he contemplated learning to do such mighty deeds. Was it something a person learned, or was one just born with such abilities?

  He shook his head and turned again to see that the moon had risen almost into the trees. He tossed some small twigs into the fire ring and blew on them until a small flame arose from the embers, flaring just enough to brighten his hands. He fed a few more small branches into the flames, feeling a tickle of heat from the small fire to take some of the chill off his fingertips. Alec swigged his bitter tea, and stood up again to listen to the woods. He looked at where the halo of the moon penetrated the tree branches as it climbed in the canopy. Thinking about how far above the moon the evening star had been, the tiring boy decided that his shift must be almost over by now.

  Time now to wake their leader and turn in for the night, Alec decided. He moved over to Ari and shook his shoulder, softly at first and then more roughly. “Ari, your turn to watch,” he whispered, trying to make as little noise as possible. Ari grunted in a way that indicated he was awake, and sat up. “The moon’s risen to the top of the sky, so I thought it might be your turn now,” he explained.

  “You’ve taken your share and a bit of mine too, I’d say,” Ari remarked groggily after sitting for several seconds.

  “Here’s some tea if you’d like,” Alec held out the skin, then crawled over to his own blankets and tried to relax. Within minutes he was asleep, the mountains and uncertainties and thoughts of ingenaire powers, and even Natalie, forgotten.

  Chapter 7 – The Cave of Healing

  “Alec, wake up, please,” were the first words he heard. He rolled onto his back in a dreamy not-awake state, and looked up to see Natalie’s head just above his. Her hair was pulled behind her ears, emphasizing the shape of her face.

  “I’m glad to know that you want my company as much as I enjoy yours,” he said, the words out of his mouth before he even knew he was voicing a thought. Her expression momentarily changed to show something that was pleasure or amusement, and then returned to a different look, one of concern.

  “Alec,” she proceeded, “Ari is moaning and won’t wake up when I shake him. I’m worried about him.”

  In the middling dawn light from the sun behind the mountains, Alec sat up and looked across their camp space to where Ari slept. He rose from his blankets and walked over to the ingenaire. Ari’s face was gray, his eyelids flickered, and he mumbled sounds that didn’t seem to be words. Alec nudged his shoulder, “Ari, sun’s up, should we be moving?” he asked. The ingenaire didn’t respond.

  “I tried to wake him, but it’s no good,” Natalie said over his shoulder. “What should we do?”

  Looking towards the girl behind him, Alec noted a structure, like a tower, silhouetted against the dawn light in the mountain pass to the east, in the background behind her. He hadn’t noticed that before, but the fading light had been in the western sky when they had stopped yesterday, so he wasn’t surprised he had missed the only evidence of human occupation in the area.

  “I don’t know what to do. Should we just let him sleep some more do you think?” he temporized in response. “How was he when he turned the watch over to you last night?”

  “He didn’t actually turn it over to me last night,” Natalie said as she stood up. “I woke up for some reason and saw that you were both asleep, so I just decided to start my turn. It wasn’t very long ago.”

  “He seemed groggy when I turned the watch over to him, and he wasn’t full of energy yesterday anyway. Fighting that battle in Riverside must have taken a lot out of him. I’m not sure what to do,” Alec trailed off.

  “Let’s have a bite to eat and wait a bit and see what happens. We could carry him if we had to, but it would be awfully slow, and you’d be doing most of that work,” Natalie’s voice diminished, as she realized the futility of the suggestion.

  “Where would we carry him?” Alec asked. “Did he tell you where we’re going?”

  “I just remember he said something yesterday about following the river to the Dominion. I don’t know any more than that.”

  They sat and ate some more of the bread, a day older and a bit harder now, and drank some water from a spring nearby. Alec sat and looked around, his eyes drawn again and again to the tower on the horizon, standing out in the rising sunlight.

  An urge came over him to traipse up the valley to visit that tower, to see if any help was there, or any threat. It seemed unlikely they’d find kind strangers out here, but he wanted to know what was up the valley. It was a powerful, inexplicable, unlikely obsession upon him, calling him away from their camp.

  Suddenly he stood. “Natalie, there’s a tower or something on the horizon up at the top of this valley. While we wait on Ari to wake up, I’m going to get closer to it to see what’s up there,” he announced.

  “Do you expect me to stay here?” she asked. He nodded. She stared blankly at him for a long moment. “You won’t be gone long will you?” She didn’t enjoy his proposal, but didn’t voice an objection.

  “I’ll only go as far as I can before the sun rises a little bit above the horizon and then turn around if I haven’t found something good,” he promised, grabbed a knife from his pack, and started to walk up the valley.

  “Alright, I should have known you weren’t being honest when you said you enjoyed my company so much,” she said with annoyance in her tone.

  He waved and walked up the valley, wondering if he would manage to fix the hurt he’d just inflicted on this girl he was fond of. He turned the question over in his mind until he had to concentrate on climbing, watching for footing as the valley rapidly narrowed and began rising sharply up into the mountains above the river.

  Water trickled down a rill in the center of the ravine Alec was climbing. Even though he had already come far, the tower was still a long way ahead. The sun hadn’t broached the horizon yet in the high mountains ahead, but the dawn light was now bright and clear, showing that sunrise wouldn’t be far away.

  Alec stopped suddenly. He looked down at the stone he had stepped on. It was a perfect square, though its corners were weathered; more surprisingly, it had an inscription, one he couldn’t read, on its surface. Ahead he saw several more like it, forming a stretch of stairway going up the gully. He felt a surge of hope, and renewed his climb. The stairs were too intermittent and the stones too scattered to ease his climb up the rising gully, but they raised his confidence that he had a goal to reach; something had to be ahead, his heart told him.

  The ravine came to a branch, splitting into two watercourses, and Alec considered which to follow. At the top of the left one he could see the tower, and paved stones led that route. The other path, a smaller one, turned right and disappeared from view, with no sign of stones along its way, and almost hidden by dense brush. His intuition made him look long at the rightward path, though there was no obvious reason to go there.

  Instead he continued his journey towards the tower, convinced that the stones and steps to the left were a logical sign to follow. He twisted past several large stones, which had fallen down into the gully from the cliffs above. The gully’s slope softened, and
its floor widened out. Alec stopped for a moment to catch his breath. He squinted his eyes, and realized that the sun was climbing above the horizon. He could no longer see the tower, which was centered in the glare of the sun’s bright disk. He began to travel faster now, knowing that he had little time left until he would turn around and return to Natalie and Ari.

  A noise caught his attention and he stopped. The sun broke free of the horizon as he slitted his eyes and looked again at the still distant tower. He listened and again heard the noise that alarmed him. He crouched low to the ground against one of the large stones. The sound was a voice, the voice of a lacerta, low and guttural. It was complaining in a mutter, and he realized the lacerta must be very nearby.

  A shadow appeared on the path beside him and the lacerta strolled by, only ten feet from Alec’s rock-sheltered hiding place. Without a sideways glance the lacerta walked down the pathway, coming between Alec and his camp. Alec turned, scooted further to his left and then began moving from boulder to boulder, following the lacerta back towards the river. The lacerta was a soldier, carrying a spear, wearing a sword on his belt, and with chain mail and a helmet for protection, along with a general air of sloppy and disorderly care.

  Alec wanted to keep the lacerta in sight without being seen, and he wanted to make it back to camp and get his companions to a safer place without detection. Following the lacerta, and hoping that this was simply a short, routine patrol seemed to be the only way to return. Fortunately, the lacerta never bothered to look back. Alec’s frequent glances over his own shoulder showed no other soldiers on patrol behind him.

  Onward they went for several minutes, coming to the place where the gully sloped steeply downhill at the fork in the waterways. The lacerta was easy to keep track of, making no effort to patrol, and continuing to grumble. He stood at the fork for a few moments, then turned and looked back up the way he had come. Alec stayed behind a stone, only twenty feet away. He heard the footsteps start again, and realized that the lacerta was moving back towards the tower. Apparently he’d reached the end of his patrol, or as much of it as he planned to make.

  Once the soldier was past, Alec began to move towards the tenuous safety of the camp. Alec turned at the fork in the gully to look back over his shoulder at the retreating lacerta. It proved to be a mistake to take his eyes off the path. His foot slipped on a wet stone; he fell into a small pool, splashed water, and involuntarily shouted as a sheet of cold water rose and soaked his clothes and skin. He heard silence as the lacerta’s mumbling stopped, and his heart skipped a beat.

  Instantly he jumped up and darted into the smaller fork of the ravine. He bounded up it, and followed the first sharp turn that would hide him from view of the sentry. Up the steep route he continued to scramble, as it made two more turns. After the second turn the gully opened up into a wider dell that extended nearly flat and straight in a hollow between the high peaks.

  Alec slipped behind a large tree and stopped there panting heavily. As his eyes darted nervously in all directions he noticed a thin crevasse in the far side of the valley off to his left, but didn’t dare risk crossing the valley floor to hide in it. He saw no movement and heard no sound, but he stayed in his spot watching the entrance of the valley intently.

  The sun was high above the horizon by now, and Alec knew that Natalie would be expecting him back at camp soon. Hopefully, Ari would be awake and healthy when he returned, if he returned, the young carnival worker fearfully told himself.

  A spray of dirt erupted at his feet, making Alec jump, and he turned to see a spear in the ground. A low growl from the top of the bank on his right drew his glance to where the lacerta stood. Alec snatched the spear from the ground and ran towards the crevasse, as the lacerta scrambled down the bank. Alec reached the entrance, stopped to pick up stones from the ground, then ran inside the gloomy opening. Fifty feet in he stopped and turned, sure that the lacerta wouldn’t spot him in the crevasse’s dark interior. While Alec lacked self-confidence in many things, his ability to throw hard and accurately were something he knew he could do well thanks to years of pitching contests at the orphanage. The soldier panted closer as Alec propped the spear against the wall and readied the stones. When the lacerta stepped into the entrance Alec pitched all four stones as hard and as quickly as he could at the soldier’s unprotected face.

  All the missiles hit the lacerta squarely around the eyes, and blood streamed down its forehead, blinding it. Without further thought or hesitation, Alec took the spear and drove towards the lacerta, aiming at the unprotected neck while the creature groped at its face. His arms-extended jab hit his target squarely and the lacerta thrashed and squealed, then collapsed in a bloody mess.

  Alec jerked the spear free from the soldier’s neck, feeling the point grate against bone. Still holding the spear staff in his hand, he felt revulsion well up and overwhelm him at the spontaneous violence. Unable to look at the bloody wreck before him, Alec turned and fled into the crevasse’s unknown depths.

  The route turned and twisted and climbed, then doubled back on itself and climbed more sharply. Alec ran in a panic, unable to think about anything but flight away from the battle he’d just fought. He’d never done anything so impulsive and serious before.

  Suddenly he stopped. He had to stop, the crevasse, now a cave, had abruptly ended on a small shelf jutting out from a soaring cliff, with a sheer drop on the outside, and tumbled stones far below.

  He looked over the cliff and saw the distant river valley. Somewhere down below were his friends, and nearby must be more lacertii. He slumped down and sat on the stone ledge, catching his breath and collecting his thoughts. He’d never expected to be fighting for his life and running from lacertii in unknown mountains, and he had no idea what to do next. What’s more, he remembered he had two friends more helpless that him at the bottom of the mountain, and he knew he had to return to them.

  As he turned to look upward at the cliff behind him he noticed that regular incisions appeared in the cliff’s face. He couldn’t tell where they went because of another ledge fifty feet above him. Yet the cuts in the stone were spaced so regularly and looked so even that without question it was a ladder.

  Alec walked over to stand below the slices in the stone. Slinging the spear through his belt in the back of his trousers, he jumped up to grab the first stone rung, but missed it. He looked around, pulled together some loose stones below the rungs, and stepped up on top of the small pile, several inches closer to his goal. He launched himself again, and caught hold of the bottom rung, but his fingers slipped on moss that had grown there, and he fell back. Mentally prepared for another effort, he jumped again and forced the aching fingers of his left hand to squeeze a tight grasp on the stone.

  Taking a breath, Alec reached upward with his right hand to the next rung and pulled himself up, then continued until he could wedge his toes into the lowest rung. He climbed upward more easily, his arms growing leaden with the effort, until his head finally cleared the isolated shelf above his ledge. His eyes saw what was there and he stopped in amazement.

  Set in the stone wall of the cliff, where no other works of men appeared, was a polished metal door. The smooth door had large hinges on one side and a handle on the other. There were no other features. Alec climbed onto the ledge, which felt colder than the one he’d just left, due perhaps to the strong winds that gusted about.

  He went to the inexplicable door and grabbed its handle, but nothing happened; the metal didn’t budge an inch. He took hold with both hands, feet braced on the ground, and heaved mightily. His newly acquired spear whacked the side of his head as he tried to jerk the door, but the resultant welt on his scalp was the only change in circumstances; the door remained as solid as the stone face of the mountainside. Irritated, Alec pulled the spear out and dropped it to the floor. He pulled the door handle again, and felt it give slightly, then saw a faint pattern he’d not noticed before in the metal. It looked like a tranquil scene of a man in a peaceful setting, ben
t over a young woman who lay on a cot. Alec pulled out his knife and tried to scrap at the etching to see if he could remove any tarnish and observe any clues about the door or what was behind it. The knife had absolutely no effect on the door, leaving not a single scratch or mark.

  Alec was completely frustrated by the door that challenged him. He set his knife down on the ground, grabbed the handle again, and braced himself, just as he had done for his last effort. He jerked hard on the door handle, and promptly went flying back to land hard on his seat as the door glided open easily. Alec stood up, rubbed the smarting bottom of his trousers, and stared in bafflement at the gaping door. He saw that inside the dark entrance was some slight illumination. He bent to pick up his knife and spear, only to hear the door hinges squeal as the door began to suddenly close; he dropped the weapons in surprise, and the door stopped closing.

  The puzzling behavior of the doorway was more than Alec understood. “Can’t I take weapons inside?” he asked aloud. Now filled with confusion and curiosity, he stepped forward to the threshold and looked inside closely. A curtain of water showered down just inside the doorway, coming from some hidden spring in the ceiling, to create a shallow pool inside the door. Beyond the small chamber rose a set of stairs, and lining the walls were intricate drawings of plants and objects and animals, along with writing that covered all the available surfaces he could see.

  A new compulsion hit Alec, and he bent to remove his boots. He was seized by a conviction that this place was one that he must not defile. Then, with a moment’s deep breath to prepare, Alec placed his bare feet in motion and passed through the doorway, grimacing at the prospect of the cold shower the spring water would drip on him.