The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities Page 7

  “So we can see roads? I always just felt where the ground was compact,” Aja commented.

  “And those are fields,” Alec waved to the side. “Since it is spring, the farmers have not planted crops yet. And there is a rabbit,” he directed her view to a bolting animal that fled into a pile of brush.

  “What have you done today,” she paused to adjust her phrase, “Alec, since I saw you last night?”

  “I have slept, and thought, and then healed many of the women in the village,” he said.

  “Did you cure Annem’s toothache?” Aja asked.

  “Right before lunch time. She was so happy, she kissed me!” Alec told her.

  “She’s a passionate woman,” Aja laughed. “To kiss a man says volumes about how great her gratitude is.”

  “How far are we going to go tonight?” the girl asked Alec.

  “As far as I can walk,” he told her. “After recovering from the demon wounds and doing all that healing, I don’t have much energy tonight. I thought we’d walk as far as possible, then I’ll sleep, and you can keep watch. Will that work?”

  “What will I watch?” she asked innocently.

  Alec looked at her, and realized the sincerity of the question.

  “You will watch to make sure nothing dangerous gets close to us. You’ll wake me up if you see anything you’re not sure about. Can you stay awake until sunrise to do that?” he asked her.

  “Sure! So should I wake you up before I go back to being a tree?” Aja clarified.

  “Yes,” he told her, and they walked on quietly for a few more minutes until Aja started asking more questions about the things she was seeing, questions that she peppered Alec with for several more hours until he finally took her into a copse of trees to rest.

  Aja awoke him the next morning after not enough hours of sleep, as a red ribbon appeared on the eastern horizon. They returned to the road and began to walk again, until the disk of the sun started to emerge from below the horizon. “You look peaceful when you’re asleep. Your face is gentle; I’m sorry I don’t see you like that all the time. Have a good day, Alec,” she told him, and then Alec watched with amazement as Aja stood in her canvas bag of soil, her bare feet planted atop the dirt, and transformed into a tree, through an almost instantaneous process in which her body rapidly thinned as her limbs assumed their new form, her head became branches and leaves sprouted across all.

  Once she was packed on his back, he reached for his Warrior powers and began to run, carrying on a steady pace through the entire day. Even when they passed working farms and through small villages, or went by other travelers, he maintained his pace, neither slowing down nor diminishing his energy to become invisible. He was pleased with the progress he made, sure that he was gaining on his collective targets, both the ingenairii group and Andi and Amane.

  Eventually evening fell, and the return of Aja the person came as he was still in Warrior mode, running with distance-eating strides. Her weight instantly increased his load, and he heard her voice call to him. “Are we in a wind storm? What’s happening Alec?”

  He stopped and released his powers as he knelt, then felt great weariness overcome him from the cumulative expenditure of energy during the day.

  “I was running through the use of my abilities, and so we traveled quickly throughout the day,” he told his companion as he unstrapped her.

  “Am I a hindrance by returning to this form? I’m sorry if I slow you down,” she asked with anxiety evident on her mobile and expressive face.

  No Aja, you’re not a hindrance. I’m in need of rest, so it’s timely that you’ve arrived to remind me to reduce the stress on my body,” he replied. “Your timing is perfect.”

  Aja leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you. How far have we come today?”

  Alec computed. “The land has been gentle and the road has been clear. We’ve come perhaps fifty or sixty miles today. It’s enough to make me pleased. We can walk on a bit more, and chat until it’s time to settle in,” he told her, and they began to walk together. Aja filled Alec in with her report on the little that she had seen the previous night, while Alec described the things he had passed during the day.

  “That’s the thing that made me leave Erwin. I could never stop asking about what the day had been like, and he grew so tired of answering my questions. He just wanted me to do,” she hesitated before completing the sentence, “what he wanted,” she said, revealing a sadness Alec had not seen in her before. “Well, that was one of the things,” she amended.

  “What’s that?” she asked before Alec could try to frame a comforting comment, and he looked ahead at a small cluster of lights.

  “It’s probably a village,” he told her. “There are too many lights to be just a farmstead.”

  They continued on, and in a few minutes entered the environs of the cluster of buildings, including a tavern that seemed to bustle with all the occupants in the region, judging from the amount of noise that it emitted.

  “Oh, can we go in, please?” Aja asked Alec. “I’d so love to see so many people together.”

  Alec thought about the small clutch of coins that Kendra had given him as a departing gift to help with their travels. It was little enough to stretch over many days, but he wanted to please the girl who was so excited by new experiences, and the hope of a warm meal also appealed to him.

  “We’ll get a bite to eat,” Alec agreed. They entered the door of the building, and stopped to look at interior, where the only two seats Alec could see available were jammed in a corner by a counter where a group of mostly men were drinking large tankards of beer. The air was smoky and the room was noisy as Alec took a deep breath and plunged into the crowd, holding Aja’s hand tightly as he led her to the counter seats and placed her in the seat against the wall, while he took a seat next to a beefy man who he judged to be a farmer.

  He noticed Aja rubbing her buttocks vigorously. “Someone pinched me back there!” she told Alec.

  He grinned and shook his head, then leaned in close to her and whispered in her ear as his hand gently released his Healing energy to take away the ache, “I’m sorry. You’ll be safe back here in the corner, and I’ll give you better protection on the way out if the courtesy of the house doesn’t appear better.”

  She gave him a grateful smile, as a serving man behind the counter tapped him from behind.

  “We’ll have a bowl of stew and a mug of redberry,” Alec told the man. “What do you want?” he asked Aja.

  “Oh, nothing for me Alec. I just like to see the people. Maybe I’ll have a taste of your food,” she said, and the waiter left as soon as Alec fished out two copper pence to pay in advance.

  “You’re either brave or stupid,” the farmer said to Alec a moment later.

  “Why’s that?” Alec asked, turning to look at the man, hoping it was meant to be the start of a joke, and not a threat of some kind.

  “You bring a girl that pretty into this place and you’re going to have to fight at least a half dozen men to be the one to leave with her,” the farmer warned. “And I’m not sure you look big enough to work your way through that many fights.”

  Alec relaxed. “If it’s just fights, we’ll be fine,” he replied. “I’ll tell them they have to fight you to get to me,” he slapped the man’s arm with a smile, hoping to defuse any tension.

  “That’ll buy you a little time, but you’ll need to go fast when the time comes,” his neighbor agreed congenially.

  Alec’s bowl and mug arrived then, and he turned towards the food and Aja. The girl shifted her own attention from eagerly observing the crowd to huddling her head with Alec’s.

  “People must be friendly here,” she observed, as Alec offered her his mug of juice. “A lot of men are looking at us.”

  “This is nice,” she said of the juice. “Not as good as water, but better than the wine and ale Erwin always wanted me to drink.”

  She only tasted the gravy of Alec’s stew and decided she had no desire f
or more, leaving him to sit and eat his bowl of food as he turned to look at the crowd in the tavern. There were a few men who looked at Aja constantly, and many who looked at her from time to time, but Alec saw nothing that made him worry. As he finished gobbling down his meal he listened with surprise as Aja started to sing a song. It was a song that he’d never heard before, but the tune and the words were clearly appropriate for a tavern minstrel to entertain a house with.

  Those who sat in their immediate vicinity quickly quieted down, and the circle of listeners spread quickly around the room, as Aja stood up, and began to clap her hands to the tempo of the music, quickly leading the customers to oblige her and follow. The serving man came up behind Alec and tapped him urgently on the shoulder. “The master of the house says we’re not going to pay your bird, and there’s no begging allowed neither,” he explained with a significant look.

  “She’s just singing because she likes to sing. I can tell her and the crowd that you told her to stop. Would you like me to do that?” Alec challenged him.

  “No! There’s no reason to be hasty. I’ll go tell the master,” the servant said hurriedly, and he left.

  Aja’s song ended, and the crowd immediately applauded the beauty of her voice, then began to call for more.

  “Where did you learn that?” Alec asked her, leaning in to her and practically shouting in her ear to overcome the noise around them.

  She turned and shouted something back, but Alec could not hear the reply, and then she smiled at him, turned back to the crowd, and pushed herself up so that she was sitting on the counter, now taller and more visible than she had been before, and started into another rousing tune.

  Minutes later she finished her third ballad, and then changed the tempo, singing softly, a gentle lullaby tune that a mother might sing to a baby. It quieted the crowd profoundly, as every ear in the house listened to the words of love that she crooned. When Aja finished her gentle melody the room was profoundly silent once again, then more applause, in a thoughtful and respectful manner, circled around the room.

  “Oh Alec! This has been so much fun!” she told him with shining eyes, leaning down to speak into his ear. “But you probably want to start walking again, don’t you?” she cradled his head in her hands affectionately.

  He nodded his head. “We do need to go, but we’ll do this again the next chance we have, okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, my lord Alec,” she told him, and gave him an appreciative kiss, at which the tavern broke into raucous commentary and applause.

  “We’re leaving now friends, but thank you for sharing your tavern with us tonight,” Alec shouted as he stood, to a chorus of boos and shouts.

  A half dozen men all in a cluster around a pair of tables in the middle of the room stood up, and a nervous silence descended over the room. “You can leave, but the songbird will stay and sing for us, beardless boy,” their apparent leader told Alec.

  The man had a long, bushy beard, and Alec suddenly recognized that all the other men who stood up also had beards. In fact, he realized, every man in the house but the serving boys and Alec himself had a beard.

  There was no point in trying to talk his way out of the situation, Alec concluded. He seized his Spirit energy to establish the buffer he had learned to construct between energy streams when he practiced multiple forms of the ingenaire energies. He then called upon his Air powers and his Healer powers.

  “Fellows, let us leave together in peace, and there will be no trouble,” he warned, standing in front of Aja.

  The bearded leader of the standing gang laughed loudly, then uttered an epithet.

  As soon as he did, Alec created a disk of air that lifted all six of the men into the air, and slammed them against the ceiling. The rest of the crowd stared at the men above them, and stared at Alec, then began to scramble for the corners and the exits.

  “Come along Aja,” Alec said quietly, and he led the way to where the men floated above the room. They all looked at him, bug-eyed with fear, their faces red.

  “We didn’t mean anything, great one,” one of the followers said.

  Alec created a second disk of air, and raised himself above the floor, so that he could reach out and touch each man, then did so, one by one, releasing his healing powers so that a powerful surge in hormones developed in the men’s faces momentarily, and their beards fell out in heavy, dark showers that hit the floor in piles beneath them, revealing pale smooth cheeks and chins on them all, and depriving them of the sign of manhood that they seemed to feel entitled them to bully others.

  Without speaking, Alec lowered himself to the floor, and escorted Aja to the main door, then allowed his Air energies to lower the antagonists to the ground. Still silent, Alec looked around the room at the witnesses who cowered in the corners, behind tables, and along the other exit hallways. He smiled, and then escorted Aja out into the darkness of the village street.

  “Let’s hurry away from here,” he urged her, and the couple broke into a gentle jog for the next half hour, until Alec grew tired and slowed down to a brisk walk, his hands on his hips.

  “I can’t imagine there was any real reason to worry about being followed,” Aja said a minute later, breathing heavily. “There aren’t any fools likely to try to follow a man who does the things you did back there,” she looked at him sidelong.

  “No, but they’d follow a girl as pretty as you,” he said with a smile, also struggling to catch his breath.

  “Well, aren’t you gallant?” she laughed.

  “That was going so well, up to the end,” she added. “You’re probably reconsidering the likelihood of letting me sing again, aren’t you?”

  Alec looked at the mournful regret Aja expressed. “We can probably manage to work something out,” he reached over and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a hug that he found surprisingly pleasant to maintain as they walked silently along the road in the countryside.

  “I’m sorry to leave you alone at night when I fall asleep,” he told her just a little later as he rolled himself up against a fallen log in a small wood lot.

  “You do very well doing what you do with me, Alec, like taking me into that tavern tonight. I’m used to spending the night time alone, and now you’ve made it much more exciting by giving me my sight!” she assured him. “Don’t worry about a few hours of night time,” and he soon fell asleep to the sound of her humming the same lullaby she had sung in the tavern.

  The next morning, after his wake up tap from Aja, Alec felt stronger than any day since he’d recovered from his fight with the ingenairii in Exbury. He strapped his tree companion upon his back and engaged his powers immediately, running with his greatest level of Warrior energy suited to the purpose, and shortly after noon time he arrived on the outskirts of Moriadoc, the westernmost of the Twenty Cities, and the location where he hoped to pick up information about the next direction to travel in.

  Questions. Alec asked questions of the people he met in the first section of the city he entered, a rundown area where the tanneries and the dye manufacturers produced noisome odors, and the housing was home to the lowest class of the city’s population. No one he asked would provide a straight answer about the police, but when he moved towards the heart of the town and asked in the shops of the prosperous merchants, he received directions to the city headquarters of the local constables, and the armory of the Regent’s militia.

  The visit to the police eventually produced answers, but only after Alec persisted in asking questions.

  “Why do you want to know, and why is there a tree strapped to your back?” the officer at the first office asked in response when Alec asked about kidnappings and powerful warriors.

  When he eventually got through the deskman, he spoke to an administrator who was more helpful. Alec helped himself by weaving a disk of reflective light around Aja, so that his tree-passenger appeared invisible, and generated no further questions.

  “I’m trying to catch a group of men who hav
e been kidnapping young women across many cities,” Alec explained. “They started with a girl named Kriste, and it’s been going on ever since. I was with a couple from Exbury, a man and a woman, who were also hunting for the kidnappers, but we got separated, so now I’m following them as well.”

  “Can you tell me anything unusual about the woman you’re following?” the man asked.

  Alec was stumped. “She’s nice-looking?” he asked in confusion.

  The officer’s face took on a set look. “Can you give me a clue?” Alec asked. “Something about her voice? Her behavior?”

  “We took her to an armory,” the man said.

  “Oh!” Alec pulled up a sleeve and showed his Warrior’s mark. “She fought like one possessed! Faster than anyone you’d ever seen!”

  “That is the same mark,” the man agreed, and his features relaxed.

  “Why would you take a Warrior to an armory?” he asked.

  “She insisted she could fight well enough to beat the kidnappers, and we dismissed her, until we tested her in the practice sessions in the armory,” the man explained.

  “The kidnappers came through here about six days ago, and left five days ago. They took three captives that we know of,” he told Alec. “This woman warrior, Andi, she and her suitor came through three days ago, and left the same day they came.”

  “She named Amane as her suitor?” Alec asked.

  The officer twisted a grin at the tone in Alec’s voice. “He named himself as her suitor. She put no name to the relationship, but they’re clearly together.”

  “Where are they all going?” Alec asked.

  “Boundary Lake,” the man told Alec. “It’s north west of here, a frontier town up in the mountains. The trip is probably a week long on horseback.”

  “Do you know where they’re going from there?” Alec asked. “I’d heard a rumor once that maybe they’ll go through the lands of the lacertii?”

  “If they’re going to Boundary Lake, they certainly could be headed towards the lacertii nation, all the crazier on their part,” the man confirmed.