Visions of Power Read online

  “How do you know it’s sore?” she asked with sudden suspicion as she realized what he had said.

  He picked up the remaining salve that hadn’t been put on Ari’s ankle. It was the right amount to knead into her shoulder and help her heal. He wondered if he subconsciously left that amount aside because at some unrealized level he had observed the pain earlier.

  “If I massage this on your shoulder it will take some of the pain away and help you heal quicker,” he sat up straighter.

  “Why don’t you answer the questions and I’ll put my own hands under my shirt to rub your special dirt on,” she said with more mock antagonism than he suspected she felt.

  He sighed at the lost hope of massaging her. As she began to apply the salve, he explained what had happened. “When I left this morning, I really only meant to be gone a little bit,” he looked up at the rosy sky where the sun was now falling low in the western sky, the day nearly over.

  “But the tower was farther than I thought. I climbed and climbed without reaching it, and I was about ready to come back because I wanted to be back at the time I’d promised. But a lacerta soldier happened along the same trail I was on, coming down from the tower. He seemed to be on a regular patrol route, and apparently thought the way was pretty safe because he didn’t watch out particularly closely; he reminded me of Len from the caravan when he had a chore to do that he didn’t really plan to carry out. The lacerta was between our camp and me, so I had to follow him down along the trail, and then when I had a chance to get past him, he spotted me and began chasing me.”

  “Alec!” Natalie exclaimed. Her eyes grew large.

  “We went a ways off the trail, and fought, and I killed him,” he continued trying to make the battle sound mundane. “Then I took off running, and wound up on a ledge, somewhere up there,” he pointed to the mountain behind him, presently a vibrant red from the sunset’s colors.

  “I found a hidden place, and there was a cave. It was a magic cave. It was incredible; it felt mystical and holy in a way I can’t explain. There was water dropping from the ceiling, and drawings along the walls, and a long stairway. At the top I opened a door with a flash of light and looked out a window, and now I’m different. When I look at you I can look at your health and see what ails you. I can look at plants and things and see ways they can heal us. That’s how I knew to do some of the things Ari needs. That’s how I could see your shoulder injury,” he trailed off into silence.

  Natalie had drawn into a defensive crouch as he had ended, unconsciously trying to shield her body from him with her arms. She looked down at herself and gave a self-conscious laugh.

  “I can’t exactly see, um, you know, through clothes or anything like that,” he said quickly in response to the unspoken concern on her face. “I see the health of your body, not your body itself.”

  She forced herself to relax her posture.

  “That’s an interesting story,” Ari’s voice came from over Natalie’s shoulder. The ingenaire was among them again.

  “Ari, you’re awake!” Natalie actually squealed with happiness.

  Alec looked at the ingenaire and grinned with delight at his consciousness. He looked closely for several moments, scrutinizing his health. Alec saw that the gray pallor of his skin was now a better color. The headache had diminished substantially, and his heart was beating stronger. Even his ankle appeared to have begun mending.

  “You did all the best things possible under the circumstances, young doctor, but I do have a tendency to mend quickly, if you’re wondering about my healing,” he said with a wry lift of his eyebrows under Alec’s intense observation. “Is there anything else you think you need to do for me?” he asked lightly.

  Alec sensed that beneath the humor the question had a serious purpose.

  “There’s something about you that I couldn’t figure out,” Alec said slowly, trying to buy time. His senses told him that the strange void had not yet begun to replenish, but that the ingenaire was now better prepared to accept the restoration of powers than he had been before.

  “You’ve got something else about you that I don’t understand,” Alec continued. “It’s not precisely your spirit, it’s not any part of your body, but it is something that’s a connection to strength for you. The only thing I believe it can be is your ingenaire’s powers. Am I right?”

  “Alec, you can suddenly explain things that no one else but another ingenaire has ever been able to tell me before. I am sure you’re right, because what you can see is what I can feel about myself when I actually try to consider myself in that way. So tell me what you think you see now,” Ari replied, and his tone expressed his real interest in hearing Alec’s evaluation.

  “Before, when I first looked at your health, your ingenaire’s powers were empty; you were like an empty bottle, I guess or more like you were a tank connected to a hose, and the hose was blocked,” Alec tried to draw an analogy. “Does that make sense?”

  Natalie looked back and forth between the two, trying to follow the conversation, her lips barely parted as she concentrated on the conversation.

  “I would say that you’ve come up with a very accurate description of my state,” Ari replied. “Even if you shouldn’t have a future as a doctor, you might become a scribe in the court and demonstrate your fluent tongue,” he smiled.

  “Are you saying that Ari doesn’t have his magical powers?” Natalie asked with concern.

  “Yes, that’s the fundamental fact we’re discussing,” The ingenaire replied, while at the same time Alec said, “Yes, but now he’s ready to regain his powers, and he’s growing healthier otherwise.”

  “There you go again,” the ingenaire chuckled. “What a positive way to describe the situation. Now all I have to do is restore my powers. That’s all. Do you have a root or some bark that will do that?”

  “Well no. I thought you’d have the answer to that. You do know how to restore your powers, don’t you?” Alec asked. For the first time since he’d arrived back at the camp he felt concern. He’d counted on the ingenaire’s powers to blast away any lacertii that might be coming after them.

  “I know precisely how to restore my powers,” Ari responded. Both Natalie and Alec smiled. “But I can’t do it here. We may have to travel a few hundred miles before I can find a priest and an ingenaire and go through the ritual of ’Blessing of John Mark’ to restore my abilities. Until then, I’m just a wily old man with two special young people to watch out for me. And that should be enough for us to get out of these mountains and down river to a city where we can tend to a number of things.

  “As a matter of fact,” he continued, “rather than sit here talking, let’s take advantage of the last hour of sunlight to move away from this place. We’ve sat here for 24 hours now and the lacerta Alec has tangled with gives us good reason to be concerned about the neighborhood. Pack up your things and we’ll make ourselves a little scarcer to find.”

  At the mention of the name of the prophet ‘John Mark’ something sprang open in Alec’s new collection of knowledge. On an impulse, before Ari could say anything else, Alec picked up his water skin and walked over to his mentor. He drained the last of the water from the cave upon Ari’s scalp, then placed his hands on both sides of the wounded ingenaire’s head, and said a prayer, asking for energy and healing. “Ex Deo nascimur, in Jesu mortimur, perspritum sanctum reviviscimus,” he said reverently as his heart asked for Ari to be healed here and now. He felt a ringing in his ears as he finished the prayer, and backed away from the ingenaire. “How do you feel now?” he asked, while he looked at Ari and observed that the ability to connect to his powers appeared to be restored.

  For a second Aristotle sat with closed eyes, and a look of enchantment on his face. Then he opened his eyes. “That was truly amazing!” he said. “My friend, your gift is so great you cannot comprehend it yet. You are something truly special. Now,” he changed his tone and spoke again after several seconds of rapturous contemplation, “let’s get moving
, unless Alec has some miraculous means of transporting us instantaneously to the heart of the Dominion.”

  Alec and Natalie both made Ari promise that he’d answer questions when they settled at their next camp, then quickly packed their few items, scattered the fire ring to leave less evidence of their camp, and followed Ari along the game path that meandered between the river and the foot of the mountains.

  Two hours later it was pitch dark except for the promise of the moonrise behind the mountains, and they had tripped and stumbled the last half hour over the path that hugged the rugged terrain of the mountains. Alec was mutely following the sounds of the other two in front of him. The activities of day had caught up with him, and the chase by the lacerta, the climb to the Cave, and the excitement of Ari’s recovery had left him dull and dragging, although he knew he was suffering from a greater, inexplicable drain than those events alone should have caused; perhaps his healing abilities required more of his energy than he realized, he mused as he staggered along. Without any awareness, he suddenly crashed fully into Natalie, who had stopped and turned to face him.

  So sudden was the unseen, unexpected collision in the darkness that he realized in the midst of the bump that there was a delightful softness to her body, even as his chin bumped into the bridge of her nose.

  “Ow! Healer, if you can’t see me any better than that then I guess I really don’t have to worry about you having such good eyes you can look through my clothes, do I?” she playfully scolded as she stepped back, rubbing her nose ruefully.

  “I’m sorry,” Alec replied, too tired to come up with anything witty to say. “Why’d you stop?”

  “Ari said you seemed to be falling behind, so we’re waiting for you to catch up. As soon as the moon rises a little we’ll find a place to stop for the night,” she continued.

  “Alec, why don’t you walk between Natalie and I for the next little bit?” Ari said kindly.

  A few minutes later, after a slow pace that Alec realized was for his sake, the moon began to breach the horizon, and its cold light began to give colorless shape to the land they moved across. By the time it had completely broken above the mountains, they reached the ravine of a wide, swift-moving stream that joined the river. They turned and followed its bank up towards the east, and Ari found a small dell at the base of a steep waterfall.

  “Alright, this is home for the evening,” he announced. “This place has a good feeling.

  “Let’s not build a fire tonight. Everyone get a bite to eat, and then find a comfortable spot to sleep on. I’ll take first watch, since I’ve already slept all day, Natalie, you’ll have second watch, and Alec, you can take the last watch.”

  Neither of the others disagreed. They quietly began to eat some of the dwindling supply of bread they had, and Natalie passed around her canteen. The two youngsters crawled into their blankets and quickly drifted off to sleep.

  Alec woke the next morning as Ari shook his shoulder. “Dawn’ll be here in less than an hour. Let’s get up and get going early to see how far we get today,” his friend said quietly in the pre-dawn darkness.

  Ari had taken a double shift of watch duty last night, and Natalie had taken the last shift, after the two had agreed Alec would benefit from a solid night’s sleep. As Alec rolled his blankets and tied them to his pack he realized the scenery around him was beginning to materialize in the sunrise.

  At the back of the dell the ravine’s walls rose steeply. A section of the wall resolved itself into tumbled stonework, the obvious work of men in some distant past time.

  “We are standing on consecrated ground,” Ari told him as he observed what the boy was looking at. “That’s why it felt safe to stay here. That’s the remains of a chapel from a past age.”

  Alec began packing and preparing himself for the day ahead. He felt recovered after the sound night’s sleep, and paused in his ablutions to look at his two companions. He concentrated and made his vision focus on their health, looking for signs of healing in their joints.

  “Let’s wait a couple of minutes more,” he said. “I’d like to make up one more batch of salve to place on your ankle and Natalie’s ankle and shoulder. They look better already, but we’ll be putting a lot of work on them and need them to heal as much as possible.” After quickly routing through his bag of medicines he kneaded together the same mix of greenstem and limestone and brownearth and other items he had used yesterday afternoon, while staring aimlessly at the stones of the chapel ruins. Something caught his eye as his mind wandered, and he realized he had been staring for some little time.

  “Here, take some of this and rub it all over your injured spots before we go,” he announced to the others, leaving the salve where they could utilize it. He walked over to a spot in the center of the far end of the chapel, and looked at the floor. Some small plants growing there looked as if they had powerful healing value, though he couldn’t place them in his new pharmacology. He knelt and plucked them firmly, seeking to retrieve as much of their root system as possible. Even the dirt felt strong, and he scooped up some of it too, rolling it into balls that he wrapped in leaves.

  “You’re right where the altar used to be,” Ari told him from where he had begun to pull his boot back on.

  Alec pondered the sanctity of the soil as he placed his specimens in the leather sack that was now his medicine bag, and joined the others.

  “My shoulder is much better this morning, Alec, thank you,” Natalie said as she held out a chunk of bread for his breakfast.

  “I think you’ll be healed by tomorrow if we put some more on tonight. Ari, you won’t need any more salve unless you twist your ankle again,” he diagnosed.

  “Let’s ford this stream, then get back to the river and follow it. I think that with a good day of traveling we may be able to reach a small town, Walnut Creek, on the river tomorrow, and gather some supplies. My hope is that we’ll be able to secure a ride on a boat going downriver from there and get back to the Dominion quickly. If we don’t take a boat, we won’t travel quickly; we won’t travel at all. There are no roads from here to the west,” Ari announced as he stood up and shouldered his pack.

  “We’ve got two more days of bread left, so let’s hope your plan is right,” Natalie inventoried their meager supplies as she too stood to leave. “Now Ari, tell us everything you can about what happened back in Riverside, and what we do now,” she finished.

  The three crossed the stream and then settled into a vigorous pace that began to eat up distance as the sun rose.

  “Our carnival had poor timing in choosing to come to Riverside,” Ari began, “and I blame myself for not recognizing the signs that told of the danger we walked into.

  “That earthquake that cut off the road from the plains was the work of a powerful force that wanted to prevent others from finding what was happening in Riverside. I felt the unnatural creation of that earthquake, but didn’t realize the reason it was done, so I didn’t caution Richard to stop approaching the town.”

  “Why did those lacertii attack Riverside? Where did they come from? I thought the lacertii only lived somewhere up in the northern wastelands, not out here in the eastern mountains,” Alec asked.

  “After all the talk I had with you out on the prairie you’re still surprised? We haven’t seen these creatures in the mountains for many generations, but I didn’t doubt they might be here. These mountains have a long history of harboring powerful forces for both good and bad.” The ingenaire answered. “Five hundred years ago the last duke supported by dark ingenairii lost a great battle, as well as his life and his reign over a large swath of the mountain lands. Since then it’s been an unsettled wilderness. No one at all has lived out here until the past fifty years, when explorers and prospectors began to cross the wide prairie again. They were followed by the first settlers, who lived in the farms and towns we came to visit. It’s inevitable that folks will come back here to live. On the other side of this ridge we’re paralleling there is a very wide fertile valley
that was the heart of the old duchy, and of even older kingdoms before that. As I told Alec, two thousand years ago the ancestors of the people that now live in our Dominion lands came from that very valley. It’s a place that will support many people, and provide a great deal of wealth, and there are mines and forests that could provide a lot of commerce if folks came back here. There’s great power in the land here too; many strong ingenairii in the past came from these lands, and there were shrines and sites of great miracles. Our Savior himself, and his great disciple John Mark walked in these places.

  “That’s part of the reason why I was on this journey with Richard’s carnival. I was asked by a wealthy merchant family to look into the growth and opportunity in these mountains; that was an additional task they wanted me to perform for them since I was coming out here to do something for them,” he said as his eyes slid to Natalie’s face for a brief moment. “And beyond that,” he said in a confessional tone, “I had also decided to look into activities out here for the sake of the ingenairii, because I’d heard some reports that dark things were happening in the mountains.

  “In the distant past, the wealth of this area was great, especially at the times when there was a royal court. And very far back in the past, these mountains weren’t at the end of the desert prairie; that long drive we made over the plains used to cover very rich lands with many people of their own. But war and politics and great energy combined to sweep all the land free of people and rich soil, and it’s been empty ever since. For so long in fact that I couldn’t even tell you the names of the cities that used to exist there.

  “But at any rate, in one past age, certain ingenairii formed an alliance, and developed bonds among themselves to work in concert for the benefit of the kingdom, which was a benevolent one at the time. They practiced some of the most powerful magic ever known to have occurred. They had the advantage of working in a time of peace, and so turned their efforts away from battles, and they also had the advantage of the land itself, which carried magic in great concentration in some locations.”