“The sacrifice you made has made many good things possible, and many lives better,” John Mark assured him. “For example, your friends Rander and Rief were married to each other a month ago.”
Alec smiled at the thought, amazed at how quickly the two had become attached to each other.
“I could tell you things all day long,” John Mark said. “But the best way for you to find out everything you want to know is to get out of this cave and on your way back to your domain.”
“Is Bethany alright? Is she waiting for me?” Alec asked. “Is she mad at me?”
“She is waiting for you, sitting on the throne as your queen, supported by Rander and the Palace Guard. She and Kinsey and Aristotle expect your return, and they are scoffed at by many others. Oyster Bay is almost in a state of civil war as it awaits you. False claimants and pretenders to the throne, along with those who love trouble, are stirring unrest in the city. It’s been nine months since you arrived here; your body and soul needed a great deal of time to recoup from the horrors you suffered. Now, you are needed there.”
“I’m ready to go,” Alec said standing, ready for John Mark to whisk him away. He was surprised by the notion of nine months’ passage, although he’d experienced similar long unconscious convalescences when visiting the holy places for cures and treatment. He was already anticipating the look on Bethany’s face when he first would be able to face her. He hoped it would be a surprise, catching her unguarded when he appeared in a doorway. He wanted to watch the features of her lovely face change from surprise to joy as he appeared out of nowhere, months after their last moments together.
“Here’s the door then,” John Mark said with a gentle smile. “This journey must be a physical one, Alec. If I were to send you with my powers, you would have to come back within a week.
“I am very proud and pleased Alec. You have been everything that you needed to be, and more. The lord is pleased to know that under the duress of such challenges, you were faithful to his ways, and have been a light to your nation. You will make a good king and you will make the Dominion a land the Lord will favor,” he gave his blessing, and watched Alec step through the doorway.
Chapter 2 – Going Home
Alec’s raft washed up on a beach under the watchful eyes of the Goldenfields soldiers stationed at the eastern fort along the Giffey River. He walked up the sandy rise to confront the men who looked at him curiously. “Captain Alec of the Guard, reporting for duty and requesting fast transport back to the city,” he told them, snapping a salute.
Alec was gaunt and thin as a result of his journey. After a long month of solitary travel, he’d arrived back at the edge of the Dominion, and now looked forward to hurrying his way back to Oyster Bay by reliable means of travel. He’d walked to the ruins of Walnut Creek, where he’s salvaged a knife and an axe, and constructed the rickety raft that had carried him the rest of the way on the cold river waters.
“Are there any members of the Guard stationed here?” he asked the still silent soldiers.
“A few,” a rough-looking female soldier answered. “There’s a lieutenant with a squad. And what are you doing coming down river on a raft? Who are you really and where are you from?”
“I’m returning from the Pale Mountains,” Alec answered. “I’m on my way to Oyster Bay. I’m a captain in the Duke’s Guard in charge of the healers, and I’m hoping to be on my way as quickly as possible. Give me a sword and we’ll wager my trip home that I’ll beat any two of you!” he said with a smile that he hoped showed his intended jest.
“Let’s do it another way,” the woman responded. “You come with us and we’ll let you talk to the Guard lieutenant.”
Minutes later, Alec spoke to the officer, Lieutenant Callan. She remembered Alec vividly.
“You took Mortis from me last winter to make him your aide. I never got him back, you know,” she told Alec after she saluted him. “He stayed with Ellison up in the offices, and does who knows what now.
“That’s neither here nor there, though, I suppose,” she mused. “There’s a whole world of people wanting to know where you are and where you’ve been, me included!”
“It’s been a long time. I wrestled with the demon in the Pale Mountains, and thanks to God the demon lost,” Alec reflected. “It’s been a long journey, but I’m on my way back now. Can I have a horse to speed the journey along?”
Shortly after that he was on a horse bound for the fort at the river sand bars, and then on another horse riding to the fort where his healing water spring was located. And from there he was on board one of Natha’s ships carrying a load of barrels down to Goldenfields city, where he used the Guard’s tunnel entrance to the palace island to arrive unannounced among his friends.
Chapter 3 – At Goldenfields Palace
“Guard Captain Alec, reporting for duty,” he said as he stood in the doorway of Ellison’s office, causing the man’s head to jerk up from his paperwork so fast it must have pulled a muscle.
“Alec? Alec!” the normally imperturbable Goldenfields Guard officer leapt from his chair and came around his desk to embrace his long lost friend in a warm, silent hug.
“What was that, Ellison?” Colonel Ryder poked his head out of his door to better hear Ellison, and then his jaw too fell in amazement. “Oh Lord! What a gift! Alec!” he shouted as he too wrapped his arms around the long lost companion.
“Come out! Come out to the courtyard,” Ryder insisted, dragging Alec back out into the open yard the healer had just slipped across. “Inga! Lewis! All officers!” he shouted with a voice of command that caused several heads to turn. Within seconds an avalanche of men and women were pouring into the courtyard, jumping on Alec in a pile that left him at the bottom, concerned that he might be crushed to death.
“Alec! Oh good Lord, Alec!” Lewis repeated, unable to say anything more as his shining eyes searched Alec’s face.
“Take him to the Duke. All appointments will be cancelled for the day when the Duke sees the Crown Protector back!” Ryder said, and he grabbed an arm and pulled Alec into the palace, leading a parade of more than a score of Guard members, drawn to the resurrection of the champion they thought was dead.
The noise of the approaching cavalcade was evident in the Duke’s meeting, and his bodyguards looked on with alarm and drawn swords as the doors to the chamber burst open and Ryder, Ellison, and the others came in pressing Alec before them.
“Oh my word!” the Duke of Goldenfields exclaimed loudly, just as surprised as everyone else. “Ring the bells in the tower!” he told a scribe.
“Alec,” he said warmly as he shook the hand of the returning healer. “Seeing your smiling face makes this one of the best days of my life.
“Send for the princess,” he instructed a page. “We are so glad to see you! Are you here to save the ingenairii?”
“What about the ingenairii?” Alec asked in confusion. “I’m just coming back from the Pale Mountains.”
“Have a seat,” the Duke instructed. He looked at the crowd of people assembling in the meeting room. “Have you told folks where you’ve been?”
Alec shook his head. He hadn’t said a half dozen words yet in the pummeling rush of excitement.
“Are you here alone? Well stop keeping secrets! Tell us where you’ve been, and where you’re going!” the Duke said.
Alec obliged him. The room grew quickly silent as every ear strained to hear him over the muffled sounds of new people arriving to confirm the rumor of his appearance.
“When we were in the Bondell wilderness, we had to fight a demon from the Michian invaders. You all know that?” Several nodded their heads.
“There the four of us, the warrior ingenairii who fought the demon, and we weren’t able to defeat it in physical battle, so I took the demon back to the Cave of John Mark, and I let Jesus wrestle with it, all the way down to Hell,” Alec said. “And I hope I never have an experience like that again,” he said soberly, looking around. Princess Rhiann had slipp
ed into the room and held the Duke’s hand, he saw.
“And then I slept for a very long time as my body and soul were healed. And now I’m on my way back to Oyster Bay to return to Bethany and take care of unfinished business,” he told them, not wanting to mention his future as the heir to the crown of the Dominion.
“Will you awaken the ingenairii?” a voice called from the throng of Guards seated before him.
“What has happened to them? Why do I need to do something for them?” he asked, unable to comprehend what the nature of the question was.
“Alec,” Princess Rhiann, a beautiful princess from Bondell, now the Duchess of Goldenfields, said as she came forward and hugged him, kissing his cheek. “Yula and Merle and all the ingenairii are asleep, and can’t be awakened. Every ingenairii in Goldenfields has been in a coma for a week!”
Chapter 4 – The Ingenairii Illness
“Let me see them,” Alec immediately turned to the Duke. Alec felt horrified as his stomach churned at the notion of his friends falling victim to some inexplicable plague that harmed ingenairii.
The room took on a dramatically somber tone as his friends from the Guard recollected the malady affecting the ingenairii, who they knew Alec was so fond of, and was in fact a strong practitioner of those same magical powers. The Duke nodded, and Alec stepped quickly out of the room; “I’ll be back after I know a little more,” he promised as he left.
“Alec, wait,” Ellison called as he trotted along the hallway. Alec abruptly halted as Ellison caught up with him, then together the two resumed the journey. “It’s not just the ingenairii from the Palace, Alec,” Ellison warned. “It’s also the ingenairii who joined our Guard. And it’s Cassie and Appel too.”
Alec stopped again and looked at Ellison, just before they came to the stair case that descended to the ingenairii domain in the palace. “When did it happen?” There was an even worse feeling in the pit of his stomach as he wondered if Bethany in far off Oyster Bay might be infected.
“They all seem to have fallen into their slumbers within a few hours of each other,” Ellison said. “We brought Cassie and Appel over here to Merle’s rooms so that we could keep a watch on them all together,” he explained as they started down the steps.
Alec reached the bottom of the stairs and opened the door, revealing a scene that was so unusual that it stopped him in his tracks, framed by the doorway. Three rows of cots had been erected, and people laid on them all, unconscious. A Guard medic sat in a chair nearby watching over them.
“Alec,” Ellison said urgently. “Before you do anything, you need to know something.”
Alec paused next to Yula, and looked up at Ellison. His eyes had a haunted look that frightened the Guard leader. “What?” Alec asked.
“Appel was unconscious on the street outside your shop,” Ellison began. “Cassie went out to see him, and when she knelt beside him, she keeled over too.
“I don’t know if she caught something from him, or if she started to use her powers, and that was what made her pass out,” Ellison finished.
“Well, if it’s just something that’s contagious to ingenairii, we’ll know shortly,” Alec said grimly, as he began to walk among the victims. He saw Cassie, lying deathly pale, on a cot next to Appel. “What are you doing to treat them?” Alec asked the medic.
The nervous medic, cowed by the presence of someone with Alec’s stature, stammered his answer. “I drip water into their mouths every three hours, sir.”
“Have some broth made up so they get some nutrition,” Alec suggested. “I don’t think you can do any more than that. What have you tried beside that to treat them?”
“The first couple of days we tried bleeding some of them, dousing some of them, letting some just sleep peacefully – whatever someone could think of that wasn’t painful or cruel, we tried,” the medic said.
“What’s your name?” Alec asked.
“Remsie, sir,” the medic responded.
A memory flashed through Alec’s mind. “You were taking care of me after the palace rebellion, weren’t you?” Alec asked.
“Yes, sir,” Remsie said with a smile, happy to be remembered.
Alec continued to wander among the prone, powerless ingenairii, recognizing faces of friends and acquaintances. He stopped by Merle and held his limp hand, praying.
“Well, I haven’t passed out so far,” Alec said a minute later. “So it must not be a contagious illness.
“What have we heard from Oyster Bay?” he asked, fearful as the implications of his question worked through his mind.
“Nothing so far,” Ellison said. “It’s too soon. This only happened here a few days ago. We’ve sent word to Oyster Bay to tell them what’s happened here.”
Alec sat down in a chair, and considered the options. He hadn’t tried to use his ingenairii powers since awakening in John Mark’s Cave a month earlier. If there was something dangerous to the use of ingenairii power, he was immune only because he hadn’t tried to use the power. He could try to use his healing power to help the victims here, but if he fell under as well, there would be no one to help him.
Yet he knew that if he didn’t find a way to treat this ailment, the ingenairii would waste away into eventual death.
That reminded him of a warning he had received from Merle in these very chambers, back at the beginning of his training as an ingenairii. Merle had told him about inexperienced apprentices who had tapped into the power of the ingenairii realm, only to be seduced by the whispered allure of the available energy. Such apprentices let their souls inadvertently separate from their bodies, and never came back. The bodies lay in a coma-like state until they wasted away, just as was happening here.
“I’m going to go to Oyster Bay immediately, Ellison,” Alec said. “Let’s go back to say farewell to the Duke, then I’ll go to Natha and take his fastest ship down the river.”
“Your Grace,” Alec said minutes later as he and Ellison returned to the Duke’s public meeting room, “I want to go to Oyster Bay as quickly as possible to see if the ingenairii there are in good health, and see if we can find a cure for our people. I’m going to trader Millershome’s to use his fastest boat.”
“I’m sorry to lose your company again, but I understand the urgency,” the Duke replied. “We’ll wait to hear word from you. You know, Oyster Bay is unsettled these days politically, Alec. The Queen and Rander are having a hard time keeping the city secure with lots of jockeying going on with all the succession intrigue. You need to be careful.”
“What if I announced that I intend to take the crown for myself?” Alec asked. “Would Goldenfields support me?”
The Duke’s eyes widened, then he grinned broadly. “Alec, what would you like for me to do to help you? The Dominion would be well served by your leadership, and we will do all we can to assist you. Especially if it means I never have to worry about chasing the crown myself; at my age I just want to rule Goldenfields and prepare my son to be a good ruler after me. We haven’t done anything to aid Bethany only because we haven’t been asked.”
“I am the grandson of King Gildevny,” Alec said. “I don’t know if I want to spend the rest of my life being king, but if Bethany is queen already, and if the Dominion needs me to take charge and provide peace, I will do it.” He wondered again, as he had often done in recent weeks, why she had chosen to step into the throne. Whatever her reason had been, he knew it must have been sound, supported by Rander as it was.
“I can have a battalion of our Guard ready to send to you within days,” the Duke told him earnestly.
“I’ll send you a message if I think I need them,” Alec replied, placing his hand in the Duke’s.
“I’ll wait to hear from you,” the Duke said. “I know you’re anxious to go,” the Duke looked towards Ellison, and the two were moving out of the palace minutes later.
As they began to cross the bridge a group of horsemen came onto the bridge from the other end. “Those look like Bondell riders,” Alec s
aid as he observed the blue coats. A sudden question entered his mind, but before he could ask it, the leader of the horsemen recognized him.
“Alec? Alec!” Rashrew shouted. “Thank God you’re alive! It’s so good to see you. How did you come to be here?” questions came rushing one after another.
“This is perfect! We need a healer,” he stepped back among his men as they gently cradled a bundle off the back of a horse. “Imelda fainted several days ago and we haven’t been able to revive her. We thought your healers here in Goldenfields would be able to help her,” Rashrew said with deep emotion in his voice, and evident relief to find Alec.
“Was she trying to heal someone when she fainted?” Alec asked, again fearing that the illness could have spread to Bethany and the others in far off Oyster Bay.
“Yes she was,” Rashrew told him.
“All the ingenairii have passed out when they’ve used their powers,” Alec told his Bondell friend. “We can place her with the others; there’s a medic here to keep an eye on them. I’m leaving to go to Oyster Bay right now,” Alec said. “I hope the ingenairii there will have an explanation and a cure.” His hopes were diminished by the discovery that Imelda in Bondell had suffered the same malady as the Goldenfields ingenairii, strengthening his concern that all ingenairii were vulnerable to the strange weakness, regardless of physical location.
Alec parted ways with Ellison and Rashrew and the rest, as he headed towards the Millershome dockyards. He maneuvered through the familiar streets of Goldenfields until he came to the gates of the yard that he knew so well. “May I speak with any member of Natha’s family?” Alec asked at the gate. He’d done this before, and knew that it would take a little time and effort, but would win his way into the yard where he needed to be.
“Which one?” the guard at the gate asked. “Who asks and why?”
“Uh,” Alec stammered at the unexpected response. “Tarkas? “It’s Alec the healer, seeking a fast ship to Oyster Bay.”
Preserving the Ingenairii Page 2
