“The first reason is that you have already met the grendasteusse, the person who will be my successor some day, hopefully far in the future, as she lives out in the world, learning its ways,” Bernadina told Alec. “And I foresee that you will meet her again, out there in the world.
“The second reason we shall allow you to leave is that it would not be a violation of our law to do so. You,” she paused dramatically, and Alec unconsciously moved forward onto the edge of his seat, “are in one respect allowed to leave simply because you are one of us. There is lokasennii blood in your veins.”
“How can that be?” Alec asked in astonishment. He rose to his feet unknowingly.
“There were other communities of our race in the very, very long ago days, though we are the only one left. Though you do not have the ability to change shapes, there are traces of your lokasennii heritage evident. Your ability to hear my thoughts so clearly and easily the first time we met in the cave proves it. Somewhere in your ancestry, I would guess on your mother’s side, there was lokasennii.”
“Do, do lokasennii and normal humans, you know, have babies together?” Alec asked, embarrassed to ask such a question in front of so many people.
“Since we believe lokasennii are normal people, yes, we do have babies with each other,” Bernadina smoothly used humor to cover Alec’s faux pas. “But as it happens, several of our people have gone out into the world and brought back mates from your race, who never leave here again, of course,” she explained. “And they often have children, who inherit the lokasennii characteristics.”
“Are there children that don’t have lokasennii characteristics?” Alec asked.
“Yes, and they are taken to orphanages,” she answered. “We are a small community, and we try to find the delicate balance that brings in fresh blood but does not dilute our unique characteristics.”
The answer left Alec vaguely unsettled, but without a sure objection. “So there may be many people around this nation who have lokasennii heritage, who could hear your thoughts or answer them?”
“Ah,” Bernadina answered, as there was some shuffling among the Councilors at the line of questioning. “There would be very few if any at all, and yet you are here with us. Only the grendasteur or the grendasteusse can project thoughts, as you have done with me, and we know of no case in which a child of either has ever been left among your people as a foundling, not to mention that you are a male, which defies our knowledge of the practice. But as I say, you are here, with your extraordinary abilities, a mix of our race and yours, and other races as well, I suspect.”
“Other races?” Alec asked, stupefied by the notion. “But I’m just a boy.”
“No, my healer, you are an extraordinary man. I believe that you are a living descendant of many races, some still living, some that are otherwise gone – the Sleagh Maith, Sylphs, Hermeticans, Ajacii and huldra. In my poor understanding, it is the only way to explain the many talents I detect in you. Some should not be able to co-exist in a single body. You should not be a healer like the Sleagh Maith and a warrior like the Ajacii together, and yet you are.
“And so, for a number of reasons Alec, we are going to let you leave our community. My own beloved Baltasar will lead you back out to the highway, along with some fresh supplies to help you on your way,” Bernadina told him. “You can leave the council house now, and Baltasar will lead you back to your building. After the Council and I finish our other matters, I will come to say farewell.”
Dismissed, Alec left the building, and found his guide waiting for him. Baltasar guided him along the trails to the house where Alec’s furs and belongings were stowed. “May I look around while Bernadina is busy?” Alec asked.
“You’re more than welcome to explore. She will call you when our time to leave arrives,” Baltasar replied, looked at him with a gaze of inscrutable patience, and walked away.
Alec immediately left the building and walked in the other direction. On this trip he passed many other people who seemed busy in their treks about the community, hauling goods or carrying tools, while others ambled placidly along. None seemed aware of Alec’s status as an outsider in the isolated community, as he turned at random and followed paths that grew larger or small, went among empty tracts of forest, and those with several homes. He found himself on a path that grew narrower, less traveled, and appeared to approach the very edge of the greenery.
After many steps, Alec came to a stop. He was atop a bluff looking thirty feet down at a deep blue pool. At one end of the long, narrow body of water was a plume of steam from a thermal spring, while at the other end a silver, threadlike waterfall of melting mountain snow fell melodically into the water. Alec scrambled down the side of the bluff, along a way that could be called a trail only with great generosity, and placed his hand in the water at three locations along the bank of the pool; all were different temperatures, according to their nearness to either end. Slipping out of his simple short white robe, Alec slid into the middle of the pool, and paddled towards the warm end, until he found the hottest water he could stand to soak in.
“Come down here,” a girl’s voice called, and he saw a head with wet streaming hair pop out of the water at the cold end.
“Wouldn’t you rather come to this end?” Alec asked, intrigued by the sudden appearance of the girl, but unhappy with the prospect of entering the cooler water.
“In discomfort there often is discovery. Come on,” she urged, causing Alec to sigh, then stroke through the water, every stroke changing the temperature.
“Why do you like this water?” Alec asked as he pulled up next to the girl. “The warm water feels so relaxing.” He studied the girl’s face closely, fascinated by her nearly golden eyes.
“You look so young again, Alec,” the girl, approximately his own age, told him.
“Do I know you?” Alec asked. Her words frightened him, his instincts telling him that they portended something extraordinary.
“You have, and you will, but right now, my consort, no, you do not know me. But it is time that you took a step in that direction,” she said. Her hand rose out of the water and touched his forehead. “Go to the shore and rest, and someday I’ll be a part of your memories again.”
Under a geis, Alec turned and swam to the edge of the water, then climbed onto the bank, and promptly fell asleep. When he awoke, he opened his eyes and looked up at the starry night sky above, and gasped at the dreams that had filled the holes in his memory.
He had dreamed of the successes in Stronghold, and the horrible battles against the lacertii, in which he had fought as never before to preserve the lives of his friends. There was the foolhardy, reckless ego he showed in the cave in the Pale Mountains, when he had tried to heal the preternatural wounds on the holy body in the cavern crypt. His dreams had moved on to his journey to the Michian Empire, and his struggles to protect the Dominion from an invasion by the demon-led forces of the empire. He thought tenderly about his reconciliation with Bethany in Frame and afterwards, and he tried to grasp the realization that he was the King of the Dominion. His dream had ended with his costly success in the horrific battle against the demon in southern Bondell, and the trap he had laid to spirit it away to its doom in John Mark’s cave, where he had swooned after his triumph.
And then he awoke again, back by the pool on the edge of Warm Springs. He lay and tried to comprehend it all, to integrate his new knowledge into his view of his life in this different nation. Are you awake yet, my friend? He felt the voice of Bernadina within his mind.
I am awake. I need time to think; please let me be, he replied bitterly. His memories told him he had come so close to a happy life with Bethany. It had seemed his fate assured his marriage to the wonderful water ingenaire.
He held up the ring on the chain around his neck. In the darkness he could not read the words, but he knew what the ring said: Dominion and Empire, King and Consort. The girl in the pool had called him her consort. She was a lovely girl, and seemed a gentle one
, yet she was not Bethany. What had happened? Had Bethany rejected him, had she died, had he found it politically necessary to marry into the Michian Empire?
He lay on the stones, and listened to the water, watched the stars move overhead, and wept. Why was he in this land? What had brought on his exile, and how had his memories been purged?
Your time to depart is at hand, Bernadina spoke to him again.
Do you know why I am here? Alec responded.
Yes and no, she replied enigmatically.
The sky above the overhanging bluff showed faint streaks of pink, promising the arrival of a new day.
You are here because you needed to break from your past, and you are here because our nations need you. You are healing, and will continue to do so, day by day, little by little. Take comfort, my special friend, Bernadina spoke again.
The light overhead was brighter, and the head of a bear looked down at him. As he vacantly stared, the bear’s head became that of a man. “Are you ready to go?” Baltasar asked.
“I must move on,” Alec said mechanically. He rose and donned his robe and climbed the ledges and crannies in the bluff to return to the top. He felt weak, and extremely hungry, and silently followed Baltasar, who resumed his bear shape as he ambled through the woods, until they had traveled far along the way towards the community again.
“Strolling on four feet always feels more natural to me in the forest,” he explained to Alec. “And in the mountains, too,” he added after a pause. “But here among the people of the village it feels better to walk as a man. I suppose each portion of the world calls for its own treatment.”
They journeyed the rest of the way in silence, and Alec found Bernadina waiting for him in his cabin, a tray of fruit and a jug of water on the table. “Have a meal with me before you go,” she suggested gently. She still looked as beautiful as before, and her beauty was a result of the transcendent peace she projected, he realized.
“Do you know what I learned last night?” Alec asked aloud.
“I do,” she replied. “But you do not know all, yet. There is still great unknown joy in your hidden past, as well as tragedy,” she consoled. “But now you are on your way into the future, Alec. You have journeyed far to get here. There are many struggles ahead for you, some in which you will be the deciding factor.
“Eat and nourish yourself Alec. You have slept by the blue pool for over a month. Your body needs to regain strength,” she said. “And I know you are worried about Caitlen, but you cannot hurry without the energy to make the journey. Let me entertain you with an old, old story, one that might interest you, and perhaps might someday be of use to you.”
Alec cocked his head with curiosity, granting tactic acquiescence to her suggested storytelling. He sat and ate the fruit, flavorful and juicy.
“I mentioned the six non-mortal races that are still in existence, or were within recent memory,” she began. “The lokasennii, of course, and the Sleagh Maith, Sylphs, Hermeticans, Ajacii and huldra. But the oldest stories, perhaps no more than myths, tell us that once upon a time, these mountains were home to many more races of people with skills or abilities.”
“How many?” Alec asked without prompting.
“Forty nine,” Bernadina replied.
“Forty nine?” Alec asked in astonishment. He paused, contemplating so many, then intuitively began to wonder if he would find there to be forty nine energy realms connected to the axis mundi.
“The legends say that only forty eight powers were ever discovered, but that a forty ninth remained unfound,” she briefly added.
“They lived together in a great civilization here in the mountains, each with their own community, each using their own skills, conversing with one another, trading goods and services with one another, maintaining peace with one another,” Bernadina explained.
“How long ago?” Alec asked.
“So long ago that the legends of our ancestors call this a legendary story from time forgotten,” she answered. “There were individuals who were special like you, able to grasp more than one power, who combined their individual abilities to do wonderful things. Eventually, those talented people began to think of themselves as a race apart from the forty nine.
“I imagine that you would have been held in high esteem in their ranks,” she gently tapped each of the marks on his arms.
“They built a great temple in the mountains, and set themselves there, and proclaimed that they would study the special powers, to try to understand them and enhance them for better service to the world. But what they really did,” Bernadina explained, “was each of them tried to make themselves the greatest of the self-proclaimed great. They each tried to acquire more powers, and they tried to find ways to make their energies useful as weapons. They fell to feuding with one another. They were jealous of one another’s powers. And their race to individually acquire more powers and to find ways to use them as weapons obviously led to terrible results.”
Alec felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, a sense of disbelief. “I don’t want to believe that people with our powers could behave like that, but I know they can,” he thought back to the coup by the ingenairii in the Dominion, which had killed King Gildevny. “But I’ve used powers as weapons too,” he added as a feeble protest, thinking of the way he had commanded Shaiss and Alder to focus their light energy as a death ray against the lacertii. He looked down at the marks on his arms now, greater in number than his last memories had showed him, and he wondered how he had added powers.
“Don’t be distressed, dear,” Bernadina told him. “I’ve shared some of your memories, remember, even some that you don’t possess yourself, yet. Your motives and theirs were completely different, and the results were completely different too.
“Some of the regular members of the races saw the evil that was brewing, and they left over the years, silently slipping away from their communities. Their fates are unknown to us, but I would guess that some of them must have moved far around the world and become the ancestors of you and your fellow ingenairii.”
Alec reflected on that. “Ari told me once that there had been ingenairii who lived in the Pale Mountains long ago, who used their powers before the arrival of Jesus and John Mark.”
“Perhaps they were the descendants of those emigrants,” Bernadina commented.
“Another result was that some remaining communities became small, shrinking to the verge of extinction. There were two such races, the Loki, who could speak with their minds, and the Sennai, who could shift shapes to become animals, and as their numbers dwindled, they intermingled. They became the ancestors of our own race,” she explained.
“The race in the temple, the ones who fancied themselves the master of all the non-mortal races, were very displeased as they saw their perceived followers shrinking in number. One of them, a man named Hellmann, had grown to have the greatest number of powers, and he had devised ways to use them that were brutal.
“Hellmann insisted that the members of the temple had to prevent any further desertions, and a great argument ensued. The argument led to battle, and terrible destruction of the temple, and unspeakable deaths among the people there. When the death and demolition were over, Hellmann and his wicked crew were triumphant, but they were the lords over a great waste, and they were angry, filled with a terrible bloodlust. They went out among the communities of the races and began to slaughter more, even as they turned on one another and continued to ambush each other,” Bernadina’s story continued. Alec was horrified, but mesmerized by the tale.
“How did it end, what happened?” he asked.
“A small number of the members of the communities survived, and came together to try to find some way to stop the destruction. Four of them had a plan: a Warrior, a Healer, a Spiritual, and a Stone member worked together. By then Hellmann was the only one left of those who had lived in the Temple, and he was like a god with the many terrible powers he possessed: he was able to possess and trick and delude others, he could mo
ve air and water and light. There were numerous things he could do beyond that.
“He learned that the four still opposed him, and he hunted them down in a cave in the mountains, then he launched into battle with them. The Healer and the Spiritual used their energies to protect and heal the Warrior, who fought bravely against Hellmann, and managed to maintain the battle, while the Stone member closed off the cave, and brought it all down upon them, burying all five of them deep inside the mountain, clutched together in a battle of bodies, minds and souls.
“To this day, there remains a fear that Hellmann is only trapped, not dead, and someday he may be able to emerge from the mountain to resume his quest for dominion and control,” Bernadina finished.
“Those others, they sacrificed their lives to defeat him,” Alec stated.
“They did,” Bernadina affirmed. “And the survivors who were left, the few bruised survivors created a monument to them somewhere in the mountains, before they abandoned their dead communities and tried to begin life anew.
“It is quite a legend,” she added, as Alec sat silently, pondering.
“Will Hellmann ever return?” he asked quietly.
Bernadina looked at him with a level gaze. “Perhaps,” she replied. “But you have many other things you should concentrate on before you start planning how to fight a demigod.”
She smiled, and gestured. “Thank you again for saving my life,” Bernadina said as Alec stood.
He looked at her, and saw the sincerity of her gratitude on her face, and he understood that she had his best interests at heart. Is it my fate to fight for good in this land? He asked her.
It is. And you will feel rewarded by your achievements, she assured him.
He hugged her, then shrugged on his furs, hoisted his pack of traveling supplies, and went outside to follow Baltasar away from the magic of Warm Springs and back into the cold reality of the world outside.
Chapter 19 – Black Crag Hospitality
Rescuing the Captive: The Ingenairii Series Page 20
