“I’ve already tried being mute and disguised; I probably can’t do that again,” he said.
“No, but there is something you can do for me that will solve the problem temporarily,” Caitlen replied.
Alec looked at her attentively, as she showed a businesslike manner.
“Krimshelm is the target of one of the Conglomerate’s attacks. Since you know the city, at least slightly, I’d like for you to go there to help the reigning Earl’s family fight off the Conglomerate,” she said, her words growing more hurried as she approached her request for Alec to leave her.
He stared at her. “Are you doing this because you need help for Krimshelm, or because you need to banish me?”
“Some of each Alec,” she blushed and admitted. “I have to show these people that I can stand on my own and send you away. But if you will first teach me to talk to you mind-to-mind, so that I can feel like you’re still with me every moment of every day and night, I’ll feel like I’ve outwitted them.
“And when you come back from saving Krimshelm, they’ll have to accept you as a hero,” she said. “I hope,” she added softly.
Alec thought about how long he had wanted to avoid serving as a ruler in the Dominion, and how unhappy he had been with the decisions and politics and balancing of factions one against the other, as he had watched the Duke of Goldenfields. He wanted no part of such responsibility again. Nor did he want to become the source of problems and friction for Caitlen, whose heart he knew was truly his; she was facing exactly one of those dirty, pragmatic decisions like the Duke had, and he was the problem at hand. Accepting banishment for the time being would be an acceptable way to help her calm the xenophobia of her Valerian ally; yet he wished she had stood up for him in public.
Caitlen watched his face as he stood before her weighing those thoughts. “If you do not want to do this, we will not,” she said, afraid she had upset him. “You are worth more to me than the soldiers from Valeriane.”
“I will go to Krimshelm,” Alec said. “It is the best solution. You can announce this afternoon that I will leave for Krimshelm tomorrow. And tonight we will make one more effort to make you an ingenaire. Don’t fret Caitlen. Being princess is what you are supposed to do, and I was sent here to make that easier, not harder. I’ll go for now and come back tonight,” he told her.
“Alec, maybe you should stay,” Caitlen replied, saddened that he accepted this banishment for her sake, torn by indecision and her relief at his simple accedence to her needs.
But instead of replying, Alec disappeared from the room, leaving the girl to clench her fists in anguish for a long minute, then calm herself and leave her room to return to her duties.
Alec transported from Caitlen’s suite to his apartment, where no one was present. He sat and pondered his decision. He was a foreigner in this land, but he had no homeland to go to – the Dominion and Michian were worlds in which he had no friends, no role to play. He believed himself called to this land only for the purpose of helping Caitlen regain her throne, so that she could fight the use of slavery. He had come to believe that he was also in Vincennes for her heart and his, and that happiness in a relationship with the Princess was something he could achieve.
Rising, knowing that he had made the decision and would have to stand by it, Alec left his apartment and walked through town to one of the banks in the eastern part of the city. The Conglomerate, lead by businessmen, had left the banks unmolested, and Alec was able to withdraw a small amount of money, a stake he would possibly need to use in Krimshelm.
Caitlen, please write a letter of introduction for me to take to Krimshelm, he sent a message to the princess. That was something else he would need. He left the bank and walked to the former headquarters of the Conglomerate forces. The building was a series of jagged wall sections that surrounded charred timbers and fallen bricks. Alec had fought hard here, and expended his energies here to disrupt the Conglomerate occupants. And after his efforts, he was still seen as an outsider, and an unworthy ally.
Alec stood and looked at the destroyed building as the sun set. His work was finished there, and it was time to move on, he realized. He walked back through the oversized metropolis, and long after dark he reached the vicinity of Caitlen’s temporary headquarters. He strode into the commissary for a quick meal, then left the building to go to a dark alley, and translocated to Caitlen’s suite.
The Princess was waiting for him. “Alec, you don’t really have to go,” she said as she came to give him a long hug.
“Caitlen, you wouldn’t have agreed to this if you didn’t think you needed it. I understand that you are different from your countrymen because you did trust me as a foreigner,” he told her.
“Do you have a letter of introduction I can give to the Earl?” he asked as he gently pulled out of her grasp. She nodded yes. “Then go lie down on the bed, and let me see if we can bring you closer to becoming an ingenaire.” He felt distant from her now; he knew that after this he would leave her for a long time, and that the next time they met, her life would have changed as she consolidated the powers of her stronger army and her growing empire.
It felt improper to delve so intimately into her soul when he felt so detached from her, but he knew there was no other time left. He knelt on the floor beside the bed and raised his arms to place both his hands on her head, then let his Spiritual powers open the channel between them. He circled and examined her, seeing the clear signs of Spiritual abilities that he had laid down in his prior sessions with her. They were with her still, though not incorporated within her.
He moved about, establishing more of the sense of the Spiritual, opening up his own memories to show her the faith he felt, the miracles he had witnessed. She believed him, and the potential for Spiritual power increased. But it remained on the surface, not suffused within her being, and he only saw one direct way to incorporate the faith within her. He took his memories deep within Caitlen’s soul, and showed her the experience in John Mark’s cave, when he had tried to focus his healing power upon the mystically dead and alive body of Christ. Alec pulled the girl with him down the remembered plunge towards Hell, then let her feel the love of Jesus rescue him. The dramatically turned journey showed her the right and the wrong of faith, and let her experience through his first hand memories.
He saw himself staring down at the open wound on his hand, then saw the wound become a channel for his Spiritual powers, and finally saw the wound become a weapon that he used to destroy the three demons that circled Jeswyne and him in Oyster Bay. Alec began to relive the loss of Bethany, and the night he let his Spiritual powers float among the stars in a calming recollection of every moment of affection he had shared with the Water ingenaire.
Suddenly Alec was aware that Caitlen was crying. He pulled his memories away from the core of Caitlen’s spirit, and then pulled himself free from her, no longer imposing what he knew into her, and he examined the spirit of the woman. The essence of faith was deep within her now, but not integrated, and she was crying, suffering from the exposure to so much of the passages in his life where he had witnessed or relied on his Spiritual energy.
Caitlen’s eyes were clenched tight, and Alec used a fingertip to wipe away the moisture that brimmed within each eye. He knew he had imposed a great deal of his own faith on her in a fast and direct manner. “I’m sorry Caitlen, I know it hurts,” he said gently. “The next step will be yours. You have the elements of my faith and Spiritual powers within you. If you can accept them and incorporate them into the fabric of your own being, I believe that with my blood you will be able utilize the energy.
“It will be up to you,” he told her. “I’ll be listening, and I’ll come back if I ever hear you call me back. I’ll let you know if we achieve success in Krimshelm.”
Her eyes opened and bored into his, searchingly, as if trying to find something more about the knowledge she had just gained. Her hand crept up behind his neck, then pulled him towards her so that their foreheads touc
hed. “I wish you weren’t going, and that this had never been necessary,” she told him. She started to say something more then paused. “Will I see you in the morning?”
“No,” Alec replied as he pulled away and rose. He strolled over to the table where an elegant scroll of paper laid waiting for him. “I’m not going to wait until tomorrow. I’ll leave tonight. I hope that I will hear good things about your future,” he told her.
“Alec! Wait!” she sat up and cried, but he disappeared from the room, leaving her alone with her sadness.
A selection from Ajacii and Demons, Book 8 in the Ingenairii Series…
“Those are your missing memories,” a conventionally-sized John Mark said to Alec. The saintly figure sat cross-legged on the dusty floor of his cave, near where Alec lay sprawled as he awoke.
“What was real?” Alec asked. “That life with Jeswyne? Was it real? Was the life in Vincennes a dream?”
“It has all been real, Alec,” John Mark said. “Everything you have experienced since you awoke on the sea has been a real life, affecting the lives of other real people. And as your memories have been given back to you in stages, you have come to know your prior life, and integrated the two together in your psyche.
“This last stage of memory that has been restored, it too is all real. The good and the bad were real Alec. The love with Jeswyne and your family was real. Your effort to violate God’s law and create life was real too. Now you know everything you have done. Most importantly, you’ve had the opportunity to start a new life with a clean slate in Vincennes, and live it without the pain and despair that was pulling you down in the last years of your old life,” the saint explained. “Your memories were taken from you when you were set adrift, without knowing precisely how you would define yourself in the Vincennes world. Of course, with your values and morals, you rose again to become a champion of defending society; I could have predicted that, knowing how good your heart is.”
“So the life at Oyster Bay I just came from, as consort and king and husband and father and even necromancer, that was a dream just now? How long have I been here dreaming?” Alec asked, still confused.
“You translocated yourself directly into this chamber from Krimshelm, and you have been dreaming here, recapturing the hidden memories from your past, ever since,” John Mark told Alec. “The world has continued to exist and move forward. Eleven generations of your progeny have sat on each throne, both Dominion and Empire, Alec since your last memories of that land; several weeks have passed in Vincennes since you left Krimshelm. When I took you away from your blasphemous activities in exile, I placed you in the boat in the path of the fishing fleet, but over a hundred years later. You were picked up and arrived in Vincennes at a time when that society was in the beginning of the greatest crisis it has ever known.”
“The challenge to Caitlen’s throne? That is serious, and bad for her and her nation, but it doesn’t seem like it will be the end of the society,” Alec replied.
“”If you chose to be involved, you will discover much more about what is occurring in Vincennes,” John Mark replied. “And if you chose not to become involved, it may never come to your attention.”
“What do you mean, if I chose to be involved?” Alec asked.
“You are back in your own part of the world, Alec,” John Mark answered. “This is the society you know, the one you were born into. You may think that your arrival in this cave is just a place for you to come to so that you can make your memory whole. Well you’ve done that, but now you must decide what comes next, and you must make a commitment.
“As happened in the past, you have acquired so much power that you begin to upset the balance of life. As you know from your deadened necromancy mark, that power has been taken away from you, ever since you attempted to break the barrier of death and bring a person back to life,” the saint explained. “Now, you are going to have your traveler power removed as well. Your trans-locations place you too far above the limits of ordinary mortals, able to accomplish too many achievements in a way that leaves all others at too great a disadvantage.
“But!” Alec began to protest.
“However,” John Mark resumed the conversation, cutting Alec off. “You will be allowed one more trans-location before that power ends. You could move from here to Oyster Bay, or from Oyster Bay to Michian, or from Goldenfields to Vincennes. The location and time of your last movement are yours to decide, but when that one movement is gone, the ability is gone.
“You will still be a Warrior, a Healer, and a Spiritual Ingenaire. Your time travel abilities are of course already disengaged, as the necromancer powers are and the travel power will be,” John Mark summed up.
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Alec began. “I know that what I did with the necromancy was wrong, but I was not healthy, not spiritually right. I had lost so much when I lost Jeswyne that I couldn’t cope,” he protested. “It doesn’t make sense to take those other powers away.”
“You are still the greatest ingenaire in the land,” John Mark replied. “The fact that you can sustain both Healer powers and Warrior powers is unknown throughout history and your Spiritual powers are a greater gift than most people understand, as you are starting to understand. Be at peace with what you have, and make the most of your extraordinary gifts to carry out your mission.”
“I did not know the Spiritual powers could provide the means for a soul to communicate with another,” Alec admitted. “I learned it from the lokasennii, in a fashion. Who are they? Who were those Ajacii, I fought? What are the other races Bernadina told me about? Are they all real?”
“They are all real. They are all a part of humanity. Some people were born with greater abilities, and gathered together over time, having children who grew stronger in their ways. They evolved powers like ingenairii, but without being spiritual the way ingenairii powers tend to be, as you have discovered. Some of those races maintain their isolation from humanity, some mingle within humanity, some are taking on a greater role than ever before,” John Mark explained.
“Is that the challenge Vincennes faces – the Ajacii trying to assume control?” Alec shrewdly asked.
Rescuing the Captive: The Ingenairii Series Page 36
