The trees and underbrush were thick, and Alec could find little evidence of the passage of the men he pursued. He re-engaged his Spirit energies, and found that one of the tentacles of evil he had noted earlier stretched itself towards a spot in front of him. Alec redoubled his efforts to press trough the briars and the bushes that grew in tangles along the way, marveling at how the Old Ones had made all such patches open up for the orderly passage the group of Rangers had followed through the woods until now.
He heard a cry, but it was the sound of men, screaming in terror and frustration, not the shouts of women in trouble, as everyone had heard before. Alec pressed on, and came to a spot where he saw the three Rangers in a small opening, each attacking the others viciously.
“Stop! Stop fighting!” he screamed as he pressed through a last cluster of briars, but even as he burst through the tangled barrier into the small glade where the fight was occurring, one Ranger stabbed another fatally, while the third Ranger sliced his blade across the neck of that one. Two of the Rangers were down, and the third one looked at Alec with madness in his eyes. He ran at Alec and slashed with an intense energy that astonished Alec.
“Monster! Get back! Get back to the underworld you came from!” he snarled at Alec with hatred.
Alec parried the thrust, and fought a defensive match. “Lib! It’s me, Alec. Stop this attack,” Alec shouted at the man, as they circled and clashed continually.
Alec’s Spiritual energies were still engaged, and he sensed that the unseen evil whose presence he had followed to the site of the battle was in contact with Lib, yet not in touch with Alec. His own Spiritual energy was providing protection against whatever dementia the tentacle of energy was infecting the others with. Carefully, Alec split his energy forces so that he could grasp his Air energies as well. Even as he did so, he felt the pressure of the dark energy increase around him, trying to take advantage of the weakening of his Spirit energy strength. He was immune to the forces still, but there was little room to spare, no further diminution of his Spirit energy could possibly be allowed to accommodate any of his other powers if he wanted to protect himself from the unseen threat.
Alec wrapped Lib in a straightjacket of air, pressing the crazed man’s arms against his sides, then lowered his sword.
The man was screaming at him, using language foul and profane, provoked by the evil that possessed him. Alec stood in front of him, and opened a small pocket in the Air curtain, the slipped his own hand in to touch Lib, and shared his Spirit energy with him. Find the truth, Alec told him. See through the illusions that possess you, Lib.
The screaming stopped, and confusion clouded Lib’s face. “Alec? What is happening?” the Ranger asked. “I can’t move my arms,” he said in startlement. “Oh great trees, what has happened?” he cried in horror as he saw the bodies of his two dead companions lying on the ground.
Lib, listen to me. There is an evil spirit here that possesses the souls of men who are unprepared, Alec told him. He released the Air powers he held, and strengthened the current of Spirit energy he drew from the ingenairii realm, setting Lib’s body free from its bonds.
“You have to stay in contact with me. That will protect you from the evil illness,” Alec told him.
“How did you speak in my mind?” Lib asked.
“It’s one of my abilities. It’s part of the same talent that is protecting us from the evil,” Alec told him, as they held hands. “We have to go. This same evil is going to infect the others as well.”
“What about Chad and Mart? Can you help them?” Lib asked, looking at the two dead Rangers.
“We can come back and recover their bodies when this is over, but they are dead,” Alec began to pull on Lib’s hand. “Open a passage for us, that way,” he pointed.
Lib looked at where Alec pointed, and Alec felt him express his energy, then a rustling of branches occurred, and a clear path opened.
“But I thought you could bring the dead back to life? They said you did that for Andi,” Lib pleaded as Alec began to firmly pull him away. “I heard that she was dead, but you put her spirit inside your own body, then brought her back to life.”
“I don’t remember,” Alec told him. “But those two are beyond that. We have to go, or we’ll see more Rangers like that,” he urged, and jerked hard, pulling Lib with him in a rambling jaunt that soon brought them back to the location of the horses.
There were sounds of shouts and roars coming from across the stream. “You need to stay here,” Alec told Lib. “Go to sleep and rest deeply,” he spoke, then combined his Spirit energy and Healer energy to slow down and sooth the man’s body and soul, making him collapse in a state of profound sleep.
With Lib no longer available to persuade the plants with his powers, they no longer cooperated by opening in front of Alec, making his journey towards the next clash more difficult, once he cleared the brook. He headed towards the shouting, a journey that took minutes, minutes that seemed far too long while he listened to screams of pain and anger. At last he came to the clearing where three men were dead, and four others were fighting against Andi. Amane was one of those fighting her, Alec saw in disbelief, realizing how profoundly the evil must be possessing the souls of those it came in contact with.
Alec re-engaged his Air powers once again, diminishing his Spirit energies to the lowest level he felt kept the evil from infecting his own soul, warily cognizant of it virtually flickering within his peripheral vision as it grasped to capture him inside its evil infection as well. He stood unobserved by the combatants and pondered what strategy to use.
He sent his Air energies out to create walls among those who were fighting, astonishing them as their blades and bodies bumped against the invisible constraints, then he walked in among them, using his power to spread them widely apart from each other.
He approached Andi first, stopping directly in front of her. “Traitor!” she shouted at him. “I gave you my love, I gave you my devotion, my body, I have given you everything I have Alec! I hate you!” she screamed with passion and true hatred. Alec looked back at the other members of the group, confirming that they were so widely separated from each other that they would not have time to inflict harm upon him or each other, once he released his Air energies, as he was going to have to do.
“Andi,” he said softly, opening a hole in the air curtain that divided them, as she stood upright against it, pressing forward to try to reach through it, to do violence against him. He reached through to grab her and let his Spirit energy calm her.
I’m sorry for the pain I’ve given you; I do admire and respect you, he told her softly as the evil that possessed her was banished. He felt the artificial anger drop away, and saw the rage leave her face. With the threat that she would attack him removed, he dropped his Air energies, and seized his Healer energies.
“Alec? What?” she started to ask a question, when he placed her in a deep slumber as well, then turned, and reengaged his Air powers to re-divide the other, still-infected men who were converging upon his location, and slowly, one-by-one, put each of them through the same process of being relieved of their infection, then dropped into the heavy sleep he induced within them. He listened to their screams and curses and challenges which he soothed away, unmoved by any, except the words he had heard first from Andi.
He finished at last, having used his energies extensively for the first time since his reawakening, and felt weariness already starting to consume him because of his exertions. Alec dropped his energies other than his Spiritual powers, and began to grimly move towards the center of the dark forces he detected in the heart of the forest. With its other victims neutralized, all of the evil energy was focused upon him, and he found that he had to increase the amount of Spiritual energy he used to protect himself from infection by the madness that had overcome his companions. As he drew closer to the heart of the darkness, fighting through more tangles, climbing up and down hillsides, sensing the passage of time, he felt the power of the suggest
ions of the darkness, fighting to penetrate his defenses, testing a variety of tactics to try to motivate him away from his pursuit of its source. He heard the urging to go back to Ridgeclimb, to give up his hopeless mission. He easily dismissed the whispers that suggested he go back and kill the remaining Rangers, then take the horses and the valuables and live a life of easy luxury somewhere. The voices told him how beautiful Andi was, and how badly he had treated her; go back and take her to a place where you can marry her and make her a queen, the suggestions crackled away on the periphery of his consciousness.
Imagine her as your wife; make her the mother of your children. Marry her and let her be your queen, the voices said. They cajoled, they pleaded, they wheedled and reasoned and used every tool available to try to manipulate him.
Alec shook his head, and bellowed out a challenge. “I am coming to find you and slay you, and you will not trick me!” he shouted aloud, as he approached the center of the force that was at the heart of the forest.
He pressed through another thicket of dense brambles, feeling the thorns make more of the innumerable small tears in his hands and his arms and his face, and then he found himself on top of a small dike, a circular earthen wall that surrounded a village of two score homes or more. Facing him, at the foot of the levy he stood on, were his attackers – a sight that astonished him, and threw him for a loss. Gathered together were a dozen women, of mixed ages, all watching him with hatred and fear in their facial expressions.
“Who are you? Why are you attacking my friends?” he shouted at them.
“Who are you to come into our forest?” one of them asked in return.
Alec sensed a building of forces in the land beneath him and the air around him. He split his use of the ingenaire power once again, slightly lessening his Spirit powers, while reaching for a small portion of Warrior powers, enough, he hoped, to protect himself from whatever inevitable attack was about to be launched.
“You are using evil powers, and you are causing the murders of my friends. We came here bearing no ill-will towards you, and we posed no threat to you,” he said, his eyes casting about to scan their faces and to also monitor the environment about him, looking for any overt new threats.
“You broke the law of the forest. None may travel in these woods except upon the agreed roads, unless they have our approval,” one woman spoke, a much older woman. Her visage was wrinkled, and Alec thought that her appearance justified the name of witch.
“We were in a hurry to try to help other friends,” he began, when he sensed a movement above him and glanced up in time to see a huge snake dropping directly towards him from a tree limb far above. He stepped to the side and swung his sword upward, severing the reptile’s head from the body in mid-air, as its mouth gaped open and its fangs glistened with venom while it fell to the ground, dead.
As his momentum from his sword swing carried him around in an arc, he caught sight of a large swarm of angry hornets about to sweep upon him from his rear. He instantaneously exchanged his Warrior energy for his Air power, and created a gust that blew the buzzing hornets far into the woods.
As quickly as the hornets were gone, the ground beneath him began to liquefy, turning to a soup that Alec began to quickly sink in. As fast as he had switched powers before, Alec jumped his energies from Air to Stone, and caused stones in the earth to congregate beneath him, then lift him on a rocky pedestal above the morass.
Knowing that some other assault was coming, Alec focused on engaging his Light energy, then reached out to collect all the available light in the vicinity, and caused the descent of absolute darkness on the village area. Under the cover of the inky blackness he ran to a new location, then caused a flare of light to illuminate and stun the women below.
“Enough of the battle!” he shouted, growing angrier with each moment. “I came here only to stop the evil that attacked my companions, but if these assaults continue, you will suffer my attack on you! Stop this now!” he screamed so loudly he felt his face turn red, and he strained his control of his Spiritual powers with his rapidly growing anger. He abruptly checked himself as he realized that the result of weakening of his Spiritual energies in order to allow the use of his other energies was also allowing the hateful energy around him to affect his feelings and judgment.
“Forgive me John Mark,” he muttered a quick, quiet prayer of regret. “I do not want to kill them. I only want to rescue the girls.”
He felt the energy that surrounded him abruptly vanish.
He turned his head, looking in all directions for the next calamity to descend upon him. There was none in view in any direction, and he looked back down at the women in the village. Other women were coming out of the largest hut of the village, increasing the size of the group that faced him. It grew into a mob as he stood engaged in a silent stare down.
“What did you mean about rescuing girls?” the crone who appeared to be the leader of the village of women asked.
Alec stopped and considered the question, confused by the interest the woman showed in his one short prayer after his earlier pleas and threats had accomplished nothing. “A girl I know, and many other girls, were kidnapped, by a gang of men – Warrior ingenairii, if you know what that means.
“I’ve been chasing them for weeks trying to set the girls free,” he explained. “My companions are with me on this quest.”
“Do you speak the truth?” the old woman asked.
“I speak the truth,” he replied.
“Anyone can claim they speak the truth,” some other voice protested from the crowd.
“He is a man. No man is to be trusted,” another voice shouted.
“Why hasn’t he caught these kidnapers and freed the girls already? He is a mighty warlock,” yet another doubter called from the crowd.
“I am not a warlock!” Alec denied emphatically. “I understand how you create the powers you use; I do not use that means of accomplishing my goals. Your way is a painful one for the spirits you rely on.”
“He is a seer,” a different voice called. “He knows what we do, he rescues girls. He is trustworthy.”
“Never trust a man,” came a bitter rejoinder from somewhere in the crowd.
“Enough!” the leader called out, bringing order back to the mob of her followers, just before it careened out of control.
“Do you speak the truth?” the woman asked again.
“I do,” Alec replied. “My soul grows troubled when I say falsehoods, and I do not wish to carry that burden. I am telling the truth.”
“The whole truth?” the leader prodded him.
He stopped and reflected. He wondered how much of his story was pertinent to this confrontation, a confrontation he did not even understand yet. He only knew that it had descended to merely verbal jousting instead of physical battle, and he was glad for that.
“I have told all the truth that I think you care about,” he answered, and listened as his words provoked a murmur of distrust.
“If we could believe you,” she paused dramatically, “we might let your friends go in peace. We might even let you go in peace.
“We might even assist you,” she said at last, a statement that drew another ripple of murmurs from her followers.
“Come down here, so that we may weigh your truth,” she said. She held her hand up to him in a gesture of offering to help.
“Why would I trust you?” Alec asked, and at last he recognized the dilemma of his situation.
He was not going to be able to defeat this group unless he slaughtered them, and he could not imagine himself raining death down on all the women who had come to gather there. But he could not simply run away, to try to return to the survivors of the Exbury Rangers. The floating spirits of death would follow or even beat him to that target.
And he did not trust the women enough to step down among them.
“I will make myself your hostage,” a woman said. “I trust you.”
She stepped forward, a woman who looked worn by
a hard life, with shapeless brown hair hanging down to the shoulders of her coarsely woven shift.
“What is your name?” Alec asked her.
“I am Celty,” she answered.
“Celty, I am Alec,” he replied. “Can I trust you, and can I trust your sisters?”
There was a murmur of approval, and he realized that in terming them sisters he had stumbled onto the name they gave each other.
“They will not harm you, nor will I,” she told him.
Slowly, Alec crouched, down on top of the earthen dike, then hopped to the ground and walked to Celty.
“How will you weigh my truth?” Alec asked.
“With this,” she said simply, and she held up her hand in front of Alec’s face. Her fist was balled shut, and when she opened her hand, he leaned in close to see what she held. There was only a palmful of powder, and suddenly Celty gave a powerful puff, blowing the powder up into Alec’s face.
His vision immediately grew dizzy, and before he could even protest her treachery, he fainted and collapsed.
Chapter 4 – Trial by Fire
Alec awoke when a bucket of cold water was thrown on his chest. His body jumped and shivered in response to the shock. He was in a dim and smoky room, lying on the floor, next to a roaring hot fire. Drops of water that had splashed off his body had hit a circle of stones around the fire, and they sizzled themselves away in tiny clouds of steam that rose and mixed with the strangely-odored smoke of the damp wood on the fire.
Alec was staked to the floor, tight ropes around each ankle and wrist, across his waist and his chest and his neck. He was unclothed, lying naked in a room so large it could only be the large hut he had observed in the center of the village.
“Don’t exercise your powers, or we will kill the rest of your companions,” the old woman said, squatting on the floor near his head. “I warn you of that, but of course it doesn’t really matter. While the smoke from the persimmele tree is burning, you cannot touch the energy you use.”
The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities Page 4
