“Could you explain?” Alec asked.
“Boundary Lake is virtually a part of the Twenty Cities culture, but not one of our cities. It’s up in the mountains, a long way away, on the frontier with the lands of the lacertii in one direction to the northwest, and untamed wilderness in the other direction to the southwest, though they say there’s a civilized land on the far side of those mountains. But there’s a war with the lacertii going on, and I hear Boundary Lake is losing,” the man explained.
“How can I find the road to Boundary Lake?” Alec asked.
“Go west through the city, and go north at the first great branching outside the city, maybe five miles past the gate,” the officer said dismissively. “You can’t miss it.”
“Thank you,” Alec told the man as he stood up to leave.
“Are you as good as the girl with your sword?” he asked.
“Even better,” Alec said. “I helped train her.”
“Good luck in your efforts then. I imagine if you catch the girl before she catches the kidnappers, you’ll team up?”
“We can’t lose if we’re together, can we?” Alec agreed. “I just need to catch them.”
He left the office and went to the streets, headed towards the west side of the sizeable city. He was pleased to learn that he was only three days behind Andi and Amane; he’d made better progress than he had hoped. Sunset was near when Alec reached the west side of the city, and he decided to wait for Aja’s arrival, due to occur within minutes. He stepped into a dark alleyway and unstrapped the tree from his back, set it down, then leaned against a wall.
“What’d we got here?” a voice asked.
Alec raised his chin from his chest. Three men, teenagers, he guessed, stood at the mouth of the alley.
“Move along. I’m just resting,” he told them, seizing his Air energies in case they were needed.
“Just resting? What’d you do? Bring your own tree to take a leak on?” one of the youngsters laughed at his own wit.
Suddenly the transformation occurred, and Aja stood before Alec. The heads of the prospective robbers snapped back as their jaws dropped, and then Alec used his energies to lift them up onto the roof of the building he was leaning against. Aja was stretching, her eyes closed, not even aware of the brief encounter.
She looked around, adjusting to the environment. “Is it odd to change in one place and then resurrect in another?” Alec asked suddenly, curious about what the experience was like.
“It can be frightening,” she answered. “It used to be frightening to not know where I’d be or who would be waiting for me or what they’d want to do.
“But I don’t feel that way when I’m with you,” she told him. “I know you’ll never let anyone hurt me,” she reached out and took his hand shyly.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“We’re in Moriadoc, on the west side of the city,” Alec answered.
He felt her body tremble. “I lived in this city with Erwin,” she answered. “But I never saw it, of course; I only listened to it, and smelled it, and walked through it at night.”
“Will we go to a tavern again this evening?” she collected her thoughts, and seemed determined to regain the usually sunny disposition she displayed.
“We certainly will,” Alec answered, eager to talk with Aja about what he had discovered in his afternoon interview.
“We’ve come a long way very fast,” Aja told Alec when they were seated at a private table in a nice tavern near the spot where she had metamorphosed back to human form. Alec had selected an establishment whose clientele appeared to be shopkeepers and craftsmen, a group that he expected would not be hostile, but would be receptive if Aja felt compelled to perform once again, which he anticipated would happen. He ate a meal of food that was fresher and more wholesome than most taverns served, another sign that the clientele were the prosperous merchants of the area.
“We left Birnam Forest just three days ago, didn’t we?” she asked, and received a nod of Alec’s head in confirmation. “It took me over a month to wander the other way on my own last summer when I sought refuge there.”
“What was that like?” Alec asked, remembering Aja’s comments about how unsettling it could be to revive in a strange place.
“I tried to be as careful as possible. When I sensed sunrise coming each morning, I’d always try to find other trees nearby, and take root close to them. Then I’d just wait to find out if anyone was nearby when the evening came; I’d go back on the road, and keep walking – night after night,” she told him.
“Today I talked to the police in the city here, and they said that Andi only left three days ago, and the kidnappers left five days ago,” Alec decided to report on what he had learned. “They’re going towards a town called Boundary Lake.”
“Alec! That’s the region my village is in! I came from a place near Boundary Lake,” Aja told him.
“Do you want to go back there?” Alec asked, suddenly remembering that he had no real solution for what to do with Aja; his only goal had been to help her leave Birnam Forest, and already they were in Moriadoc. She didn’t seem ready to be left alone by him, and he wasn’t ready to part company with the charming girl.
“I don’t want to go back to Dryden, my village, and I don’t want to stop traveling with you!” she cried. “You won’t make me leave you, will you?”
“I was just thinking that I would not want to see you leave yet,” Alec confessed, bringing a warm smile to Aja’s face. “I will soon reach a time when I will be in battle, and you will not be safe to stay with me though, Aja. I don’t know what to do with you.”
“I had no plan when we left the women’s village,” she replied, her hand reaching out to touch his on the table. “I still don’t; but whatever could happen, these three days with you have been blissful. I’ve had sight and vision! I’ve had the safety of the protection of the greatest hero ever known! And I’ve had a good friend,” she told him, and squeezed his hand affectionately.
“May I sing now?” she asked. “I feel happy and ready to sing.”
Alec looked around the room. The corner by the fireplace appeared to be a spot from which others had entertained the patrons of the establishment, judging by the stools set against the wall there.
He left a copper pence tip for their waiter, then escorted Aja over to the stools, and took one for himself in a location from which he could lean against the wall and watch the crowd. Aja stood a little in front of him and to his left. The waiter from their table picked up the tip off the wooden surface, then looked up at Alec with a puzzled expression, for just a moment, before Aja began to sing.
Her first song on this evening was not the boisterous drinking song she’d begun with the night before. Tonight she seemed to judge correctly the quality of her audience, and she began with a song about a daughter telling her father thank you, just before her wedding ceremony beginning. It was a sentimental tune, one which appealed to the men of the crowd, who both remembered their own weddings and saw the pending arrivals of weddings for daughters; they were appreciative in their applause when her tune ended.
The cook came out to look inquisitively at the songstress in the dining room, but only shrugged his shoulders when his eyes met Alec’s, and he went back to the kitchen.
Aja launched into a second song, a more boisterous song about a ne’er-do-well apprentice whose master was coping with increasingly greater potential disasters in ever new verse, to great comical effect. The occupants of the room laughed and stomped their feet and applauded at the end, but only for a second before Aja began her next song. And so she held the audience in the palm of her hand for nearly two hours of music, as the room grew full, then crowded, then stuffed to overflowing, as more and more people entered, while few left the room.
She took a break to drink water, and stood next to Alec. “It gives me such energy to sing to an appreciative crowd!” she said. “I know we’ve been here a long time; would you like to leave now?” she asked him.
Aja smiled and turned, then began her next song, while Alec slipped away to visit the restroom; there was no harm in him leaving her alone among such an adoring crowd, he knew.
When he came back down the hallway, the song was over, and the crowd was beginning to mumble and buzz with all the conversation that had been repressed while listening to the music. Alec came around the corner, and saw that Aja was not in the corner by the fireplace. He pressed through the crowd and made his way to the front, looking for his friend. “Did you see where the singer went?” Alec asked a group of men sitting at a front table.
“Some ordinary–looking fellow came to talk to her after the last song, and she followed him out the side door,” one of the men said, and pointed off to his right.
Alec thanked them for the information, then went through the identified door, which led to the kitchen.
“Did the singer come through here?” he asked the cook, who was still hard at work over his griddle.
“She did, with a dandy, about two minutes ago. Went out that door,” the cook pointed with a knife, and Alec walked rapidly out the door. The door way faced a stable building across the alley from the back of the tavern, and Aja was not in sight down either direction in the alley. He felt very uneasy about the situation; he was deeply aware of the genuine rapport he and Aja felt, and he didn’t believe she would simply walk away from him, especially when they had just spoken about traveling together.
He extended his Spiritual energies, and tried to find any hint of Aja.
Above him in the rooms of the tavern was a medley of people expressing many strong emotions, and he tried to filter those out. To his left he detected no great emotional state, while to his right were two people tremendously excited about something. Alec began to jog down the alley to his right, and as he reached the intersection with a street he paused and extended his senses again.
The two people he followed were nearby, to his right again. He walked down the street, his hand prepared to reach for his sword, as his eyes examined every possible location where Aja might be hidden. As he passed a doorway to a building, he discovered that the entryway was deeper than he expected, hiding a stairwell and landing of dark, shadowed corners, and within one of those corners his two sought souls were together, engaged in an embrace.
“Aja?” Alec stood at the street level and called up into the darkness that was four steps above him.
There was no answer forthcoming. Aja was there, Alec knew. Yet she was not answering his call; in fact, she was locked in a passionate kiss with a man, hidden away in the darkness, oblivious to Alec’s presence, and Alec wasn’t sure what to do.
“Aja,” he called again, quite loudly this time.
The voice that answered wasn’t Aja’s. “Go away bud, and leave us in peace,” a man replied, apparently taking his lips away from Aja’s long enough to answer.
“I want to talk to Aja,” Alec replied just as loudly as before, his voice spreading widely across the empty city street. Alec sent his senses towards the man, seeking to learn what type of person he was, but all Alec could detect was shallow self-concern in the man, no sense of concern for the rest of the world, or for the woman he held. And there was something else about the man; not a part of his spirit, but connected to it in some manner.
Alec placed a foot on the stone tread of the first step, decreasing the distance between himself and the couple. “Aja, it’s Alec. I need to talk to you.”
“Oh, Alec! Hello!” the girl seemed to come out of some revere she had been in. “Look! It’s Erwin! He still loves me!”
“Aja, I need to talk to you,” Alec told her. “Can you come down here?”
“Sure, Alec,” she replied. A moment later she spoke in a low voice. “Let go Erwin, please.”
“You stay up here with me if you want to talk to him,” Erwin answered her. “You trust me, don’t you?”
“Of course, Erwin,” Aja answered. She was strangely willing to accept anything the man told her, it seemed to Alec.
“I’ll come up there with you,” Alec said in a cheerful voice, and took another step upward.
“Stop! We don’t need you up here. Tell the girl whatever you have to say, then leave us be,” Erwin interrupted the conversation.
Alec ignored him and took another step upward, only to hear the sound of a sword being drawn from a scabbard. “One more step and you’ll pay the price.”
“I wouldn’t try to start a fight,” Alec warned him. “I’m only here to talk to Aja.”
“You can talk from there,” Erwin said.
“Aja, you don’t mind if I come up there and talk to you, do you?” Alec asked.
“No Alec, but Erwin says not to, so we better not,” she answered.
Disturbed, and curious, Alec adjusted his use of powers, then created a ball of light, letting it float above the three of them who stood on the steps, providing illumination that allowed him to clearly see the other couple.
Erwin was a much older man than Aja, probably in his forties or fifties, he appeared to Alec. He was by no means a handsome man. Aja had known and loved the man previously when she was blind, of course, so his physical appearance wouldn’t have been an element in her initial attraction to him, and it certainly wasn’t now.
“What in the blazes is that?” Erwin asked, looked upward.
“It’s Alec! He does every amazing thing you can imagine!” Aja said affectionately.
The man examined Alec closely, at first with an expression of panic on his face, and then a look of cunning, as he seemed to search Alec for something in particular. “So you’ve got something too! I thought I was the only one who had anything from Boundary Lake, but maybe you do too,” he said aloud, referencing nothing that made any sense to Alec.
Alec took another step up the stairwell and Erwin drew his sword. With a dismissive glance, Alec called upon his Air energy to wrap bands of air around Erwin, pinning his arms to his sides, then floating him up and away from Aja.
“What are you doing to me?” the man screamed in panic. “Let me down!”
“You stay there,” Alec told him facetiously. He stepped up next to Aja, then, prompted by a premonition, he placed his hand on hers, to talk to her through the silent, spirit-to-spirit means of communication.
Aja, I’m glad to see you. I was worried when I couldn’t find you at the tavern, he tried to tell her.
Except he couldn’t make contact with her spirit, even while holding her hand. There was some type of barrier that prevented his communication.
“What are you doing to her?” Alec looked up at Erwin. “What have you done to her soul?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the man said. “She just happens to be in love with me.” As he spoke, his hand crept unknowingly to the center of his chest and rested there, grasping something beneath his shirt.
Alec released Aja’s hand to turn to Erwin, who he lowered closer to the steps for a more thorough examination. Alec reached with both hands and grasped the man’s shirt, then ripped it open with a sudden jerk, revealing a golden pendant on a plain leather thong, hanging around Erwin’s neck.
“Leave me alone, curse you!” Erwin shouted. He flailed in the air and struggled, then he reached for his sword.
“Don’t hurt Erwin, Alec. Leave him be,” Aja spoke from behind Alec.
Alec, adjusted his Air energies to wrap Erwin’s arms tightly against his sides, then reached in and gently pulled the pendant forward. He lowered his bal
l of light to illuminate the small gold disk better, and looked closely.
The golden disk was round, with a frame of brilliant small jewels, and finely etched writing on the face.
“That’s mine! I found it! Leave it alone!” Erwin was screaming with such force that spittle flew from his mouth, showering Alec’s face as he bent close to examine the piece of jewelry.
Alec leaned back from the pendant, and pulled his belt knife free, then raised the knife in front of Erwin’s suddenly fearful face. After a moment of purposeful menace, he sliced the knife downward, and cut the leather thong that held the pendant, and pulled it away from the man.
Erwin screamed again, an incoherent shout of rage and wailing loss. People were walking on the street to see what was causing all the noise, Alec realized, but he dismissed the watchers momentarily as he looked at the pendant. It was familiar; Alec had rarely worn any more jewelry than a wedding ring, even when he reigned as a monarch, so he paid little attention to jewelry, but he found that this pendant struck some chord of familiarity nonetheless.
He felt Aja’s hands on his back, caressing his shoulders, distracting him as he looked at the golden disk.
“Alec, you have been so good to me,” Aja spoke softly, her mouth touching his earlobe as she virtually whispered to him.
“No! Thief! Help!” Erwin screamed.
“Can’t you make him go away,” Aja asked. “Better yet, why don’t you and I go away somewhere, just the two of us. You know how much I think about you?” she asked suddenly. “I want to show you my appreciation,” her hands were rubbing his chest now, reaching around him from behind in an embrace.
Alec broke away from his examination of the pendant to look first at Aja, then at Erwin.
“It’s an enchantment!” Alec exclaimed, suddenly realizing what was happening. “Aja, you go stand in that corner and wait for me,” he ordered her, distracted by the affection she was demonstrating towards him as he held the pendant.
“You’ve enchanted this girl with this pendant,” he looked at Erwin as he made the accusation.
The man hung his head guiltily. Alec looked down at the pendant, then closed his eyes and focused his Spirit abilities on trying to examine it. There was a spiritual energy within the pendant, something that he sensed was generated by the gemstones interacting with one another. Whatever it was, it was nothing he could explain; he’d never been trained in the Ingenaire Hill Spiritual house, where there might have been some academic or theoretical explanation for such an artifact. But regardless of the cause, he knew he had figured out its power.
The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities Page 8
