“Where are you from? Are they all giants like you?” the man asked.
“I’m from a village in the far east, and I’m big for my village,” Alec answered easily. “I heard there were captive humans, one with a mark, being brought to the city, and I wanted to see what they look like. Have they come past here?” he asked directly.
“Just this morning,” the lacerta replied. “They should be inside the city gates by now. You may have missed the show, I’m afraid.”
Alec thanked the shopkeeper, and went back to the road, where he decided to be reckless, and used his energy once again to propel himself at a high pace, weaving in and out among the many other travelers, relieved that he was not far behind. He advanced much more slowly than at any time previously, but he gained hours compared to the rest of the traffic once again, and an hour later he reached the city gates.
The gate was a massively constructed portal to the city that lay within the walls. Much of what he had seen outside the walls was as dense as a city for that matter. The gate was actually four gates, large enough to accommodate a high flow of traffic, but still not large enough for all that strained to enter the capitol of the lacertii.
Alec made himself invisible and pressed forward through the thick-packed crowd, jostling and bumping, causing confusion as he went, but determined to enter the city directly. He cut to his left at the last moment, as the guards began to take notice of all the consternation he had raised in line, and he entered through the relatively empty exit gate, unseen and untouched.
He stepped into a shadowed alley entrance and allowed his Light energy to drop, becoming visible. He picked up his Warrior energy once again, at a low, precautionary level, and then went into the bustling flow of traffic in search of clues to the whereabouts of Andi and the other captive.
A food market was not far from the gates he had entered. Alec stopped there, sure that the vendors would be a good source of news and gossip.
“Have you seen the human captives they brought into the city?” Alec asked a lacerta man who was selling cuts of meat.
“They came past here just an hour ago. Ugly looking thing, pale and pasty and repulsive, if you ask me,” the vendor told him.
“Which way did they take them? I’d like to catch a glimpse,” Alec asked.
“They went that way, towards Chrimsabbra,” the vendor replied, then turned to help a paying customer.
Alec turned to his left and began walking in the direction indicated, hustling to pass others along the road, though not making such an obvious spectacle of his speed. He traveled for an hour without finding anything resembling the forbidding fortress he remembered. Finally he stopped at a shop selling baskets, and asked for directions to Chrimsabbra.
“That way,” the proprietor director with a point back in the direction he had come.
“How far that way?” Alec asked for clarification.
“Quite a ways, maybe three miles, past the stableyard on the right,” the vendor said.
“Thank you,” Alec said. “I want to go see if the human prisoners are there,” Alec explained as he started to head out the door.
“They’re not,” the lacerta sitting on the stool that was surrounded by baskets replied. “They just went past here half an hour ago. They must be taking them to the palace.”
“Why would they do that?” Alec asked.
The vendor shrugged. “Maybe the king wants to witness the execution personally,” he suggested.
Alec rushed out the door and continued down the roadway. He hadn’t asked the direction to the palace, he realized. The afternoon was passing, and the sun would begin to set before long. Alec was growing more worried; he did not want to have to try to find his way around the city in the darkness.
He stopped at another shop, one that appeared to be a pawnshop, he judged by the number of worn items on display for sale. “Am I close to the palace?” he asked.
“If it were a mad dog it would have bit you, you’re so close to it,” the woman inside answered. “Go that way down the road, five minutes tops.”
Alec dashed out the door and went running in the direction of the palace. Traffic grew thick and slow-moving, but Alec resorted to ruthlessly bullying his way through the crowd, and quickly caught sight of the towers of the palace rising above everything else in the vicinity. He homed in on the sight, and as he drew closer, he saw that the gates of the palace were open while a ceremonial guard marched into the palace grounds with goose-stepping precision. Alec made himself invisible and pressed past the last of the citizenry, leaving shouts of angry indignation behind him, as he caught up with the last of the polished soldiers in all of their finery, and heard the gates of the palace slam shut behind him.
He felt jubilant at his small success. He was inside the palace, undetected and unexpected. Ahead of him he saw the column of soldiers parading across the palace grounds, which were a beautifully manicured, park-like setting, towards the palace itself, the location of the towers he had seen from the street. Alec took advantage of the open space of the palace grounds and ran up along the side of the procession, passing several squads of soldiers until he spotted a wagon that was escorted by guards on all side.
Alec ran close to the wagon and found Andi. She was chained to a post, her clothes in such tatters as to be no effective cover for all the cuts and wounds in evidence on every inch of flesh that showed. There was no sign of the Boundary Lake officer, Alan, on the wagon with her, nor was there another wagon among the procession. Andi’s head hung low, but her eyes were alive, and looking from side to side.
Alec timed his approach to the wagon to allow him to jump between two guards in motion and dive up onto the deck of the conveyance, causing the vehicle to momentarily sag under the addition of his weight. Several heads turned to glance at the wagon’s unusual motion as it momentarily surged, then stabilized, but seeing nothing further, they snapped back to their rigid formation posture. Alec held his breath as he sat up and cautiously moved to reach Andi, crawling until he could reach out and place his hand on her ankle.
Alec, how did you get here? she asked as soon as she felt his touch. I’ve never been so happy to see you, and I can’t even see you.
Alec released a slow, steady stream of Healer energy into her body, letting the power reach to all portions of her body, slowly addressing all the injuries she carried. I’ve run quite a race to reach you, he told her as his energies penetrated her flesh. Where is your companion? I thought there was an officer with you.
He heard her sob aloud. Alan was executed yesterday, trying to protect me, she answered.
I’m sorry, he replied. Do you know what they plan to do with you now?
They are going to display me at the court and then kill me, she answered.
We’re going to have to change that plan, he told her.
I’m glad to hear you say that, she answered. Do you have a plan?
Not yet. I just arrived, and my energies are weak, Alec replied.
We’re almost in the palace now, she told him. Can you set me free?
Alec ceased the flow of Healer energy, and turned his head to look ahead. He saw an opportunity.
I’m going to work to weaken your chains right now, he told her, formulating a plan.
Slow down, you’re using their language – I have to translate, Andi interrupted.
Alec continued, more slowly. As soon as our wagon is in the sally port, break the chains and grab my sword and knives. I’ll leave them at your feet, he directed. I won’t join you in battle; I’ll be working to isolate us from all the other guards, so you’ll only need to slay the lacertii who are trapped right around the wagon, he explained. I’ll fight with you after I complete my task, if needed. Take care, my girl.
Alec, Andi paused. Your heart – thank you.
As they spoke, Alec focused a minute beam of light behind her standing post, aimed at a spot on the chains around her legs, leaving only a thin metallic thread holding the chain link intact. He rose to h
is knees and did the same to a link on the chain around her waist, then reached upward and carried out his mission a third time, on the chain around her arms and chest, finishing the action just as the wagon entered the sally port.
He pulled his weapons out hastily and deposited them at her feet, then rolled to the back of the wagon. Just as he got there, the back axle of the wagon pulled under the entry to the sally port, bringing the entire conveyance within the confines of the stonework that provided a last defensive measure to protect the palace. “Now Andi! Go!” Alec shouted as he jumped off the wagon, and landed on the ground. He rolled to the side, no longer invisible, at the same time Andi’s chains loudly clanked free as they fell away from her, causing consternation among the guards who were marching behind the vehicle.
Alec placed his hand on the stone palace wall and called forth his Stone energy. He heard Andi slaying guards, drawing shouts and screams from her victims as she slaughtered every lacertii she could. Using his powers, Alec caused the structure of the sally port doorway to drop stone curtains to the ground at both the front and the back entries to the space, cutting it off from all the palace around it, and isolating himself, Andi, and the lacertii guards who were closest to the wagon when Alec’s barriers fell into place. Long seconds passed as the stones descended into place, and Alec heard Andi sweep around the side of the wagon and work her way towards the back.
He finished pushing his energy into the wall, and dropped his powers, exhausted, then stood up, and looked at Andi as she ran to him. “You’re the last one, you son of a goat!” she shouted, and then to Alec’s horror she drove his own sword into his stomach.
His eyes widened in shock as he felt the incredible pain of the deadly wound. He realized the irony of the situation; he had not told her that he was disguised as a lacertii, and she had not seen him while he was invisible, to know such. She had come to the back of the wagon and simply seen another lacerta, and accordingly delivered her blow to him.
She immediately gasped, as her link to him registered the pain he felt.
“Andi,” he gasped, as he slid down, his back against the new wall he had created, leaving a dark smear of blood behind him.
She screamed a hysterical scream of anguish and confusion.
“Oh my stars, Alec! Are you a lacerta? I didn’t know Alec. I didn’t know!” she shouted and wailed and dropped to her knees.
The sword was still in his flesh. She started to pull it away, but he grabbed her wrist to stop her. “No,” he murmured. “Are all the others dead?” he asked.
“Yes, Alec,” she spoke softly now, barely audible above the muffled sounds of the shouts coming from outside the chamber.
Hold my hand, give me your energy, he told her mentally, his eyes trying to focus on her increasingly blurry face.
He felt the vibrancy of her energy, and he reached for it, grasping it greedily, relatively weak as it was compared to his own. He converted it to Healer energy, sensing the new pain he was creating within himself in the process of converting the two incompatible powers.
Pull the sword out now, he commanded, and he felt the agony of the metal blade slicing his flesh further as it passed through his body once again. He screamed as the blade left his body, then he feebly applied the healing power to his internal injuries, trying to accomplish enough repair to keep himself from bleeding to death.
Andi felt his scaly hand’s grasp upon her hand start to weaken, and saw his eye lids drop simultaneously. His fingers slipped away from her hand and fell into his lap, then his head lolled to the side. He was no longer conscious. She threw the deadly sword, the tool of her mistaken attack, against the far wall of the chamber, then wrapped her arms around Alec and held his lacerta body tightly against her own. Alec, are you there? she spoke to his spirit but received no answer. She continued to sit and hold him for long minutes, then gently laid his body flat on the ground and checked his pulse. She gave a cry of joy when she detected a weak pulse still beating within him, and nearly crushed his hand with the impulse of celebration she felt.
Andi leaned down over Alec’s lacerta face, and gingerly placed her lips against his nearly lipless mouth, kissing him with love and devotion and respect.
She had hated having him inside her head in the intrusive one-way manner she had suffered since his head injury; she had flirted with Alan, the officer from Boundary Lake before and during their captivity, though it had been difficult to think of the one man when another man was virtually alive in her head. But she had felt Alec’s fixation on her as he tracked after her in pursuit, his determination to follow her, and she had felt his approach. She had felt the softening in his heart, his recognition of her difficult life, and she felt closer to him for that.
And now she was boxed into a nearly lightless stone cage with him, listening to the sounds of frantic lacertii screaming and pounding outside the miraculous walls that had created a safe harbor right in the very heart of the lacertii king’s palace. There was a frenzy of noise outside the walls. Then, after several seconds of ominous silence, the pounding began. Sledgehammers had been procured, and the stone protection began to give small shivers as it tried to defy the force that was swung against it repeatedly.
Andi kissed Alec’s mouth again, then scrambled to find the sword she had thrown, fearing that the lacertii would soon break through the safety Alec had created for them, ending their chance to make a bid for freedom. She bent and kissed him one more time, then raised her head and squawked in surprise when he responded by kissing back, and she felt his long, slender lacerta tongue run across the surface of her lips.
“You didn’t realize you had the energies of a Healer, did you?” he rasped. “Those kisses seem to be powerful themselves.”
“Oh Alec, I didn’t know it was you, I really didn’t! I was just trying to kill everything around me that seemed like a lacerta,” she told him, stroking his face, not repelled by the feel of his skin.
“That’s a good story. You need to stick to it,” he answered.
“You’re feeling better! I can feel you feeling better,” she told him, delightedly. “So don’t think I’m going to put up with your sarcasm,” she replied, just before a particularly well struck swing of a hammer outside produced tangible results in a series of small cracks in the surface of the new walls.
“Here, help me,” Alec asked as he stared up at the ceiling above. “Roll me over on my stomach.”
Another blow struck against precisely the right spot on the wall opened up a small hole, letting a pencil-thin red shaft of light from the setting sun enter their space.
“Quickly, go gather up all the weapons you can in thirty seconds.” He waited until she did as bid. “Good, now lie down next to me,” Alec directed next. “Right up against me, body to body,”
“What are we doing?” Andi asked, as she obediently knelt next to him, one arm full of weapons.
Two more mighty blows struck the stone wall and a large splinter flew inward, grazing across Alec’s back.
“We’re hiding,” Alec told her, and he called upon his Air energy to lift them up so that they floated against the ceiling of the sally port space, and then he engaged his Spirit and Light energies, and used the Light energy to make them appear invisible to anyone below, as their backs were pressed against the ceiling and they could watch events unfold beneath them.
The stone wall gave way, and a panel fell inward in a single piece, landing where Alec had just been laying, and as soon as it fell, a dozen arrows flew into the sally port pre-emptively, attempting to harm anyone within. A head cautiously stuck into the space and looked around, then a torch was held aloft as a lacerta climbed in and more sledges hit the stone wall, breaching the defense thoroughly.
The sally port was immediately crawling with soldiers; so many were sent into the small space that their movement became difficult because of the crowding that occurred, while Alec and Andi hung silently above it all and watched and listened.
“They couldn’t have just v
anished into thin air,” an officer who was apparently in charge complained five minutes after the initial breach, waving his hands upward, directly at the spot where Alec and Andi hid.
Andi, Alec said silently, I will not have the energy to maintain us here much longer.
You’re doing fine, Alec, she replied. I know you’re weary and weak.
As soon as they leave, I’ll let us down, and then we’ll need to find a place to rest, he said. And then, when we do, I’ll need to change you.
That’s the story of my life, men always want to change me, she said with a laugh.
No, I mean, Alec stopped, belatedly smiling as he recognizing the irony in her comment. I could not have come across the entire nation if I had not adapted my body to look like a lacerta.
Can you change back? It’s not permanent, is it? she asked.
Well, it is permanent, he lamented.
Alec! Andi exclaimed in horror, then realized he was joking.
They gave a sudden lurch, as Alec’s energy fluctuated, a sign of the impending collapse of his abilities.
“Post a guard outside, and assign a crew with hammers to break both these walls down in the morning,” the commanding officer below them ordered as he watched the last of the bodies of the dead soldiers be carried out of the sally port. “Don’t start the hammering too early though. We don’t want to wake his majesty; that wouldn’t be good for any of our careers!” he laughed.
“Sir, you don’t suppose this is related to the wall that sprang up at the Boundary Lake battlefield, do you?” one of the junior officers in the room asked.
“The thought has crossed my mind. The she-devil with the mark was present in both places, and the stone barriers here seem similar to what we’ve heard about out east, on a much smaller scale,” the senior leader agreed. He started walking towards the hole in the wall. “It just leaves the question of why she didn’t use her tricks to free herself earlier,” he was speaking as he left the sally port, and the last of the other lacertii followed him out.
The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities Page 18
