Alec the Wanderer: Generations of Eredwynn #4

by Daniel B. Harris

  Finally, my ladies woke and I waited outside the tent, getting a morning kiss as they came out. Our inventory showed, since we had two more mouths to feed, that we only had two or three days’ worth of rations. None of us thought too much about it and Barb was happy that Bambi’s mother was safe.

  Just before breakfast was ready, Carol roused the girls. They came out looking quite rumpled from sleeping in their clothes, but very happy to be healthy again. They certainly ate like healthy ten year olds and it made me feel good.

  Mary asked, “Where are we going today? We sure don’t want to go back to our home town. I think that everyone there is dead!” She then became somber. “Including Mom and Dad.”

  Martha put her arm around her sister. “We’re going to miss them, but they were sick and hurting before. Now they’re in heaven and not feeling pain.”

  Mary nodded and I looked confused. I started to ask about this ‘heaven’ place, but Amanda caught my eye and shook her head. I understood that it had something to do with the teachings of the cult. Now wasn’t the time to discuss that kind of thing with the girls, so I let it pass and answered Mary.

  “We’re hoping to go home today. I’ll have to use one of my special skills to find our path and then we’ll show you some more tricks. I doubt you’ll like them as much as the healing, but they’re pretty neat, too.”

  Carol spoke to everyone in her take-charge voice, “Let’s get these dishes cleaned up, the bedding packed and the tents down. We’ll get everything packed and ready to travel so when Alec finds a ring, we can go. I’ve seen enough of this place and we’ve saved two wonderful young ladies.”

  Mary cut in. “Carol…”

  I interrupted with, “They ain’t ladies, and they won’t even be women for a few years!”

  Mary laughed. “You knew what I was gonna say. That’s kinda funny that you listened and remembered. Most adults don’t hear kids.”

  I smiled. “Mary, I always try to listen to someone that I like! I like you and your sister very much and am glad that we met you, and could help you. I know the situation could have been better, but we take what we get.”

  She smiled, nodded and jumped up to begin the packing chores. With six busy pairs of hands, the work went quickly. We were set to travel and I found a comfortable place to sit. Casting for the ring that had brought us here had taken a while. I didn’t want to fall over while I was looking for the route home.

  I asked the sorceresses if they would like to go on the casting trip and they all joined me. The twins didn’t know what was going on, but weren’t big fans of being very far away from us. They sat right in the middle of our circle and watched what we were doing.

  We joined hands, I concentrated on Eredwynn, my time and place. I made very sure that there were no other stray thoughts and activated my remote viewing. My vision shot straight up for a mile and I was looking down on us and the campsite. I could see the town where we’d met the twins and the pyres burning all around it. I waited for the view to track on a ring or at least move! Usually it was skimming all over as it looked for my target, be it a swamp, forest or ring. This time, nothing happened. I checked my focus and direction, but still nothing. I changed what I was looking for to a forest and my vision darted off to the west. I had a mile high view of the forest we’d arrived in. I changed my search back to a ring portal to Eredwynn and my perspective darted back to the east and stopped directly above us once more. It didn’t zoom in like it would if we were sitting on a ring, it just stopped. I deactivated the spell and came back to myself.

  The magical members of my band were staring at me and they were all quite pale. I shook my head. “I don’t know, ladies. I saw no portal from here to Eredwynn. My spell was working properly, as you saw when we went to the forest. I don’t know how to get us home!”

  Their eyes glistened and the stress level grew. Finally, Carol took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and looked at us all. “Then we look every day until we find one. Until then, we can keep with ‘the wanderers’ program when lost, and travel east. We’ll have to hide our ‘special abilities’, because we’d hate for someone to mistake us for witches. We can heal ones and twos or maybe even small groups, as long as we’re careful. Alec, look every day! I’m already missing the castle.”

  Martha gasped, “Y’all lived in a castle? Are you the King and Queen?”

  Carol laughed. “Actually, I’m a princess and he’s a prince. His father is the King. These two are our Consorts; they are part of our family, too, and very special.”

  Mary inquired, “Are we your Consorts, too? You said we could go with your family.”

  I chuckled softly. “Sweetheart, if you two were six or eight years older, I’d consider you for a position as Consorts. I was thinking that you’d be our ‘royal Wards’, if that would be all right.”

  Mary and Martha nodded happily, while my ladies giggled behind their hands. Barb leaned forward and whispered through her giggles, “Dirty old man, picking up ten year old Consorts!”

  I chuckled. “I said ‘Wards’. Besides, I can’t even get the Consorts I have alone, with this situation. I don’t need, or want, any more ladies in my bed and certainly not a ten year old!”

  She kissed me gently. “I was teasing you. I know you weren’t thinking anything like that. You even seemed a bit squeamish when you found out I was fifteen, and that’s well within the legal limit for a Consort.”

  “That is true, but you’ve changed my mind. You can change my mind some more when we get out of these tents and back into real beds again.”

  She nodded, we slung our packs and hit the road. We went way around the city of Amiens, found the road running east on the other side and trudged along.

  At noon we veered off the road a ways. Carol ported in enough wood to cook a meal and pulled me to the side, while the sisters cut wood and built a fire.

  “Alec, I hope you have a good trick for hunting because the larder’s becoming lean. I could shield the camp and you could port or fly to wherever. Just please hurry back, because I’ll be terrified the whole time you’re away.”

  I kissed her firmly and hugged her. “All right, my love. I do know a trick or two. I’ve been a wanderer for a while and done this before. Take care of my family and I’ll be back soon.”

  I focused on a deer, as close as possible, that didn’t have a fawn. Orphans saddened me, human or animal. My vision was whipped northwest to a forest. I saw my target and scanned the area around it for people. Finding no one, I ported.

  I popped in thirty feet away and fired a heavy energy bolt, decapitating the creature before it knew I was there. I levitated it, field dressed it for travel and ported back to my family.

  Still levitating the carcass, I called, “Carol, how would you like me to butcher this?”

  She replied, “If you’ll finish skinning it and let me borrow your dagger, I’ll butcher it for us. I’ve had plenty of experience doing that on the farm. I’ll go get the others to lend a hand. I won’t insist that Barb help if she doesn’t want to. Oh, Barb has the twins and me calling Amanda, Mandy. It’s what she called her when they were little girls. She likes it, but didn’t use it in Vegas. That’s another reason to call her that; no bad memories attached.”

  I smiled, nodded and went to work on the skinning. It only took a few more cuts and a strong pull and the job was done.

  Carol came back over with Mandy and the twins. A slightly green Barb followed behind. Before I handed over my dagger, I gave Carol a tip.

  “My love, you know this is an enchanted dagger. I want to show you what it can do, so you’ll keep any body parts you’re attached to out of the way.” I took the dangling leg of the deer and without any effort cut through it, bones and all. Her eyes went wide and she nodded her understanding. She gingerly took the handle from me and went to work.

  The twins jumped right to work and took little direction, and Mandy caught on quickly and followed their example. Poor Barbara didn’t want to seem like she was l
azy, but just couldn’t fight off her aversion to a dead animal carcass. She stayed back out of the way and watched.

  Holding my focus on the deer to keep it floating, I went to Barb. “Hun, if you could get out our plates, skillet and whatever else you can think of, we could stack the meat on them. Don’t feel bad about not being able to help with the butchering. It’s a nasty, messy job and I don’t blame you. You also need to smile! You have such a beautiful smile.”

  She forced herself to smile. “Thank you, Alec. If there’s a next time, maybe I can help. But if I get much closer than this, I’ll waste my lunch!”

  When Carol had finished, and we had meat stacked everywhere, I got ready for one of my special tricks. I wrapped steaks for tonight’s dinner so we could have fresh meat at least once. I got a large container of salt that I always carried in my pack and opened it. With the complete silence that surrounded me as the girls all watched, my concentration was clear. I floated all the meat into the air, sliced tiny groves in it and pelted it with high velocity salt. I then visualized removing the water from it and released my intent. The meat shrunk rapidly and uniformly, more quickly than a butcher could dream of doing. I sorted the dried meat into four flour bags that I always kept on hand and the chore was done.

  Carol, smiling and shaking her head, went out to bury the carcass. I knew that there were some things that could be done by magic that she hadn’t mastered and was still impressed to see them done.

  We packed up the camp and Carol used her magical cleaning spell, the one that I was impressed with, to clean everyone thoroughly. We hit the road again with food to last us many days.

  As we followed the road, we passed many small communities that treated us with suspicion and didn’t seem to want us near the villages. I couldn’t blame them, because the plague had caused fear and mistrust. The road began to track northeast and we followed, simply because we had no other way to go.

  We’d camp at night, wake, and pack and continue on. Every morning I’d look for a portal home but had no luck. When our food supply ran low, I’d go hunting. One of my hunting trips, I offered to take the twins. They said that they had some knowledge of local flora and could find us something other than meat. Personally, I thought that they just wanted to see what it was like to disappear and reappear in a different place. Carol thought it was a good idea and I was sure her motives were that I become attached to our Wards, as she and the sisters had.

  I gathered them to me and explained the sensation that they would feel when we ported. They each took a small bag for what they found and I cast for edibles. We also needed meat, but I could cast for that later. Their first jump might cause excitement when I needed quiet for the hunt. My hunts were hardly fair to the deer, but they were effective and kept my growing family fed.

  I focused and my vision raced off on my mission. It found a very pretty clearing surrounded by trees. I locked it in and gathered the twins into my port and cast.

  There were squeals of shock and delight as we arrived. I began looking around for anything that I could recognize and the girls took off. I called to them as they began their gathering. “I don’t want you to wander too far from me. We don’t know what’s around here and you should keep close. Find what you can and we’ll go hunting for meat afterward.”

  They nodded their understanding and began picking greens, digging for roots and watching their distance from me. They actually seemed to know what they were doing, which was a happy surprise. I located a willow tree and decided that tea with dinner would be a nice change from plain water. It would also help with the aches and pains that we were all starting to feel. The road had always been my life, but I’d never considered myself lost. The stress from this situation was wearing on even me. The sisters didn’t complain, but I knew it was getting to them, too.

  I was shoving a few handfuls of bark into my gathering bag when I heard the scream. I was instantly at attention, with my dagger out, and then kicked myself for allowing the girls to wander off unshielded. That was such a stupid rookie mistake, it proved the stress had me out of focus.

  I located them on the other side of the clearing and shielded them quickly. They were backing away from the edge of the woods and I could see the tremor of fear in their hands. A large wolf, focused in its hunting mode, appeared at the edge of the trees, moving slowly toward the girls. I altered my vision to look for life signs, knowing that wolves rarely hunted alone.

  Slinking through the grass of the clearing, well hidden and silent, were two more of the creatures. They had flanked the girls on both sides and while the one in front kept their attention, the ones on the sides were preparing to attack.

  I began running across the clearing toward the girls and was within ten yards when the wolf closest to Mary lunged. It went airborne and was aiming for the girl’s throat when I caught it using telekinesis and held it. It was snarling and thrashing against my magic, but couldn’t break free. The one on Martha’s side saw that the odds had changed and made a break for it, but the one in front kept coming. I didn’t want to kill the creatures for doing what wild animals do, so I tossed him and his pack mate back to the trees. They quickly regained their feet and cleared the area.

  I took a knee and wrapped the girls in a hug. They were sobbing on my shoulders, but soon regained a bit of their composure. Mary looked me in the eye. “They were gonna eat us, weren’t they?”

  I nodded and told them gently, “They are just wild animals and they thought you were food. They didn’t know that you’re sweet young women and are under my protection.”

  Martha tightened her grip on me. “You saved us again and I’m very thankful, but why is my forehead pulled to the top of my head?”

  I laughed. “I put a shield around both of you so the wolves couldn’t get to you. That was just in case they charged before I got to you. It’s like the shield we have over our camp at night, just smaller.”

  They nodded their acceptance of my explanation, gathered their bags and came back to me. I offered to take them back to camp before my hunting trip, but they wouldn’t hear of it. Today they were getting to spend time with me, and they were going to make the most of it.

  I ported us to a deer, bagged and dressed it quickly, and returned us to camp. The second we arrived, the twins ran to Carol to tell all about our trip and the wolves. Carol was smiling at me as if I’d taken her own kids out on an exciting adventure.

  Chapter Fifteen

  A couple days later we came to the city of Liege. The sickness had begun to take hold in this city, too, but they still had a physician trying to help. We found him by following a long line of sick and dying people. The man that was guarding the door to only let a few in at a time, allowed us in when he saw that we weren’t infected. My party waited for me just inside the door and I made my way up to the overworked, exhausted man. “Excuse me, sir, if I may have a word when you get a moment.”

  The man sighed deeply and turned to me. “This is amazing! A person who wants to see me that isn’t ill. How can I help you?”

  “My lady friends and I aren’t from around here and might be able to help you. We are skilled healers, but would have to work in private. I can tell that you’ll drop soon yourself if you don’t get some relief. May we help you?”

  “I’ll give you the chance to help and there are rooms near the back door that you can use. I’m trusting you not to hurt my people with your secret methods. Bring in your friends and we’ll set you up in the rooms.”

  I waved for everyone to come with us and followed the poor doctor back to four rooms in the back of the building. The back door was right by the farthest room, and that would be quite convenient for sending out healed patients.

  Before we were sent patients, the doctor came to me. “Sir, it’s not that I don’t think that you have the best interests of my people at heart, but I don’t know you. I would like for you to allow me to sit in on a treatment session before I lie down for a bit.”

  I nodded hesitantly and info
rmed him, “I want you to know that we don’t use witchcraft. We learned these skills far from here and hadn’t even heard of such a thing until we got here. Our abilities come from ourselves and not any evil force. I was told that a lot of the folks around here believe that anything they can’t understand is evil. I believe that you know helping people is a good thing.”

  The doctor nodded. “There are quite a few superstitious folk around, so if there is something odd about your treatment that they might see, you should blindfold them. I’ll examine your first patient and then, if all is well, I must rest.”

  I agreed and the doctor waved to a man by the door. He sent in a young man who was feverish and had pronounced swelling under his arms. The ill man, the doctor and I went into the first room. I had the young man sit in a chair and told him, “My name is Alec. I’m going to try a technique that is used often in my homeland. I’m certain that it will make you feel better, and hopefully will cure you completely.”

  The man gave a hopeful look. “God bless you, sir. I pray that your treatment will work.”

  I fought off a chuckle and stood behind the man. I put my hands on his shoulders and scanned him. He was burning up and had infection spreading through him at a rate I’d never encountered before. I let my magic flow, and watched as the swelling went down, sores healed and disappeared, and his temperature returned to normal.

  When I released him, the man jumped to his feet and hugged me. Then remembering that I was a stranger, he released me and shook my hand. “Sir, you saved my life! How can I ever repay you?”

  I laughed. “You can repay us by letting people know that they can come for healing. Since we are using abilities that the folks here have never heard of, make sure that they know it isn’t anything evil. That would be payment enough.”

  The man nodded gleefully and we ushered him out the back door. The doctor caught my eye. “Are you angels? I’ve never seen anything like that before and know you can’t be demons.”