“I know,” Alec sighed. “But it will not be. It just will not be.”
Chapter 10 – A Dark Promise
"Alec, I watched the dignity you brought to Bethany's death, and the way you honored her wishes," Jeswyne said to her consort during an illness. "Please grant me the same respect. I don't expect to live forever. When my spirit is ready, please let me go," she spoke quietly.
"You're a long way from that kind of decision," Alec spoke, stunned by the topic she raised. He had seen the obvious, that his own body was not deteriorating with age, and he had let his mind wander down the dark paths of speculation regarding the growing chasm in their physical abilities, but he had never walked up to the subject to face it honestly.
"Jeswyne, we have been together for nearly fifty years, love. We've had so much together, I don't want to imagine what life would be like without you," he whispered, laying his head on her pillow.
"It won't happen now, or any time soon, but we both know, the whole world knows, that you are not growing old, Alec. That is how your fate is. But I have known you and loved you since I was a girl, and you have made this life the best it could possibly be for me," she replied. "I just want you to know that my spirit will be ready to leave someday, and I hope you will accept that."
Alec nodded his head, but said no more, and he brooded on the conversation long after he healed Jeswyne and they resumed their normal life together.
Chapter 11 – The Lure Beyond Death
The ceremonies were grueling, but they provided structure to the days. After more than sixty years as the Empress of Michian, more than sixty years of marriage to Alec, Jeswyne had passed to the other side. She was the only ruler most Michian citizens had ever known, and she was a beloved ruler, whose death delivered a personal shock to most of those citizens.
There was little sympathy for Alec, who had been disliked by multiple generations of Michian residents, but there was respect for him at Jeswyne’s state funeral in Michian. And then there followed the coronation of their oldest daughter, Valera, as the new empress, ascending to the throne at the age of sixty one.
Following the coronation, Alec removed his belongings from the Michian palace, and returned to Oyster Bay. He held a memorial service there for Jeswyne, who had been queen of the Dominion, through all the decades of Alec’s rule. And then Alec announced he was abdicating the throne of the Dominion, and turning the crown over to his eldest son, Alec.
He no longer wished to be with people. Alec was heartbroken by Jeswyne’s death, and he wanted to go to the retreat in the past, the time before people, where he and Jeswyne had fallen in love and always gone as a personal retreat. He made a series of farewell visits to all his children, and then went to the small headquarters of the declining collective force of the empire’s sorcerers and sorceresses, ordering them to leave Michian. He had no authority to enforce his personal dislike for them, but he hoped that he put enough fear in them to cause them to leave Michian free of their demonic presence.
Then, with that personal priority addressed, Alec sent himself back in time to the lonely seaside cottage known to no one but Jeswyne and himself. Alec went there alone, to come to terms with the loss of his wife. He was near one hundred thirty years old in the terms of the conventional world, with eighty years of experience in a body that appeared to be less than thirty, and there was no one who was a contemporary for him.
Alec thought of the time before his cursed imprisonment as his first life; that first life was the life he had lived among equals, other people who thought of him simply as a person. And then, after his long entrapment with the demon in the energy realm had come his second life, the life he had formed with Jeswyne. It was the life in which only Jeswyne treated him as a peer, a real person; to everyone else in the Empire he had been the feared Demonslayer, and to everyone in the Dominion he had been a revered demi-god ruler.
So he lived alone in the isolated past, and over the years he talked in his mind to the imaginary friends of his past, talking with Aristotle and Inga and Rubicon and Rander and all the rest, reliving the experiences that remained in his memory alone, so that he slowly fell into a state of mental despair. He began to imagine that he was talking to Bethany more than any other, begging her forgiveness for the fifty years of disappearance. And the longer he lived apart from other people, the longer he nursed his sorrow and loneliness, the more he began to entertain a fantastic notion.
One morning came when Alec stood on the beach and decided to act upon his wild concept. He focused on the elemental steps of acquiring his ingenaire powers, and directed his image into the power realm, then he maintained complete control over the image as he took it deep into the energy realm. He was dressed as a warrior, and he strode forward confidently. Brushing aside the implied promises and the dreamy offers of absolute ability, he walked onward beyond measure through the energy realm, until he came to a barrier, where the dimension of the warrior powers ceased, and the energies of another power, in this case the fire ingenairii, began, he could tell by the images of flame and the longing for heat that he felt.
Alec walked along the barrier, knowing that at some point the barrier between the two would end when they came together at the axis mundi, the point where all energy varieties in the ingenaire energy realm coincided. When he came to the point where a hard barrier separated him from the axis mundi, Alec took steps to enter the central chamber. He re-enacted the steps he had taken decades ago in his life, when he had sought to enter the axis mundi as a way to gain access to the power of the restorers, the translocation energies that he now used so frequently.
He maintained his grasp on the warrior power, then began to force the image of a healer to overtake the warrior weapons he held, until the competing forces began to lift his image out of the warrior realm and towards a more neutral site, the axis. Alec then took the last step in the painful process, as he focused on the process he had used in his battle with the renegade ingenairii in Oyster Bay; he had taken in a variety of different powers, and adjusted them to serve his explosive purpose. He thought again of that balanced absorption of multiple powers, and as he did so, he descended and stood within the axis mundi.
His first objective was to find the great amulet he had seized from the crypt of Carthom Ingenairii Sivis, one of the last acts he had completed back in that long lost first life. That amulet was the means of bringing a physical body into the axis mundi, and he needed the physical presence in order to give his body its first charge of the new energy he wanted to wield. He walked about the axis mundi, approaching its intersection with the trans-location energy, searching until he found the amulet he had left there before, and once he had the amulet, he used it to pull his physical body away from the empty beach at Oyster Bay’s future site, and focused on what he had to do.
This was a neutral ground, or perhaps one that was equally charged by all the fields of ingenairii power. From here he could walk about and look out or up or down or in any direction, and see the ending of each chamber of particular powers. He saw the water powers and the plant powers and the earth powers, but he was searching for one particular power. It was a power that he believed he had seen before, a dark and frightening power, but it offered the energy that he wanted – necromancy.
Alec wanted to go back to speak to his dead friends and loves. He wanted to hear them speak and listen to them tell him their life stories. He wanted the pain of loneliness and abandonment that fueled his mental illness to come to an end.
The number of energies that touched the axis mundi was greater than he realized, for many powers were only subtly evident. Alec’s search among the opportunities in the axis mundi existed in a timeless dimension for him, but at last he found the site he desired, and he fashioned the amulet energy and his own energy to allow him to enter the necromancy energy sector.
It was a different place from any other energy sector he had experienced. There was none of the fantasy of battle he had known in the Warrior realm; this place was a dar
k place. There was light of some sort, but it barely illuminated a murky atmosphere with an unhealthy glow. Alec felt the energy of the Necromancer power pressing against him, and it felt unwholesome. He grasped the secret of perverting his Spiritual power, turning towards darkness and falsehood; there was no honest way for the dead to speak to the living, he realized; the necromancy power was a distortion, a perversion of power. There was a threat in the air, and he imagined he heard cries faintly beckoning him in the distance.
After a troubling journey through the energy, he saw the far side, the opening that was the means of reaching the necromancy power as an ingenaire. Convinced that he would be able to access the power, Alec exited the necromancy sector to return to the axis mundi, then dropped the amulet there in case he should ever need it again, before he returned to the world of ancient Oyster Bay.
He had been in the energy realm for a long time. The fireplace he kept lit was not only extinguished, but there were small plants starting to sprout inside the fire ring. He had brought his body back to reality as dusk approached, and his first act was to restart the fire. He sat on a stump near the fire, and stared at the flames as night descended. He had grown irrational, despondent and depressed during his isolation, yet the sinister feeling of the necromantic energy had disturbed him to the point that he took no action, but only brooded about the prospect of about using it.
For three days Alec considered whether to attempt the use of the power. He ate and slept with nothing else to do and nothing else on his mind. On the evening of third day he concluded that he must attempt to speak to his old friends, and after nightfall he closed his eyes and focused his attention on directing his spirit through the dimensions between worlds to the entrance to the necromancy.
The light that beckoned him inward was not the bright light of the other energies he knew. It was a dark glow, one that only highlighted other lights, it seemed, without shining any light of its own. Alec paused at the opening, then plunged in.
He faced innumerable doors, each of which was his to open, each offering secrets and knowledge and emotion that lay trapped beneath death. Taking the power, and re-entering his body that sat staring at the fireplace flames, Alec prepared to exercise necromancy for the first time.
“Bethany,” he called. “Bethany, can you hear me?”
“I hear you Alec,” a voice came from the flames before him, and he saw Bethany’s face and torso within the flame, shaped by the fire. “Why do you call me?”
“I am so glad to see you again!” Alec cried. “I am alone, without anyone who is a friend,” he told her.
“You have thousands of followers who would be friends. You have a host of children who love you Alec. You should turn away from the dead and return to the living,” the dead woman said. “Let me return to the place I belong, and you must do the same. This is not the real you, the Alec I loved.”
Alec watched the spirit entity shrink back to ordinary flames in the center of the fire pit, then, dissatisfied with Bethany’s message, he called upon another lost friend. He reached with the power into the vast array of doors and flung open the one where he sensed the spirit of Aristotle was able to be approached.
“Ari,” Alec spoke affectionately as the form of his mentor rose in the flames, “I don’t have anyone who understands the world I’ve lost.”
“Alec,” the shade said with sympathy, “you have gained multiple worlds in the process of seeing one pass away. You can participate in the world in almost any way; you can deliver life and hope to almost anyone. Alec, with your abilities you can bring peace to any trouble and calm any roiled spirit. Turn away from the dead, and go out among the living. This is a dangerous and evil thing you are doing,” Ari’s spirit told him, then it melted away.
The night passed, and Alec brooded as he stared at the new mark that had emerged on his arm, a skull, one that seemed to have life within its ominous black eye sockets. The next night he called upon other spirits, but they too rejected his desire for company. He tried again each night but found no peace among the dead, and began to scheme a different way to bring the dead back to life.
As one morning began, Alec gathered lumps of clay, and fashioned them slowly into a human body throughout the day, so that by nightfall the shape lay next to the fire. Alec altered his healing power to slowly convert the clay to flesh, and as midnight approached, he called forth the spirit of Jeswyne.
“Alec, why do you do this to yourself?” the spirit in the flames asked. “Go back to Anechka and Petr and all the children and the grandchildren and the others who love you so much.”
“I will go if you will go with me,” Alec said. “Let me move your spirit into this body; let me give you life again.”
There was menacing thunder overhead, lightening ripped across the sky, and a deluge of rain that Alec had not anticipated came pelting down from the sky. The fire began to diminish, and Jeswyne’s spirit dissolved into nothingness.
“Alec, you have gone too far. I must put an end to this madness before you disrupt all of creation,” Alec saw John Mark standing above him, towering from a height that was not his normal size. “Come with me Alec, to be healed,” John Mark’s basso profundo voice said, and then Alec passed out.
Chapter 12 – A Choice of Worlds
“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 who would defend justice and compassion in 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 Krimshelm fishing fleet, but over a hundred years later. And so you were picked up and arrived in Vincennes at a time when that society was beginning to experience 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 choose to be involved, you will discover much more about what is occurring in Vincennes,” John Mark replied. “And if you choose not to become involved, it may never come to your attention.”
“What do you mean, if I choose 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 dis-engaged, 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.”
Ajacii and Demons: The Ingenairii Series Page 9
