Rescuing the Captive: The Ingenairii Series (26 page)

He heard noise and saw the woman stirring when he awoke in the morning. His eyes barely opened, his whole face swollen from the splinters that were embedded in several places. “Who are you?” Alec croaked.

“
You throat must be so dry! Here,” the woman placed a dish to his lips and poured a few drops of cold water into his mouth. “I’m sure that’s better. My name is Bernadina. Thank you for saving my life yesterday. You were a godsend, a providential gift, arriving to put an end to my captivity.

“
How do you feel this morning?” she asked.

“
Not my best,” Alec said. He began to raise his hands to his face, but she reached out swiftly and held his hands in a surprisingly strong grip.

“
Here, if you are ready, let me pluck the splinters for you. My fingers are more dexterous than yours,” she said gently, although Alec understood it was an order. He lowered his hands, and she began to pluck out each tiny splinter.

After a while she took a break to pull a stool over to his bedside, allowing her to sit while she performed her painful task. Alec studied the building he was in, and studied his caregiver. The room was only a single-room hut, but the walls were smoothly whitewashed, and there was a glass window within the door. He was on a platform of some type, which along with a cot and a pair of stools was the sole furniture he saw.

There was a knock at the door, and a burly man stepped inside. “The Council is awaiting you,” he said.

“
Until this boy’s wounds are attended, he is my first priority,” Bernadina stood as she answered. “They know that, and so do you. Tell them to go soak their heads, and I’ll be with them in the afternoon.”

Bernadina was a lovely woman. Her beauty haunted him, reminding him of a face he had seen somewhere in the past. She had very long hair, held in a loose braid that hung over her shoulder. She had a pronounced widow’s peak that helped make her face appear heart-shaped, and she appeared to be old enough to be his mother, or even a youthful grandmother.

“
So you know now that I’m an old crone, do you?” her eyes were studying his.

“
Thank you for bringing those bears to rescue me. You’re a beautiful woman,” Alec replied.

“
Here now, be quiet, and let me finish this. We’ll be done before mid-day,” she told him as she took her place on the stool, and resumed inflicting her dozens of little pricks of pain on his face. Alec began to sweat, from the combination of the long, agonizing painful process and the warmth of the building.

“
There, all finished at last,” Bernadina told him after what seemed to be a very long time, plucking the last of the splinters off of his forehead.
Go ahead, use your wonderful powers, I want to witness them
, she said in his mind.

“
How do you do that?” Alec asked her out loud. He pulled the hem of his shirt up to his face to wipe away the sweat. He pulled the cloth away from his face and saw the myriad of small red streaks and spots among the sweaty dampness.

“
Your face is a mess now,” Bernadina said. “Although obviously, it was a mess before you wiped it as well,” she added with an amused tone.

“
Why is it so warm in here?” Alec asked suddenly, the obvious contradiction of the frigid mountain winter he knew contrasting with the warmth of the small room he occupied.

“
Ah, an easily answered question,” the mysterious woman said.

“
Welcome to our community, Warm Springs,” she said. “We have very hot water that bubbles to the surface in this valley, year round, winter or summer, rainstorm or drought. This house has a pipe of the spring water that runs through the floor, providing constant heat. Most of our houses do, except for a special few.”

“
Come with me,” she stood from her stool. “Let us go soak in one of the pools of spring water. It will help you relax, and heal, and it will give us time to talk comfortably.”

Alec awkwardly swung off his table, and tried to hobble to the door; one leg’s calf was wounded, while the other leg’s ankle was a painful mess.

“
Oh forgive me,” she placed her hand in Alec’s, then opened the door and called out, “Baltasar! Come carry our hero, please.

“
I forgot about the wounds you had down there after all this time plucking that sweet young face of yours. Thank you Baltasar,” she said to the large man who opened the door. “Please carry the mind-toucher, the body healer, the weapon master, the space-eater, to the Red Pool. I’ll come with him,’ she said as the man swept his arms under Alec and lifted him with ease, whisking him out the door.

“
Sadly, I’m so glad to see you back that I’m actually happy to do chores for you,” Baltasar replied as they walked outdoors in mildly chilly air. Green plants grew in profusion in a misty space that Alec could tell housed scattered buildings among numerous small streams and brooks that seemed to flow from all directions. Their musical sounds covered all other distant noises.

“
We spent weeks searching for you. Brestin guessed that you must be underground, else wise we would have heard you call us,” the large man said.

“
Here is your spring,” Baltasar said, stopping.

“
Thank you,” Alec said, silent to that point in the journey due to his embarrassment from the need to be carried and from overhearing Baltasar’s comments. He looked around at the neat stone semi-circular wall that shaped a large pool. Abundant steam rose from the murky water, and deposits of red mineral crystals were scattered in a ring around the pool just above the level of the water.

Alec was deposited on the step above the water, while Bernadina grew indistinct in the steam as she moved to the other side of the water, and then a minute later she stroked through the water to a spot not far away. “Remove your clothes, and soak in the water Alec,” she told him, and turned her head as she swam languidly back into the steamy mist.

Without pause, Alec shucked his clothes and slid into the water. There was a wide ledge, he discovered, at the perfect depth to sit on and soak up to his neck. He put his head back against the rim of the pool and closed his eyes, and felt a blissful calm, more relaxing than any moment he could remember since he had awoken in the rowboat on the sea. He sensed Bernadina was back with him, and he felt her fingers slip in between his. He squeezed his hand around hers, his head still back and his eyes still closed.

He and she were the same person, he realized. He was sharing her thoughts, as she was sharing his.
No, don’t go there
, her spirit tugged him away from her dark memories of her captivity in the cave. Instead he was with her as she became a small animal, a mouse, he realized, that had scampered among the rocks and the cracks and the debris of the cave until it had reached the outside world again. Then she had become a woman again, and cast her marvelous mental voice towards her family and followers, telling them of her survival, and her need for urgent help.

He felt her in his own memories, reliving the resurrection of Cassie on the sandy beach on Ingenairii Hill, and she saw him in the Cave of John Mark, and then Caitlen was cradling his head in her lap, tears running down her cheeks, before his partner left him and went into parts of his memory that he could not find himself, and when her spirit returned it was sober and silent and more loving than before.

Her fingers slipped out of his grasp. After a moment they stroked his cheek, and rubbed his temple, and he turned his head. When his eyes opened she had floated away, and he thought for a moment of Leah, floating in the river beside their raft as they had escaped down the River Giffey, running from death and destruction.

“
We have come to such similar places,” Bernadina said, “and yet we traveled by such different routes.”

“
You have the ability to change shapes,” Alec said. “And the ability to speak your thoughts over distances.”

“
All of us in our village can change shapes while we are awake. Women can become mice, while men can become bears,” she said. “It has always been the way of our race.

“
And some of us receive the gift of speaking our thoughts afar. But there are usually only two or three at a time, and never a male,” she added.
Until I met you, and now both sides of the conversation can happen without speech
.

I cannot do it so well as you, nor so far away
, Alec haltingly projected his thoughts, his Spiritual energy awkwardly conforming to the unusual use of the power.

“
It is new to me,” he said out loud.

“
Poor Alec,” she said. “You have seen so many things in this world, experiences that no boy or man should ever have to face.

“
Yet, your God, and his John Mark, they have treated you as a truly beloved son,” she said.

“
What? I don’t understand what you mean,” Alec said, his peaceful drowsy state disrupted by her statements.

“
You will, when the time is right. They have put great faith in you, as a mortal man, to carry out the will of the divine, time and time again; this is another time when you are fulfilling their plan, as it happens. And your reward is that you are being saved here in this land, by doing what you have set out to do, and when the time is right, I believe all the parts of your life will come together,” Bernadina spoke with a shade of finality in her voice, as she closed that portion of the conversation. “Will you heal yourself now? I want to feel that force of yours. Will it harm me to participate?”

Alec felt the restoration the warm pool water had given him. He was ready. “It will not hurt you, but it will affect you,” he said to Bernadina as she approached him again, and placed her hand in his. He thought of the time he had been with Caitlen on the road, healing himself as she touched him, causing a spark of his energy to siphon off to heal her wounds. He willed his Healing energy to emerge from the power realm, and let it flow resistant-free from his body to hers, caressing every muscle and joint and organ of her body, not only repairing them, but enhancing them, restoring their vigor, in the most intimate sharing of energy he could recollect. Then his energy flowed as he willed it to within his own body, making his ankle whole, reconnecting the muscle in his calf, soothing the irritated skin on his face as it drained away the infections injected by the splinters.

He released the energy, but held her hand, and reached out to her with his Spiritual power.

Enchanting, absolutely, extraordinarily, unquestionably, enchanting
, Bernadina’s voice breathed the words in his mind.

“
I know I have to return you to your world, but it is so tempting to just keep you here, permanently anchored in the spring, like another wonder of nature,” she told him.

“
Here,” she handed a chalice to him, one he hadn’t noticed moments before. “Drink from this, only half of it.”

“
What is this?” he asked as he looked down into the cup. It was half full, with a slightly cloudy, otherwise colorless liquid that had an odor of minerals.

“
It is a small amount of water from each of the healing springs here in our valley, all mixed together,” she answered, her eyes watching him closely.

He hesitated for just a second, then took a mouthful of the water.

“
Don’t’ swallow it all yet,” Bernadina cautioned him as she took the chalice back from him. She raised it to her lips, and swallowed the rest of the liquid, then raised her head to his.
We must exchange the water we each hold,
she told him as she placed her lips against his.

He opened his lips slightly, and felt the waters intermingle within his mouth, an apple-flavored tang coming upon him, and a tingling that radiated outward slowly through his whole body.
Swallow the water
, she instructed him as she pulled away from him.
That
will protect you; we are united more closely now.

When he opened his eyes to look at her, she looked half the age she had looked before, more nearly his own age now in appearance. “Somewhere in this land there is a woman who is nearly your twin sister,” Alec told her as he sat up. “I saw her somewhere, but I don’t remember where.”

“
I hope she’ll treat you as kindly as you deserve when you see her again,” Bernadina murmured. She released his hand, flipped in the water, then dove and stroked to the far side of the pool, a gauzy image in the steam. By the time she walked back around to him, they both were dressed.

“
This pool is a very special one, reserved for extraordinary occasions,” she told him as they began to walk away. “And this has been one of those occasions.”

Alec looked up at the snow-capped mountains that ringed the valley above the shallow layer of mist. It was hard to comprehend the contrast of the warm sub-tropical climate around these pools that stood just a few yards from the slushy snow around the perimeter of the hot spring environment. It was a beautiful juxtaposition of the two opposed environments, each maintaining their own characteristics within close proximity to one another.

“
Come with me,” Bernadina murmured, turning off their path, and heading towards a large building. She passed through the double doors, with Alec in her trail. Inside, Alec found a dozen men and women in a semi-circle of chairs. “Sit over there,” she commanded him, pointing to a half dozen empty chairs along one side of the room, as she proceeded to take a chair at one end of the collected attendees.

“
Thank you all for your patience this morning,” she addressed the silent gathering. “I have attended to the needs of our guest, who saved my life yesterday. He has used great powers, abilities beyond any that the lokasennii, or even I, a grendasteur, have. He has been kind, and used his healing powers to restore my own health and vitality as well.