The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11) (22 page)

“We’re leaving now?” she asked, as she stepped into a tight hug with him, without even waiting for confirmation.

“We’ll see you at the palace, before nightfall,” Alec told Thyne.  Then he engaged his Traveler energy, and the pair disappeared from the room, leaving the colonel alone, shaking his head and wondering if he would ever see the strange pair again.

“Everyone back in here and grab water skins to take downstairs to the old ladies,” he shouted to his guards.

Chapter 16

Alec and Kecil materialized at the trailhead, where the path from the outside world opened upon the view of the greenery of Warm Springs.  The weather was mild, with ice and snow visible on the sides of the mountains overhead.  The pair of newly emergent arrivals unwrapped from their embrace.

I am a Grandemeure, Alec, who had visited before.  I come to speak to the Grandestuerre of the Lokasennii, to gain knowledge
, he broadcast his thought out to the village at large, then stood waiting for the response.

“Shouldn’t we go down there?” Kecil asked.

“I’ve sent an announcement that we’re here,” he told her.  “Let them prepare themselves for our arrival.  They don’t get many visitors.”

“But you’ve been here before?” Kecil asked.

“Yes, but it was a hundred years ago,” Alec affirmed.

Alec?  Alec of Woven and Ridgeclimb and unbelievable achievements?
A woman’s voice sounded in Alec’s head.

He paused, finding familiarity in the voice, though it had a deeper timbre and more nuanced weight than he remembered from the teenage girl he had left behind in Woven so many decades prior.

Hope?  Is it you?  Have you succeeded to the high seat?
Alec asked.

Where are you Alec?  Yes, it’s me!  You sound close – this is a surprise I did not look for.  Come see us
, the grendasteur invited.

I’m just overlooking the village now.  I’m bringing a friend with me; we’ll be at your door in ten minutes
, Alec replied
.  I hope the spring waters are still warm and inviting!

The waters haven’t changed
, Hope assured him. 
Are you injured?  Do you need the Red Pool?

No, no injuries, any of the warm waters will be delightful
, he replied.

Come to the Yellow Pool – I’ll meet you there
, Hope said with joy transmitted clearly in her thoughts.

“We’re invited to join them,” he spoke aloud to Kecil.  The pair walked down through the cool spring air, into the warmer air of the valley. They passed along the trail, past a few cabins, and even past a few of the inhabitants, who gestured, waved, and pointed the visitors in the right direction.

“You seem very popular here, or else these people are very friendly,” Kecil commented.

“I don’t know any of them; Hope must have advised them we were coming,” Alec answered as they walked along misty paths and small bridges that wove between various pools of water.

“This must be the place,” he commented idly as he saw a splash of yellow color ahead.

A woman’s figure appeared out of the mist, a woman who appeared middle-aged, yet whose face still revealed the features of the teenage girl Alec had known as Hope, a century earlier, during a long, grueling journey across the mountains.  Alec had taken the young girl, then the grendasteusse, with him on the long trip to the Twenty Cities, and left her there to pursue the relationship she wished to forge with Kane, the heir to the ducal seat of the city-state Woven.

She had remained in Woven, with Bauer as her mentor, and Kane, and the royal family that Alec had fought to restore to power.  But at some point she had clearly been called back to Warm Springs, and had succeeded Ailse as grendasteur, leader of the lokasennii.

“Let us relax in the waters and catch up on old times, dear friend,” the woman said as Alec approached her.  “And introduce me please to your companion,” she nodded towards Kecil.   “Have you mentioned our rules to her?” Hope asked with just a moment of hesitation.

“She is immune from your rule, for she is not a human.  This is Kecil, a lacerta who I have hidden in a human form so that she may travel with me,” Alec explained.  He stopped speaking to suddenly pull his shirt off over his head.

“Let’s visit your pool, and you can tell me all about your life,” he said, as he sat down on the ground next to the edge of the pool.

“And you’ll tell me about yours,” Hope answered, as she took Kecil by the hand and disappeared into the mist.

The trio reunited in the misty waters of the pool, sitting and relaxing in the warmth as Alec and Hope recounted to one another what had become of their lives and friends after they had separated and gone their separate ways in the city of Woven.

“Kriste and the other girls returned to Woven, and she stayed there with Jasel and Stacha and Bauer,” Hope recounted.  “Stacha and Alfred’s hat shop became a modest success.  And Lady Salem restored the government of the city.  I married her son,” Hope said.  “And Stacha and Jasel married in due course.”

“Of course you married Kane,” Alec nodded in agreement.  “And you learned of the lives of the mortals and the ways of the world outside of Warm Springs?”

“I did,” she agreed.  “And I learned of love and honor, as well as the importance of remaining hidden from troubles.

“Which I suspect has something to do with the reason for this most unexpected visit?” she suddenly opened the door to the topic Alec intended to discuss eventually.

“The Grandestuerre is wise,” he agreed.

“We have been in Vincennes,” Alec began.

“That’s quite some distance from your homelands, isn’t it?” Hope asked.

Alec explained the reasons for their each being in the Avonellene Empire, and the circumstances of their meeting.

“I’m so sorry to hear that Andi passed to the other plane,” Hope said with tears.  “She was so infatuated with you when we were traveling through the mountains.

“She lived a very long life for a mortal,” the lokasenna said.

“And one that was full of adventure and achievement,” Alec agreed.

“And so you freed this one from a violent death?  That was the right thing to do, as you would of course do,” Hope said.

“While we were in Vincennes,” Alec brought the conversation around, “an Ajax came to arrest us for practicing magic, when we were healing the people of the city.  He said the Lokasennii felt stirrings of evil, and so the Ajacii were watching for magic or energy being used, as a sign of where the evil might be breaking out.

“He tried to arrest us!” Kecil blurted out.

“The Ajacii do sometimes handle these delicate matters with a slightly extreme response,” Hope said.  “I understand now.”

“What is this evil you detect?”  Alec asked.  He paused, then asked the second question that popped into his head.  “Could it be related to the evil that we now face in the north of the Dominion?”

“Tell me about this northern evil,” Hope pressed.  “It seems hard to imagine that any evil could be so heinous as to be detectable from such a great distance; after all, we did not even feel Hellmann during your last great battle with him.”

“I saw it,” Alec said. “We saw it,” he corrected himself, gesturing towards Kecil.  “It had a feeling of evil.  I did not feel Hellmann specifically in its nature.”

“No one would know the feel of Hellmann better than you,” Hope interjected.

“This evil has taken away perhaps hundreds of people.  We do not know what has become of them,” Alec explained.  “I am sending a large group of ingenairii to confront it, and Kecil and I will go to join the battle in a few days.”

“A pair of our members were in the Crystal Spring, and they had,” Hope paused, “sensations.  They both said they felt an evil presence in the world.

“That report was why we sent a messenger to the Ajacii.  I’ll send another message to them tomorrow, letting them know that you are not the evil,” Hope smiled.

“I can go to them myself, and perhaps take you with me more quickly,” Alec offered.

“You and your extraordinary abilities; how could I forget?” she murmured in reply.

They all lapsed into silence for several minutes.

“These spring waters are marvelous,” Kecil said.  “I don’t know of such places among the lacertii lands.

“Was it staying in these waters that made your race able to speak with your minds, as you and Alec do?” she asked.

“No, we had the ability before we found this hidden place,” Hope answered.

“But the waters do seem to enhance our powers, or bring out special nuances,” she reflected.

Alec thought of his first visit to the valley, when he had healed in one spring, and then had his memory-restoring visions in another.  “The springs are special,” he said.

“Let us go and greet the others.  There is a great deal of curiosity about visitors who can arrive unseen, and are led immediately to the springs,” Hope stirred herself, motioned to Kecil, and swam out of sight to the far end of the spring pool, lost in the mist.  Alec sighed, then roused himself from the water and pulled his clothes on before the women re-emerged.  Together, they walked back along the paths and out of the mists, into the village of the lokasennii.

“This is my friend from many, many years ago, Alec.  He has been known as the Demonslayer, but he is better remembered among our people as the man who defeated Hellmann,” she spoke to the score of inhabitants who had gathered.  “And he should be known as well for what he also is, as named by myself and each of my two predecessors; he is a Grandemeure, a man with the abilities of a grendasteur.

“Please make him and his companion welcome during their brief visit,” she finished.

Several people came to shake hands, and to chat, or to recount stories they had heard about Alec in the past, told by their parents or grandparents.

Two young women waited until the rest of the villagers had left, then approached with serious expressions.

“Ah, these are the two girls who had the sensations of evil that I told you about earlier,” Hope introduced them.  “This is Curess, and this is Elilie.”

The two women greeted Kecil politely, then shook hands with Alec, and as they did, strange expressions crossed their faces.  They looked at one another, then Elilie spoke.  “May we have a word with you, grandesteur?” she asked.

The three women stepped aside, their expressions were serious as they spoke, until Hope suddenly laughed.  The conversation continued for just a few seconds more, and then they returned to join the visitors.

“The most extraordinary claim,” Hope said.  Her composure was rattled, Alec could tell.  “I’ll allow these young ladies to explain themselves,” she turned the matter over to Curess and Elilie.

They looked at Hope.

“He’s not going to harm you,” she said brusquely.

“My lord,” Curess began, “when we met you here, and sensed your presence, your great strength of spirit, well my lord, we both looked at one another, because,” she paused without completing the thought.

“Because my lord,” Elilie picked up the narrative, “we’ve felt your spirit before, or at least a part of your spirit.”

“Or maybe we felt your spirit as a part of something else,” Curess interjected.

“We both believe that when we felt the presence of the evil spirit that is entering the world, we felt your spirit,” she said.

Alec stood in stunned disbelief.

Kecil began to laugh.

“This man?  Evil?   He saved my life as a stranger.  He has healed dozens of people he doesn’t know.  He has tended to the needs of everyone but himself since I’ve met him.  He’s the furthest thing from evil that I’ve ever met.  Even the holy saint of his own god says only good about him,” the altered lacerta girl said.

“We don’t say that he is evil,” Elilie commented.  “I don’t think he is.  But somehow his spirit is involved with the evil.  We felt a sense of him within the evil presence.”

“When exactly was this?” Alec asked at last, at a loss to explain how the ridiculous claim could have arisen.

“We felt it when we were together in the Crystal Spring a month ago.  There was a sudden feeling of evil, like we had never felt before.  The water in the spring seemed to feel tainted, and even the stones seemed to cry out in pain, as if they were being forced to bear some great evil,” Curess cried passionately.

“My lord, we don’t blame you, but we know what we felt,” she added hastily.

“And I’ve felt something evil again, a time or two, much fainter,” Elilie chimed in.  “And the feeling is your spirit, but your spirit with evil…surrounding it, perhaps,” she tried to put words to an indescribable sensation.

“How can this be?  How could you sense me from thousands of miles away, let alone find this impossible evilness upon me?  It doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“Could you tell where it happened?” Alec asked.  “In the past month I’ve mostly been in the Avonellene Empire, to the southeast of here.  But I’ve traveled to the west of here a few times as well,” he added.

“It seemed to be far away,” Elilie said. “Perhaps to the west?  It’s hard to say; it felt like it traveled through the earth itself.”

“Even if we identified a location, what is this about evil?  I’ve not done anything evil – nothing out of the ordinary for the past few weeks.  I’ve tended Andi as she finished her life, and then I’ve been adjusting and going about life without her ever since.  But if there is evil around me, I’m not aware of it.”