The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11) (25 page)

Chapter 19

An hour later, Alec and Kecil reunited with Dale and the score of others who had finally abandoned Gallop.

“We saw that bright light,” the officer told Alec.  “What did it mean?”

“It means we have a friend,” Alec replied.

“You don’t look good,” Dale added candidly.  “Who’s our helpful friend, do you know?”

“I’m spent,” Alec answered candidly.  “I used everything I had to fight the darkness, and I wasn’t winning.  I don’t know where that great light came from, but it made all the difference.  It was greater than anything I could create.  And it set the cloud back, for now.”

“We need more friends like that!” Dale spoke.  “Now, what do we do with our people?” she motioned to the small crowd of escapees from the settlement.  They were a varied crew, some carrying their worldly belongings in their arms, others with small push carts, while a few had nothing at all.

“Can we go back to town and get our things?” someone in the crowd shouted.

“Not if you want to live,” Alec replied.

“We will go away from Gallop, and keep going until we meet the ingenairii that are headed this way,” he addressed the group.  “We should meet them in a day or two, and then we’ll be safe.”

“Safer,” Kecil amended quietly.

Alec ignored her comment.  “We’ll come back this way when we’re with the ingenairii, and they will all fight the cloud together, so that we can defeat this menace to the north.”

“I don’t have any food!  What am I going to eat?” asked an unkempt-appearing man.

“We’ll have food for you by tomorrow,” Alec said resolutely.

“That’s enough,” Lieutenant Dale spoke sharply.  “You’re alive, and lucky to be.  You should have left Gallop days ago.” She nodded to her small contingent of guards, a half dozen men standing next to the group of survivors.  “We’re going to proceed down the road now, and we encourage you to stick with us.”

The guards began to move forward, and Dale linked her arm through Alec’s as she began the retreat, while Kecil immediately took his other side and began striding forward as well.  The remainder of the Gallop population fell in with a murmur of conversation.

“We have enough supplies to feed this lot dinner tonight, but it’ll be sparse tomorrow, not that missing a meal is the worst fate in the world,” Dale told Alec.

“If I recover my strength tonight, we’ll have plenty of food tomorrow,” Alec assured her, thinking of Traveling to Healing Spring to retrieve food supplies for delivery once he overcame his weariness from battle.

The road went through alternating stretches of forest with occasional glades and openings, a few settled, though most uninhabited, through which the group slogged until nightfall.

Alec revived enough during the journey so that he was able to call upon the energy to start a fire for the group, once they selected a spot near a brook in the forest.  Dale’s troops shared the scant supplies they carried so that everyone had something to eat, and when the guard watch rotation was established, the camp settled into an uncomfortable, exhausted silence.

Alec served on the third shift of the watch, refreshed by the hours of sleep he enjoyed curled up with Kecil for warmth.  When the sun rose and the guards relaxed their scrutiny, Alec Traveled to the palace at the Healing Spring.

“Jennings!” he shouted as he arrived at his office in the palace, and opened the door to the hallway.

“Jennings!” he repeated moments later, when he was twenty feet down the hall.

“My lord, this is an unexpected pleasure,” the steward said unflappably as he appeared in a doorway.  “How may I assist you?”

“I’d like to have as much bread and breakfast food as possible,” Alec said.  “I’m on a camping trip with several people,” he avoided admitting the full truth.  “I’m going to go take a warm bath and then I’ll take whatever the chef can have ready, without disrupting the life of the palace, of course.”

“Everything is going well?” the steward asked with a touch of anxiety, sensing some untold element to Alec’s story.

“It’s been a bit touch and go,” Alec admitted.  “There’s a problem up in the northlands that I don’t understand.  But there’s a whole cavalcade of ingenairii traveling there to handle the issue together, so there’s nothing to fear.”

He turned and went back to his room, where he luxuriated in a hot bath that lessened the aches of his body, though he felt his ingenaire abilities still strained by the previous day’s challenging actions.  Without the mysterious stream of energy from the sky, he would have died the day before, he knew.  It was a sobering admission, one that left a shadow of fear upon his heart.

“Will I be coming home to see you soon, master?” he quietly asked John Mark, not expecting any reply, and receiving none.

He rose from the bath and dressed in clean clothes, then armed himself with a pair of bandoliers of knives and a sword, though he knew the weapons were of little use in the battle he was likely to face.

The kitchen had three canvas bags ready for him on the table when he walked in on the staff that was hastily packing a final bag of food for him to take as part of his unusual request.  He thanked them, and when all was ready, and the bags were tightly pressed into his arms, he surprised the gathered helpers by disappearing with the goods that were destined to be eaten hundreds of miles away.

“Was there ever anyone like him as the master of the house?” one staffer wondered aloud.

When Alec returned to the camp, all the members of the group were awake.  A trio of men shouted in alarm, as Alec appeared at the edge of the camp, but his delivery of fresh, hot breakfast food soon relieved the tension in the camp.

“Well, my lord, I suspect it’s time we move along?” Dale asked Alec as she stood and wiped her hands on her trousers.

“It’s time,” Alec agreed.  “I’ll feel better when we can meet the ingenairii and let them protect us.”

Alec walked during the day with his Warrior energy in place at a low level, allowing him to watch for signs of trouble that never occurred as the group moved out of the range of the black cloud.  They walked through a more-settled landscape with several active farming and ranching operations evident among the forests and open territories the road passed.

By mid-afternoon, as Alec’s group was wearily resting by a small brook, the company of ingenairii arrived.

“My lord!” Preeble, the head of the Light ingenairii house exclaimed as Alec stood at the roadside.  The two Warrior apprentices, Pranger and Gleese, arrived as well, grinning in delight at the sight of their leader.

“We’ve been traveling for most of the past day,” Alec explained.  “We had to retreat from Gallop because the darkness invaded the actual town, and it was too strong to withstand,” his comments had the effect of sobering his new companions.

“Kecil and I will turn around and travel with you back to Gallop now,” he said.  “And these other refugees can continue south to someplace safe, if they wish.”

“My lord, my squad and I want to return to Gallop with you,” Dale immediately spoke.  “It doesn’t feel good to have left our station, and we want to be there when we fight to get it back, even if we won’t be doing the fighting directly ourselves.”

After a brief discussion, a half dozen of the town’s residents decided to travel back to Gallop along with the soldiers and the ingenairii, while the others accepted supplies from the ingenairii and chose to continue to flee to the south.

Alec walked alongside the light ingenairii, and tried to explain to them as much as he could about the opponent they were headed towards.

“It rolls across the ground at a faster pace than a walking person, and I’ve only once ever seen any color inside it. When the Light power came down from the sky and attacked it, the cloud turned red inside, and then it withdrew, completely,” he explained.  “And it feels evil.

“The lokasennii said that they can sense an evil presence,” he said speculatively.

“Who are the lokasennii?” one of the light ingenairii asked.

“They are,” Alec began, then paused, “they are a race that is the forerunners of the Spirit ingenairii; that’s the best I can do to describe them.  They still live in a land far away, and they have told me of the dangerous new evil they have sensed.  I think it might be the same evil that we are fighting, but they describe something about the evil that makes no sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Kecil emphatically echoed.

“What is it they say?” one of the ingenairii dutifully asked, as the others in the group looked at Alec.

“They say they sensed something like me as part of the evil energy,” Alec said with a skeptical tone.  “That’s why we have the Spiritual ingenairii with us – to help to try to detect any relationship between this power and me.”  He motioned towards the two ingenairii who rode near the back of the group.  “It’s preposterous, of course,” he added, as much for his own flailing peace of mind as for any other reason.

The group continued to march on, and spent the night in the wilderness, then resumed their travels the next morning.  They reached the outskirts of Gallop in the late morning, and stopped to prepare for their anticipated encounter with the evil darkness.

Chapter 20

Gallop sat silent and empty, visible across the landscape of the fields that bordered it on its southern side.  The group of ingenairii and the survivors of the settlement stood and discussed the enemy they expected to soon confront.

“We must keep the Light ingenairii near one another,” Alec directed.  “Who is the most powerful of you?” he asked.

“Kalie,” a pair of voices called, while other hands pointed at a dark-complexed girl who sat on a horse near the rear of the group.

“We’re going to put Kalie in the center of our group, and protect her as best we can,” Alec explained.  “Everyone is going to have to use their power – use a great deal of it – to keep the cloud from attacking us.   That will mean constantly firing bursts of concentrated light at the cloud if it gets too close to our group.

“And Kalie,” he pointed at the girl himself, “will focus all her power on trying to shoot her energy right into the heart of the cloud.  I don’t know if this will work; if it doesn’t we’ll have to retreat and try a different tactic.  But Kecil and I saw the cloud retreat after it was hit with a powerful blast of power.

“It can be hurt.  I hope that we will be able to hurt it – badly and permanently – by all working together,” he told the group.

They moved towards the village and through it.  The few residents peeled away from their protectors to return to their homes and gather items they had abandoned, as the ingenairii rode through the center of the settlement and reached the northern side.  Alec spread them across a semicircle formation, with Kalie, the Spiritual ingenairii, and the Warrior apprentices in the center.

The air was full of tension, as the ingenairii all stared out across the open fields, each watching their own quadrant of the surrounding territory, expectant, nervous, and ready to fight the unknown foe.  Alec walked among them, comforting them and encouraging them, certain that the cloud would pounce upon the Ingenairii force very soon.

The minutes passed, and the tension grew to anxiety, and then to boredom, and then to relief.  The afternoon began to become evening, and Kecil motioned to Alec.

“You might as well take them down now; they’ve been out here so long they lost their focus,” she told him when he approached her.

He nodded his agreement with her, and called the ingenairii back towards Gallop.  As the group strolled back, Alec took the hand of Cuck, the senior Spiritual ingenairii.

Did you feel any sense of evil, or
, he paused,
of anything else?
He asked silently.

I did not have any sense of anything except the anxiety of my companions
,
my lord
, the man replied.

Then our adversary was not active near us
, Alec concluded. 
Thank you
.  He released his grip on the man and they walked into town together.

The squad ate dinner around a bonfire in the courtyard of the guard post that night, and settled into an uneasy sleep.  When the morning broke in the eastern sky, the members of the assemblage awoke, one by one, and prepared for another day of anticipated battle.

After breakfast, they trooped out into the open fields, and took up their positions again, then settled in to wait.

“What if it doesn’t come?” Kecil asked Alec midway through the morning.

“My lord!” Cuck, the senior Spiritual ingenairii shouted excitedly.

Alec went across the trampled field to respond to the man.

“My lord,” Cuck reached out and took Alec’s had.

I feel the evil, my lord.  It is growing stronger
, he informed Alec.

“Everyone!” Alec shouted.  “Be ready.  Something may be about to happen.”

“I feel something, but I don’t know if it’s evil, or,” the second Spiritual ingenairii, Lair, hesitated, “perhaps I’m confusing your powers with the evil?” he questioned his own senses.

“It’s very dark in the forest over there!” an ingenairii on the left side shouted.

All heads turned to look at the blackness that consumed everything beyond the closest rows of tree trunks.  The black cloud burst out into the open field on the left, pressing forward across a wide front that was daunting in its scope.

The ingenairii froze momentarily, unable to process the emergence of such an unconventional and frightening adversary.  The reality of the confrontation crystalized into the existence for all the ingenairii who had lived only in the sheltered life of the Ingenairii Hill campus to that point.  The acknowledgement of a violent battle to preserve their own lives exploded upon their consciousnesses, and they could not react for precious seconds.

“Fight!  Fight this thing!” Alec screamed.  He called upon his own energies, and released a bolt of bright white power that sizzled the air between two of the stunned, still Light ingenairii as it flew at and then struck the cloud.  The impact of the light caused a roiling pause of the advance in the immediate vicinity of Alec’s strike, while the rest of the cloud continued to move forward.

The sight of Alec’s action seemed to arouse the rest of the group, and a dozen flares of light flashed across the field, hitting the cloud with a volley that stopped the progress of the entire front line of the cloud, and caused momentary flashes of red light to luridly glow within the darkness.

“Kalie!” Alec called the Light ingenairii who he hoped would deliver the telling blow against the cloud.  “Are you ready?”

At the same moment, the two Warrior ingenairii apprentices engaged their powers with an overabundance of exuberance, and each ran towards Kalie with some notion of protecting and assisting her.  In their enthusiasm and clumsiness, they each managed to collide with her, and knocked her unconscious.

“The darkness is over here too!” one of the Light ingenairii on the right side said, and a volley of light beams shot in that direction as well.

“Kalie!” Alec exclaimed in shock, as he rushed over to try to revive the injured woman.

“Oh my lord, I’m so sorry!”  both Gleese and Pranger said abashedly.

“It’s closing in on us!” the Spiritual ingenaire shouted.  “I feel its anger.”

Alec looked up from his kneeling position next to Kalie.  The Light ingenairii were firing bolts of energy in a disjointed manner, slowing the cloud in some spots, but not stopping it anywhere.   And the cloud was drawing dangerously close.

“Fall back, everyone!” he called.  “Let’s retreat towards the village and set up a new defense at the entrance there.

“Gleese, you and Pranger carry Kalie back to safety,” he ordered the apprentices.  “Kecil, you go with them,” he told his companion, “and the two of you as well,” he told the two Spiritual ingenairii.

The Light ingenairii were turning tail and running, terrified by the turn of events and the approach of the black cloud.

“Stay with me,” Alec reached out and grabbed the arm of a young man running past him.  “We’ll slow this thing down.”

The Light ingenaire jerked to a stop in Alec’s clutches, and he turned to face the approaching cloud, wide-eyed.

Alec fired a long, steady beam of energy across a wide portion of the front of the cloud, backpedaling slowly as he did.

“You shoot at the edges,” he told his new assistant.  “I’ll keep attacking the front.”

Alec fired another splash of Light energy into the center of the cloud, and he was gratified to see his companion begin to shoot numerous bursts of energy as well.  They slowed the advance of the cloud and kept in front of it as they backed towards the others and the village.

There was a sudden, long beam of Light energy that flew past Alec’s shoulder and struck the cloud, causing it to churn and withdraw with violent activity as it widened the gap between itself and the small band defenders who were pressed against the boundaries of the village.

Alec looked back and saw that Kalie was sitting up on the ground, supported by Kecil, and the Light ingenaire was firing the beam that pained their dark adversary.  Kalie ceased her activity, and then Alec saw her eyes close and her head slump forward as the girl passed out again.

The cloud ceased its withdrawal, but did not begin to advance again – instead it seemed to sit warily in place, awaiting the next step from the small band of humans that sat before it.

“Everyone, fire now!” Alec shouted.  He pointed at the huddled group of Light ingenairii.  “All of you – draw as much energy as you can and shoot at the cloud!” he directed.

“You and I are going to aim at the spot that Kalie hit,” he told his companion, as he raised his hand and pointed at the cloud.  A series of bursts of light energy began to fly towards the front of the cloud, striking it in various spots as the ingenairii obeyed Alec’s command.

Alec pulled the Light power into the world, and began to release it in a steady stream of repeated bursts of concentrated energy, hitting the same spot repeatedly.  He felt his abilities being tested by the ongoing efforts, and then he felt relief, as the young man next to him began to fire at the same spot as well, causing a dull red glow to begin to throb within the cloud for the length of three breaths.  And then the cloud withdrew pulling all its wisps and streamers and dark mass back into the forest.  The forest darkness receded, and then there was only a silent scene of an otherwise ordinary northern forest, the trees standing tall and straight, no birds or animals making any sounds, while the small band of ingenairii and their human companions stood in the open field and stared.

“Should we chase after it?” the man next to Alec asked.

Alec shook his head.

“We didn’t beat it; we battled to a draw.  Without Kalie, we couldn’t have done that, and she’s in no shape to chase after that monster,” he wearily waved a hand back at where the strongest Light ingenaire still slumped unconscious, her chin resting on her chest, held in the embrace of Kecil’s arms.

“Dale,” he called to the guard officer.  “Let’s go back to the south side of the settlement and let everyone rest, then we can evaluate what to do next time.”

The two Warriors lifted Kalie from Kecil, and began to gently carry her along Gallop’s main street.  The rest of the group began walking along as well, the Light ingenairii huddled together, talking intently as they moved.  A pair of the civilians who had returned to the settlement joined them as they walked through town, but nothing else of note occurred and everyone found the same part of the camp site they had sat or slept in during the previous night.

The sun was halfway down towards the western horizon, indicating that there were still hours of sunlight before nightfall.

“Everyone drink some of this water,” Alec began to distribute the skins of water from the Healing Spring.  He wanted to go back to his palace, to gather more food to serve out for the evening meal, but his energies were too strained from the battle to allow him to easily use the Traveling energy.

“Gleese, Pranger, Dale, come talk to me about what happened today.  Cuck, come join us too,” he called together the team to carry out the analysis on what had gone wrong.  Many things had, Alec knew, but he wasn’t sure if he knew everything.

“My apologies, my lord,” Gleese immediately began the conversation as they all sat down on a pair of fallen logs near the campsite.  “We panicked,” she nodded towards Pranger. “We’ll perform better next time.  We’ll know what to expect.”

“I know you’ll do better,” Alec told them encouragingly.

“We can do this,” he told them all.  “The cloud was chased off with Kalie hardly involved.  We just need to watch out to make sure that it doesn’t try to out-maneuver us; it knows now that we can hit back hard.  Lieutenant Dale, are there any reports of it doing anything tricky or unusual?”

“We haven’t gotten many reports from survivors of attacks by the cloud, and none of those reported anything unusual,” the officer answered.

“But no one has ever fought back against it to make it need to be clever,” she added.  “I don’t know what to tell you my lord.

“I’d set a guard watch if you want, but no one’s going to see a black cloud at night until it is already in the camp,” she explained.

The group discussed little more, then separated for the night, and settled into the camp routine.

In the morning, following an uneventful night, the ingenairii and the guards traveled back through Gallop to the north side of the settlement, while the civilians chose to remain at the southern campsite, fearful of another attack by the cloud.

The ingenairii all assumed the same positions they had held the previous day, each of them promising Alec that they were better prepared and ready for the confrontation to come.

And when noon came, the cloud returned, bent on conquering its feisty nemesis.

Wide fronts of the darkness approached from both the right and left sides, rolling through the forest with a steady, silent approach that was unnerving.  The ingenairii, prepared by the previous day’s experience, began to fire their bolts of Light energy at both sides immediately.  Kalie withheld her energy, then shouted to Alec.

“Where should I attack it?” she asked, looking both right and left.