The Cloud of Darkness (The Ingenairii Series Book 11) (8 page)

Comprehension dawned on the lacerta’s face, and she scooted left and out of sight.

“Are you going to let me look in there or not?” the guard asked.

Alec swung the door open and stepped inside, making space for Gruy to look into the small space through the doorway.

“Where is she?” the guard asked Alec, without seeming concerned.  “Where’s the woman you brought the food up here for?”

“She may have gone to the temple to say her prayers,” Alec adlibbed.

The guard looked without interest around the room.  “Just the one bed, and a small one.  You two are pretty close?” he leered.

“She’s wild about me,” Alec said in a confidential tone, accompanied by a smirk.

A grunt sounded from the corner of the room.

“What was that?” the guard asked, starting to take a step forward.

“Probably just the mice,” Alec frowned at the corner.

“You and your lady friend have a good night,” the guard stepped backwards, and then out of the room.

“Did you have to make that noise?” Alec asked after counting silently to five, waiting long enough to make sure the guard was really gone from the door.

“Why’d you bring someone here? Was he a guard?” Kecil asked.

“A squad of guards came into the dining room on a search; they’re searching for us.  They must be searching the whole city,” Alec speculated.  “I imagine the authorities are pretty embarrassed about that escape happening right in front of the entire stadium audience – all those witnesses.”

He handed a bowl of the stew over to Kecil, as they both sat on the bed.  “If you haven’t eaten a lot lately, you ought to go slowly,” he advised, as Kecil picked a chunk of meat from the stew and began to greedily chew on it.

There was an unexpected knock on the door.  “We have a few questions, for you, my lord,” Alec recognized the voice of the female officer he had seen in the dining room.

Alec threw his bowl of stew aside and pushed himself onto the lacerta girl, knocking her stew out of her hands and to the floor as well, as he forced them into a prone position on the bed.

“Trust me,” he said urgently as he cupped his hands around her face while lying on top of her.

“Oh, what are you doing?  I feel something!” Kecil cried, while the door squeaked open, and Alec pressed his lips against those of his companion, feeling the lips plump out against his.

“Oh, I see your companion is back,” the officer said.

Alec lifted his face from Kecil’s, and raised his upper torso, while keeping the majority of his body covering the other body on the bed.

“I thought we already had an inspection,” he protested, as he continued to keep his hands on Kecil, transmitting his healing power into her to transform her surface appearance from lacerta to human.  He continued to pour his power into her, making the transformation creep downward along her body, altering her torso and arms, then her hips and loins, and finally her legs.

“Have some sense of decency and remove yourself from the girl while we’re here talking to you,” the officer snapped.

Satisfied that his hasty work was sufficiently complete, Alec rolled to the side and sat up, while Kecil’s hands delicately touched the thick, wavy hair on her scalp that had previously been only sparsely covered.  Alec removed his hands, letting them delicately trail across the softened flesh of Kecil’s cheeks.

“So what do you want?” Alec asked.

“We are carrying out our inspection, and this happened to be the door we came to,” the officer said blandly.  “And you do match the description of the man we’re looking for very well.  Your clothes are even the correct colors.”

“I’m just unlucky,” Alec said.  “Now that you see there’s no monster here, are you satisfied?”

“Are you alright, miss?” the officer asked.

Kecil wordlessly nodded her head.

“She’s a bit young for you, isn’t she?” the officer said to Alec.

Alec was speechless for a moment.   In all his centuries of life, he’d not ever been seen as the older member of a couple, physically, because his body had always healed and regulated its own condition.  Over the course of his marriages to the beloved wives he’d outlived, he’d always come to eventually seem too young for them.  His mind momentarily drifted off to memories of Andi, who had always laughed off his eternal youth as she had grown older.

“Our ages are our own affairs,” he said with all the dignity he could muster.

A knowing smile appeared on the face of the woman, while the guard behind her openly leered.

“Are we done here?” Alec asked.

“Well you still seem to be a perfect match for one of our suspects, but the girl can’t be the other, so I suppose we can let you go.  Are you going to be here long?” the officer asked.  “We may want to ask you a few questions yet.”

“We planned on leaving tomorrow morning,” Alec replied.

“Don’t leave too early; wait until midday,” the officer advised, then pulled the door shut, leaving the two in privacy.

“What did you do to me?” Kecil immediately asked, sitting up next to Alec.

He called on his Light energies once again, and formed a mirror that floated in front of the girl.

“This is what you look like now,” he told her, then watched as she examined her image carefully.  She had curly blond hair, dark eyes, and a wide mouth.  She was pretty, without being stunning.  Her body, still clothed in the tattered rags she had been wearing, but now human in appearance, was that of a young woman, perhaps twenty years of age or so.

“I can’t look that much older than you,” Alec muttered, and he formed another mirror to float alongside the first, and he looked closely at his own features. He had faint crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, perhaps, but other than that, he saw nothing to make him think he looked older than thirty, and perhaps less.  For a man who was over half a millennium old, it was a ridiculous matter to consider.  Or perhaps he looked closer to forty, he conceded to himself.

“Bah,” he waved his mirror away, then looked over at Kecil.

The girl was turning her head slightly to either side, examining her profile.  “These lips you have are so big.  Do they get in the way when you eat?” she asked seriously.

“No,” Alec answered distractedly, as he reflected on their situation.  The officer clearly had her eye on him, and it seemed unlikely that he was going to leave the inn without further use of his ingenaire abilities.  Yet he was growing tired – he’d used a variety of powers in the past several hours, and he’d used them during the majority of the time.

And then he laughed.  In his exhaustion he’d neglected to think about using his Traveling abilities – he’d been so caught up in the minutiae of dealing with the officer and the moment-to-moment issues that he had overlooked the obvious solution.  He could take Kecil to safety in a matter of minutes, if he was willing to forego her companionship on the journey.  He’d only need four or five jumps through space to reach Chanradala, where he could restore Kecil to her family – and to her original form.  It had to be the solution, he concluded.

“Kecil, I’ve been a fool!” he exclaimed out loud, the realization sunk in.

“How so, my lord Alec?” she asked.

“Would you like for me to take you home, back to Chanradala, in half an hour?” he asked with a smile.

“You cannot do such a thing,” she answered.  “And even if you could, I would say no.

“What I would like for you to do is give me some more dinner, since you spilled mine on the floor before I could eat it,” she replied.

“Why would you not want to go to Chanradala?” Alec asked, shocked by her refusal to follow the obvious path.

“Because,” she hesitated.  “I ran away,” the words burst out of her mouth, the wide human mouth with the bright red lips.

“So you ran away; they’ll be delighted to have you back when they find out everything you’ve been through,” Alec consoled her, sure that no parent would hold a grudge against a lost child.

“I ran away from my own wedding,” Kecil spoke in a meek voice.  “On the wedding day.  With another man.

“I was supposed to marry the prince of the land,” she added after another pause.  “My parents arranged the marriage.  My father is a duke.

“I ran away with Straystonate, the stable boy,” she saw Alec raise his eyebrows.  “He was a traveling companion – nothing more.”

“I just didn’t think I wanted to live in the palace,” she tried to explain herself.

Alec maintained his silence.

“The prince is a nice person, worth having as a husband, but I didn’t really know if I wanted to live in the palace for the rest of my life,” she added.

“And then, while we were traveling, the stable boy fell off the mountain road and died, and that’s when the humans found me and took me as a slave,” she started to cry.

Alec wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and pulled the girl against him in a sympathetic hug.

“So I can’t go back to Chanradala,” she concluded after a pause, as she resisted Alec’s embrace at first, then relaxed and leaned against him.  “Not for a while more.  Custom says that a broken wedding must be forgiven after a full year, and it’s only been half a year.

“If you truly mean to take me back,” Kecil looked at Alec, then looked away, “and even if you really can do this magical travel that you say….”

“I can,” Alec interrupted her.

“I ask you not to send me back.  Let me wear this human disguise and live among these people,” Kecil begged.

Alec began to respond, but stopped, cut off by another knock on the door, an aggressive pounding.  Before the last boom of the door was complete, it flew open, and the guard officer along with a large squad of guards streamed into the room, grabbing hold of both Alec and Kecil.

“We are placing you under arrest, pending witnesses who will identify you as the man in the stadium who stole the monster,” the officer said in an authoritative, official voice.

“The girl has nothing to do with this,” Alec said quickly.  “Let her go.”

“We believe you,” the officer said.  She nodded to the guards who held Kecil.  “Release her.”

“Bungacantik,” Alec spoke the girl’s full lacerta name, “come to me.”

She sensed the purpose in his decision to call her by the formal moniker, and she stepped towards him.

“You stay away from him,” the officer ordered.  “You may not touch him.”

Kecil’s arms were already spreading wide to hug Alec farewell, and she was only a step away when the officer spoke, but spoke in the language of Avonellene, a language the lacerta did not speak.  Alec wrenched himself from the grip of his captors and gathered her in his grip.

“Stop this!” the officer ordered.

Alec held tightly to Kecil, then looked over his shoulder at the officer and smiled.   And then the pair of captives seemed to slightly glow, and they disappeared from the room.

Chapter 6

Kecil was caught unprepared for Alec’s maneuver, and when they pair passed through the nothingness of the Traveling experience, then rematerialized in a dark city alley, she gasped deep breaths of air.

“What did you do?  Where are we?” she asked.  “How did you do that?  It felt awful!”

Alec was pleased that the girl didn’t seemed too panicked, although he had sprung the maneuver on her without any warning.

“It does feel odd,” Alec agreed.  “I’ve been traveling that way for a long time, and it does still feel uncomfortable, even now.

“We’re back at the stadium.  I needed to take us someplace where I knew no one would be around, so that we could escape arrest and catch our breath,” he explained.

“We need to leave Witten,” he stated the obvious.  “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you back to Chanradala?”

Kecil looked up at Alec, studying his face.  “I don’t know,” she said softly.  “I’ve only known you for a couple of hours, but in that time, look what you’ve done to me – you’ve saved my life, changed my appearance, made me invisible, and now moved me magically.

“And I think I can trust you,” she added.  “Yes,” she spoke to herself more than him, “I do think I can trust you.

“I still must stay away from Chanradala for a few more months.  Is there a safe journey we can take to reach the city more slowly than what we just did?”

“Let’s just skip up the river to Vincennes for tonight,” Alec suggested.  “We can leave our troubles in Witten, and start the journey from the capital.

“Are you ready this time?” he asked, as he clasped his arms around the girl.

She took a deep breath, and then Alec triggered his powers, so that they left the city of troubles, and moved to an alleyway in the metropolitan city of Vincennes.

“That’s a first step,” Alec muttered.  He wasn’t sure what the next step would be.

He didn’t have any money, he realized.  He’d left everything behind in the inn they had fled from.

“I’m going to go back and get some money for us,” he told Kecil.  “You stay right here.”

Alec engaged his powers and returned to the room at the inn in Witten, where he found the officer still in the room, without her accompanying guards.

"Have you come back to punish me?" she asked, staring at Alec as he slowly bent to grab his bags of supplies, his eyes watching her.

"I don't know of any punishment you deserve," he replied.  "And I'm not the one to decide that matter anyway."

"What are you, and where's the monster?" the woman asked.

"There is no monster," Alec replied from his heart.  "There's a girl who looks differently from you and me, but she's not a monster.

"The girl who was with me is the girl I rescued," he spoke.

"She didn't look at all like the description," the officer objected.

"But she's still just a girl, and she shouldn't have been used in the stadium the way she was," Alec insisted as he lifted the bags of supplies.

"We're going to Vincennes, so you can call off the search," he advised, and then he disappeared from the room.

"What was that?" one of her guards asked, leaning into the room from the hall.

"That was the end of our search," the officer replied. "Let’s report back to headquarters that they got away," she directed, and she left the room without any further glance at the empty space, praying that no one would ask for details of her encounter with the fugitives.

As Alec returned to rejoin Kecil in the alley in Vincennes, he found a well-meaning woman in the alley talking urgently to his companion.

"You don't have to live like this," the woman told the disguised lacerta girl. "We have a shelter where you can be safe.  We'll give you clothes and some money so that you can return to your family.

"Who are you and what do you mean to do to this poor girl?" she turned sharply on Alec as she became aware of his presence.

The woman protectively wrapped an arm around Kecil's shoulders and began to guide her out of the alley.

"We know your type, ready to take advantage of a poor friendless girl in the city," the woman castigated Alec. "You'll not get away with it this time."

"It's alright," Kecil protested to her self-appointed protector.  "He's my friend.  He's taking care of me," she said insistently as they exited the alley.

"Better not to take any chances," the older woman ignored Kecil's comments.  "Take care of him boys; I've got our new girl."

As Alec followed the perplexing conversation out of the alley, three men with knives jumped at him from both sides of the alley mouth, long blades held ready to strike.

Belatedly recognizing the ambush under way, Alec seized hold of his sluggish Warrior powers.

He stepped back with a backwards somersault that cleared him from the targeted strikes by the assailants, who inadvertently crashed into one another, leaving two of them on the ground.  Alec immediately stepped forward and punched the third, disarming him and leaving him unconscious. 

Armed with the knife he had seized, Alec turned to face the woman who held Kecil's arm while she stared in confusion at the defeated trio of rogues she counted on to enforce her commands.

"You're a procuress," Alec accused, pointing the knife at the woman.  "Step away from Kecil now," he commanded.

The woman responded by pulling a hidden knife from the folds of her sleeve, and pressing it against Kecil's throat.  "You got lucky with the boys, or something, but I'm still in control of this situation, stranger," the woman's voice was harsh and flat as she spoke.  "Now you go away and leave this girl and me alone or she'll get hurt."

"And then what?" Alec asked.

"And then neither one of us will get any use out of her," the woman snarled.

"I'm going to back away, "Alec surrendered.   He heard the men behind him struggling to their feet as he raised his hands to demonstrate his peaceful intentions, and began to step sideways away from the scene.

"Go on if you know what's good for you," the evil woman snarled, acting as though she were gaining control of the dangerous situation, while Kecil looked at Alec with a pleading expression on her new human face.

Alec looked up, and there was suddenly a bright light overhead.

As the procuress and her henchmen stared up in surprise, the light disappeared, and then a moment later, so did Alec.  When the captors looked back around their own environs, their eyesight diminished by the bright light, they could not spot Alec.

An invisible force suddenly grasped the knife-wielding hand of the woman to wrench it away from Kecil's throat, and the woman was forcefully flung away from her captive as she shrieked in angry astonishment.  Before she even stopped her momentum, Alec appeared again, standing by Kecil as he placed a protective arm around her shoulders.

"Now, take your filthy business far away and don't let me catch you in this neighborhood again," Alec commanded.

One of the men responded by throwing a knife at him, which Alec caught in mid-air, feeling his connection to the energy realm beginning to sputter.  He tossed the knife to the ground.

“The next knife you throw at us, I’ll throw back at you,” he threatened.  “Now go!”

The ruffians responding by turning tail and retreating, their spirits broken by the sight of the knife caught in mid-flight.

The woman looked up hatefully from where she lay in a heap on the ground, then she rose to her feet and ran off behind her accomplices.  “Come back, you cowards!” she screamed in a voice that faded as she distanced herself from her unsuccessful effort to capture a new victim.

“Thank you again, Alec!” Kecil cried.  “That was frightening!  What was she going to do to me?”

“We won’t talk about it now,” Alec said grimly.

“I brought us here because there used to be a mission nearby where I thought we could be safe.  Let’s hope it’s still here,” he said wearily, lifting the packs of belongings to his shoulder.  “Come with me,” he turned her to face in the opposite direction, then started to slowly walk down the street, and around the corner.

They stopped in front of a doorway after only two score of steps.

“At least it appears to still be here,” Alec said with relief.  He stepped up and tried the door, but found it locked, so he pounded loudly upon it.

“Who knocks?” a voice called from inside the building.

“We come to request hospitality and refuge, in the name of John Mark,” Alec called.  “We seek the peace of the Lord for this night.”  He tried to make the strongest possible appeal to the inhabitants of the mission.

There was no response from the other side.

“We are travelers who have had troubles, and would appreciate the kindness of the followers of Christ,” Alec called after waiting patiently for several seconds.

They heard a bolt and a latch thrown, and then the door opened partially.

“Please come in and tell us what bothers you,” the voice spoke, and a hand appeared in the gloomy interior of the building beckoning them in.

Alec stepped in front, with his hand extended behind him to hold Kecil’s hand, and pull her along up the steps and through the door, into the sanctuary.

As soon as they entered, the door was closed behind them, and they saw two elderly women holding a candle, looking at the new arrivals with curiosity and concern.

“Thank you sisters,” Alec said politely.  “We are travelers.  This is Kecil, and I am her friend Alec.  We were accosted on the streets and sought shelter in this mission.  Thank you for your hospitality.”

“We seldom receive visitors anymore,” the closer of the two answered.  “And it seems dangerous to open our doors after dark, but you spoke as though you were a believer, and we didn’t wish to ignore your plea.”

“I am a believer,” Alec said gently, with a smile.  He thought of the founding of the mission, many years prior, during the early years of his term as Caitlen’s consort, when a missionary had somehow managed to cross the continent to arrive in Vincennes with a stated mission of spreading the Gospel.  Alec had quietly assisted the missionary, Brother Frewwer, within the limitations of the non-political, non-religious role that a consort seemed limited to in the Avonellene Empire, and the small mission had grown steadily, if not dramatically.

“I believe in the message that John Mark delivered, and the salvation the Savior provides,” Alec professed his faith to the women.  “And we thank you for giving us a safe haven where we may spend the night.”

“Well, come with us, and we’ll show you to rooms; we have plenty of them available,” the second nun spoke up, turning with her candle to lead the way into the interior of the building.

They moved down an empty hall, and despite the dim light of the single candle, Alec could see the cobwebs that hung in the corners and from the rafters.  It was a melancholy place, and he felt sad that his hopes of seeing Jesus’s message flourish in the mighty city had fallen on such hard times.

The small group climbed up a set of wide stairs.  On the second floor they saw a number of doorways, a few of which might have shown dim light shining from within, but there was no pause, and the two women led Alec and Kecil up a narrower staircase to the third floor.

“You can have your pick of any rooms up here,” the woman with the candle offered.  “We’ve not had any one up here in a decade.”

Alec reached out his hand, and carefully sent a limited trickle of the Healing energy into the hand of their guide.

“Thank you for these rooms,” he said.  “May we also have a fresh set of clothes, and night clothes if you have them, for Kecil?” he motioned towards the girl to call attention to the scanty covering she wore.

The woman looked at him with one eye squinted, appraising him.

“She can come down with us and we’ll provide her with a few togs,” the woman suggested.  “You stay up here.

“She’ll have to climb back up here in the darkness though; we don’t have a spare candle to offer her this evening,” she cautioned.

Alec nodded his agreement, and gently took his hand from the woman’s and placed it on Kecil’s back to prod her to follow the others.

“I’ll arrange a room for us, and then meet you back here at the top of the stairs,” he offered her.

She looked at him and wordlessly nodded, then waited and followed the two women back down the stairs at the same slow, deliberate pace they had used to climb up.

Alec went midway down the hall, and opened a door at random.  He took a deep breath, and once more pushed his waning abilities and called upon the Light energy to produce a dim globe of illumination that showed him an unremarkable room with a window, and single bed, and nothing else to offer.  He called the light to follow him and he looked in the room across the hall.

The second room had much more character.  It had two windows; both were gables.  There was a bed, a desk and a chair, and a cranny that disappeared around a back corner of the room; it was a larger room as well.  Alec stepped inside and saw that the cranny was a narrow hall that led to a third gabled window.