Preserving the Ingenairii (29 page)

“Alec?
 
Are you awake?” her voice began with sleepy tones,
then
conveyed her quick recovery of the facts of the situation.
 
She stood and walked over to him, then knelt down beside him and placed her hand on his stomach.
 
Alec felt a trickle of healing energy enter his body, relieving some of the pain.
  
“I’m sorry,” she said soothingly.
 
She looked over at a candle, evaluating how far it had burnt down.
 
“I should have dosed you two hours ago.”
 
She started to reach for something on a table behind her, but Alec raised his hand to grab her and place it back on his stomach.

“Give me your power,” he whispered as he sent a weak thread of his healing energy into his troubled bowels.
 
Stracha complied, and Alec felt the enhancement of his efforts to destroy the infection that was sapping his strength.
 
He looked into her eyes as he felt her energy help his, then he closed his eyes and focused on pushing as much healing power as possible through his fingertips, so that he could finish the disinfection.

“What do you have, willowbark?” he asked a moment after he felt the completion of his task, and released his powers.

“I have willowbark and heston balm,” Stracha replied.

“Good,” Alec answered.
 
“Give me both of them.”
 
He lay silently as she prepared the doses and administered them.
 
He puckered at the bitter astringency of the palliative.
 
“How are you?” he asked as he smacked his lips.

“Better than you,” she smiled enigmatically.

“How long have you been healing me?” he followed up.

“Four weeks now.
 
They took a few days to find a healer and bring me here.
 
Constanc wanted to come, but I told them you and I had healed together.
 
The others are angry at me for being the one to come, and the army remembers that you ran away the last time I healed you, so everyone in the Dominion is thinking about us,” she said.
 
“If I don’t heal you they’ll never let me forget it.

“I don’t know how you stayed alive until I got here.
 
The army medics did better than I ever would have thought possible, considering your intestines were practically falling out of you after the demon sliced you open,” she said.

Alec closed his eyes and remembered the battle with the demon.
 
He remembered feeling the claws cut across his body as he was flung away, and he remembered the healing energy he had managed to administer to himself on the battle ground.
 
He must have been in truly perilous shape if he was no better than his current condition after so much time and effort.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“You’re hidden in a crypt under the cathedral in Frame.
 
The Goldenfields officer wanted to keep you hidden away so you could heal without distractions or visitors,” she explained, “or so that if you died, people wouldn’t know.”

“Go back to sleep now,” she suggested, pulling the sheet back up over Alec’s chest, and he immediately did so, as the pain relievers and his healing powers eased the ache he felt.

He woke again sometime later, feeling better, but still far from well.
 
Stracha was absent, but a Goldenfields guard was sitting alertly nearby.
 
The face was familiar.
 
“I know you, don’t I?” he asked.

“Guardsman Givens, sir,” the soldier responded, standing and striding over to Alec’s side.
 
“What can I do for you, sir?” he asked Alec.

“Tell me what happened in the battle,” Alec said.
 
“Where’s the army now?”

“I was behind the lines, you know, like you told me, so I didn’t see anything until it was a rout, and we were chasing them through the city here.
 
But from what folks told me, you went out and walloped a demon, and that made the whole south end of the Michian line collapse.
 
The Goldenfields battalion started rolling behind the Michian line and the Michian forces had to retreat in a hurry.
 
Lewis had you brought in here and they put out a net to find a healer ingenaire, which turned up a fair good catch, I’d judge,” he said with a brief grin.

“Lewis has been back twice to check on you, and she left a few of us here to keep an eye on you until you’re back up and ready.
 
A couple of the lads have kept more of an eye on your pretty healer than on you, but I’ve knocked their heads and kept them in line.
 
Now that you’re coming around I imagine they’ll take orders from you,” Givens finished his comments.

Alec was half-listening as he conducted a self-diagnosis.
 
He remained in some pain, and his internal organs were not functioning fully, while his weight and muscle
strength,
had fallen even below the previous level this weak body maintained before his battle with the demon.

“…now that you’re an officer,” Givens continued.

“What did you say?
 
What kind of officer?” Alec asked, catching the last comment.
 

“Captain Lewis recommended you for a field promotion, and the colonel approved it.
 
You’re a captain in the Goldenfields Guard,” Givens explained.

Alec grinned at the echo of his past. And then it hit him again, and with greater impact – the people who would understand the irony of a second promotion to captain in the Goldenfields Guard, the people who had been his friends and supporters and allies, they were virtually all bound to be dead and gone.
 
He had no one to share the rich joke with.
 
They’d gone on with their lives as he had remained trapped in the energy realm for five decades.
 
The experiences they no longer even thought about were still the most recent events he could remember.
 
He thought about the time he had sat on a beach with Bethany, and the times he had sat by Aristotle on the front seat of the carnival wagon.
 
Then he remembered the explosion of power he had created after healing Lewis’s father, the first Captain Lewis, near a bluff above the Giffey River, and as he did, the germ of an idea for a cure struck him.

“When Stracha returns, tell her I want to talk to her,” he instructed Givens.
 
“And thank you for being here to watch over me.”
 
He closed his eyes and fell peacefully asleep, hopeful that a cure was available.

“Alec, wake up.
 
Alec, is everything okay?” Stracha asked as she gently stroked his forehead.

He opened his eyes and focused.
 
“Stracha, thank you for coming.
 
Could you get a barrel of water from the spring on the River Giffey, the spring on the far side of the city?”

“You mean the healing water?
 
Of course!
 
That is, of course it’s a good idea; I don’t know what luck we’ll have getting it shipped here, with the war,” she responded.

“Is Givens here?” Alec asked.
 
She nodded.
 
“Givens!” he called in his loudest voice, which carried a little way.
 
“Tell Givens that you must have a barrel,” he spoke to Stracha again.
 
“Tell him to tell Lewis that we need the water for me.
 
That will get it here as fast as can be arranged.”

“That water – it comes from the spring Alec created.
 
You created it, didn’t you?
 
It will surely help you, won’t it?” Stracha asked.

Givens arrived.
 
“Did I hear you call?” he asked.

“Givens, thank you for coming.
 
The healer here needs some of the water from the healing spring in Goldenfields.
 
Will you ask Captain Lewis to expedite a shipment?” Alec asked.

“We need a barrel of the water from Alec’s spring,” Stracha clarified.
 
“How quickly can you get one here?”

“Captain Lewis will be here this afternoon to check on the Demonslayer,” he grinned as he motioned towards Alec, who groaned at the name he had been given.
 
“I’ll mention it to her, and you should do the same.
 
Anything else?”

“Has the Michian army used any more demons since the battle here?” Alec asked.

“They haven’t done anything except retreat since the last battle,” Givens answered.
 
“At first it was a rout, but once they got back to Oyster Bay, they stiffened up and have held their ground there.
 
But, no, there haven’t been any further battles against demons.
 
Thank God for that.
 
They must be afraid that you’ll come out and kill another one.”

Alec gave a twitch as a spasm of pain raced through the muscles of one thigh.
 
“Let’s let him rest now,” Stracha said, and she ushered Givens out.
 
“Here,” she placed her hand on his leg, as she sensed the source of his pain, and Alec felt a surge of relief.

“You’re better at that.
 
You’re growing stronger in your power and applying it with true spiritual energy,” he commented.

“You showed me how.
 
I’ve been trying to do things the way you showed me outside Three Forks, and it feels more natural every time I do,” Stracha told him.
 
“We don’t have many teachers now, you know.
 
Things have changed since you left, Alec.
 
Parnell does the best he can, but he was barely on Ingenairii Hill before the invasion chased us away from Oyster Bay, and the rest of us only know what he can teach us.
 
The Queen is the only one of the old healers left, and she’s obviously got her hands full with other things up in Stronghold.”

Alec sighed.
 
He thought of how much he had learned from the old healer records on Ingenairii Hill, and the complete education he had gotten from Rubicon, Nathaniel and Moriah.
 
“There is no one else to teach young healers?” he asked.

“Gordon would know the answer to that, but Alec would perhaps not,” Stracha replied without evident triumph.
 
“There is no one else.
 
Many were killed during the war, and the evacuation from Oyster Bay was hurried and catastrophic.
 
We’ve never found out how many total ingenairii there are, or where they all are, or what abilities they hold.

“You are the greatest thing to appear for the Dominion in years, Alec; the best thing since the last time you were here.
 
Before you came, many people were saying we should surrender to end the war and allow the Michian Empire to rule us, but if you bring more successes, those voices will be silent,” Stracha told him.
 
“Now you rest and wait for your Goldenfields officer to arrive.
 
We’ll talk to her about getting the healing water for you.
 
She’ll do everything she can to help us, I’m sure, because she needs you for the good of the whole Dominion.”

Stracha stood and looked down at Alec, who nodded and closed his eyes, then immediately began to breathe the steady, gentle rhythm of a sleeper.
 
She returned to her seat and sat, wondering if the sun was shining outside.
 
For the past several weeks she’d hardly gone out of the rooms below the cathedral.
 
Her skin was pale she knew, paler than normal from the lack of light.
 
She only knew the Goldenfields Guards who took turns with her, while above ground people were returning to Frame, or passing through the city on their way to other newly recaptured lands further west.
 
Stracha sat and quietly thought about the boy she was tending, and the possible ways to attempt to change his treatments, until she heard a clacking sound from a pair of boots approaching.
                   

“Any news to report healer?
 
Givens tells me the demon-slayer has spoken today,” the Goldenfields officer addressed Stracha briskly, motioning for her to follow to the bedside.