The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities (13 page)

Alec released Aja’s hand to turn to Erwin, who he lowered closer to the steps for a more thorough examination.  Alec reached with both hands and grasped the man’s shirt, then ripped it open with a sudden jerk, revealing a golden pendant on a plain leather thong, hanging around Erwin’s neck.

“Leave me alone, curse you!”  Erwin shouted.  He flailed in the air and struggled, then he reached for his sword.

“Don’t hurt Erwin, Alec.  Leave him be,” Aja spoke from behind Alec.

Alec, adjusted his Air energies to wrap Erwin’s arms tightly against his sides, the
n
reached in and gently pulled the pendant forward.  He lowered his ball of light to illuminate the small gold disk better, and looked closely.

The golden disk was round, with a frame of brilliant small jewels, and finely etched writing on the face.

“That’s mine!  I found it!  Leave it alone!” Erwin was screaming with such force that spittle flew from his mouth, showering Alec’s face as he bent close to examine the piece of jewelry.

Alec leaned back from the pendant, and pulled his belt knife free, then raised the knife in front of Erwin’s suddenly f
earful face.  After a moment of
purposeful menace, he sliced the knife downward, and cut the leather thong that held the pendant, and pulled it away from the man.

Erwin screamed again, an incoherent shout of rage and wailing loss.  People were walking on the street to see what was causing all the noise, Alec realized, but he dismissed the watchers momentarily as he looked at the pendant.  It was familiar; Alec had rarely worn any more jewelry than a wedding ring, even when he reigned as a monarch, so he paid little attention to jewelry, but he found that this pendant struck some chord of familiarity nonetheless.

He felt Aja’s hand
s on his back, caressing his shoulders, distracting him as he looked at the golden disk.

“Alec, you have been so good to me,” Aja spoke softly, her mouth touching his earlobe as she virtually whispered to him.

“No!  Thief!  Help!” Erwin screamed.

“Can’t you make him go away,” Aja asked.  “Better yet, why don’t you and I go away somewhere, just the two of us.  You know how much I think about you?” she asked suddenly.  “I want to show you my appreciation,” her hands were rubbing his chest now, reaching around him from behind in an embrace.

Alec broke away from his examination of the pendant to look first at Aja, then at Erwin.

“It’s an enchantment!” Alec exclaimed, suddenly realizing what was happening.  “Aja, you go stand in that corner and wait for me,” he ordered her, distracted by the affection she was demonstrating towards him as he held the pendant.

“You’ve enchanted this girl with this pendant,” he looked at Erwin as he made the accusation.

The man hung his head guiltily.  Alec looked down at the pendant, then closed his eyes and focused his Spirit abilities on trying to examine it.  There was a spiritual energy within the pendant, something that he sensed was generated by the gemstones interacting with one another.  Whatever it was, it was nothing he could explain; he’d never been trained in the Ingenaire Hill Spiritual house, where there might have been some academic or theoretical explanation for such an artifact.  But regardless of the cause, he knew he had figured out its power.

“Aja, we need to leave the city.  Are you ready to go?” he asked his companion.

“Anywhere you want, Alec,” she told him, still reacting to the pendant he held.

“Does this work on everyone, or just her?” Alec asked Erwin.

“It works on all women, but it has no effect on men.  What are you going to do?” Erwin asked.  “Are you done with it?  Can I have it back?  I’ll never come close to Aja again, I promise,” he said earnestly.

Alec reached out and took Aja’s hand.  He extinguished the light that illuminated their little dramatic tableau that was now being watched by a dozen people on the street.  Alec led Aja with him down to the street, then lifted Erwin with his Air energy.  “You’ll abuse this charm and abuse women with it, I have no doubt,” Alec told Erwin, “so it has passed from your possession.  Now go away from us and learn to live honestly.”  Erwin began to shout in anger and sorrow, as Alec lifted him high above the street and deposited him on the roof of one of the nearby buildings, as a means to separate him from the two travelers.

“Come on Aja, let’s go,” he told his companion, and pressed through the small circle and began walking down the street, with Aja in eager pursuit.  The night was far advanced, after the time spent in the tavern and the time spent confronting Erwin’s seduction of Aja, and Alec fretted over the time they had lost, time that could have been spent traveling.

“Aja, I’m going to carry you so that we can travel faster for a few minutes,” he told her.  “We ought to get out of the city and into the countryside before we stop for the night.”

Without comment, Aja let Alec sweep her up into his arms, as he embraced his Warrior energy and his Light energy.  He was tired; he could tell he had used his energies for too long during the day of travel, and he knew that he would sleep soundly as soon as they reached a safe place outside the city.  Carrying Aja, invisible to those around them, Alec hurried as fast as possible through the nighttime streets, avoiding the few obstacles
he found
, and then shot through the partially closed gate in the city’s walls on the west side.  Within a half mile he felt free of the confinement of the city, as buildings grew less densely packed, and he relaxed as he pushed them on.

Aja was silent throughout the journey he realized, her head snuggled docilely on his shoulder.  Another few minutes brought them past the end of the development around the city, and Alec slowed to
a
walk, released all his ingenaire energies, then stopped and placed Aja on the ground.

“We need to find a place to spend the night,” Alec told the girl.   “Let’s go up there,” he pointed to a tree-covered hillside nearby.  They trudged through the underbrush and found a cluster of rocks where Alec removed his supply sack and unrolled his blankets.  He heard Aja rustling behind him, then he lay down to rest, and felt her lay down against him.  She was naked, and runn
ing her hands against his body.  “
Aja!” he sat up in surprise.  “We can’t do this!”

“I love you Alec.  I want to marry you and be yours forever,” she told him as she began to unbuckle his pants.

“Stop!” he told her, sitting up and grabbing her hands.  “You don’t know what you’re doing.  This pendant is enchanting you, making you think you love me.  Please put your clothes on,” he insisted.

“I know what I’m doing.  Erwin and I did many things, until he grew tired of me and started liking other women.  That’s when I knew I had to leave him one night,” she told Alec.  “I can make you feel wonderful.”

“Aja, listen,” he said sternly.  “We are not going to be lovers just because I have an enchanted pendant.  You wait right here, and I’ll be back,” he told her.  He stood and ran down the hill to a crooked tree that was hollow and next to an empty stream bed.  He took the pendant from his pocket and placed it inside the tree, then ran back up the hillside.

Aja watched him approach.  “How do you feel, Aja?” he asked.  She had gotten dressed, he noted with relief.

“I feel, awkward,” she answered.  “I’m sorry I acted that way.”

“You were under an enchantment from a pendant.  It makes the man who wears it appear desirable to women, apparently irresistible,” Alec told her, sitting down again and kicking off his boots.  He lay back on the ground and adjusted his position to move off a sharp stone.

“You have an incredible voice, you know,” he told her.  “You’ve really got an enchantment all your own.”  He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.  “Good night, Aja,” he mumbled, then drifted off to sleep, leaving the troubled girl to ponder what had been done to her.

Chapter 8
– Aja’s Daylight

Alec awoke to the touch of Aja’s fingers poking him in the ribs.  Her feet were already atop her canvas rooting bag.  “Good morning, Alec,” she said softly, and then transformed into her arboreal form.

The change occurred so swiftly tha
t Alec wasn’t
sure he had really even seen Aja’s face before she had transformed.  There had been no time for morning chit chat, and he felt cheated by the loss.

He still felt weary as well.  After the long day of using his energies to
reach
and get through Moriadoc, Alec felt sluggish.  He packed up his supplies, ate a brief breakfast of dried fruits, then, ambled down the hillside and grabbed the enchanted pendant out of the hollow tree before returning to the dimly lit road and starting to walk westward.

There were mountains not far ahead.  The hill he had slept on, and the surrounding hills, were the out flung beginnings of the chain of stony sentinels that soared high above the vast plain of the Twenty Cities.  Alec started walking, looking up at the mountain chain that reared its peaks far above him.  The road towards Boundary Lake was likely to climb a considerable amount of altitude, and the Warrior kidnappers would presumably be slowed down as they dealt with their large collection of captives and hired helpers
during their journey
.  Andi would be slowed down as well, needing to slow down for Amane.  That meant that he had a real opportunity to catch up with all of them in the mountains.

He did not know how far away Boundary Lake was, he realized.  The journey had been described as a week on horseback by the officer he had talked to, but Alec didn’t know if the officer knew what he was saying.  It had to be at least five days, possibly as long as nine, he decided.  And he wanted to rest for a day, to be better prepared to fight when he did meet the Warriors.  But if the mountains were the place he could best catch up with the kidnappers, maybe he ought to exert himself to find them, then rest when he caught up; he told himself that once he had them in his sight he could follow them surreptitiously, for they would not be traveling at any accelerated rate at that point.  It would also give him a better chance to catch Andi and rendezvous with her before confronting the Ingenairii as well.

With a deep breath, he engaged his Warrior powers, and began again to run at a speed that transcended the ability of any person not endowed with extraordinary abilities.  During the course of the morning, Alec passed through five small villages and completed the passage of the foothills.  At noon he slowed down to a walk as the roadway began to
climb more steeply
amidst the increasingly stony landscape.  He ate more dried fruit, and stopped to pick a patch of wild greens he saw growing along the side of the road, one that he knew was edible and tasty.

As he squatted by the patch of green and ate, an elderly man driving a flock of goats came down the road towards him.  “Not many of the youngsters will eat the rocky climbers,” the goatherd commented on the plants Alec was chewing.

“It’s good to eat, doesn’t cost anything, and it’s right here,” Alec smiled at the old man.  “Why not eat it?”

“That’s what we old folks say!” the man answered with a toothless grin.  “It’s what our parents said to us, but now the young people, they say they know better.”

“Someday they’ll be the old ones shaking their heads, eh?” Alec smiled, then went on his way uphill, resuming the use of his energy to climb the route along the east face of the mountains.  All during the afternoon he had an open view of the distant terrain on his right as he ascended, and he looked out over the vast plain of ranches and farmlands that spread out towards the Twenty Cities.

Half an hour before sunset he reached a wide plateau, where a sizable village was situated at the mouth of a pass, and Alec decided to spend the night in the village.  He found three taverns with rooms and stables, a sign that many travelers spent the night at that location.  All three had full stables, and so Alec spent time at each tavern, asking if his traveling companion would be allowed to sing as the evening’s entertainment in return for a room and a meal.   Two said no, but the third manager said he wanted to see and hear the girl for himself to decide.

Alec left the inn with a promise to bring the girl back.  He barely had time to get into the corner of the stableyard and unload his tree before the sunlight disappeared from the sky and Aja reappeared.  She performed her luxurious stretch, rotated her head from side to side, then looked at Alec.  Her eyes narrowed speculatively, and Alec realized that he carried the enchanted pendant in his pocket.

“Aja, I want you to wait right here,” he commanded.  “Will you stay right here until I return?” he asked.

“My lord, I’ll stay here as long as I can, but then I’ll come in search of you,” she replied.

Alec ran to the stable, and stashed the pendant behind a beam in the floor of the hayloft, then returned to Aja.

“I’m sorry I didn’t think to lose that sooner,” Alec told her.  He opened his arms and gave her a hug of friendship.

“What has happened today?  Where are we?” Aja asked.

Alec led her to the front of the inn and showed her the view of the wide valley far below.  “We’ve climbed up into the mountains,” he told her.  “We’re going to spend the night in this inn, if it’s okay with you.  But the catch is, you will have to sing for our supper and room, if that’s not too heavy an obligation for you?” he grinned.