The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities (24 page)

“I am awake, and I feel as though I am recovering, thank you,” Alec answered.  “How long have I been here?”

“Four days, my lord,” the man replied.  “Would you like something to eat, or drink?”

“I would like both, please,” Alec answered.  “Is Andi here?” he asked quickly, before the servant could leave to fetch his meal.

“The woman who traveled with you before?” the man clarified.  Alec nodded curtly.  “No, sir, she has not been here since the morning you both left, the morning you saved the city from the lacertii.

“I’ll go fetch a tray of food and be back,” the man added, then pulled the door shut before Alec could ask any further questions.

When he returned, two men came with him, and entered the room silently as the servant carried in a tray of food, quietly placed it upon a table next to Alec’s bed, and left again without speaking.

Alec sat up straight upon his mattress, and looked at the two men who stood near the door.

“My name is Marshall Rommen,” one of them, the older of the two, spoke, “and this is Major Whime.”

“We, and all of Boundary Lake, are in your debt for the extraordinary things you have done for our city,” Rommen said.  “The lacertii are in disarray from the loss of an entire army, and we are strengthened for having one less front to have to defend with many forces.

“We came to thank you for what you have done for us,” the Major added.  “And if there is anything we can do for you, the city is at your disposal.”

“My companion, Andi, do you know where she is?” Alec asked.  “She had left the city just a few hours before me, heading towards the front where the battle took place.”

“We were told that your last request was to be united with her, and we have searched for her,” Rommen replied.  “She was seen in the company of two officers heading towards the front where you defeated the lacertii.  One of them has been found dead in the forest, killed in the battle there.  But neither your companion, nor the captain she was with, Captain Alan, has been seen since.”

“There was no sign of bodies?” Alec questioned.

“None,” Rommen agreed.

“Could the lacertii have taken them captive?” Alec asked, sensing worse news was coming on top of the bad news he had just heard.

“We believe they have been taken prisoner,” Rommen answered.

Alec closed his eyes.  “Do you know where they would have been taken?  Is there a camp where prisoners are held?” he asked.

“We do not know.  None have been returned to us since the war began,” Whime said bleakly.

“Thank you,” Alec answered, and said no more, contemplating how he was going to go after Andi in the land of the lacertii.

“What can we do for you, my lord?” Rommen asked.

“Pack a good supply of travel foods for me,” Alec said, swinging his legs out of bed and searching for his pants.  “I’m going to go after them.”

“How can we help?” Rommen asked again.

“Get the food I need, and have it ready for me when I get downstairs,” Alec answered, standing and retrieving his clothes.  “I’ll be down in just a few minutes,” he added, seeing the officers standing there.  “Go,” he added plainly, and saw them quickly exit his room.

Alec sat back down and ate the bread on the tray upon the table, then ate the carrots, soft with age, and drank the juice in the cup.  He pulled on a shirt from his pack, and
his entire
arsenal of weapons, bandolier of knives, sword, and bow and arrow, checked that he still had the lip balm from Birnam Woods, then slung his bag over his free shoulder and went downstairs.

Servants stood silently, heads bowed as he passed.  He walked without comment to the doorway, and found Rommen and Whimme outside the Red Horse, a full bag of rations ready for him.

“Thank you,” Alec said simply.  “If I can find any captives, I will send them home to you,” he promised, and then without fanfare he left the inn again.

Chapter 15
– Racing Through Lacertii Lands

Two days later Alec was well behind the lacertii lines, trudging invisibly along the roads of the lacertii-held territory, frustrated by his lack of knowledge. He had invisibly flown over the wall he created, then headed down the road, past the blackened corpses that still remained on the ground, producing a horrible stench which hung heavily in the air throughout the valley, and nearly made him gag for two hours.  He traveled in search of a large camp, where he expected to either find Andi and Alan held captive, or to hear that they had been sent elsewhere.  Instead the road had been empty, so that afte
r a day he had doubled back and
gone in search of an army headquarters near the northwestern front that Boundary Lake defended.

By late afternoon on the second day he had finally found the camp he sought.  It was not as large as he had expected, which relieved him, because it meant he had less camp to search.  He remained invisible, though after two days of constantly drawing upon his Light powers to maintain his invisibility he was feeling worn thin.

Inside the lacertii camp he dodged the traffic and wandered towards the center, where he expected to find the command tents, and he hoped, the prisoners.  His search was in vain.  There were no human prisoners to be found anywhere.  Alec tried listening in on conversations within command t
ents, hoping that he would over
hear some hint or reference to the whereabouts of human captives; all he heard were laments about the appearance of the formidable stone wall that had reduced the opportunities for the lacertii forces to engage the Boundary Lake guards, or other administrative matters that bore no interest to him.

His listening strained him, requiring a dramatic shift in his perspective, one that he hadn’t expected.  In crossing to the lacertii side of the boundary, he crossed a linguistic boundary as well.  His mind began – with a shock, and then a struggle, and finally with increasing confidence – to listen and think in the language he had grown up in.  It was the language of the west, he realized, of the lacertii, Dominion, and Michian.

Alec finally realized he would have to expose himself as part of his search, by actively questioning lacertii in order to track down Andi.  When an officer he had identified as a key commander entered his tent alone to settle in for the night, leaving a pair of guards outside, Alec invisibly entered his tent with him, then drew out his sword and appeared to the man.

“Stay silent,” Alec said as the lacerta gasped in shock.  “I’m not here as an assassin tonight.  I’m looking for information.  Stay calm, and I’ll be out of your camp in minutes.  Do you understand?” Alec asked as he held his sword at the officer’s neck.

The lacerta nodded, and Alec proceeded.  “On the morning that the granite wall arose, two people disappeared.  One was a female who could fight like three men, an ingenaire who had a mark on her arm like mine,” he displayed his Warrior mark.  “The other was a man, a Boundary Lake officer.  Were they taken captive?” Alec asked.

The lacerta nodded again.  “Are they in this camp?” Alec asked him, and the officer shook his head no.

“Are they still alive?” Alec asked the question that he most feared.

“They are, as far as I know,” the officer spoke for the first time.

“Where can I find them?” Alec demanded, as he sighed in relief.

“They’ve been taken to the capital for questioning, to learn about the connection between the marked warriors on the southern front and now the ones we’ve seen here on the eastern front,” the officer said.  “The two who have gone running through our countryside, then her, and now you.”

“She and I have nothing to do with the rest of this,” Alec answered, pondering the knowledge that the lacerta had just shared.  “We happened to be in Boundary Lake without intent, not even aware there was war here until we arrived.  We’re chasing the other two, the first two you mentioned, as criminals we wish to bring to justice.

“Which way must I go to set my friend free?” Alec asked.  “I do not wish to fight your people, that’s not why I’m here,” he thought with regret of all the soldiers he had massacred by the granite wall.  “Which road is the road to Chanradala?”

“Sir, are you speaking to someone in there?” a guard’s voice asked loudly from the other side of the thick cloth door of the tent.

“No,” the officer said after a moment.

“Which road?” Alec hissed.  “Tell me and I’ll be gone.”

“West from here, the main road.  It goes all the way to Chanradala,” the lacerta replied, his eyes looking into Alec’s.

“Thank you,” Alec said.  He placed his sword in his scabbard, turned invisible, and pushed the canvas flap door of the tent open, then was gone from the officer’s tent and life, leaving the man wondering if he had hallucinated or dreamt the whole conversation.

Alec stood outside the tent, and looked up at the stars to get his bearings, then turned and headed west through the camp, threading in and out among the guards and tents and weapon stacks that barred his way.  He held onto his invisibility until he was out of the camp and on the road, then with a sigh of relief he dropped his use of the energy and began a straightforward journey through the wilderness in pursuit of Andi.

He was a week into the month he had left, the time until the next full moon, the deadline for him to administer the kiss to Andi that would save her life and restore his memories.  And he felt a growing yearning to rediscover those memories, to learn anew about the special bond he shared with the Black Crag guard.  Her devotion to him, both the love and the agony, seemed increasingly appealing, as something above and beyond the ordinary, romantic love he had known in the past, if romance could be called ordinary.  With every day that passed as he wandered through these unknown lands, he felt a wish to have such a love to hold on to, and Andi grew more appealing, because of her devotion and ability, to be that anchor his life could securely
attach to
.

He had no idea of how far the journey was to Chanradala.  It was time, he concluded, to press himself to the extreme limit of his abilities to travel across the land as quickly as possible to catch up with Andi.  It would be
far
better to find her on the road than to have to hunt for her through the endless mazes of the vastness that he remembered Chanradala covered.

He gathered himself together and delved into the power realm to seize the Warrior energy, then began to run along the dark road, empty in the wilderness and the middle of the night, so that there were no reasons to slow down or delay his trip.  He ran and ran through the mountains, following the road as it left the great plateau on which Boundary Lake sat, following the road as it climbed up from the plateau and began to curve around the mountains, rising higher as it searched for a ridge line to follow or a pass to save further altitude.  He kept running without thought, letting the energy from the Warrior realm power his body in its mindless race as his legs churned and his arms swung, and him mind distractedly thought about all that was at stake.

The lacertii officer had said that there were marked warriors on the southern front.  From the geography he knew during his life in Michian, Alec knew that the empire was the southern front to the lacertii.  And the marked warriors was a reference to the Warrior ingenairii, indicating that they were fighting the lacertii on the Michian border.  The lacertii were in another two front war again, and they faced another Michian invasion, one that included ingenairii.  That made some sense, or at least was consistent with the name of the Michian god that the Warrior in Boundary Lake had uttered as an expletive during their confrontation on the bridge.

That confrontation had been when he had set Andi free.  He had missed his opportunity to remove the prophesized threat that hung over her then, but now, as he sensed the sky behind him in the east begin to prepare for the arrival of dawn, he could finally complete that part of his duty.  Then he would face the problem of how to transport himself and her and possibly a captive Boundary Lake officer to safety from the middle of the lands of the hostile race of lacertii.  And beyond that challenge came the
other
goal he was set on, finding the Warriors who had kidnapped girls over the span of thousands of miles, and deliver
ing
justice to them.

Alec saw sunlight upon the landscape around him, and he saw signs of an inhabited settlement ahead, where smoke was rising from a chimney.  He would hope to get past that settlement, he told himself, then find a place where he could hide for the day and safely sleep.  He was exhausted from his night of traveling and energy use.

Alec split his powers, slowed down, and made himself invisible as he passed through the village that appeared to be part settlement and part military base.  On the other side of the village there were wide open pastures in which cattle, horses and sheep all had respective portions, and so Alec continued to run, dropping his invisibility once again along the empty road as he searched for any spot of dense wilderness where he could easily hide himself.  A half an hour later he was back in mountainous terrain, and he left the road.  He climbed up into a patch of fir trees in a steep gulley, and he finally released all the powers he used, so that he was without defense or disguise as he fell into an exhausted state of sleep.