The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities (25 page)

He awoke in the late afternoon, and ate a quantity of his travel food, starved from two or three skipped meals, he realized.  He drank water from a mountain spring, and listened to the wind blow in the trees overhead.  He still had no idea of how far he was from Chanradala, but he had covered a great deal of distance over the course of the night.  Perhaps, he hoped, he
had covered two or three days
equivalent of the travel Andi had covered, bringing him closer to catching up with her.  As he finished his meal, his mind drifted away from thoughts of the action of the pursuit
and back
to thoughts of his quarry, Andi
.

Andi was an attractive woman, he knew, and she was open, honest and energetic.  As he thought about her, for the first time in his memory he realized she was someone he wished he did love, and he wondered why he didn’t.  Her situation, trapped into being Spiritually tied to him, suddenly hit him with the realization of the full force of the tragic dimension it imposed on her, and he felt sorrow, sorrow for her and pity, and he felt real regret that he had not been better able to feel sympathy for the turmoil her soul felt.  He would do better for her, he promised himself.

Alec crept down to the edge of the road, looking for any sign of lacertii out and about.  There were none in sight, and he seized his Warrior energy to resume the rapid pace of his journey.  The road rolled through the terrain among the mountains, and there was little traffic for his first hour on the road, but then more and more travelers began to remain in constant sight, and Alec resorted to using his Light energy as well as his Warrior energy in order to travel unseen, dodging among the shepherds who tended flocks and the farmers who carried crops, or the carts of goods that occupied the road, evidence to Alec that he was approaching a major city.

Within half an hour the walls of the city were in view, and Alec decided he needed to change his tactics.  He wanted to question people regarding both the passage of human captives and regarding the correct road to Chanradala on the far side of the city.  He could ask no one anything if he was either visible as himself or invisible, so he decided to employ his Healer energies to make himself appear to be a lacerta.  He stopped and studied the features of the lacertii who passed by on the road.  Within his bubble of invisibility he created a shiny surface, a mirror like the one he had offered to Aja on the night she had received vision.

He studied his features closely as he darkened his skin, then roughened the texture.  He changed the shape of his eye sockets, increased the elongation, an
d withered away most of the eye
brows.  He looked down at his feet.  They were enclosed within the boots he wore, and certainly likely to remain hidden, so he did not reduce the number of toes he had on each foot.

He would pass inspection, he decided, dissipating the reflector.  He moved alongside a wagon, where he was blocked from the view of everyone else on the road, then dropped his invisibility, and began to walk with the traffic into the city.  Traffic ground to a halt at the gate, where every vehicle was subject to inspection and every lacerta was subject to interrogation.

Knowing that he would fail miserably at creating a false explanation, Alec turned himself invisible, drawing muffled gasps from behind him, and then he threaded his way through the line of waiting entrants to the city, and slid past the guards undetected, gaining entry into the city streets.

The quality of the city matched the vague memories he held of the long-ago visits he had made to the lacertii capital city.  The streets were mostly narrow, except for a few wide boulevards, and the buildings were almost all dark in color, creating an atmosphere that struck Alec as oppressive.  He walked westward on the boulevard that extended into the city from the gate he had snuck through, and tried to decide on the best means of gathering information.

Ultimately, he decided to be bold, and he entered a building that appeared to be a police station.  “I’m from the country,” he introduced himself to a policeman in the building’s entry hall.  The lacerta wore a green uniform that Alec hoped meant police; it, and the club he carried, were commonly worn by many lacertii he watched enter and leave the building.

“Where?  How far?  What village?” the lacerta asked immediately.  “You’ve got quite an accent, not that you need anything more to stand out, as big as you are.”

“East of here, far east, almost to the war front,” Alec explained.  “I saw some human captives taken past our home a few days ago, and the soldiers said they were going to be brought to Chanradala.

“Did they come through here, and if so, how long ago?” Alec asked.
             

“Sure, the army paraded the captives through here three days ago.  It was a parade!  Them chained to a stake on top of a wagon, everyone in the streets throwing stones and filth at them.  We don’t catch the marked warriors often, and that’s the first one they’ve caught out east.  They’re on their way to Chanradala, no doubt, probably be there in another day or two,” the lacerta was garrulous in his response.  “What’s it matter to you though?”

“My brother was killed in the war, and I want revenge,” Ale
c
replied.  He had anticipated the need for a reason to be chasing the captives, and developed one, although it seemed weak.  He didn’t care how sensible it sounded, as long as it was accepted.

“We’ve all lost family in these wars, my friend, but you won’t get any revenge trying to fight one of the marked ones, believe me, even a chained one.  You go on home and tend to your family now,” he said in a kindly tone, dismissing Alec.

With a nod, Alec left the building and resumed following the road west through the city.  He stopped at a street vendor and confirmed that the road he was on would lead out of town and towards the capital.  He had no lacertii money, so he could buy nothing from the vendor to thank him for his help, but continued on through the city.  He drew stares as he went, but he accepted that as the state of the world, beyond being helped; as the policeman had noted, Alec was big.  He was above average in height among humans, and his height had not changed when he altered his appearance.  Among the lacertii he was far above the normal height and weight; he’d not seen anyone on the streets any taller than he was.

There was no reason for him to be overly cautious about standing out in the city he was in, he decided.  He was almost out of the city now, not likely to return to the place, and would in any event outrun news about himself.  He exited the city gates shortly thereafter, not long after noon, and he started running, using his ingenairii abilities to rush past the other traffic on the road, knowing that by the end of the day he would be two days or more in front of those travelers he passed.

In the middle of the afternoon Alec entered a heavy rainstorm, one that created puddles, slippery spots along the road, and poor visibility as he squinted his eyes and kept his head down.  Water streamed off of him as he continued to run along the road that
grew
nearly deserted during the downpour, and only the occasional streaks of lightening helped illuminate the view he had of the long road in front of him.  There were no further mountains to climb, only rolling hills and spreads of flat fields.  The land appeared to be a prosperous one, with many farms scattered among and between the small villages he flew through.

In the city he had stopped in, the officer had indicated that Andi was only three days ahead of Alec.  As night fell, Alec was sure he had made up at least one of those days during his afternoon jaunt, despite the rain’s reduction in his speed.  He continued running in the night, and boldly created illumination for himself, throwing caution further aside in favor of shining a small light in front of him to show any obstacles in the road.  Three hours after darkness fell the rain finally stopped, but the road began to climb a long, constant slope.  In the darkness Alec could not see a wide enough view to tell how high or far the hills extended, but he continued on until he felt his energy begin to diminish in intensity.  He was near a farmstead, and he let himself into the barn, then climbed into the hayloft above the livestock, and fell soundly asleep, comfortable in the hay, and comforted to learn that a lacerta’s barn was much like a human’s barn.

When Alec awoke in the morning he ate more of his food stores, aware that he had too little to last much longer, especially if he soon reached Andi and needed to feed her and the Boundary Lake captive as well.   It was a problem to put aside until it was real and immediate, he decided, as he climbed down from the loft and left the barn behind.  He immediately engaged his Warrior energy and began to speed down the road once again, up early enough to be on the way before many other travelers.  He flew along, passing mile after mile in his chase to find Andi, and his mind idly pondered how they would interact when reunited.  He would be kinder towards her; he fe
lt almost affectionate now, as h
e better understood her predicament, and he hoped that in feeling his affection, she would be comforted.

But he had to catch her first.  Within two hours there was more traffic on the road.  The landscape was visible in the growing daylight, and he could see that the road wound among numerous valleys set amidst tall hills – not quite mountains, but a challenging topography to cross.  The road continued to climb, and it wasn’t until noon that he reached the crest of the chain of hills.  When he reached the high ridge the road followed, he slowed down to a normal walking pace, dropping his use of his energy.  He wanted time to absorb the view; from the crest he was walking along, the road descended in a long, long gradual slope, dropping a distance of more than a quarter of a mile, he guessed, into a wide lengthy valley.  And within the valley sprawled the great urban growth of Chanradala.  He had reached the outskirts of the capitol, and had only to begin to look for Andi, the needle in the haystack of the city.  Despite his efforts and hopes, he had not caught up with her before she was engulfed in the lacertii ocean.

Alec re-engaged his energies, and ran down the long winding road, sometimes jumping down the switchbacks, leaving the other travelers along the route shouting in excitement, surprise and outrage as he passed them easily.  Within three hours Alec was at the floor of the valley, and among the scattered buildings that stretched among the fields and the farms
, and uneasy
co-existence
with the haphazard growth of buildings from the city.  He ceased his use of powers once again, and stopped in at a general store, to question the proprietor.

“Where are you from?  Are they all giants like you?” the man asked.

“I’m from a village in the far east, and I’m big for my village,” Alec answered easily.  “I heard there were captive humans, one with a mark, being brought to the city, and I wanted to see what they look like.  Have they come past here?” he asked directly.

“Just this morning,” the lacerta replied.  “They should be inside the city gates by now.  You may have missed the show, I’m afraid.”

Alec thanked the shopkeeper, and went back to the road, where he decided to be reckless, and used his energy once again to propel himself at a high pace, weaving in and out among the many other travelers, relieved that he was not far behind.  He advanced much more slowly than at any time previously, but he gained hours compared to the rest of the traffic once again, and an hour later he reached the city gates.

The gate was a massively constructed portal to the city that lay within the walls.  Much of what he had seen outside the walls was as dense as a city for that matter.  The gate was actually four gates, large enough to accommodate a high flow of traffic, but still not large enough for all that strained to enter the capitol of the lacertii.

Alec made himself invisible and pressed forward through the thick-packed crowd, jostling and bumping, causing confusion as he went, but determined to enter the city directly.  He cut to his left at the last moment, as the guards began to take notice of all the consternation he had raised in line, and he entered through the relatively empty exit gate, unseen and untouched.

He stepped into a shadowed alley entrance and allowed his Light energy to drop, becoming visible.  He picked up his Warrior energy once again, at a low, precautionary level, and then went into the bustling flow of traffic in search of clues to the whereabouts of Andi and the other captive.

A food market was not far from the gates he had entered.  Alec stopped there, sure that the vendors would be a good source of news and gossip.

“Have you seen the human captives they brought into the city?” Alec asked a lacerta man who was selling cuts of meat.

“They came past here just an hour ago.  Ugly looking thing, pale and pasty and repulsive, if you ask me,” the vendor told him.

“Which way did they take them?  I’d like to catch a glimpse,” Alec asked.

“They went that way, towards Chrimsabbra,” the vendor replied, then turned to help a paying customer.

Alec turned to his left and began walking in the direction indicated, hustling to pass others along the road, though not making such an obvious spectacle of his speed.  He traveled for an hour without finding anything resembling the forbidding fortress he remembered.  Finally he stopped at a shop selling baskets, and asked for directions to Chrimsabbra.

“That way,” the proprietor director with a point back in the direction he had come.

“How far that way?” Alec asked for clarification.