The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities (28 page)

Alec remembered the size of the contingent he had been traveling with in the far mountains on the other side of the Twenty Cities.  He was shocked by the thought of lifting so much material for any distance, and he suddenly felt a longing for the restoration of his memories.

“We could fly up there,” he said.  ‘I don’t remember flying down over Oolitan, but I don’t think there would be any problem if we climbed up the trail until darkness fell, then flew the rest of the way.  There’d be just the two of us,” he appraised the prospect of the journey.  So they trudged on relentlessly, and began the climb up the trail when no other lacertii deigned to start the upward journey.  The mountainside was already steeped in heavy shadows as the sun set on the far side of the Pale Mountains, where the Dominion would still be enjoying the late day sunshine, Alec realized.

The pair of ingenairii lacertii climbed steadily upward as the valley below them grew darker and darker, and began to twinkle with lamps and torches in windows of buildings and along the streets.  “We can stop,” Alec said a few minutes later.  “Hold still,” he told Andi, then applied Healing energy to alleviate the exhaustion that they each felt in the back of their thighs.

“That is almost as good as the massages you give,” Andi told him playfully as he removed his hands from her hams and wrapped his arms around her. 

“Are you ready to go?” he asked, and before she even answered, Alec established the disk of air beneath them, then lifted them upward.

“Oh, Alec!” Andi clutched at him tightly as they sped upward, rising far above the valley floor.
  “Did I mention that I didn’t enjoy flying over Oolitan?”

Alec looked down at her face, and saw in her brave determination and her lacertii features as much to desire a
s any woman had tempted him in
uncounted years.  Her eyes recognized his longing, and she closed her eyes, just before he began to
kiss
her, his lacerta mouth pressed against hers.

They held each other and kissed passionately during an endless embrace, until Andi opened her eyes and saw the dark sky above and behind Alec’s head.  She abruptly pulled away from him and looked around.  The sky was black, and the stars barely twinkled.  The sunset had become visible again, a thin, red, curving line on a far-off horizon below them.

“Alec!  Alec!  Where are we going?” she asked, holding
onto
him tightly.

He opened his eyes at last, and saw the predicament he had created as he had allowed his Air energy to propel them upward unimpeded and uncontrolled while his passion had focused all his attention on Andi.  He stopped the continuing climb, and instead set them on a gradual glide towards the west.  They fell slowly at an angle, as Alec’s attention focused on the patterns of small lights that provided an indication of where below within the dark mountainous mass the road towards the Dominion ran.  He flew them through the chilly air as they passed above mile after mile, while the long, fingers of his hands unintentionally massaged small circles in the muscles of Andi’s back.

When they finally touched down on the surface of the road, there was no telling how far they had traveled.  The road was in the center of a lacertii village in the Pale Mountains, a village whose dim lights had guided Alec to his target, and
one
that smelled strongly of livestock.  They walked away from the lights and remained on the road for another half hour, until they found themselves in a pitch dark stretch of road where little starlight illuminated their way.

“We can spend the night here,” Alec suggested.  They hiked off the road’s surface and into the forest that climbed the hilly surroundings.  Alec opened up a small cave in a cliff along a small stream, and then he heated up a number of stones to create warmth in the darkness, and finally hung a small ball of light upon the ceiling of their chamber.

“Would you like something to eat?” he asked as he squatted over the pack of dwindling supplies he carried.

“I’m famished,” Andi replied enthusiastically, as Alec laid out his assortment of dried fruits and meats and crusty travel bread.

They each ate in silence, Andi ravenously and Alec thoughtfully. “It was completely dark out there in the sky,” he mentioned at last.

“Yes,” Andi agreed, looking at him inquisitively.

“That means it’s a new moon, so the full moon is two weeks away,” he explained.  “That’s when I’ll recover my memories, if I kiss you by the full moon with the special salve on each of our lips.”

“Ah,” Andi understood at last.

“I’d like to practice for it some more,” Alec said with a crooked grin.  “Just to make sure we can do it right.  What would you say if I were to convert us back into human form, so that we have full lips to practice with?”

“But what about when we travel tomorrow?  Are you going to turn us back into lacertii again in the morning?”  Andi asked.

I think that if we use our Warrior abilities, and remain invisible, we could run perhaps all the way out of lacertii lands by the end of tomorrow, or perhaps the next day. 

“And in the meantime, we could practice,” he told her. 

She studied him.  “I’ll say yes, of course.
”
 

There was a moment of introspection, before she added, “
I just marvel at the way your spirit has turned around in your affection for me, even without your memories being restored.  Thank you, my love.”

“I’m a practical man,” he protested.  “What man wouldn’t be in love with a beautiful woman who also happens to be a Warrior ingenaire, capable of attacking with deadly force at any moment?”

She shot an elbow into his ribs.

“Just like that,” he tried to have the last word, before Andi pushed him backwards and sat atop him, looking down sternly.  “Now get to work on this change!” she ordered.

Alec focused his healing energies on their bodies, and slowly reconverted them each back to their human form, so that they could spent the night comfortably together.

In the morning time Alec and Andi ate all but a few pieces of the remaining food supplies, then left their cave and returned to the road.  A lacerta boy was driving a herd of goats along the way.  “I’ll create the bubble of invisibility,” Alec informed Andi, as she stood behind him, her fingers idly scratching his back.  “It’s not big enough for us to separate by any great distance, so stay on my heels.  I won’t go as fast as possible if I split my abilities between the powers, so don’t expect to push your limit.”  And with that last set of instructions he burst out of the bushes by the side of the road and began the race to the border of the lacertii lands.  The lacertii shepherd noticed the motion of the bushes, and a pair of his goats bleated plaintively seconds later, but nothing
further occurred to distract the boy
from his daydream as he kept the sheep moving to the marketplace.

Alec and Andi ran with easy, loping strides, not slowing when rain moved in.  They passed only farms and villages in the morning, but as the sun rose to someplace directly overhead, above and behind the thin clouds that continued to release a soft drizzle upon the land, they began to pass units of the lacertii army on the road, or others that were maintaining bases along the way.  Throughout the afternoon they had to weave their way around other traffic, both civilian and military, and at sunset they came to a heavily maintained roadblock, the apparent extent of lacertii control over the boundary with either the Dominion or the unclaimed wilderness.

The two ingenairii slowed to a walk to squeeze around the barriers that prevented the visible passage of travelers, and then jogged for a few more minutes in the increasingly dim valley that the road followed.  “We’re free, Andi!” Alec said exuberantly, when he no longer sensed any lacertii patrols within any proximity of them.  “We’re in lands not controlled by the lacertii!  We don’t have to set any girls free!  All we have to do is hunt down a pair of Warriors and then we’ll be free to decide what to do next.”  He reached over and squeezed her hand in joy, then dropped his invisibility and slowed to a walk, content to end the day in a relaxed state.

“Let’s find a cave and call it a day,” Andi suggested, squeezing his hand in response.  They left the road and climbed up the side of a mountain to a location where Alec excavated a deep cavern for them.  They both went out and gathered tinder and fallen timber so that Alec could start a proper fire at Andi’s insistence, and they pulled in a pile of yew and fir branches to provide some bedding.

After they had everything settled and they reclined upon their soft nest of branches as the fire crackled, Alec brought out the last of the food they had.  “After tonight we’ll have to start scavenging.  I went down the river the first time eating almost nothing but roots and fish.  Raw roots, boiled roots, roasted roots – I thought I’d never have to eat roots again.”

“Can’t you just make a wild boar jump into the fire and roast himself for us?” Andi asked.  “You’ve done just about everything else on this journey.”

“It has been an unusual journey,” Alec said reflectively.  “So much has happened, and I don’t even remember parts of it.”

“Let me show you something I want you to remember,” Andi said, rolling over against him, and the two of them paid no attention to anything but each other until they fell asleep.

Chapter 17
– John Mark’s Cave

At noon the next day Alec and Andi arrived at the Riverside bridge.  There was no evidence of any city having ever existed on the far bank, and Alec chose not to cross to look any closer.  “I was so young when I came here Andi,” he said softly.  “I didn’t know anything about lacertii or ingenairii
,
or even about girls!” he ended with a grin at his companion.

“Let’s start going along the riverbank to see if we can find some food,” he suggested.  He had a goal he wanted to reach – the Cave of John Mark.  They were only a short distance away from reaching the one location that Alec would think of as home, no matter where he lived or who he loved.

In the course of their journey along the game trails in the river bottoms Alec used his throwing knives to kill a young boar, and he carried the carcass with him until he arrived at the familiar mouth to a gully, with an hour of sunlight remaining.  The glade of fir trees were gone, the spot where he and Natalie and Aristotle had camped, but Alec delved into the stony side of
the mountain and created a rude
, shallow cave.  Then he carved apart the boar’s carcass while Andi gathered firewood, and he told her what to expect in the morning when they awoke and went to visit John Mark’s cave.   They posted no guard after eating their meal, the first meal of hot meat either had had since leaving Boundary Lake, and both slept soundly during the night.

The morning brought the sound of heavy rainfall outside their cavern entrance, and Alec awoke to find Andi sitting at the mouth of the cave, watching the moisture from the sky refresh the greenery all around them.  “You still plan for us to go today, even in this weather, don’t you?” she asked as she felt Alec stir into consciousness.

“Believe me, getting a little wet in the rain won’t seem like a problem, and you will find the journey to be one of the greatest events of your life,” Alec affirmed.  He stood and stretched and came to stand next to her.  “Let’s get going,” he held a hand out to help her rise.

“Without your sword?  No knives?” Andi asked.

“None are allowed in the cave,” Alec answered, and they stepped out into the cool rain to begin the journey.

They started the journey up the ravine, which was gushing a steady flow of water on its way down to join the Giffey River.  Alec discovered none of the
crafted
stones he had seen scattered and broken on his first trip up the ravine; the centuries of further floods and debris had covered them or washed them away.  But the two travelers came to the fork in the waterway, and Alec took the smaller route on the right without hesitation.  It led eventually to the sma
ll bowl-shaped dell that still
provided access to the same nearly-subterranean passage that gloomily wound about and came to the shelf on the mountainside.

The details of the way to the cave remained firmly etched in Alec’s memories, even after so many years between visits, and he reached up to the exact spot where his fingers found the handholds chiseled into the stone of the cliff.  He guided Andi’s fingers to them, and boosted her upward with a familiarly-placed hand to push, which she commented on, then he followed her and joined her in observing the round door that beckoned them inward. At his insistence they removed their boots.

“Go on Andi,” he encouraged her.  “You go first.  Open the door and go in.  I’ll be right behind you.”

She looked at his face with searching eyes.  “I remember your memories of this Alec.  I can feel how much it means to you,” she told him.  She kissed him chastely on the cheek, then walked forward and opened the door.  Alec watched in rapture as she stepped into the chamber, then stopped all movement and froze in place as the pure waters of the cave drenched her wi
th a calming, cleansing bath.  Bringing her to this place
was his greatest gift to her, he thought, no matter what might come after this.