The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities (39 page)

Alec awoke with a start the next morning, the bright window showing him the arrival of a new day.  He cleaned up quickly and then went in search of Duke Remton, who he found meeting with a dozen advisors.

“Your grace,” Alec interrupted.

“My lord,” Remton replied.  “It’s good to know that you and Tonshire have returned.”

Alec started at the mention of Lady Tonshire; he had left her in Stronghold, he realized.

“The lady will be back very soon,” Alec answered.  “I’ll return to Stronghold to fetch her home as soon as I ask a favor.  I have not been able to find my companion, Andi, nor do I sense her presence.  Could you ask your guards to thoroughly search the palace to locate her this morning?”  he asked.

The duke agreed, and Alec immediately returned to Stronghold, arriving at the apartment where he had left his companions the night before, only to discover it empty.  Alec left the building and discovered pandemonium in the streets, with shouting, dancing, and fighting all taking place in a chaotic mix of activity.

“What’s happening?” Alec grabbed a teenage boy on the street and asked.

“Are you stupid, old man?” the boy asked disrespectfully.  “The sorceresses, the lieutenant, the ingenairii – they’re all dead!  Everyone is free!” the boy wriggled from Alec’s grasp and went down the street.

“Where is the new ruler?” Alec asked a matronly woman, shouting to be heard.

“They’re all down by the river,” she answered, motioning vaguely.

Alec left her and began to push his way through the mobs of people on the street.  The going was slow, and at last Alec resorted to raising himself on a disk of air, so that he could fly over the tops of people and buildings, drawing shouts and screams, but successfully making his way to the riverfront in a matter of seconds.

“Where is Chair Woodbine?” Alec asked several people, drawing varying directions that eventually led him to a large hall that was crowded with people.

Entry into the hall was difficult, but Alec managed to push his way in, until he reached a security check manned by one of the guards he had recruited the evening before.  “Where is Lady Tonshire?” Alec asked.

“She’s with the other ladies and guests, in the third room on the left,” the guard replied, allowing Alec entry to a hallway.  At the designated door he found Tonshire with Gwendolyne and Christine, in addition to several other ladies.

“Would you like to return to Goldenfields now?” Alec asked.

“I’ve had a very exciting time here, and I’m so glad to see the change that is taking place in Stronghold, but I am ready to return to my family,” Tonshire agreed.  “I’ll come again someday to see the city and all the sights,” she promised Gwendolyne, “even if I must travel by more conventional means,” she laughed as she eyed Alec.

“Please tell Linnear that I will return soon to find out how I can help,” Alec told Gwendolyne, and with that last promise he and Tonshire were transported back to his room in Goldenfields.

“Welcome home, my lady, and thank you for your help,” Alec told his companion.  Together they walked down to see Duke Remton.

“Here is your daughter, your grace,” Alec announced.

“Thank you, and please be assured that we will find your partner if she is to be found in the palace.  We have two dozen people looking for her,” the Duke replied.  Alec joined the search, and continued to call her name with both his voice and his spirit, but by mid-afternoon the search was complete, and Andi was not to be found on the palace island.

In response to several requests, Alec took up the training and oversight that Andi had been occupied with.  The last time she had been seen had been when she had passed out during training, after she had been affected by Alec’s encounter with the sorceress in Stronghold.  Alec carried out the training, wishing he could relish the comfort and the irony of being in charge of Guard training at Goldenfields, where his own training with a sword had begun.  But instead his mind obsessed over Andi, trying to fathom what could have happened to her, hoping to deduct some new location he could search for her.

That evening Alec ate in the common mess that had been set up for the fledgling new guard
s
, sitting alone at a table as he brooded over Andi, still sending out periodic calls with faint hopes that she would awaken from some strange sleep and respond.  At length, with no success in his search, Alec left the mess hall with a lantern and went to the infirmary, an empty, abandoned building whose furnishings were piled against one wall, coated in dust.

He pulled the heap of furniture apart and set up a pair of bed frames, placing them where the beds had been located at the time he had treated Duke Toulon and Inga in the infirmary, in those long-ago days of his youth.  He lay on one uncomfortable frame, without a mattress, and thought about the long strange journey he had taken with Andi.  She had simply been another face in the crowd, albeit a pretty one, at the time he had met her as a member of a squad of Black Crag guards, and then she had been a traveling companion on the way to Ridgeclimb, helping to provide some escort duty for the traders they had traveled with.  And all the way from Ridgeclimb to the Twenty Cities she had been a member of his group, and the companion he had most relied on for her Black Crag martial skills and training, but no more.

Not until Woven, when he had made the decision to save her life, had she been more to him than another person on the journey.  And then, when his extraordinary efforts had saved her life after her heroic fight on behalf of their companions, all that had changed.  A single event had led to them arriving at their personal unity, given them the deep bond and the special relationship that had changed everything, and made him appreciate the girl’s depth of character and tenacity.  He had found himself immersed in her and in love with her.  There had been the long interlude when all the love and knowledge had been sheared away by his brain injury, and then, triumphantly, the memories and the love had been restored.

It had been a terrible, daily burden for Andi when she had loved and known him while he had not returned the affection, Alec knew.  And now he felt a shadow of her pain.  He didn’t feel the equivalent of the rejection she had felt from him, but he suffered from her absence.  His soul wanted the comfort and reassurance of feeling the palpable connection to her, but there was only
emptiness
at the other end of that connection now.  And there was the fearful unease of not knowing when the uncertainty would be resolved.  He lay on the frame, feeling a wooden support slat cut into his thigh, and wished that there was at least some way to know when there would be an answer to the uncertainty.  He needed a prophet to give him some clue, cryptic as the prophets were at times.

Kinset!  He suddenly realized that he had a prophet he could ask.  Kinset was in Stronghold, and Kinset seemed to prophesize about Alec’s affairs in particular.  Alec could make the journey to Stronghold in the morning and ask Kinset about Andi’s location and future.  It was a relaxing thought, an answer to the black chasm of the unknown, and it helped Alec to ignore the discomfort of the bed frame and fall asleep in the infirmary.

Alec awoke early in the morning, before the sun had arisen.  He washed himself in the palace, then launched himself to Stronghold, arriving there as the sky was beginning to brighten with the arrival of daybreak.  The streets were quiet, and Alec walked within the city, assessing the conditions as he waited for full morning to arrive, when he judged he could find Kinset for a conversation.

The city was unsettled, Alec could tell.  His Spirit energies allowed him to sense the hope and uncertainty that most waking people felt.  He would come back to help the new leaders of the city, he told himself, once he found Andi.  There was a long list of things to do: help settle Stronghold and Goldenfields into secure new regimes, overthrow the viceroy in Oyster Bay, attack the sorcerers in Michian, and find and finally punish the last surviving Warrior ingenaire who had begun the whole series of events by leading the kidnapping sojourn through the eastern lands.  But first and foremost there was the search for Andi.

An hour later, Alec stood outside the entrance to the hall where he had found Tonshire the day before.  Turning invisible, he entered the hall and then made himself visible again.  He was thankful that his energies were restored to his fullest ability after a day without strenuous use, for it gave him the confidence to be ready to do whatever Kinset
might
indicate he would have to do to find his love.

He found Gwendolyne and Christine, just beginning their day.  They welcomed him back to Stronghold, and took him to the morning meeting room, where Linnear and his father were eating breakfast with advisors.

“At last!” Linnear exclaimed.  “Father, this is the king who has returned!  This is Alec, who brought us back to Stronghold and defeated our opponents.”  He stood next to his father, a stout man with shrewd eyes, who looked Alec over, then bowed to him.

“We are thankful my lord,” Chair Woodbine spoke to Alec.  “We are thankful for the freedom you have offered us.  Even more, we are thankful for the reunion of our family.  We could have not done it ourselves, and even if we had the ability, I think we had fallen too far into fear to attempt such a thing on our own.

“Is it true that Goldenfields is also independent once again?” he asked.

“It is true,” Alec assured him.  “And
beginning already to build its
own guard.  The transporters are all disabled for many weeks.  Once I carry out a personal errand that is my next mission, I will go to Oyster Bay and lead the overthrow of the Viceroy as well, so that we can give the whole Dominion back its freedom.

“But first I would like to speak with the Spirit ingenaire who came to Stronghold with us,” Alec looked at Linnear.  “Do you know where Kinset is?”

“He spend the night with us again last night.  He was very helpful yesterday, helping us sort the good-hearts from the guards with dark spirits, as you did before,” Linnear answered.  He motioned to an aide nearby, and sent the man to find and bring Kinset to the meeting room.

Alec sat at a side table and listened to the discussion about shipping and collecting the trading fees, until Kinset walked into the room, following the aide who had been sent for him.

“I knew you would want to see me soon,” Kinset told Alec as they shook hands.  Alec motioned him out of the room and they went to a separate space.

“Do you know where she is?” Alec asked as soon as the door closed behind them.  “Is she safe?”

“Your beloved is in danger, but her fate is not yet decided,” Kinset told Alec.  “She was spirited away to Michian.  If you go there you will find her, but you may lose your powers in the process of searching for her, and you will face a great opponent.

“I do not understand it all, but that is the prophecy I feel in my heart,” Kinset told Alec.

“How could she have been taken to Michian?” Alec asked, gripping Kinset’s hand in a desperate hold.  “The restorers are virtually all disabled, and even if they weren’t, who would know to look in Goldenfields to find her, and why would they?”

“Your answers are in Michian,” Kinset told Alec.

“I understand,” Alec said.  “I know you’re only passing to me the things you learn.  I don’t blame you for anything; I’m really very happy that we met.  You’ve been a great help,” Alec told the Spirit ingenaire.  “You’ve given me a direction to look in, and I’m thankful.”

“But there is danger for you as well,” Kinset warned.  “Be very careful before you do anything foolish or rash.”

“Thank you Kinset,” Alec said warmly, touched by the prophet’s concern.  “I will be careful.  And I will rescue Andi – nothing can stop me.  Give my regards to Linnear, and let him know I will return when I can.”

“My lord,” Alec addressed the Duke of Goldenfields a half hour later, upon his return to the other newly freed city.  “I have been told that Andi has been taken to Michian somehow.”  He held up his hand to forestall the protest about the impossibility of such a thing.  “I don’t know how it happened, or who did it, but I am going there to set her free.  And when that is done, the two of us will return to Goldenfields to help you.  Stronghold is free of the ingenairii as well, so you have an ally you can work with against Oyster Bay if you need one soon.”

Alec immediately took his leave of Remton, and went up to his own room, where he packed a bag of supplies, then engaged his Traveler energy to move step-by-step towards Michian.  He traveled first to the Saltcrust, the empty Bondell fortress set high upon a towering pinnacle of stone.  He made the next jump to southern Bondell, again stopping at the bridge over the Ravinia River.  From there he made his next transport through space and landed in a small glade behind the Canare clan’s enclave.

He sat and rested under the ancient trees that surrounded a small pond, and contemplated what he would do next.  He could imagine only two places where Andi could be hidden in the city, only two places that might have the power to somehow overcome and remove her.  One was the palace, where it was possible a restorer had escaped his poison, and was still able to travel, and happened to have the ability to travel to Goldenfields.  The other was the central temple of the sorcerers and sorceresses; at least he assumed there was a reconstituted central temple, as there had been long ago, before he had stormed and ravaged the structure, slaying and driving out as many demon-callers as he could when he had been consort to the empress, so long ago.