Preserving the Ingenairii (23 page)

            The use of the energy was wearing him down already, after just a few patients.  He sat down to rest, when a man came to see him.  “That man said you healed his daughter.  Can you come over to look at my son?  I know it’s too late for him, but if you could ease his pain, that’s all I’m asking,” the man pleaded with a heartfelt catch in his voice.

            “Is he far?” Alec asked as he stood to rise.

            “Just a minute over here,” the man said, gently tugging on his shoulder.

            Alec followed the man along the road, where many people were now falling out along the roadside to sleep for the night, the sounds of children whimpering and adults crying diminishing as exhaustion caused them all to sleep.  The man stopped next to two boys, one the age of the body Alec now had,
the
other slightly younger.   The older boy was on the ground, moaning, and the removal of a wad of cloth showed a nasty, bleeding stab wound in his stomach.

            “He tried to protect Ailan, and a thug stabbed him this morning.  We’ve carried him all day,” the father explained. 

            Alec saw damage to the liver and kidney and internal bleeding, as well as infection setting in.  The boy was in bad shape indeed, and a brave one to not be screaming loudly in pain.  Alec placed both hands over the wound, and released his powers, noticing as he did so that his right hand tingled slightly, in a way that he guessed suggested an uneven distribution of his energy.

            Experimentally, Alec removed his left hand, and allowed the right hand to solely provide the healing energy to the wounded boy, sealing off the punctures to the organs, and draining away the blood that was pooling.  The energy flowed smoothly, to Alec’s surprise, as he realized that this body was right-handed, and functioned best when used that way, despite what he expected to do.  Alec healed up the laceration on the skin and stopped his work, leaving a scar that he suspected would always remain.  He felt the need to save his energy after such a comprehensive healing.

            “Your son needs to sleep tonight, and give him assistance tomorrow.  Feed him meat if you can find any, he lost a lot of blood.  He’ll pass that tonight and tomorrow by the way, so don’t be alarmed,” Alec told the father.  “Good luck,” he said with exhaustion, turning to leave.

            “What’s your name, doctor?  You have carried out a miracle.  You’ve done more than we thought anyone could do,” the man hugged his younger son tight.  “We’ll do anything you want for the rest of our lives.”

            “My name’s Alec,” Alec replied without thinking.  “You just take care of each other.  That’s all I want you to do.”

            “That’s awfully mature advice for someone so young,” the father replied.  “And it’s good advice.  We’ll take it, but we’ll be ready to help you any time, any way.”

            Alec wearily nodded his thanks, and left the family behind.  He was musing about the strange preference his body had for its right hand.  He drew his sword from its scabbard with his left hand, and swung it experimentally, cutting, thrusting and parrying,
then
he flipped it to his right hand, and began again.

            The saber felt heavy in both hands, evidence again, Alec realized, that the arms he now had were not strong.  But the right hand movements felt smoother than the left-handed movements.  Standing alone in the dark in the middle of an empty spot in the road, Alec tried to engage his warrior powers.  He closed his eyes again to find his way between the barriers, and as he did, he had a momentary recollection of Moriah sitting with him on Rubicon’s porch, training him to engage his powers with his eyes open.

            But that was fifty years ago now, Moriah was possibly dead, and he was far away from Ingenairii Hill.

            His warrior powers inhabited the image he created, and he returned to the world of the Dominion.  His powers were reduced.  He knew he did not have the ability to pull the energy he formerly had, but whether that was a case of fatigue, or like left-handedness, something different about this body, he did not know.

            Alec opened his eyes, and adjusted the scabbard to the left hip so he could draw it with his right.  His senses were enhanced, and he could hear and see the details of the world around him, something that was nearly overwhelming in this unprepared body.

            “Where has Gordon gone?” he heard Nestor ask.

            “It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Stracha answered, apparently not too fond of this person he formerly had been.

            “He held up well today,” Constanc answered.  “I thought he was dead in the back of the wagon this morning.”

            “He was dead,” the leader’s voice spoke.  Alec had not heard the man’s name yet.  “You all saw his body, right?  There was no heartbeat, no brain activity.  I don’t know what happened to him or why, but he’s not the same boy this afternoon as he was yesterday when he got lost in the energy.”

            “What happened to him there?” Stracha asked.

            “I don’t know.  I’ve heard stories about apprentices who wander away and never return.  There was one in the stone house when I was an apprentice on the Hill.  His body lasted for days before it passed.  I’ve never heard of someone being out of body for that long and coming back though,” the leader said.  “You’ll have to ask him if you want to know.”

            There was a silent pause.  Alec heard another voice, from a different direction, away from the ingenairii.  “You four go that way, and take out the guard when you hear my yell.  We’ll take out the near one.  You can kill the male healers if they resist, but we want to capture the females; they’ll bring a good price from Michian.”

            Alec felt horrified at the thought of ambushing and capturing healer ingenairii to sell as slaves.  “Constance, Nestor!  Watch out!  There’s an attack coming!  Someone’s attacking the healers!” he shouted loudly.  With his warrior powers feebly engaged, Alec ran towards the small fire that he knew was the healers’ campsite.

Chapter 19 – The First Battle

            A voice shouted out, “Who said that?” and as Alec approached, he heard the clash of steel on steel as swordplay began.  Alec spotted the cluster of four ingenairii together with two guards on either side.  As he reached the scene, the guard closest to him was brutally skewered, and the girls in the center cluster screamed at the sight of the sword-pierced body.

            Alec raised his sword and slashed down on the neck of one attacker, severing his head, and swung his blade back upwards through the forearm of another attacker.  He hacked down again on a third member of the attackers, but his sword became stuck in between the ribs of his victim, and slipped from his grasp as the body collapsed.

            There were no other foes on his side of the camp, so reaching down he picked up a dead man’s knife and hurled it across the way, striking an assailant in the throat.  Alec scooped up a sword, and heard a new chorus of screams as the ingenairii recognized what was happening.  With a few swift steps he was beside the remaining guard, and together they killed the remaining three attackers.

            Alec looked down at the dead bodies splayed across the ground.  He released his warrior energies, and felt the total exhaustion of over-exertion strike him.  His knees buckled, and he slumped down, then fell face forward, still conscious but unable to support himself.

            The girls continued to scream, and then there were shouts and screams from others who were camped in the area, unsettled by the outbreak of violence in the lawless domains of the refugees.  “Harry!  Help me carry him over by the fire,” Alec heard the leader call.  Hands grabbed him and rolled him over, then picked him up and laid him down near the campfire.

           
“Healers!
  Are you alright?” Alec heard several voices calling.

            “We’re fine,” Nestor’s voice replied loudly.  “Nobody tries to harm ingenairii and lives to tell!”

            “Lord
help
us!  Look at his arms – he’s got healer and warrior marks!” Alec heard Stracha exclaim, and he felt fingers touching his forearms.  “He’s Alec come again!” he heard and with that he passed out.

            Alec awoke with a terrible headache.  He blinked his eyes,
then
raised a hand to shield them from the sunlight that was filtering down through a leafy canopy overhead.  He heard the sound of traffic moving nearby, and in the distance he heard the noise of a battlefield.  “Oh, my head hurts,” he said out loud, not certain where he was or what was happening.

            “Bring some willow bark tea!” a girl’s voice shouted loudly next to him, and he winced at the pain of the shrill sound penetrating his skull.

            Suddenly memory came flooding back to him.  He was no longer locked in the horrific combat with the demon in the ingenairii realm.  He was no longer Alec.

            A hand brushed the hair off his forehead, and he opened his eyes again to look.  Both the female healers, Stracha and Constanc, were hovering next to him.  “Please help me sit up,” he requested.  Each girl placed hands behind his back and helped raise him.

            “Thank you,” he told them.  He raised a hand to his temple, and applied a small stream of healing power to his headache, banishing it from his awareness.

            “Did you just heal with a touch?” Stracha asked in a voice that was filled with awe.  “Are you really Alec the Lost, come back to save the Dominion, just as the legends promise?”

            Alec looked closely at her, then turned his head and looked at Constanc, whose face was also only a foot from his own. 
Were there really myths about him
, he wondered in amazement.

            “Lad, here, take this, it’ll make you feel better,” the leader of the group knelt beside him and offered him a warm mug of bitter willow bark tea.  “We don’t have sugar for it, sorry.”

            “It’s in my blanket,” Alec looked around and then pointed to the blanket he had carried yesterday.  “I pulled some sugar and other goods out of the wagon.  They’re in the blanket over there.”  He set the mug carefully down on the ground.

            “Whatever happened to you Gordon, it is like nothing I’ve ever heard about or dreamed of.  You were extraordinary!  You’ve saved our lives, for sure, and perhaps some others, if the rumors of healing families are true.

            “Is there anything you’d like to tell us?  We need to get moving before the battle catches up with us, but we’ll make time to hear your story,” the man said deferentially.

            Alec sat silently for a moment, rubbing his hands across his face, trying to judge what to say.  He thought about all the implications of trying to explain that he was Alec, that he had come back from a battle with a demon in the energy realm, that he had taken over someone else’s body because they had died.  It was a fantastic tale, one that would be hard for anyone to believe.  The story wasn’t one he wanted to try to tell, at least not right now.

            “Let’s get moving on to safety in Three Forks,” he said after consideration.  “We’ll have time to talk then.

            “How is our other guard?  Did he survive?” he asked, suddenly remembering the attack from
  the
night before.

            Constanc shook her head.  “He died on the spot.  They stabbed him in the heart.”

            Alec leaned forward and slowly stood up.  “Everyone needs to carry a weapon,” he said.  “I’m going to see what’s left on the attackers.  Where are their bodies?”

            “The crowd came and pulled them away for us.  They dumped them over there,” Nestor pointed as he walked up.

            Alec walked over to the bushy screen, then pushed through it and saw the pile of dead men.  Rigor mortis had set in, and stiff bodies maintained grotesque shapes as he rolled them aside to find weapons he could plunder.  He took a sword to replace the one he had lost the night before, and chose one that was an upgrade from that weapon.  He stripped off a black leather vest and pulled a bandolier of throwing knives off another man, and a bow and quiver of arrows off a third body.  Satisfied that he could protect himself and his companions, Alec slipped back through the bushes to the campsite.  The bustle of activity at the campsite stopped, as all eyes turned to look at him.