Preserving the Ingenairii (8 page)

“That looks familiar,” he drawled.
 
“Is it your work?” he asked.

Alec
grinned
a slight grin.

“Not very original, is it?” Lewis returned the smile, remembering the stone fountain Alec had created early in his healer
career,
about the time he healed Lewis from a devastating injury.

“It solved the same problem each time,” Alec answered, remembering the discharge of unwieldy ingenairii powers he had absorbed from other ingenairii in both cases.

Guards were at the gate, looking on emotionlessly as Alec and the others approached.

“I’d like to enter the Hill,” Alec requested.

“Only ingenairii may do so without a pass or reason,” one guard answered.

Alec rolled up his shirt sleeve, revealing a pair of his glistening marks.
 
“I am an ingenairii, and will bring my companions with me.

He paused then for a moment.
 
“Are there any others left I can meet with?” he asked, a plaintive note in his voice.

“There is one,” the second guard answered speculatively,” and he told us that someday another ingenairii might arrive.
 
If you go to the Stone House you will find him there,” the guard added, moving aside and allowing Alec and the Goldenfields contingent to enter.

Chapter 6 – Ingenairii Hill

           
“Hello Alec, come in,” Tritos said as Alec approached the door of the largest building in the Stone Ingenairii compound.

              
Alec looked at
Bethany
’s former companion, his heart a mix of contradictory guilt, sympathy and disdain.
 
He led the guards into a sitting room.
 
“Where are the other ingenairii?” he asked as soon as Tritos followed them into the room.

              
“I’ve had them all brought here to this compound,” Tritos said in a neutral voice.
 
“You know of course about the illness.
 
We have enough room here to keep them all together in one building.”

              
“I’d like to see them please,” Alec replied.
 
Tritos gestured for them to follow, and he led the way out and over to the building next door.

              
Inside, beds and cots filled every room.
 
Alec anxiously scanned each face, recognizing many who he knew.
 
“She’s in the next room,” Tritos said quietly.

              
“Thank you,” Alec replied, and moved through the maze of unconscious ingenairii.
 
He spotted
Bethany
immediately, and watched a nursing assistant dribble some water between her lips.

              
“Are you adding anything to the water?” he asked the older man, who shook his head negatively.

              
“Let’s brew up a broth that will give them nutrients,” Alec said as he stroked
Bethany
’s dull hair back off her forehead.
 
Her face was gaunt, as was the case with the others.
 
“Tritos, may I have some paper and a pencil?” Alec asked, and he proceeded to write a list of herbs and plants that were needed.
 
“Can someone be sent to market to get these?” he asked, handing the list to Tritos.
 
“We need to start getting some minerals and vitamins into them while we look for an answer to this,” he gestured around the room.

              
Tritos handed the list to another attendant and asked him to acquire everything.
 
“Aristotle said you’d come back,” Tritos said.
 
“When people started falling over, it happened fast.
 
Sadly, frighteningly fast.
 
Within a day there were only three of us left – Aristotle, Kinsey and me.

              
“We spent a day going through all the houses finding everyone, and getting them all together here, then instructing the servants to take care of them,” Tritos told them.
 
“Then the next night the three of us sat down and talked about how to find an answer.”

              
His eyes looked haunted.
 
“It was an awful time.
 
We all felt worse than helpless.
 
I saw people just collapse for no reason, over and over, and so had they.
 
Then when someone realized it was caused by trying to call upon their powers, people started to plan as if they knew what to plan for and how to protect themselves, and they still went down.
 
And we had no idea why – we’ve been doing this for hundreds of years, and now it was different!” Tritos stopped talking and the others could see him reliving the painful memories.
 
Alec imagined the sense of horrific doom that must have hung over the heads of the last ingenairii to succumb; better to have gone fast, he thought to
himself
.

              
“Since Aristotle and Kinsey are both Spiritual ingenairii, they decided to try a plan to link to each other before they entered the energy realm, and Kinsey was going to try to pull Aristotle back if something seemed to be happening to him.
 
He was going to maintain a link so that at least she would know what was happening to him, and she could bring that knowledge back here to our world so that we could try to find a remedy.

              
“So they sat down together, at that table over there, holding hands,” he pointed.
 
“Then Aristotle passed out, and Kinsey gave a gasp, and she passed out too,” Tritos finished.
 
“And all I could do was call in the assistants to help pick them up and place them on cots.

              
“We’re out of room for more cots,” he said after a pause.
 
The room seemed darker now, Inga thought; she hoped it was just a cloud passing in front of the sun, because she felt Tritos’s anguish keenly.

              
“But I suppose that’s okay,” he added after another pause, “because we’re about out of ingenairii too.
 
Aren’t we Alec?”

              
Alec put his hand to his face and wiped away the moisture that brimmed in his eyes.
 
He felt sympathy as he listened to Tritos, and imagined the staggering loneliness he must have felt when Ari and Kinsey toppled over, taking away the last best hope for a solution.

              
“Aristotle insisted that you were going to return.
 
Kinsey agreed with him.
 
He told me to give this to you when you arrived,” Tritos withdrew an envelope from inside his tunic and handed it to Alec.
 
“
Bethany
had maintained all along that you would be back.
 
‘It’s just the way it is with Alec,’ she told everyone,” Tritos added, before he let go of the envelope.
 
“She had made her peace with your disappearances, or at least you’d made your peace with her.”

              
Alec looked at the envelope.
 
His name was written in a bold stroke.
 
It felt like a letter from sometime long ago, or like a letter from a dead person, even though he refused to think of the unconscious ingenairii in those terms.
 
Tritos rose and walked away, while the others sat and looked at Alec.

Chapter 7 – The Journey Begins

           
Alec gently tore the seal on the folded parchment, and opened the paper to look at the message.
 
He was frightened at the implications of Ari’s foreknowledge – had the wily leader foreseen a prophetic vision of the collapse of the ingenairii abilities?

           
“
Dear Alec
,” the first line read, and those simple words moved him again.

           
“
If you are reading this, the worst has happened, and our breed is on the brink of extinction.

           
“This strange malady that is striking us down is a result of your victory over the demons of Michian.
 
I have no knowledge of how or why, but my heart feels the truth in those words.
 
Beware of the deadly battle that awaits you if you choose to seek to rescue our fallen friends and colleagues.

           
“There is a weapon you may be able to use, in the lands of the lacertii.
 
Your decision to seek peace with that race is potentially most fortunate.
 
What the weapon is, I do not know, but it resides in a forgotten holy place that is now under the sway of the lacertii.

           
“You have done much already Alec, and no one should ask you to do another impossible, heroic task.
 
Yet there is no one else.
 
Go quickly, study with the lacertii to find the weapon that will defeat a demon, and then find and fight the battle if you choose.

           
“God bless you Alec.
 
I rejoice that you are still alive to read this,

           
“Affectionately, Aristotle
”

“What is it Alec?” Lewis asked.

Alec tried to refocus from the letter to his friends.

“You gasped while you were reading,” Inga added.

Alec shook his head after a moment of silence.
 
“Aristotle said that this is
all my
fault, and only I can fix it,” he paused.
 
“I’ll have to go to the lacertii lands to find the weapon to use.”

The others sat in stunned silence, looking at him.

“How can it possibly be your fault?” Berlisle asked.

Lewis reached for the letter in Alec’s hand, and began to read it himself.

Tritos,
meanwhile sat with a look of thunder on his face.
 
“This is
all your
fault?
 
What have you done to everyone?
 
How could you do this to your own friends?
 
To
Bethany
?” he asked.

“I don’t know what I did, nor does Aristotle say how; he says that my battle with the demons caused this,” Alec said defensively.
 
“But I will leave immediately to go visit the lacertii to find the way to fix this.”

“What about the palace and the crown and the usurpers, Alec?” Lewis asked.
 
“Don’t you think you need to address the problems here in
Oyster Bay
first?”

“All of that is meaningless to me if I don’t restore the ingenairii powers, because Bethany and the others will die,” Alec burst out.
 
“I, yes, I should do something, but I don’t have time,” he floundered, uncertain of how to respond.

“Why don’t you do a couple of things -- at least go see your friend, Rander, to let him know you are alive, and will come back to be king some day?
 
And send a couple of us back to Goldenfields to ask for help to be sent here in the meantime?” Lewis suggested calmly, sensing that Alec needed guidance in his moment of anguish.
 
“Rander has been working to protect Bethany and the throne for you during your absence.
 
He deserves something for that.”

Alec felt grateful for the advice.
 
“Yes, that’s right; it’s obvious.
 
I have to talk to Rander.

“I’ll make sure the folks here mix up the right nutrients for our friends,
then
go find Rander, and then we can be on our way,” he decided.
 
After another moment of sitting silently, he stood.
 
“Let me see everyone who is resting here,” he said to Tritos.
 
“I’d like to see them all.”

“Follow me,” Tritos said.
 
“You’ll take me with you to visit the lacertii, won’t you?” he asked as they began to walk.

Alec looked at him and thought.
 
He still felt guilty about the fact that Bethany had left Tritos to return to him.
 
And he also understood that the prospect of remaining as caretaker for dozens of unconscious ingenairii, friends and
acquaintances
who were wasting away, had to be morbid and unpleasant in the extreme.
 
But Alec felt uneasy about taking along
Bethany
’s jilted suitor, and riding with him across the landscape for days and days, always harboring that guilt.
 
And he also felt that there was a sense of rightness about leaving Tritos to stay with the incapacitated ingenairii – they should be left under the care of one of their own, an ingenaire like them.