Against the Empire: The Dominion and Michian (45 page)

Alec sensed the progress they were making, and stopped the flow of his energy just before the last of the tumors were killed. “Why’d you stop?” Bethany asked in surprise, turning her head to look into Alec’s eyes.

“I thought we’d let Rief experience this too,” Alec said.

“Then shouldn’t you take your hand out of my blouse?” Bethany asked as she removed her own hand from Sara.

Alec jerked his hand up quickly, and blushed, then grew more embarrassed at his own over-reaction.

Bethany and Rief exchanged places. “With your permission?” Rief asked Sara, who nodded calmly, allowing the former slave girl to gently position her hand. Alec’s hand tentatively slid along Rief’s collarbone to its position.

“Just use your healing vision, and pray for healing,” Alec instructed her too, and he began to release his powers into her shoulder. They flowed more smoothly through Rief initially, due to her unfamiliarity with the use of the power. Her body did not resist the power, but did not seem as prepared to adapt to it, passively letting it flow into Sara, where Alec finished the task of killing the last of the dangerous cells that resided in her flesh.

He stopped, and withdrew his hand from Rief, who also pulled her hand back from Sara. Abram, who had been silent as an observer in the small room, asked, “Is she cured?”

“Alec has killed all the cancer that we saw,” Bethany affirmed.

Abram reached out and gave Alec a hearty slap on the back, the most demonstrative he had been during their visit. Alec winced at the impact of the farmer’s powerful hand.

“We’ve got a long way to go, and I’m confident all of you are as healthy as we can make you,” Alec said.

“Is there anything we can give you? anything you need?” Sara asked, already standing up.

Alec edged towards the door and opened it, letting all the adults flow out into the farmhouse’s main room, where most of the children stood curiously. “May we have a loaf of bread to take with us?” Rief asked. “Yours is so good, and I don’t think Alec is going to bake any for us on the rest of the trip,” she said.

“That’s nothing to ask for at all,” Sara cried. “I’ve got two loaves sitting still warm, and a cake to boot. You take all of them, and take something more,” she urged. “That’s hardly any kind of thanks for healing Sandy as you did, let alone the rest.”

“No, those will be greatly appreciated. Those baked goods will taste like manna from heaven,” Bethany said. “You have no idea how poorly Alec makes us eat when we travel,” she gave a sideways smirk to him as she spoke, and he sputtered in indignation.

“If you’re going to Sandyforks, you’ve got two or three weeks of travel ahead of you,” Abram warned. “Are you ready for that?”

“It will be long, but we’ll be ready. I hope that because we’re traveling so light, we’ll be able to do it a bit quicker than that,” Alec explained. “So if everyone is ready, we’ll saddle up Walnut and be on our way.”

They returned outside, and Alec asked both girls to ride on Walnut together. “If I use my warrior powers, I can run alongside and we can cover ground at a faster pace,” he explained before they could protest.

“Yes, oh mighty crown protector,” Bethany answered as she began to climb up, followed by Rief. With a wave of their hands towards their hosts, the group set out again, following the trail across the prairie that led back to the cities of the Dominion. Alec engaged his warrior powers, and for the remainder of the afternoon they traveled at a fast clip across the land. By the time the sun was near setting, Alec released his powers and called a halt, tired by his long use of powers.

Scrubby trees nearby provided the fuel for their fire that night, a diminished, smoky affair. They sat around the fire, eating a dinner that was small amounts of several food items they had, as they tried to save and stretch their food supply out.

“How did Alec’s power feel to you, Rief?” Bethany asked during a long silent spell.

“I don’t know how to describe it,” she said. “Because of what the Cave gave me, I didn’t feel uncomfortable with it, and I could understand and watch it work. But it was different from anything I’ve ever felt before. It felt, well, I guess healthy is the word,” she struggled to explain.

“Do you think you can generate something like that yourself?” Alec asked.

“Maybe. Probably. It will take some time,” she said.

“We can work on lessons on how to grasp the power, and there are some things about healing I learned from reading the old papers that will help,” Alec suggested.

“How did it feel to you?” he asked Bethany.

She hesitated. “It felt like you,” she said. “Now that I’ve felt it, with what I know about my water powers, I think I’ll be able to work up to doing things like that. But this afternoon it mostly felt like you. I think I know a little more about you now,” she said thoughtfully, and would say no more.

Chapter 41 – A Life Preserved

They set no guard that night, and all woke at the same time when the sun was rising and Walnut nickered lightly. They spread out to discreetly attend to nature on the plain where there was little cover, and then resumed traveling westward. By mid-afternoon the Pale Mountains were no longer in sight, but they kept on moving at the brisk pace Alec wanted. He felt an urgency to start the recruitment of forces and to press their advance to help Bondell.

“Alec, can we take a break?” Bethany asked, after a whispered conversation between the girls on the horse.

Alec obediently slowed to a walk, and held Walnut’s reins as the girls dismounted. They spread out for privacy, and seconds later Bethany screamed in a tone of real terror and pain that send chills up his spine. He raced towards her, pulling his knife free from his belt, and saw a large cat standing on Bethany’s limp body, its ears back, snarling at him as he arrived, with Rief somewhere behind him.

Alec ducked in close to the animal, using his powers, and sliced its neck sending a bloody spray across Bethany, himself, and the quickly dying animal’s body. “Oh Tarnum!” Rief cried in horror, as Alec rolled the heavy body off of Bethany and examined her body. The animal had snapped her neck, and she was dead.

“Is she dead?” Rief asked.

“Yes, but I can save her if I do it fast,” he answered.

Frantically, he pulled the glove off his left hand and placed both hands on Bethany, prepared to send a surge of healing power into her. But instead he gave a wail, as no powers came forth, just as they had failed him at times in Michian.

He turned and looked at Rief in terror. “I can’t heal her; my powers have failed!” he said.

“Can I help?” Rief asked.

Alec thought for a split second. “Place your hands on my shoulders and send your healing powers into me,” he directed. “I’ll direct them to heal her.”

“I don’t know how to make the powers happen yet, Tarnum,” Rief said in a pitiful voice.

“If we don’t do something quickly, there’s no reviving her,” Alec said. He looked at Rief. “I can try to force your powers out of you, but it could be painful,” he said, looking at the scars on his left hand.

“Will it help bring Beth back to life?” Rief asked.

“It may be our only chance,” he said, almost begging.

“Do it then,” Rief said, and she closed her eyes.

Alec placed his left hand on her forehead, and the Spiritual powers that were imbedded in his hand dramatically rekindled and sprang into action, telling him about her fears for Bethany, her hopes for the future, her love for him. He rapidly placed his spirit in the gray space between worlds, as though he were working on an elementary ingenaire exercise, and drove his spirit through the hand and into Rief’s psyche, seeking to find her spirit. He rapidly and mercilessly rooted through her consciousness until he found the spark that he knew was the essence of the girl, and he dragged it with him towards the spot where the ingenaire powers resided.

Suddenly his other powers reignited as inexplicably as they had failed, and he plunged into the ingenaire domain with Rief still in his care, then pulled her out as he emerged ready to heal Bethany. He removed his hand from Rief’s head and placed her hands on his shoulders, then turned and placed his own hands on Bethany.

“Take your power and send it into me,” he ordered Rief. He sent his own power into the blond woman’s body, repairing the neck bones and the damaged nerves, then treating the harm done to the brain. He moved his hands down to her chest and started vigorously pumping, physically forcing the lungs to exhale and inhale, pumping the blood through the body, while send pulses of healing power into the organs as well.

He felt his healing powers start to fail from the intense drain he had demanded, and he called on Rief’s power, sucking it into him and through him into Bethany, until the body started to generate activity on its own. He felt the glimmer of a spirit through his left hand, and he focused his energies there, going out in search of Bethany’s spirit before it retreated too far from her body.

Alec sensed Bethany nearby, and launched himself after her.  He could feel Rief’s spirit being dragged along, attached to him by his grip on her power.  And he could sense his approach to Bethany as well. When he encountered her, the contact felt like a sudden burst of vibrance.

               
Thinking back to his experiences in past rescues from near-death, he firmly held her spirit and restored it to her own body, then reached through his spiritual powers, now enhanced by using the strength in his hand, and wrapped her with a sense of love, focusing on affection and concern and fidelity and trust until he realized that the strength was a combination of his own feelings as well as the holy love.  He felt the permanence of the renewed bonds between Bethany’s body and her spirit, and he withdrew, again taking Rief with him and returning back to her body.

               
He felt a sting of pain, but it was overshadowed as he felt the shock and incomprehension that the girl from Michian was suffering after being whipsawed around the series of overwhelming ingenaire experiences, and he took time to gently cradle her back home, sharing with her as well the love and respect he owed her for her devotion.  Withdrawing from Rief he came to rest within his own body at last.  Taking a pause to recover from the frenetic, explosive use of energies, he used his last moments of consciousness and energy to confirm that Bethany’s health was sound, and then he passed out.

Chapter 42 – Return to Stronghold

               
When Alec awoke, he was lying on his back in the empty prairie.  The dead lion carcass was to his left, and the two girls were sitting nearby to his right, their heads close together.  The sun was near the horizon, but still gave warmth that soaked into his body.  He slowly sat up, and both girls turned their heads to look at him.

                “
Are both of you okay?” he asked.  He placed his hands on the ground to push himself up, then gasped in pain and jerked his left hand from the ground.  He tumbled sideways, then looked at the palm of his hand.  The wounds in the palm were open and bleeding, exposing tendons and sensitive flesh; above them, a new ingenaire mark glistened – a vibrant cross that seemed to emanate energy.  Cradling his left hand in his right, Alec tried to use his healer energy to cure the injury, but found no power available to draw upon.

                “
We’re good, now,” Bethany told him.  “Are you alright?  What happened?” she motioned to his hand to indicate the subject of her concern.   Both girls rose and came over to him.

               
He showed the palm to them.  “You’ve got another mark, Alec!” Bethany said as her finger touched the fourth emblem he possessed.

Rief continued to study the injury in his hand. “Can’t you heal it?” she asked.