The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities (2 page)

The
Journey Home

Chapter 1
– The Resurrection of Alec

             
Andi sat in the chair between the bed and the window, reading a book she had selected from Amane’s family library.
  The library was different from
most libraries in Exbury, Amane’s brother Tarry had told her; half the books were about plants and gardening, while half the books were about everything else.  Not many families had so many non-gardening
books, Tarry said with sincere pride in the family’s scholarship
, and Andi believed him.

She had danced with Tarry the night before at a ball in the home of another family of Old Ones, and during a break, Tarry and
Amane had both taken her to the host
family’s library and let her search at length before she finally found the single shelf of books that were not related to gardening.  They had laughed at her disbelief, and reminded her that it was Exbury, and they’d be happy to take her on another garden tour the following day if she’d like proof.  All three of them had laughed together at that joke; Andi had been on an estimated thirty garden tours in the twenty days she’s been staying in Exbury

             
She smiled softly as her eyes flipped from the pages of her book to the face of Alec, lying in the bed.  His face was calm; the word serene came unbidden to Andi’s mind as she looked at him, then looked at the angle of the shadows out the window.  It was time to roll him over, so that he did not develop bedsores as he lay in his long coma.  The book went down on the table beside her chair, and she spent several minutes, tenderly adjusting Alec
with
her best
efforts
to keep him comfortable.

             
She sat back in her chair and began reading again when the door opened and Amane entered the room with a tray.  He placed it on the table beside her, then sat in the other chair there and removed the cloth that covered the contents.  There was a pot of green tea and two mugs, as well as breads and fruits and some bacon.

             
Andi thanked her host and the two sat quietly chatting for several minutes as they ate the meal in the quiet room.  Amane reminded Andi that the nurse would arrive at noon to assume the watch over Alec’s unconscious body.  “Would you like to go to the archery range this afternoon and see Tarry and the other Rangers carry out their final practice?” he asked.

“I’d love to,” Andi answered, “But I have to go on a garden tour with one of your sister’s friends, and her brother.”  She smiled at the notion; it was a cliché of her brief life in Exbury that someone wanted to take her on a garden tour in the city.  There was usually a young nobleman or scion of an Old Ones family involved in the tour, a reminder that, with no effort on her behalf, Andi had become perceived as the most eligible unmarried young lady in Exbury high society.  The young men we
re brazen in their attentions to her
, considering she was staying in a house with Amane and Tarry, and known to be the companion of Alec, the sleeping warrior.  But still the invitations came, and so she went on new tours of gardens, and amazingly enough, she still continued to learn about new and different gardens with each tour.

“Maybe you’ll have fewer tours after tomorrow,” Amane said sympathetically.  He was referring to the rescue mission that was leaving the city the following morning, a group of more than a dozen young men from the city’s elite families; the departure of the Rangers, as they were called, would mean the exi
t of some of the potential suito
rs who had exhibited interest in Andi while
she had stayed in Exbury.   The Rangers
were setting out on the road to pursue the
Ingenairii
kidnapping crew that had come through Exbury three weeks earlier.  The prince of the city had demanded that his stolen citizens, several young girls, be returned to safety with their families
, and the Rangers were the expected means of meeting his demand
.

Initially, Andi had insisted that Alec would awaken and take up that rescue mission, one that t
he mighty ingenaire
had steadily
pursued across mountains and through the Twenty Cities already.  Alec had been injured in his battle
s
with the kidnapping crew, but had inflicted some damage to them in exchange, and shown that he could fight them evenly.  Andi had inflicted
further real damage upon the kidnappers
when she had burst into an ingenaire-energy attack upon the unsus
pecting group, provoked
by the wound that she witnessed delivered to Alec.

Alec’s skull had been pierced by an arrow
the kidnappers had shot at him during the battle in Exbury
.  His body had died momentarily, but Andi had run to him, and somehow, driven by shock and despair, made contact with his departing spirit.  Her communication with him had drawn him back, had drawn him into possessing the use of her body and powers, as well as
the even more extraordinary use of Amane’s
powers, to heal the frightful injury and restore life to the body.

The event had given Amane and Andi a sense of shared awareness.  They felt a closeness with one another.  Amane had been entranced by the girl’s beauty already, before they had mingled their powers, and he had only fallen into a deeper infatuation with the girl, while Andi had felt comforted and buttressed by the closeness with Amane at the time when Alec was beyond any contact at all.

When
Andi had entered Exbury
, it had been
with Alec, already in an intimate
and evolving
relationship of shared memories, feelings and awareness, a commingling of identities that had begun after another miraculous healing following a terrible wound, when Alec had saved Andi’s life by restoring her body and pulling her spirit back to earth.

“Shall we plan on the archery range tomorrow?” Amane asked, his hand resting atop Andi’s to emphasize his hope that she would accept his offer.
  “After we see the Rangers off?”

“Yes, that would be delightful.  It gives me an excuse not to accept any garden tours tomorrow if any are offered,” Andi agreed.

“Very good!” Amane was delighted with the prospect of taking Andi out.  As her host, he wouldn’t even have to arrange the polite fiction of his sister to be chaperon
e
for a visit to the family’s own archery range, letting him enjoy time alone with the beautiful blond, and helping distract him from thoughts of his brother’s departure.

“Thank you,” he stood, then bent down and kissed Andi’s cheek, thr
illing to the feel of her skin under
his lips as she turned her face for him.  He picked up the tray, whose contents had been ravaged by their repast.  “I’ll take this back to the kitchen, and fetch another pot of tea.”

With that he was off, and Andi’s eye’s tracked his figure as he went around the bed and to
the door, then left the room.  On some level s
he enjoyed the obvious manner in which he was smitten by her, and the attention he paid, which bordered on smothering without ever quite getting there.  Her eyes shifted a degree further down, and she saw that Alec’s eyes were open, and staring at her.

Andi let out a scream of shock that brought Amane and two servants running to the room.  When they burst through the door they found Andi on her knees at the
side
of the bed, her forehead pressed against Alec’s.

She looked up at the arrivals, her eyes full of moisture and her voice hoarse with emotion.  “He’s awake!” she announced simply
.