The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities (27 page)

The stone wall gave way, and a panel fell inward in a single piece, landing where Alec had just been laying, and as soon as it fell, a dozen arrows flew into the sally port pre-emptively, attempting to harm anyone within.   A head cautiously stuck into the space and looked around, then a torch was held aloft as a lacerta climbed in and more sledges hit the stone wall, breaching the defense thoroughly.

The sally port was immediately crawling with soldiers; so many were sent into the small space that their movement became difficult because of the crowding that occurred, while Alec and Andi hung silently above it all and watched and listened.

“They couldn’t have just vanished into thin air,” an officer who was apparently in charge complained five minutes after the initial breach, waving his hands upward, directly at the spot where Alec and Andi hid.

Andi,
Alec said silently
, I will not have the energy to maintain us her
e
much longer.

You’re doing fine, Alec,
she replied. 
I know you’re weary and weak.

As soon as they leave, I’ll let us down, and then we’ll need to find a place to rest
, he said
.  And then, when we do, I’ll need to change you.

That’s the story of my life, men always want to change me
, she said with a laugh.

No, I mean
, Alec stopped, belatedly smiling as he recognizing the irony in her comment
.  I could not have come across the entire nation if I had not adapted
my body to look like a lacerta
.

Can you change back?  It’s not permanent, is it?
she asked.

Well, it is permanent
, he lamented.

Alec!
Andi exclaimed in horror, then realized he was joking.

They gave a sudden lurch, as Alec’s energy fluctuated, a sign of the impending collapse of his abilities.

“Post a guard outside, and assign a crew with hammers to break both these walls down in the morning,” the commanding officer below them ordered as he watched the last of the bodies of the dead soldiers be carried out of the sally port.  “Don’t start the hammering too early though.  We don’t want to wake his majesty; that wouldn’t be good for any of our careers!” he laughed.

“Sir, you don’t suppose this is related to the wall that sprang up at the Boundary Lake battlefield, do you?” one of the junior officers in the room asked.

“The thought has crossed my mind.  The she-devil with the mark was present in both places, and the stone barriers here seem similar to what we’ve heard about out east, on a much smaller scale,” the senior leader agreed.  He started walking towards the hole in the wall.  “It just leaves the question of why she didn’t use her tricks to free herself earlier,” he was speaking as he left the sally port, and the last of the other lacertii followed him out.

Alec immediately released his hold on his Light powers, no longer rendering them invisible, and let loose his Spiritual energies, so that he was only grasping the Air energy he needed to sustain them against the ceiling in the dark room.  “I have to lower us now, oh mighty she-devil,” Alec warned just before they plunged downward with little control and hit the ground with moderate force.  They both rose and scrambled to the end of the room furthest from the entry hole, then sat in a spot that was behind the wagon Andi had been brought in on.

Alec was exhausted, and leaned against both Andi and the wall as he sat.  His eyes closed,
and his head lolled against her
as he passed out immediately, still having not yet fully healed his own injury from her attack on him.

Chapter 16
– Escape from the Lacertii Lands

Andi awoke with a start.  She had fallen asleep resting next to Alec, and had dreamed that they were both lacertii, and had made love, and she said a silent prayer of thanks that at that moment Alec couldn’t feel her spirit the way she felt his.  She felt chilly, and looked down at herself, still wearing the same torn clothing she had been captured in days before, holes, rips, and missing patches both testaments to the abuse she had suffered in battle and captivity, and also the reason for her chill.  She carefully rolled her body closer to Alec’s in search of his body warmth; she knew that the lacertii she was lying with was Alec, and for that reason she felt none of the revulsion she had felt towards the reptilian-appearing race throughout her captivity.   She had been chained to the post the entire time she was transported, subject to slaps and pinches, blows and abuse from the lacertii soldiers who had conveyed her towards her execution.  That treatment had enraged Captain Alan of Boundary Lake, who had suffered little of the same, but who had witnessed her humiliation.  When an opportunity had come, he had lunged after two of the worst abusers, and snapped their necks before his body had been pierced with swords.

Alec yawned loudly, and Andi slapped her hand over his mouth to silence him, fearful of guards that might be stationed at their entrance.  His eyes flew open, swinging about wildly as he tried to establish his location, until he saw her, and he relaxed.  She removed her hand from his mouth, and motioned to the dim entrance hole, lit by the morning light outside, then she returned her supply of weaponry to Alec, replacing the knives in his bandolier and the sword in his scabbard.

He nodded, then held her hand; she felt him apply Healing energy to himself, completing the repair of the wounds he had suffered at her hand
.  Let’s get out of here and out into the city,
he suggested when he finished. 
We can deal with your transformation after we’re secure.

She nodded and stood as he did.  He noticed her shiver, and reached out to touch her with his Healing energy, warming her body and drawing a grateful smile.  He dropped his Healing energy and seized upon his Light power, then created the bubble of invisibility that hid the two of them as they walked along the side of the wagon and approached the gaping hole in the entrance to the sally port.  Alec stepped out first, taking their protection with him, and Andi stepped through right behind him.

Four guards were posted at the entrance, and a stack of sledgehammers were piled next to the entra
nce, testimony to the industrious
activity that would soon be underway.  The human and the lacerta refugees strolled up the drive they had entered upon, a
nd came to the gates that led to the city streets beyond the palace
.  Alec placed his hand on Andi’s arm and pulled her to the side suddenly, off the drive and into a cluster of decorative shrubs, where they were hidden from view.  They sat down upon the ground facing each other, and Alec released his Light energy, then grasped his Healing power, and reached for Andi’s hand.

He studied her face closely, examining the features she had, and suddenly was struck again by the beauty of her perfectly symmetrical features.  There were signs of stress, a few wrinkles he didn’t remember seeing when they had first met, and he was reminded of the burden she carried because of the unrequited love that she extended towards him, while he had returned none of it.  He felt affection for her, and pain for all the pain she had suffered.  As he looked at her, a tear drop fell down her left cheek, and he realized she was aware of his feelings.

I won’t be able to make you as beautiful as a lacerta as you are as a human, my dear, so don’t expect to break as many hearts among the lacertii as you do among humans,
he told her with his lacerta approximation of a smile, his sharp teeth displayed.

Thank you, my lord,
she said simply, then closed her eyes.

Alec released his energy upon her, effecting changes little by little, darkening her skin and thinning her hair, changing her skin texture, considerably reducing the profile of her breasts, widening her hip structure to give her stride the gait that was common to lacertii.  Minutes later, as he finished his last touches, he severed his use of the Healing energy and grasped his Air, Spirit, and Light powers, then fashioned a large, oblong mirror of air and light, and gave her the opportunity to closely examine her features.

She reached out and took his hand
.  It is incredible!
she told him
.  I recognize myself, and yet I do not, of course.  You’ve done such a good job.  Why did you change my, profile, so significantly?
she asked, thinking of a particular part of her anatomy.

You still have breasts,
he motioned to the small dark spots on her chest,
but lacertii females do not have any more that you have now.  You’d stand out if I hadn’t changed them
, he gave a toothy lacerta grin.

Are you ready to begin our journey west?
he asked.

She nodded, and Alec caused the mirror to vanish, then he enveloped them in invisibility and lifted them off the ground and over the fence, back into the non-royal precincts of the city, where they could walk about freely.  They landed gently on the road, and Alec led them into an alley way, where they were unobserved as they became visible once more.

“Here,” Alec said as he unslung his pack and dug down into it.  He pulled out an extra shirt and handed it to Andi.  “It’s not exactly the highest of lacertii fashion, but you’ll be less of a spectacle.”

“Thank you,” Andi said appreciatively as she buttoned up the front of the shirt, feeling both warmer and less self-conscious.  “What do we do now?  Where do we go?”

A nearby voice startled them.  “What’s the situation here?  Move along you two; no loitering near the palace, you know that,” a policeman called down the alley to them.

Without comment they both began to move, Alec closing up his pack and slinging it over his shoulder, and they walked past the policeman hand-in-hand, heads bowed guiltily.  Neither of them commented as the officer swatted Andi’s rump when she passed him.

“See? You are attractive as a member of either race,” Alec commented under his breath as they walked away.  They strolled for five minutes, until they were sure they were out of sight of the officer, then Alec stopped and looked up at the sky, judging the position of the sun.

“We need to go west, that way,” Alec told Andi, pointing to his left.

“I thought we’d go south.  Isn’t that where the Warriors were going?” Andi questioned.

“They were,” Alec agreed.  “But I do not know the precise way through the lacertii nation to reach the Michian border.  I do know how to get us back to the Dominion, and I know how to get from the Dominion to Michian, going the long way around.  Plus,” he hesitated, leaving his thought unfinished.

“Plus what?  What else is there on this trip that you seek?” Andi prompted.

Alec turned, and started heading west.  “Plus we can visit the cave of John Mark, Andi.  There is no holy site where I have ever been closer to God than there.  We will be refreshed there Andi, and the trip from there will be mostly by river, so we can float instead of walk.”

“And you can visit all the cities and places you remember?” she asked.

“I hope to,” he replied, and he held her hand again as they walked “over time, as we need to go to those places to find the ingenairii.”

“When this is done Alec, what happens?” she asked.

“I don’t know, Andi.  I don’t know what happens to you, or to me, or to us.  I don’t know what kind of a world we will find in the Dominion or Michian,” he replied.

“But we each will have options to do anything we want, virtually,” he told her more hopefully.

They walked throughout the morning as they crossed the thronging city, but shortly after noon they reached the west gate and passed through to the sprawl of buildings outside the gate, a sprawl that reached all the way to the low mountains that rose ahead of them at the western edge of the great valley.  Those mountains, Alec realized with a lump in his throat, were the Pale Mountains, the eastern side of them.  In those mountains had begun the long transformation he had undergone, from carnival helper to dominant ingenaire.

“We’ll have to make a decision,” Andi told him a half hour later, as they walked amid the stream of traffic on the road.  “By the time we get to the foot of the mountains, it’ll be later afternoon.  We’ll have to decide whether we want to spend the night down here, or start climbing and spend the night somewhere halfway up the road.

“Remember when you took our wagon in the air on the way into the Twenty Cities?” she asked.  “Oh no, you don’t remember,”
s
he answered her own question, crestfallen.  She had felt such comfort in the friendly attitude Alec had shown her since their reunion that she had forgotten about his catastrophic loss of memory.

“What happened?” Alec asked.

“The eastern city of the Twenty is Oolitan,” Andi reminded him.  “When we came to the end of the mountains, the road down to Oolitan was virtually carved out of a cliff that seemed to be a half mile high, and the city was huge, a tangled mess they told us.  So you took our whole group, wagon, horses, mules, people, goods – and you flew us to the ground on the far side of the city.  You thought we saved three days when we were following the ingenairii who were kidnapping the girls.”