The Journey Home: The Ingenairii Series: Beyond the Twenty Cities by Jeffrey Quyle Read Free Book Online Page A

and down hillsides, sensing the passage of time, he felt the power of the suggestions of the darkness, fighting to penetrate his defenses, testing a variety of tactics to try to motivate him away from his pursuit of its source.   He heard the urging to go back to Ridgeclimb, to give up his hopeless mission.  He easily dismissed the whispers that suggested he go back and kill the remaining Rangers, then take the horses and the valuables and live a life of easy luxury somewhere.  The voices told him how beautiful Andi was, and how badly he had treated her; go back and take her to a place where you can marry her and make her a queen, the suggestions crackled away on the periphery of his consciousness.
    Imagine her as your wife; make her the mother of your children.  Marry her and let her be your queen, the voices said.  They cajoled, they pleaded, they wheedled and reasoned and used every tool available to try to manipulate him.
    Alec shook his head, and bellowed out a challenge.  “I am coming to find you and slay you, and you will not trick me!” he shouted aloud, as he approached the center of the force that was at the heart of the forest.
    He pressed through another thicket of dense brambles, feeling the thorns make more of the innumerable small tears in his hands and his arms and his face, and then he found himself on top of a small dike, a circular earthen wall that surrounded a village of two score homes or more.  Facing him, at the foot of the levy he stood on, were his attackers – a sight that astonished him, and threw him for a loss.  Gathered together were a dozen women, of mixed ages, all watch ing him with hatred and fear in their facial expressions.
    “Who are you?  Why are you attacking my friends?” he shouted at them.
    “Who are you to come into our forest?” one of them asked in return.
    Alec sensed a building of forces in the land beneath him and the air around him.  He split his use of the ingenaire power once again, slightly lessening his Spirit powers, while reaching for a small portion of Warrior powers, enough, he hoped, to protect himself from whatever inevitable attack was about to be launched.
    “You are using evil powers, and you are causing the murders of my friends.  We came here bearing no ill-will towards you, and we posed no threat to you,” he said, his eyes casting about to scan their faces and to also monitor the environment about him, looking for any overt new threats.
    “You broke the law of the forest.  None may travel in these woods except upon the agreed roads, unless they have our approval,” one woman spoke, a much older woman.  Her visage was wrinkled, and Alec thought that her appearance justified the name of witch.
    “We were in a hurry to try to help other friends,” he began, when he sensed a movement above him and glanced up in time to see a huge snake dropping directly towards him from a tree limb far above.  He stepped to the side and swung his sword upward, severing the reptile’s head from the body in mid-air, as its mouth gaped open and its fangs glistened with venom while it fell to the ground, dead.
    As his momentum from his sword swing c arried him around in an arc, he caught sight of a large swarm of angry hornets about to sweep upon him from his rear.  He instantaneously exchanged his Warrior energy for his Air power, and created a gust that blew the buzzing hornets far into the woods.
    As quickly as the hornets were gone, the ground beneath him began to liquefy, turning to a soup that Alec began to quickly sink in.  As fast as he had switched powers before, Alec jumped his energies from Air to Stone, and caused stones in the earth to congregate beneath him, then lift him on a rocky pedestal above the morass.
    Knowing that some other assault was coming, Alec focused on engaging his Light energy, then reached out to collect all the available light in the vicinity, and caused the descent of absolute darkness on the village area.  Under the