Read The Lifesaving Power: Goldenfields and Stronghold Online
Authors: Jeffrey Quyle
With that Alec turned and walked back through the hospital, and out onto the street with Johanna. “Let’s find a place to sit and rest. Do you know of a place nearby?” he asked carelessly.
The cousin of the girl he had come to heal looked at Alec with awe. She could see clearly how much Alec had drained himself in healing so many children. She was startled by how much older he looked now, his skin had turned gray and there were dark rings under his eyes. More than anything though, she was unable to grasp how a seemingly ordinary-looking person could so casually carry out such miraculous actions.
Not far down the street she saw tables on the sidewalk, signs of a café. “Let’s go right down the street to have a bite of lunch,” she suggested, and led Alec through the traffic to a table, where she ordered two glasses of juice, two cups of poinstra, and some meat rolls.
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You really can perform miracles, can’t you?” Johanna asked Alec after he had gulped down a large amount of juice. She remembered the conversation they had started in the morning. “I thought this was going to be an unpleasant morning taking you around the town today because Brandeis was too drunk to get out of bed. But you have made this one of the most meaningful days of my life,” she said, ending with her voice in a virtual whisper.
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Can I learn to be a healer like you?” she asked.
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Not exactly like me, perhaps,” Alec told her. “I have a gift, a blessing from God, and it is very rare. I am thankful beyond measure for what has been given me, and I want to use it as wisely as possible,” he replied. “You cannot do all these things, but you could learn a variety of remedies and cures that would bring great relief to many people. It would take training and study,” he finished, remembering Leah’s knowledge of cures.
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Will you teach me? I want to do something like that. I’ve never had any plan of what to do with my life other than get married, but now I know that I want to do this, to be a healer,” Johanna asked, reaching across the table to take Alec’s hand pleadingly.
As she spoke Alec felt another wave of her emotions sweep through him, and he sensed her sincerity as well as her continued longing for marriage to Durer; both the healing and the love would satisfy her soul, he could sense. He was astonished at how readily her feelings were apparent through his spiritual abilities, powers that he had had no training in and which he had only experienced one or two times previously.
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I don’t think that this visit to Stronghold will last long enough to really train you,” Alec told her. “I could train you, and I would like to train you. But now is not the right moment.”
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You have plans to leave Stronghold already?” Johanna asked, suddenly feeling despair at the thought of his departure.
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Sometime soon, probably. I don’t know when, precisely,” he replied. Their food arrived, and Alec bit hungrily into his food, then ordered another plate of meat rolls.
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When did you learn you had this ability, and why were you only in a carnival with such powers? How far can your healing go? What is the greatest injury you’ve healed?” Johanna asked him as he ate his food. She could see the color returning to his complexion as he rested and ate and restored his energy.
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I had a visitation, I guess you could say, that gave me these special abilities. I know there are things I cannot do. Death is virtually impossible to overcome, and some injuries can be eased but not completely reversed; but many illnesses and injuries, especially if discovered early, can be treated. Prayer and medical care can do much together,” Alec answered. “I’ve learned to do more as I’ve practiced.”
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We have a family priest at the compound, but I’ve never spent much time with her,” Johanna admitted. “Lately life didn’t seem to show much of God’s love to our family,” she said with wistfulness.
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There is a God and he has a plan for all our lives,” Alec told the girl. “I don’t understand the plans, but I have faith that doing the right thing will be part of his plan at the end of the day.
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Shall we go downhill?” Alec asked. “I think I’d like a nap to recover. That, and going to bed early tonight will probably do wonders for me.”
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I forgot that you were part of that crowd that caroused last night,” Johanna said as Alec stood. “You seem far too responsible to be the type of person who drinks all night. I probably got you up a little early, didn’t I?” she asked with a mischievous grin.
Alec was glad to see her smile, and realized that she had accepted him as a friend, something he realized he wanted from this girl. They walked back down the cliff trail and returned to the Locksfort compound.
As they entered the gate, one of Johanna’s cousins caught her in the courtyard. “Your father’s boat has been spotted down river! He should return tonight, Johanna!”
Alec felt an alarm go off in his mind. Who was her father? He knew he had heard something before, but he couldn’t remember what. “I thank you for your time this morning,” he said to Johanna. “I’m going to run along now.”
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Can I join you in the morning back at the hospital?” Johanna asked as Alec started to walk away. When he replied affirmatively, Alec overheard her telling her cousin about how many children would be healed.
He worried, wondering if word of a healer ingenaire had traveled upriver to Stronghold, and whether anyone would suspect him of anything.
Alec wandered through the hallways, looking for the way back to his room. He entered a courtyard that looked unfamiliar, with only one other doorway. He passed through the dim, shadowed yard, and found a stairwell that led downward. Alec faintly perceived a torch at the bottom of the stairs, and he climbed cautiously down. At the end of a short hall was darkness, which Alec’s eyes could not penetrate, so he removed the torch from its wall ring and walked forward.
The darkness resolved itself to be a door. Alec stood before it, uncertain of whether to go any further. He was trying to find his way to his own room, and he knew that this was not the way. But he felt an impulse to open the door, an impulse from no source he could imagine. There was not bound to be anything here of interest to him in the deserted bowels of the compound.
He looked down on the floor, and saw a thick layer of dust, through which no feet but his had walked in a long, long time. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see no faint glimmer of sunlight reflecting down the stairwell from the empty courtyard above.
Alec found his hand turning the door knob, and glanced forward to see the opening door. As the door swung inward, the sound of falling water came to Alec’s ears.
With a revelatory flash that made his knees buckle, there came to Alec’s memory the day he had entered the Cave of John Mark.
He stepped slowly forward, and the flame of his torch fizzled and dimmed momentarily as he advanced, then Alec felt the thin shower of water falling upon his own body as he entered the chamber. The flame steadied, then brightened, and as it did, its light was reflected off the glistening wet walls of a perfectly round room. In the center of the room was a floor opening through which the streams from the walls were flowing downward.
Alec advanced towards the center of the room, and looked down the well. There was no other opening in the room beside the door he had just entered. There was not even any means for the water to come streaming in other than simply penetrating through the stony walls themselves, yet somehow a constant sheet of water continued to fall.
He knelt on the wet floor and peered downward. In the wall of the descending cavity below he saw incised bars, just like the ones he had climbed long ago in the Pale Mountains.
Alec knew that he now must climb downward. He carefully balanced the torch on the floor at the edge of the well, turned and slipped a leg over the edge, and began to cautiously clamber down. He reached up and grabbed the torch with one hand, pondering how to carry it and climb one-handed. He noticed a hole on the wall and crammed the torch handle into the perfect fit, then climbed down two more rungs, and found another apparent torch hole.
The slow repetitive process continued, his muscles growing sore as he climbed down the well, water gurgling and dripping all around him in the close confines of the narrow space. He had no concept of how mustre passed, but he grew achingly, physically tired while he also felt an overwhelming curiosity, mixed with fear, growing within him.
He heard the echoes in the well change in tone, losing their hollow character, and then feeling pinched in upon, just as his foot hit the surface of the water collecting in a cavity at the bottom of the well. He stepped down through the surface and found the water only came up to mid-thigh despite the unending flow coming from above.
Turning, and holding the torch high above him, Alec saw an opening in the far wall, set like a window, through which the water was escaping. Alec moved towards it and climbed up onto the window ledge, crawled forward a foot or two, then felt no further ledge, and he tumbled forward out of the well.
He turned and slipped down a chute of flowing water. He felt his body thump against the stony sides of the waterway as it descended further down below the ground. The flame of the torch was snuffed, and he continued to fall in the darkness.
There came at last a moment when he stopped making contact with anything but water and air, and then he was plunged a moment later deep under water. He sputtered and hit bottom, then pushed off and breached the surface, taking a quick breath. Alec found that he could stand on the stony bottom of the pool and almost keep his chin out of the water.
All this water would probably make a water ingenaire feel comfortable, Alec thought miserably to himself. He thought then of Bethany, and as he did, there came into his heart a dark shaft of certainty that she was no longer waiting for him. He wondered if some sense of intuition was guessing, or if a fact had just been revealed. Alec remembered all the letters he had not written, and the one he had written, probably too late, as well as the times he had not tried to return to visit her. He had not shown her love, and he knew that now, after many months of separation, she had stopped looking for some sign from him. She is going on with her life, he thought. Amidst the water all around him, Alec felt tears well up in his eyes, tears of disappointment that he had let such a perfect partner escape him, and disappointment that he had caused her pain in his long quest for something else.
Looking around the pitch black enclosure, Alec sensed a dimmer darkness in one direction, and slowly he shuffled through the water towards the area where something was different.
In no little time he grew convinced that his eyes were not deceiving him, and that there was some source of light deep down in this subterranean grotto. The floor of the pool began to incline upward, and Alec stepped out of the water onto a solid shelf of land.
A stone on the ground at the foot of a wall was softly glowing. It was the light Alec had followed. He stepped across the dark floor to the stone, and knelt to look closely at it. His right hand still held the sodden torch, he realized as he released it. The stone had no discernable features, and so he reached down and picked it up.
As he grabbed it, a doorway opened in the wall behind the stone, and Alec stumbled forward.
Alec entered the chamber and looked around. Th only light came from the torch beside the doorway he had entered. He removed the torch from the wall and stepped forward into the eerie atmosphere of the empty room, where the jagged stone walls were clothed in shadows that wavered as his flame danced in the air. As he walked and examined the space, he could find no evidence of another entry along the walls, causing Alec to think he had reached a dead end.
“
Welcome Alec,” a voice said in a kindly tone as Alec stood near the center of the chamber.
He turned quickly, and saw the saintly John Mark sitting on a stony seat near the center of the room. “Your grace,” Alec addressed him in astonishment, not sure what to call him.
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You should just use my name,” the ghostly presence answered. “I’m glad you’ve made it here.”
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You’re very close to finishing your assigned duty, and you’re carrying out many good acts along the way,” John Mark told him. The saint motioned for Alec to sit next to him on the stone bench that had appeared.
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Will I find a way to heal Noranda? Am I almost there?” Alec asked with anticipation.
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You’re very close. Unless you deliberately try not to, I think you will see your friend sit up very soon as a result of your abilities,” John Mark answered.
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And then I’ll have all my powers back, and I can go back to Oyster Bay or Goldenfields, or someplace else?” Alec followed.
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You will not have your powers back in the sense you hope, Alec,” John Mark said gently, causing Alec to catch his breath in fear.
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You’re a unique person in so many ways, Alec,” John Mark observed. “And you’re proving to be surprising even to me, who foolishly thought I could understand the unknowable plans of God.
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You have greater power than I believe has ever been seen in the Dominion. You wield your energies with greater ability than virtually all other ingenairii. And with both healer and warrior powers, you have virtual control over life and death,” the ghost explained. “But now, you are about to enter a strange time, when your powers are not going to always be available for your use.
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You must give something up,” he explained slowly. “To be fair about it, we will let you pick what you surrender.”
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It will not be an easy choice. You must surrender one of your strongest ingenaire powers. Your strength has grown too great, and that strength, because of the potential future that you may experience, must be curbed. You must face certain challenges that will teach you humility. And ay potentially be subject to experiences that will naturally diminish your abilities at times as well.
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Alec, you may retain your limited powers in the Time and Spiritual fields, because you do not knowingly use them to your advantage.
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But as for your Healing and Warrior skills, one must be shorn away for the time being as if you were a prized lamb giving up your precious wool,” he continued. “You have more control over life and death than any mortal should have, and not yet enough experience in life to understand the best exercise of those abilities. When you chose which power to surrender, and mean your choice with all your heart, the balance between what you should be able to do and what you are able to do will be restored and you will be able to go on with your life until the balance shifts again.”
Alec’s knees wobbled at the implications of what he had just been told. He was going to have to give up one of his powers. Which one? His skills as a warrior? They had proven to be very effective; useful at almost all times in almost all places; since he had first felt them burst from their somnolence, when he had fought for Ellen and Leah, those powers had served him well, although he had managed to make the journey all the way from Bondell to Stronghold without them.
How could he give them up? But if he didn’t, then a terrible alternative existed. His medical skills too were now being considered for the sacrificial table.
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I know this must seem unfair to you, Alec,” John Mark interrupted his thoughts. “But your presence here is proof that this is meant to be.”
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What do you mean?” Alec spoke aloud for the first time in a long time.
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This is a Holy Place, a place of miracles, of piety, of reverence. You have found your way here, without a calling or any signs. There was no expectation on my part that you would arrive today,” John Mark answered. “You are now in an ancient place where the earliest Christians of this land held secret worship services. Few have visited this site in the millennium since my passing.
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No one else has visited three of the holy sites, as you have Alec,” John Mark said with a tone that Alec thought seemed wistful. “I want to tell you something critical that you should know and consider before you make your choice.
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Many days have passed in the world since you arrived here. There are people who realize who you are, and the general population of the Locksfort compound now realizes that you were the healer who froze Noranda, and that you are the warrior ingenaire who killed many of their allies, and that you are declared to be the protector of the crown of the Dominion,” John Mark explained.
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You should also remember that you have been told that Noranda is not meant for you.”
Alec felt his knees shake as the implications of his predicament blossomed. Again, time had passed inexplicably and unpredictably. And he was about to release one of his powers. When he returned to the Locksfort compound, he would come into a hostile world, where his only clear hope of survival would be if he cd retain his warrior ingenaire abilities to fight his way out, and back to Oyster Bay. Without his warrior powers, he would not be able to try to reunify the Dominion, or help his friends in Goldenfields fight the lacertii.
His only hope of saving Noranda would be if he had his healer powers. And he would be able to do many more worthy things if he retained his healing powers. Of course, being a healer would do him little good if he was dead or imprisoned by the Locksforts.
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I am afraid, Teacher,” Alec spoke at last, falling to his knees.
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Alec, fear is a powerful tool of the enemy. You must have faith in Jesus, your Savior,” John Mark softly answered. “Do as you believe he would want you to. Let not your will, but His, be done.”
He could not imagine surviving without his warrior skills. He could not imagine living without his healer skills.
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I, I will, I will surrender my Warrior powers,” Alec stuttered. He felt a pricking, and looked down at his right arm; he raised the sleeve and saw that the warrior ingenaire mark was dull and lifeless.
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Step over here Alec,” John Mark said.
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What about my powers? Will you take them away?”
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They are already gone. When you spoke from your heart, the Lord’s will was accomplished,” John Mark answered as Alec stepped backed onto the solid stone. John Mark stepped over and held his arms open wide. Alec hesitated for a moment, still feeling anguish, then took a full stride into the embrace of the shorter man, whose arms felt strong and warm as they wrapped around him, promising protection and comfort.
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Alec, your decision was brave, and right, and pleasing in the eyes of God,” John Mark told him. “For that reason, you will not be completely shorn of the power you agreed to surrender. Each month, when a new full moon arises, you will be given three opportunities to exercise your Warrior abilities,” John Mark explained, as Alec felt a small sense of joy ringing in his heart.