Adam's Journey (The Aliomenti Saga - Book 8) Read online

  But he wouldn’t be here long enough to develop that mastery.

  “I assure you that I am no enemy.” He paused. “What is your name, friend?”

  “My name?” He watched his father’s eyes widen, scrambling for something, anything, and finding no reasonable answer. “My name is… of no importance to you.”

  The words sounded strong to his ears… but his Energy senses felt the heartache and shame of it all, a stranger unknowingly reminding him of his greatest embarrassment. “Then my name is also of little importance. I shall refer to you as friend instead, then. Tell me, friend: where are you headed this day?”

  “I…” He paused, scrambling once more as he searched for an answer. His father had no specific destination in mind. The youth finally decided upon a variation of the truth. “I am the youngest of my family, and there will be little left for me of my family’s lands after my older brothers have received their share. I was… I have decided to seek opportunity elsewhere.”

  Adam admired his father’s spunk and spirit, even if it was driven by his anger and thirst for revenge. His father wasn’t one to accept defeat. That was a good thing. He’d face far more harrowing challenges over the course of his long life, most of which he couldn’t even fathom on this day. “I have just come from the north myself, and have seen little in the way of human settlement for quite some time. But I believe there is a thriving village near the sea just a few miles to our south. It is undoubtedly a place where a strong young man like you can find work… perhaps even a wife in the future.”

  His father’s eyes lit up, startled at the mere idea of marriage. He’d been told often enough that no woman would want a nameless reject that he’d begun to believe the words. “That sounds perfect.”

  And with that, his father turned around and headed back the way he’d come, making clear he had no desire for talk or companionship.

  Adam let him move about fifty yards ahead, enough to not feel he was being followed—even though Adam had already been heading in that direction at the time of their collision—and then started in the same direction, taking care to keep his pace slower so that the distance between them increased.

  He felt a shift in the breeze and glanced up, watching as the horizon darkened, less from the slowly setting sun and more from dark clouds moving toward them.

  The storm was coming. Soon. Right on schedule.

  His father kept walking, picking up his pace as if sensing the urgency of locating a suitable shelter before the rains began. The open fields and road gave way to a forest up ahead, and he suspected that his father believed he’d be safer from the rain beneath the tree canopy.

  Adam sighed inwardly.

  His father would soon learn that trees didn’t always provide much protection.

  ~~~12~~~

  995 A.D.

  His teenaged father vanished into the trees before him as the skies continued darkening. He heard the distant roll of thunder and felt a bit of wind dance around him, swirling dirt from the road into the air around him. Adam glanced around, noted that only he and his headstrong father were foolish enough to be out with a major rainstorm on the horizon, and ordered his nanos into a protective exoskeleton, rendering him invisible to anyone who might be looking. He reached down and checked that the time machine remote remained strapped to his leg, fumbled around and hit the button to close the top—no sense returning later and finding the interior drenched and his journal ruined—and floated into the air, ready to check in on the other party to the next collision involving his father. He coasted along ten feet off the ground, high enough to pass comfortably over his distracted father’s head, low enough to avoid the lowest branches of the trees in this part of the forest, and flew south above the road until he met the trail intersecting the main road coming in from the east.

  Her thoughts found him before his eyes found her.

  And he felt the same deep fear she felt, the emotions barreling into him as the images exploded into his waiting mind—

  She’d threatened to leave, to walk away from the growing community of half-siblings her father had sired over the centuries. As one of his oldest children, she’d at first treasured the wonderful life of the forest, the ever-present scent of the fragrant ambrosia fruit, the great health she’d always enjoyed, the isolation from the warring and sickly residents of the world around them. She’d long argued with her father, first requesting and then demanding that he allow the mothers of his many children to enjoy the same eternal life he and his offspring enjoyed. She argued that it was wrong that he let them wither and die of old age, never seeing their children after he stole them away soon after they’d reached their early childhood years. And those mothers were the lucky ones. Not all the mothers survived childbirth.

  Eva’s mother hadn’t.

  Ambrose finally tired of his daughter’s rants, finally threatened to kill her for her insolence. Shocked, she’d threatened to leave, to take her immortality and the secrets of her long life to the wider world, to warn the nearest villages against the charms of the immortal man. He’d snapped at her threat, and countered with his own: he’d send an army of his children—her half siblings—after her.

  They’d never stop searching for her. She’d never again sleep soundly, one eye always cracked open, watching for familiar faces, eyes that looked too wise for their apparent years, eyes that bored into her, seeking the answer to an unasked question about her identity, leaving her with an icy fear that one day she’d fall asleep and never wake.

  She’d left anyway.

  And now she feared death, a fear she’d never known in the safety of the trees, where people didn’t wage war and fight battles, where disease was unknown, where aging was unknown after reaching physical maturity. She didn’t fear predators; there were none that preferred human flesh. She didn’t fear invaders; her father spread stories of the ghosts haunting his home during his many centuries of rendezvous outside the trees, stories that became part of the mythic fabric of towns and villages and communities all around them and kept the curious far away from the fragrant wood. But she now feared death in a way no mortal human could understand. After living multiple lifetimes, she’d ignored even the possibility.

  Now she saw impending death everywhere she went.

  She saw in the men and women she encountered in her travels a resemblance to her father, to the half-siblings she’d known since their births. She’d ascribed that in part to the reality that those half-siblings came from local communities; no doubt those she saw were distantly related to those she knew as her family in the forest, and the physical resemblances couldn’t be ignored. Coupled with Ambrose’s threat to send his “army” after her, those resemblances exaggerated her fear of imminent death, those moderately familiar faces became not the distant cousins of her family, but the very people coming to kill her. Her sleeping patterns suffered. Her paranoia grew. She headed further away, further than Ambrose had likely ever traveled, yet her paranoia and sleep deprivation synergized together to drive her mad.

  That was how he’d found her now, alternating between a brisk walk and a jogging pace in this forest far from her home, glancing fearfully over her shoulder at irregular intervals, convinced that every shadow hid an assassin sent by Ambrose to collect her and bring her body back home. She hadn’t noticed the darkening clouds, the mounting winds, the change of the scent in the air predicting rain, and barely reacted as the first drop slipped through the tree canopy, plopped between her matted golden locks and her ear, and slid down her neck.

  Nor did she know she was about to meet her destiny and her one true love… in a most painful way.

  ~~~13~~~

  995 A.D.

  Having located his mother, Adam returned to the intersection between the roads, floated comfortably above the ground, and waited. The nano-based exoskeleton kept him invisible from any who might think to look up, perhaps toward the raindrops that now regularly slipped through the leafy canopy above. He watched as the dirt not already swir
ling about slicked into wet dirt and from there into mud. Adam “reminded” his exoskeleton that he didn’t need to feel the rain drops nor the blustery winds, and the physical cocoon solidified.

  He could still hear things, though. He could hear distant rolls of thunder getting ever closer to this spot, could hear the leaves rustling and the splatter of the rain drops upon the broader varieties and the rapidly dampening road below.

  And as the two people who’d given him life collided with each other below, he could hear the thoughts of two people so consumed with their troubles that they couldn’t see another human being directly in front of them.

  It was this collision that he’d come back to ensure; his father always started the story with the wry observation that, but for the stranger with the gruff voice and hooded cloak, he’d never have been in this exact forest at this exact time, likely still wandering along to the north in search of cover from the heavy rains. Lightning arced across the sky, the crackling sound perfectly coinciding with the collision, the rolls of thunder following as his parents tumbled to the muddy ground.

  He’d orchestrated this meeting with a gentle nudge, and even he thought the timing of the visual and audio display from Mother Nature seemed too perfectly coordinated… yet still perfect.

  The two of them scrambled to their feet, slicking water off their clothes, trying to dry their hands of the wet mud. Eva moved her predominantly clean hands through the damp strands of golden, muddied hair away from her face.

  When she saw Adam, she saw not the man she’d one day love, but the fulfillment of her father’s threat, a man who’d first knocked her to the ground, and would now go for her throat or draw a weapon to finish her off.

  She’d never let him finish his assassin’s work. Eva turned south and ran, her movement slowed as her shoes dug into the mud.

  His father, angered about the collision, the mud, the rain, the fact that he’d not reached the village identified by the stranger, and his general lot in life, saw her muddied and murky shadow disappear around a bend. His anger intensified. “Hey!” he shouted. And he ran after her.

  Adam’s son, watching above, could only shake his head. His father felt he’d been wronged, felt he was owed an apology, and he intended to collect that apology. He’d get something owed him in this life, even if it meant fighting that person until they did so.

  The youngster ran as best he could, pulling his boots out of thick clumps of mud. The suction created a slurping sound as his footwear dislodged from each new footprint. He rounded the bend, found his quarry out of sight, and kept running, shouting after his quarry the whole way.

  Adam floated along above the chase, staying to the side and just ahead of his father’s path. He saw the bend, saw what was coming, and could only shake his head as his father shouted once more and sprinted around the corner nearly blind from the water in his eyes and the view blocked by thick shrubbery.

  Their second collision had an audience.

  His research had included locating journals preserved from those days, records kept in this corner of the world, trying to piece together a full image of what he’d experience in terms of the setting around this physical meeting of his parents. He’d learned that around this time, travelers along this road had complained to the local noble that a band of youngsters were sitting in wait, attacking them as they walked or rode by on horseback, stunning them with pummeling fists and making off with valuables, vanishing into the shadows of the forest before their victims could recuperate and give chase. The noble, bored though he might be with the troubles of the commoners, nevertheless decided to send a few of his knights out on patrol. They did so, in full armor atop regal steeds, watching for anything amiss. They’d brought along a horse drawn carriage with a lock upon the door inside, where any captured would find all finery removed… and where they’d wait until they were moved into more permanent confinement prior to hearing their varying sentences for crimes pronounced.

  His father and mother fit the description of the criminals offered by the victims in the minds of the knights. Both were young and were running along this road rather than indoors ahead of the storm like any innocent person. Their filthy, haggard appearances, the bruises from their collisions and the welts still visible on his father’s face after the beating he’d taken from his brothers just a few days earlier, the dirt and mud and general uncleanliness displayed by both… all were clues that confirmed their guilt in the minds of those assigned to stop the menace.

  They rose to their feet slowly after recognizing the new threat, wary, the faint remaining sunlight glinting off the swords pointing their way.

  His father wheeled around, meaning to run to the north… and found another knight behind him.

  He turned to glare at the man who’d led him to this humiliation… and found himself staring in the eyes of a white haired woman.

  Adam felt his father’s first reaction toward his mother. Hatred. Anger. This was entirely her fault.

  Her reaction was somewhat different. She’d feared him, feared what he represented as a potential agent of her father’s. She didn’t hate him, just that he’d brought the hunt to completion.

  It was only when the knights unlocked their cage and forced him inside first that she realized he’d had no connection to her father’s threat, that her father wouldn’t have actual knights in armor and on horseback out to collect her in a driving thunderstorm so far from home. He was a victim of chance as well, their collision marking the end of his freedom as well as hers. She glanced at the knights and the swords motioning her inside—“come, miss, it’s getting dark”—and realized that her fear had caused her capture, that her father had likely forgotten her soon after she’d left, that he’d never let others leave to chase her down.

  Her foolishness and fear had been this stranger’s downfall now as well.

  Adam sent a few nanos buzzing down inside the carriage, watching as the minute cameras, part of each of the bots, transmitted video imagery and sound into his mind. He knew they’d gotten in, knew what would happen next.

  He’d sent the bots in to see the people who were already inside.

  The new captives found inside an emaciated young man of indeterminate age, his body so skeletal that they wondered if he remained alive. But the young man’s eyes cracked open, full of calculating anger, and he took in the presence of the new arrivals within two lazy eye blinks before closing them again. Adam recognized the eyes, even if the skeletal face bore little resemblance to the one he’d come to know over the centuries. He knew that Arthur Lowell’s earliest years hadn’t been pleasant, though details were scarce. His parents had gleaned only snippets in the earliest months of their mutual captivity, saying only that Arthur had suffered greatly and barely lived long enough to meet up with them. Even with that warning, Adam was staggered at the man’s horrific appearance, and felt a brief bit of amazement at the sheer will it must have taken for the youngster to survive even to this point.

  The other captive hadn’t suffered quite so much. Her white blond hair was a bit matted with mud, and there were a few leaves there that seemed to enhance her appearance. She showed no signs of malnourishment or injury, unlike the others. Her deep blue eyes registered an instant look of distrust in Eva as the other woman crawled in, but had flickered with the briefest hint of interest when his father had clambered aboard. Adam supposed it was somewhat natural; she’d been in there with a man who looked like death itself, so a relatively healthy young man would look godlike by comparison. It was no fleeting emotion, though. Her attraction for him would continue, and he’d soon come to share in that emotion. In just a few years, his father and Genevieve would secretly become parents to a young girl called Elizabeth, a child that their entire village and future generations of Aliomenti and Alliance would believe to be Arthur’s daughter.

  His father glared at the young woman who’d been captured with him. “What’s your name?” He spoke with a sneer that masked his anger at his situation.

&n
bsp; “Eva,” she replied, meeting his defiant gaze with her own. “What is your name?”

  His father hesitated only briefly. “Adam.” He nodded, convincing himself. “My name… is Adam.”

  From his invisible perch high above, the son nodded at the father’s response. It seemed a minor thing. But in claiming the name, his father had finally won a small victory, even if it was only cosmetic in nature, a victory only because those in this mobile prison didn’t know any better.

  The visitor from the future glanced at the ragtag quartet portrayed by his nano spy cameras—Arthur, Genevieve, Eva, the one they’d all call Adam—and marveled at the idea that this quartet was destined for immortality, wealth, and power beyond any possible comprehension.

  He flew away from the forest and the storm, and had the machine follow him, opening the lid and floating back inside once the falling rain vanished. He closed the lid, dissolved his exoskeleton, and let the Energy dry the excess moisture he’d tracked inside.

  His work for this stop was now complete.

  But there was much more work to be done.

  Much more.

  ~~~14~~~

  Adam’s time machine departed the year 995 A.D.

  But the lives of those he’d just witnessed continued at a normal pace.

  The four prisoners were charged with armed robbery. Though none of them possessed weapons implicating them in the crimes, and though none of the victims testified that any of them were responsible for the thefts, their captors argued for their conviction, and the noble agreed. All four lost their freedom.