“Is he alright?” Salem asked, as the others gathered around in fright and concern.
“Let’s carry these two over there,” Bauer directed. “They’ll be okay by the morning,” he assured everyone. “Now,” Bauer directed as soon as they had Alec and Jasel in place, and he gave instructions that put the other survivors in motion.
“Alec, do you need help? Can you do this?” Bauer asked as the two men lay on the ground.
“Cut us both, then hold our wounds together,” Alec spoke faintly, and after Bauer did as instructed, Alec used his last grasp of the Healer energy to heal the two vascular systems together, so that blood began to flow from him to Jasel and back, as they both lay unconscious on the ground.
Half an hour later, as the wagon came into sight down the road, Salem carried a bundle of blankets over to spread them over the two sleeping men, then knelt and looked in wonder at the arms that grew together.
“It’s extraordinary what he can do,” Bauer said over her shoulder.
“What is this?” she asked as she pointed at the link between their arms.
“Alec is sharing his blood with Jasel, to keep him alive and help him heal,” Bauer answered.
“Is there anything he can’t do? Is he really even a human? Why is he out here in the wilderness with us going through all these hardships?” Salem turned to look up at Bauer, and watched his face in the light of the small torch he carried.
“He lives only to serve others,” Bauer told her. “He can do anything. I saw him fight a demigod and win,” Bauer thought back to the memories he had glimpsed when he and Alec had shared their blood and spirits, when he had been converted from a sorcerer to a human. “He has seen more of God and served his God more than I believe any other mortal could ever imagine, if he even is a mortal any more. He has fought and killed demons, he is the friend of all races,” Bauer said softly, thinking about how the lokasennii looked up to Alec.
“How long have you know him? How old is he?” Salem asked.
Bauer looked at her and paused. “I’ve known him longer than you’ve been alive, and he was old when I met him,” he answered cagily. “The wagon’s almost here, and we’ll have a bite to eat, if you’d care to join the rest of us now,” he advised.
She rose to walk with him over to the campfire that was burning. “Will he be okay?”
“He expects to be. I expect him to be, maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after that,” Bauer answered. “He’ll be okay, and Jasel will be, different.” Then he began walking, and said no more. Bauer went on to hand out assignments and duties as Alec had directed him, and the caravan slept peacefully that night. When Bauer awoke the next morning and walked in the chilly air to check on Alec, he found Stacha bundled under blankets with Alec, sharing her body warmth with him.
He let the trio sleep in the dawning light, while he went to check on the mules and the oxen, and when he was finished he discovered that Alfred and Salem were standing side-by-side watching over the sleeping companions.
“So then he lifted the oxen, with Mrs. Grean on them, mind you, up the hillside,” Graze was telling Salem. “That, to me, is more impressive than making himself fly.”
Alec’s eyes opened, and he saw Stacha beside him, then realized the other two were standing over him. He looked over at Jasel, examining the boy with his Healer vision, and gave a slight nod, satisfied that Jasel’s injuries were healed thanks to the presence of Alec’s blood flowing through his veins throughout the night.
“Alfred,” he whispered, “lend me your knife.” He held his free hand out, and Alfred pulled the blade from his belt, allowing Alec to swiftly slice the two connected arms apart. Jasel cried out, and Alec clamped his hand over the boy’s arm to heal the cut, then healed himself, as Stacha sat up.
“What’s happening?” Jasel asked, not remembering anything since he had been struck down from his saddle the night before.
“We’re ready to start moving this morning,” Alec answered as he stood, and extended a hand to Stacha to help her up as well, her drowsy face looking fetching in the morning light.
“But I remember there were men all around us, and they were fighting. They stabbed me,” his hand explored his torso, examining the places he remembered wounds.
“Alec healed you,” Salem said. “He saved your life. He saved all our lives,” she looked over at Alec again with bright eyes.
“We need to get everyone going and get underway,” Alec brushed the matter away. “Alfred, would you and Stacha go put the oxen in the harness?” he sent them away. “Salem, go get those children of yours out of their covers, and everyone else who’s still abed too,” he told her.
When they were gone, he knelt down by Jasel. “Do you remember a long time ago, just after your parents left the farm at Ridgeclimb, when I came to visit you on the farm?” he asked.
“I haven’t thought about that in a long time,” Jasel answered. “Everything sure seemed simpler then. Or maybe I just didn’t know how complicated the world was.
“I didn’t know you could do the things you do,” he added.
“That morning you came into the farmhouse and found Kriste and me passed out on the floor,” Alec began to explain, “I had tried to use one of my powers to help Kriste; she had told me she was having nightmares.
“That power I used was what I call my Spiritual power. It does many things,” he reached out to place his hand on Jasel’s forearm.
It lets me talk with my mind to the mind of another person, like this, he spoke mentally.
Now, to help heal you, I let my blood flow through your body last night. One thing that may happen is that you will be able to send your thoughts to other people as well, he added.
I hear you! Can you hear me? Jasel immediately replied, an astonished expression on his face. I remember now, you did this in the kitchen of our house once!
The two held a conversation for several minutes, Alec answering questions and explaining to the best of his ability, while cautioning against inflated expectations. We shall practice, Alec assured him. But now we need to get moving, Alec told him, and they carried their covers over to the wagon.
During the day the caravan moved along the road, staying together as a single unit, and over the course of the day, each member of the group that had been attacked came to Alec to thank him for the rescue.
“I was most impressed by your abilities,” Kane spoke with an assumed mantle of authority to Alec, who barely succeeding in hiding a smile at the importance Kane sought to convey. “When we are back among the Twenty Cities, I would offer you the opportunity to be a fighter for me. I cannot tell you the particulars right now, but it would bring great honor to you.
“You would not be eligible to be a suitor for my mother however, even when the mourning season is over,” he added pointedly.
“I will take your offer under consideration,” Alec had answered politely.
Andi came to see him later. “Marva will never believe half the tales I tell her about this trip; not a quarter of them,” she told Alec. “The pool of water that ate people seemed like the best, but when I tell her you came flying in and killed almost a score of men alone, she’ll call me a liar.”
“We’ll know the truth, no matter what she says,” Alec answered. “Thank you for keeping Hope safe on the rocks until I arrived,” he added.
“That would have been a good story,” Andi agreed. “I held a slew of them off, didn’t I?
“But then you came flying in, and suddenly, me fighting a few men with a sword doesn’t sound like much,” Andi complained. “You owe me a favor for interrupting my great victory. I almost had them where I wanted them!” she said with a laugh. “Actually, I hope you’ll let me take you out to dinner and show my appreciation.” She added nervously, “when we finally reach a city.” She looked at him beseechingly as she made the most direct address to him she had dared since the journey began.
“We’ll have dinner sometime,” Alec casually agreed, still mindful of Hope’
s warning earlier.
They traveled that day and the next, Alec resting in the back of the wagon the first day, as their group saw more traffic on the road, and the following night they stopped before sunset, when they reached a roadside inn, build at a fork in the road; Jasel rode in the wagon as well as Alec, sitting with Stacha and Alfred, watching and listening to their lessons on the millinery shop. “Who is ready to sleep in a bed?” Alec asked when they stopped at an inn, and listened to a roar of approval. They took three rooms, Salem’s family in one, the other women in one, and the men in the third. After arranging their belongings securely, they settled into a half empty public room and ate dinner together, a group of people who got along with one another after all the trials of the road; even Andi felt charitable towards Stacha, whose attentions had shifted from Alec to Graze, as those two continued to share their mutual interest in the millinery business.
The next morning Alec was up early, and speaking to the stable boy, as he went out to feed the animals in the stable. “Have you had any other travelers come from the east recently?” Alec asked.
“Four days ago,” the boy replied. “Seven of them came riding through here four days ago. They didn’t say much, and they definitely weren’t miners; I don’t know who they were, where they came from, or what they were up to.”
Alec tossed a coin to the boy, one of his small coins from Valeriane, a coin that would seem exotic and foreign in the western mountains. “How far is the ride to Oolitan?” he asked.
“You’ve got the wagon and the mules?” the boy clarified, to Alec’s nod. “You’ll need a day and a half to reach the View, and then most of a day to get to the bottom of the Glide.”
“The Glide? What is it? I’ve never heard of it,” Alec asked and commented.
“Never heard of the Glide? You are from the other side of the mountains, aren’t you? As if that accent doesn’t give you away,” the boy made Alec wince with his reference to an accent, even though Alec didn’t know if the boy meant his Dominion accent as he spoke the Avonellene language, or an Avonellene accent. Alec had never lost the accent that had marked him as an outsider in Vincennes from his first moment there, though it had smoothed out over his century of life in the empire’s lands.
“The Glide is a long path carved into the side of the escarpment that is the beginning of the mountains proper,” he explained. “The View is the flat land at the top of the Glide; you can see eight of the Twenty Cities from there on a good day, they say,” he added parenthetically.
“Oolitan sits right at the base of God’s Step – that what we call the cliff because it’s so high and straight. It’ll take most of a day to climb down it; it does take a full to climb up, that’s why most of the inns are located right there at the top of the cliff.
“Some folks don’t even make it all the way up! I hear that you can find folks sleeping at night along the side of the road,” the boy completed the travelogue that he knew.
Alec thanked the boy and returned to the inn, where the few other travelers on the road were eating breakfast in the common room. He knocked on the doors of the others from his group, calling them all downstairs to eat the warm food that was available, a welcome change for the first meal of the day after the long weeks of travel, and as they sat around a table together, Alec decided they needed to talk about their next plans.
“We are only a day and a half from the end of the journey through the mountains,” he announced, and he looked at the expressions around the table. Although Salem and her children maintained a look of studied neutrality, there was relief on the faces of all the others.
“And the stable boy tells me we are only four days behind the ingenairii who took Kriste,” he looked at Jasel. “They are riding on horseback now, so they are already down in Oolitan.
“How large is the city?” he looked at Salem as he asked the question. “Will we be able to track them through it? How many roads lead out of the city?”
“Oolitan is not the largest of the Twenty Cities, but it’s a large one,” Salem answered. “Anyone will need two days to get across it, not just because it is large, but because it is so unruly. It’s a trading port as much as a city, and authority is weak and corrupt; there’s not much order to it.
“There’s a main road south to the port city of Shoreham, there’s the Old Road that goes north to some of the cities in that direction,” she paused with some emotion, Alec could tell, “and then there’s the Great Road that goes on west to most of the other cities, including the Five Old Cities of Power.”
“And Woven,” Kane added.
“That’s where we’re from,” Jody spoke up.
“And it’s where we’ll be again someday,” Kane interjected with a determined voice.
“Shush, children, none of that right now,” Salem gave both of them a meaningful look.
Alec sighed; he knew that they only reason the wagon and the mules had been able to gain on the Warriors had been because of his abilities to keep them moving through the blizzards and weather in the mountains that had delayed their ingenairii targets. There would be none of those storms or factors to be likely to work in their favor from now on. They would begin to fall behind if he allowed the others to continue to slow him down. But he felt the strong realization that the others would continue to need his leadership for at least a while more.
“Well, let’s make haste to get to The View as fast as we can, and decide what comes next,” he said. “Everyone needs to think about what they plan to do once we’ve reached the Twenty Cities.” With that he stood up and went to the stables to prepare the animals for departure.
Their travels that day showed them one particularly interesting sight; they passed a caravan headed east towards Black Crag, the first organized caravan to attempt the trip. “We’re leaving a week earlier than usual, but by being the first ones to arrive east we’ll collect a premium for the load we’re carrying,” the team leader told them.
“You say you made it all the way through with just that rig?” he asked dubiously. “What were the tollkeepers like?” he euphemistically referred to the bandit gangs.
“We only ran into two sets, and they won’t trouble travelers as much anymore,” Alec said flatly. “Did you happen to see a set of folks on horses, about seven, also headed down into the Twenty Cities?” he asked.
“We did, they hit the bottom of the Glide the day we were starting up. They were a bit of a celebrity group for making it through in the heart of winter. They didn’t mention there was another group behind them,” he said.
“They didn’t know we were behind them,” Alec answered. “Did they mention where they were headed once they got through Oolitan?”
“No, they just asked about the fastest way to get to the Western Road,” the other leader answered, then cracked his whip to set his train back into motion. “Got to keep moving; good luck.”
“And good luck to you too,” Alec answered.
His caravan, had been dwarfed by the eastward bound collection of forty wagons, with spare to mules carry fodder, and multiple guards on horses. The small group spent the night camping along the road, maintaining two guards on each shift of the watch. Alec and Jasel worked on extending the boy’s ability to speak with his mind. You can’t hear me any further away than this? Jasel asked as they sat only five feet apart.
Not yet, but keep practicing. You will develop the ability, Alec urged him.
It seems like a lot of extra work, Jasel commented, without any real benefit.
Imagine that you’re calling out to Kriste, Alec suggested. Think about if she could hear you telling her that you’re coming to find her. Think if she could answer and tell you where she was!
The look at Jasel’s face showed Alec that he had stumbled onto the best motivation possible, and the boy practiced continually.
By mid-afternoon on the following day, they reached the edge of The View, the small plateau that sat amid the mountains, several thousand feet above the plain in which the
Twenty Cities were located. Alec stood at the edge with the others in his group as the regular traffic of the region paced by them. The view from The View was extraordinary; Alec drank in the sight of the flat plain that stretched into the distant horizon. Oolitan spread out far below them, a city with small patches of recognizable grids of streets, but mostly a turning, teeming mass of roads and ways that merged and ended and started randomly. It would be a tortuous journey through that slow-moving traffic, he realized.
Off in the distance, he saw six cities easily. Two were north along the northern road, and one was south, though it was not the great port city, Shoreham. Looking west, the direction they had to travel, he saw two cities in a line that must be the Western Road they were looking for, as well as a city to the southwest.
“It’s an inspiring sight,” Salem said as she came to stand next to him.
“It is,” Alec agreed. “What cities do we see?”
“To the north are Churt, and then Firence,” she pointed past Alec. “Down south is Creole.
“Over there in the west is one of the Five, Erechta, and the most distant you can see is another of the Five, Exbury. The near one,” she paused for only a moment, “is Woven.”
“Was it your home? Is that the city you’ve fled from?” Alec asked her.
“Yes,” she answered softly. “It was home.”
“My path leads to Woven, it seems,” Alec said carefully. “Do you plan to journey that way too? Shall we continue to travel together?”
“I wish that I could return to Woven, and I wish that I could travel with you, but we cannot return,” Salem said. Kane had walked up, and stood behind his mother.
“We could! With Alec fighting for us, we could return!” he said excitedly.
“Alec is not on his way to Woven to fight for us. He is going in pursuit of his own mission,” she said, not looking at Alec. Her eyes looked out at the horizon, tears forming and brimming.
The Caravan Road Page 23
