The Caravan Road (2 page)

The Caravan Road

Chap
ter 1 – The Ridgeclimb Clinic

He didn’t realize it at the time, but Alec’s adventure began while he was tending to a patient from the village in the valley.  Trevia was a long-time friend, a woman whose children he had delivered and watched grow over the course of the previous two decades.  Trevia brought fresh loaves of bread and baskets of mushrooms as her means of paying what she owed for the treatment Alec had provided to her and her family over the years.  Like her neighbors and the others who lived across a wide region of the nameless mountain range, Trevia respected and trusted Alec as not only the caregiver, but also the pillar of society who made peace and prosperity possible for the hundreds of people who scratched their livings from the meager resources of the isolated mountain region.

As Alec finished applying a salve to the infected scratch on Trevia’s leg, a knock at the door preceded the entry of a young medic into the room.  “When you finish with Trevia, there’s a visitor who wishes to speak to you,” the doctor-in-training said deferentially to Alec.

Alec calmly dismissed his young protégé, then finished listening to Trevia explain how difficult her daughter was to raise.  “When I was her age, young people showed much more respect towards their parents,” Trevia insisted as she bemoaned Ingenia’s willful neglect of chores around their homestead, a neglect that the mother was sure was the result of spending too much time mooning over a young man who lived on the other side of the ridge.

Trevia appreciated the manner in which Alec nodded his head sympathetically.  She only wanted someone to listen to her; she suspected there was little that could truly be done to change the girl’s interests, as she matured and her place in society seemed to change on an almost daily basis.  “I wish she could just stay my little girl forever,” Trevia lamented as she finished getting her burden off of her chest, thankful that Alec would listen, when even her own husband merely shrugged and told her that children were bound to grow up.

And then she was out the door; she knew her heart was lightened, and her leg was feeling better.  She did not know that Alec had managed to detect and heal a small tumor on her liver while he had seemed to fuss over her scratched leg, nor did she know that Alec had gently released a wh
isper of a stream of Spiritual i
ngenaire energies into her as well, accounting for the livelier spirits she carried out the door.

After she left, Alec sat alone for a long minute in the bright stone-walled room of his clinic, a building that was stoutly-enough built to withstand a siege, though it only served peaceful and humanitarian purposes.  The large building was constructed on a rocky rise that looked down upon the Black Crag-to-Oolitan caravan route, a difficult but highly traveled road through the mountains that carried the trade of goods between two lands that knew nothing of each other besides the goods that traders carried back and forth.

Alec’s clinic was an established landmark on the caravan route.  When Alec had decided to settle and create a home for himself in the middle of the sparsely-populated, rugged wilderness along the caravan road, he had begun to build the structure himself, at the same time he had begun to build his medical practice to serve the scattered handful of residents in the area and the travelers and traders along the road.  He had also established a rule of law that hadn’t previously existed for hundreds of miles of his location atop the rugged mountainous plateau he adopted as his home.

He had started small and slowly, using his Stone ingenaire abilities to craft the solid walls that protected him, his clinic, and his patients from outlaw
s and the element
s.  Little by little he had expanded the building from its original two rooms to become the large complex it now comprised, all constructed of walls that Alec had fused together into solid, seamless stone, able to resist attack as well as the inclement weather that
was more likely to strike
, especially in the vicious storms of the  winter season.

Now the clinic building was used by caravans as a shelter from the storms, and was credited with saving lives of traders who otherwise would have frozen to death in the brutal waves of snow and frigid temperatures that swept across the mountains in the late
fall and early spring (not to mention the dark winter season, when
no reasonable person was foolish enough to
try to
travel the mountains).  Alec felt no qualms about charging high lodging and supply rates to the caravan travelers in such situations.  He felt that they knew the storms were a hazard in the winter-time, and any decision to gamble on traveling across the road close to winter was a result of calculated greed, which deserved to pay a price.  The proceeds of his
business-like
hospitality enabled him to maintain the staff of apprentice medical trainees who studied under him at the mountain clinic,
who
often
came to learn healing skills so that they could
take their knowledge with them back to their far-flung homes after several years of study, for Alec’s healing skills had been practiced on patients traveling along the trading route, and stories of his miraculous cures had traveled with those survivors back across the kingdoms and nations that were home to the survivors.

Alec raised himself from the stool he sat on in the empty examination room, ready to find and listen to the visitor who awaited him.  His curiosity was raised simply by the fact that the announcement had referred to a ‘visitor’ and not a ‘patient’
,
with the implicit differentiation that this was not a medical matter.  The stone walls made the room cool – year round – and Alec didn’t mind stepping out.  The stone walls were solid, protective, and imposing, but they were chilly, he admitted.  One of his young followers was working with local women to weave hangings that helped warm the rooms, and Alec was enthusiastically in favor of the project.  The first few woven hangings had perceptibly helped the rooms feel better, and some of the local women showed a real talent for creating beautiful tapestries. 

Additionally, the project was creating a market for the local wo
ol, giving the shepherds an easier
way to earn a living from their products, instead of having to rely on the trading caravans to buy the raw wool for a pittance.  Alec didn’t mind paying a premium for the tapestries he was buying, and he expected that the many rooms and the many walls in each room
of the clinic
would provide a long-lasting market necessitating a period of buying.  By the time he was done furnishing his needs, he hoped the local entrepreneurs would begin to sell their products to the traders and receive a greater value for the finished goods than they currently got for their wool.

He took one more look at the tapestry on the wall behind him, a tapestry that was his favorite, a scene of several children playing a game of tag, then left the room to walk down the long hall that ran the length of the roadside wing.  In the foyer he found Marcus, the messenger who had spoken to him earlier.  “Your guest is in the battle room,” Ma
rcus informed Alec with a
gesture towards a door that stood slightly ajar.

Alec raised his eyebrows with a look of inquiry, curious why a visitor would await him in a room that was not a medical examination room.  “It’s Carmive, sir,” Marcus answered the unspoken question.  “She said she truly needed to see you, but that it was not for medicine.”

“Thank you Marcus,” Alec acknowledged, then crossed the drafty foyer to the opposite side, and entered the battle room, where a dark-haired woman awaited him.

The battle room had earned its name from the tapestry that hung upon its wall, a fanciful depiction of what a mountain weaver imagined a battlefield would look like, with orderly rows of soldiers in precise formations facing one another.  The weaver had never experienced or witnessed a battle, Alec knew.  The reality of battle was chaos – fluid situations, dynamic conditions, shifting positions and unpredictable surroundings.  Alec had lived through multiple wars, and their battlefields all had that one thing in common – whether it was the Dominion, the lacertii, the Michian empire or Avonellene’s own armies, there was never any way to stick to a plan or stay in an expected formation once the battle began.

He shifted his attention from the tapestry to Carmive, a long-time patient and neighbor.  Alec had begun tending her ills when she was just a girl.  He had seen her grow up, he had seen her wedding, and he had tended to the health of her own children, who were nearly adults themselves now.  She looked healthy to Alec’s eye, and he instinctively used his Healer vision to examine her as well while he pushed the door shut behind his back.  There was no evidence of injury or illness, as Marcus had indicated.  Alec wondered what local issue had arisen that would prompt Carmive to come see him; while some of the neighbors tried to draw Alec into every local dispute that arose, Carmive was not one of those.  Alec had repeatedly avoided becoming entangled in the disputes which he believed people should learn to solve on their own, disappointing many who lived in the region, but he had never heard any such request from Carmive, until now.

Carmive rose from her chair.  Alec held out a hand to greet her, then sat in the companion chair as Carmive took her seat again.  “It’s nice to see you this morning.  Is your family well?” Alec asked.  It was still just mid-morning, and Carmive’s homestead was over an hour’s journey to the western valley that rested below the ridgetop caravan route.  She had apparently left her home immediately after breakfast; whatever the issue was, Alec concluded it would be important to her, but not something so urgent that Carmive had felt the need to leave before breakfast.

“They’re all well,” Carmive replied in a warm voice, glad to open the conversation with such an easy topic.

“And how are your crops looking?” he knew that Carmive’s husband devoted more of his time to crops than to livestock, only raising a small herd of swine and a few cattle to supply meat for his own family, and relying on several fields of grain and vegetables that were scattered along a small river valley below the ridge that the caravan road followed.

“Well, the late frost hurt our orchard, but everything else is going to bounce back,” Carmive answered assuredly.

Alec sat in silence, waiting for her to open the real conversation.   He’d checked on two topics that didn’t seem to trouble her, so now it was time to wait patiently and let her open up the issue that was on her mind.

“I’m sorry to trouble a great man such as yourself,” she began humbly just seconds later.

“You’re no trouble, and I’m not a great man, just a neighbor,” Alec tried to put her at ease.

“Oh, but y
ou are!” Carmive protested, “and
you’re always so willing to help us all.

“That’s why I thought I should ask for your advice, and maybe your help,” she picked up the thread of her purpose for visiting.  “Jasen’s grandfather has passed away out west in Oolitan; we got word from a message that was delivered on the last caravan that came through.

“There’re
some affairs that need to be settled up.  Jasen’s his only heir, so we need to send someone to sell his home,” she explained.  “We have it in mind to go ourselves, but we’re nervous about leaving the farm for the weeks it’ll take to get there and deal with everything and then return – a month each way at best, we figure.  That means we’d have to leave the kids to tend the farm, and that worries me,” she admitted.

“Would you think it’ll do to let the two of them stay in the house on their own?” she asked.  “And would you be willing to have someone check on them on a regular schedule to let them know they have someone to help if they need?” Carmive asked her second question before Alec had even answered the first.

“Carmive, we can certainly send someone to go by the farmhouse every day you’re gone,” Alec agreed.  He thought about her two children, a son and a daughter, the son probably still a teenager – though just barely, and the daughter perhaps a couple of years younger.  The son, whose name Alec recalled as Jasel, was a strapping, husky boy, someone built to work on a farm.  His younger sister, Kriste, was inexplicably petite, with a frame that was thin and small, petite in contrast to the rest of her family.  Alec had delivered Jasel himself, but had been absent when Kriste was born; one of his apprentices had successfully handled the delivery while Alec was on one of his periodic trips to Valeriane.  Alec had often checked on Jasel, a boy who had lived a boy’s life to the fullest on the farm, frequently suffering injuries and accidents from his handling of implements and animals.

“They’re good kids; they won’t cause any trouble,” he assured her.  “You and Jasen can travel without worry.  Is there anything I can do to help you prepare for this journey you’re going to make?  I’ve never been to the Twenty Cities myself to know what to prepare you for; it’s a long trip, especially for a couple that’s traveling alone.  You’re going to be coming home well past the start of autumn, and that’s not a good time for normal folks to try to travel the mountains,” he warned Carmive, unnecessarily, for he knew that she was well aware of the potentially troubling weather than could descend upon travelers when cold weather claimed dominion over the mountains.

Although he knew the weather grew challenging all along the road, Alec had never gone any further west than the clinic where he resided.  His long-ago journey to the clinic site had brought him from the Avonellene Empire to the place where he’d founded his home, and the handful of trips he’d made since settling down in the mountains had been back in that direction, back east to Valeriane or Warm Springs.  He didn’t go as far as Vincennes.