The Caravan Road

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Carl’s heart was genuinely pleased to have Cathlin back with him, safe and sound, and Alec detected hints of concern even for Lugust’s fate in what had turned into such unexpectedly hostile circumstances for the emperor.

  “Carl, what harm has Lugust done on the throne that we must undo first?” Alec asked after letting the parent and child share their reunion.

  “He has emptied the treasury to spend profligately on balls and celebrations for the crowd of hangers-on he entertains,” Carl spoke, “but worse than that, he has harmed innumerable families throughout the empire by seizing young men or women and conscripting them into his bloated, ineffective army that is fighting pointless battles of conquest in places we don’t need to fight.

  “He’s hurt many families, he’s killed many innocent citizens, and he’s sullied the empire’s reputation,” Carl spoke emphatically, giving a speech he had either made before, or at least rehearsed in his own mind many times. All his words were genuinely driven from a desire to see the empire be a better place for its citizens, Alec sensed, making his next decision easier to announce.

  “We are going to go down the stairs and out to face the group of guards who are milling below in confusion,” Alec said. “And we are going to announce that Lugust is abdicating the throne to Carl.”

  Even the befuddled man sitting on the floor took notice of that statement.

  “What are you going to do with me?” he asked. “Kill me?”

  “We surely don’t need to kill him,” Carl stated.

  “No, we aren’t going to kill him. He is going to leave when I leave, and go into exile,” Alec assured the room. “Availlie, you are going to remain here as the head of the bodyguards for the new emperor, and Arden will remain to serve as bodyguard to Cathlin,” Alec looked at his Ajax companion. “Arden should be down among the guard members right now,” he added. “Waiting to join us.” She nodded agreement.

  Within the following half hour, the small group went below and emerged from the barred door to the tower, silencing the growing crowd that was surrounded the base of the structure, uncertain of what had happened to their emperor, who they had seen scream for help from the balcony, then appear to fall from the balcony, only to miraculously lift back up and disappear inside the tower, after which they had seen Alec disappear in midair. The astonishment and uncertainty that occupied the crowd of armed men was thick, and Alec had his Warrior energies on their fullest level, prepared for any potential reaction that might emerge among the members of the mob below.

  Alec stepped through the doorway first, followed by the emperor, then Availlie, and the two newly freed prisoners last. They stood silently at the doorway, as the crowd watched tensely.

  “I am Alec, the Demonslayer, the Duke of Valeriane, the widower of the Empress Caitlen, whose long, peaceful and prosperous reign set the hallmark for success on the throne of the empire,” Alec spoke, his voice still retaining a slight accent, even after a century of life in his adopted land. “Because of the injustice that has been done to my city, I have returned to correct the problems in this palace.”

  There was a considerable stirring among the crowd as men and women muttered to one another.

  “I was here in the days when the Conglomerate and the nobility and others,” he didn’t mention the Ajacii, “mistreated the crown, and brought great pain to the Empire,” he told them. “I was here to help Caitlen regain her crown, so that she could serve as the rightful ruler, and a ruler who did right for the people of the empire.

  “The decisions and actions of my great-grandson, the Emperor Lugust, have hurt the people of all the empire, and his actions in Valeriane have brought me here for the protection of the people,” he said.

  There was the sudden twang of a bow from his left, and he reached out to snatch the shaft of the arrow in midair.

  “I will find the person who shot this,” he added in a studied casual voice.

  “Just as I have plucked this arrow from the air,” he held it over his head, the crowd again silent, “I am here to pluck the emperor Lugust from his throne. I have accepted his resignation, and have agreed that his brother, Prince Carl, shall now become the next emperor.”

  He turned and motioned for Carl and Cathlin to step forward, next to him, as the crowd erupted in loud and spirited shouting.

  “Who here is ready to pledge their fealty to the new emperor of Vincennes?” Alec asked.

  On cue, Arden pushed forward through the crowd. “I will serve the Emperor Carl, and his family,” he glanced at Cathlin, “faithfully.” He dropped to one knee, and raised his sword above his head, hilt held towards Carl.

  Two others from the crowd immediately joined Arden, as Carl took the handle of the sword, then returned it to him. Others in the front row began to kneel as well, and within a minute, half the guardsmen had pledged their allegiance to the new emperor.

  “I will take Lugust to the cells and guard him myself,” Alec told Carl. “Availlie shall serve as your head of bodyguards,” he nodded to her. “Within the hour, start arranging to have every member of the palace guard sent to me one at a time so that I may inspect them and determine their loyalty to the new emperor.”

  “How will you do that? You don’t even know these men,” Carl exclaimed. “Can you read their minds?” he asked facetiously.

  “No, I read their souls,” Alec spoke with such earnestness that Carl looked towards Availlie for support, only to see her sagely nod her head in agreement with Alec.

  “Come with me, your majesty,” Alec said to the deposed emperor, taking him by the elbow. As they began to walk away from the scene at the bottom of the tower, a member of the guard tried to swing his sword at the frightened Lugust. Alec unsheathed his own sword and blocked the strike, then knocked the sword out of the man’s hand.

  “We are not here to execute him, only to remove him from office,” Alec told the man.

  Three days later, the change in government was complete. A meeting of the Council of Advisors was hastily held, which confirmed the change in reigning monarch, and Alec had weeded through the entire palace guard and portions of the serving staff, recommending dismissal of nearly a fifth of those who had worked in the palace. Those he had named had been summarily escorted from the palace, and Carl began his reign with the diminished but loyal staff.

  Over the following week, Alec rested from his heavy use of his powers, then went about finding a few surviving members of the court and the staff who remained from the time when he had lived with Caitlen in the palace. Few of them had been true friends, but the memories they shared with him of the long ago times brought back memories of Caitlen, his children, and even the grandchildren he had known, as well as the other people who had been ministers in the government in the last decades of his life in the palace in Vincennes. He took to walking around the palace, often unrecognized, remembering even older times, events and people that no one else alive in Vincennes would recollect, and he grew melancholy at the reminder than he had outlived the generation he had felt at home with in Vincennes.

  “Your majesty,” Alec told Carl, after his week of exploring the palace, the city, and himself, “I have many good memories of the life I lived here, but they are only memories for me now, and the people I talk to are ghosts. It is time for me to leave.”

  “You are welcome to stay here all the days that I rule,” Carl replied. “I’ve come to accept that you are really my ancestor from the old days, an ageless miracle. I know that you have not only saved my life, but saved the lives of thousands of others by placing me on the throne. I would urge you to stay.”

  “You will be a good emperor,” Alec answered. “You don’t need me. I’ll leave Availlie here to protect you – at least protect you – in the short term,” he had noticed a profound compatibility between the emperor and his guardian, and felt comfortable with the prospect of the two together.

  “I’ll head back to Valeriane soon, and take Lugust with me. I’d like to take Cathlin as well,” he added.r />
  Carl looked at him with a shocked expression. “Why would you take my daughter to Valeriane?” he asked.

  “Because I’d like to renounce my dukedom, and see you name her as the new duchess of the city,” Alec explained. “Arden will be there to serve as her bodyguard after I leave the city; I’ll stay long enough to introduce her and assure that she has the support of the merchants and the local gentry,” Alec assured. “And I’ll send additional Ajacii back here to support Availlie as your bodyguard unit for as long as she thinks they’re needed.”

  “I couldn’t possibly need any one else with her to protect me!” Carl said enthusiastically. “No one on the world could possibly match her speed or skill with a weapon!”

  “She’s very good,” Alec agreed, “but she might welcome a few others.”

  “You have some reason for dropping Cathlin into the seat at Valeriane?” Carl asked.

  “Only to make sure that you have a loyal ally behind you,” Alec assured him.

  There was further discussion over the next few days, until Alec prevailed. On a cold, rainy day, he and Lugust, Cathlin and Arden, along with a troupe of retainers chosen to keep Cathlin from being too lonely, departed from the city. Alec and Availlie had a long, personal farewell discussion shortly before the leave-taking.

  “The Select were sent to Valeriane to prepare to fight a great battle for the city. Now you have me tied down in Vincennes babysitting in the palace. I find that I enjoy this assignment, my lord, though it has no real call for battle and blood; how did you arrange this?” Availlie asked Alec as they strolled through the city on the afternoon of his last day in Vincennes.

  “It wasn’t the plan when we started our adventure,” Alec assured her. “I’m not smart enough to plot anything like this. But once we were here it seemed like the best solution to the problem.

  “You will be good for Carl, and for the palace, and you being here will be good for the Ajacii,” he hesitated just a moment. “And I think this will be good for you Availlie. You can perhaps start over in life to some degree, if you decide you want to live your life here among the people of Vincennes.”

  She looked at him sideways as they walked in silence through the streets, until Alec abruptly stopped in front of a large, rundown-looking institutional building.

  “This was a practice hall, where I first worked with my sword when I was sent to this land,” Alec told the Ajax woman. “I was given the chance to start over here in Avonellene after I had dropped to the lowest point in my life. This hall is where I spent time training the local ruffians to use a sword, and some of them became very good. One went on to become part of the empress’s bodyguard as a matter of fact.

  “He had a chance to start over, I had a chance to start over, now we’ve given the monarchy a chance to start over with Carl as well,” Alec ended his dialog.

  “And I’ll have a chance to start over too, you’re obviously saying,” Availlie responded. “Thank you for the words to consider.

  “So you are off on your way to start over again?” she asked.

  “I am,” Alec sighed. “I don’t feel any calling, any sense of purpose in this land any longer. I came to this land and met Caitlen, then I fought Hellmann, and since Caitlen left, I’ve not have any great reason to stay.”

  They continued to converse as they walked back to the palace, then they said farewell, a farewell that they each knew was the final time they would meet, before joining their respective groups at the ceremony that saw the Valeriane-bound group depart, atop horses and within carriages, a sizeable group that would deliver some elements of the imperial court to Valeriane as Cathlin established herself in the ducal palace.

  Though notes had forewarned the people of Valeriane of what to expect, there was considerable angst in the city and the palace when the entourage arrived, and Alec spent several days offering assistance and bolstering the legitimacy of Cathlin as duchess, while emphasizing to her the need for and value of Charls as steward to run the palace and the duchy, and he felt satisfied that the terms he set were going to work for the good of the city and the empire.

  And then, feeling that he had tied up the loose ends of his life in the Avonellene Empire, he quietly left the city early one morning, taking the exiled former emperor Lugust with him to a new home in the west.

  Chapter 10 – Friends in Warm Springs

  Bernadina? He broadcast the mental call days later as he approached the valley that led to the hidden village of Warm Springs. Bernadina, he called again, receiving no answer.

  Bauer? He called next, hoping to contact someone he knew before he began to directly approach the settlement.

  Who calls? Who are you? Alec faintly heard the voice of his long-ago acquaintance reply.

  Alec, it’s Alec, he answered. I am on my way to visit Warm Springs. I’ll be there by nightfall.

  It will be so good to see you, such a wonderful day, Bauer answered. Thank you for such an inspiring surprise!

  “Come along, my friend,” Alec said to the silent Lugust, who followed him obediently through the late fall weather on the trail that rose from Valeriane towards Black Crag and the frontier of the Avonellene empire. The man had tried to escape from Alec the first night after they had left Valeriane, only to discover that Alec had created a wall of air surrounding the exiled ruler, a dense cell of atmosphere impossible for Lugust to force his way through, leaving him invisibly imprisoned.

  Throughout their journey, during the days that had transpired as Alec and Lugust walked along the road, climbing steadily higher into the mountain elevations, Lugust had tried multiple times, in multiple ways, to make a case for his release and return to the throne. He had tried to bribe and threaten and cajole and to be a co-equal ruler with Alec, all to no effect, other than to test Alec’s patience. Even now he did not surrender hope that he would somehow miraculously attain his freedom and return to Vincennes.

  Alec had grown weary of Lugust’s incessant whining and complaining. Additionally, the emperor’s physical condition was commensurate with the indulgent life he had lived in the palace, leaving him physically unable to travel at Alec’s pace. Between the two matters, Alec had finally placed Lugust in a traveling cocoon of air, one that carried him and also contained his noise, so that Alec had travelled for three days with Lugust floating behind him, seldom heard and never listened to.

  Now, Alec stopped at the entrance to the valley, and let Lugust down, then released the confining air that surrounded the man. The emperor was free, though he did not realize it yet. He continued his constant wheedling, not knowing that Alec could hear him now but had not heard him earlier in the day.

  “Once we arrive at Black Crag, you can turn me over to the garrison there as the emperor-in-exile, and they’ll serve me quite well. They you can go back to Vincennes and tell the court that I’ve been disposed of,” Lugust was plotting.

  “And in a year or so, after the court grows tired of Carl’s sanctimonious ways, you can send a message to me and I’ll bring the Black Crag brigade down so that we can assume control of the throne again. It is a perfect plan!” Lugust was urging Alec.

  “Come on, let’s go this way,” Alec replied, turning off the caravan road to head north into the mountains.

  “What? What madness is that?” Lugust asked in astonishment. “Are you taking me out into the wilderness to murder me?” He turned and started to run, until Alec used his Air energies to lift him off the ground and bring him back to where Alec had advanced several yards along the narrow trail.

  “If I planned to kill you, I would have done so long ago,” Alec repeated the same answer he had given innumerable times in response to Lugust’s accusations of impending murder. “We’re going someplace where friends live.” He made Lugust walk in front of him, desirous of wearing the man down through the arduous journey, as a way to stop the ongoing mutterings and schemes.

  Alec did not comment as they passed the trail that led to the cave where he had long ago met Bernadina, then
held as a captive by a band of highwaymen, robbers that had descended into cannibalism as well as murder and theft. He had set Bernadina free, and she in turn had rallied a number of her fellow lokasennii to come to rescue Alec from the bandits. Bernadina had taken Alec back to Warm Springs, where she had tended him and helped him heal from numerous injuries, and revealed to him many secrets about the existence of the lokasenna, the ancient, hidden race of people who exhibited some of the powers of the Spirit ingenairii, as well as the unusual ability to shift their shapes between human and animal.

  Through Bernadina he had learned that his own Spirit ingenairii abilities were the result of a distant lokasenna heritage in his own family history, just as his Warrior ingenairii abilities had descended from the ancient Ajacii. There were other ancient races as well, the Sleigh Maith, from who his Healing powers had been passed down, and Sylphs, Huldra, Hermeticans, and others he did not know, but had heard Bernadina mention.

  Bernadina had been a counselor and a friend and a spiritual soul mate in many ways, a being with whom Alec felt closer than with virtually any other, as their souls had communed in the mystical spring waters of Warm Springs. Now, with Bernadina’s voice silent, Alec feared that her long years had caught up to the grandasteur, the leader of the lokasennii, and a woman who had lived far beyond a mortal human lifespan.

  Onward they trudged through the path, over a stretch that was icy and slick, then around another pair of mountain ridges. It had been many decades since Alec had passed this way to visit Warm Springs, but he remembered the path well, and after a certain point, he boosted his Spirit powers to detect their approach towards any lokasenna sentries who might be guarding the entry to their community.

  Five miles later, Alec sensed a pair of lokasennii nearby, and he prepared himself for the encounter. He did not prepare Lugust however, and when a large mountain bear suddenly lumbered from the bordering scrub to occupy the trail directly in front of them the former emperor screamed and ran to Alec. “Save me! Fight it! Kill this thing.” Lugust shouted his commands in a fearful squeal.