Free Healers by Laurence Dahners Page B

them without their permission. Besides, most of them are people with problems only Tarc or Daussie can treat.”
    Kazy felt mystified. Problems only Tarc or Daussie can treat? How could they possibly treat conditions their mother, the experienced healer and their teacher, can’t treat?
    ***
    Back on the road again, Tarc was riding the Hyllises’ bay horse. He’d ridden it to the back of the caravan and then back up to the front. Though he wouldn’t admit it, he hoped to encounter Lizeth when she rode back to report in. She liked riding point for the caravan and so she frequently had that assignment. She preferred riding the far-point, but today she was riding near-point, dropping back every so often to report what the far-point guard had seen.
    Tarc rode for a while beside Sam who was leading the guard wagon’s mules, but, bored, had ridden a few hundred yards out front. To the right side he saw a large, shallow valley with a big lump in the middle of it. Curious, he studied it, wondering what it could be. As his eyes traced back and forth he realized there was some kind of regular pattern in the valley.
    As if the landscape was laid out rectangularly.
    He realized that even the big lump in the middle of the valley had some kind of regular rectangular pattern to it. It’s a city! A city of the ancients! The rectangular pattern must be the residual shape of their buildings and streets!
    Tarc wheeled the bay and rode back to Henry Roper’s wagon. “Mr. Roper!”
    Roper smiled up at him, “You noticed the old city, eh?”
    “Yes! It’s… it’s enormous!”
    Roper nodded, “Yes, the things they could do back then were astonishing.”
    The caravan moved far enough that Tarc was able to turn and look out at the remnants of the city. “What’s that enormous lump in the middle? Did they build the city around some kind of mountain? It looks like they’ve built some of their homes right up on the top of the hill!”
    Roper laughed, “You’re not going to believe this, but the ground out there was flat when they built the city. That lump’s the remains of a group of huge buildings where much of their business was done.”
    “That can’t be! The lump’s way too tall! As tall as if you stacked 20 to 30 houses, one on top of another!”
    Roper grinned, “When they built them, they were a lot taller than that. A hundred houses high or more. It’s just that they’ve collapsed and lost much of their original height.”
    Tarc turned to stare out into the valley, then back at Roper with wide eyes. “You’re not saying this just to see how gullible I am?”
    Roper shook his head, “No, the things they could do back then are almost impossible to believe.”
    Tarc looked back out over the city, “Like what?” he asked wonderingly, but then before Roper could answer said, “Wait! A city that big should have had a huge wall. Why can’t I see any remnants of it?”
    “Cities didn’t have walls back then.”
    Tarc turned back to Roper, a frown on his face. “Really? How did they defend themselves?”
    “Well, two things. First, large groups of cities and the people around them banded together to form something they called a ‘nation.’ That nation then was their defensive unit to fight against other nations. They didn’t have to defend themselves against raiders from the countryside because the countryside was part of the same nation. Second, they had weapons so terrible no wall could possibly protect them.”
    “What?! How can that possibly be?” Tarc asked, an astonished look on his face. “Surely if they built those huge buildings, they could build a wall the height of four or five houses. If they built it out of rock and it was as wide as a couple of houses…” He ran down as he saw Roper shaking his head at him in amusement.
    Roper said, “The first things to make walls obsolete were cannons powerful enough to break down any wall, no matter how thick or how high. But later they built airplanes, big