Captives of the Savage Empire

Chapter Two

A satisfying rumble shook the ground beneath Torio as he Read this section of the fault settle into a more stable configuration. "Perfect!" he said aloud, and Lord Wulfston dropped his concentration and became Readable as a human presence once again. He could not be Read further, for he was a savage Adept, capable of causing the earth to shift—with proper guidance.

The two men were seated cross-legged, hands joined, on the floor of an abandoned house several miles inside the Aventine border. For winter travel they were dressed in heavy woolens and furs, but even so Torio shivered …no… he was not shivering—the ground was moving again, only moments after their successful effort!

He Read the fault, but it was secure—and the shock waves were coming toward it, not away from it. Not the minor quake they had just set off, but a major one somewhere farther away—could it be the very catastrophe they were seeking to avoid?

The ground they were seated on rose and fell, as if they rode a boat over the wake of another. "It shouldn't be that severe!" said Wulfston, not knowing the effect was not the settling they had triggered.

"It's a distant quake!" said Torio. "I can't Read that far." Torio's Reading range, without leaving his body, was approximately three miles. It was a good range for a Magister Reader, an excellent range for one as recently exalted to that rank as Torio. Nonetheless, it was frustrating to know that Readers could go far beyond the good or excellent, and not know how the breakthrough was made.

Only one person had thus far made that breakthrough. //Master Lenardo!// Torio shouted mentally.

For once Lenardo did not correct his title. //I'm here, Torio. Let me Read for you—the Masters will be looking for you and Wulfston.//

"Lenardo is investigating," Torio told Wulfston, and Read with his former teacher. Lenardo was not with them in person, but was Reading them from Zendi, deep in the savage lands. He no longer had to leave his body to Read over such distances—but even more important under the present circumstances, Lenardo had the power to Read without allowing other Readers to Read him. No Reader had ever developed that ability before, or most of the vast range of Lenardo's powers.

Not allowing himself to comment or question mentally, Torio followed Lenardo's perceptions, tracing the shock waves of the earthquake backward, south and west to their source. Gaeta!

Torio had never been there, but he recognized the city where he would have been right now, taking medical training at the great hospital, if his life had followed a Reader's normal path. It had not. Inside the empire he was considered a renegade. If he were caught he would be examined by the Council of Master Readers, using whatever techniques they deemed necessary to bring into his mind information that would aid the empire against the savages. Then he would be executed as a traitor.

Outside the empire, though, in the savage lands, he was a lord by virtue of his powers, with lands set aside for him to rule when he was ready. Could he ever be ready for such a role?

Lenardo had focused on Gaeta. The last shocks were still pounding the seaside town as the two Readers observed. As the earth's heaving ceased, people began pulling themselves up from wherever they had been thrown. There were fires all over town—it was winter, and in every home people were trying to keep warm. But most fires were just scattered coals, quickly shoveled back into place, flaming hangings or other items stamped out. Here and there small buildings had fallen, garden walls collapsed in spots, but most of the town had only minor damage that would be set right in a few days of work.

The hospital was another story. It was the largest building in town, set on a hill overlooking the sea—and part of that hill had fallen, sending the seaward wall of the building tumbling down into the road below. Under such stress, the second story of a newer wing had collapsed onto the rooms below, trapping both the patients and the many Readers who lived and worked at the hospital. People were hurt, stunned, trapped under rubble—they were in no condition to put out the fires spreading through the halls!

As the fire blazed up atop the hill, people in the town below realized that the hospital was in trouble, and every uninjured person hurried up the hill to help. First they had to unblock the road—but willing hands set to work, and everyone with shovels, buckets, anything that might help, quickly dug through the fallen earth. Soon buckets of water were being passed from nearby wells up to those fighting the fire—but it was slow, so impossibly slow! All those able to move inside the hospital were already pulling people out as best they could. There were plenty of Readers—no one would be left to die because his presence was undiscovered—but people were dying throughout the building, dying in agony of burns, or, less painfully, of smoke inhalation or suffocation because they could not be reached in time. Others were bleeding to death, trapped where no one could reach them to staunch their wounds.

And every Reader suffered the agony of the wounded and the dying. Torio and Lenardo suffered with them, even more so because they could do nothing to help… and because it was entirely possible that their manipulations had unintentionally caused this tragedy.

Lenardo withdrew his attention from the scene of chaos, and sought the point that had been the center of the earthquake. Here the rock levels beneath the earth were freshly slanted—a secondary fault no one had realized was there. Torio felt Lenardo's remorse, regret—but concentrating on the major, unstable fault they had been trying to ease, who could have guessed that their small tremors would shake loose this other instability? If it had been any distance from the hospital, or if the hospital had not been such a mixture of additions clinging to the top of that hill…

But it had happened, and it was their fault. Torio was glad he dared not «say» anything to Lenardo through their mental linkage. He would not know what to say at the moment to the man who had led him out of the Aventine Empire into a new way of life, only to have their best intentions erupt into death and destruction.

They brought themselves back to the abandoned house. Torio came out of the trancelike state in which he had been Reading Gaeta, and found himself gripping Wulfston's hands convulsively.

"I'm sorry," he said in a choked voice, releasing his grip.

Wulfston paid no heed to Torio's unnecessary apology. "What happened?" he asked as he stretched his hands, wincing as circulation brought pain—followed immediately by the warmth of Adept healing.

"Gaeta," said Torio. "The hospital. The quake destroyed the hospital, Wulfston—patients, healers, everyone dying—"

"Torio!" Wulfston gripped the younger man's shoulders despite his sore hands, at the same moment that Lenardo told him, //Not now, Torio! Get out of the empire—then we'll talk about what went wrong.//

"We were not aiming at Gaeta," Wulfston said firmly. "It's nowhere near the fault we activated. It was coincidence."

"No. All the minor quakes we set off along this fault activated that one."

"Lenardo?" Wulfston asked.

"He's still Reading us," Torio replied. "He wants us to leave."

"I was about to suggest the same thing," said the Adept, climbing to his feet and stretching his legs. "Lenardo, we'll see you in a few hours. Come on, Torio."

Torio also rose and stretched. Both Readers and Adepts were accustomed to using the stable, cross-legged position for periods of concentrated effort; even in this cold weather, neither man was cramped.

Their horses were tethered outside, saddled and ready. They rode at a normal pace, not a gallop—they had not yet been Read, and did not want to call attention to themselves.

"If they think we deliberately destroyed Gaeta," Torio said, "they'll be Reading for us all along the western coast. No one will look for us here."

"If they think we would deliberately attack a hospital," Wulfston said grimly, "how will we ever make them trust us enough to negotiate a treaty?"

Both men fell silent. It was a dark, moonless night; Torio took the lead, guiding the horses by Reading. Trying to deny his aching guilt, he reminded himself, We did not activate the fault, Drakonius did. We are simply trying to repair the damage before Tiberium is destroyed.

The capital city of the Aventine Empire sat directly on the unstable fault line. A major earthquake there would mean thousands of lives lost—and Lenardo had had a series of precognitive flashes showing that very event. With the mysterious increase in his Reading powers, that odd talent had also increased—and Torio had no doubt of Lenardo's accuracy. What he doubted was whether anything they did could prevent the prophecy from coming true: thus far, every one of Lenardo's visions had come to pass.

Despite having left the Aventine Empire for good, Lenardo did not want harm to come to his homeland. Both Lenardo and Torio had life-long friends in Tiberium; Torio had no qualms about helping to prevent the destruction of the capital. What he had observed in his few months in the savage lands made him certain that Readers and Adepts had to learn to work together.

Unbidden, the scene of horror at the Gaeta hospital rose in his mind—that was the result of a Reader and an Adept working together. Yet, had there been Adepts in Gaeta, the fires would have been out as fast as an Adept could see them—or a Reader tell him where they were. An Adept could lift walls off people by the power of his mind, and as to healing powers…

Torio's first experience in the savage lands had been at the hands of one of their miraculous healers. Casting his lot in with Lenardo and his daughter Julia, he had fought his way with them out of the empire in a long, harrowing ride. They had reached the gates of Adigia unharmed—but just as they escaped across the border, Torio had been struck by an arrow. They had had to ride on, the arrow grating and tearing at the flesh of his shoulder while he clung desperately to Lenardo, trying not to fall off the galloping horse.

In the Aventine Empire, had Torio been tended immediately he would probably have lived. But he might have died from loss of blood; he might have died from infection; he would certainly have had a long, painful recovery and an ugly scar. If an Aventine healer had gotten to him only when the savage healer had, after he was faint from blood loss and the arrow had wrought great damage to the bones and muscles of his shoulder, he would have had a much lesser chance of surviving, and if he had, he would certainly have had restricted use of his arm.

Under the care of the savage healer, Torio's wound had healed within a few hours to the point at which he could use his arm without pain. Within a few days no one could have known the wound had been there; there was not even a scar.

Raised an Aventine citizen in constant fear of the encroaching savages, Torio had never realized that they used their powers for anything but destruction. Ever since he had discovered what good they could do, he had been as eager as Lenardo to find ways to bring their two powers together. What he was unsure of was the right way to do it.

Wulfston rode silently, not intruding on Torio's thoughts. They had crossed the border by breaching the wall earlier today—Wulfston had simply brought a portion of it down in a neat mound over which they had easily ridden their horses. There were other ways, Torio had learned—an Adept could walk in at a gate if he chose a time when few guards were about, by first planting the suggestion in their minds that they had orders to let him in, and then that the event had never happened. Nowadays, though, every gate was heavily guarded and that technique could not be used on more than one or two people at a time.

That Adepts, with no Reading power, could manipulate minds as well as bodies, was one of the more terrifying discoveries Torio had made on the other side of the border. It was a wonder that the empire had not been destroyed generations ago by people with such powers. Lenardo said that the only reason was that up to now the Lords Adept had spent so much energy fighting one another that they had been unable to concentrate their powers against the empire. But now…

Now there was peace in all the savage lands along the Aventine border. Lenardo, Aradia, Wulfston, and Lilith held what Aradia claimed was the largest territory ever united in mutual agreement. Twice their alliance had been attacked by other savage lords, and twice they had won—the second time with Torio in the midst of the fighting. The lands of the Lords Adept who had attacked and been destroyed had increased the territory they held; it now seemed, as their numbers had increased with the addition of Torio, Lenardo's daughter Julia, and Lilith's son Ivorn, that the alliance of Readers and Adepts was perceived as too powerful and dangerous to try to attack. Besides, as Aradia was fond of saying, their enemies probably thought that if they just waited long enough the members of the alliance would begin to fight with one another, and leave themselves vulnerable.

Torio was automatically Reading their way through the woods that grew wild all along the border—a sort of no-man's-land on either side of the wall where no one wanted to live. Restricting his concentration to an area directly ahead, he narrowed the possibility of another Reader's homing in on him and reporting their whereabouts to the Aventine guard.

Restricting his Reading that way, though, meant that he could not let himself be wide open to anything within his range, or to the relays of powerful Readers who might be sending messages related to their escape. It was probably true that the search for whoever triggered the earthquake was centered near Gaeta, two days' ride away—but someone was sure to report that there had been a quake in this area just before the major one, and then—

Sure enough, Torio felt the touch of another mind. Instantly, he stopped Reading. "Wulfston—they've found us."

"It's all right," said the Adept. "I know the way from here." He rode up beside Torio and took his horse's rein. "We're still an hour from the border—don't Read, and perhaps they won't be sure of where we are. I can handle anyone they send against us—but I'd rather not."

Torio let Wulfston lead him, feeling again the frustration he had left behind for many years before crossing the border into the savage lands: the frustration of being truly blind. The feeling came on him now only when they had to hide from other Readers, something unheard of in the life he had known before. Privacy, yes—there were times when Readers wanted to shield their thoughts or conversations—but then they used techniques which did not leave them helpless and dependent, led by someone else through a world suddenly unfamiliar and dangerous.

Torio had been born blind; darkness and dependency had been his heritage until his Reading abilities woke when he was six years old and he had been taken to the Academy at Adigia. It was there that his life had become inextricably entwined with that of Lenardo—Master Reader, renegade, and now savage lord.

Lenardo had been teacher, mentor, and father to him ever since the day his Reading had forever dispelled Torio's darkness. The boy had never known light, associating it only with the warmth of the sun on his skin, and even after he had been discovered and begun training as a Reader he had still not understood what «seeing» was. It was normal enough for a small child just beginning to Read to «hear» only those thoughts broadcast strongly by trained Readers, and to sense only the vague forms of the world about him; still, within a week of his first experience of Reading, Torio walked confidently in the world without bumping into things. What he could not understand as the months passed was that his teachers insisted that what he was doing was not "seeing."

Master Clement, head of the Academy at Adigia, had told him not to worry about it—visualization would come later. Lenardo, though, had understood the boy's confusion. Never having seen, Torio had no motivation to visualize. He was so perfectly delighted with the independence that Reading gave him that he could not imagine anything more. So one morning just at dawn, Lenardo had taken the sleepy child up to the top of the Academy tower. There, he had turned the boy to the east, so he could feel the first rays of the sun on his face, and Read the sunrise for him. Shape and color burst into Torio's mind for the first time—a whirl of uninterpretable data, but beautiful. More beautiful than anything he had ever experienced before! With Lenardo's mind guiding him, he understood: this was light. This was seeing. This everchanging panorama was what everyone who could see experienced constantly. //How can they do anything but stop and watch it?// Torio had asked.

//Too few ever stop and watch,// Lenardo replied. //You don't understand yet how much you have just made me appreciate what I can see, Torio.//

Torio had been barely seven years old then, and Lenardo about the age Torio was now, newly established as a teacher at the Academy. From that day Torio learned more quickly from Lenardo than from any of the other teachers—and over the years, as the boy grew up, the student-teacher relationship turned into a deep and abiding friendship.

Thus it was that Lenardo had chosen to trust Torio with the knowledge of his secret mission into the savage lands last year—branded as a traitor and exiled, to all public appearances—so that he could seek out Galen, the renegade Reader, and prevent him from aiding the savage Adepts intent on destroying the Aventine Empire.

And thus it was, when Lenardo had to all appearances turned traitor in his turn, Torio had fallen under suspicion. He had not really understood last summer what he was fleeing to when he joined Lenardo in that crazed flight across the border—he had been fleeing from the decree of Portia, the Master of Masters among Readers, who had declared Torio unfit without testing him, and decided to marry him off to weaken his powers and prevent his becoming a threat to the empire.

Overnight—literally—he had gone from candidate for testing for the top ranks of Readers, loyal citizen of the Aventine Empire, to savage lord with lands held for him against the day when he had learned enough about the wielding of power to be able to rule them. Barely two seasons had passed since that precipitous change in his life, and he had not yet adjusted to it. He was not sure he could.

Everything he had ever known was turned topsyturvy. The savage Adepts were power-mad monsters with no motive for living except to destroy anyone and anything that came in their way—but Aradia and Wulfston and all the other Adepts Torio had met were trying to build a peaceful amalgam of lands, an alliance too strong to be readily attacked, so that their people could live in health and safety. And, although the hope had been postponed by the events of the winter, they still wanted eventually to try to make peace with the Aventine Empire.

Marriage severely weakened the powers of either a Reader or an Adept, Torio had always been taught. But Lenardo was married now to Aradia—and both their powers had increased dramatically.

And, most significant, both Readers and Adepts had always believed that their powers were separate—mutually exclusive. No Reader had ever learned Adept powers, and no Adept had ever learned to Read… until now. But only last summer, Aradia, Adept and adult, had somehow through her association with Lenardo developed the ability to Read. Even more astonishing, Torio had been witness when, to save Aradia's life, Lenardo had somehow found within himself the Adept power to spark a fire with his mind—thus setting off the explosion that destroyed the Lords Adept who were attacking the city of Zendi.

He had witnessed it… and still Torio found it almost impossible to believe. Lenardo's Adept powers were minor—nothing compared to what Aradia or Wulfston could do—yet every time Lenardo would casually light a candle without touching it, or move a small object without getting up to fetch it, Torio felt as if his old friend and teacher had become a stranger.

For that reason, Torio had agreed to work with Wulfston, whose lands were to the west of Lenardo's. In Wulfston, Adept powers were not disturbing—it was only when a Reader exhibited such powers that a chill crawled up Torio's spine.

Closed within himself because he dared not Read, Torio found his mind cycling the same thoughts over and over. What was he doing here? Where did he belong? Could the tampering with nature he and his colleagues were doing—causing earthquakes, attempting to raise Adept powers in Readers and Reading in Adepts—result in anything but ultimate doom? Was Gaeta a warning from the gods?

"Torio!" A sharp whisper from Wulfston as he pulled the horses to a halt. "Listen!"

Torio listened—but he did not have the usual heightened senses of the blind. Like any Reader, he had neglected his physical senses, relying on the sense that brought him so much more information. Thus it took him a few moments to sort out what Wulfston had heard from the normal sounds of the winter woods.

Beyond the sighing of the wind and the call of some night bird there was a distant rhythm—felt more than heard, as if it came through the ground and up their horses' legs to pound softly like the blood in their arteries. Men marching.

"You couldn't have heard that while we were riding," Torio whispered. "Did you Read it, Wulfston?"

"You know I cannot. Besides, I am braced to use my Adept powers. I heard it. Where are they?"

Torio dared to Read again, directly ahead. A band of perhaps a dozen Aventine guards were marching along a small section of.road that paralleled the wall—and if they had not made the mistake of falling into step when they reached that bit of smooth surface, they might have succeeded in the ambush they were obviously planning at the fallen wall. They were closer to it than Torio and Wulfston, and led by a Reader—a young man wearing the Sign of the Dark Moon. It should be possible for Torio to Read such a failed Reader without being noticed—provided he controlled his thoughts and impressions with the greatest care. Alone, it might not have been too difficult; relaying verbally to a nonReader made it extremely hard to avoid thinking something to let the other Reader know he was there.

"They're headed straight for the fallen wall;" he told Wulfston. "That means a better Reader than they have with them scanned along the wall until that point was found. I suppose they're counting on my not daring to Read, if they think they can ambush us there."

"We'll go around them" said Wulfston. "They probably have no idea how little energy it takes to start an earthquake, and think I'm too exhausted to make us another entrance. They're wrong."

So Torio and Wulfston moved off at an angle that would bring them to the walk behind the guardsmen, actually taking them across the border closer to the road to Zendi. Torio continued to Read cautiously ahead of them—

And felt something.

They were being Read! Not probed for thoughts, but being scanned as Torio had Read the Reader with the guardsmen, just for identity and position. A better Reader than Torio was observing them, but had slipped just enough to let him sense… her… attention. Portia.

The Master of Masters was an old, old woman who never left Tiberium. She had to be out of body to be Reading the border, but her physical presence was not necessary to relay their whereabouts to—

There was no use trying to hide anymore. Torio let himself Read on every side to his full range, and found the army closing in on them from every angle except directly ahead.

"We're surrounded!" he told Wulfston. "Run for it!"

The two men kicked their tired horses, and plunged through the woods. Portia began to relay strongly, //They've Read us! Hurry! Close in before they cross the border and set other sorcerers on us!//

//It's too late,// Torio told her with grim satisfaction. //None of your guards are close enough to stop us now.//

//Torio! It is you—have they resurrected you from the dead? Is that in their powers?//

So the guards at Adigia had reported that they had killed him? It might have looked that way, and their Reader had been unconscious—Torio himself had seen to that.

Some perverse impulse led him to tell her, //Yes, they resurrected me, Master Portia, when my own people would have destroyed me. Call off your dogs—you have no idea of the powers we can wield, working together!//

The Readers who led the Aventine troops «heard» the exchange, of course—and Torio felt the superstitious fear it planted in them. They hesitated. "Wulfston—do something—anything! Scare them off!"

Wulfston pulled his horse up, the animal rearing in protest at being pulled off its pace. He controlled his mount with one hand, pointing with the other. They could hear the guards approaching now on every side-close enough to see the flash of lightning that appeared to come from Wulfston's outstretched hand. He turned his horse, his cloak billowing behind him, and fire de scribed an arc in front of the approaching army, trees blazing up just paces before them in the white heat of a savage funeral pyre, consumed to ashes so rapidly that the nearby trees and brush did not catch fire. A smoking, scorched arc lay before the soldiers, who had glimpsed through the trees the savage sorcerer using his powers.

Torio Read their fear with glee. "Now!" he shouted, and he and Wulfston pounded for the wall. It loomed ahead of them, half again as tall as the tallest man, nothing a horse could leap, although with the aid of Adept power… but he could not ask Wulfston about that now, in the midst of their dash for safety. Again they halted, as Wulfston examined the wall before them, hardly able to see anything in the darkness, seeking the weakest point. Dry brush before the wall burst into flame, illuminating and revealing a crack—and Torio Read the stones beneath the flaw give way. The wall came tumbling down, neatly, Wulfston guiding the falling rubble as he had before, to give them a smooth pathway.

Almost before their bridge to freedom was built, they were galloping toward it. Behind them, the Aventine army gave chase. "They won't follow far!" said Torio as they reached the savage side of the border.

"They won't catch us, but they might harm some of our people if they come upon them," answered Wulfston. He halted again, looked back, and concentrated strongly. Trees creaked, branches dropped—and then two huge trunks fell with a mighty crash, neatly closing the passage Wulfston had made in the wall. "There," he said—but the strength was gone from his voice, and he swayed in his saddle, becoming Readable emotionally. The emotion was exhaustion.

Torio understood at once what had happened. AH the spectacular Adept tricks Wulfston had performed this night might appear to the uninitiated harder than felling a few trees, but for all of them the Adept had either been working with nature—seeking the fault in the earth, the flaws in the wall, and letting gravity do the rest—or performing very basic tricks such as the control of fire. Throwing thunderbolts had used up some of his energy, but Wulfston was a fully empowered Lord Adept approaching the prime of life. Those powers were easy for him to control. His last act, however, had been directly against nature—breaking down the substance of huge, healthy trees. Torio knew that he had chosen it only because the other way of closing off the wall—raising the fallen stones back into their places—was even more difficult, possibly beyond his powers. His choice had meant that once he had started the trees to falling, gravity came to his aid.

But now Torio had an exhausted Lord Adept to get back to Zendi, a ride of several hours yet. "Can you ride on for a while?" he asked. "If they can Read that we're nearby, they might think it worthwhile to try to break down your plug in the wall—or burn it."

"I'm all right," Wulfston said, although he was breathing shallowly, his heartbeat far too rapid. They were still in overgrown woodlands, and would be for several miles yet. When Torio took his horse's reins now, Wulfston did not protest, but concentrated on staying awake and in the saddle—for an Adept's natural response to using his powers for extensive work was to fall into a deep, restorative sleep.

"Hang on," Torio urged. "Portia is Reading us—I can't hide your weakness from her. If we don't keep moving, she might send the troops through to try to take us."

Wulfston sat up straighter. "You tell Portia," he replied, "that I still have energy reserves—and that it takes far less effort to kill men than to stop them without killing them."

Torio Read Portia absorb the truth of that, and call back the guards. Then he and Wulfston rode on toward Zendi.

It was mid-morning before they reached the city. Zendi lay in a plain, with well-traveled roads approaching from all four directions. Patches of snow lay in the fields about the city, but inside all was clear and dry. From a distance the walls appeared impregnable, but the gates stood open in welcome to one and all. Zendi appeared prosperous to an external glance—but Torio knew what was inside. Twice last year Zendi had been the scene of devastating warfare. The walls stood, the gates had been repaired, and the crater Lenardo had blown to destroy the enemy had been filled in. There were empty places along the streets, though, like missing teeth, where buildings had been destroyed in one battle or the other. The whole northwest section of the city was rubble, awaiting spring for rebuilding.

Zendi might put on a fine face for strangers, but the buildings were almost bare of furnishings. The city's carpenters and cabinet makers were spending the winter producing necessities, but most people still slept on pallets and hung their clothes on pegs.

Despite the primitive conditions, the people of Zendi were happy: For the first time in most of their lives they were warm, well fed, clothed, and secure. The marriage between Lenardo and Aradia had strengthened their alliance—and if that one held, the others would.

Wulfston and Torio were well known to the people of Zendi. Shouts of greeting went up as they passed, and people stuck heads out of windows to see, waving cheerfully. They knew nothing of the mission the two men had been on, but Reader and Adept together were the symbol of their new and hopeful life.

There were other signs—happy, healthy children playing in safety in the streets, and Arkus, Lenardo's chief architect, in front of a dilapidated building, going over restoration plans with a stonesmason. "Welcome, my lords!" he called as Wulfston and Torio passed, and Arkus' wife Josa, heavy with child, came out onto the front steps to greet them. Lenardo had given this young couple a structurally sound house, but it was up to them to make it livable.

When Wulfston and Torio reached the large house that was now Lenardo's home, he and Aradia came out to greet them. "Oh, you are exhausted, my brother," Aradia said to Wulfston as he climbed down from his horse. "I should have gone with you."

He managed a weary smile. "There's nothing wrong with me that food and sleep won't cure. I know we need to counsel, but I'm afraid I'm in no condition to join you."

Lenardo said, "Torio can tell us everything, and we won't make any decisions without you. Come in and eat."

The dining table in the large hall was also council table when all the Readers and Adepts gathered. It was the only place they had where four Adepts and three Readers could sit together in comfort. All three Readers were there today, but two of the Adepts, Lilith and her son Ivorn, were in their own land. "I sent her a message this morning," said Aradia. "If we need a formal council, she will come—but have we enough information to make decisions yet?"

"I don't think so," said Torio, picking at the food Cook had set before him. Wulfston ate heartily of the roast meat, bread, wine, and vegetables, as Adepts always did when they used their powers. It was Wulfston's second meal that day, as they had carried bread, cheese, and wine with them, but to watch him one would think he hadn't eaten in days.

Readers were vegetarians, for red meat seemed to inhibit their powers—no one really understood the mechanism. As usual Lenardo was an exception to all the rules. Nothing seemed to limit his Reading. He and Aradia ate a modified diet including some meat, but more fish, cheese, and eggs. Torio stayed with what he was familiar with—there was so little familiar in his life these days.

Lenardo's daughter Julia came bouncing in in the middle of the meal, curls windblown, cheeks rosy from the cold. In unReaderlike manner she hugged Torio, then hugged and kissed Wulfston, saying, "Sorry I'm late. I was helping find some strayed horses, and I couldn't Read that you were back till I got inside the walls." The apology was in part a boast—Julia was not yet ten years old, and to be able to Read from any point of the city walls to Lenardo's house at her age was exceptional. Torio wondered how much she knew, for she had undoubtedly slept through last night's disturbance.

She sat down next to Lenardo, asking, "May I have some meat today, Father?"

"No, Daughter. We will have nothing inhibiting your Reading."

"But how can I learn Adept powers if I don't have the strength?"

"Show me an Adept trick, and you may eat anything you please," Lenardo replied.

They were so natural together that they actually seemed father and daughter—they even looked alike. But the dark-eyed, dark-haired child had met Lenardo only last year, when her budding Reading powers would have caused her to be murdered by her own people had Lenardo not rescued her and then adopted her. There were no Academies here; he was teaching her himself, using the apprentice system favored by the savage Adepts. It was obviously working well; Julia's abilities were growing so rapidly that Torio saw distinct improvements on each of their frequent encounters.

Adoptions of heirs were common here. Used to not seeing, Torio rarely Read anyone's physical appearance on first acquaintance. He had known Wulfston for several days before he discovered the Adept was black. It was only then that he had realized that Wulfston and Aradia were not blood-related as he had assumed, since they addressed one another as brother and sister and had the normal love/annoyance relationship of siblings.

Wulfston, it turned out, had been born in the Aventine Empire. When his Adept powers manifested, he would have been killed by outraged neighbors had not Aradia's father, Nerius, stolen the little boy away and smuggled him across the border. Then Nerius, a most powerful Lord Adept, had adopted the boy as his son and raised him together with his daughter—and by some miracle they had reached adulthood as friends rather than rivals.

Amid the family atmosphere, Torio's qualms lessened. Up until a year ago there had been no place on either side of the border where Readers and Adepts could be friends—where a child was safe even if he developed the wrong ability. Surely this kind of cooperation was right!

Nonetheless, when Torio met with Lenardo privately after Wulfston was in bed, more unconscious than sleeping, he still had uncertainties. "I feel," he explained aloud, for to assure privacy they were not Reading, "the way I felt the day Decius was wounded because of what I said and did."

Decius was one of the young Readers in training at the Adigia Academy, now moved to Tiberium. The day of the savage attack which had resulted in the move, Lenardo had allowed Torio to give Decius his lesson in swordplay. Blindfolding the boy, so he would have to reply on Reading as Torio did, he had accomplished more in that one lesson than Lenardo had in a month. Torio had congratulated his pupil warmly—and then forgotten him as the alarm went up: The savages were attacking the Academy!

But Decius, basking in the praise of the acknowledged best swordsman in the Academy, had not gone to hide with the children as he should have. Only thirteen, he had joined the battle—and sustained a wound to his leg so severe that there was nothing the healers could do but amputate. Knowing that the boy would never have tried to fight if he had not just been praised, Torio was stricken with remorse.

"You didn't do anything wrong that day," said Lenardo. "Decius misinterpreted what you said—he heard what he wanted to hear."

"This time it wasn't misinterpretation," Torio said grimly. "I was defiant to Master Portia."

"She has been a teacher for many years," Lenardo replied. "The defiance of young Readers should come as no surprise to her."

"But I lied to her." Lying to another Reader was a breach of the Readers' Oath.

"She didn't know you were lying?"

"It… wasn't exactly a lie. She thought I had been killed when we escaped last fall—and she asked if the Adepts had raised me from the dead. I said yes."

"That is a lie, Torio."

"I know. I meant I didn't make it up—Portia did. I just thought it was so ridiculous—"

"I understand," said Lenardo. Torio heard him get up and move—to the window, heavily curtained now against winter drafts. They were in the room Torio always used here, sparsely furnished with a bed, a chest, and a chair. Torio was on the bed, fighting physical weariness because his mental state would not let him relax and sleep. "Did your lie serve a higher purpose?" Lenardo asked.

"No. It was something I said in anger—Master Portia refused to give me a fair chance last fall, but I was more angry at myself, and all of us, for what we did to Gaeta."

"Good," said Lenardo.

"What do you mean, good? I was angry and I did something stupid."

"But you understand why you did it, Torio—that is what is good. And if you understand why, then you will not do it again. Remember what you said about Galen—that he did wrong for the right reasons?"

"That's what we did last night," Torio said grimly. "How can we ever know we're doing the right thing?"

"We will never do such terrible damage again as we did at Gaeta, once we find out how the one fault set off the other. I must study not just the main fault we have been trying to relieve, but the faults under the entire empire before we try again. I still foresee a terrible catastrophe. I only hope.we have time to prevent it. Your lie might help us, Torio. Even though they now know we are causing the earthquakes, and have no idea it is for their own good, the Aventine government will think twice before attacking if they believe we have the power to raise the dead."

But Lenardo's precognition failed him in that hope. Two days later, Torio was packing his few belongings to return to Wulfston's land when Lenardo contacted him. //Torio, leave your body and join me.//

He did not question, but lay down on the bed and composed himself. A Reader of Torio's age would normally have used this technique only a few times in practice exercises; but with all the communications over long distances he had performed in the past few months, it had become almost commonplace to Torio. He and Lenardo were the only ones in their small community who could do it; Julia was far too young, and Aradia had not the skill.

When he left his body and joined Lenardo, Torio found a third presence. //Master Clement!// He allowed his joy to suffuse the atmosphere; the old man had been teacher to both Lenardo and Torio, and Master of their Academy.

Warmth flowed from Master Clement at the contact, but he told them, //I cannot stay long. Join me on the plane of privacy.//

//There is something wrong,//Lenardo said when they had made the peculiar change of «position» that took them completely out of contact with the physical world. Not even the best Reader who ever lived could spy on them here without making the move with them and thus revealing his presence.

//Aye,// Master Clement replied without prologue. //The Aventine Senate is preparing an army to attack you—but not along the border. They are commandeering every sailing vessel they can, to travel up the coast, land the armies, and drive you south into a trap laid at the border. Portia has told the Senate the savages set off the earthquake that destroyed the Gaeta hospital. Lenardo, you should have known that such a target—//

//The hospital was not the target—there was no target. You know what we intended, Master Clement.//

//I know what you intended, Lenardo, but perhaps one of your Adept allies—?//

//No!//Torio interjected. //It was Lord Wulfston working with me that night, Master Clement. He would not do such a thing! And even if he wanted to… you know my abilities are not great enough to guide him to a target so many miles away, nor are any Adept's powers strong enough to move a pebble, let alone a rock face, at that distance.//

//You would not lie to me, Torio? I know you did to Portia, and I dare not contradict you without revealing that I know much more of what is happening on the other side of the border than I am supposed to.//

//I'm sorry,//Torio said penitently. //I didn't think.//

//The impetuosity of youth. You must learn to curb it, son. What you said is not the reason the empire is preparing to attack you—but it is a cause of their great haste. Portia has convinced them that you are growing together in the powers of darkness. She also fears the ancient prophecy: When the moon devours the sun, then the earth will devour Tiberium. There will be an eclipse just before Summer Festival. Portia fears that if we do not stop you by then, you will destroy the empire.//

Despite their bodiless state, Torio could feel tension from Lenardo. //We cannot allow the Aventine army to attack us. Master Clement, without Adepts they will be powerless against us. I will not have good men slaughtered—for that is what it would be. Can you not persuade Portia—?//

//Do you think you could, Lenardo? Or the Senate? Even if it is a foredoomed effort, they must do something—and I have told you of their sneak attack to give you the opportunity to plan. I am trusting you—and you, too, Torio—to find a way to prevent a battle in which all too many lives would be lost. I must return now—I cannot allow myself very much time in which no one can contact me. The Council of Masters meets frequently these days—and our work is not at all pleasant.//

The old man's presence was gone. Torio and Lenardo remained on the plane of privacy for a few moments more. //The attack will come against Wulfston's lands,// said Lenardo. //You will have to Read for him, Torio.//

//I know—but what will he do? Sink the ships? Drown all those people? Readers will be navigating the ships. It wouldn't be a mistaken thought flung in a moment's anger—it would be deliberately using my powers against other Readers! Master Lenardo, how can I?//

//Stop clinging to the past—here I am a lord, as are you. Master your powers instead of restraining them. You never question defending your life with your sword—why do you question defending it with your powers?//

Powers. Unrestrained powers, used to gain control over other people. He couldn't go home again, Torio knew—but how could he adapt to living the way people did here?