Wulfston's odyssey

Chapter Eight

Helplessly, the Seers observed as Z’Nelia fought for possession of Chulaika’s body. Equal in determination, neither would give way-until the body, weakened by the long struggle, collapsed.

Chaiku wailed, trying to wake his mother, until Ashuru bent and picked him up, cuddling him with a mother’s instinct while her mind still probed Chulaika’s.

Wulfston Read with them, his own Reading powers barely maintaining the link after he had poured out his Adept energy. He could feel Lenardo, too, only tenuously keeping touch, letting Ashuru and Tadisha search the mind of the woman on the floor, to find out which sister had survived.

Only to discover… both.

Two minds seethed angrily within the one person, but with the body they inhabited unconscious, it appeared that they must wait in frustration for its awakening to continue their contest.

The Seers withdrew, leaving Chulaika unconscious.

Wulfston looked around. The room was small, with a narrow window. No sounds of battle came through it.

A heap of ashes marked Z’Nelia’s physical remains. Telek’s body lay near the door. Wulfston looked for Zanos, wanting to make the man understand what he had done, but the gladiator had gone.

Lenardo sat cross-legged on the floor, struggling not to faint from weakness. Wulfston knelt beside him, lending strength from the last of his reserves. Lenardo looked up gratefully, but as soon as the desire to lapse into unconsciousness passed he put his hand on Wulfston’s arm, shaking his head. “Save your strength. There may be other healing to do.”

Wulfston looked up sharply at Tadisha. Her eyes took on a faraway look. “The battle is over,” she said.

“Z’Nelia’s army was divided. The Savishnon overran the western troops, but were weakened enough that our combined armies defeated them, and have taken the city. Our Healers are already working among the wounded. It appears that we may safely take the time to heal ourselves.”

“Norgu?” Wulfston asked.

“Unharmed except for the weakness after battle.”

“Thank Shangonu for that!’ added Ashuru. “If that boy had the strength left, he would grasp this chance to seize the throne.”

“He will certainly try soon,” agreed Tadisha.

“Z’Nelia will fight him,” said Lenardo, “unless we can drive her from her sister’s body.”

“Will you help us do that, Master Reader?” asked Ashuru.

Lenardo gave a grim smile. “In my present condition I don’t know how much help I can be, but you will certainly have all I can give, Queen Ashuru.”

Wulfston thought belatedly of introductions, and then realizd that none were necessary between Readers and Seers.

They lifted Chulaika’s body onto the narrow bed in this room where Z’Nelia had kept Lenardo, and dragged Telek’s body out onto the landing. Uninjured soldiers were in the castle now, carrying out the dead.

The charnelhouse of the corridor where they had fought Z’Nelia’s guards lay in their path. They had no choice except to go through it, and out into the blood-smeared courtyard, where the bodies had already been removed.

The servants’ wing of the castle, though, had not been touched. Karili had taken over the kitchen, and were sorting through the supplies to put a meal together for those who had exerted Adept powers.

Wulfston’s stomach was giving him conflicting signals: he was “hungry as a Mover,” and yet sick at what he had just been through. Someone handed him a flagon of fresh milk, and he drank it gratefully as their little group proceeded into a room furnished with worn but luxurious carpets and cushions, where Ashuru and Tadisha’s serving-women were waiting to remove their blood-spattered outer garments, providing clean caftans for all.

Finally Wulfston asked Lenardo, “What happened to you? I’ve been worried ever since Z’Nelia took you from Norgu, and you didn’t contact me.”

“I couldn’t, ” Lenardo replied, taking a piece of fruit from a tray servants had already brought in. Wulfston noticed for the first time how thin and gaunt Lenardo looked. “Every minute I’ve been awake, I’ve had to fight Z’Nelia. Whenever her attention was called elsewhere, she put me into Adept sleep.”

“And didn’t bother to feed you,” Wulfston noted.

“Not often,” Lenardo agreed. “She wanted me weak; she kept probing my mind, sifting through my memories. I don’t know what she wanted, Wulfston, but I gave her as little as possible. I assume she wasn’t satisfied, because she never gave up-even today, when she knew you were approaching from one direction, the Savishnon from another.” He shook his head with a smile. “Thank the gods you finally got here! I’ve never been so glad to see you in my life!”

Lenardo reached out to squeeze Wulfston’s hand, an unusual gesture from a Reader. Wulfston gripped the thin hand in return, reassured that Lenardo really was well and needed only rest and food to be his old self.

“You’ll want this,” he said, removing Lenardos ring from his finger and handing it to his sister’s husband.

Lenardo smiled. “Thank you for keeping it safe for me. Aradia would never forgive me if I lost it.” He slipped it onto his finger, and turned it, studying the entwined emblems of wolf and dragon. “Did you send another message to Aradia?” he asked.

“Yes, with one of Ashuru’s people. Now you can write her a letter.”

“We should be home before any letter,” said Lenardo.

“Doesn’t that depend on how long it takes to drive Z’Nelia out of Chulaika’s body?”

The Master Reader nodded. “However, if we cannot do it soon, I fear it will be Chulaika who is driven out by Z’Nelia.”

Wulfston shuddered. “I hope not. But if that should happen… I made a promise to Ashuru in return for the help of the Karili in rescuing you: that you would help her to restore Z’Nelia to sanity.”

“All I want to do is go home,” said Lenardo, “but I will honor the promise you made in my name… if it should prove necessary.”

From across the room, Tadisha was watching Wulfston and Lenardo. Servants brought cooked food, placing it on clean woven mats on the floor. She turned to aid Kamas, whose broken arm still pained him.

Lenardo ate meat without protest, although he always claimed it blurred his Reading powers. Right now he needed to restore his physical strength.

Norgu joined them, warily accepting their congratulations on the victory against the Savishnon. The boy was closed tightly against Reading. Wulfston feared that he thought they had tricked him into remaining behind the main army, hoping he would be killed. By silent consent they told him only that Z’Nelia was dead. Perhaps tomorrow they would be able to drive her from Chulaika’s body, and have only Norgu to worry about.

There was little conversation, as everyone was bone-weary. Reports came in all through the meal of areas secured. More troops from other members of the Karili Assembly were approaching; by morning they would drive another wedge between Djahat and the Savishnon, forcing them even farther back and leaving the Seers and Lenardo free to work with Chulaika.

It was almost noon before Wulfston woke the next day, much restored. The smell of food guided him downstairs, to find Lenardo, Tadisha, and Ashuru being served in the same room where they had gathered yesterday.

“Norgu has gone to join his army to the others,” Ashuru reported. “This is a good time to attempt to drive Z’Nelia out.”

Wulfston nodded. “Shall I stand guard?”

“No,” relied Lenardo. “I want your strength in the rapport, Wulfston.”

“In the-? Lenardo, I’m no Master Reader!”

“And I’m no Lord Adept. You understand the way a Mover’s mind works as neither Ashuru nor I can.

And you can provide an anchor for us. Ashuru and I will be out of body. You will Read with us, and guide us back should Z’Nelia attempt to lose us on the planes of existence.”

“Is that what happened to the Seers who tried to See into the Dead Lands?” he asked.

“Apparently,” said Ashuru. “This is something our Seers could learn from your Master Readers. We have little experience wiht these ‘planes of existence,’ for many who have attempted to explore them have either been lost, or returned as mad as Z’Nelia.”

Lenardo nodded. “So did many Readers who first attempted to reach them, but eventually we developed safeguards, and now we can often cure minds which have been influenced by communication with those planes which we do not understand.” He shook his head. “I do not know what we will encounter in driving Z’Nelia out of Chulaika, but I have relied on Wulfston’s strength many times before. I trust him.”

Tadisha asked, “What do you want me to do, Lord Lenardo?”

The Master Reader looked toward Ashuru. “I do not know what experience your daughter has had, Queen Ashuru. By our standards at home, she would probably qualify as a Magister Reader. If I were her teacher at Gaeta, if she had already had experience in healing sick minds I would want her to have this opportunity despite the danger. But this should be no one’s first experience of mental healing.”

Ashuru nodded. “As a mother, I would protect her. As a teacher, though, I believe she is ready to participate.”

“Very well, then. We can begin.”

Barak had gone out to observe the battle, and Kamas was still in healing sleep. So it was Lenardo, Ashuru, Tadisha, and Wulfston who went to the tower room where Chulaika slept, her body containing Z’Nelia’s presence as well as her own.

Not allowing the woman’s body to waken, they reached out to the two minds.

“Chaiku!” Chulaika demanded. “Where is my son?”

“Well cared for,” Ashuru told her. “Do not worry; you will soon hold him in your arms again.”

“Never again!” Z’Nelia raged. Ill will hold him! I will raise him, teach him my ways. Leave me, Chulaika.

You have lost this battle.”

“No, Z’Nelia,” Lenardo told her, “this time you have lost. You have no right to Chulaika’s body. Accept your death, and go in peace to the plane of the dead.”

“You think you can kill me again?” Z’Nelia demanded. “I will kill you all!”

Without warning, they were no longer in the tower room of the castle in Djahat, but on the lip of the crater on Mount Manjuro!

Heat pulled the sweat through their pores. The ground beneath their feet trembled as the lava heaved.

The sky was black with ash and smoke. The only light was the lurid red-orange glare of the lava, reflecting off two figures locked in mortal struggle: Z’Nelia and Chulaika, each trying to thrust the other into the bubbling lava.

But as they fought, glancing down into the heaving pit, inside the crater was no longer lava, but a seething maelstrom of malice, anger, rage, lust, jealousy, guilt-

Wulfston slowly regained self-awareness, and realized that it was Lenardo interpreting the imagery, letting them all understand what the magma represented to Z’Nelia and Chulaika. And something else. He could sense the Master Reader trying to identify some sensation that remained frustratingly just out of reach.

The moment Wulfston found himself, the other Seers were “there,” standing on the brink of the lake of chaos, watching the twin forms struggling on the opposite side.

Lenardo staggered, and Wulfston grasped his arm to keep him from falling. “What-?”

But there was no need to speak. The moment he thought of the question, he knew the answer: Z’Nelia had created this mind-world, and so it operated by the rules she had laid down for it. She had decided that the physical strength of each person within this world would depend on the strength of that person’s talents at the moment he entered it. And Lenardo’s talents had been weakened by her mistreatment.

“She fears you,” Wulfston told Lenardo, willingly supporting the Master Reader.

“And from her fear of me,” Lenardo observed, “she has created her own destruction.”

For, it seemed, her death trauma had weakened Z’Nelia’s own talents so that she had no more power than Chulaika. It was an evenly matched battle!

Tadisha, though, was fully recovered. Young and strong, she began to run lightly along the rim of the volcano.

“Tadisha, no!” Wulfston called.

“Go with her!” said Lenardo, sinking cross-legged to the ground. “I am safe here.”

“Go with Tadisha,” agreed Ashuru, starting around the lip of the volcano in the opposite direction.

Not quite sure what they would do when they reached the battling twins-tear them apart? throw Z’Nelia into the volcano? — Wulfston and Tadisha nonetheless fought their way across the treacherous ground, against a rising wind. On the other side, Ashuru’s figure grew dim as the crater spewed up drifts of chaos, threatening to overflow and engulf them all.

The forms of Z’Nelia and Chulaika became clearer as they approached. What should they do?

Suddenly, behind the battling women a new figure appeared!

It was a man, young and strong, slender and muscular, brandishing a diamond-tipped spear.

Norgu!

Norgu not as he was, but his ideal image of himself as a grown man, which-by Z’Nelia’s own rules-he could maintain here because he was in full possession of his powers!

Norgu strode toward the struggling women, spear at the ready.

Wulfston and Tadisha ran against the wind which tore the words from their mouths and tossed them away as they shouted at him to stop-

— too late!

With the point of his spear, he caught Z’Nelia in the small of the back as she strove to push Chulaika into the pit.

The spear shoved Z’Nelia against Chulaika, and both women tumbled into the maelstrom, locked together, screaming with one voice as Norgu howled with triumphant laughter!

Wulfston leaped toward him. Norgu spun, aiming the spear at him. “You die, too, Beast Lord!”

Ashuru arrived behind him. “Stop, Norgu!”

Norgu turned to her. “Ah, the Queen of the Karili. How convenient. I shall rid myself of all my enemies at once, and rule Africa uncontested!”

Norgu drew back the spear as if to thrust it into Ashuru. Tadisha cried, “Mother!” and tried to grasp Norgu’s arm.

He sidestepped her, swinging the spear toward Tadisha now, its diamond tip about to gut her.

Wulfston dived for the shaft, hauling the tip down short of its mark. He rolled, wrenching the spear from Norgu’s hands, unable to stop as his momentum carried him toward the lip of the crater!

Chaos rushed up at him, delirium and madness reaching out to envelop him-

With every vestige of strength he could command, he flung the spear ahead of him, the momentum shoving him backwards at the very edge so that he stopped with his hands on the lip of the crater, his head hanging over, peering into the pit as it erupted!

The volcano of greed, guilt, jealousy, and power-hunger belched out its core of madness.

Tadisha on one side and Ashuru on the other grasped Wulfston’s arms, hauling him to his feet. As they started back toward where they had left Lenardo, Ashuru shouted, “Norgu! Come with us!”

But as they rounded the rim to where they could see him without having to turn around, they found that Norgu hadn’t followed.

The fountain of chaos tossed the diamond-headed spear tantalizingly out of Norgu’s reach. The boy tried to grasp it.

“Let it go!” shouted Wulfston, but Norgu paid no heed.

The fiery plume shifted. The spear fell down into the chasm. Magma erupted; Norgu was engulfed where he stood, his screams drowned in the roar.

The soil beneath them heaved.

They stumbled on toward Lenardo.

Smoke blinded them. Heat blistered their skin.

A wave of chaos washed over them, tearing them apart!

“Lenardo!” Wulfston shouted, lost in a storm of fury. Only the Master Reader could get them home. But where was he? “Lenardo! Lenarrrdddooo!”

He tried to Read, couldn’t, remembered that he was Reading this whole scene-

Wulfston hurt. He was aware of aching in every muscle and bone before he felt the finger pressed firmly to his forehead between the eyes, and heard Lenardo’s voice saying calmly, “Wulfston, wake up. It’s all over. Wake up now.”

He did, with a moan.

He was slumped on his side, cheek against the cold stone floor, legs twisted painfully. He had iallen sideways from the cross-legged position he had assumed to Read with the others. The more awake he became, the more agony assaulted his nerves. Nothing that happened in Adept battle had ever hurt this much!

Light stabbed his eyes when he opened them to find a blurry Lenardo bending over him. “I know it hurts,” the Master Reader said, “but you’ll be all right. You weren’t prepared to go out of body.”

“Is that what I did?” he managed to get out. Even his tongue hurt.

“Yes. Don’t try to move. Can you start healing yourself?”

He found that he could. Relief and warmth spread through his cold, cramped limbs. Lenardo gently straightened his body, massaging the abused muscles. “What happened?” Wulfston asked. “I shouldn’t have fallen.”

“I know; the worst that should have happened from leaving your body in that position is a few cramped muscles. Norgu may have shoved your body over out of spite, when he discovered what we were doing.”

Healing, Wulfston could not Read. “Tadisha? Ashuru?”

“They’re fine. They’ve gone to find Norgu.”

“Or his body,” Wulfston said bitterly.

“Not necessarily,” Lenardo told him. “Chulaika’s still alive.”

“Did we… drive out Z’Nelia?”

“I’m not sure. She’s in a coma, and I’m not ready right now to Read her that deeply.”

That had to wait for the next day. Today they healed themselves once more. Lenardo and Wulfston ate, then went to their own rooms to sleep. They rested comfortably, for the news from the battlefield was good: the Karili allies had sent the Savishnon into retreat once again, and if the followers of the war god could never be persuaded to change their ways, at least their numbers had been decimated. There would be a few years of peace.

But under whose rule?

In the morning, Wulfston found that their problems were far from resolved.

Norgu was no longer an immediate threat. Tadisha, Ashuru, and Barak escorted back to the castle a living, unharmed body… with a mind that seemed to comprehend less than Chaiku’s.

The trauma Norgu had suffered when his mother took her revenge at the dream-volcano had erased his knowledge and memories, leaving him a hulking, helpless infant. Ashuru and Lenardo found no injury to his intelligence; he began immediately relearning, and within a few days could already babble a few words. He was still completely self-centered, but it was normal for his apparent stage of infancy. Perhaps this time, if he grew up under the proper supervision, he would mature in character as well as intelligence and powers.

Chulaika was another matter. Lenardo and Ashuru spent hours beside her comatose body, trying to reach her mind. Eventually they discovered something quite unexpected.

“It’s as if Z’Nelia and Chulaika are uniting to form one individual!” Ashuru explained.

“When Norgu thrust them together into that maelstrom of destruction,” Lenardo speculated, “they were forced to depend on each other, or they would have been as devastated by it as he was.”

“Do you think they can integrate?” Wulfston asked. “Can you help them?”

“We’re trying,” said Ashuru. “Only time will tell if a person capable of ruling the Zionae will emerge.”

But time was something they did not have. Neither the Zionae nor the Warimu had a leader. If they did not settle those people’s fears soon, some of them would try to assume leadership, creating civil war.

Lenardo gave Wulfston a grim smile. “You know what you have to do. You and Aradia taught me, remember?”

Aradia had tested Lenardos mettle by throwing him to the wolves-giving him a conquered land to rule, alone. And the Lord Reader had succeeded far beyond Wulfstons expectations. He had never discovered whether it had been beyond Aradias.

Much as it disturbed him, Wulfston recognized that Lenardo was right: someone had to take command, and Wulfston was the logical candidate.

The Zionae and the Warimu were accustomed to being ruled by strength. Only a powerful leader could unite them to the Karili Assembly. And with Z’Nelia/Chulaika in coma and Norgu reduced to mental infancy, Wulfston was the only leader available with the Mover’s powers they respected.

So, before any minor leader decided to make his move, Ashuru called the Karili Assembly into session in the audience chamber of the palace of Djahat. But she did not take the throne; rather, she took center place in the Assembly, who faced the throne as visiting dignitaries.

The officers of the Zionae and Warimu armies were also the chieftains of their towns and villages.

Wulfston invited them into the audience chamber. When all were assembled, he made his entrance, dressed in the richest garments they could find in the palace, including a golden crown. Lenardo walked beside him, similarly attired. Thus they declared themselves the equals of the kings of the African nations.

Wulfston took the throne, to a mutter of astonishment. Lenardo stood at his side. Neither man was armed, nor was Barak, who stepped forward to flank Wulfston on the opposite side.

Wulfston waited until the whispers died into hushed expectancy. “Most of you do not know me,” he said,

“but you know who I am: Lord Wulfston of the Savage Empire. This is Lord Lenardo, Master Reader-the greatest Seer among our people. He is also my brother-my sister’s husband-and the reason I am in Africa.

“When Lenardo was kidnapped and brought to Africa, I was forced to come here, and became involved in your wars with one another and the Zionae. Here I discovered that I am Zionae. My ancestors built this palace, and ruled these very lands.

“My grandmother was Katalia, who was murdered by her nephew Desak, the father of Z’Nelia and Chulaika. I am their cousin, and Norgu’s one generation removed. Z’Nelia is dead, and her sister Chulaika is in coma. Norgu is incapacitated, and Chulaika’s son Chaiku is only three years old.

“Therefor, by right of blood and conquest, I am now the ruler of these lands.”

In the silent, sullen hush, Barak stepped forward. “I Verify what Lord Wulfston has told you of his ancestry, by my Grioka’s powers.”

People looked at one another uneasily. To most of them, Wulfston was an unknown quantity.

One of the Warimu chiefs stepped forward. “Are you not the Lord of the Black Wolf, reports of whose conquests have come to us from the lands across the Northern Sea?”

“I am,” Wulfston agreed, squashing his feelings of irony that at last that song was doing him some positive good in Africa.

“You led the assault on the castle,” said one of the Zionae officers. “Your Mover’s powers destroyed more than a hundred of our best men.”

“If Z’Nelia had not captured Lenardo, I would have had no reason to enter the castle,” Wulfston reminded him.

“Nor,” he added, sensing that he had their attention and growing respect, “do I want to rule the lands of the Zionae or the Warimu.”

There was a murmur of disbelief. Wulfston let it fade before he continued. “I have lands and peoples of my own, to whom I have responsibilities. I cannot stay in Africa. However, I have incurred obligations here by my actions, and discovered obligations of kinship. Therefor, I appoint as my regent in Africa Queen Ashuru of the Karili.”

All eyes turned to the Karili queen, who stood wrapped in dignity, waiting for the protest to be voiced.

It was. “Ashuru is a Seer, not a Mover,” the Zionae officer pointed out. “She has no powers with which to battle our enemies.”

“Powers do not make great leaders,” Wulfston replied. “The greatest enemy you have faced is the Savishnon. Z’Nelia defeated them with her Mover’s powers, but almost destroyed herself in the process.

And all that happened was that the Savishnon regrouped and came back four years later.

“You were all in the most recent battle. How were the Savishnon defeated this time? Not by Movers’

powers, but by you, the combined armies of the Zionae, the Warimu, the Karili, and the members of the Assembly.

” There is your secret of peace and safety,” Wulfston explained. “It lies in unity, in alliances between peaceful nations, standing together against those who spend their energies in mindless conquest.

“The Karili Assembly drove the Savishnon from their lands by uniting in a common cause. Queen Ashuru brought them together, and has led them successfully through this test of their union. I trust her as my regent, and you will soon grow to trust her when you prosper under her rule.”

He did not mention the problem of Chulaika/Z’Nelia. Chulaika’s body still lay in coma, both sisters’

mental presences within it, slowly integrating as if they might eventually become one person.

Lenardo kept his agreement to help Ashuru. Each day they spent hours in rapport with the twin minds, attempting to help them integrate.

Wulfston spent the time at first in a futile attempt to arrange a peace conference with the Savishnon leaders. They would not even discuss it. Savishna, he learned, mandated war and conquest until the whole world was under the rule of the war god, at which time the world would end and all who had fought gloriously in the cause would be united with Savishna for an eternity of celebration.

Followers of the weak, peaceful Shangonu, he was told, would be destroyed.

There was no foundation on which to make a truce, let alone a lasting peace. The Savishnon would lick their wounds, regroup, and attack again. And they would probably continue to do so until the last one of them died.

It was incomprehensible to him how anyone could think as the Savishnon did, so in the end he could only console himself with the idea that strengthening the Karili Assembly meant that the Savishnon would have enough to occupy them in Africa for the next few generations, and would not set out across the sea to attack his friends or his descendants.

Thinking of descendants, though, always brought his thoughts to Tadisha. Some days she worked with her mother and Lenardo, attempting to integrate Z’Nelia and Chulaika, but on others she stood as her mother’s representative, reminding Wulfston that she would be Queen of the Karili one day, and that meant she would live out her life in Africa.

He didn’t want Tadisha to stay in Africa; he wanted to take her home as his wife, And she wanted him to stay here and rule.

Both were impossible.

Still, they could not resist having what time they could together. One evening they stood on the parapets, watching the sun set in red and gold splendor. Tadisha had worked with Lenardo and Ashuru that day, and was mentally but not physically tired.

“Lord Lenardo is teaching me so much,” she said. “But it is frustrating.”

“How so?”

“Z’Nelia resists the final integration with Chulaika. Yet once that is achieved, Lenardo’s obligation will be fulfilled, and you and he will leave.”

Wulfston had no answer to that. It was true.

Tadisha was silent for a moment, then said, “I once hoped to persuade you to stay with me.”

“I know.”

“Do you know when I knew it was impossible?” she asked.

“No.”

“When we rescued Lenardo. He was so weak after Z’Nelia’s torture-we might as well put the right name to what she did to him. I have seen it in his mind, things he would not tell you… but I think you knew anyway.”

“I know Lenardo,” he replied.

“Yes,” she said softly, “just as I knew when Kamas was trying to hide the pain of his broken arm. That was when I Saw it, Wulfston. Lenardo is as much your brother as Kamas is mine. You had told me that your ties were to your family in the Savage Empire, but the first time I saw you and Lenardo together was the first time I understood in my heart that your bonds of love are as strong as bonds of blood.”

“Tadisha,” he said gently, “you must know how that can be. Every true marriage is such a bond of love.

Every adoption of a child,” he added, thinking of the way Chaiku had taken to Ashuru. “You may have a new little brother if you cannot bring Chulaika out of her coma, or if she recovers, but cannot care for Chaiku.”

‘I know,” said Tadisha. “But I already have a brother who is almost a grown man. Kamas proved himself in battle and now he stands in for Mother on the days I am in the rapport.”

She was closed against Reading. Wulfston looked into her face in the fading light, trying to tell if she was offering him hope. He was afraid to take it, afraid to expose his heart to the disappointment of mistaking her meaning.

“Your mother once said you could learn a great deal from our Master Readers,” he suggested.

She turned toward him with a smile. “Yes. And what would be better for the Karili than an alliance with the famous Lord of the Black Wolf?”

“Tadisha!” At last he dared to take her in his arms, to kiss her, to hold her close. He needed the reality of her slender form against him to believe it was possible-

“Wulfston?” she whispered against his cheek.

“Yes?”

“Will you marry me?”

He laughed. “I will if you will marry me!” he told her. “You will be welcome in my lands, Tadisha. And, although the journey is long, you will see your home again, and surely your family will visit us.”

She hugged him tightly. “I think Mother knows, but I will go now and tell her officially.” Then she slipped from his arms and was gone, leaving him breathless in the cool night air, fearing that Ashuru might forbid it, knowing that she had no reason except to lose her only daughter to the lord of a far-distant land.

Ashuru did not leave him in trepidation for long. By the time he descended the tower stairs, a servant was there to request that he attend the Karili queen in her chambers.

He felt once more that he faced the lion in her den.

Ashuru was seated, flanked by Tadisha and Kamas, all three closed to Reading. “Lord of the Black Wolf, you ask for my daughter in marriage?”

“I do,” he replied, “and offer the Karili nation both the assurance of support in time of need, and trade in time of prosperity. Like you, Queen Ashuru, I speak for several nations joined in an alliance. I can offer your Seers the knowledge of our Master Readers. You may send your Seers to train in our Academies, and we will send our Readers to share their knowledge, and learn from you.”

She waved that aside. “But what do you offer my daughter?”

“My hand, my throne… my heart,” he replied simply.

“Tadisha, will you then renounce your claims as my heir to your brother Kamas?”

“Yes, Mother, gladly,” Tadisha replied.

“Very well,” Ashuru replied, still the majestic lioness. “Lord Wulfston, you arrived in our lands with nothing, and have proved yourself a valuable ally. Lord Lenardo has shown me how much our Seers could learn from your Readers. A union with your Savage Empire will provide us with much of value.

And I believe that despite your lineage, you can be trusted to treat my daughter with love and respect.”

“I promise that, Queen Ashuru.”

“However,” she continued, “I must make one condition: you must fulfill an obligation of blood.”

“An… obligation of blood?”

“Your cousin Norgu.”

“Norgu? What about him?”

“Lord Lenardo believes that the Master Readers in your Savage Empire could help Norgu to regain his mental capacities. But along with his mental growth, his great powers as a Mover will return. If he does not have the right guidance, he will grow again into the dangerous, spiteful, selfish man we saw here. A Seer cannot discipline a Mover of such strength. Norgu must be raised by a powerful Mover-a man like his father who might have turned him into a true leader. But Matu’s death left no one with both the power and the wisdom to teach Norgu. You saw the result.”

“I saw it,” Wulfston replied, his mouth dry. She couldn’t mean…?

She did.

“The condition I place upon your marriage to Tadisha is that you take Norgu as your ward. You are a Lord Adept, a powerful Mover with the strength to control him. You control your powers; you do not let them control you. Teach this to Norgu, Lord Wulfston. Bring him to manhood again and return him to us as wise and capable a leader as you are yourself. Give me this promise, and you may have my daughter as your wife.”

He looked at Tadisha, seeing hope and fear mingled in her eyes. Norgu, his ward? To accept the task of teaching him to act responsibly?

But if he refused, he lost Tadisha!

“I… cannot guarantee the result,” he said finally, “but I will accept the task, Queen Ashuru. I will do my best to turn Norgu into a capable, responsible adult.”

Ashuru smiled. Tadisha absolutely glowed. Kamas grinned at him.

Then Ashuru stood, holding out her arms. “Then welcome to our family, son!”

There were hugs all around. Kamas said, “I’ve always wanted a brother! But by taking Tadisha away, you’re certainly giving me a job.”

“Want to trade?” he suggested. “You take Norgu, and I’ll take the Karili.”

Kamas laughed. “No, I think I got the better bargain.”

“You’re wrong,” Wulfston replied, standing now with his arm around Tadisha’s waist, “no matter what she costs, Tadisha is the best bargain of all!”

He left Tadisha and her family to make wedding plans, and went to tell Lenardo.

“I wondered how long it would take the two of you to figure out that you were meant for one another,”

Lenardo told him with a grin. “Congratulations! I needed some good news.”

“Why? Is there something wrong that I don’t know about?”

“We’ve hit a block in the reintegration of Z’Nelia and Chulaika. Z’Nelia is hiding something behind a barrier so strong that to break it would be to destroy her mind, and probably Chulaika’s as well.”

“What can you do?” Wulfston asked.

“I don’t know. In my training at Gaeta I Read a patient with a similar block. He had been there for months, in a coma, just like Chulaika. The Healers could not get through it. And while I was still there the man died; his body just wasted away because we could not reunite his mind to it.”

“And you didn’t have Adepts to strengthen his body. At least Aradia and I were able to keep Nerius alive until you came to help us rid his brain of that tumor we could not Read. Is there any way I can help you with Chulaika, Lenardo?”

“I don’t see how,” the Master Reader replied. “But it cant hurt your training as a Reader to get more experience, so why don’t you join us in the rapport tomorrow?” He laughed. “Your Reader’s training is all upside-down, Wulfston! We’ve never worked on the most basic lessons, and you’ve plunged right into healing sick minds.”

“Well, I’ll leave Norgu’s mind to you, if you don’t mind,” Wulfston told him. “But yes, I’d like to Read what you do to try to help Chulaika.”

So the next day Wulfston joined Lenardo in the rapport. Ashuru was content to beg off, as she had a royal wedding to plan.

Wulfston didn’t know quite what he expected, but it wasn’t the calm, peaceful emptiness he found when he followed Lenardo into the mental landscape now inhabited by Chulaika/Z’Nelia. There was no volcano now; no battling figures wrestled to the death. Instead, there was something like a long, empty corridor, featureless, disappearing into nothingness in the distance.

Slowly, Wulfston became aware that the disorientation he felt came from the fact that there were really two corridors occupying the same space, not quite overlapping perfectly. In the physical world, that would make no sense. Here, he understood that the corridors were the twin sisters’ lives from past to future, merging together to form one personality that would not be either of them, but a new person formed from all the past experiences of both.

This time he and Lenardo did not take shape; they did not participate, but merely observed. Their point of view shifted down endless miles of corridor, so much the same that they might as well have stayed still, until finally the two corridors began to separate. Here there were colors and sounds, then shapes.

“Here the integration ends,” Lenardo told him. “There is a memory here that Z’Nelia refuses to share, and until she does, the integration cannot be completed.”

Wulfston “looked” around. It wasn’t seeing, though; it was Reading, that sensing different from his other senses that he was becoming pleasantly accustomed to. He discovered where the separation began, explored along the spectrum from integrated new personality through mingled strands of Z’Nelia and Chulaika, to where it was only Z’Nelia-and within that area a perfectly literal “mental block”-a mind barrier so solid that it might as well be a physical wall of steel!

“What in the world could she have to hide behind that?” he wondered-

And knew the answer!

The block remained. He did not penetrate it.

Yet he knew, as plainly as if it were his own memory, what Z’Nelia was hiding.-no, was being forced to hide!

The memory was from the time Z’Nelia had almost died, after she saved Johara by loosing the volcano, and then was struck down by the Savishnon spy. Her spirit had wandered the planes of existence between life and death, perhaps seeking the plane of the dead, unable to find it because her body was still infused with her indomitable will to live.

But of those memories only one was blocked, a memory of terror, of fleeing, lost, from one plane to another until she encountered-

Pure evil!

A mind even more warped and twisted than her own, a figure of female depravity, ancient and withered, kept alive by secret, forbidden methods. A spider hidden deep within the web that spread throughout an empire, carrying her poisons ever outward to maintain her power- until one man discovered her evil, and brought about her destruction.

She refused to die! She escaped the plane of the dead, and waited impatiently. Eventually fate brought her Z’Nelia, her instrument of revenge!

“Blessed gods!”

Lenardo tore himself and Wulfston out of the rapport with such violence that the pain was almost physical.

One moment Wulfston was in Z’Nelia’s memory, face to face with the gaunt figure of evil, and the next, senses reeling, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor of Chulaika’s tower chamber, gasping for breath as if the exertion had been physical.

“What-? Lenardo, who was that?”

But the Master Reader had closed his mind.

“Lenardo! Who was that?!”

Lenardo looked up, his face drained of color. “Portia,” he replied.

“Portia? The old Master of Masters? But how could she hide such evil from Master Readers?”

“She didn’t hide it from us all,” Lenardo reminded him. He shook his head, as if trying to clear it of Portias mental touch. “Wulfston-”

“You are the man who stopped her,’ said Wulfston. “Your kidnapping was her revenge.”

“No.” Lenardo shook his head. “It was Z’Nelia she controlled, not Chulaika. It’s much more complicated than-” His eyes widened in horror. “Aradia! Wulfston, you and I are her first line of protection. Our child!”

“Go pack whatever you need for travel,” said Wulfston, getting to his feet. “I’ll tell Tadisha and Ashuru.

We must leave at once.”

“Your wedding,” Lenardo reminded him.

“I don’t need a wedding, only a marriage. Move!”

Lenardo climbed to his feet, staring at the still form of Chulaika on the bed. “Wulfston… how did you get through that barrier Portia placed in Z’Nelia’s mind, when a Master Reader could not?”

“It wasn’t Reading,” Wulfston explained. “I just… knew, the way I knew Chulaika was somehow connected to me the first time I saw her. Barak says I have the Grioka’s talent.”

Lenardo nodded. “Thank you. Go on, now. Tell Tadisha. I’ll find the Night Queen crew.”

It took three days of preparation before they could leave. Wulfston and Tadisha were married in the Shangonu temple, with considerable ceremony despite the hurried plans.

The men of the Night Queen were eager to go home, but Zanos had not been seen since the destruction of Z’Nelias body. There were rumors of a flame-haired white man seen in the Warimu lands, and Wulfston theorized that the gladiator was planning a raid on the slave pens at Ketu. All he could do was wish him well in that endeavor, and be glad he did not have to confront him over the murder of Z’Nelia.

“Besides,” Lenardo reflected, “I doubt you’ll ever convince him he committed murder. He’ll always see the act as a just execution.”

“Yes,” said Wulfston, “but the execution of the wrong person.”

The Master Reader stared at him.

“I never could understand how Z’Nelia had either the power or the accuracy to attack our ship from a thousand miles away,” Wulfston explained, “but that was what I thought had happened. But after I confronted Chulaika in Norgu’s castle, I realized she was the one who destroyed the ship, hoping to strip me of my friends and retainers. She drew the power from every Adept on the Night Queen-so much power that her storm got out of control. I’m sure she didn’t plan on losing me!”

“You were supposed to be her weapon against Z’Nelia,” Lenardo agreed.

“But she didn’t have as much control as she thought. She was successful enough turning the storm I raised against me, that first day of the pursuit.” He shook his head. “We assumed it was Sukuru who damaged the Night Queen, but he never had that much power.”

Lenardo asked, “What about Zanos? What will he do when he finds out it was Chulaika, not Z’Nelia, who was responsible for his wife’s death? And that Chulaika may survive?”

Wulfston could only shrug. “That is a concern for the future. Right now, we have more immediate problems.”

Norgu was one of the problems. He was as uncoordinated as a two-year-old child now, and could no longer ride a horse. They had to carry his gross bulk in a wagon, and have someone with him to entertain him along the way, or he fussed and screamed like a baby.

Finally everything was ready. The caravan that would take them to the Great River awaited, and messengers had gone ahead to procure passage on a ship for them. Kamas was in the courtyard, but Tadisha and Ashuru were nowhere in sight.

“Wulfston, Lenardo, come to the tower,” Tadisha’s mental voice invited.

Lenardo and Wulfston looked at one another, and the Master Reader smiled. “When you have been married a little longer, you will learn that it’s not worth resisting such a request. We will be on the road more quickly if we go see what Tadisha has to show us.”

Both Tadisha and Ashuru were in the tower room- along with Chaiku, who sat on the bed grasping his mother’s hand.

Chulaika no longer lay helpless in a coma. Her eyes were open, and she focused on the two men with a weak smile.

It was not Chulaika alone, though; the integration was complete, they Read. This was a new person, Z’Nelia and Chulaika as one.

Her eyes-so like Wulfston’s mother’s eyes-fixed on him. Her lips trembled, but she was still too weak to say anything. But he could Read what she wanted to tell him. “Thank you. I will be well now. No more fighting.”

Even trying to form coherent thoughts was an effort for her. Wulfston knelt beside the bed. “We are happy for you. Rest now, and regain your strength.”

“Yes. Take care of my baby. Love… “

“That’s right,” he agreed. “Love your son. Queen Ashuru will help you raise him to be a great king one day.”

He looked up at Ashuru as the woman on the bed drifted weakly to sleep. She was right to make him take Norgu away, he realized. Chaiku had to be allowed to grow up without his half brother’s threatening presence, and Norgu would be better off far from Africa’s temptations until he learned to value cooperation over conquest.

Wulfston rose and took Tadisha’s hand. Her green eyes looked into his for a moment. Then she turned to say goodbye to her mother, and to her homeland.

Hand in hand they followed Lenardo down the tower stairs, to join the caravan waiting to take them to their new life together.