Dragonlord of the Savage Empire se-2

by Jean Lorrah

  “Now wait,” said Lenardo. “If you*were guiding the swinging of the beam, then chance was not operating.”

  “Yes it was,” she insisted. “There were all kinds of chances as to what the beam would do. I simply encouraged the chance that it would swing right into place.”

  “I’ll never learn to think like an Adept.”

  “You should,” said Aradia. “Your Adept talents could be doing much more with far less effort if you knew how to train them. Either Arkus or Josa could have done that job alone today, but the way they do it, trying to will the beam to go where they want it instead of letting it go in the right direction, they exhaust themselves.”

  “I’m not sure I understand the distinction,” said Lenardo, “but I hope you’ll teach it to Arkus and Josa.”

  “It’s simply understanding nature,” Aradia explained. “You see if there is any way what you want done would happen naturally, and then you let it happen that way. For example, you are in a valley, and a rock dislodges above you. If it comes bouncing down the hillside, what do you do?”

  “Me? I run out of its path, hoping it doesn’t bounce in my direction.”

  “And if you were an Adept?”

  “I suppose… I could guide the rock to bounce away from me. Oh, I see-I think. The chances that it would land right on me are not very high, anyway, so I shouldn’t waste energy forcing it to the other end of the valley but just concentrate on having it not hit me.”

  “Very good,” she said. “Now, instead of a valley, you’re in a canyon. A rock dislodges from the top and is falling straight down on you. As an Adept, what do you do?”

  He thought a moment. “My guess is that it would be almost impossible for an Adept to change the path of a heavy free-falling object. So I run out from under it.”

  Aradia waited a moment and then said, “Right, as far as you’ve gone. But a rock falling from such a height is going to bounce-”

  “And I have to see that by chance it doesn’t bounce right on me,” Lenardo said with a laugh. “Would that I could, not that I have often been threatened by falling rocks.” Recalling the earthquake that had almost brought the Adigia Academy down on him, he added, “Only once.” Then he said seriously, “Will you stay here in Zendi long enough to teach some of this to Arkus and Josa and the others? I don’t think they’ve had any formal training in using their talents.”

  “People with a single talent usually don’t. Wulfston and I worked with a few around Castle Nerius. My father’s idea of Academies for Adepts, though-”

  “Why not?” asked Lenardo.

  She took his hand. “Think a moment. Suppose you had a group of people with Adept talents, trained since childhood. Together, they might be as strong as a Lord Adept or even two or three. And if they were guided by a Reader…”

  “That is the second time you have suggested it, Aradia.”

  “Yes, for if it is on my mind, it will be on others’. Here, in your land, is where the first Academy must be, protected by the lands of your allies. Because you are not an Adept, it will not appear to those who might be your enemies as a preparation to mount an offensive. As time passes and you do not use your trained Adept talents to conquer, you will earn more trust.”

  “Aradia,” he said in amazement.

  “No, Lenardo, I have not lost my head along with my heart. You must be prepared to defend yourself at all times. Lilith, Wulfston, and I know you. We have fought side by side. Other allies will come.”

  In the next few days, Aradia spent part of each day teaching Lenardo’s people with Adept talents to use them more efficiently. She also helped in the construction work and the continuing job of repairing the water and sewer systems. Their bath together at the end of each day became a ritual, and by now everyone knew that it was no rumor that Lenardo spent his nights in Aradia’s pavilion.

  However, they did not make love again. It was enough to lie in one another’s arms, warm and content. Reading what little he could of Aradia, Lenardo suspected that she was waiting to see how much of her Adept strength returned. As he hoped that his own skills would also approach normal again, he curbed the desire that the sight and touch of her body awoke in him and learned to appreciate their simple nearness. His range of Reading seemed to be returning to normal, as was the clarity of his perceptions. Something kept him from further attempts to leave his body; perhaps it was that he was so thoroughly enjoying being within it.

  Soon Wulfston would bring Julia home, though, and before that she would get her promised excursion to the sea. Lenardo would have to try his powers then and face explaining his apparent hypocrisy to his daughter on her return. Julia would not be in Zendi for an hour before she would know of his time spent with Aradia, and her devious little mind would quickly draw the proper, or improper, conclusion.

  But Lenardo would deal with those problems when they arose. For the moment, he had a growing relationship with Aradia, and a sweet contentment he had not known even in the Academy.

  One cool, bright morning, Lenardo was listening to Helmuth’s report on agricultural plans for next year, doing nothing more than agree, as he knew little about farming. As usual, he was neither trying to Read Helmuth nor completely blocking against Reading.

  Suddenly a shock of pure terror struck through his gut, along with the sensation of being hurled upward, falling, and intense, unbearable pain. He screamed in agony before he could shut it out, and then he found Helmuth on his feet, his face white, staring at him. “My lord-”

  “An explosion,” Lenardo gasped. “Near Northgate. The man’s still alive. Get Sandor!” As he ran out, he added, “Get Aradia. Hurry!”

  He was breathless by the time he arrived at the site of the tragedy, both from running halfway across the city and from Reading the victim’s pain. Aradia was already on the scene, trailed by Greg and Vona. She glanced up at Lenardo, saying, “I heard him scream,” and returned her concentration to the injured man, putting him to sleep.

  It was easy enough to see what had happened. One of the workers digging around the foundation of a warehouse, to repair a crack before it weakened the structure, had struck a yet-uncleared sewer line with a pocket of gas in it. His metal pick must have produced a spark, and the pipe had exploded, slamming the man against the wall of the building.

  He had slight superficial burns, not serious, but the blow had broken his left arm and leg, which had hit the wall.

  “Where is the internal bleeding?” Aradia was asking. How did she know that? Then Lenardo actually looked at the man he had been Reading and saw that his lips were turning blue. “Two broken ribs have pierced his lung.”

  “Guide me,” said Aradia, laying her hands over the man’s side.

  This, Lenardo understood, was working against nature, forcing the broken ribs to withdraw and return to place. An Aventine surgeon might have done it by cutting into the man’s chest, but in the time it took, the patient might bleed to death. If he lived, he would develop an infection untreatable with the antiseptics they understood. But Aradia could work in the knowledge that if she saved the man immediately, she could drive out any infection with healing fire.

  When the ribs were back in place, Lenardo Read the bleeding veins and arteries, while Aradia, in such rapport with him that a single word seemed to guide her to the right spot, joined them and then closed the punctures in the lung tissue.

  The man was out of danger now. Worried that Aradia would use up her strength, Lenardo said, “Let Sandor take care of his burns and broken bones. He’s good at that.”

  “They’re not simple fractures,” Aradia said. “He’ll be lame if his leg is not set right.”

  Sandor, who had been hovering nearby for some time, said, “It’s a blessing you are here, my lady. I don’t think I could have saved him, even with Lord Lenardo’s help. But now we should take him to my house so that after the bones are set, he won’t have to be moved again.”

  Several boards were quickly lashed together, and the injured man was carefu
lly lifted onto them and carried to the house near the bathhouse, where the infirmary was. It was an elegant home, with which Sander’s wife was greatly pleased, although Lenardo’s main motivation in giving it to the healer was the central location and the size, which permitted a number of rooms to be used as a hospital and still leave plenty of room for the family.

  Aradia did not seem inordinately fatigued. “When we healed Nerius,” Lenardo said, “although it took a long time because the work was so delicate, it was certainly not so much work as you have done already today. Yet both you and Wulfston were so exhausted that you collapsed.”

  “Oh, no,” she replied, “that was enormously harder work. We didn’t just move my father’s tumor, we destroyed it. There was no Way to burn it or otherwise remove it in a natural way. It had to be disintegrated, made not to be. That was more against nature than any work I have ever done before or since.”

  Made not to be. A chill went through Lenardo as he realized the implications of what he had Read but not understood. I didn’t understand because I could not conceive of such a thing. He still could not, but he let it pass. There was work to be done.

  Lenardo, Aradia, and Sandor set to work on the injured man’s arm and leg. It was tedious work, combining physical manipulation wherever they could with Adept influence to align the bones and set every chip and splinter back in place. Again, Lenardo found an astonishing rapport with Aradia. The work did not seem to tire her beyond what the same amount of physical labor would have done. Perhaps she had regained her full strength. Lenardo was glad. He no longer wanted to blunt her powers.

  When they finally finished, it was late afternoon. Sandor, pale and drawn, was assured that his patient was healing now and was sent off to sleep himself.

  “You should sleep, too, Aradia,” said Lenardo.

  “Oh, I will, but first I want a bath and some food.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not as tired as Sandor. You did far more of the work.”

  “But I am a Lady Adept, fully empowered. I am bone-weary, Lenardo, but I won’t collapse. Give me a good meal and let me sleep through till I wake on my own, and tomorrow I won’t know I did all that today.”

  They found the patient’s wife waiting in the hall, three children clustered around her. She had already been told that her husband would recover fully, and her gratitude rang far beyond her inadequate words.

  “Your husband’s going to be just fine,” Lenardo told her. “If you and your children need anything before he’s better, come to me.”

  The woman managed a smile at Lenardo’s naivete. “Brad ain’t my husband, not like fine ladies got. But he’s my man, and these is his children. I guess we’re just stuck like glue.”

  “Some people are,” Aradia murmured. “Now, don’t you worry. You can go in and look at your man if you want to, but he’ll be sound asleep for several days. Then you’ll have to care for him until he gets his strength back.”

  “Oh, my lady, ‘twas fate you was nearby! The other men said Brad was so scared he didn’t even cry out.”

  As she and Lenardo left the building, Aradia said in a puzzled tone, “I know I heard him scream. That’s why I came running.”

  “You must have heard the explosion.”

  “No, I don’t remember hearing that at all, just a scream of such fear and pain-” She shivered.

  “Whatever brought you there, I’m thankful,” said Lenardo. “I am partly responsible for what happened to Brad. I Read the crack in the foundation, and I Read the sewer line close to the buildings along there and warned them not to break it.”

  “Well, then, it was the man’s own carelessness.”

  “No, it was mine. I didn’t even think to Read for gas in those pipes. Then that work was interrupted for the festival, and the workmen had proabably forgotten all about my warning by the time they got back to it.” He sighed. “There ought to be a Reader checking every work crew every day. A child could have prevented the accident today, not by Reading the gas but by Reading the pipe.”

  Aradia studied him, but it was obvious that she was too tired to concentrate. “Lenardo, we will talk tomorrow. Right now I need a bath, a good meal, and sleep.”

  Although she knew that she would be virtually unconscious from the moment she lay down, Aradia insisted that Lenardo come and sleep with her. He finished his interrupted work, inspected the city as he did each evening without leaving his room-but with more thoroughness than usual-and then crossed the forum to Aradia’s pavilion. The guards and Aradia’s maid said pleasantly, “Good night, my lord,” as he passed. His presence on this night when Aradia was already deep in the Adepts’ recuperative sleep confirmed their certainty that whatever the reason a Reader and a Lady Adept were spending their nights together, it wasn’t sex.

  Lenardo slept almost as deeply as Aradia but woke as the pale light of early dawn filtered into the pavilion. Beside him, Aradia lay curled up on her side, her hair spread across the pillow, the covers pulled up to her chin against the chill of early morning. I think it’s time, he told himself, that I stop having the rain diverted around Zendi and invite Aradia into my house. But instead, she might leave. Yes, Lenardo admitted, he knew perfectly well why up to now he had avoided suggesting the obvious.

  Aradia would probably not waken before noon, but he had time before he had to be up, and so he lay comfortably in the warm bed and Read outward. In the outer chamber, Aradia’s maid was also sleeping. Outside the pavilion, her guards were moving back and forth to keep awake until their replacements came. Otherwise, the forum was empty, but Lenardo Read a few early risers wakening here and there. Soon, from his own house, Dom came to fill buckets at the fountain, and he read Cook poking the kitchen maid to make her get up and start work.

  It was a shivery cool morning with a promise of autumn. Lenardo began to Read visually to enjoy the beauty of the sunrise. It was something he did perhaps four or five times a year, but each time it brought back the morning he had taken seven-year-old Torio up to the Academy tower and let the little blind boy see the sunrise through his eyes. Master Clement had scolded Lenardo, who had just passed his own exams the year before, for awakening in the boy a yearning for something he would not be able to do for a year or more. But within six months Torio was Reading visually with ease, and Lenardo was quite certain that it was because he had learned to want to see such beauty.

  This morning the sunrise was equally beautiful, breaking through the clouds in a palette of magnificent colors. I wonder if Torio is watching the sunrise today.

  As effortlessly as forming the thought, Lenardo was in a room he had never seen before, where Torio, still in his nightshirt, was standing “looking” out the window. Before the boy’s sightless eyes were the buildings of a city, blocking any view of the sun until it was far overhead. But Torio was indeed watching the sunrise, seeing it in unrestricted glory by Reading.

  Confused, Lenardo wondered where the boy could be, so close by? And then he recognized the city: Tiberium.

  Heart pounding, Lenardo sat up in shock, but even so he lost neither clarity nor contact. He was really Reading Tiberium, and directly, all the way from Zendi, without leaving his body!

  But that’s impossible!

  //What’s im-Master Lenardo! Is that you?//

  Beside Lenardo, Aradia woke with a start. “What’s wrong?”

  Not knowing what to tell Torio, Lenardo withdrew without confirming contact. Let the boy think it was his imagination.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he assured Aradia, although he did not at all understand what had happened. Could it have been my imagination?

  “Did you have a bad dream?” Aradia asked. “I was having such a beautiful dream until you shouted and woke me up.”

  “I didn’t shout,” he said. “That must have been part of your dream.”

  She laughed. “Yes, you did. As clearly as anything, you said, “That’s impossible!’ “

  Could he have said it aloud? Never. Not after all his years of traini
ng. He was not delirious now. But how could Aradia know? Yesterday she had heard a scream that wasn’t uttered. But that is completely impossible.

  “Will you stop saying it’s impossible and tell me what you’re talking about?”

  “Aradia,” he whispered as chills crawled up his spine. “Tell me what you were dreaming.”

  “Mmm? It wasn’t prophetic or anything. I was just watching the most beautiful sunrise.” At his stricken look she broke off, eyes wide. “Lenardo, were you Reading me?” she asked in a small, frightened voice.

  “No,” he said, slowly shaking his head. “Aradia, you were Reading me.”

  “But that’s-” her eyes searched his “impossible?”

  He nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking.”

  “Coincidence?”

  //I was Reading the sunrise,// he projected at the intense level used to test children.

  “Well, at this time of day, anyone-” She froze. “You didn’t say that, did you?”

  //No.//

  No. It can’t be!

  //Obviously it can be, for it is.

  Her eyes grew wide with terror, and she reached for Lenardo, overwhelming him with panic as she clung to him, pleading, “No. Stop it. Tell me how to make it stop!”

  Chapter Five

  Fighting his way out of Aradia’s desperate fear, Lenardo tried to project soothing calm. //Aradia, Reading is nothing to be afraid of.// He had never seen such a reaction before. The awakening of Reading ability was a cause for rejoicing, not despair.

  //But you can Read me, everything I’m thinking!// Flashes of incoherent scenes that meant guilt to Aradia but nothing to Lenardo.

  //You’ll learn to shield your thoughts. Besides, there’s no one here but me to Read them, and I love you.//

  He let the warmth of his caring flow to her, feeling her respond and open to it, giving back joy for joy. Her fear dissolved as she yielded her mind to him as completely as she had her body. For a long time, neither had a coherent thought, but such a height could not be sustained.