Dragonlord of the Savage Empire se-2

by Jean Lorrah

  Lenardo’s own thoughts began to intrude. How could this have happened? And what of his own experience just before Aradia wakened? He had to find out if it had been his imagination, half a dreamVery gently, he removed himself from Aradia’s embrace, remaining with his hands on her shoulders. She looked at him expectantly.

  He said, “You’ll be confused at first about whether people are talking or thinking. Try not to answer their thoughts. That is very disconcerting to nonReaders. It is also against the Readers’ Code. Whatever you Read by accident, you are supposed to forget.”

  “Lenardo, I’m not a child. I can exercise discretion. What I must learn are techniques. Most important, how do I keep you, or especially Julia, from Reading me?”

  “The simplest way is to stop Reading.”

  She frowned. “I can’t. Right now I’m getting a sort of echo effect-what you’re going to say just before you say it.”

  “Is it gone now?”

  “Yes. What did you do?”

  “Stopped Reading. You see? That keeps you from Reading me. There are ways to Read and at the same time keep other Readers from Reading you, but they are difficult to master. They won’t work against any Reader more sensitive than you are, and you can slip up and reveal yourself to a less sensitive Reader. For the moment, what you need is to be able to guarantee your own privacy of thought. Refinements can come later.”

  “How do I stop?” she asked, screwing up her face in concentration.

  “Not like that.” He laughed. “All right, I’m open to you again.”

  “I can tell.”

  //Very well.// He fell into the exercise for teaching children. //Hear the tune playing in my head? Stop listening to it. Just blot it out.//

  He sat concentrating on the music, but Aradia’s feelings intruded: frustration, anger, fear.

  “I can’t,” she burst out. “I can’t shut it out.”

  “Aradia, relax. That’s your own fear preventing you, a double fear. First that you’ll never be able to keep the whole world out of your private thoughts, and second that if you once stop Reading, you’ll never be able to start again.”

  “Damn you, Lenardo. How can you Read my thoughts better than I can myself?”

  “I have taught hundreds of Readers. Over half of them had the same problem.”

  “But I’m not a child,” she said in irritation. “I’m a full-grown, fully empowered Adept.” The small cushion from one of the chairs went sailing toward Lenardo on the force of Aradia’s frustration.

  He caught it, laughing. “And that solves your problem.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re not Reading me anymore, and I can’t Read you. I should have remembered that when you’re functioning as an Adept, I can’t Read a thing about you, not even your feelings.”

  “Oh, you’re right. That’s a relief, and it seems what’s happened hasn’t affected my Adept powers.” Then, thoughtfully, “Lenardo, exactly what has happened?”

  “You’re a Reader, Aradia. I’ve never heard of the ability not appearing until adulthood, but your Adept talent showed first and was trained, and you shut out Reading while you exercised it. And of course you grew up in a society that feared and hated Readers, so you probably suppressed Reading, didn’t even recognize it until you got to know and trust a Reader.”

  “On the other hand,” she said, “maybe I caught it from you.”

  “It’s not a disease.”

  “Perhaps Readers and Adepts don’t have two separate talents at all,” she suggested. “Maybe it’s which one you look for and train and which one you fear. Lenardo, if I can do both, why can’t you?”

  When he didn’t answer, “Try it,” Aradia prodded him. ‘.‘Something easy-light the candle.”

  “I really don’t want to carry it out to find a fire.”

  “No, don’t joke. Try to light the candle, Lenardo. Concentrate. It was made to burn. Fire is its natural state. Envision the flame.”

  Lenardo concentrated until his head began to ache, but no flame appeared. Finally he said, “It’s not going to work, Aradia.”

  “But it has to. If I can Read-”

  “You simply have both talents. Some people are painters, and some people are musicians. Rarely, there is someone who can do both. So you have two talents. You are both Adept and Reader.”

  “Possibly,” she said. “But what do I do now?”

  “I’ll teach you everything I can,” said Lenardo. “We’ll see how much ability you can develop. Right now, though, you should get some more rest. You said you’d need to sleep till noon today.”

  “I’m too excited to feel tired. I want to try Reading everything. But what if it’s only you I can Read?”

  “It may seem that way at first, if you develop the way a child does. It takes a while to Read thoughts other than those a Reader is deliberately projecting. Aradia, you know meditation exercises. Rest this morning and then don’t eat until after we try some tests this afternoon.”

  “Don’t eat?”

  “One morning’s fast can’t hurt you, but what kind of dietary compromise can we find for you?”

  “Don’t even bother to suggest that horse fodder you eat.”

  “A few days of purifying diet won’t hurt you, any more than a few meat meals at your castle hurt me.”

  “Yes, Master,” she said in mock obedience, but she lay down. Although her thoughts were completely unReadable once more, he could see that she went quickly to sleep.

  Lenardo had to exercise careful control to stop trembling before he could dress and leave Aradia’s pavilion. At home he ate the hot cereal Cook placed before him, not because he wanted it but to avoid another lecture about keeping up his strength. As soon as he dared, he escaped to his room and began to Read.

  Zendi was all around him, the morning bustle well begun, the harvesters already in the fields outside the walls, a caravan a three-hour journey away packing up camp to head into the city, while in the hillsHe was Reading effortlessly in every direction, well beyond the city walls that had previously approximated the radius of his nondirected perception. Incredulously, he let the circle expand, Reading east and west slightly beyond his borders and not quite to them north and south, as his lands expanded farther in those directions.

  He found the same exquisite clarity that he had previously known only within the small circle of awareness, and he could focus on one thing and see it as if it were there within his grasp, complete to the smallest detail.

  What is happening to me? I committed the cardinal abuse, impaired my powers… and now this!

  Reading outward in a single direction, he was aware not only of Wulfston’s castle but just as easily and at the same time the sea far beyond.

  A sleepy Julia was allowing one of the women of Wulfston’s household to comb her hair, while the lord of the castle was in his own room, dressing for travel. Then Wulfston went to Julia’s room.

  “Ready for breakfast?”

  “But we can’t leave yet,” she protested. “Father hasn’t contacted me, and he may not be able to reach me at the sea.”

  //I’ll reach you.//

  “Oh!” Joy bubbled up in Julia’s mind. “Father’s here now, Lord Wulfston.”

  “Hello, Lenardo. Feeling better?”

  “Father says he’s completely recovered,” Julia relayed, “and there’s no hurry about returning to Zendi. Lady Aradia is still there.”

  “Still? Lenardo, what are you two up to?”

  Julia must have caught something of the consternation Lenardo tried to cover, for she giggled as she told Wulfston, “He says you wouldn’t guess in a hundred lifetimes. And… he thinks Aradia should tell you herself.”

  “If that means Aradia will stay until we get there, I’m delighted,” said Wulfston. Then, guiding the gaping servant woman out, he told Julia, “Meet me in the kitchen when you’re through with your lesson, and don’t forget to tell your father about helping Demetrius find his mares.”

  “Aww, that wa
s easy,” said Julia, but she nonetheless eagerly told Lenardo of helping one of Wulfston’s men locate five horses lured into the hills by a wild stallion. He gathered that his foster daughter would soon have a swollen head if left to the adulation of nonReaders.

  Only years of training and concentration allowed Lenardo to put this morning’s events out of his mind and give Julia her lesson. She was improving rapidly, happy in her work, but she was now torn between her promised holiday and her consuming curiosity about what was happening in Zendi.

  //Go and have a good time,// Lenardo told her, //but don’t be a nuisance to Lord Wulfston.//

  He managed to get through his morning’s work and clear the afternoon for Aradia. Beginning with the simplest tests, he sought the limits of her current ability, similar to those of a child whose powers were newly wakened. When Lenardo verbalized his thoughts, she could Read them clearly. Other people were a blur of emotion except for an occasional clear thought, and she could not even sense inanimate objects, let alone visualize them.

  “So I’m considerably less of a Reader than Julia,” she said when Lenardo decided that it was time to stop.

  “At the moment, yes. If you were Julia’s age, I’d pat you on the head and encourage you to do better tomorrow. As it is, I don’t want to discourage you, but I don’t want to raise false hopes, either.”

  They were in Lenardo’s room, seated on either side of his worktable. Now Aradia went to the window, staring out at the courtyard. “I don’t know if I want to Read any better.”

  “Why not?”

  “All my life I’ve judged people by their actions. I’m not sure I want to know their motivations.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I know people act from selfish motives,” Aradia explained, turning to face him. “My goal is to make working for me in my people’s best interest, yet there are those who become caught up in patriotic fervor, and I might be tempted to trust such people more than those who were merely doing what was expedient.”

  “Since you recognize the danger, Aradia, I do not think you will fall prey to it.”

  Her violet eyes studied him. “So you agree.”

  He nodded slowly. “Galen always acted from enthusiasm. I was the object of his enthusiasm for a time, but then came a time when I disagreed with him. He became disillusioned with me and was easy prey for Drakonius.”

  “Who wasted no time making it expedient for Galen to work for him,” said Aradia. She sat on the edge of the worktable, facing Lenardo. “You have learned quickly, now that you are over the blindness your empire instilled in you. You will be a great leader, Lenardo.”

  “I was not meant to rule. With every day that passes, I wonder what mistakes I have made.”

  “You think I do not? Every conscientious ruler worries, but he acts. I did not know whether you could act, Lenardo. That’s why I gave you Zendi. You have proved yourself here.”

  “Insulated. Untested.”

  “When the test comes, it will be against all of us, and we have passed the test against Drakonius. It will be a long time before anyone will dare attack us. But if we do nothing for long enough, that attack will come.” Again her fingers traced the brand on his arm. “Lenardo, I don’t want to leave you.”

  “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “Then-”

  “No. Don’t say it. Come here.” He drew her onto his lap, where she leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. “Aradia, I don’t know protocol among Lords Adept, so I’ve been making up my own rules.”

  “You have the right to make the rules in your own land.”

  “Then in my land, the right and honorable thing for me to do, because I love you and I want you with me always, is to ask you to marry me. I realize that that will present difficulties. We each have a land to rule, and your people might well object to your forming a permanent alliance with a Reader, and one who has been on this side of the pale less than half a year. Still, I want you to know what I would do if it were possible.”

  She was glowing with serene happiness. “I’m glad you said it first,” she murmured. “We’ll combine our lands and rule jointly. We have the right to set precedents. Lenardo, I was willing to sacrifice some of my powers for you, as my parents did when they married. After that first time, my strength and accuracy were greatly diminished.”

  “So were mine,” said Lenardo. “But later-”

  “Yes,” Aradia whispered fiercely, “later. There is something fated between you and me, foretold in ancient legend. When I woke today, after you had gone, I tested my powers. I removed one of the cobbles from the forum floor and lifted it. I split it, Lenardo, and then I crumbled part of it to powder, and I still felt so strong that I broke off a small piece and disintegrated it.“He recalled what she had said about disintegrating her father’s tumor. “How is it you are not exhausted?”

  “I don’t know. I have never had such strength. And you?”

  “I can Read farther and ‘more easily than ever before. I was having difficulty reaching Julia at Wulfston’s castle, and then this morning I discovered that without effort I could Read all the way to the sea, I haven’t yet dared to try leaving my body. I felt as if I could Read the whole world.”

  “Leaving your body? What do you mean?”

  “The highest, most difficult form of Reading is to dissociate one’s… self… from one’s body. I did it the day I first Read Drakonius’s stronghold for you. You thought I had fainted, remember?”

  She studied his face, and he could feel her trying to Read him. “No, I don’t think you’re lying,” she said. “I’m sure you believe that some sort of separate spirit leaves your body. But if that were possible, legends like that of the ghost-king would be fact, not fairy tale.”

  Lenardo considered. “Was this ghost-king one of your ancestors, Aradia?”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “Neither am I. Someone like you, both Adept and Reader-”

  “No!” She wrenched out of his embrace, shoving hard against his chest as she jumped to her feet. “No. There cannot be any life separate from the body. The legend of the ghost-king is meant to warn of the folly of such nonsense.”

  Reading how upset Aradia was, Lenardo recalled what he knew of savage beliefs. No dieties, no afterlife. “Life is the greatest value,” Aradia had once told him. She believed that there was nothing more than her physical life; he remembered that the subject was particularly painful to her because her mother had taken her own life, the worst thing a savage could do. He decided that it was best to change the subject.

  “You will understand more as your abilities increase. There’s nothing to fear, and we have joyful plans to make.”

  “Indeed we have. Lenardo, let’s not tell anyone yet. I want Wulfston to know first.”

  “And Julia.”

  “Julia,” Aradia said. “Oh, my. Do you think she’ll accept your marriage?”

  “You do see the point precisely. As long as she is assured that she will not be losing me but gaining you, I have no fear that she will object. However, there is the matter of explaining to a literal-minded child my seeming hypocrisy. I told her that Readers never marry.”

  “In the Aventine Empire,” said Aradia. “And most Readers are married off, if I understand the system, to produce new Readers. What seems wrong, though, is that only second-rate Readers reproduce; where do Readers like you come from?”

  “My parents were, as you put it, second-rate Readers. I don’t remember them very well.”

  “Has there never been an instance of two Master Readers having a child?”

  “Male and female Readers are rigorously segregated.”

  “But you Read each other.”

  “Yes.”

  She put her hand along the side of his face. Ill fell in love with you before I could Read you, but now there is so much more. Lenardo, how can man and woman touch minds like this and not desire to join bodies?//

  //They do. That is why the marriages arra
nged for those who do not reach the top ranks of Readers are generally successful. But for those who remain in the Academies, the mental union with other Readers far more than suffices for physical touch. Aradia, you need not touch me now.//

  Ill want to touch you!// Her fingers slid into his hair, and she bent to kiss his mouth possessively. Fire stirred in his veins, and she laughed. //You see? You excite me, Lenardo, and now it will be even more exciting to touch, to make love-//

  Passion threatened to overwhelm his control, but he forced common sense to prevail. “I love you, Aradia,” he said aloud, “but I don’t think we want to announce our intentions to the world by having Helmuth or Arkus walk in on us like this.”

  “Very well, then,” she said wistfully. “Later.”

  But later, although she moved into Lenardo’s room and into his bed, Aradia did not want to make love. Now that she was open to Reading, Lenardo knew that it was not teasing, that she wanted him but felt compelled to wait. He could not find the reason without invading her privacy, but he sensed that she was waiting for something she both feared and longed for.

  But when he tried to ask her about it, she avoided the subject, again demanding that he try to exercise Adept power. ‘ ‘Fire talent is the most common and the easiest of all even for the Lord Adept,” she told him. But although he tried to ‘cooperate and then at her insistence tried to make the silken hangings move, all he achieved was a tension headache. He wondered idly if that was what she had intended.

  Three days later, Julia arrived home with Wulfston. When Lenardo lifted his daughter down from her horse, he did not resist her embrace but squeezed her in return, enjoying her happy surprise at his leniency. He could feel her trying to Read him, knowing that something important had happened while she was away.

  Wulfston, too, was brimming with curiosity. As soon as they were all together in Lenardo’s room, he demanded, “Now, what scheme are you two plotting?”

  “No scheme,” Aradia replied. “Just happy plans.”

  Wulfston looked from one to the other and said, “I think I can guess.”