Savage Empire se-1

by Jean Lorrah

  Aside from the fact that Arkus’ anger was not directed at Galen, Lenardo had not learned anything of immediate use. The name Braccho, apparently the general of the local army rather than a ruler, he stored away as a possibly useful fact. Another name, too, had been in Arkus’ mind-a name he would hardly let himself think because it brought such mixed emotions.

  Lenardo could not tell, because Arkus could not, if the feelings were fear, anger, revenge, or admiration. The name that conjured them was��� Aradia.

  When he reached the forum, Lenardo saw in actuality the source of Arkus’ memory. The shields were hung up there, the top one bearing the dragon’s head in black on a field of gold. The five smaller shields below it were grouped in two rows. One in the first row and two in the second had been burned; only the frames remained, tattered fragments of leather clinging to them. The other two were painted, one with a green spear and the other with a brown horse’s head.

  As Lenardo skirted the edge of the forum, a woman approached him, hardly more than a child, wearing only a tabard cut off at the hips. Her body was still adolescent, but she flaunted it boldly. “I can give you pleasure, Meister. You got money? One copper, I-”

  “No, thank you.” He tried to push past, quelling his disgust at a society that reduced young girls to this.

  The girl clung, dogging his steps, slipping ahead of him to run backward as she offered, “Anything you want to do, Meister-or I will show you new tricks. You want to-?”

  She began to catalogue her techniques, in graphic detail. Lenardo blushed furiously, to the amusement of the passing crowd. They, he noticed, took the girl for granted; his reaction was what made them laugh.

  Finally, to get rid of her, he stopped and lifted his cloak to display his blistered arm. “Child, I am in pain,” he said. “Can’t you see I have no use for your talents tonight?”

  At home, he would have worn the robes of a Reader, and no one of this girl’s profession would have approached him-certainly not in such fashion! In the Aventine Empire soliciting rudely in the street was unheard of.

  “Please, Meister-I’ll soothe you, help you sleep. Maybe a bed for the whole night?” Her eyes lit, and he Read that she was hoping for a comfortable place to sleep without having to do anything but Oh, ho. There was her plan. She had the Adept power to put people into deep sleep. She planned to rob him. He smiled to himself and told her, “Away with you, now. When I want a woman, I’ll find a woman, not a half-grown girl.”

  But he wouldn’t want a woman. He was a Master Reader-he had learned to focus the yearnings of his body into positive channels when he was Torio’s age.

  Tonight the only yearning of his body was for rest and ease from pain. He ought to eat, he knew-had, this morning, planned to find a hot supper, in Zendi. Now, though, pain had killed his appetite, and besides, there was no inn in the filthy warren Zendi had become where he would trust the food.

  He was thirsty, feverish, fighting lightheadedness. He had to get out of town, find a place to rest.

  A fruit-seller passed him, and for the first time something tempted him: juicy golden citrus fruit. He chose two oranges. All he had to pay with, however, was a gold corn.

  Even though he was not Reading as he concentrated on speaking with the vendor, he could feel empathically that his money pouch was being eyed, weighed. He dropped the silver and copper coins the boy gave him in change back into the pouch and determined not to make that mistake again. -He must hide his small supply of gold inside his pack and carry only coppers and perhaps a silver piece where they would be seen if he made a purchase.

  Pretending he hadn’t noticed anything, he walked away, Reading the two men flitting through the crowd, following him at a safe distance. Together? Yes. Very well. He Read crowds in several streets radiating from the forum-mustn’t get caught in a deserted area. Reading the men trailing him, he wove through the crowd to get out of their sight, ducked into a side street until they had passed, and came out behind them. Then he eluded their search in the crowd, and escaped through Northgate just as the strangers’ bell rang. Soon the gate was closed behind him for the night, the thieves remaining in Zendi.

  For some time, Lenardo walked among people returning home from a day’s business in Zendi. The crowd gradually thinned, until he walked alone again. He located a sheltered spot well off the road, ate a piece of fruit, and lay down to sleep.

  With a Reader’s discipline, Lenardo was able to put himself into a light sleep from which he would awaken at any disturbance. It was a troubled sleep, as he usually slept on his right side; each time he would truly fall asleep he would try to turn over, sending waves of pain through his sore arm. By morning it was badly swollen, his right hand stiff and clumsy.

  Still very tired, he set off along the road again, now in territory completely strange to him. It was more of the same-fields, peasant huts, squalor and misery. He felt a kinship with the landscape.

  He stopped to bathe his arm and spread ointment on it, but the pain just from doing that was almost too much to bear. He drank feverishly at the brook and staggered back to the road for a few hours. By early afternoon, he knew he could go no further.

  There was medicine for fever in his pack, an opiate that dulled the physical senses and sent the mind roaming in precarious realms. He dared not use it unless he were safe, where nothing could disturb his body. On the road, there was no such place.

  There were hills off to his right, however. He had a full skin of water, food, and medicine. If there was a cave in those hills where he might hide for a night and a day���

  When he left the road, he found it even harder to walk. His head seemed to lift from his body, then return with a stabbing pain. Twice he fell, dragged himself up again, and continued his nightmare journey. At one point he was seized with teeth-chattering chills, but most of the time he was in a clammy sweat.

  His vision became distorted, and as he tried to Read both the way he walked and the surrounding countryside, the two perceptions blurred into confusion. He had to concentrated on his own steps, narrowing in to force one foot to follow the other���

  How long he traveled thus, he didn’t know. He had reached the lower slopes of the hills and was clambering over a rocky outcropping when he suddenly Read people-savages-all around him.

  Alert, he could have avoided them. As it was, they were upon him, hill bandits on helpless prey. He only half understood what they were saying.

  “An exile.”

  “No one will be looking for this one.”

  “They always have good clothes, sometimes money.”

  Then harsh hands grabbed him, and laughter rang out as he howled in pain, trying to shake them off, reaching for his sword with numbed fingers that scrabbled at the hilt. More laughter as he was disarmed, his cloak ripped away, his arms twisted behind his back, forcing another scream from him.

  He was staring into the face of a man perhaps his own age, but the face was bearded, the mouth open to show teeth missing, and those present black with rot.

  “What have you got, exile? What can you give us for your life?”

  “Nothing,” Lenardo gasped, knowing they wanted him to grovel and plead before they killed him anyway.

  The bandit hit him in the stomach. Gratefully, Lenardo blacked out. He came to with the pain of someone twisting his branded arm again. “Beat him,” the. bandit instructed, and while two held him, others punched and kicked at him, ever careful to keep him conscious. Against the pain in his arm, the blows hardly registered. Hanging limp between the bandits, he waited for death to release him from pain.

  Suddenly he was dumped to the ground, stripped of scabbard, boots, money pouch. Then one of the bandits felt under his shirt and pulled forth the amulet old Quintus had given him.

  There was a gasp. The bandits dropped Lenardo and the amulet as if both had become red-hot.

  “The wolf-stone!”

  “Aradia!”

  They scattered like startled birds, disappearing in
to the hills. Lenardo tried to sit up. They had taken everything, leaving him weaponless, without even boots to protect his feet from the rocks or a cloak to wrap up in against the night. He needed water, but they had taken the water-skin too.

  He tried to Read around him, not moving. There must be a spring somewhere in these hills. He was deathly thirsty, and he had to clean the wound on his arm, where the bandits had burst the blisters with their filthy hands.

  Far, far up in the hills, he Read water. He couldn’t stand; he could barely get to his knees to crawl. After a while, it ceased to matter. He slumped into unconsciousness.

  Feverish sleep possessed him, thirst and. pain awakening him several times to see stars overhead. One time he was freezing but couldn’t find cloak or blanket. Then he was burning, his lips splitting with thirst, the sun blazing down on him. The pain in his arm was gone.

  Somehow he found the strength to turn his head, meaning to look at his arm, but caught instead by a vision. Hallucination, he told himself firmly, but still before his bleary eyes, swimming in and out of focus but stubbornly remaining, sat the white wolf.

  It was not the abstract alabaster symbol, but a living animal, dusty about the feet, watching him curiously from a safe distance. Safe? Who was the one in danger here?

  Perhaps the animal would tear him apart, and his troubles would be over.

  The wolf rose and made a sort of whining noise, like a dog. It ran a few paces away, turned to look at Lenardo, came back to its original position, and whined again. Twice more it repeated the performance. Bemused, Lenardo wondered, You want me to follow you, boy? I’m not going anywhere. Probably not ever again. The effort of focusing his attention on the animal sent him back into unconsciousness, and when he next woke, the wolf was gone. If it was ever there.

  He focused his eyes on his right arm, lying like a separate thing, swollen, red streaks running from the yellow, scabrous brand up toward his shoulder. He had seen such marks before. It meant his arm must come off if he were to live.

  But I’m not going to live, he thought. Alone, far from help, he would die of thirst before the day was out. Carefully assessing his situation, he came to the same conclusion twice more and decided he was thinking clearly enough. It was truly hopeless. There was no need for him to suffer the lingering hours. He could not move to compose his body, but it didn’t matter. He would not be returning to it.

  In utter peace, he Read outward until he floated above the wreck of his physical form. Now there was no pain or fever; he was free. When his body died, he would be fully released-but while it still lived he must see Master Clement or Portia. They must know he had failed, must do something about Galen���

  Before he began to concentrate on Adigia, however, other minds attracted his attention. Four men were coming from the hills. More bandits? He Read them and found there were five, one of them shielded against Reading. An Adept!

  The savage Adepts could not Read, but neither could they be Read; a part of their training apparently included barriers against such intrusion, even though it could not come from their own people.

  Focusing himself to see and hear, Lenardo saw five men in clean, serviceable clothing, moving purposefully down the hillside. One of them stopped, pointing to Lenardo’s body. “Look! There he is!”

  They all began to run toward the crumpled form. “Is he dead?” asked the oldest of the group, a stoop-shouldered man with a gray beard.

  “Do you know him, Wolf-stone?” asked another as the apparent leader of the group knelt beside Lenardo’s body.

  “No,” he said, and Lenardo Read that this was the one. barricaded against him. He was a young man, a Nubian-a Nubian Adept? But if not Adept, why shielded? And they called him Wolf-stone? He was lifting the alabaster wolfs head with the violet eyes, comparing it with one he wore about his own neck. Lenardo wondered vaguely if the white wolf had gone to get him. “He wears the wolf-stone,” the black man said. “It is the sign-yet���” He examined Lenardo’s wounded arm. “An exile fresh from the empire -how can he wear Aradia’s sign? Never mind; we must take him to her if he can survive the journey.”

  “Is he alive?” asked the graybeard.

  “Oh, yes. Don’t you see him breathing? He will suffer less if we can avoid waking him. Helmuth, wet his lips, but be careful he does not breathe water in. The rest of you prepare the litter.”

  Reluctantly, Lenardo realized that he was not to be relieved of his mission. He must return to his body and live-for wherever these men took him, he might learn more of Galen. He would lose his right arm, his sword arm, but, he thought with bitter humor, the brand of dishonor would go with it. If he should ever return to the empire���

  If there was to be an empire to return to, he must regain his body. He had not thought to have to do so. It was a slow, painful, nearly impossible process when the body was as debilitated as his was. Finally, he opened gummy eyes to see the graybearded face swimming above him, as gentle hands wetted his parched lips from a water-skin.

  Thirst was his first concern. Helplessly, he tried to speak, had no voice, but the old man lifted his head so he could drink, saying, “Lie still, son. You’re all right now.”

  The black man immediately turned back to him. “Don’t give him too much at once, Helmuth.”

  Then he spoke to Lenardo. “Do you understand me?” He now spoke in Aventine.

  With the water to release his throat, Lenardo managed, “Aye.” It was too much effort to say that he understood the other language too.

  “You’re safe now. We’ll take you to Aradia. I’m going to make you sleep, so the journey will not pain you.”

  Lenardo wanted to protest, but he was too weak. The black man began to chant something in a language Lenardo didn’t know, and he fell into dreamless sleep.

  The dreams came later, as he was carried smoothly along in the litter. Or was that a dream too? Four men walking could not carry a litter so that it did not lurch or bump.

  The confusing smooth motion was interspersed with strange images-worry about his pregnant wife��� her time was due��� when he got home, he might have a son. He tried to cry out to hurry-yes-the babe was born. A fine, healthy boy. Maj is fine��� happy���

  A horse��� lame��� nothing seemed to help. Poultices. Must ask Aradia���

  Lovely girl. Halja��� laughing blue eyes, light brown hair. Could he manage the marriage fee before her father gave her to another?

  And woven through all the dreams the image of a woman��� a woman who blended somehow Into the wolf-stone, the two images shifting��� shifting��� white wolf��� alabaster woman��� violet eyes���

  He woke in a room, at night, lying in a bed. The black man, sitting beside the bed, rose and gave him water. “Are you in pain?” he asked, still in Aventine.

  “No,” Lenardo replied, a pang of sudden fear as he remembered, looking for his right arm. It was still there, lying atop the covers like a dead thing, bloated, the streaks of red no worse than before but still there “Are you rested enough to speak?” asked a low-pitched female voice. Out of the shadows at the foot of the bed moved a woman with palest blond hair, her eyes dark pools in the dim candlelight. She reached for the wolf-stone about Lenardo’s neck. “How do you come to wear this? I know you not.”

  “When I was sent into exile, a friend gave it to me. He thought it might protect me.”

  Her delicate eyebrows rose. “It has, indeed. The hill bandits have enough respect for it that they dared not kill you. It saved you a second time in that you are a Reader, and anyone else might have had you killed.”

  At Lenardo’s start of surprise, she smiled, her pale face momentarily beautiful. “In your delirium, you talked of everything on the minds of the men carrying you-Helmut’s lame horse, Jorj’s marriage plans, Gron’s son��� and Gron did not even know he had been, born yet.” Pure shame rang through Lenardo. Delirium or no, his training should have kept him from invading t
he men’s minds, let alone babbling out their secrets. But the woman continued reassuringly, “Fortunately, no one but Wulfston spoke your language, so you did not frighten the poor men out of their wits.”

  “Wolf-stone?”

  “I am Wulfston,” said the black man.

  Confused, Lenardo touched the alabaster wolfs head. “You are called-Wolf-stone?”

  “Yes, that is what my name means. When you are well, I will explain how I got the name.”

  “I am Aradia,” said the woman. “May we know your name?”

  “Lenardo.”

  “Well, Lenardo, our first order is to put you back in good health. Let me examine you.” As she spoke, a many-branched candelabrum on the table beside the bed��� moved. Lenardo saw it only out of the corner of his eye and glanced toward it. It was perfectly still now-no, he must have imagined As he watched, every candle burst spontaneously into flame. At his astonishment, the woman said, “That is an easy trick-the candles are made to burn. I simply work with their natural inclination.”

  “How can candles have a natural inclination?” asked Lenardo.

  “All of nature has desires,” said the woman. “Water desires to run downhill. Crops desire to grow. What you call magic is nothing but encouraging things to follow their natural desires.”

  “Then you savages attack the empire because of a natural desire to kill?”

  “No,” she replied gently, “because of the natural desire to grow. Now, if you will let me examine your wounds-”

  Wulfston stripped away the blankets, revealing Lenardo naked on the bed. “There were no signs on his back, my lady. They seem to have beaten his face and stomach, and he bruised his knees trying to crawl to shelter.”

  “To water,” said Lenardo, recalling that deathly thirst

  Gentle pale fingers probed his cuts and bruises, pressed on a rib until he winced. “I wonder if-” She laughed, a light, lovely sound. “But you can tell me, can’t you? Is this rib broken?”

  He Read it. “Cracked, not all the way through.”

  “Can you Read other people that easily?”