Sorcerers of the Frozen Isles se-5 Read online

  “Yeah… I know,” Decius said grudgingly. “But-how can you be sure there aren’t Adepts somewhere with even more powers than Wulfston or Aradia?”

  “You’re right-I don’t know,” Torio conceded. No one understood exactly how Adept powers worked, for an Adept using them was unReadable. Even Readers who had learned Adept tricks, like Lenardo and Melissa, found that they could not Read at the same time they were applying Adept power.

  When the two boys had finished their bath, they dressed in familiar Aventine-style tunics, the warm-weather garb Lenardo had popularized in his lands. Torio still felt more comfortable in such clothes than in the silk shirts, hose, and tabards of the savage style.

  Decius still wore the plain white linen tunic of a Reader in training, while Torio’s was green silk, edged in gold embroidery-a concession to his position as a savage lord. He would have preferred to dress in the black-edged white tunic indicative of a Reader who had reached one of the upper ranks.

  Master Clement still wore the robes of a Master

  Reader-scarlet cloak over a black-banded white tunic-every day. Lenardo, who had the right to them as well, wore them only on ceremonial occasions.

  At nineteen, Torio knew it was better to follow Lenardo’s example than Master Clement’s, for there was no denying that the world had changed.

  Lords Adept had no rules for clothing except richness, it appeared. As their powers made them individualistic, their garb was idiosyncratic-just as Readers dressed alike because their powers united them rather than setting them apart from one another.

  Only it’s all the same power, Torio reminded himself as he entered Lenardo’s house and Read Melissa waiting for him in the courtyard.

  “Decius, Melissa’s-”

  “I know,” the younger boy told him. “Go on and get all silly with her. You don’t have to worry that /’”

  Read what you’re doing!”

  In another year or sd you’ll understand, thought Torio to himself, wondering if Master Clement was trying to stem that awakening in Decius. He had beaten it out of the young Lenardo, Torio had once Read to his utter astonishment. He had never known the gentle Master Reader to use physical punishment on any other student. Despite his efforts, the desire had merely lain dormant in Lenardo until he met Aradia.

  Torio had experienced the vague yearnings of adolescence some years ago, too, but he had sublimated them until he had met Melissa last year. Now… neither of them knew how to achieve what they wanted.

  Marriage, they were sure-but when? They were young enough to wait, but also young enough not to want to. Had they not both been brought up in the segregated disciplines of the Academy system, they might simply have followed their inclinations by now.

  But both had desires beyond those of the flesh. Torio’s Reading abilities were growing at a rate which astonished the Master Readers. While Melissa’s Reading talent was maturing only at the normal rate for her age and potential, she had added Adept powers which were growing daily.

  The wisdom of both Readers and Adepts who tried to advise the young couple was to wait until their growth spurt had reached its peak before consummating their physical desires.

  Thus it was easier for them to be apart most of the time. Nonetheless, Torio went eagerly to the sheltered bench in the courtyard where Melissa waited.

  She was a slender young woman with a heart-shaped face and dark hair whose natural curl asserted itself in soft wisps about her face. Spring sunshine had already brought out the freckles across her nose, and she appeared healthy and contented and happy to see him.

  They Read each other without words for a moment. Then Torio took Melissa into his arms. Both stopped Reading, to assure their privacy. That left Torio blind, but his other senses were thoroughly saturated with the feel, taste, and scent of Melissa.

  They kissed until both were satisfied that they were really together, then sat down side by side, Torio’s arm around Melissa, her head on his shoulder.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she told him. “I heard what happened yesterday.”

  “Let’s not talk about that,” said Torio. “How are you? How are your healing techniques progressing?”

  “Steadily. Torio, I don’t understand why you can’t learn Adept powers. If those attackers had succeeded in killing Wulfston yesterday, you’d have been helpless.” She shuddered.

  “I haven’t forgotten how to use a sword,” he reminded her.

  “Against people who can stop your heart at a distance?”

  “I know. But if you had felt those people burning to death as I did… perhaps you wouldn’t be so eager to increase your Adept powers.”

  She nodded against his shoulder. “The Lords Adept have traditionally used their powers for destruction-even someone as thoughtful as Wulfston does it instinctively when his life is threatened. But when those powers are turned to healing… Torio, do you remember Zanos?”

  “You, too? Decius was just chattering about him. What’s going on?”

  “Zanos and his wife Astra came with Lilith, and we had a long talk last night. You know, Lilith has set apart some of her lands for Zanos and Astra to rule-they each have both Reading and Adept powers.

  But Zanos isn’t ready to settle down here in the Savage Empire until he goes back to his homeland, which he hasn’t seen in over twenty years.”

  “The home of the Master Sorcerers?” Torio asked.

  “Yes!” Melissa said eagerly. “Madura. It’s a group of large islands, far in the northern sea. Zanos wants to see if his village is still there, and if any of his kinfolk are still living.”

  “So why shouldn’t he go and see if he wants to? Melissa, we’re not trying to hold people who don’t want to stay here, are we?”

  “No-of course Zanos and Astra are free to go. But it will be a long journey. They’re looking for people who might want to join their expedition. There could be dangers, so they want as many Adepts and Readers as possible.”

  “And you want to go,” Torio said flatly, firmly quelling the urge to Read her.

  He felt Melissa lift her head, and knew she was looking at him. “Yes,” she said. “I want to go. Torio, they have healing techniques far beyond anything we know. Here, a baby born blind can be healed, but nothing can be done for someone your age. In Madura-”

  “-they can fly, too,” he interrupted her.

  “Torio, this is serious! Yes, it’s hard to filter out the truth from the garbled stories-but we are just floundering here, using trial and error to learn how Readers and Adepts can best join their powers. In Madura they already know! So why should it be surprising that they can do things we can’t?”

  “At least you’re a little more logical than Decius,” he told her. “But Melissa, you still have so much to learn here. Let the adventurous ones go-and if they find the Madurans friendly and willing to trade knowledge and goods, if they have these healing powers you’re so eager for, then of course you will go and study in one of their hospitals. But to undertake a long, dangerous journey on the basis of a few exaggerated tales-”

  “You sound just like Lenardo!” she said in exas-peration. “Torio, you’re young-don’t you want some adventure in your life? I do. I love you, but I don’t want to stay here just because you’re afraid to stir out of one safe little haven-”

  “Just yesterday I was nearly killed in this ‘safe little haven’! Melissa, I have had enough adventure in the past two years to last a lifetime. If you want to go with Zanos-”

  Suddenly Melissa was no longer leaning against him. He could feel her, still on the bench beside him, sitting bolt upright as she demanded, ” What did you say?”

  At a loss to explain her reaction, he repeated, “I’ve had enough adventure-”

  ‘ “No-after that.”

  “I started to say, if you want to go with Zanos, I won’t try to stop you except to ask you to think it through with me.”

  He could feel her eyes boring into him, and let himself Read her. She was staring at
him in alarm, Reading him in return. “Torio-I’m sorry. What I said to you was out of line-but you don’t even know what you said to me!”

  “Well, what did I say?”

  He could feel her fear and concern as she told him, “You broke off in the middle of a sentence. Then you took your arm away from around me, focused your eyes on me the way you do when you’re Reading-except that I knew you were not seeing me-and then you said, ‘Your destiny, Melissa, is to be found in the frozen isle of Madura. Zanos’ fate lies not there, but in a land he has never seen, beyond the southern sea.’ “

  “That’s silly,” he said. “I don’t talk that way, and I’d certainly know if I said any such thing. I’m trying to talk you out of going to Madura, so why would I-?”

  But he could Read that she had heard him say the very words she claimed-he Read it through her eyes, saw himself, heard his voice speak it.

  “By the gods!” he whispered.

  “I… I think so,” whispered Melissa in return.

  “Well,” said Torio, “if what I said is true, if your destiny truly does lie in Madura-then so does mine!”

  Chapter Two

  ” Prophecy!” said Master Clement when Torio and Melissa let him and Lenardo Read their memories of what had happened in the courtyard. “Son, this is a rare gift, and a dangerous one.”

  “Not so rare,” Torio protested. “You have it, Master Lenardo,” he appealed.

  “No,” said Lenardo, who had finally given up on getting Torio to address him by his savage title, “what I have are precognitive flashes. They are incomplete, and often incoherent, but they are scenes, not words, and I do not blank them out.”

  “They are also always your own experiences,” Master Clement reminded him, then turned to Torio.

  “You, son, have just predicted the future of two other people. What you said, although it doesn’t tell us much, is a complete thought and certainly comprehensible. A prophet always knows other people’s futures, never his own.”

  Torio shivered. “I don’t want to know. This isn’t like Reading. I don’t like it!”

  “Why, Torio?” asked Melissa. “Because you told me it’s right for me to go to Madura, even though you don’t want me to?”

  “No-because I didn’t know what I’d said!”

  “Master Clement,” said Lenardo, “that is not usual, is it? I’ve never known a Reader with this gift before.”

  “Nor I,” replied the old man. “It has been generations since the last-but no, I do not recall that the prophet cannot hear his own prophecy. Torio, I think you simply refused to hear yourself tell Melissa she will go far away from here.”

  “What happens if I don’t go?” asked Melissa.

  “You will go,” said Lenardo. “My precognitive flashes are of fated events. They always happen, although almost never in the context I expect.”

  Master Clement added, “Under the circumstances, there is no reason to think Torio is pulling a prank, nor is this gift something he sought, so it is not wishful thinking. Torio, can you tell me my fate?”

  “A child in the womb, a voice from the tomb, a generation of gloom if you serve not your doom.”

  This time Torio heard the words he spoke-yet it was as if they were spoken by someone else. He had no idea where that doggerel verse came from, or what it meant.

  “Interesting,” said Master Clement. “What about Decius?”

  This time Torio was silent. When no involuntary words came, he said, “I guess I don’t know.”

  “Probably because the boy has not yet done enough in life to establish a direction. Or to attract the notice of the gods, as some men would put it. At the present time, nothing in his life is fated.”

  Melissa protested, “Then you are saying that the gods will send me to Madura whether I want to go or not?”

  Lenardo held out his right arm, displaying the dragon’s-head brand. “In the days of the white wolf and the red dragon, there will be peace throughout the land. I had never heard that prophecy, Melissa, nor did I know of Aradia and the white wolf that is her symbol before I came to these lands-and yet she and I together are making that prophecy come true.”

  “And when the moon devoured the sun last year, Tiberium fell, as it was foretold,” Master Clement added.

  “But we had that one wrong,” Torio said eagerly. “It wasn’t the eclipse. It was when the failed Readers on the Path of the Dark Moon turned against the Emperor, whose symbol was the sun!”

  “Misinterpretation is precisely why this gift is so dangerous, son,” explained Master Clement. “Look at the damage we did trying to prevent that prophecy from coming true.”

  “The point,” put in Lenardo, “is that the prophecies do come true, no matter how we try to prevent them.

  Melissa, my limited experience suggests that you would do better to take your journey to Madura with Zanos than to tempt fate by refusing. Your destiny appears to be to become a great healer. If that is so, then you will never be satisfied until you go and learn those techniques the Maduran sorcerers have to offer.”

  ” If they will teach you,” said Zanos when Melissa and Torio approached him about joining his expedition.

  “The stories are contradictory,” he explained, “and yet Astra’s powers say the people who tell them to us are speaking the truth-or what they think is the truth. The Madura I remember was a peaceful land ruled by Master Sorcerers who kept the weather moderate, so that ours was a garden isle. Now, I’m told, they ignore the people’s needs, and the climate has become so cold that the whole land is frozen and nothing grows.”

  “And the healers?” asked Melissa.

  They had found Zanos alone in the suite of rooms he shared with his wife Astra, in the guest house reserved for Lilith and her retinue. Zanos still looked very much the gladiator, a huge, strongly muscled man who rarely stayed still for more than a few minutes at a time. His head was crowned with flaming red hair, and he raked it back with his fingers as he paced the room which seemed too small to contain his restless bulk.

  “I don’t know what’s happened to the healers,” he told them. “At one time they were supposed to be the greatest in the world-but now I hear they have gone too far, usurping the powers of the gods. First it was restoring life to the dead. Then metamorphosing men into animals. My friends, ever since I left Tiberium I have been inquiring about Madura-and these are the stories I’ve been told.

  “What I have pieced together tells me only one thing for certain: the rulers of Madura have stopped making their people their first priority. Now they live to pursue the limits of their powers… while their people live in fear. In fact, the slavers tell me Madurans go eagerly aboard their ships, willing to grasp at any chance to escape.”

  “Yet you still want to go there?” asked Torio.

  “It was my home,” Zanos replied. “I cannot rest until I know if my brother survived the raid in which I was taken. And… I must know whether Madura could still be my home. All my life I have dreamed of returning. I cannot simply forget that dream; I must know whether my fate lies in Madura.”

  Melissa looked at Torio, but he said nothing. When they left Zanos, she asked, “Why didn’t you tell him what you prophesied?”

  “Because nothing I could say would stop him from going. He has a legitimate quest, Melissa-what if he does find his brother living miserably under this new rule? Perhaps he can bring him back here, to live in the lands he and Astra will rule.”

  “And?” she persisted.

  “And… you must go to Madura. Better with a well-equipped expedition of Readers and Adepts than in some way we might regret. Besides, if these things I say prove true, then Zanos will have to return safely-and therefore so will you and I.”

  Once it was decided on, plans for the expedition moved quickly-but it was only a minor concern of the Readers and Adepts who had gathered in Zendi.

  In the past year, Lenardo and Aradia had had to put down an attempted takeover of their new government by what was left of t
he Aventine army, and put an end to the corrupt practices of Readers who had been a small but powerful core within the Aventine Empire. Their leaders might have died in the earthquake that toppled Tiberium, but having once broken their Reader’s Oaths they went right on Reading people’s private affairs and using what they discovered to extort money or favors.

  Ultimately, Lenardo had had no choice but to make examples of the worst of them in a public execution.

  The others were scattered to menial positions in Academies now governed by Master Readers who had sworn loyalty to their vows a second time, under Oath of Truth before Lenardo and Master Clement.

  Lenardo’s increased powers meant that not even the most powerful Master Reader could lie to him, but it was Master Clement the other Readers trusted. Despite his protests that Lenardo had the greatest Reading powers ever known, Clement was elected Master of Masters, head of the Council of Master Readers. That, to Torio’s mind, was the best decision they had made in years.

  Now that the upper ranks of Readers could be trusted once again, they were able to determine how best to use the lesser Readers on the Path of the Dark Moon. Most of those who had not been involved in the attack on Tiberium had simply continued with their assignments as scouts, messengers, midwives, and general finders of things lost.

  There were thousands of such people, willing to accept the rule of the new Council of Masters-but there were also hundreds who now knew that they possessed minor Adept powers as well as their small Reading ability. Most of those who had joined in the group-mind that took on a life of its own to destroy Tiberium had spent the year since coping with guilt.

  Not only corrupt senators had died, but innocent men as well; not only Master Portia and other Master Readers who had lent their powers to politicians and criminals, but other Readers who had honestly done nothing but obey the Masters to whom they had sworn loyalty; not only the tyrannical royal family, but also hundreds of soldiers who had been doing nothing but their duty, and equal numbers of ordinary Aventine citizens out to watch the Emperor review his troops.