Empress Unborn se-7 Read online

  Zendi was a thriving city now, rebuilt after the series of battles that had raged over it during its years in disputed territory. The old wood and mud-and-wattle buildings were replaced with stone; fire was no longer the plague it had once been. The water and sewer systems were back in repair, and Lenardo’s current project was to bring water and safe, comfortable heating into the homes of even the poorest of the citizens.

  There was plenty for the Adepts and Readers to do: weather to be controlled so the crops would thrive, the sick and injured to be healed, the young people with their burgeoning talents to be trained.

  The Academy system already existed to train young Readers, but there had never before been systematic training of those with minor Adept talents. Healers had apprenticed themselves to other healers, those with power over weather had been valued by the farmers, but the rest had generally used their powers sparingly, lest the local Lord Adept take too sharp a notice of potential rivals.

  Then there was the ongoing research to bring out Adept talent in Readers, Reading in Adepts. Now that it was understood that the two talents were one, it was hard to see why so many who were skilled at one could not evoke the other. Wulfston longed to learn to Read, but had somehow never made the breakthrough. Master Clement only laughed when Aradia offered to teach him Adept tricks, saying, “I’m too old to start a new way of life. Teach Decius-he’s eager to learn.”

  Decius was approaching his examinations for the rank of Magister Reader, a source of irritation to Julia.

  “I’m a better Reader than he is,” she fumed, “but he gets to learn to go out of body and I don’t!”

  “Decius is eighteen,” Aradia reminded her. “When you are his age, you’ll learn those techniques.”

  She wished Decius and Julia were a little closer in age; she’d have much preferred Julia to focus her growing interest in the opposite sex on the young Reader than on her friend Galerio, a sixteen-year-old minor Adept who led a gang of youngsters with similar small talents. Aradia was hard put to explain why she didn’t like the boy. He had no family, and lived by his wits and talents. Normally she admired such spirit.

  But neither Galerio nor any of the young people he led would attend the classes designed to help them make the best use of their abilities. “He doesn’t want you to tell him what to do with his life,” Julia explained.

  “Julia, you know that’s not the purpose of the classes,” Aradia protested. “You’d be doing him a great favor if you could persuade him to attend.”

  “He doesn’t listen to girls’ advice!” Julia exclaimed, and Aradia suddenly saw one reason Julia was fascinated by Galerio: he was one of the few people her age who did not treat her with the deference due Lenardo’s heir.

  Decius might have been a similar challenge, if he had paid attention to Julia at all. Aradia decided to throw them together. She had a valid reason: both were powerful Readers, but neither had mastered a single Adept talent.

  So she told Julia she wanted to work with her and Decius together, apart from her other pupils. Julia agreed eagerly-she longed to add Adept powers to her talents.

  Decius arrived right on time, striding confidently despite the peg leg he wore. When he was only thirteen, he had lost his left leg in a battle Drakonius had taken into the very Academy at Adigia, where Decius had then been a student. Those wars were over now, but they had scarred an entire generation.

  Decius’ scars were only physical. Emotionally, he was as sound as any young man Aradia knew-and today he was flushed with triumph as he joined Julia and Aradia in the private chamber where they would have their lesson. “It’s my day for learning!” he told them. “This morning I moved to another plane of existence-it’s even more exciting than going out of body!”

  Aradia had never done either, but she knew that

  Readers on the advanced levels could go into other dimensions, other… places, she supposed, where not even the best Readers could spy on them. Not physical places, though. For her, it was a strange concept-but she did not let it concern her, because she would have no occasion to try it. Let Lenardo worry about other planes of existence.

  But she congratulated Decius, and then got down to the business at hand.

  Before them on the table she placed a fireproof bowl, in which were shavings and tinder. “Fire is the easiest power to manifest,” she said for the thousandth time, “although one of the most difficult to master.

  Never practice without an Adept skilled in fire control present.”

  Julia said, “I’ve tried this a hundred times, Aradia. It won’t work. “

  “It won’t work if you think it won’t,” said Decius. “I think it will.”

  “Do you, Decius?” Aradia asked.

  “Yes,” he said firmly.

  “Then try. Concentrate. Envision the flames. Feel the heat. Put your mind to just that bowl, just the kindling-Decius, you’re Reading!”

  He blinked, and looked at her. “Sorry,” he muttered, and returned to staring at the kindling. He was still Reading it, his disciplined mind probing the air passages beneath it, imagining how the draft would come up through-

  “Decius-”

  “Wait,” he forestalled her. “Let me-”

  Suddenly he was blank to Reading-and the kindling burst into flame!

  Decius sagged, catching himself by hanging on to the table. He stared at the bowl in astonishment, and a sudden grin seized his features. “I did it!” He looked at the two women. “I did it!”

  “Show me how!” demanded Julia.

  Decius smiled at her. “You just have to know you can. Really, Julia-Master Clement’s been trying to teach you that. All I did was take the feeling I had this morning, when I knew I could move to the plane of privacy, and apply it here-I made myself know I could do this in just the same way!”

  “But I know I can do it,” said Julia, “and I still can’t!”

  “Julia,” said Aradia, “you are getting upset. In that condition you won’t learn anything at all. Use your relaxation technique-”

  “I don’t want to relax,” the girl fretted.“I want to start a fire.” She fished more kindling from a container by the empty fireplace and piled it into the bowl, where the original fire had quickly burned itself out.

  “Julia, don’t,” said Aradia. “Not being able to do it when you are agitated will contribute to your belief that you can’t do it later, when you’ve calmed down.”

  “Why don’t you want me to do it?” Julia demanded. “I’m as good as Decius! Master Clement teaches him to leave his body, but he won’t teach me. Now you teach him to start fires, and you won’t even let me try it. It’s not fairl” And the girl got up and stomped out of the room.

  Decius rose, but Aradia put a hand on his arm. “Let her go. She’ll calm down. If we keep her here now, shell just go on arguing.”

  “Girls sure are different from boys,” he observed.

  “You’re an expert?” Aradia asked.

  “I’m in charge of one of the boys’ dormitories at the Academy,” Decius explained. “It’s all right, except when I’m also on sleep duty. ‘

  “Sleep duty?” she asked.

  “Young Readers have to learn not to Read in their sleep-one boy with a nightmare would set off the whole group. Besides, you don’t want other Readers knowing your dreams. So we older students have to take turns staying awake, and waking up any of the little boys who start projecting dreams.” He shook his head. “It’s hard on them-I remember. But we’ve all got to learn, or we’d be afraid to go to sleep.

  Dreams can be very embarrassing!”

  “I know,” said Aradia, thinking of the strange dream she kept having about her unborn child. Any number of times she had started to tell Master Clement, but decided it was unimportant. Why shouldn’t she dream about what her daughter would look like as a young woman?

  Fortunately, she had not had to go through the regimen Decius described when she learned to Read.

  Lenardo said that when she dreamed
, she seemed to brace her Adept powers automatically, which of course kept her from being Read.

  “Now,” she said to Decius, “let’s see if you can light the fire again-and don’t work so hard at it!”

  This time she had him smother the fire before it burned itself out, then rekindle it and direct the flames to consume specific bits of wood. Accustomed to the disciplines of a lifetime in the Academy, Decius learned quickly. Still, by the time she was satisfied he was panting with exertion, although he had not left his chair.

  He leaned back, pleased with the day’s work.

  “Now don’t be worried,” Aradia warned him, “if you can’t Read as well as usual until you get a nights sleep. And eat plenty of supper tonight-meat if there is any, but at least some fish. No arguments.”

  “I’m not arguing,” he replied. “Lady Aradia, next lesson, would you teach me healing techniques? “

  He gestured toward his left thigh, where the stump of his leg was hidden beneath his white tunic. Aradia understood. Decius refused to live at a slower pace than any other eighteen-year-old boy. As a result, the healers often had to heal bruises or blisters to his stump, no matter how they adjusted and padded the wooden leg.

  “Of course,’ she said, knowing what a relief it would be for him to heal it himself. “You will probably learn quickly. I’m proud of you, Decius-what a day you’ve had!”

  “Master Clement was right,” he told her. “The whole secret is in believing you can do it.”

  “Then why can’t he learn Adept powers?” Aradia wondered.

  “He could,” Decius replied. “But I can understand why he wont. Right now my Reading is… hazy. It’s frightening to have my powers diminished, and I’m not even a Magister Reader yet.” He smiled at her. “I guess it’s funny to you when I say I’m too old to adapt really well to having both powers.”

  “You may never get to be any better at Adept powers than I am at Reading,” Aradia agreed.

  “Perhaps not. But I wonder what the little children will be like-the ones growing up with both powers.

  Will they be like the sorcerers Torio met in Madura?”

  “I hope not! Those stories Zanos and Astra told, about cold fire that almost destroyed their land…”

  Aradia shuddered. “Decius… you’re not still thinking of going to Madura to see if they can restore your leg?”

  “Maybe, one day,” he said. “Not now. Whatever Torio found there, he was afraid to bring it back.

  Melissa stayed to keep it confined to Madura. But Lady Aradia, if power exists, there are those who will seek to use it. I’m going to try to become as good an Adept as I am a Reader, because someday I may have to confront power such as we have.never seen in all our Savage Empire.”

  Julia stormed out of the villa and walked northward, zigzagging through side streets until she came to the main north-south road, north of the forum.

  Hordes of people crowded the wide street, buying and selling at the shops and stands. They were prosperous, not a single person in the rags or bedraggled finery that had been common in her childhood.

  Stout farmers bought furbelows for their apple-cheeked wives, and sturdy children chased one another between the wagons or munched on sweets while staring wide-eyed at the passing throng.

  Julia was often recognized. People gave her bows and curtsies as she passed, and she quickly cheered up. This prosperity was partly her doing, and she felt rightfully proud. When she opened to Reading, she felt the love of the people-they were happy, beginning to trust in the security Lenardo and his family had brought them. They were no longer forced to work, as under Drakonius, but found that working now made them prosperous despite the taxes levied on their goods.

  Theft was uncommon; Readers could be anywhere in the crowds, making it simply too dangerous a trade to ply in Zendi. It was still being eradicated in Tiberium, she had heard.

  Under Master Clement, the corruption had been cleaned out of the Readers’ system-bribes and threats no longer compelled certain Readers to Read in another direction while a crime was being committed.

  But Tiberium was larger than Zendi, and even more crowded. And the people felt they had been conquered, unlike these on the winning side in the most recent conflict.

  Julia passed jugglers and musicians entertaining the crowds, and turned out of the North Road into a side street near Northgate. Here were the shops of wine merchants, where wagons were being loaded with barrels for the village inns, and for the homes of a few prosperous farmers.

  A few streets along, though, the buildings became residential. These were new blocks of flats for working families. Their landlords were carefully supervised lest they permit them to turn back into the kinds of slums that had burned in the battle for Zendi.

  Every few streets there was an open area planted with grass and young trees. Eventually these would become carefully gardened parks, but building homes for Zendi’s growing population was a higher priority just now, so the little parks were left with their natural grass and wildflowers. In one of them, a group of young people were wiling away the time.

  Dilys and Piccolo lay in the shade of some bushes, kissing and pawing at one another, oblivious to the rest of the group. Giorgio was eating bread and cheese-he was always eating, resulting in a physique that caused the others to call him Fat Giorgio. Antonius and Mosca were wrestling, their muscles standing out with the exertion, while Blanche and Diana cheered them on.

  Atop a small mound that would one day become terraced flower beds sat Galerio, leader of this loosely associated group of minor Adepts.

  Young, talented folk like these, ranging in age from twelve to twenty, were one of the problems Lenardo and Aradia had yet to solve. They had no education, and no formal training in using their talents. Many of them, like this group, refused the offer of training, and so except for occasional odd jobs, their talents were wasted.

  “Ho, Julia!” called Galerio. “Come sit by me and help judge this contest. You can Read if anybody cheats.”

  She climbed the mound, with no care for grass stains on her white dress. Except for special occasions, the white of a Reader in training was her usual wear.

  Galerio was sixteen, and to Julia’s thinking, the handsomest boy she had ever seen. He had wavy dark hair, and deep brown eyes fringed with thick black lashes. His skin still had the rosy fairness of youth, while his body was sculpted by exercise.

  Of course Galerio never told his cohorts that he exercised other than swimming at the baths, but Julia had Read his private exertions, supplemented with Adept direction. He had some healing potential, but would not admit it. He kept the public use of his powers to moving small objects.

  Julia Read the wrestlers. They were evenly matched in size and weight. Antonius was fourteen, Mosca fifteen, both still clumsy with adolescence. They fought like street urchins, kicking and kneeing, trying to bang one another’s heads against the ground. Julia understood the rules: “wrestling” for these boys meant simply no punching, eye-gouging, pinching, or biting, and no surreptitious use of Adept power.

  Suddenly Mosca went blank to her Reading, and Julia Read a sharp cramp in Antonius’ side. “Cheat!”

  she cried. “Mosca, you gave Antonius that cramp!”

  Mosca rose with a threatening growl, but Galerio said, “You know the rules, Mosca. Antonius wins.”

  The younger boy got up, dusting himself off. “Thanks,

  Julia,” he said shyly. Antonius was dark, like Julia and Galerio. Mosca had hair of the shade between dark blond and light brown, and light blue eyes that looked at Julia coldly.

  Galerio said warningly, “You know Julia’s right, Mosca.” Then he grinned. “If you can learn to fool her, you’re gonna get past most Readers.”

  “Yeah,” said Mosca, only partially placated, “I’ll have to learn that.”

  “So,” said Galerio, “what’re you doing here, Julia? You usually have your stupid lessons in the afternoons.”

  “They’re not stupid when I’m
learning to catch people cheating,” she replied. “But Aradia’s in one of her pregnant moods today-I can’t do anything right.”

  “No wonder. She’ll want her own brat to have the throne, and you’re in the way.”

  “No,” said Julia, “there are plenty of lands for all of us. Tomorrow Aradia will think I’m wonderful. Father warned me that pregnant women act a little crazy at times. That’s all it is. ‘

  “Yeah? Well, your father’s not here to stand up for you now, is he?”

  Julia changed the subject. “Let’s go out Northgate and into the woods.”

  “What’s in the woods? We’re not allowed to hunt the deer.”

  “Well, we can…”

  Julia was open to Reading, although not concentrating on it. As she spoke, something impinged on her consciousness. Outside Northgate, in the area she was thinking about, people along the road shuddered uneasily.

  “What’s the matter?” Galerio asked.

  “Somethings happening,” she replied. “I can’t tell what it is exactly, but people are frightened.”

  Then it touched them: a cold wind out of the warm air. It swept through the little park, tearing at their clothes, pulling the girls’ hair out of its fastenings,

  “Brrr!” said Fat Giorgio. “It’s gonna rain.”

  But there were no clouds. The sky was hazy blue above them.

  The wind continued, churning up the city’s dust, making their eyes smart.

  “What is it?” cried Dilys.

  “A whirlwind!” Galerio shouted. “Get down!”

  He scrambled down off the mound, and the nine of them huddled at its base as icy wind pelted them with debris.

  But there was little there to hurt them. They were merely getting dirty.

  Out on the crowded market street, Julia Read the wind wreaking havoc.

  Wagons overturned. Animals screamed in panic.

  Signs fell.

  Canopies whipped about, slapping people down.

  Screaming children, unable to find their parents, were crushed beneath tumbling cartons or run over by wagon wheels.

  Parents seeking their children saw them whipped out of reach by the howling gale.