Savage Empire

"Wulfston," said Lenardo, determinedly keeping his voice level, "why are you so weak?"

"Working against nature. Couldn't fight it with Nerius' own strength-actually had to destroy." He struggled up, looking gravely at Aradia.

She stirred. "Father?" weakly-then, in panic, "Father!" as she tried to sit up. "His heart!"

"It's all right," said Lenardo. "Wulfston started his heart again. Nerius will live, Aradia." But will you?

"I must…" Aradia whispered, "change his state… from unconsciousness to healing sleep."

"Not until you've rested yourself," said Lenardo. "If you try to get up now, you'll faint again."

"But-"

"No 'but's.' Nerius is already starting his own natural recovery. If you want to speed the process later, after you've rested, fine. Use the healing sleep on yourself." She smiled weakly at him. "Thank you, Lenardo." She slept.

Wulfston asked, "How can you not be tired?" His voice was flat with fatigue.

"I was only Reading-you two were doing the work." There was a deep, comfortable chair with a footstool before it, where Nerius' nurse undoubtedly napped away many hours. Lenardo installed Wulfston there and watched him, too, fall into deep sleep.

What a time for Drakonius to attack, he thought. Both Adepts completely helpless.

But fortunately Drakonius didn't know that. That night, Lenardo lay down and left his body. It was a dangerous move to attempt to reach Drakonius' stronghold from here, with no Reader to contact there, for this time he would avoid Galen, who could not Read him on this plane unless Lenardo willed it.

Lenardo had a strong foreboding about Drakonius. No clear flashes of precognition had come to him, but he had long since learned to heed this feeling of danger.

So, if the Adepts were out of commission, the Reader ought to be doing something. Traveling without connection to his body, he moved faster and more easily than a few days before. The dark of night was no obstacle to a Reader in full possession of his faculties-how absurd that mere ram had obscured his vision before!

He was even farther away now, and thus in greater danger of dissipating his consciousness if he could not find a focus. By the time he reached Drakonius' stronghold once more, he needed someone as the object of his attention. Anyone would do-he merely let his consciousness be drawn to the first person he encountered, a guard watching the river from atop the cave-riddled cliff. He was an old warrior, alert and prepared. Even while his eyes scanned the river continuously, though, his thoughts were on his off-duty time tomorrow and a certain farmer's wife whose husband did not question where the extra shares of food and occasional jug of ale came from as long as be shared them when he came weary from the fields.

Lenardo left the man to his fantasies, having learned that Drakonius' men were making no battle preparations. He then sought within the stronghold, an encampment with a very temporary flavor. In the long passageways, Drakonius' personal troops slept in bedrolls, a few guards at their posts. Despite the relaxed atmosphere, the guards were guarding, not conversing or napping. Clearly, Drakonius expected his men to maintain discipline.

He found Galen, also asleep, not merely not Reading but with an alert shield guarding his dreams. So… the boy was defended against him, for who else could Read him here? Not waking him, he thought for the first time to Read the boy's health, finding him not ill but underweight and on the thin edge of nervous collapse. His nails were chewed ragged, and there was a rash across the backs of his hands that Lenardo had seen before, each time Galen had had to stand for examination. I thought he had learned to control his nervousness.

The entrance to the cave in which Galen slept was blocked with a slab of rock. It was not too heavy for one man to push aside, but the "door" had been "locked" by driving an iron ring into the rock on either side and simply running a stout rope over the slab of rock between them. So Galen was not trusted. Lenardo felt a new appreciation of the fact that he could now walk out of his room-out of the castle if he wished-any time he wanted to.

He left Galen, found other small caves with one or two people in them-some not asleep, whose activities he deliberately did not Read.

It was only in the room-to-room search that he found Drakonius, for although the Adept was awake, his mind was unReadable.

At least Lenardo was fairly certain he had found Drakonius. The man was definitely an Adept, awake, and busy. Reading visually, Lenardo saw a broad-shouldered man in his fifties, black hair and beard streaked with white, skin tanned and leathery. His chair was actually a box containing a supply of arrows for his bowmen. Not even a stool to spare-on campaign everything must do double duty.