The watcher panicked. Hideous images flickered through his mind-pain, dismemberment, flame; an Adept could keep a tortured prisoner alive and in agony indefinitely. He had seen Drakonius do so!
Lenardo had no idea what Aradia intended to do to the man, but whatever the threat, it was the wrong move. As the watcher cowered before her, his psychic presence suddenly went blank-as blank to Reading as an Adept's! He realized that this was one of those men with some minor Adept-power-like the young soldier he had met in Zendi -and that he had been driven by terror of Aradia to use it… on himself.
As the man collapsed before her, Aradia knelt at once beside him. His heart had stopped, but Lenardo Read it forced to start again when Aradia concentrated. But it didn't take hold. In the bare moments it took for Lenardo's long legs to carry frim across the room, he realized that an Adept always had the means of suicide at hand by stopping his heart-but that it was ineffective before a stronger Adept, who could reverse the process. He Read, though, that this man was irretrievably dead. His power was not to move things-it was to create fire. And he had done so, to his own brain. It was cooked through.
The smell of burnt flesh was rising as Lenardo reached,. Aradia's side. She rose, staring in honest horror at what had happened. Although her thoughts were as unReadable as always, her nausea matched his own. She closed her eyes and turned away, saying, 'How could he be so desperate? I had to know, but I wouldn't have hurt him-'
She squared her shoulders, becoming the calm leader again. 'Remove the body,' she instructed the soldiers. When they had gone, she turned to Lenardo. 'Drakonius has watchers in my lands.' 'They are looking for me,' he replied. 'You Read him?'
'That is all I could Read-except that he did not report to Drakonius before he was captured.'
'Then why didn't he tell me that? There was no need for him to die.'
'Aradia… do you treat your prisoners as Drakonius treats his?'
Her lips thinned. 'I should have known. Father would not have made that mistake. He would simply have implanted the desire to speak truth before the man was brought before him. But, Lenardo, if you were Reading him, why didn't you warn me?'
'I didn't know what he was going to do. And if I had known, and shouted it across the great hall… Wulfston has warned me that your people would kill me if I gave myself away.'
'Wulfston has told me a great deal about you, too,' Aradia said. 'You frustrate him.' 'Frustrate?'
'He knows what great value you could be to us, and how dangerous you would be working against us. He wants to trust you… as I do, Lenardo.'
'Don't,' he said, not ready to discuss even a truce until he had had time to think over the scene he had just witnessed.
'There-you see? That is frustrating. You appear to be a man whose word we could take-if you would give it.'
'What do you want from me, Aradia?' 'Your loyalty. If you were my sworn man, you might use your powers openly. No one would dare question your motives.'
'Why should I give you my loyalty?' 'Because we have the same ideals. Wulfston told me why you were exiled. I can protect you from what you fear.'
'What I fear?'
'Lenardo-do you not fear pursuit? Leaving here and running northward while you were still so weak-that was not the act of a rational man. Do you expect retaliation? Would the Readers send someone after you, to kill you lest you join with us?'
At this rate, how long before she figures out / am in pursuit of Galen? 'Why should they? They know the savages will kill anyone who shows the ability to Read.'
'But I did not kill you, did I? And Drakonius did not kill the Reader he used to attack Adigia, although he may have been killed since. I wonder.' She took off the remaining gold bracelet and tossed it into a chest by the wall. When she lifted the lid, Lenardo caught a flash of brilliant metal.
Gold, silver, jewels, coins-an immense treasure! And I thought there were no ornaments worn here. Aradia still wore the small gold pendant earrings, but nothing more except the rich embroidery of her surcoat, a far cry from the many rings, bracelets, and necklaces a wealthy woman of the empire might wear.
Aradia clapped her hands sharply, and a man entered from the inner hallway. 'Pepyi, have the treasure chest shut away.'
'Yes, m'lady.'
Aradia started up the stairs. 'Are you going to leave the chest there, unguarded?' asked Lenardo.
'The lock can be opened only by an Adept. Would you care to try to lift the chest, Lenardo? It will take six strong men to put it away-and I do not believe six of my men at one time would conspire against me.'
'The value of the items in that chest might make them consider it.'
'Why? They want for nothing. Also, the punishment for theft would make them think twice.'
'And what is the punishment for theft?' The memory of the tortures he had seen in the watcher's mind made his skin crawl.
'Years ago, my father found an excellent solution for nonviolent crimes. The criminal is simply struck dumb.'
'What?'
'He cannot speak. That does not prevent him from making reparation. It is, of course, a handicap, a great embarrassment, because everyone knows why he cannot speak. Since it is difficult to communicate with others, he must commune with himself-and by the time the command is lifted, and they can speak again, most such people have reformed their ways.'
'That's a terrible thing to do!' Was there no limit to the ways these Adepts manipulated people?
'It is painless. It does not separate the criminal from his family or make him incapable of honest work. He cannot run away, for he carries his punishment with him. Furthermore, only once, since my father instituted this method of punishment, has someone who suffered it repeated his crime.'
'And what about the poor creature who is born dumb? He will be taken for a criminal under punishment.'
Aradia stared at Lenardo in shock. 'To be without Adepts-how horrible! You actually allow a child to grow up with such handicaps, deaf, dumb, blind-?' 'You can cure all of those?'
'Almost always in an infant. You saw Pepyi below? He was born blind, but my father cured him when he was just a baby-as soon as his parents discovered he couldn't see. It took over a year, but he sees.'
'I have a friend who is blind,' said Lenardo. 'The optic nerves-the nerves from the eye to the brain-did not develop normally. Could you…?' 'Is he a grown man?' 'He's seventeen.'
'No, I don't think anything could be done now. When a baby is developing and growing, it is relatively easy to correct such defects. I am sorry for your friend.'
'Torio would laugh at your pity. Fortunately, he is a Reader-one of the best I've ever known. One day he will be far better than I am.'
'And how good are you, Lenardo?' They had stopped at the top of the stairs. 'What do you mean?' asked Lenardo.
'There are degrees of ability among Readers just as there are among Adepts, Wulfston tells me. What is the level of your skills?'
As he hesitated, not wanting to tell her he had just been admitted to the highest rank, she said, 'No-your ratings would be meaningless to me. Come into my study.'
She led him through her bedroom, where she paused to remove her earrings and exchange the velvet surcoat for a worn and ink-stained robe, and into a smaller room with large, many-paned windows of clear glass. The walls were lined with books and scroll-cases-as many, it appeared, as in the academy library! So here was one savage who could read and write.
'You are a scholar?' he asked.
'One cannot go everywhere and experience everything. Books bring knowledge one could never gather in a single lifetime. But of all these books, Lenardo, many of them from the Aventine empire, not one explains the techniques of Reading.'
'It cannot be taught by books,' he explained. 'One learns to Read by demonstration and experience.'
'Very well. I want a demonstration.'
'If you have not the talent-'
