Captives

not work.//

//And what is the desperate effort?//

//The empire is preparing a fleet of ships, the largest fleet ever known. Warships, fishing boats, merchant vessels-many will gather here at Gaeta in the next weeks. We are gathering the largest army ever. We will sail up the coast, out of range of the most powerful Reader, and put ashore west of Zendi, which is reported to be the seat of government of the savage lands. It will be a hard three-day march from the coast to Zendi-but three days will not give the savages time to gather an army anywhere near large enough to counter ours. Since it is unlikely that either of their mature Readers will be near the coast, they may not even know we are coming the first day or two. If our own Readers do their work we can prevent runners from escaping ahead of our army to spread the news.//

//But you will be fighting people with Adept powers.//

//Aye. The first minutes of battle will mean many deaths-until the savage Adepts use up their energies. After that, the savages will have nothing but ordinary soldiers-and although their warriors are fierce and well-trained, our troops will outnumber them. We will kill the Readers. We will kill the Adepts if we can, although they always save one last bit of their power for escape. If we take the Readers from them, though, they will be blind-and we will push the empire walls beyond Zendi, and perhaps go on to win back all the lands the Aventine Empire once ruled.//

//What is your role in this plan, Magister?//

//The fleet requires navigators. I have been assigned to direct the five Magister Readers chosen for that task.//

//But-you're a healer. You should be directing the medical corps!//

//Certainly I will work with the healers after the fighting has begun-but until that time there will be little need for healers except to dole out herbs for seasickness. Now, Melissa, you should not remain on the plane of privacy any longer. The troops will begin arriving soon. I will have no time to give you further lessons. Let me say goodbye to you now.//

//Goodbye? But-//

//It is best this way. Until I have proven myself in battle, I will remain under suspicion-and I do not want that suspicion to fall on you. Do not let any of the other Readers know anything you learn from Alethia. Work hard with Master Florian and Magister Puella. I expect to return to find your skills much further developed.//

//What if you don't-?//

//It is time to go, Melissa,// Jason told her firmly. //The same way we came-with me… now-//

Melissa had no choice but to follow him. They were still in their bodiless state, though, and she tried once more, //Magister Jason, what if-?//

//Melissa, you have done beautifully!// he overrode her anxious question with his powerful mind. //Just remember what you have learned today, and you will excel as both Reader and healer!// And then he left her, returning to his own body so that she could not communicate with him without having every Reader in range privy to their conversation.

As soon as Melissa reached her body, it responded to the emotions she brought with her. Her stomach churned, her eyes welled with tears, and she turned her face into the pillow to muffle her sobs. Jason was going away to die! She had no precognition, but she knew the reason for his abrupt farewell: he did not expect to return from his mission into the savage lands.

He had made light of his assignment. Navigator, healer-it sounded safe enough; as safe as any assignment in an army heading out to war. But in this war the enemy would be seeking out Readers, exactly the way Jason had described the mission of the Aventine army.

Now the savages had Readers to pick out their fellows-and only the savages had the Adepts who could kill at a distance with no weapons but their minds. The better the Reader, the easier the. target… and Jason was a very good Reader.

It's my fault, Melissa realized. My silly, childish gossip with Alethia gave Jason the questions to ask in Tiberium that put him under suspicion. He could have just told them about me, but he wanted to protect me.

She mulled that over. It was a strange reaction on Jason's part, to protect her at the expense of his own promotion to Master rank. He admired her as a healer. He had made certain she would be able to go on to higher ranks. But why? She had done nothing wrong-shouldn't the Council of Masters be told that things they thought were secret were traveling the Path of the Dark Moon? If they had called for Melissa, under Oath of Truth she would have been exonerated of gaining wrongful knowledge.

But she would stand self-accused of gossiping, of spreading rumors-and if they had called her to Tiberium before today, she would have failed the Reading test they might have given her, and been relegated to the Path of the Dark Moon herself. And Jason did not want that.

Jason had assured her that if he survived the war, they could be together-colleagues at the hospital at Gaeta. A lifetime of mental intimacy-surely the purest form of love two people could know. He must love her. Otherwise it made no sense for him to take such risks on her behalf.

She could not let him take them alone!

In battle, no injury would require greater healing skills than Melissa already had. More healers would be needed-the call would certainly come for volunteers. She dared not volunteer before that call, but she would be ready when it came! Now that Jason had let her know, once and for all, that he wanted them to be together, she would see that they were not separated, even for the length of the war.

Her decision made, Melissa went about the rest of her day's work in a glow of happy expectation, secure that whatever the future held, it would be with Jason.

As the days passed, the army gathered in Gaeta. The demolished section of the hospital was leveled, and a temporary barracks built. Every home in town took in a soldier or two, and still they came. Tents blossomed on the hillsides surrounding the town, where flocks of sheep usually grazed at this time of year. The shepherds had to move early to the higher elevations, but everyone knew that an important battle against the savages was being prepared for, even if they did not know the events that had precipitated it. Somehow, the word got out to the non Readers that the savages had caused the recent earthquake-at that, people became even more responsive and eager to aid the army.

Troops exercised in the streets and in the hills; mock battles charged across the meadows, and the healers at the hospital spent many hours treating sprains and strains that were anything but mock as soldiers who had not fought for years renewed their battle skills. There were sword wounds, too, among those who practiced too enthusiastically, knocks on the head, and even the occasional arrow gone astray.

When the number of such injuries diminished, although the maneuvers did not, the healers knew the army was ready for battle. The generals knew their work-ships were already in the harbor, waiting for these troops; every other port in the empire had a part of the fleet waiting, and a part of the army preparing in its environs. All would gather here at Gaeta on the first day of spring.

At last the call Melissa had been waiting for went out: healers were needed for the army. She had been bubbling over with enthusiasm for the war effort since her last lesson with Jason-no one was surprised when she was first in line to put her name on the list.

Melissa had tried several times since that last lesson to contact Jason, to tell him she understood what he had done and that she would not let him go into danger alone. He was rarely in the hospital, however. He spent much time with the ships' masters, comparing maps and knowledge of the coastline above the border of the Aventine Empire. Merchants who would not say how they got them quietly contributed current maps. Melissa tried not to allow herself the childish thought that Jason stayed out of the hospital to avoid her.

But he would not communicate with her. When she tried to contact him, he told her he hadn't time, or he was busy with someone else. Knowing that she would attract attention if she kept trying, she finally gave up.

Thus it was that on the day she boarded ship with the other female healers, and watched Gaeta becoming smaller and smaller as the ship swayed its way out to sea, she felt Jason's astonishment to meet her mind as the Readers aboard all the ships reached out mentally to identify themselves. The bulk of the fleet was passing Gaeta to the west, having sailed up from the south. There were many Readers whom Melissa had never met before-she had not realized that there were so many Readers that all of these could leave the empire and still leave it with plenty of healers and other Readers to rely on.

In that crowd of eager, curious minds, there was no privacy for Jason and Melissa-she could not tell him why she had come, nor could he scold her, as she could sense he wanted to. The whole journey, she realized, would be