Captives

might find.

The ride had not settled his mind. From the savage point of view, he had done nothing but help defend his new ally. But Torio had trouble thinking of himself as a savage. I don't know what lam.

He had joined eagerly in Lenardo's plans for making peace between the savages and the empire-but if the empire sent an army against them, how could they seek peace?

The sea breeze stirred his hair, throwing an overgrown lock down across his forehead to tangle in his eyelashes. It could not interfere with the vision he did not have, but it annoyed him anyway, and he pushed it back with an impatient hand. A mark of the savage, long, unkempt hair. He would cut it, he decided, and stop attempting to conform to the fashion of people he didn't belong with. But if I cut it short, people will just think I'm imitating Wulfston, for the Lord of the Land wore his wiry hair close cropped as any Reader's.

Shoving the recalcitrant hair back angrily, Torio wondered, How can I decide what to do about my life when I can't even decide how to wear my hair?

He was tired, he decided! After a few hours' sleep, things would look different. But first he must make a Reading search of the shoreline in both directions.

Just as he reached for the reins to guide his horse toward the north, Torio Read a brief start of fear, followed by sharp sorrow and a sense of devastating cold. It cut off as abruptly as it had begun, but not before Torio had located its source as somewhere along the rocky beach outside the harbor, more than a mile away.

A Reader! At that distance no nonReader's feelings would have come through so clearly. He easily guessed that a survivor of last night's storm had hidden among the rocks, not Reading so as to escape notice. In sleep, the Reader had automatically shielded his thoughts-but Torio had caught the unshielded moment of waking, cut off as soon as the Reader realized where he was.

He urged his horse forward, skirting the harbor and taking the trail down to the beach, picking his way through the rocks as he Read the area. The Reader was in a cave-a woman, huddled beside the dead body of a man. Both wore the plain white tunics of Readers, the man's banded in black. He had been a member of the upper ranks; the woman was still in training.

Torio felt sick: a seventh Reader dead. But the woman was alive-unhurt so far as he could tell, except that she shivered in her damp garments as the morning breeze entered the cave.// Come out in the sun, where it's warm,// Torio projected at the most intense level, but the woman was holding tight against Reading, lest she be Read. I'd have found you anyway, thought Torio. If you hadn't given yourself away it would just have taken a bit longer.

The woman tensed and looked up as she heard Torio's horse approach. The cave was shallow-she could not retreat. He dismounted and climbed the rocks, calling, 'Don't be afraid. No one is going to hurt you.'

When Torio reached the cave entrance the woman was crouched at the back like a trapped animal, her fear escaping the hold she kept on Reading.

They were no more than a few paces apart, the body of the dead Reader between them. Torio said, 'There's really nothing to fear. You are in Lord Wulfston's lands. My name is Torio… Magister Torio.'

It was the first time he had claimed aloud the rank Lenardo insisted he was entitled to, although he wore the robes of a Magister Reader on ceremonial occasions. He had meant to reassure the woman, but instead her fear grew, her heart pounding wildly. 'Then it's true!' she gasped.

Even as Torio was trying to fathom what «truth» frightened her so, her fear was shoved aside by desperate hope. 'Can the savage sorcerers bring Jason back to life? The way they did you?'

No! Oh, no-his lie come to haunt him! No wonder this girl was terrified if she thought Torio half a ghost.

'I was not dead,' he said gently. 'The guards were wrong. I was wounded, and healed by Adept power-but no one has the power to return life to the dead.'

'You're lying,' she spat. 'Take us to the savage Adepts who saved you. Let them decide!'

Maybe Wulfston could persuade her-everyone seemed to find it easy to trust him. 'Come with me. Lord Wulfston will tell you it's not possible. And do not fear to Read-I am the only person in this land capable of intercepting your thoughts.'

When she began to Read him, Torio found it easier to Read the woman before him-hardly more than a girl, somewhere near his own age. She was numb with cold, but instead of moving toward the inviting warmth outside she bent to the body on the cave floor, saying, 'Please help me-'

'I will send someone at once to take his body to the castle. He was your teacher?' he asked, although the girl's attitude suggested more than that-some relationship not possible between a male and a female Reader in the Aventine Academy system.

'Yes,' she answered his spoken words. 'Magister Jason. We were at Gaeta together-'

Torio's stab of guilt made the woman look up at him.

'You caused the earthquake, didn't you? You almost killed me that time, and now you've killed Jason. If you don't bring him back, the gods will exact retribution, Torio.'

The gods did not concern him; his conscience did. 'The earthquake was not meant for Gaeta- ^

'Tiberium, I suppose,' she said resignedly. 'Now that you've destroyed our fleet, you think you'll go back and wreck the rest of the empire. But we'll fight you. You won't be able to twist the minds of all Readers. How many more will you have to kill?'

'We do not want to kill any,' he said, knowing that her mind was wandering in shock. 'You are cold and tired. Let me take you to a safe place. At least come outside, where it's warm.'

It took much persuasion to get the young woman to leave the body of the dead Reader, but finally Torio put her up on his horse, wrapped his cloak about her, and climbed up behind her. 'You haven't told me your name,' he remembered.

'Melissa.'

'Melissa, Read with me, please. I am searching for other survivors. If we encounter any more Readers, you may be able to help me persuade them we want to help.'

'I don't know that you do,' she replied, but she Read with him along the shore. He felt her surprise at his range. 'You're so young-and you have misused your powers. How can you Read so far and so accurately?'

He didn't tell her that he was not Reading at his best this morning, tired after being up all night. Instead he suggested, 'Perhaps my abilities will persuade you that I have not misused my powers.' It was the reassurance he clung to himself: he had not lost any of his abilities since throwing his lot in with the savages. Rather, they had improved-faster, Lenardo judged, than they might have if he had stayed in the empire's Academies. Faster than Lenardo's had at Torio's age, the Master Reader insisted.

Torio and Melissa found no more survivors, and so, after stopping at a sailmaker's cottage to ask him to send his apprentices for Magister Jason's body, he turned the horse back toward Wulfston's castle. Melissa had grown warm and sleepy in his arms, as Lenardo's daughter Julia had once done riding thus with Torio. But Julia was a child, and Melissa a full-grown woman… something Torio became keenly aware of as her weight settled drowsily against him and her scent tickled his nostrils.

She had made no protest at his touch, although this was hardly an emergency. He did not know which Reader had tried to save the other from drowning in last night's storm, but under such conditions the restrictions against male and female Readers being together were definitely suspended.

Perhaps, despite his assertion of his rank, Melissa regarded Torio as a failed Reader. Portia had, after all, declared him such. But she had declared Lenardo failed as well-Lenardo, whose powers exceeded those of any other living Reader, including Portia herself.

Portia was a frail old woman-she must be beyond the peak of her powers. She had even believed Torio's lie. It hadn't been delivered under Oath of Truth, of course, but even so, no Master Reader should have been fooled by a Reader as young as Torio.

He wished he could talk to Lenardo. Later today he would have to report events in Wulfston's land to his teacher; perhaps he could discuss his own uncertainties as well. Not that these were really anything new; this was the same indecision he had felt ever since he had first come into this land on the spur of the moment, without any thought to how he would fit in here.

Wulfston's castle was quiet when they arrived, the servants alert, but no one else stirring. Torio Read Wulfston sleeping-but not the sleep of total exhaustion, bordering on coma, that Adepts went into when they had used their powers to the limit. Wulfston could be wakened if he were needed, but Torio saw no reason that his introduction to