Jean Lorrah - Empress Unborn

The storm was over, but the market was devastated. Every hand was needed to dig out the injured, and every Adept was quickly put to work, those on the scene quickly teaming with Readers to save as many lives as possible.

Aradia and Decius started into the melee, only to be accosted by Master Clement. “Lady Aradia!” the old man exclaimed. “We need you to direct things here. People will listen to your orders.”

That was true, although she knew his underlying motivation was to keep her from exhausting herself-

and thereby threatening her baby-with the use of Adept powers.

So she sent out the word: healers to the forum, all injured to be sent there as soon as life-preserving measures had been taken. There was now a hospital in Zendi, but it did not have room for so many. Only those requiring much further healing would eventually be taken there. Once it was organized, the healing talent in Zendi would easily suffice to help everyone who had been injured in the freak whirlwind.

Decius helped broadcast the directions to the Readers, most of whom had not been in Zendi during the battles when this plan had first been developed. Soon the evacuation of the ruined area was proceeding apace.

Aradia resisted employing her own powers, until a man pushed his way through the crowd to fall on his knees at her feet. “Lady,” he begged. “Oh, Lady-please. My friend-”

He spoke the savage language with a strong Aventine accent, and his appearance was Aventine: clean-shaven, hair cut short. But the former Aventine Empire was now part of the Savage Empire, so he and his friend were her people now.

Aradia asked, “Where is your friend?” intending to see how badly he was injured and get help.for him-

but when the small Aventine man led her to his friend she gasped in horror.

The man lay writhing on the cobblestones, his face twisted in agony. He was burned hideously, having been caught when a food vendor’s vat of boiling oil overturned.

One side of his neck and face were swollen, blistered, and puckered, and where his chest and shoulder were soaked with oil she knew even without Reading that he was just as badly burned beneath his clothing. How could he have been overlooked?

But as she tried to Read him, Aradia realized how: he was as blank to Reading as an Adept exercising his powers.

But he was no Adept; his burns were reddening and raising further blisters even as she watched. No healing was going on here.

A woman knelt beside him, pale with shock, trying to wipe the oil from his face with her kerchief. A child clung to her skirts.

The woman looked up as the crowd cleared a path for Aradia. “Oh, my lady! Please help him! He saved my baby!”

“That’s right!” the man’s friend exclaimed excitedly. “When the vat overturned, Pyrrhus grabbed the kid out of the way, threw him to me-but the oil hit him) . Help him, Lady-please!”

Aradia laid her hand against the uninjured side of Pyrrhus’ face and willed his pain to stop.

At once the ghastly twisting of the man’s face abated, and Aradia smiled at his relief. But then his eyes opened, and he stared up at her in utter shocked astonishment.

The eyes were brown, shadowed under heavy brows. They studied her, and then he asked in a tense, hoarse voice, “Who are you?”

“I am Aradia, Lady Adept,” she replied. “Do not fear-you will be completely healed. I will put you to sleep now.”

“No!”

“It is necessary,” she said gently, understanding that these Aventines did not yet fully trust the people they had always called savages, especially Adepts. But Pyrrhus would when he woke to find his pain gone, his body unscarred.

He fought her, but his injury had taken his physical strength; his body was weak with shock. His strength of will was astonishing, though-she had to force him into unconsciousness as if he were an enemy Adept resisting her attempts to put him out of commission.

But Aradia had conserved her strength. She eased Pyrrhus into healing sleep, setting his own body to repairing the damage the boiling oil had done.

Then she turned to the woman, asking, “Are you hurt? Or your child?”

“No, my lady-thanks to these men.” The woman was not Aventine; she spoke the savage language with a peasant’s accent.

So their Adventine visitors had risked their lives to save the child of someone they still regarded as a potential enemy. A moment’s unconsidered reflex, but one of many small incidents that would eventually build a bridge between conquered and conquerors, and help them to forget their relationship had begun under those conditions.

“I will see that they are rewarded,” Aradia assured the woman.

The injured man’s friend was kneeling beside him, his hands clenched into fists, as if he wanted to help, but didn’t know how. “What is your name?” Aradia asked him.

“Wicket,” he replied. “Look!” he gasped excitedly. “The blisters are going down already!”

“Yes,” Aradia told him. “Pyrrhus will be perfectly well in a day or two. I will have him taken to the hospital as soon as I finish here.”

And Aradia vowed that no matter what Master Clement said, she would visit Pyrrhus there and aid his healing until he recovered.

Decius joined her again, ostenisibly Reading what she was doing in order to learn to heal, but she knew that he was carefully monitoring her condition, ready to stop her if she showed signs of exhaustion.

But the one healing effort was well within her limits. By the time she was satisfied, the last of the injured were in the forum, and reports of deaths and property damage were ready for her attention.

Five people had died, killed instantly in the storm, no one able to help them in the midst of the whirlwind.

All those alive after the storm had been saved, and she heard Julia and her band of reprobate friends being praised on every side. They had come in from the north end of the market-the part least accessible to the Readers and Adepts who had run to help-and were credited with saving at least a dozen lives.

Now what am I doing with that scamp ? Aradia wondered. She walks out like a spoiled brat, and comes back a heroine .

Julia had Read that the reports were in, and was wending her way across the forum to take her place beside Aradia. Only when she saw the child’s condition, hair a rat’s nest, face smeared with grime, clothes torn, did she realize that Julia had actually been caught in the storm.

Aradia could not scold her before their retainers, so she said nothing to Julia as she received the reports.

The well-built new structures in that area of town had stood firm; if the wind had not struck the market, few people would have been harmed.

But as the last man turned to leave, Master Clement came up to them. “Don’t Read,” he told the two women. “The news will reach the other Readers soon enough, but you should know it first, Aradia.”

“What has happened?” Aradia asked, bracing Adept powers.

“I have just received news from Tiberium, from Adigia, from numerous villages throughout our lands.

There was not only this one freak whirlwind today. There were almost twenty, each one occurring where it would create the greatest damage and loss of life. It cannot be coincidence, my lady. Although no Reader anywhere in our lands Read anyone behind it, such a series of storms can only be the product of Adept attack.”

The next day, Julia stood proudly before the people of Zendi as Aradia gave out awards to those who had helped to save lives after yesterday’s storm. The older Readers were embarrassed by the ceremony-they were not accustomed to being rewarded individually for their services.

Master Clement had set up an Academy here. Almost all of the Academy-trained Readers lived there, continuing the life-style they had always known. The only difference now was that men and women worked there together, something that still made some older Readers uneasy.