Jean Lorrah - Empress Unborn

Dilys and Piccolo, Blanche, Diana, and Georgio were all there, lost without Galerio. Out of the whole crowd, theirs was the only resentment Julia felt-and she could not blame them.

After the funeral pyre blazed into white heat, reducing the bodies to ashes in minutes through Adept power, everyone filed silently from the forum. Julia started toward the five young people, but they turned away and lost themselves in the crowd. Julia was left standing alone.

With a sigh, she turned and walked through the subdued people in the streets, until she reached home.

There she went to her room, and buried herself again in Portia’s scrolls.

Amazing how similar Portia’s circumstances in Tiberium then were to Julia’s in Zendi now! She had a title, a position, great Reading ability for her age, and great responsibility, yet she was frustrated because the political structure of her community would not allow her to make things better.

And, just as a mysterious enemy was attacking Zendi, Portias Aventine Empire was shrinking year by year through attacks of the Savage Adepts no one truly understood, and everyone feared. Her Readers were used, conscripted into the army to guide it-and they died in battle, often as not, first target of Adepts who knew they would have the Aventines at their mercy if they could blind, deafen, and silence them by destroying their Readers.

But all Portia’s efforts to get the Senate to change the law, to allow Readers a say in the government of the Empire-to have even one senator to represent them- fell on deaf ears. NonReaders feared Readers, Portia slowly came to recognize, especially nonReaders who had acquired some power of their own through money or political influence.

When she put the scrolls away for the night, Julia felt confused. She hated Portia. Portia had tried to kill her father, had destroyed Pyrrhus’ Reading, had manipulated Readers and nonReaders alike. But the Portia of those scrolls was a different person-someone Julia sympathized with.

She would read more tomorrow, as Master Clement had asked her, to find the connection. How had the devoted, benevolent Portia of the scrolls she had read today become the power-mad villain Julia had known?

In the early-morning hours, Julia was once again awakened by Aradia’s screams. This time she did not get up, Reading it was just another nightmare, and that Devasin went immediately to waken and comfort her mistress. Again Aradia could not shake off the dream after she woke, insisting, “She’s trying to kill me! She’s stealing my powers!”

If only Lenardo were here.

But Julia’s father was gone. Wulfston was gone.

Torio was gone. Melissa was gone.

Zanos and Astra had gone with Wulfston to rescue Lenardo.

Lilith and her son Ivorn remained in their own lands to the north, fighting off a series of border infractions that pounded against the Savage Empire now just as the Savages had pounded against the Aventine Empire in Portia’s day.

Who was left to protect Zendi? Julia, young, her responsibilities now taken from her. Master Clement, old, his powers possibly waning. Decius, also young, but much as Torio had been when he had first joined their battle to create the Savage Empire. But Decius was crippled in body if not in mind, and unused to the new powers he was acquiring.

And that was it, out of the entire group who had toppled an empire and built a union of allies on its ashes.

No wonder Aradia had nightmares!

And no wonder she pounced on the opportunity Pyrrhus and Wicket presented to gain new allies. But they knew so little of those two. Wicket admitted to an unsavory past, even if he gave few details.

Pyrrhus, though, was more mysterious, even if they knew all about him.

Or did they?

Swordsmanship was taught in the Academy-but where had he learned to fight with a knife, or to shoot, or to use all those other weapons in his portable armory? Julia was fairly certain she knew when he had learned: between the time he escaped from Portia after she had crippled his mind, and the rapport which ended the Aventine Empire and killed Portia.

Pyrrhus must have set about to learn every form of weaponry he could, not only to protect himself once bereft of the ability to Read an attacker, but also obviously to take his revenge on Portia if the opportunity presented itself.

The opportunity had been mental, not physical-a far more satisfying revenge. Yet Pyrrhus had seemed far from satisfied when he appeared in Zendi.

Why had Pyrrhus and Wicket come to Zendi in the first place? Aradia had found out that they were successful and had a good reputation as bodyguards in Tiberium. Why leave?

Determined to find out, she let herself drift back to sleep.

Aradia’s nightmares continued, but she was learning to live with them. She wished Lilith could come earlier than she had promised, but she could not ask when there were constant border skirmishes against Lilith’s lands.

There were also continuing Adept attacks, but none near Zendi now that the Readers were watching for anything unusual. Some of the events might be natural phenomena-when whirlwinds came out of thunderstorms, who was to say that they were not produced by nature? If an irrigation dam broke in Wulfston’s lands and flooded acres of farmland, that again could have happened naturally. The only odd thing about the events occurring now was that there were so many of them.

Cattle stampeded. The wall of a stone quarry collapsed, killing three workers. High winds of the first winter storm destroyed a bridge in the mountains south of Tiberium, cutting off the main trade route through the center of the Empire for almost a month. Even with Adept aid, it took that long to rebuild the vast expanse and reinforce it against such winds in the future.

People started talking about the “hard-luck year,” and in Zendi gossip attributed it to Lenardo’s being kidnapped. On one hand, Aradia was always pleased to see how beloved her husband was, for he had won these people as a stranger and a Reader in the days when the first was to be distrusted and the second executed upon discovery. She had deliberately put him in a hopeless situation, and Lenardo, not knowing any better, had turned the decaying city into a shining example of hope and enterprise. That was when she had fallen hopelessly in love with him.

On the other hand, it was difficult not to be annoyed that they did not place the same faith in Aradia that they did in her husband. And as her powers waned there was less and less she could do personally to show them she could care for them as well as Lenardo did.

As weeks passed with one problem after another, and no clues as to where the attacks came from, Aradia even began to lose faith in Master Clement. He was as frustrated as she was, none of his Readers picking up the slightest hint of upcoming attacks. They just happened, out of the blue-and once in a while a nearby Reader would be able to tell which minor Adept had suddenly shifted the wind or knocked the main prop out from under a half-constructed building.

Pyrrhus’ theory was the only reasonable explanation: the people who were used had commands implanted, keyed to some expected occurrence. When it happened, they acted, and immediately forgot.

Even Master Clement could not discover who had implanted the commands, for consciously the recipients did not know that the commands had been implanted, or even that they had performed the acts.

The Master Reader explained to Aradia, “I can sometimes uncover the command-but not who put it there. Whoever it was, he or she was unknown to the victim. To learn more, I fear we have no choice but to subject one of those victims to having his mind delved into by a circle of Masters.”

They were in Aradia’s study. She and Master Clement had arrived first, then Wicket and Decius. They were still waiting for Pyrrhus.