Jean Lorrah - Flight to Savage Empire

So that’s where it came from!

She dragged her attention away from the sorrowing woman, mortified. Readers were trained as children not to Read while they slept. Astra’s training had taken much longer than that of the other girls; her powers had refused to rest at night despite months on end of being jolted harshly awake by a monitoring Reader each time her mind reached outward in her sleep.

To avoid Reading the patient, Astra concentrated on the room, recognizing it from her dream. But the rest… Portia visiting a nonReader? Conducting the funeral for the innocent herself, dressed all in white?

And the dead baby wrapped in cloth of gold? Surely not for this grieving woman’s benefit.

Portia wasn’t a healer-Astra had never known her to touch an ill or injured person, even in an emergency. Of course she would have had medical training years ago, but the Master of Masters was never involved with such things now.

Astra’s dream, then, could not have been mere Reading of this poor woman’s loss. Her grief had triggered something-a memory, something connected

with the infirmary… a time when Portia had come here to inform a new mother-

My mother ! Astra realized in utter astonishment. With the total conviction of her wild powers Reading the history of that room in the maternity ward, she knew she had Read her own mother’s memories!

Astra had learned her mother’s story in gossip and random thought. Since young Readers were always separated from their families when their powers were discovered, she had been no different from the other girls at first-except that she had lived here at the Academy since she could remember, while others were brought here at six, seven, or eight.

But the adult Readers knew the scandal, and inevitably it leaked to the young girls in training-and under the harsh disciplines of Readers’ training they grasped at something to gossip about. No adult had ever told Astra her parents’ story; the pretense, even today, was that she should never know it. As if that would help her ward off the suspicions always flung her way!

Eventually she had pieced together the whole story.

Twenty-five years ago, the city of Zendi had been inside the empire’s northern border. The savages, after a long and bloody battle, had succeeded in pushing the border all the way south to Adigia. Thousands of refugees overflowed the small town of Adigia, many of them wounded in the fighting. Among the injured were some male Readers from the Zendi Academy who had escaped being killed by the enemy. Healers from the central cities, especially Tiberium, had rushed to Adigia to deal with the many sick and wounded.

The rule regarding male and female Readers not meeting had been suspended for healers in the emergency. Thus it was possible for Master Anthony, a swordsman and musician, to become the patient of Master Cassandra of the Tiberium Academy.

Not long after his recovery, and before her recall to Tiberium, something… happened between the two Masters. Love? Perhaps. Certainly there was no way for Cassandra to hide the fact that she had violated her Reader’s Oath of celibacy.

Apparently she had been kept a virtual prisoner in the Academy until her child was born. Not long afterward, she somehow managed to escape from the Academy, from the empire entirely, never to be heard of again.

Leaving me, the symbol of her shame, as a ward of the state. How she must have hated me, not to have taken me with her.

Two healers entered the infirmary room. One of them, Master Claudia, said to the distraught young woman, “We know how you are grieving, Celia, but you must understand that the baby’s stillbirth was in no way your fault.” The other Master handed the woman a cup of wine, which Astra could Read contained a sedative.

As the patient drank, Claudia spoke soft, hypnotic words. The woman slowly relaxed, her mind entering a trancelike state. The two healers’ minds gently touched hers, deepening the trance, then delicately worked to lessen her grief in ways that Astra only partially understood.

They were using techniques of advanced medical training. Astra had received basic training in such techniques at Gaeta, but these were methods she would have learned only if she had become a healer rather than a music teacher. In her time as a student at the Gaeta hospital-

TERROR! PAIN!

Dozens of Readers’ agony screamed at Astra, buffeting her like a small craft in an ocean storm. She could not shut her mind against the flood of fear and PAIN!

“Help!” she screamed mentally, helpless in her out-of-body state to close her mind to the inundation.

Master Claudia looked up, her concentration broken. “Help me!” Astra pleaded.

“Stay here!” Claudia commanded her assistant as she hurried out of the room. Astra fought to reorient herself. She had to get back to her body, shut herself away from this pain, but hundreds of emotions kept tearing at her-

“Astra!”

Master Claudia’s mental voice was like a hand firmly grasping her by the wrist, pulling her back to the physical world… and indeed, the healer was holding her wrist as she reentered her body, feeling as though she’d fallen from a great height.

Master Claudia stood, breathing a sigh of relief. “Thank the gods! Astra, what were you doing out of body when you’re still so weak-?”

“Gaeta!” Astra gasped, now able to make sense of what she had experienced. “Something terrible’s happened at Gaeta!”

“The seacoast town?” Zanos frowned. He didn’t understand what Astra was so upset about. “What about it?”

Astra swallowed hard. “Late last night, an earthquake devastated the hospital there. Many patients and healers were injured-and some were killed, including five Readers.”

“Friends of yours?” He had come here expecting to find her feeling better, not in the midst of a personal tragedy.

“Acquaintances, some of them. But it was enough that they were Readers. I felt it happen,” she added, and suddenly he understood. In her world, no one dwelt in isolation-and he felt a strange pang for the threats he had made to Darien and Primus.

But Astra was continuing, “Zanos, it’s more than just the deaths of Readers-in a natural disaster, such things happen. But this wasn’t natural-they were murdered .”

“What?” He could see that she believed it-and with a Reader’s powers, perhaps she had good cause.

“That earthquake was no act of the gods,” Astra explained. “Master Portia used her powers to search the territory immediately afterward. She witnessed two spies from the savage lands, sneaking back over the border-a powerful Adept and a renegade Reader.”

This was indeed frightening news-and no rumor of it had penetrated The Maze. “She’s sure the two savages had something to do with the earthquake?” Zanos asked.

“Why, they bragged about it! When Portia confronted him, mind to mind, the Reader declared there was nothing the savages couldn’t do, combining Reading and Adept powers. Portia alerted the border guards, but the spies escaped.”

Although Zanos found nothing magical about evading the border guards, the rest of the story- “Just one Adept guided by a Reader-setting oft” an earthquake? Surely they can’t have such strength!”

“Master Portia found no other savages, and I’m told she did a lot of searching. The Emperor called for a special closed meeting of the senate, where she made a full report. They’re probably still debating what to do, though there’s little doubt that when the citizens hear about Gaeta there’ll be a public outcry for war.

The savages can’t be allowed to get any bolder, any more powerful.”

As soon as the senate session is over, the news will be all over The Maze , Zanos thought. “How much more powerful can they become?” he wondered aloud-and Astra gave him an unexpected answer.