Jean Lorrah - Dragonlord of the Savage Empire

If he could entice Galen and the four Adepts to Southgate, he could destroy them all. A watcher on the Southgate tower signaled the approach of the enemy to the army outside, and they began moving toward the gate, which would be opened for them.

"Halt," Lenardo shouted, galloping to the front of the first column. "Stay back, and when I signal, retreat."

"My lord?" But the astonished question immediately dissolved into obedience. "Yes, my lord."

"Get me a signaling mirror and someone with the talent to start fires. Hurry!"

Galen was Reading him, and so Lenardo once more created a false scenario in his mind: his troops advancing, himself at their head. At Galen's direction, the Adepts shot thunderbolts at his phantom. Lenardo enticed them to waste their energy over and over again.

A watcher's polished mirror was thrust into his hands, and he tried to concentrate on two things at once: keeping Galen occupied with his phantom and signaling his true message to the watcher on the Southgate tower.

Retreat before Hron's troops, he signaled. Let them win Southgate. Then take shelter as far from the gate as you can.

He could Read the watcher's indecision and feared that Galen would. He told the boy, //It's no use, Galen. Tell your Adept Lords to surrender.//

//You always were a fool, Lenardo.//

The watcher finally signaled Message acknowledged and turned to relay it to the other soldiers. The retreat began as Lenardo projected to Galen an image of his troops approaching the gate from the outside, while in reality they drew back, bewilderedly obeying their lord's orders.

"Where's that fire talent?" Lenardo demanded.

"He's coming, my lord," someone assured him, and indeed, a man in peasant garb was soon brought to him. "This is Mib."

"My lord," the man stuttered, eyes downcast, more terrified of Lenardo than of the battle.

"I need your help* Mib," said Lenardo, dismounting from his horse so that he could speak quietly and reassuringly to the man. "The enemy is approaching Southgate, and our own men are pulling away. We are going to blow up the gate."

"Blow up, my lord?"

"There is marsh gas under the gate," Lenardo explained, andjbund that that meant nothing to Mib.

Trying to keep Galen occupied with false images so that he would not Read what was really happening put a deadly strain on Lenardo's patience. Precious time was passing. With a fine show of effort, the troops inside the city retreated before Hron's oncoming army. Lenardo was still trying to make Mib understand that if he would cause a fire at a certain spot under the ground, the whole area would explode. The man didn't understand but was willing to try.

"How deep, my lord?" he repeated for the third time.

Again Lenardo tried to find a measurement Mib would comprehend, just as Hron's troops took Southgate, scrambled up the tower, and called down to the Adepts and Galen that there was no one outside the gate.

Galen still Read what Lenardo was projecting: Lenardo's army trying to break down the gates. "You're lying!" he shouted at the soldiers on the tower, and forced his crippled body up the tower stairs, blocking the way of Hron behind him. Marava and the other two Adepts were working their way to the tower.

"Now," Lenardo told Mib. "Start that fire now."

The man went blank to Reading as he concentrated his effort. Lenardo Read the underground cavern where the culverts had collapsed. Nothing happened. He located the spot of heat in the ground.

"Move east!"

Mib gasped and panted; then he began to concentrate again.

Galen came out on top of the tower and looked at the scene below. His eyes and his Reading told him two different things. In utter terror, he clasped his hands to his head and screamed. Hron came up beside him, took one look at the scene so different from the one Galen had been describing, and dealt Galen an open-handed cuff that sent him sprawling.

In vast relief, Lenardo let go of the phantom scene, concentrating fully on Mib. "Lower," he told him.

"Hurry!"

Already sheets of flame and thunderbolts were erupting all about them as the Adepts now saw the army massed a good distance from Southgate, but not too far for their Adept tricks.

"Now," Lenardo shouted to Mib. "Do it now, before they realize we lured them-"

//Murderer,// Galen's voice screamed in Lenardo's head. //I'll kill you! I'll kill you!// He scrambled to Hron's side and pointed. "My lord, Lenardo is there. He tricked me, my lord. Kill him!"

Hron could not have made out individual figures at that distance, but whether he believed Galen or not, his blows would kill his enemies. Sheets of flame lighted the ah". Thunderbolts shook the ground. Even as Lenardo urged Mib to fire the marsh gas, the man's body convulsed, a bolt seared through it, and he fell blasted, dead at Lenardo's feet.

Horrified, Lenardo leaped back, his shocked cry lost in the noise of thunderbolts, the screams of the dying, and the galloping of panicked horses. He had to find someone"Can you start fires?" he cried to anyone who came near, but no one answered.

//Master Lenardo, get out of the front ranks.// It was Torio, freshly arrived and Reading the scene of carnage.

Lenardo Read widely and found that inside Zendi, word had reached Aradia of the assault on Southgate. She could fire the gas with hardly an effort. //Aradia, Aradia!// he projected, but it was no use. Concentrating her Adept powers, she was completely blind to Reading, and she was leading a small band toward Southgate. Within minutes she would be in range to be killed in the explosion of the gas. If Lenardo did not set it off, though, she would be one Adept against four-certain death even with her increased powers.

Lenardo remained in the front ranks of the retreating army, calling on every side for a fire talent, Reading Aradia approaching her doom. No time! No time to find anyone else.

Torio reached him, Reading with him, saying, "I can't find a fire talent, either. It won't work, Master Lenardo."

And Galen easily focused on the two Readers together and began describing their location to Hjon.

//Galen,// Torio gasped. //Galen, it's Torio. We were friends.//

//If you're Lenardo's friend, you're not mine. You chose the wrong side, Torio. My friends have the power, not yours.//

"I have it," Lenardo said suddenly, desperately.

"Have what?" Torio asked in bewilderment.

"The power to fire the gas. If Aradia can Read, why can't I do Adept tricks? Fire is easy, she says. Easiest of all-"

He stopped, knelt, and concentrated, Reading the pocket of gas, trying to visualize it flaming. His head began to hurt, but nothing happened. Aradia was only a few streets away. He couldn't warn her.

He couldn't warn her because she couldn't Read and do Adept tricks at the same time. He had to work blind- Read the spot-stop Reading-concentrate-heat-fire- flame-willThe earth beneath him heaved and buckled, and then Lenardo was slammed to the ground on a wave of compression. He tried to Read what was happening but couldn't. Blind as he had never been since earliest childhood, he knew only the physical pain of the air knocked from his lungs, the roar of the explosion, the screams, the choking dust, grit in his eyes keeping him from seeing as Torio rolled him off his cloak and covered both of them with it to shelter them from the debris raining out of the sky.

The noise and the feel of matter falling on them went on and on as Lenardo's horror built. He could not Read. He was trapped within his physical senses… forever? On a wave of physical and emotional exhaustion, he passed out.

Lenardo woke to the ground shivering beneath him. He had no sense of passing time and for an instant thought it the explosion of another pocket of marsh gas. But it was a tremor, not a jolt, and he felt at once that he was no longer tangled with Torio on the rocky ground but alone in a comfortable bed.