Jean Lorrah - Empire 03 - Captives of the Savage Empire

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Prologue
THE LEGEND OF THE FIRST READER
Before there was an Aventine Empire the world was broken up into little kingdoms. In one of those
kingdoms lived a young man who had the power to Read-to know what was in other people's
minds—but he was the very first to have such power, and he did not know what to do with it, so he
remained a poor honest laborer.
In this kingdom the king had no sons, but he had one very beautiful daughter; all men who saw her
wanted to marry her. Since she did not know how to choose among her many suitors, she declared a
contest: Whoever could give her her heart's desire would have her hand.
So men brought her gold and jewels, fine horses, musicians and dancers to entertain her, perfumes and
spices—and always she declared that their gifts were not her heart's desire.
The young Reader, though, was able to Read what was going on in the princess' mind as her suitors
displayed their treasures and were rejected. The king grew angrier and angrier as the girl refused one
after another of the fine, strong, wealthy men. The Reader knew that the king wanted his daughter to
marry a king… but the daughter did not like the powerful men who tried to claim her hand.
Watching the princess each time there was a public ceremony for another suitor, and Reading her true
desire, the Reader fell deeply in love with her. At length, despite the fact that he was a common laborer
with no property to give her, he decided to risk pressing his suit. When he stepped forward, the people
laughed to see a poor man with no troop of servants carrying treasures, marching forward empty-handed
to the foot of the throne.
The king, however, was curious enough to allow the Reader to offer his gift. The young man drew himself
up, and addressed the princess. "All your life," he said, "you have had gold and jewels, slaves, furs and
perfumes, horses and falcons, treasures from all the lands of the world. All these your father can provide
for you—yet you say you do not have your heart's desire. Thus it cannot be any worldly treasure that you
long for. What you desire is the love of a good man—a man who is not bent on accumulating treasure or
making war on his enemies—a man who will place you above all things as the greatest treasure of his
heart. This I can give you, as no man else."
Never before had the princess met a man who understood her deepest desires. "Yes!" she cried. "That is
my heart's desire! I shall love you above all men!"
But the king, who had thought the young man comical until his daughter's response, was maddened with
anger. "You lie!" he roared. "No daughter of mine would be so foolish as to forego power and wealth for
such frivolity! You are a liar, young man, and will die for daring to say such a thing about a member of the
king's family! And you," he added, turning to his daughter, "will deny what he has said, or I will have you
killed, too!"
"But I can prove it!" cried the young Reader. "I can tell you what is in your heart—I can hear any man's
thoughts! You are thinking that you want a strong and powerful man to marry your daughter and be king
after you—someone who will give her strong sons who will capture many lands and accumulate great
treasures. But if you could Read what was in her heart, you would know as I do that these things mean
nothing to her."
Now the king knew that the Reader spoke the truth about what he was thinking, but he also thought it
nothing but common sense, such as any man ought to think. He had the young man hauled off to the
dungeon, threatening to cut his tongue out if he continued to tell lies about the princess. That night,
however, another suitor for the princess' hand arrived—a great and powerful warlord from a neighboring
land.
Languishing in his dungeon, the Reader Read the plans of the warlord. He had brought with him an army,
claiming it was his gift to the princess, for surely it must be strength of arms that was her heart's desire.
But he was also prepared for rejection—in which case his army, thus smuggled into the heart of the
kingdom, would turn on the people. They would kill the king, and the warlord would take the princess by
force and make himself king of all the land.
Knowing this, the Reader begged and pleaded with his guards to arrange an audience for him with the
king. As it happened, the king had planned to test the young man's claims, for he could see great value in
someone who could tell him his enemies' secrets… if such an impossible claim proved true. So the next
morning he had the Reader brought before him, and the Reader told him the plan of the warlord. The
king had his own army, disguised as common people, surrounding the warlord's army when he made his
offer to-the princess. She rejected him, of course—and he turned and shouted to his men, "To arms!"
Just as quickly, the king's men threw off their disguises, and in a battle at the king's feet they slaughtered
their enemies. The Reader was elated—he had proved his value, and was sure the king would change his
mind and allow him to marry the princess.
But the king saw only danger in a man who knew what was in people's minds—he immediately
envisioned his son-in-law plotting to kill him and take the throne, and no reassurances would make him
trust the Reader, nor would the pleadings of the princess mitigate his decision.
He knew, of course, that the Reader was a double-edged sword: If he did not like the way the king
treated him, he might run away to work against him with one of his enemies. Therefore he had the young
man hamstrung, so he could not run away, and he tortured him to force him to Read for him.
In less than a year the king had conquered all the neighboring lands. He always knew the size of the
enemies' armies, where they were located, all the battle plans. He also captured the fine, strong, warrior
son of one of his enemies—a man who saw opportunity in ingratiating himself with a king he could not
conquer. Soon plans were underway to marry the princess to the warrior—for she had learned well the
lesson her father had taught her. The Reader might have been willing to give her her heart's desire, but he
had not the strength to win her and then protect her. So she gave up her desire for someone to love her in
exchange for someone who would be very much like her father, shower her with presents, and protect
her against her enemies.
On the eve of the wedding, while the bridegroom and his prospective son-in-law were drinking
themselves into a stupor with the wedding guests, the Reader was of course left alone in his room in the
castle—what need to chain him in the dungeon once he was lamed? The treatment he had received for
revealing his gift had worked on his mind in the past year—and he had learned to walk again, if with a
hideous limp. When the revelers were thoroughly drunk, he set fire to the castle, went to the room where
the princess lay guarded only by women, whom he killed, and carried the girl off into the night.
In the morning, the king and his would-be son-in-law were found dead, along with most of their guests.
The princess was found in the woods nearby—she claimed to have been raped by the Reader, and nine
months later she bore a son.
The princess ruled the land as her father had before her, for she had his army and she knew his methods.
Her son turned out to be a Reader like his father… and it is said that all the Readers of what would
become the Aventine Empire are descended from him. His father, however, disappeared without a trace.
Here and there were heard tales of a strange lame man who could tell people's most secret thoughts, but
no warlord ever held him again, and no one knows what finally became of him. Perhaps, bitter and
disillusioned at the fate of his offer of true love, he is wandering still.
Chapter One
Where do I belong? What should I be doing with my life? Certainly not healing!
Magister Jason was wrong to encourage me. He should have let me quit the first time I lost a
patient-then I would not be about to kill my best friend's son!
Looking down at the fretful child, Melissa wished she were anything else but a Reader in the hospital at
Gaeta. Alethia trusted her to cure Primus, but how could she? The boy's appendix was inflamed; all their
herbs, compresses, and cold packs had failed—and now she would have to try surgery as a last resort.
What if Primus died?
She Read within the boy's body, wanting to moan with his pain and fever, studying the swollen, throbbing
organ. If this went on, it would burst, spilling poisons throughout the child's system. Then there was no
hope at all of saving him. She had to cut out that infected bit of intestine!
For the first time, she was sorry she and Alethia had been reunited. This was why a Reader still in
training, like Melissa, was discouraged from keeping up associations with childhood friends who had
dropped by the wayside.
Alethia, too, was a Reader, but she now wore the Sign of the Dark Moon, the badge of a Reader who
had failed to achieve one of the two top ranks, and for whom a marriage had been arranged. Alethia and
Melissa had been fast friends at the Academy. Melissa would never forget the day Alethia, aged
seventeen, had been told that her powers had shown no increase in more than a year, and it had been
determined that she would go no further.
Alethia had spent the evening sobbing on Melissa's shoulder. Her life was over—both girls were quite
convinced of it. She would be married off to a similarly failed male Reader, to breed children who might
have the talents they lacked. The loss of her virginity would diminish what powers she had; her badge—a
black circle on a field of white—would be the only sign that she was a Reader… a failed Reader.
Melissa had absorbed Alethia's agonized fear that day, and applied herself thereafter with the greatest
diligence. Never, she vowed, would she be taken like Alethia, to spend her life producing the children of
a stranger and using whatever Reading power she retained to show non-readers where to dig wells or
locate their lost sheep.
At eighteen Melissa passed her preliminary examinations and was sent to Gaeta for training in healing.
She had arrived in fear, knowing that more than half the Readers who completed the medical training still
eventually failed and were married off. It would be better to live as a healer than as a message service
and finder of strayed children—but Melissa's heart throbbed to the vibrations of the great hospital. There
was pain and suffering here—pain she shared with the patients when she Read them—but Reading the
easing of that pain because of' something she had done was the most satisfying use she had ever made of
her talent.
Her primary teacher was Magister Jason. They never met face to face, of course—no male and female
Reader could unless one or both wore the Sign of the Dark Moon. Celibacy was the rule and the
necessity for the upper ranks and those still in training; temptation was to be a voided.
But the touch of Jason's mind was an inspiration to Melissa. Disciplined yet vibrant, he Read with her as
she examined patients and learned to interpret the data she gleaned. Medicines, bonesetting,
manipulations of joint and muscle—these she learned from the other healers. Jason taught her to look
deep within the human body and, when no other means would suffice, to cut into it and make repairs.
She quickly progressed from sitting entranced while her mind looked through Jason's eyes, her hands
feeling what his were doing, to the day when she herself held the knife, and Jason's mind guided her.
She never wanted to give up the experience of his mental touch. There was only one way to manage that:
She must become such an expert healer that she would be invited to stay at Gaeta for the rest of her
days, as Jason did. She dreamed of their spending hours each day in deep rapport, healing the sick and
injured together. Her skills improved rapidly under his tutelage. She was happy.
And she remained happy… until the first time she had a patient neither medicines nor surgery could cure.
They had had no choice—none of their medicines, no applications of herbal packs, nothing would reduce
the ulcerating tumor blocking the girl's intestine. All the surgeons hated abdominal surgery, for more than
half the time they could not prevent an infection that killed the patient within a few days of gruesome
agony.
Melissa had administered the herbalist's latest concoction to the girl. For the next few hours her patient's
body temperature would rise dramatically—possibly enough to kill the organisms introduced by surgery.
But such high temperatures often caused convulsions that killed the patient more efficiently than the
infection.
That was the first time Melissa faced the possible death of a patient. She was still in training; the teachers
examined her patient hourly, but none of them offered any advice beyond what she had already tried. She
had done everything right—and still her patient would probably die. It was the first time she questioned
her desire to spend her life as a healer… and that day brought the reunion that would soon make her
question it again.
The girl had drunk the new medicine in total trust, then, in exhaustion and hope, fallen asleep. Melissa left
her sleeping, not knowing where she was going, but having to get out of that sickroom for at least a few
minutes.
"Melissa, there's a visitor for you in the family room," one of the aides told her.
Melissa cringed. Probably the girl's father again. She gritted her teeth and prepared to face him.
But it was not a man waiting for her. It was a young woman—a very pregnant and obviously happy
young woman who wore on her cloak the Sign of the Dark Moon.
"Alethia!" Melissa cried, running to embrace her friend. "Oh, how good to see you again! What are you
doing here? There's nothing wrong—?" Automatically she Read Alethia, finding to her relief nothing but a
perfectly normal pregnancy, advanced approximately seven months.
"No, there's nothing wrong!" Alethia laughed. "I'm happier than ever in my life, Melissa. My husband and
I were just transferred here to Gaeta. I thought you might be taking your medical training by now."
Alethia's pregnancy was her second, it turned out; she had a son almost two years old, who was being
cared for by a neighbor while she went visiting. "I can't work now, anyway," she explained. "After about
the fourth month, my range is severely limited—but it comes back, Melissa. By the time Primus was six
months old, I was Reading as well as I ever could—at least so far as I can tell. Well enough to be
wonderfully happy with my husband."
"You are happy? The man the Masters chose for you—?"
"Oh, Melissa, I am so fortunate! You must meet him. When do you have a day off? Come spend the day
with me, and meet Rodrigo when he comes home in the evening. He's a navigator for the fishing
fleet—finds the schools of fish for them, too. He's good at it—they usually come in with a full catch by
the middle of the afternoon."
And how insensitive he must be, Melissa thought, to be able to shut himself off from the deaths of
all those captured creatures. Readers occasionally ate fish—but they rarely caught them themselves.
"I'm glad you're so happy, Alethia," Melissa said cautiously. "I have an occasional afternoon off—never a
full day. My next afternoon is the day after tomorrow—but I have a very sick patient, and if I cannot
leave her—"
"I understand," said Alethia. "Melissa, I cannot Read to the hospital now, to contact you. I'll show you on
the city map where our house is. I can still receive perfectly well from a stronger Reader—thank the gods
for that, as it allows…" She lowered her voice, and drew Melissa to where they could not be overheard
from the hallway. "I want to tell you what it's like for two Readers to be married. If it should happen to
you, you mustn't have the blind terror I had—and that Rodrigo had, too. You'll probably be a
Magister—even a Master one day. But… they're failing so many Readers… you should know it's not
terrible at all to be married. You can Read me; you know I'm really happy, not lying to you. We'll talk
when you visit me, Melissa."
Melissa expected to cancel that first afternoon with Alethia, for her patient grew progressively worse,
until all they could do was dull her pain with opiates. She died just before noon, her father and Melissa on
either side of the bed, Jason Reading with Melissa. When the child slipped from unconsciousness to
death, it was Melissa's task to tell the father. She wished that he would rage, strike her, do anything but
thank her for her efforts in a voice gruff with tears, and leave her to her own inadequacies.
But Jason was there, his mind calming hers, telling her, //It happens to all of us, Melissa. There was
nothing more you could have done.//
//There has to be more!// she told him. //Why did you give me this patient if you thought I couldn't save
her?//
//Because no healer could have… and you needed to learn that we cannot work miracles. Melissa, you
were born to be a healer—but you must accept your limitations if you are ever to be one of the best.//
//How can I accept the deaths of children! We must find some way to stop infections so when we save
someone's life with surgery we won't be killing him with the organisms we admit with the knife.//
//Good—let the experience lead you to seek answers, and you will make a fine healer one day.
Meanwhile, you are now off duty. Find something to keep you from brooding.//
//I am going to visit a friend.//
But even Alethia could not cheer Melissa. Her house was a lovely cottage surrounded with a flower and
herb garden; her little boy was a tow-haired charmer—but all Melissa could think of was the girl who
had died.
She picked at the lunch Alethia served, and tried to be polite… until finally, seeing the dismay in her
friend's eyes, she confessed, "This morning one of my patients died. It's the first time, Alethia, but I know
it won't be the last. I'm no good as company today."
"Oh, Melissa, how terrible! I understand—but you shouldn't go back to the hospital. Why don't you go
down to the beach for a while? I'll bring Primus down to play in the sand after you've had some time to
your-, self."
It. was a hot summer day, but the breeze along the shore made it pleasant to stroll. For a while Melissa
lost herself in the sound of the water, the screech of the gulls. Approaching no one, she watched pelicans
dive for fish, and children build castles. Her unadorned white tunic marked her as a Reader in training; no
one approached her.
The solitude didn't help much; her mind went back over every step of the treatment she had given her pa
dent. First she had tried medicines. The herbalist had advised her at every step—but should she have
accepted his concoctions routinely? She had had training in herbs… but he had spent his life studying
them. Had she decided on surgery too soon? Too late? Jason had agreed with her decision—because it
was the best decision, or because it really made no difference?
She felt sticky. Her bare arms were beaded with sweat, and freckles had sprung out on them in the heat
of the sun. Her skin was turning pink; she would have a nasty sunburn if she didn't get off the glaring
sand.
She wasn't ready to go back to Alethia's, but she saw deep shade under the pier. The rocks would be
awash at high tide, but it was out at the moment, leaving a pocket of cool shade there. The sand was
damp in the cavelike space, but the rocks were dry. She climbed up, using physical activity to tire herself
out, as if she could thus tire her mind out from its ceaseless circling.
Her climb brought her up close to the pier, the boards just a short distance over her head. She leaned
back in an unexpectedly comfortable niche in the rock, and watched the striped patterns shift as clouds
passed overhead, birds swooped by, and occasionally a person walked above her, unaware. At the end
of the pier some people were fishing.
Then someone stopped, almost over her head. She could not see through the cracks in the boards, and
she didn't want to Read. Perhaps the person would go away.
But no, the person sat down on the edge of the pier, legs dangling over the side. Male legs, and just the
edge of his short summer tunic, white, bordered in black. A Reader! From the hospital, no doubt;
someone in the two top ranks. No cloak in today's heat to tell her whether he was Magister or Master…
and she hesitated to Read him, to tell him she was there. They were not exactly face to face—but she
was not sure what the rules would say even about face to feet!
Go away! she willed without Reading, but the man lifted one foot at a time out of her sight, and returned
them to her view bare of his sandals, wriggling his toes in the sea breeze. She was trapped; she could not
get down from her perch without coming into his view.
"I know you're there, Melissa," he said. "Why are you not Reading?"
Magister Jason!
She had never heard his voice before—only the "voice" he projected when Reading. Often a Reader's
physical voice and his Reading "voice" were far different from one another; not so in Jason's case. His
calm baritone exactly matched the reassuring tone she had known so often in her mind in the past few
months.
"I didn't really think about it," she replied, "but I suppose I knew that if I were Reading you would Read
how depressed I was, and make me come back to the hospital. I wanted to be alone."
"Melissa, you have every right to be upset. I did Read for you. When I could not find you, I contacted
Alethia, and she told me where you had gone. You seem better."
She knew he wanted her to open to Reading, but she did not want him in her mind just then. "I am
better," she told him. "I think I can go back to Alethia's house and be a sociable guest. You are not
canceling my afternoon off?"
"No, of course not. Alethia is worried about you, though, and rightly so. She can give you what I cannot,
Melissa: a shoulder to cry on. There are times when even Readers need another person's touch, you
know. If you are to be a successful healer, you must learn that some things must be treated in other ways
than with medicines and surgery." He took a deep breath of the fresh sea air. "I had forgotten myself how
cleansing to the spirit the sea can be. Thank you for reminding me." He pulled his feet up, preparing to
leave, but remained sitting for a moment so she could hear him over the surf and the bird cries. "Go back
to Alethia, and let her help you." He got up, picked up his sandals, and walked barefoot back along the
pier.
Melissa stayed where she was, giving Jason time to be well out of sight. He hadn't scolded her for not
Reading as she walked along the beach—Gaeta had so many Readers that they had to Read constantly
when moving about the town, lest male and female encounter one another by accident. She should not
have forgotten that simple precaution.
How strange that Magister Jason should venture to talk to her this way. There were special rooms at the
hospital where Readers as yet unable to reach the plane of privacy could talk; no Reader ever Read into
those rooms, the only way to eavesdrop on a conversation. A mental discussion, though, was
"overheard" by every Reader within range who happened to be Reading.
She looked up at the boards of the pier over her head—they were as effective as the screen placed
between male and female Readers using a privacy room. She had never done so. She talked with
nonReaders all the time—but talking with Magister Jason, so formally, without the mental intimacy she
was accustomed to… It's your own fault, she told herself. He was willing to Read, but you weren't.
And he had been concerned enough about her to leave his duties to search for her.
She put the thought out of her head, and walked back up the beach, Reading dutifully. Near the path that
led up to her street, Alethia was sitting on the sand, watching Primus digging with a shell. "Did Magister
Jason find you?" she asked as Melissa approached.
"Yes, he found me."
"You must be very important to him if he left his patients to search for you," said Alethia. "You didn't—?"
"We didn't see each other."
"But he risked it," Alethia said in a peculiar tone, and tried to Read Melissa. But her poor powers could
not penetrate the barrier Melissa felt around her reactions to the meeting at the pier—a barrier hiding
something Melissa herself was not sure she understood.
The little boy could not stay out in the sun for long; soon his mother gathered up the protesting child, and
both women went up to the cottage. Melissa helped cut up vegetables for dinner, while she and Alethia
laughed over memories of hiding from the cook at the Academy when it was their turn to wash dishes,
and how they had cajoled extra sweets out of her. Melissa's sorrow dissipated. She never did get around
to crying on Alethia's shoulder.
Rodrigo arrived home smelling of salt air and fish, kissed his wife and son openly, and went apologetically
off to the public bath so as to be presentable for dinner. Melissa was hard-put to account for Alethia's
infatuation; her husband was quite ordinary in appearance, hardly taller than she was, slightly overweight,
hair faded from salt and sun, eyes disappearing into leathery wrinkles that marked the man of the sea.
But when he returned, clean and dressed in a fresh tunic, she Read the rapport between husband and
wife—and the deep, abiding love beneath it. Physical appearance was nothing to them; their minds met
and twined in an endless dance. Their powers might be small, but they were beautiful—and for the first
time in her life, Melissa felt left out of a gathering of Readers.
She returned to the hospital that evening, her mind at ease. Spending hours in the presence of people
living life fully, caring for their child and awaiting the next with joyful anticipation, Melissa had lost her
gloom. She would work toward positive solutions—and that meant first doing so well in her medical
training that she would be chosen to stay here at the hospital. She would complete her training, and then
devote her life to finding a way to prevent the infection that had killed her patient.
Before she could even begin, however, she was faced with another hopeless patient—and this time it was
Alethia's little tow-headed son. Now, as Melissa left the sickroom to find Alethia, she was still Reading
Primus. She had insisted Alethia lie down in her own room, promising to call her if anything happened…
but she could not merely Read for the mother now. She would have to hold her friend as she told her the
truth. They had to attempt surgery.
Alethia, though, was sound asleep on Melissa's bed. The strain of her child's illness along with her
advancing pregnancy had finally exhausted her. Perhaps it would be best if-she didn't know when they
took her son into surgery. She certainly needed the rest. Melissa tiptoed away, and returned to Primus'
side, trying to judge the moment when she could have no more hope that the medicines would take hold,
but before there was danger of the appendix rupturing.
Jason was wrong. I wasn't born to be a healer. He should have known when I couldn't learn
advanced Reading.
After her earlier patient had died, Melissa had driven herself to perfect her surgical skills, becoming
fanatical about boiling everything in the sickroom, not just the surgical tools, attempting techniques to
keep incisions as small as possible and to shorten the time the patient was exposed. But medical skills
were not all she was here to learn.
She was expected to continue her lessons in Reading—and those did not go well at all. She had barely
managed to learn to leave her body behind while her "self" went out of body. She hated the feeling,
fearful that she would lose herself, never to return to the physical. And she was completely incapable of
leaving the simple plane in which another Reader might perceive her for one of the planes of privacy. She
must learn to do that before she could become a Magister Reader, and be safe from being married off as
Alethia had been.
She saw Alethia often, and knew that there was absolutely no pretense to her friend's happiness. She
began to understand more clearly the joy of Readers united both mentally and physically, and
sometimes—especially when she had failed again at one of her Reading tests—she thought she might not
mind being married off… if it were to the right man.
Facing surgery on Alethia's son, she almost wished that she had been failed by now, and thus could
avoid this responsibility. Hers were the best techniques anyone had for abdominal surgery; she could not
ask another surgeon to perform the operation or she would be denying the child his best chance to
survive, small as that chance was.
It was time, Melissa decided. She sent an aide she trusted to scrub the child with the precious soap
smuggled in from the savage lands while the authorities looked the other way.
She supervised the preparation of the surgery herself, the swabbing of the table with alcohol, the boiling
of the instruments. She and her assistants scrubbed themselves with soap and rinsed their hands in
alcohol—but it was not enough. Their hands were where the infection clung, in their pores, to sweat out
as they worked. And they could not boil their hands.
Primus was brought in, drugged with opiates. He was unconscious, his pain gone for the first time in days.
Melissa breathed a prayer to the gods to assist her. She worked rapidly but thoroughly, Reading to be
sure she cut out every bit of infection, and sewed up the wound with greatest care. Then she just stood
there, wishing, willing, that the wound remain clean. She concentrated so hard that her Reading blanked
out for a moment, and she became dizzy. But that would accomplish nothing. There was nothing to do
but wait.
Alethia woke to the news that the surgery had been done. She sat by her son all night, while Melissa slept
only fitfully. In the morning Primus was awake and crying at pains in his abdomen, but they were only
gas, and Melissa did not want to drug him again. The herbalist gave him tea, and they placed fresh
compresses over the incision. It was still too early to know what organisms might be breeding in the
child's intestine—but Melissa could not Read anything that seemed dangerous. She slowly let hope creep
up on her. As the hours passed, her hopes grew. The second morning Primus asked for breakfast—and
hope became certainty.
Melissa asked Magister Jason to Read Primus before she would believe it—but the boy was healing.
There was no infection. She turned to Alethia, who had been Reading with them, and the two women
embraced, tears running down their faces. "Oh, Melissa," Alethia sobbed, "how can I ever thank you?
No one else could have saved my little boy." And for a moment Melissa felt as if Magister Jason's arms
were around her, too.
The next morning she was called for the first time into one of the privacy rooms. The screen was set
up—Magister Jason wanted to talk with her.
"Melissa, yesterday I was so proud of you that I went to Master Florian to recommend that we keep you
here at the hospital. I have never seen a healer progress so rapidly! You have more than a year to study;
by the time you finish, there will not be a more skillful surgeon in the empire."
"Thank you, Magister," she said, blushing under his praise… but something in his voice warned her that
he had not called this conference to congratulate her.
He sighed, part sorrow, part exasperation. "Do you know what Master Florian told me?"
"Probably that my Reading skills are not progressing as they should." She wished she could see him, and
resisted the temptation to Read through the screen.
"You have made almost no progress since you came here. Soon you must go on to the healing of minds
rather than bodies—and you cannot do that if you have not advanced much further. We should not be
using this clumsy apparatus—by this time you should achieve the plane of privacy with ease. I am
removing you from hospital duty three mornings each week. You will spend that time improving your
Reading."
"But Magister—!"
"Be prepared in your room immediately after breakfast tomorrow. I have been remiss—I assumed that
you were doing as well in all your studies as you are in surgery. I do not want to lose you, Melissa."
And with that she was dismissed.
That afternoon she told Alethia of her problems. "It's obvious you love your work," her friend said. "How
important is it to you that you learn the healing of minds, when you are so successful at the healing of
bodies?"
"I cannot imagine anything more satisfying than saving Primus' life… but then, I have never yet been
involved in trying to save a patient's sanity."
"I think you had best resign yourself, Melissa," said Alethia. "The word is that since a Master Reader
turned renegade, all tests have been tightened immeasurably."
"A Master Reader—? Alethia, what are you talking about?"
"Master Lenardo, from the Adigia Academy."
"He was exiled last spring. Yes, I know about that."
"But he came back! Sneaked into the empire, right past all the Readers along the border—claimed to be
a savage lord! They say he's learned their sorcery."
"That's nonsense. They'll execute him, and that will be the end of it."
"They can't execute him, because he escaped. They say he took two young Readers with him, right
across the border at Adigia—made the gates open by magic!"
"If this is so, why haven't I heard anything about it?"
"It's all the gossip along the Path of the Dark Moon. I would think that all Readers would have heard
about it."
The next morning, Melissa prepared for her lesson with Magister Jason. After a light breakfast, she
returned to her room, smoothed the bedclothes carefully, and lay down, taking care that her light summer
dress had no wrinkles to irritate her helpless body. When Jason's mind touched hers, she left her body
behind with an effort. He was already out of his, feeling light, free, joyous. That was how it was supposed
to feel; for her it had gone from terrifying only as far as uncomfortable.
Jason Read her feelings. //You are still afraid that something will happen to your body while you're out of
it. Look back, Melissa. Read your own body as if it were a patient's. You are breathing regularly, your
heart is beating strongly. Your body could stay for a day or two like that with no harm done—in fact, it
can be left that way for survival if you should ever be trapped without enough food, water, or air.//
//I know that.//
//No, you don't. You can parrot it back when you are being examined, but you don't know it, Melissa,
and that is why you fear to leave your flesh behind.//
//You're right,// she said—and did as he told her, deliberately Reading into her own body as if it were
that of a stranger. She was in perfect health, merely in a coma. If that were one of her patients, she would
be satisfied to leave her alone without fear that she would suddenly die.
Feeling more secure, Melissa tried to follow Jason's next instructions, but to no avail. She Read him as he
tried to show her what could not be described in words:. how to make the transition to another plane of
existence. In deep rapport, she felt him take his bearings and then—disappear! The shock was as great
摘要：

ScannedbyHighrollerandproofedmoreorlessbyHighrollerPrologueTHELEGENDOFTHEFIRSTREADERBeforetherewasanAventineEmpiretheworldwasbrokenupintolittlekingdoms.InoneofthosekingdomslivedayoungmanwhohadthepowertoRead-toknowwhatwasinotherpeople'sminds—buthewastheveryfirsttohavesuchpower,andhedidnotknowwhattodo...

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