The ground they were seated on rose and fell, as if they rode a boat over the wake of another. "It shouldn't be that severe!" said Wulfston, not knowing the effect was not the settling they had triggered.
"It's a distant quake!" said Torio. "I can't Read that far." Torio's Reading range, without leaving his body, was approximately three miles. It was a good range for a Magister Reader, an excellent range for one as recently exalted to that rank as Torio. Nonetheless, it was frustrating to know that Readers could go far beyond the good or excellent, and not know how the breakthrough was made.
Only one person had thus far made that breakthrough. //Master Lenardo!// Torio shouted mentally.
For once Lenardo did not correct his title. //I'm here, Torio. Let me Read for you—the Masters will be looking for you and Wulfston.//
"Lenardo is investigating," Torio told Wulfston, and Read with his former teacher. Lenardo was not with them in person, but was Reading them from Zendi, deep in the savage lands. He no longer had to leave his body to Read over such distances—but even more important under the present circumstances, Lenardo had the power to Read without allowing other Readers to Read him. No Reader had ever developed that ability before, or most of the vast range of Lenardo's powers.
Not allowing himself to comment or question mentally, Torio followed Lenardo's perceptions, tracing the shock waves of the earthquake backward, south and west to their source. Gaeta!
Torio had never been there, but he recognized the city where he would have been right now, taking medical training at the great hospital, if his life had followed a Reader's normal path. It had not. Inside the empire he was considered a renegade. If he were caught he would be examined by the Council of Master Readers, using whatever techniques they deemed necessary to bring into his mind information that would aid the empire against the savages. Then he would be executed as a traitor.
Outside the empire, though, in the savage lands, he was a lord by virtue of his powers, with lands set aside for him to rule when he was ready. Could he ever be ready for such a role?
Lenardo had focused on Gaeta. The last shocks were still pounding the seaside town as the two Readers observed. As the earth's heaving ceased, people began pulling themselves up from wherever they had been thrown. There were fires all over town—it was winter, and in every home people were trying to keep warm. But most fires were just scattered coals, quickly shoveled back into place, flaming hangings or other items stamped out. Here and there small buildings had fallen, garden walls collapsed in spots, but most of the town had only minor damage that would be set right in a few days of work.
The hospital was another story. It was the largest building in town, set on a hill overlooking the sea—and part of that hill had fallen, sending the seaward wall of the building tumbling down into the road below. Under such stress, the second story of a newer wing had collapsed onto the rooms below, trapping both the patients and the many Readers who lived and worked at the hospital. People were hurt, stunned, trapped under rubble—they were in no condition to put out the fires spreading through the halls!
As the fire blazed up atop the hill, people in the town below realized that the hospital was in trouble, and every uninjured person hurried up the hill to help. First they had to unblock the road—but willing hands set to work, and everyone with shovels, buckets, anything that might help, quickly dug through the fallen earth. Soon buckets of water were being passed from nearby wells up to those fighting the fire—but it was slow, so impossibly slow! All those able to move inside the hospital were already pulling people out as best they could. There were plenty of Readers—no one would be left to die because his presence was undiscovered—but people were dying throughout the building, dying in agony of burns, or, less painfully, of smoke inhalation or suffocation because they could not be reached in time. Others were bleeding to death, trapped where no one could reach them to staunch their wounds.
And every Reader suffered the agony of the wounded and the dying. Torio and Lenardo suffered with them, even more so because they could do nothing to help… and because it was entirely possible that their manipulations had unintentionally caused this tragedy.
Lenardo withdrew his attention from the scene of chaos, and sought the point that had been the center of the earthquake. Here the rock levels beneath the earth were freshly slanted—a secondary fault no one had realized was there. Torio felt Lenardo's remorse, regret—but concentrating on the major, unstable fault they had been trying to ease, who could have guessed that their small tremors would shake loose this other instability? If it had been any distance from the hospital, or if the hospital had not been such a mixture of additions clinging to the top of that hill…
But it had happened, and it was their fault. Torio was glad he dared not «say» anything to Lenardo through their mental linkage. He would not know what to say at the moment to the man who had led him out of the Aventine Empire into a new way of life, only to have their best intentions erupt into death and destruction.
They brought themselves back to the abandoned house. Torio came out of the trancelike state in which he had been Reading Gaeta, and found himself gripping Wulfston's hands convulsively.
"I'm sorry," he said in a choked voice, releasing his grip.
Wulfston paid no heed to Torio's unnecessary apology. "What happened?" he asked as he stretched his hands, wincing as circulation brought pain—followed immediately by the warmth of Adept healing.
"Gaeta," said Torio. "The hospital. The quake destroyed the hospital, Wulfston—patients, healers, everyone dying—"
"Torio!" Wulfston gripped the younger man's shoulders despite his sore hands, at the same moment that Lenardo told him, //Not now, Torio! Get out of the empire—then we'll talk about what went wrong.//
"We were not aiming at Gaeta," Wulfston said firmly. "It's nowhere near the fault we activated. It was coincidence."
"No. All the minor quakes we set off along this fault activated that one."
"Lenardo?" Wulfston asked.
"He's still Reading us," Torio replied. "He wants us to leave."
"I was about to suggest the same thing," said the Adept, climbing to his feet and stretching his legs. "Lenardo, we'll see you in a few hours. Come on, Torio."
Torio also rose and stretched. Both Readers and Adepts were accustomed to using the stable, cross-legged position for periods of concentrated effort; even in this cold weather, neither man was cramped.
Their horses were tethered outside, saddled and ready. They rode at a normal pace, not a gallop—they had not yet been Read, and did not want to call attention to themselves.
"If they think we deliberately destroyed Gaeta," Torio said, "they'll be Reading for us all along the western coast. No one will look for us here."
"If they think we would deliberately attack a hospital," Wulfston said grimly, "how will we ever make them trust us enough to negotiate a treaty?"
Both men fell silent. It was a dark, moonless night; Torio took the lead, guiding the horses by Reading. Trying to deny his aching guilt, he reminded himself, We did not activate the fault, Drakonius did. We are simply trying to repair the damage before Tiberium is destroyed.
The capital city of the Aventine Empire sat directly on the unstable fault line. A major earthquake there would mean thousands of lives lost—and Lenardo had had a series of precognitive flashes showing that very event. With the mysterious increase in his Reading powers, that odd talent had also increased—and Torio had no doubt of Lenardo's accuracy. What he doubted was whether anything they did could prevent the prophecy from coming true: thus far, every one of Lenardo's visions had come to pass.