"Aww, that was easy," said Julia, but she nonetheless eagerly told Lenardo of helping one of Wulfston's men locate five horses lured into the hills by a wild stallion. He gathered that his foster daughter would soon have a swollen head if left to the adulation of nonReaders.
Only years of training and concentration allowed Lenardo to put this morning's events out of his mind and give Julia her lesson. She was improving rapidly, happy in her work, but she was now torn between her promised holiday and her consuming curiosity about what was happening in Zendi.
//Go and have a good time,// Lenardo told her, //but don't be a nuisance to Lord Wulfston.//
He managed to get through his morning's work and clear the afternoon for Aradia. Beginning with the simplest tests, he sought the limits of her current ability, similar to those of a child whose powers were newly wakened. When Lenardo verbalized his thoughts, she could Read them clearly. Other people were a blur of emotion except for an occasional clear thought, and she could not even sense inanimate objects, let alone visualize them.
"So I'm considerably less of a Reader than Julia," she said when Lenardo decided that it was time to stop.
"At the moment, yes. If you were Julia's age, I'd pat you on the head and encourage you to do better tomorrow. As it is, I don't want to discourage you, but I don't want to raise false hopes, either."
They were in Lenardo's room, seated on either side of his worktable. Now Aradia went to the window, staring out at the courtyard. "I don't know if I want to Read any better."
"Why not?"
"All my life I've judged people by their actions. I'm not sure I want to know their motivations."
"I don't understand."
"I know people act from selfish motives," Aradia explained, turning to face him. "My goal is to make working for me in my people's best interest, yet there are those who become caught up in patriotic fervor, and I might be tempted to trust such people more than those who were merely doing what was expedient."
"Since you recognize the danger, Aradia, I do not think you will fall prey to it."
Her violet eyes studied him. "So you agree."
He nodded slowly. "Galen always acted from enthusiasm. I was the object of his enthusiasm for a time, but then came a time when I disagreed with him. He became disillusioned with me and was easy prey for Drakonius."
"Who wasted no time making it expedient for Galen to work for him," said Aradia. She sat on the edge of the worktable, facing Lenardo. "You have learned quickly, now that you are over the blindness your empire instilled in you. You will be a great leader, Lenardo."
"I was not meant to rule. With every day that passes, I wonder what mistakes I have made."
"You think I do not? Every conscientious ruler worries, but he acts. I did not know whether you could act, Lenardo. That's why I gave you Zendi. You have proved yourself here."
"Insulated. Untested."
"When the test comes, it will be against all of us, and we have passed the test against Drakonius. It will be a long time before anyone will dare attack us. But if we do nothing for long enough, that attack will come." Again her fingers traced the brand on his arm. "Lenardo, I don't want to leave you."
"I don't want you to leave."
"Then-"
"No. Don't say it. Come here." He drew her onto his lap, where she leaned against him, her head on his shoulder. "Aradia, I don't know protocol among Lords Adept, so I've been making up my own rules."
"You have the right to make the rules in your own land."
"Then in my land, the right and honorable thing for me to do, because I love you and I want you with me always, is to ask you to marry me. I realize that that will present difficulties. We each have a land to rule, and your people might well object to your forming a permanent alliance with a Reader, and one who has been on this side of the pale less than half a year. Still, I want you to know what I would do if it were possible."
She was glowing with serene happiness. "I'm glad you said it first," she murmured. "We'll combine our lands and rule jointly. We have the right to set precedents. Lenardo, I was willing to sacrifice some of my powers for you, as my parents did when they married. After that first time, my strength and accuracy were greatly diminished."
"So were mine," said Lenardo. "But later-"
"Yes," Aradia whispered fiercely, "later. There is something fated between you and me, foretold in ancient legend. When I woke today, after you had gone, I tested my powers. I removed one of the cobbles from the forum floor and lifted it. I split it, Lenardo, and then I crumbled part of it to powder, and I still felt so strong that I broke off a small piece and disintegrated it."He recalled what she had said about disintegrating her father's tumor. "How is it you are not exhausted?"
"I don't know. I have never had such strength. And you?"
"I can Read farther and 'more easily than ever before. I was having difficulty reaching Julia at Wulfston's castle, and then this morning I discovered that without effort I could Read all the way to the sea, I haven't yet dared to try leaving my body. I felt as if I could Read the whole world."
"Leaving your body? What do you mean?"
"The highest, most difficult form of Reading is to dissociate one's… self… from one's body. I did it the day I first Read Drakonius's stronghold for you. You thought I had fainted, remember?''
She studied his face, and he could feel her trying to Read him. "No, I don't think you're lying," she said. "I'm sure you believe that some sort of separate spirit leaves your body. But if that were possible, legends like that of the ghost-king would be fact, not fairy tale."
Lenardo considered. "Was this ghost-king one of your ancestors, Aradia?"
"I'm not joking."
"Neither am I. Someone like you, both Adept and Reader-"
"No!" She wrenched out of his embrace, shoving hard against his chest as she jumped to her feet. "No. There cannot be any life separate from the body. The legend of the ghost-king is meant to warn of the folly of such nonsense."
Reading how upset Aradia was, Lenardo recalled what he knew of savage beliefs. No dieties, no afterlife. "Life is the greatest value," Aradia had once told him. She believed that there was nothing more than her physical life; he remembered that the subject was particularly painful to her because her mother had taken her own life, the worst thing a savage could do. He decided that it was best to change the subject.
"You will understand more as your abilities increase. There's nothing to fear, and we have joyful plans to make."
"Indeed we have. Lenardo, let's not tell anyone yet. I want Wulfston to know first."
"And Julia."
"Julia," Aradia said. "Oh, my. Do you think she'll accept your marriage?"
"You do see the point precisely. As long as she is assured that she will not be losing me but gaining you, I have no fear that she will object. However, there is the matter of explaining to a literal-minded child my seeming hypocrisy. I told her that Readers never marry."
"In the Aventine Empire," said Aradia. "And most Readers are married off, if I understand the system, to produce new Readers. What seems wrong, though, is that only second-rate Readers reproduce; where do Readers like you come from?"
"My parents were, as you put it, second-rate Readers. I don't remember them very well."
"Has there never been an instance of two Master Readers having a child?"
"Male and female Readers are rigorously segregated."
"But you Read each other."
"Yes."
She put her hand along the side of his face. Ill fell in love with you before I could Read you, but now there is so much more. Lenardo, how can man and woman touch minds like this and not desire to join bodies?//