Thank the gods, Aradia had gone back to her own land. Lenardo would not have to face her again until he had truly established himself as the lord his people expected. That meant using his powers, not fearing them. If he decided to define himself once and for all as Lord of the Land, he must be prepared openly and honestly to exercise power.
Let the corruption in the Aventine government work until it destroyed itself. Lenardo and his allies would be waiting just beyond the pale, ready to take advantage. There would be no need to attack; Lenardo's powers would tell them the right moment to move in. Aradia, Wulfston, and Lilith would welcome him back on those terms.
Aradia. She had been dishonest with him, but was her drugging him really that much worse than his plan to seduce her, not because he loved her but to blunt her powers? She had not intended to harm him. Her motive had been to conceive a child.
Suddenly what he had overheard at Portia's Academy today flashed into his mind. Celia, the healer's patient, had feared that she was not pregnant because her flux had begun. Aradia-Aradia had assumed the same thing.
Aradia may be carrying my child. Blessed gods, why was I so angry I did not think to Read her to be certain?
He knew what to do now. He could easily Read Castle Nerius from here, contact Aradia, and Read her condition. She had been so positive she was pregnant, terribly disappointed that she was not.
She is. I'm sure she is, and with a child to unite us, we will find a way to work together. She will help me now, once I get out of the empire.
"Julia," Lenardo told the weeping child, hugging her, "I know what to do now. We're going back to Zendi!"
She looked up at him. "Can we?"
"We came all this way, didn't we? We escaped Aradia and Wulfston. We survived an earthquake. What can a few Readers do to us? Now wash your face and go to sleep, because we're going to sneak away in the middle of the night. I'll wake you."
She clung to him, daring tentative hope. "Yes, Father."
Lenardo tucked her into bed, supervising the meditation exercise he had taught her to send her to sleep despite her excitement. Then he Read outward, beyond the city, beyond the pale, to Castle Nerius. There he had first met Aradia, helped to cure her father, and fought in the battle of Adepts. There Aradia had made him a lord.
Bright moonlight flooded the landscape as Lenardo "traveled" in his mind. Strange-from here he ought to "see" the castle towers. Hopeful expectation turned to concern and then to fear. He found the hills, the road, the forest. In a nearby field, the flat rock where they built the funeral pyres lay empty, cold in the pale moonlight.
As he approached the castle, his anxiety increased, and then he saw it, its walls and towers fallen, smoke rising from the remains of the houses that had clustered about its gate. There was no sign of life.
She's dead! By all the gods, I deserted her, and now she's dead, and our child with her!
Chapter Seven
Lenardo's panic subsided slightly as he remembered that he had Read Aradia in Zendi only a few hours before. She could not possibly have reached home yet, could not have been in the castle when it was blasted.
He found her in the rocky hills on the border between their lands, alive but besieged, trying desperately to Read where the blows were coming from that struck all around her. People and horses lay dead, and as Lenardo watched, another thunderbolt roared down just beside Aradia's horse. The horse screamed and reared. She fought it down and turned, constantly moving, zigzagging, for if she stopped, she became an easy target. There was no place to hide.
Her Reading powers could not begin to cover the distance between her and her attackers, until Lenardo Read with her. When his mind touched hers, she gasped.
//Lenardo! Where are you? Oh, Lenardo, I'm so sorry.//
//So am I. Read with me!//
He guided her northward, to where a circle of Adepts surrounded a Reader relaying instructions to them. //Get the Reader,// Lenardo instructed, but to project to Aradia, he projected to the renegade Reader as well. Aradia went blank to Reading to exercise her Adept power, and the thunderbolt she cast sizzled through the ground where he had been a moment before.
"It's Lenardo," the Reader told his Adept cohorts. "Even with him to guide her, Aradia's only one against four. Keep moving!"
The Reader… was Galen.
//But he's dead,// said Aradia.
//We never found his body,// Lenardo reminded her.//
//And I've fought one of those Adepts before: Hron. He and Galen must have survived the battle last spring. Never mind. Ride for Zendi while I distract them.//
//Is that where you are?//
//No, but I'll be there as soon as I can. Ride!//
Lenardo could sense that Galen was equally confused, Reading what Lenardo projected but unable to find him physically to give the Adepts a target. They would return to trying to kill Aradia unless he could distract them somehow. An idea formed slowly, a deception through Reading. Was it possible?
As Aradia and her train galloped off toward Zendi, Lenardo deliberately did not Read them but instead tried imagining them moving at a slightly different angle, imagined himself galloping with them. A sheet of flame scorched the ah- just in front of his imaginary horse. He resisted the urge to "ride" through it and instead imagined himself almost being thrown, fighting the animal back under control, and continuing toward where he wanted the Adepts to think Aradia was. He had to make them waste energy. Then they would have to spend hours in the Adepts' deep recuperative sleep, allowing him time to reach Zendi.
It's a three-day journey.
No, by the gods, I'll ride night and day, stealing fresh horses as I need them!
He could not think further. He was too busy making Galen think that he was with Aradia's train, ducking thunderbolts and sheets of flame, telling Aradia's false image truthfully, "We're almost out of Galen's range."
As he hoped, that brought a renewed volley of wasted shots. He envisioned a supply wagon going up in flames, the driver leaping for safety while the screaming horses dashed in panic, spreading sparks through the night. All the while Lenardo could clearly sense Galen Reading him, urging the Adepts to kill him while trying to make sense of the shifting perceptions. Had Galen never learned to leave his body? If he had, he declined to use the ability now, as Lenardo galloped his phantom retinue out of range of Galen's abilities.
It was a lesser range than the boy had had last spring.
He had Read farther both at the battle at Adigia and at the battle near Castle Nerius. Perhaps Galen was ill or not fully recovered from the injuries he had sustained in that last battle.
When he felt contact with Galen fade, Lenardo let his imaginary train of riders fade as well and, in the same state of heightened awareness in which he had eavesdropped on the Master Readers without their sensing him, sought out Galen and the circle of Lords Adept. There were four Adepts with the Reader, one of them Hron, Aradia's former ally who had betrayed her to join forces with Drakonius.
The other three Lenardo did not know: a man and two women, tired and- annoyed that their plan to pick off Aradia and her allies one at a time was not working.
"Lenardo was supposed to be in Zendi," Hron was saying threateningly to Galen. "What was he doing with Aradia? We would have had her without his help. Now she'll join with her brother and the Reader in Zendi."
"We must go north and take Lilith," said one of the women.
"Marava is right," the other man said. "If we proceed to Zendi, we could be trapped between Lenardo's forces there and Lilith's to the north."
Lenardo recognized their plan. They had circled far to the east and come to Aradia's land from that direction, thinking to take the strongest Adept first in a sneak attack, four against one.