Her skin prickling with cold sweat, Aradia whispered, “I was right! They are here to take him away!”
His arms tightened about her. “We don’t know that. Aradia, you know how my flashes of precognition are. Yes, they always come true-but never in the way I expect. Wulfston may just sail a few miles south on that ship. Or he may decide to go and do some trading in our visitors’ lands.”
“After they attacked him the moment they saw him?”
“He was not a prisoner in my vision,” Lenardo offered. “He was standing freely on deck, urging the captain to hurry southward. Aradia, he wasn’t hurt, and he was clearly in charge. Wulfston is a grown man-you can’t think of him as your little brother forever.” — “Little, no. But Lenardo, he is my brother forever.
Remember what Torio said? ‘Wulfston must seek his destiny far away, only to find where he began.’ ‘
“Torio!” Lenardo snorted. “Don’t start me thinking about Torio, Aradia. I should never have let him go off to Madura, just when he had developed a new talent. And of all the irresponsible acts after he learned Adept powers there, to go wandering off who knows where instead of coming home here, where you and Master Clement and I could train him!”
Aradia let him fume, knowing that having a second student he had trained go off to use his powers in unknown and possibly dangerous ways frightened Lenardo. He felt responsible for those he taught.
It was his search for Galen, the student who had gone over to his enemies, that had originally brought Lenardo into Aradia’s path some five years ago.
There was nothing she could say, except that she knew Torio to be strong-willed and unlikely to be used as Drakonius had used Galen. But the boy was young, inexperienced. He had learned strange things in Madura, according to the reports he had sent with Zanos and Astra. Lenardo’s fears that he might be tricked into using his developing powers for evil were certainly justified, and Aradia agreed wholeheartedly that Torio should have returned to his friends. But he hadn’t. And there was nothing Lenardo could do about it except worry.
At last he came back to the original subject. “Anyway, prophecies are just like my visions: incomplete and misleading.”
“Not always,” said Aradia, running her hand over Lenardo’s right forearm. She could feel the brand embedded into his flesh, a dragon’s head that showed red against his skin, even years after the wound had healed. “In the days of the white wolf and the red dragon,” she murmured.
He held her close. “Yes-we finally did bring peace to all our lands,” he agreed, looking up at the room’s ceiling. Wulfston had decorated this suite of rooms especially for Lenardo and Aradia. Even in the dim light their emblems, Aradia’s white wolfs head and Lenardo’s red dragon, could be made out, entwined in the painted relief.
“And if Wulfston has to find where he began,” Aradia added, snuggling sleepily into a more comfortable position against Lenardo, “he was born in a village between Tiberium and Zendi. So even if he does go far away, he’ll have to… come home again.”
The next day, their uninvited African guests were brought before Wulfston, who sat on his throne, flanked by a formidable array of Readers and Adepts: Lenardo, Aradia, Julia, and Wulfston’s Reader, Rolf.
Sukuru, revived and healthy, was shaking in his sandals as he apologized profusely, stumbling over his words in the language called Trader’s Common.
The tall, gaunt black man seemed to have only minor Adept powers. He insisted they would never have attacked Wulfston had they known him to be the Lord Adept they sought, but when they saw another black man, wrapped in a plain woolen cloak, they had thought him one of their enemies, trying to thwart their expedition.
They had expected to find “the most excellent Lord of the Black Wolf,” Sukuru explained in annoyingly obsequious terms, to be “as you are now, most gracious lord, crowned in gold and seated upon a throne.”
Aradia listened, Reading fear, but a certain level of sincerity in the man. She didn’t like him: he was here to ask a stranger to do what he feared to do himself.
Sukuru and his small band claimed to represent “many tribes and peoples who share a dream of freedom.” He told of a powerful witch-queen, Z’Nelia, who held in thrall a large number of African lands.
“Besides her own formidable powers, she has many followers with powers of their own, as well as a huge and powerful army.”
Z’Nelia sounded like Drakonius-and Drakonius had been defeated.
“But why come so far to seek my help?” Wulfston asked.
Sure enough, the story of the defeat of Drakonius had traveled as far as Africa. But, it seemed, the version popular there was a distorted one in which Wulfston had defeated Drakonius in single combat.
Julia snickered, and Aradia could feel Wulfston smother laughter. “That’s a song,” he explained, “created by a bard seeking favor in my court. East of here, in the city of Zendi, you would hear a much different version, celebrating the exploits of my sister and her husband.”
The puzzlement of the envoys was clear to Read when Wulfston identified Aradia as his sister. But they did not ask; they were too eager to press their case. Despite Wulfston’s insistence that only an alliance of Adepts and Readers could defeat such a strong opponent, they wanted one single champion-someone the equal of their fabled Z’Nelia.
When Sukuru’s words won no promises from Wulfston, he called forward the veiled woman, Chulaika.
She spoke of oppression, slavery, and murder, begging, “Please, Lord Wulfston-come to our aid. Only a great Lord like yourself can help us now.”
“You are a Son of Africa,” Sukuru said suddenly. “Surely you will not refuse to help your own people?”
Aradia smothered a gasp of indignation, but Wulfston replied exactly as she would have hoped: “My own people are right here. I was not born in your land, but in the Aventine Empire, where my parents were proud to have earned citizenship. I will consult with my allies to determine what help we can offer you-but you must understand that I cannot leave my lands unattended to go adventuring in yours.”
That afternoon, Aradia was examined by Astra, who was acting as healer for her on this expedition.
Astra and her husband, Zanos, were direct allies of Lady Lilith, and represented her at this meeting; they were another couple brought together by the turmoil surrounding the fall of Tiberium. Astra would soon be taking her tests for the rank of Master Reader-even though she was a married woman-while Zanos was a former gladiator in the Aventine arena.
If Lenardo and Aradia were an unlikely team, the quiet, slender Reader and the huge, flame-haired gladiator seemed an incomprehensible match. Yet they were obviously quite happy together. Zanos had minor abilities as both Reader and Adept, while Astra, like Lenardo, had developed some Adept powers, but would rarely sacrifice her Reading skills to practice them.
“The baby is doing very well,” Astra told Aradia, “but you are tired. You should take a nap this afternoon.”
“I’m not tired.”
“My lady, do not deny your condition to a Reader. Your husband will say the same.”
“But it’s such a lovely day,” Aradia protested.
“There is no need to stay indoors,” said Astra. “Come with me into the herb garden. The walls will protect you from the breeze.”
So Aradia was installed on a chaise in the herb garden near the castle’s kitchen. Astra remained with her for a while, gathering herbs which did not grow in Lilith’s lands, and then left her alone, not protesting that Aradia was reading rather than sleeping.
Later that afternoon, Lenardo’s mind touched Aradia’s. “Come join me?” she suggested.
“Gladly. Wulfston is with me.”
Wulfston and Lenardo, it seemed, had been discussing their uninvited guests. “It doesn’t make sense,”
explained Wulfston. “Why would they come to strangers for help? There’s something Sukuru’s not telling.”