He felt his heart falter. Pain clutched at his chest as he gasped, “Wulfston, they’re-”
Wulfston saw at once that the young Reader was in pain, and Torio felt Adept power set his heart back into a normal pattern. But how much strength could Wulfston have left?
As he panted for breath, Torio felt a peculiar sick knowledge that he had not Read the whole story. The minor Adepts were retreating, and from behind them-
“Wulfston! There are other men up there!”
His warning came too late. New attackers suddenly dropped out of the sky.
They leaped from the top of the quarry-stronger Adepts, able to protect themselves from injury in the fall-and they were armed.
Knives and swords flashed-each man was a living weapon, a sword in one hand, a knife in the other, blades on their feet, on their elbows, leaping toward Wulfston, toward Torio.
Death came slashing through the air, the attackers using gravity, only guiding their fall to be certain to land on their victims.
It took a mere split-second, too short a time for Wulfston and Torio to run, with no shelter closer than the house far down the pathway.
Torio Read death upon him, three men falling toward him, one slashing for his head even as the young Reader lifted his sword and prepared to take at least one of them with him-
Flame!
Screams!
In midair, the falling men burst into flame!
Their kicking and writhing changed their course — the one attempting to decapitate Torio bounced off the quarry wall, sword clattering on the rocks as he landed uncontrolled, the pain of broken legs unfelt in the agony of burning flesh.
The seven who had dropped on them burned and screamed-five able to stand, dancing and shrieking as the fire ate from the outside in.
“Wulfston!” Torio screamed in the men’s agony. “Kill them! Kill them!” His own flesh seemed to sear and flake off as theirs did, so caught was he in their death throes.
Instead, a sheet of flame engulfed the other attackers watching from the quarry rim, sending them screaming and writhing and dancing the hideous dance of death as their flesh cooked off their bones, taking their hearts and brains last.
Only as the last man died could Torio stop Reading, cutting off the pain but leaving him blind, closed in on himself, sweating and shaking-and then vomiting as the stench of burnt flesh assaulted him anew.
Finally, he had to Read again. Still trembling, he Read slowly outward, finding only corpses.
They were all dead. There was no more pain.
Wulfston, as open to being Read as a nonAdept, was fighting not to pass out.
But he was awake, and that meant-
“How much strength would it have taken to stop their hearts?” Torio demanded. “Why did you let them die so horribly?”
Wulfston turned weary eyes to Torio. “Are there any more?”
Torio Read. No new attackers lurked anywhere around, nor was anyone fleeing. All were dead- even the ones down by the house, he Read sickly. Wulfston hadn’t chanced just putting them to sleep, lest they waken after he had exhausted his powers. “No. You killed them all,” he said flatly.
“Are you hurt?” asked the Lord Adept.
“No, but-”
“But you might have required healing,” explained Wulfston.
Torio knew, intellectually, why the Adept was trained to save the last of his strength in a situation such as they had just gone through-a last-resort means of escape or healing.
But his heart still protested the agony Wulfston had allowed.
“Torio, can you get me to the stonecutter’s cottage?” Wulfston asked.
“Yes, if you can walk. Lean on me.”
The needs of a Lord Adept who had expended his powers for them was something the stonecutter’s family understood-and Torio was glad to see that it was no hardship for them to meet even the appetite of a Lord Adept. They were welcomed joyfully into the house, where the main room served as kitchen, dining hall, and family gathering place. There was meat aplenty, just what an Adept required to restore energy quickly after using his powers.
At the gratitude of the innocent people the bandits had used so cruelly, Torio accepted that they had done what they had to-Reader and Adept working together, to protect those without their powers.
Feeling better by the moment, he ate tasty brown bread with butter, the ubiquitous cooked vegetables, fresh berries, and a rich tart served with cream-a meal designed to give strength to men who worked the quarry.
He had to explain that Readers did not eat meat, and discovered that everyone had thought him an apprentice Adept, since Readers were still scarce in this part of the savage lands.
Bevan’s family put Wulfston to bed in the loft where the married couples slept, and were astonished to find that Torio was wide awake-and full of questions about where their attackers had come from. If only they had left one of them alive!
“I dinna understand,” said Morgone, the old stonecutter who headed the family. “We’ve had naught o’
trouble wi’ bandits. People herebouts, they like what Lord Wulfston’s done. We got homes, food-who needs turn bandit?”
“I don’t know,” Torio told him, “but we’re going to find out.”
Although he had explained that Reading took no physical energy, Torio did accept a bed and went up to it early, for he had messages to deliver.
To cover the distances he must now Read, Torio had to leave his body. Had his training at the Academy proceeded normally, at his age he would be undertaking such an exercise occasionally, under the guidance of a teacher. The events of the past two years, however, had required him to Read over distances so often that leaving his body had become commonplace.
He smoothed the bed and lay down carefully, positioned so that his circulation could not be cut off while his body was unoccupied. Then he allowed his “self to drift upward.
Immediately, his Reading took on a clarity possible only when the flesh was left behind. No longer did he have to visualize the world deliberately; it was all there, without effort and without restriction.
He Read outward from the stonecutter’s cottage, searching for signs of further danger. A few miles down the road there was an inn, where local farmers sometimes stopped for a cup of ale at this time of day.
That’s all they were-farmers, the innkeeper, and his wife and three daughters, one of them flirting with a local farm lad.
But there were no strangers, no travelers, and no one with a worry in his head except the boy wondering if the girl he favored cared for him, or whether she acted this way with other customers.
Ignoring the inn, Torio scanned the fields, empty or emptying. Nothing more sinister there than rabbits and field mice. Nor did the woodlands harbor people, except for a woodcutter who lived there and a patrol of Wulfston’s foresters out to see that no one took deer out of season.
Then where had their attackers come from?
As Morgone said, there was no widespread dissatisfaction among Wulfston’s people. Only the bandits who preyed on travelers were unhappy that the new Lord of the Land did not take the attitude of Drakonius, who had ignored them as long as they did not interfere with his plans for conquest.
Wulfston’s first impulse had been to give the bandits fair warning to mend their ways-and then wipe out the ones who refused to turn to farming, hunting, woodcutting, or other honest occupation. However, too many outlaws were distrustful, having suffered many years of Drakonius’ unpredictability. Furthermore, they considered this new lord, with his preference for alliance over conquest, to be dangerously weak-easy prey for the next Drakonius.
Over the nearly two years of Wulfston’s reign, though, he had made the main roads safe. Many outlaws had decided that the risks of being caught now that there were Readers in the land outweighed the risks of pledging loyalty to the new lord. The rest moved northward, out of the area ruled by the alliance of Adepts and Readers who called their union the Savage Empire.