The shaking got worse-the floor heaved, and Melissa was tossed into the air, landing back on her bed in a tangle of bedclothes, her left wrist suffering a harsh blow against the wooden frame. As the bed bucked again, she grasped the frame and was thrown sideways, the bed toppling over on her. There was a terrible roaring, pierced by screams. She started to Read, but found the stark terror of the hospital patients too much to bear. But neither could she bear not to know what was happening. She Read again, and was bombarded with pain-suffocation-the roof had collapsed in the east wing, crushing the patients on the top floor and bringing them and their rooms down onto the orthopedic ward below.
Melissa Read but could not move-no one could. The shocks kept coming, one after another, throwing her hither and yon. There was no way she could scramble to her feet. A heavy wooden wardrobe crashed to the floor, missing her by a hand's span, but heaving a splintered section like a spear into her leg. She screamed in pain, and tried to pull it out as her bedroom turned into a battleground, pieces of wood and shattered crockery flying all around her. The best she could do was try to wrap herself in the bedclothes.
The door of her room burst open with a sharp CRACK! and banged against the wall, slammed shut again, bounced open, and was wrenched off its hinges as the building heaved in a new direction. Smoke sailed in from the hallway-it was winter; there had been fires throughout the building to keep the patients warm-the hospital was on fire!
Melissa began to cough and choke, her own body's heaving so distracting that she missed the point at which the ground stopped billowing beneath her, and everything settled into pain and fire and smoky haze. Finally she realized that the earthquake was over-but she was trapped! Her room had no window. Smoke was pouring through the door. Pulling the blanket over her nose and mouth, she dropped to the floor, where the air would be best, but there seemed to be no good air. She tried to crawl, her leg stinging where the splintered wood had pierced it. It was not a severe wound… but that did not matter. She could not escape the smoke. Her eyes burned. Her lungs burned. The whole world was burning-and then it disappeared into blackness.
Chapter Two
A satisfying rumble shook the ground beneath Torio as he Read this section of the fault settle into a more stable configuration. "Perfect!" he said aloud, and Lord Wulfston dropped his concentration and became Readable as a human presence once again. He could not be Read further, for he was a savage Adept, capable of causing the earth to shift-with proper guidance.
The two men were seated cross-legged, hands joined, on the floor of an abandoned house several miles inside the Aventine border. For winter travel they were dressed in heavy woolens and furs, but even so Torio shivered …no… he was not shivering-the ground was moving again, only moments after their successful effort!
He Read the fault, but it was secure-and the shock waves were coming toward it, not away from it. Not the minor quake they had just set off, but a major one somewhere farther away-could it be the very catastrophe they were seeking to avoid?
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.
Despite having left the Aventine Empire for good, Lenardo did not want harm to come to his homeland. Both Lenardo and Torio had life-long friends in Tiberium; Torio had no qualms about helping to prevent the destruction of the capital. What he had observed in his few months in the savage lands made him certain that Readers and Adepts had to learn to work together.
Unbidden, the scene of horror at the Gaeta hospital rose in his mind-that was the result of a Reader and an Adept working together. Yet, had there been Adepts in Gaeta, the fires would have been out as fast as an Adept could see them-or a Reader tell him where they were. An Adept could lift walls off people by the power of his mind, and as to healing powers…
Torio's first experience in the savage lands had been at the hands of one of their miraculous healers. Casting his lot in with Lenardo and his daughter Julia, he had fought his way with them out of the empire in a long, harrowing ride. They had reached the gates of Adigia unharmed-but just as they escaped across the border, Torio had been struck by an arrow. They had had to ride on, the arrow grating and tearing at the flesh of his shoulder while he clung desperately to Lenardo, trying not to fall off the galloping horse.
In the Aventine Empire, had Torio been tended immediately he would probably have lived. But he might have died from loss of blood; he might have died from infection; he would certainly have had a long, painful recovery and an ugly scar. If an Aventine healer had gotten to him only when the savage healer had, after he was faint from blood loss and the arrow had wrought great damage to the bones and muscles of his shoulder, he would have had a much lesser chance of surviving, and if he had, he would certainly have had restricted use of his arm.
Under the care of the savage healer, Torio's wound had healed within a few hours to the point at which he could use his arm without pain. Within a few days no one could have known the wound had been there; there was not even a scar.
Raised an Aventine citizen in constant fear of the encroaching savages, Torio had never realized that they used their powers for anything but destruction. Ever since he had discovered what good they could do, he had been as eager as Lenardo to find ways to bring their two powers together. What he was unsure of was the right way to do it.
Wulfston rode silently, not intruding on Torio's thoughts. They had crossed the border by breaching the wall earlier today-Wulfston had simply brought a portion of it down in a neat mound over which they had easily ridden their horses. There were other ways, Torio had learned-an Adept could walk in at a gate if he chose a time when few guards were about, by first planting the suggestion in their minds that they had orders to let him in, and then that the event had never happened. Nowadays, though, every gate was heavily guarded and that technique could not be used on more than one or two people at a time.
That Adepts, with no Reading power, could manipulate minds as well as bodies, was one of the more terrifying discoveries Torio had made on the other side of the border. It was a wonder that the empire had not been destroyed generations ago by people with such powers. Lenardo said that the only reason was that up to now the Lords Adept had spent so much energy fighting one another that they had been unable to concentrate their powers against the empire. But now…
Now there was peace in all the savage lands along the Aventine border. Lenardo, Aradia, Wulfston, and Lilith held what Aradia claimed was the largest territory ever united in mutual agreement. Twice their alliance had been attacked by other savage lords, and twice they had won-the second time with Torio in the midst of the fighting. The lands of the Lords Adept who had attacked and been destroyed had increased the territory they held; it now seemed, as their numbers had increased with the addition of Torio, Lenardo's daughter Julia, and Lilith's son Ivorn, that the alliance of Readers and Adepts was perceived as too powerful and dangerous to try to attack. Besides, as Aradia was fond of saying, their enemies probably thought that if they just waited long enough the members of the alliance would begin to fight with one another, and leave themselves vulnerable.
Torio was automatically Reading their way through the woods that grew wild all along the border-a sort of no-man's-land on either side of the wall where no one wanted to live. Restricting his concentration to an area directly ahead, he narrowed the possibility of another Reader's homing in on him and reporting their whereabouts to the Aventine guard.
Restricting his Reading that way, though, meant that he could not let himself be wide open to anything within his range, or to the relays of powerful Readers who might be sending messages related to their escape. It was probably true that the search for whoever triggered the earthquake was centered near Gaeta, two days' ride away-but someone was sure to report that there had been a quake in this area just before the major one, and then-