The full moon lighted the land with ghostly luminescence. Lenardo, a dread fear constricting his heart, sought out Castle Nerius. 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.
Lenardo jolted out of his waking dream, the same dream that had haunted his sleep the past two nights. He had put it down to anxiety at being forced into a position of leadership, a role he was not born or trained to. But now, when the vision rose again in broad daylight, he wondered whether it was true-one of his precognitive flashes. He had never before had one so long or so detailed-or so persistent.
He was riding away from Castle Nerius, away from the events that had turned a Master Reader of the Aventine Empire into a Lord of the Land among the savages. Away from Aradia.
It was too far now to Read back to Castle Nerius. They had come a day's journey and another morning's ride. Within a few hours, Lenardo and his followers would reach the city of Zendi-his city now, the capital of the land he ruled. His land for as long as he could hold it.
It won't have to be long, he thought, reassuring himself.
I'll soon be able to begin peace negotiations between the savages and the Aventine Empire.
From some distance away, fear impinged on his consciousness. Someone else must have spotted the new Lord of the Land at the head of his army. He had been Reading that apprehension sporadically ever since they had crossed the no-man's-land scarred by the battle of Adepts and entered the lands Aradia had awarded to Lenardo.
This time, though, the fear was not the numb anxiety of conquered people pondering their fate. It rose to sharp terror and sparked with hatred, and Lenardo deliberately concentrated on the distant scene, trying to Read the cause of the raw emotions…
A boy ran in terror, with a group of people chasing him in almost equal fear. All were peasants hi rags, starvation-thin, but their fear on this early-summer morning spurred mem on. The boy was in his midteens, long-legged and driven by panic, darting into the hedgerows in hope of finding a hiding place. His thoughts were incoherent: I'm not! I'm not! I didn't do anything!
Whatever crime the peasants thought the boy had committed, Lenardo Read that he was innocent. He spurred his horse, snouting, "Helmuth, Arkus! Follow me!"
The two men did not question his order but followed as Lenardo left the road, galloping cross-country in the direction of the manhunt.
The breathless quarry turned, seeking a way out. It was too far to the rocky outcroppings near the road. The muscles hi his legs twitched; his heart thudded in his ears. Every way he looked there was open farmland, and the newly sprouted crops were not yet high enough to offer shelter.
As the boy hesitated in panic, the others rushed upon him, pulling him down, beating him, kicking him while he screamed, "I'm not, I'm not! It was myrgranther said it." Then one of the men kicked him in the jaw, and the words died into moans.
Lenardo flinched at every blow, with the boy's pain attacking him more and more strongly as he decreased the distance between them.
"Stop," he shouted, long before the peasants could possibly hear him over then- own mad cries. "The boy is innocent."
But it was too late. A kick to the temple mercifully rendered the peasant boy unconscious, and as his pain cut off, Lenardo Read the others clubbing him with fists and farm tools, kicking him, aiming always at his head until they had beaten it to a bloody pulp-well after the boy was dead.
The three horsemen came pounding up, Helmuth and Arkus ahead of Lenardo, who had stopped spurring his horse in sick despair when the boy died. The peasants turned, their savage satisfaction changed once more to terror. They didn't know who these horsemen were, but any horsemen were people in authority who might do to the peasants whatever they pleased. Like the boy before them, they looked for somewhere to hide and found themselves trapped.
Helmuth and Arkus were armed, but their shields bore no device, as Lenardo had not yet chosen a symbol.
Arkus demanded with the voice of authority, "What have you done? How dare you murder one of my lord's people?"
Panicked eyes looked from one to the other of the two soldiers, but no one dared speak.
Helmuth said, "Tell us why you have done this." He was an old man, his voice gentler than Arkus'.
One of the peasants stepped forward, half bowing, and looking furtively toward Lenardo, who sat numbly staring at the blood-spattered tableau.
