Aradia sighed. "Then their Readers will start searching for us the moment we set off the fault again—and Read that our intention is to prevent destruction. Here." She lifted a brown dress off a peg and held it up against Melissa. "This should fit you. And here's a surcoat in gray. Earth colors and ash," she explained. "No bright colors, Lady Melissa."
Melissa took the garments, saying, "Why does everyone call me 'Lady Melissa'? No one calls Rolf a lord."
"Torio says you are qualified to be a Magister Reader," Aradia replied. "Our titles are based on one's powers, just as yours are. Rolf is not a fully-empowered Adept; he has only one talent. If he learns to Read well enough, Lenardo and Torio can test him—perhaps he will earn the right to a title and lands someday."
"Lands?"
Aradia laughed. "Do not be greedy, Melissa. All the lands we currently hold are spoken for, and we have no plans for conquest." She looked Melissa over from head to toe. "But you are young—and both Torio and my brother are of an age to be attracted. They have become best of friends, and work together excellently. If you were to find a true match with either of them, we would all be greatly pleased. But don't play games. If you attempt to gain power by using your female charms to turn them against one another, you will have me to deal with… and I am also a woman."
Melissa was dumbfounded. No such idea had entered her head—but then Aradia did not know of her love for Jason. She could not love another man. "I am a Reader," she said. "I have been taught never to think of marriage."
"But you are very adaptable, as we have all seen. Go get dressed, Melissa—but remember what I have told you."
Melissa thought about the conversation while she dressed, but once the funeral began she forgot it, suddenly enveloped in the grief she had put aside. In this strange land which she did not associate with him, Jason had seemed not to be dead, but back in Gaeta, where she would touch his mind once more if she ever went home.
But now, Reading his body with the others on the funeral pyre, she was forcibly reminded that he was gone. If he had only known what they are doing here! If I had only known the healing techniques I saw a minor Adept use yesterday. She would learn those techniques, she vowed—let that be an appropriate monument to Jason. As she Read the funeral preparations, she realized he would have no other.
The funeral pyre was built on a hill about a mile from Wulfston's castle. The cortege wound its way to the top, each person laying a symbolic stick of wood on the pyre. The flat rock surface of the hilltop could have accommodated a much larger pyre and many more mourners… and had, Melissa was sure. She followed Torio's lead, and Rolf followed her—placing his walking stick as his contribution.
Wulfston and Aradia spoke; the friends and relatives of those who had died each said something—and then it was Melissa's turn. For the first time she realized how little she knew about Jason! She could speak of him only as her teacher, with warmth and affection… but where was the personal feeling she had thought they shared?
Numb with surprise and a grief far more for what might have been than for what had been, Melissa watched as Wulfston, Lenardo, and Aradia sprinkled earth and water on the pyre, stood back—and the flames leaped skyward with a white heat.
When the flames subsided, only a scattering of ash stirred on the bare rock face. As if on signal, a cheer went up from the people gathered there, and they turned and began walking down the trail, laughing and talking, some even singing. Melissa stared, uncomprehending.
Rolf had gone on ahead, but Torio remained beside
Melissa. "They have mourned for death," he said. "Now they will have a feast to celebrate life."
"They?" she asked. "I thought you were one of them."
"I am, but there are some things I find strange. You have much more of the savage attitude than I have, Melissa."
He was not Reading; she had to guess from his tone of voice that he did not intend an insult. Before she could comment, Torio continued, "These people live for the moment. I thought yesterday that I was finally content here, when we stopped the Aventine army without a battle. But today here we are again, mourning our dead, having returned the Aventine dead to their own people."
"If we had reached the plain before that first battle, no one would have died," Melissa pointed out.
"What of those who died in the shipwrecks? Why couldn't I have thought to Read the condition of the ships before telling Wulfston to raise the storm?"
"Torio, you can't think of everything!"
"A Lord of the Land is responsible for all his people. How can I ever accept such responsibility?"
Melissa started forward, following the last of the mourners down the trail toward the castle. Torio took her arm. She was startled for a moment—until she realized that he was not Reading in order to keep from broadcasting their conversation to the other Readers.
Then she realized what Torio had said. "A Lord of the Land is responsible for all his people," she repeated. "You cannot be responsible for those who attack you, Torio."
"You do not blame me for Magister Jason's death?"
"Not anymore. I could blame myself—I Read you calling to all of us, offering help. I could have refused to let Jason die. I wish I had. But at that time how could I know that he was wrong about what you do to Readers? How could I guess that what he thought he 'knew' was twisted rumor? By all the gods, I wish I had come to you and let you save his life. I will never make that mistake again. Even if he had been right, if he were alive there would be the chance that we could fight you off, escape—"
"You sound like Aradia," said Torio. "She always says that life is all there is."
"Well, it's all we have right now, anyway." Both Readers fell silent, nor did Torio begin to Read again, although Melissa did. He continued to let her guide him while he thought his private thoughts. But when they were almost back to the castle, he suddenly said, "Thank you, Melissa."
"You're welcome—but what did I do?"
"Made me understand what Lenardo has been telling me for years—we cannot change the past, but can only learn from it; we have the present, and we can change the future. Look at how we've changed Rolf's future, for example! Like you, I'll never make the same mistake again."
"You'll make new ones," she said. "So will I."
"I know," he replied, letting go of her arm as he opened to Reading, "but we won't let that stop us from doing the best we can!"
The next few days passed in a blur of activity. Travel plans were made, but it was uncertain as to who was going, or where. Melissa wasn't sure if they didn't know themselves, or if specific plans were being kept from her. Torio was busy much of the time, and so training their newest Reader fell to Melissa.
Rolf's Reading showed no marked improvement, but as his ability to interpret what he Read grew, so did his confidence. One morning at their lesson time, Melissa could not find him in the castle. When she Read outside, though, she found him—running. By the time she went down to the courtyard he came pounding in, breathless—but with the strength left to pick her up and whirl her around, laughing. //I'm so happy!// he told her. //Lady Melissa, I never dared to run in my life before! How can I ever repay you?//
//I didn't do it, Rolf—you did. It's such a beautiful day—let's not go back inside.//
They left the castle and the village and wandered into the fields nearby, Melissa having Rolf test his range. It was still less than a quarter of a mile for inanimate objects—he'd have been failed just about now if that were his range after a lifetime in an Academy. Considering the short time he had been Reading, though, he might yet develop a useful range of a mile or more.
Melissa took him along the edge of a newly planted field to an area some men were clearing. "How many people?" she asked him.
"Four—no, five. And four horses."
"The people—male, female, ages, sizes?"
"Oh, Lady Melissa, I can't tell that from this distance! I'm only now starting to sort out the people I know from a few paces away, unless I hear their footsteps or they speak or think to me."
"Then can you tell me what the people are doing?"
He concentrated, Melissa deliberately not Reading so that he could not Read through her. "I can't make sense of it," Rolf confessed. "They are digging? But what? Now they're trying to lift something—and digging some more."
"They're clearing some big rocks out of a field, so they can cultivate it," Melissa explained. "They've got lots of them in the wagon already, and that's why there are four horses—it is really heavy. They have to dig some more around the boulder they're working on before they can lift it. There are five big, strong men. I haven't seen many like that around here, except in the army."
"They were probably in Drakonius' army," said Rolf. "He sent his officers to our villages every so often, and took away all healthy boys over fourteen. In the army they got good food, and healers to work on them. The people in my village were glad I'm blind—the army didn't take me, so they had someone to control the weather. What are the men doing now, Melissa?"
"They're trying to lift a boulder. It's too heavy for them—they shouldn't—" She shouted, "Hey! You'll hurt your backs! Let me get an Adept to—"
The five men, straining, had lifted the rock to waist height, their muscles bulging as they staggered toward the wagon—but Melissa had distracted them. Two looked over their shoulders in her direction, and she realized that they did not understand her. "Rolf, tell them—"
One of the distracted men turned his ankle on the uneven ground, throwing the others off balance. They lurched, trying desperately to hold on, unable to drop the boulder without dropping it on themselves—but their muscles were giving out. A second man's leg gave even as the first was scrabbling to regain his hold—both went down, the rock on top of them!
The other three men were forced to let go, and the boulder crushed one man's arm, the other's chest. Screams of pain filled the air—then the man whose chest was crushed fell silent, unconscious.
Melissa rushed to where the three uninjured men were dragging the boulder off the others. "Hold him!" she said, pointing to the man with the broken arm. "He'll be all right if he doesn't move it." When they stared blankly, she said, "Rolf—translate!"