Jean Lorrah

Dragonlord of the Savage Empire

Chapter One

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.

The peasant took in Lenardo's fine clothes and the wolf s-head pendant hanging on his breast. Then he stared at the sword Lenardo wore and asked hesitantly, "My lord?"

Lenardo understood his confusion. If a Lord Adept could not use his magical powers, neither could he then use a sword. But I'm not a Lord Adept. I'm not fit to be a lord at all.

Before Lenardo could answer, Arkus said, "Bow to your new lord. And then speak, before his first act in this land is to punish you."

The peasants fell to their knees, and their spokesman babbled, "Oh, my lord-be welcome! The boy was a Reader, my lord-your enemy. We only killed one with the witch-sight-"

"Enough," Lenardo got out past the lump in his throat. He knew that they killed Readers here, had known the danger he faced when he left the empire on his quest into the savage lands-but that would change now. "I am-" he began, but Helmuth cut him off.

"This is Lenardo, your ruler. Never again will you take the law into your hands this way. You will take your problems to the magistrate Lord Lenardo appoints or to my lord himself."

The peasants were astonished, Lenardo Read. Drakonius, the Adept who had ruled this land for many years, had taken no interest in the problems of the common people, except to punish them if they did not provide enough men and food for his armies.

"Listen well to Helmuth's words," Lenardo said. "There will be a system of justice in this land." He could not yet bring himself to say "my land." "Never again will you kill someone without a proper hearing."

"But he was a Reader, my lord."

"He was not-"

Again Helmuth cut him off, this time recalling that he could communicate directly with Lenardo without the peasants' knowing. //They are terrified enough, my lord. Do not let rumor destroy you before you prove you can rule.// "He was not given a hearing," the old man said aloud. "You cannot be certain he was a Reader at all."

Lenardo was sweating after the hard ride, the pain, and his own nervous tension. He flung back the light cloak he had put on against the early-morning chill, exposing his right forearm, where the dragon's head, mark of the Aventine Exile, was burnt deep and permanently into his flesh. It was long-healed now, and he had grown accustomed to it, but when the peasants saw it, they gasped.

Lenardo felt their eyes devouring him in a strange combination of hope and fear. Then the man who spoke for them cried, "The white wolf and the red dragon! The boy was right. And he was a Reader, my lord, to have seen ye so."

No, the boy had not been a Reader. Lenardo knew that but accepted Helmuth's caution and didn't say it. Instead, he said, "Should you suspect anyone else of Reading, you will do him no harm. He is to be brought to me in Zendi. Is that clear?"