Several boards were quickly lashed together, and the injured man was carefully lifted onto them and carried to the house near the bathhouse, where the infirmary was. It was an elegant home, with which Sander's wife was greatly pleased, although Lenardo's main motivation in giving it to the healer was the central location and the size, which permitted a number of rooms to be used as a hospital and still leave plenty of room for the family.

Aradia did not seem inordinately fatigued. "When we healed Nerius," Lenardo said, "although it took a long time because the work was so delicate, it was certainly not so much work as you have done already today. Yet both you and Wulfston were so exhausted that you collapsed."

"Oh, no," she replied, "that was enormously harder work. We didn't just move my father's tumor, we destroyed it. There was no Way to burn it or otherwise remove it in a natural way. It had to be disintegrated, made not to be. That was more against nature than any work I have ever done before or since."

Made not to be. A chill went through Lenardo as he realized the implications of what he had Read but not understood. I didn't understand because I could not conceive of such a thing. He still could not, but he let it pass. There was work to be done.

Lenardo, Aradia, and Sandor set to work on the injured man's arm and leg. It was tedious work, combining physical manipulation wherever they could with Adept influence to align the bones and set every chip and splinter back in place. Again, Lenardo found an astonishing rapport with Aradia. The work did not seem to tire her beyond what the same amount of physical labor would have done. Perhaps she had regained her full strength. Lenardo was glad. He no longer wanted to blunt her powers.

When they finally finished, it was late afternoon. Sandor, pale and drawn, was assured that his patient was healing now and was sent off to sleep himself.

"You should sleep, too, Aradia," said Lenardo.

"Oh, I will, but first I want a bath and some food."

"I can't believe you're not as tired as Sandor. You did far more of the work."

"But I am a Lady Adept, fully empowered. I am bone-weary, Lenardo, but I won't collapse. Give me a good meal and let me sleep through till I wake on my own, and tomorrow I won't know I did all that today."

They found the patient's wife waiting in the hall, three children clustered around her. She had already been told that her husband would recover fully, and her gratitude rang far beyond her inadequate words.

"Your husband's going to be just fine," Lenardo told her. "If you and your children need anything before he's better, come to me."

The woman managed a smile at Lenardo's naivete. "Brad ain't my husband, not like fine ladies got. But he's my man, and these is his children. I guess we're just stuck like glue."

"Some people are," Aradia murmured. "Now, don't you worry. You can go in and look at your man if you want to, but he'll be sound asleep for several days. Then you'll have to care for him until he gets his strength back."

"Oh, my lady, 'twas fate you was nearby! The other men said Brad was so scared he didn't even cry out."

As she and Lenardo left the building, Aradia said in a puzzled tone, "I know I heard him scream. That's why I came running."

"You must have heard the explosion."

"No, I don't remember hearing that at all, just a scream of such fear and pain-" She shivered.

"Whatever brought you there, I'm thankful," said Lenardo. "I am partly responsible for what happened to Brad. I Read the crack in the foundation, and I Read the sewer line close to the buildings along there and warned them not to break it."

"Well, then, it was the man's own carelessness."

"No, it was mine. I didn't even think to Read for gas in those pipes. Then that work was interrupted for the festival, and the workmen had proabably forgotten all about my warning by the time they got back to it." He sighed. "There ought to be a Reader checking every work crew every day. A child could have prevented the accident today, not by Reading the gas but by Reading the pipe."

Aradia studied him, but it was obvious that she was too tired to concentrate. "Lenardo, we will talk tomorrow. Right now I need a bath, a good meal, and sleep."

Although she knew that she would be virtually unconscious from the moment she lay down, Aradia insisted that Lenardo come and sleep with her. He finished his interrupted work, inspected the city as he did each evening without leaving his room-but with more thoroughness than usual-and then crossed the forum to Aradia's pavilion. The guards and Aradia's maid said pleasantly, "Good night, my lord," as he passed. His presence on this night when Aradia was already deep in the Adepts' recuperative sleep confirmed their certainty that whatever the reason a Reader and a Lady Adept were spending their nights together, it wasn't sex.

Lenardo slept almost as deeply as Aradia but woke as the pale light of early dawn filtered into the pavilion. Beside him, Aradia lay curled up on her side, her hair spread across the pillow, the covers pulled up to her chin against the chill of early morning. I think it's time, he told himself, that I stop having the rain diverted around Zendi and invite Aradia into my house. But instead, she might leave. Yes, Lenardo admitted, he knew perfectly well why up to now he had avoided suggesting the obvious.

Aradia would probably not waken before noon, but he had time before he had to be up, and so he lay comfortably in the warm bed and Read outward. In the outer chamber, Aradia's maid was also sleeping. Outside the pavilion, her guards were moving back and forth to keep awake until their replacements came. Otherwise, the forum was empty, but Lenardo Read a few early risers wakening here and there. Soon, from his own house, Dom came to fill buckets at the fountain, and he read Cook poking the kitchen maid to make her get up and start work.

It was a shivery cool morning with a promise of autumn. Lenardo began to Read visually to enjoy the beauty of the sunrise. It was something he did perhaps four or five times a year, but each time it brought back the morning he had taken seven-year-old Torio up to the Academy tower and let the little blind boy see the sunrise through his eyes. Master Clement had scolded Lenardo, who had just passed his own exams the year before, for awakening in the boy a yearning for something he would not be able to do for a year or more. But within six months Torio was Reading visually with ease, and Lenardo was quite certain that it was because he had learned to want to see such beauty.

This morning the sunrise was equally beautiful, breaking through the clouds in a palette of magnificent colors. I wonder if Torio is watching the sunrise today.

As effortlessly as forming the thought, Lenardo was in a room he had never seen before, where Torio, still in his nightshirt, was standing "looking" out the window. Before the boy's sightless eyes were the buildings of a city, blocking any view of the sun until it was far overhead. But Torio was indeed watching the sunrise, seeing it in unrestricted glory by Reading.

Confused, Lenardo wondered where the boy could be, so close by? And then he recognized the city: Tiberium.

Heart pounding, Lenardo sat up in shock, but even so he lost neither clarity nor contact. He was really Reading Tiberium, and directly, all the way from Zendi, without leaving his body!

But that's impossible!

//What's im- Master Lenardo! Is that you?//

Beside Lenardo, Aradia woke with a start. "What's wrong?"

Not knowing what to tell Torio, Lenardo withdrew without confirming contact. Let the boy think it was his imagination.

"Nothing's wrong," he assured Aradia, although he did not at all understand what had happened. Could it have been my imagination?