Chapter One

Where do I belong? What should I be doing with my life? Certainly not healing!

Magister Jason was wrong to encourage me. He should have let me quit the first time I lost a patient-then I would not be about to kill my best friend's son!

Looking down at the fretful child, Melissa wished she were anything else but a Reader in the hospital at Gaeta. Alethia trusted her to cure Primus, but how could she? The boy's appendix was inflamed; all their herbs, compresses, and cold packs had failed-and now she would have to try surgery as a last resort. What if Primus died?

She Read within the boy's body, wanting to moan with his pain and fever, studying the swollen, throbbing organ. If this went on, it would burst, spilling poisons throughout the child's system. Then there was no hope at all of saving him. She had to cut out that infected bit of intestine!

For the first time, she was sorry she and Alethia had been reunited. This was why a Reader still in training, like Melissa, was discouraged from keeping up associations with childhood friends who had dropped by the wayside.

Alethia, too, was a Reader, but she now wore the Sign of the Dark Moon, the badge of a Reader who had failed to achieve one of the two top ranks, and for whom a marriage had been arranged. Alethia and Melissa had been fast friends at the Academy. Melissa would never forget the day Alethia, aged seventeen, had been told that her powers had shown no increase in more than a year, and it had been determined that she would go no further.

Alethia had spent the evening sobbing on Melissa's shoulder. Her life was over-both girls were quite convinced of it. She would be married off to a similarly failed male Reader, to breed children who might have the talents they lacked. The loss of her virginity would diminish what powers she had; her badge-a black circle on a field of white-would be the only sign that she was a Reader… a failed Reader.

Melissa had absorbed Alethia's agonized fear that day, and applied herself thereafter with the greatest diligence. Never, she vowed, would she be taken like Alethia, to spend her life producing the children of a stranger and using whatever Reading power she retained to show non-readers where to dig wells or locate their lost sheep.

At eighteen Melissa passed her preliminary examinations and was sent to Gaeta for training in healing. She had arrived in fear, knowing that more than half the Readers who completed the medical training still eventually failed and were married off. It would be better to live as a healer than as a message service and finder of strayed children-but Melissa's heart throbbed to the vibrations of the great hospital. There was pain and suffering here-pain she shared with the patients when she Read them-but Reading the easing of that pain because of' something she had done was the most satisfying use she had ever made of her talent.

Her primary teacher was Magister Jason. They never met face to face, of course-no male and female Reader could unless one or both wore the Sign of the Dark Moon. Celibacy was the rule and the necessity for the upper ranks and those still in training; temptation was to be a voided.

But the touch of Jason's mind was an inspiration to Melissa. Disciplined yet vibrant, he Read with her as she examined patients and learned to interpret the data she gleaned. Medicines, bonesetting, manipulations of joint and muscle-these she learned from the other healers. Jason taught her to look deep within the human body and, when no other means would suffice, to cut into it and make repairs. She quickly progressed from sitting entranced while her mind looked through Jason's eyes, her hands feeling what his were doing, to the day when she herself held the knife, and Jason's mind guided her.

She never wanted to give up the experience of his mental touch. There was only one way to manage that: She must become such an expert healer that she would be invited to stay at Gaeta for the rest of her days, as Jason did. She dreamed of their spending hours each day in deep rapport, healing the sick and injured together. Her skills improved rapidly under his tutelage. She was happy.

And she remained happy… until the first time she had a patient neither medicines nor surgery could cure. They had had no choice-none of their medicines, no applications of herbal packs, nothing would reduce the ulcerating tumor blocking the girl's intestine. All the surgeons hated abdominal surgery, for more than half the time they could not prevent an infection that killed the patient within a few days of gruesome agony.

Melissa had administered the herbalist's latest concoction to the girl. For the next few hours her patient's body temperature would rise dramatically-possibly enough to kill the organisms introduced by surgery. But such high temperatures often caused convulsions that killed the patient more efficiently than the infection.

That was the first time Melissa faced the possible death of a patient. She was still in training; the teachers examined her patient hourly, but none of them offered any advice beyond what she had already tried. She had done everything right-and still her patient would probably die. It was the first time she questioned her desire to spend her life as a healer… and that day brought the reunion that would soon make her question it again.

The girl had drunk the new medicine in total trust, then, in exhaustion and hope, fallen asleep. Melissa left her sleeping, not knowing where she was going, but having to get out of that sickroom for at least a few minutes.

"Melissa, there's a visitor for you in the family room," one of the aides told her.

Melissa cringed. Probably the girl's father again. She gritted her teeth and prepared to face him.

But it was not a man waiting for her. It was a young woman-a very pregnant and obviously happy young woman who wore on her cloak the Sign of the Dark Moon.

"Alethia!" Melissa cried, running to embrace her friend. "Oh, how good to see you again! What are you doing here? There's nothing wrong-?" Automatically she Read Alethia, finding to her relief nothing but a perfectly normal pregnancy, advanced approximately seven months.

"No, there's nothing wrong!" Alethia laughed. "I'm happier than ever in my life, Melissa. My husband and I were just transferred here to Gaeta. I thought you might be taking your medical training by now."

Alethia's pregnancy was her second, it turned out; she had a son almost two years old, who was being cared for by a neighbor while she went visiting. "I can't work now, anyway," she explained. "After about the fourth month, my range is severely limited-but it comes back, Melissa. By the time Primus was six months old, I was Reading as well as I ever could-at least so far as I can tell. Well enough to be wonderfully happy with my husband."

"You are happy? The man the Masters chose for you-?"

"Oh, Melissa, I am so fortunate! You must meet him. When do you have a day off? Come spend the day with me, and meet Rodrigo when he comes home in the evening. He's a navigator for the fishing fleet-finds the schools of fish for them, too. He's good at it-they usually come in with a full catch by the middle of the afternoon."

And how insensitive he must be, Melissa thought, to be able to shut himself off from the deaths of all those captured creatures. Readers occasionally ate fish-but they rarely caught them themselves.

"I'm glad you're so happy, Alethia," Melissa said cautiously. "I have an occasional afternoon off-never a full day. My next afternoon is the day after tomorrow-but I have a very sick patient, and if I cannot leave her-"

"I understand," said Alethia. "Melissa, I cannot Read to the hospital now, to contact you. I'll show you on the city map where our house is. I can still receive perfectly well from a stronger Reader-thank the gods for that, as it allows…" She lowered her voice, and drew Melissa to where they could not be overheard from the hallway. "I want to tell you what it's like for two Readers to be married. If it should happen to you, you mustn't have the blind terror I had-and that Rodrigo had, too. You'll probably be a Magister-even a Master one day. But… they're failing so many Readers… you should know it's not terrible at all to be married. You can Read me; you know I'm really happy, not lying to you. We'll talk when you visit me, Melissa."