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companion& but not Aradia.
It had been& real.
He had been in that dog's mind.
He had been& Reading?
Torio had once asked him how he knew where the animals were that he called.
Had his defenseless state of last night dropped some barrier?
He sat beside the pool, and tried to Read. As always, nothing happened. Of
course nothing happened.
He d had a dream, that was all!
So how did he know that a grassy plain lay beyond the jungle?
Well, how did he know? Maybe there was no plain. Maybe there was nothing but
more jungle, and if he went east he would be farther and farther from any
other survivors of the shipwreck. If he went west, he would certainly come
back to the ocean. But wouldn't the shore be where Sukuru expected to find
him?
He had been attacked there once already.
So& east or west?
And then, with chill prickles up his spine, he realized that he knew east from
west. He was no longer lost, although the sun rode too high to be an indicator
of direction, and he had no lodestone. He just knew!
Something had happened to him in the night. Perhaps it really was the opening
of his Reading powers at last. He had to find Astra she'd quickly train him to
use them. But he had to keep from being captured or killed by Sukuru, or by
Z'Nelia's forces, who might assume he was on Sukuru's side.
They knew he was not a Reader. They would assume that, unable to traverse the
jungle, and not knowing that the plain lay within easy distance for an Adept,
he would go back to the sea.
Therefore he would go eastward, to the plain.
By high noon he came to the edge of the jungle. Before him stretched the plain
he had seen in his dream grassland as far as the eye could see, teeming with
life.
Some animals he recognized elephants were used for heavy labor in the Aventine
Empire, and lions had been kept by the Emperor's family as if to demonstrate
their power by their hold on the king of beasts.
But he did not know the names of the many deerlike creatures, large and small,
some with horns that appeared too large for their small heads to carry.
And the birds! Acres of flamingos turned the shore of a lake a brilliant
orangey-pink. Small brown birds hid in the grass, while bright parrots perched
in the occasional tree. Crows and magpies lent their raucous cries to the
snorts of the lions and the trumpeting of the elephants, while above it all
floated an eagle, watching with keen eyes for his prey.
In the grass, besides smaller birds there were mice and rabbits, little
squirrellike animals, snakes, lizards
and chameleons, insects.
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The life of the plain called to something in Wulfston's blood. He was one with
that community of nature under the open sky. It didn't even seem strange that
he was seeing and hearing things too distant or too small and faint to
perceive with his normal senses.
He knew what he had never consciously known before: his ancestors had come
from here, from the plain, not from the jungle where enemies lurked. This& was
home.
As if to reassure himself that he was not imagining his new senses, Wulfston
became aware of two dogs the young dogs of his dream. They were at the edge of
the jungle, in the shade, the male lying down while the female licked at a
nasty wound high on his left hind leg.
They were black, about half-grown. Wulfston understood they had been turned
out of the pack to learn to fend for themselves, and would not be able to join
another pack until they were grown. So they struggled to survive, their once
happy rabbit-chasing no longer a game, but a deadly-earnest search for food.
Wulfston turned, and made out the two dogs because he knew where to look. They
blended into the shadows, but he recognized that their black color would make
them as conspicuous on the golden plain& as he was in the Savage Lands.
Using his power to make animals trust him, Wulfston walked toward the two
dogs. When he came near, he saw that despite the way they had cleaned it with
their tongues, the gash inflicted by the hyena's filthy teeth was starting to
fester.
"Easy, boy," Wulfston murmured, offering his closed hand to the male. The
female bristled, and snarled at him from behind her brother.
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