"Jean Lorrah - Savage Empire 04 - Flight To the Savage Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lorrah Jean)

way Portia ruled the Academy. But Astra had refused to be bullied into the superficial job other Readers
must have done. She had thoroughly checked the fifteen prostitutes for communicable diseases or
pregnancyтАФand then insisted on Reading Morella, even though she no longer "entertained. "

It didn't take Astra long to find what the bordello owner was trying to hide: pain in her abdomen and
opiates in her bloodstream. Further examination re-

vealed not the cancerous tumor Morella had feared, but merely polyps which any surgeon could easily
remove.

That good news brought tears of relief to Morella's eyes and a great change in her attitude toward Astra.
After the operation and her release from the hospital, Astra had visited her often, both to check on
Morella's recovery and to cultivate the only friendship she had been able to gain since becoming a
Magister Reader. Morella was, Astra had to admit, closer to a motherly counselor than Portia had ever
been to her.

So close had Morella and Astra become that Morella had called for Astra some three months ago, to
help treat one of her women whom Astra had never met before.

"Clea worked for me for almost a year," Morella explained, "but she always complained that she didn't
make enough money. She loves jewelryтАФor she did. She has nothing left now."

"What happened to her?" asked Astra, Reading the pale and silent woman on the bed. The bones of her
face suggested that Clea had been beautiful, but now her skin was gray and taut, her face skeletal, her
hands clawlike.

"Archobus lured her away," explained Morella. "He's an aristocrat who gambles with Vortius. He gave
Clea all the silks and jewels she wantedтАФuntil he got tired of her. Then she became a hanger-on of
Vortius' crowd down at his villa in the southlandsтАж and someone addicted her to white lotus."

And that was how Astra came to recognize that particular taint in a person's blood.

"Morella," Astra said, "there's no herb I can give her, nothing that will cleanse the drug from her body. At
the hospital at Gaeta, all the Readers can do for someone addicted, whether to opiates or to one of these
rarer drugs, is to lock the person up while his body purges itself."

"I know that," said Morella. "That is why Clea came to me. She wants me to restrain herтАФbut she's so
weak, Astra! Can she survive?"

Although painfully thin, Clea was still in reasonably good health. Her heart was sound, and amazingly she
had no disease. "Yes, I think she can survive," said Astra, "but we should take her to the infirmary at the
Academy, where better healers than IтАФ"

"No!" said Morella. "She trusts me. She would see it as betrayal if I turned her over to strangers. I don't
suppose you know much about drug addiction, Ma-gisterтАж but I see it often here in The Maze. Clea has
found the determination to cleanse the drug from her bloodтАФbut it will not last once the pain begins. And
afterwardтАж"

"Afterward, she is likely to go right back to the drug at the first disappointment in her life," said Astra. "At
Gaeta, too, people go through all that suffering, only to return to their drugs."