The Darkness Before the Dawn

Chapter Nine

The answer to that became apparent a moment later when he opened his eyes to find a blurry Kayan bending over him, one hand held against his forehead and another on his chest. His body still burned with pain, but that was already fading.

He tried to speak, but his tongue was still swollen where he'd bitten it.

Kayan? he mindsent.

Who did you expect? she answered.

I-I didn't expect anyone. I thought I was dead.

So did I. I heard you convulsing, and I came in here to find you bleeding to death. What did you do to yourself?

He tried to sit up, but Kayan pushed him back. Not yet. You're still bleeding. What did you do?

I, um, I went into the other crystal.

You idiot. Jedra felt her anger course down through her arms into him, burning worse than the knife wounds.

"Aaahh!" he cried aloud. Stop it!

Sorry. She took a deep breath, and he felt the soothing flow of her healing power wash through him again. That doesn't explain these wounds, she said.

Jedra's vision cleared, and he saw the scowl on Kayan's face. I was stabbed! he told her. A gang of children attacked me, and I couldn't get away.

Children? she asked contemptuously.

Young boys, he said. The oldest was two or three years younger than me. They were tough enough, though. They surrounded me, and they beat me up, and then they cut me.

What did you do to them? she asked.

Nothing! I was trying to find a way out of there, but nothing I tried would work. I was thinking of what else I could do when they jumped me.

Uh-huh. Kayan obviously didn't believe him. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back, and Jedra could see the tendons in her neck. By the dim light coming through the window and the skylight, it looked like late evening-only two days, then, since their ordeal in Yoncalla's world. She still hadn't recovered from her near-starvation there, and here she was trying to heal him.

Stop, he said, trying again to sit up and succeeding this time. You've done enough. I can heal myself from here.

You think so? Kayan tugged open his tunic-bloody, but still in one piece-and pointed to the dozens of red scars crisscrossing his chest. Some of these are deep. I'll say when you 're safe on your own. Now lie back down.

Jedra did as he was told. Kayan rubbed her hands up and down his body, spreading health wherever she touched. While she did, he told her about the crystal world with its tall buildings and its streets full of careening chariots and its millions of people flowing like rivers. Kayan listened to him, but when he wound down she said, I don't know who's crazier, the immortal who lives there or you for going in alone in the first place. I wouldn't believe a word of it if it weren't for these knife wounds.

Jedra shook his head. How could those have happened here? My body was here the whole time, wasn't it?

The power of the mind is greater than you know. Kayan lifted up a flap of his tunic. This didn't even get damaged, except for bloodstains, but your mind was evidently convinced you were being stabbed in that other world, so it recreated the wounds you felt while you were there.

I'd just as soon it hadn't, he replied. But thank you for repairing the damage. Can I sit up now?

Go ahead.

Jedra did, holding on to her arm for support, but rather than let go when he made it upright he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

"Just don't do it again," she murmured.

"What, this?" He kissed her again.

"You know what I mean."

"I do." He reached over and picked up the crystal off the floor beside the blood-drenched sleeping cushion. He hefted it in his hand, contemplating its fate. The way he felt right now he could smash it to splinters, but when he tried to throw it against the stone wall he couldn't bring himself to do it, even to as outrageous and unfriendly a world as that. Psionics didn't work there; he couldn't know if all those millions of people were truly mindless, or if he just couldn't sense them. And the immortal who'd created them, if that's how the world had come to be... no matter how crazy he'd grown in his millennia of isolation, it wasn't Jedra's place to judge him.

But he didn't want to leave it for someone else to stumble across. He got up and took the crystal into the kitchen, where he stuck it in through the pump spout and levitated it all the way down the shaft, past the lifting valve, and on into the deep recesses of the well.

There. The inhabitants could go on about their bizarre business without hurting anyone now.

As long as he was in the kitchen, he began preparing a meal. He took more inix steaks out of the cold-box- pausing to still the heat that had leaked into it while he'd been away-and rummaged through the vegetable storage bins until he found the makings for stew, Kayan joined him, helping cut things and putting everything into a pot that Jedra heated psionically, and within a half hour the whole house smelled wonderful. They were both suddenly ravenous; they sat down across from each other at Kitarak's oversized table and began to devour the stew like tigones at a fresh kill.

The last of the daylight had faded by the time their stew finished cooking; they ate by candlelight. After his second bowl, Jedra looked across the table at Kayan's shadowy form and said, "Do you forgive me?"

"For what?" she asked, her spoon half raised to her mouth.

"For everything."

"That's a lot to forgive someone for."

"I suppose." He took another bite. "On the other hand, think how virtuous it'll make you feel."

"Hmm. That's a point." She ate another few bites. "I know what you're thinking."

Jedra laughed. "Then tell me so we'll both know."

"You're thinking we should ask Kitarak to come back and finish teaching us what we need to know."

He hadn't been thinking that-he'd only wanted to reconcile with Kayan-but now that she mentioned it, that did sound like a good idea. "Do you think he'd come?" he asked. "It's only been a few days."

Kayan shrugged. "All we can do is ask him and see."

"All right." Jedra reached out his right hand and took her left. "Let's see if we can find him."

Their mental union felt like old times-the intense rush of pleasure, the complete blending of their personalities, the orders-of-magnitude increase in their power. They concentrated on the unique signature of Kitarak's mind and sent their message radiating out to find him wherever he had gone: We're ready for you to come home now.

With mindsending they couldn't tell where their target was, or even if he had heard them, but they kept their minds open for a response, which was only a few seconds in coming.

I'd love to, but I'm temporarily indisposed. I've been captured and forced into the gladiator games in Tyr. Along with his words came an image of the tohr-kreen standing outside the city's walls, so absorbed in measuring the northness with his tinkercraft jernan that he didn't notice the soldiers until they had completely surrounded him.

We'll come get you out, they told him.

That will be difficult, Kitarak said. They have four psionicists in conjunction at all times to keep me under control. In fact, I'm surprised they haven't detec-His voice cut off in midword.

Looks as if they just did. Jedra and Kayan imagined themselves hovering over the city, and within a heartbeat their center of consciousness was there, looking down into the immense gladiator arena at the base of the half-finished ziggurat.

From above, the city of Tyr looked like two colorful plates just barely overlapping. The smaller one held the sorcerer-king's palace and gardens, while the larger one held the ziggurat, the arena, the elven market and the merchant district, and every kind of dwelling from nobles' houses to the warrens to the slave pits. Streets provided the cracks, like crazing in the glaze of a much-used piece of pottery.

Fitting, Jedra and Kayan thought when they saw the likeness, for despite the enormous ziggurat still under construction in the middle of it, Tyr was an old city. They focused their attention on the slave pits-the deep excavation into which the king's captives were herded when they weren't fighting or working on the ziggurat- but they didn't see any sign of a tohr-kreen among the milling mass of unfortunate humans and demihumans. They checked the arena itself, but no games were being fought today and Kitarak wasn't among the dozen or so gladiators practicing in the dusty red field. He wasn't among the myriad slaves toiling on the ziggurat, either.

Considering Kitarak's talents, his captors would need a powerful suppression field. Jedra and Kayan scanned the city for one, blanking out as much of the other detail as they could until the city itself was a mere shadow, and when they did that their target became obvious. High on the hill on which the nobles had built their mansions rested a single intense sphere of blackness. That was good news. Kitarak would get better treatment from a noble than from the sorcerer-king or any of his templars. But even so, slavery was slavery; Jedra and Kayan weren't about to let him remain captive.

Assuming Kitarak was inside the suppression-field bubble.

Let's look at it in regular light, Jedra suggested, and the estates themselves grew more substantial. The one that housed the force bubble was built like a miniature version of the city itself. A twenty-foot-high wall ran all around a cluster of low stone buildings, all of which in turn encircled a two-story dwelling built of wood. Whoever had captured Kitarak was rich even for a noble, wood was the most expensive building material in Athas. The mansion was big enough to contain an open courtyard in the center, in which two tall trees provided shade and over which the inner rooms looked. Observation towers rose from the outside corners of both the mansion and the outer wall enclosing the grounds, and two guards armed with crossbows waited at constant alert atop each tower. Evidently the noble who owned all this was as paranoid as he was rich.

Ah, the price of success, Kayan said with amusement, but she and Jedra were anything but amused when they realized that they would have to get past those guards somehow. Not to mention the dozens of others who patrolled the compound on foot, and probably hundreds more inside the bunkhouses. The bubble of force that presumably held Kitarak had disappeared beneath the roof of one of the low buildings at the rear of the compound. That was probably the gladiators' quarters, judging by the bloodstained practice field in front of it. Jedra and Kayan lowered their viewpoint until they could see in through the barred windows, and sure enough there was Kitarak, bound in chains by all four arms and linked to an enormous bolt that ran completely through the back wall. Two other slaves-a human man and an elven woman-were also chained to the wall. The prisoners had enough chain to allow them to sit or lie down on their cots, but no more.

The four psionicists guarding them-two young women and two bored-looking old men, one of them elven-sat in comfortable chairs across the building's single room. That could explain how Jedra and Kayan had reached Kitarak and how he had managed to reply before they had stopped him. His guards had been too relaxed, saving their energy for when they needed it, but they were alert now.

Kitarak didn't see them looking in, for there was nothing there to see. Their bodies were still back at his house in the canyon. The psionicists might detect their presence if they looked, but they were worried about trouble from Kitarak, not from outside. Jedra and Kayan could take advantage of that. They slipped around to the back of the house to where the bolt in the wall stuck out through the stone. A large iron washer and a nut held it in place. Jedra and Kayan concentrated their telekinetic power on the nut, but it was rusted tight, and they couldn't muster enough force at such a long distance to budge it. Nor could they affect anything inside the building at all; the suppression field stopped their power as well as Kitarak's.

We'll have to get closer so our power will be stronger, Jedra said as they withdrew so as not to alert the psionicists to their presence.

They rose up until they could see the entire city again, memorizing the location of the noble's estate. If they came in through the city's main gate, the caravan gate, it would be high to their left.

They had seen what they came to see. Every moment they stayed linked was costing them energy, so with the speed of thought they returned to Kitarak's house, and without pausing this time, they broke their link. They sagged back onto their chairs, tired and suddenly depressed.

"What were we thinking?" Jedra asked, leaning back and holding his hand to his forehead. "We can't just march into Tyr and break Kitarak out of an armed estate. We're strong, but we're not invincible." "No," Kayan said, "but we are responsible."

She said, "I mean we're morally obligated to try. Kitarak left the safety of his own home because of us."

Jedra nodded. "That's true." He took a deep breath and straightened up. "But we won't do him any good if we don't have a plan."

"Then let's get busy and make one."

They finished the entire pot of stew while they plotted a three-pronged attack. First they would create a diversion, to draw the bulk of the soldiers away from the slave quarters. They would use Kayan's medical power to sicken anyone who remained so they couldn't fight, and then they would use telekinesis to knock down the slave quarters. The psionic guards would prevent the falling rubble from harming themselves or their charges, but while their power was being used for that, they would be vulnerable to mental attack. If Jedra and Kayan let Kitarak know who was responsible for the commotion, he would undoubtedly join in and help overpower the guards, and then the three of them could make their escape.

"What if they move him?" Jedra asked.

Kayan got up and took her bowl to the sink. "Then we modify the plan at the rime."

"What if the psionicists are stronger than we are?"

"Nothing is stronger than we are," she said, washing out the bowl with water from the jug. "They might have better control, but this doesn't require a lot of precision."

Jedra took his bowl and the stew pot over to the sink and held them upside down, then telekinetically pulled the debris from them and dropped it into the drain. He was uncomfortable with her degree of confidence, but he supposed she might be right at that. They had slammed a cloud ray to the ground and leveled an entire city by accident; they should be able to handle four distracted psionicists.

Even so, he shuddered when he thought about it. Kitarak's training hadn't affected one thing: Jedra still hated fighting, no matter how good the odds.

They left at first light the next morning. They had loaded their backpacks with supplies, but they were supplies for surviving in a city, not for crossing the desert. To do that they held on to each other tightly, joined minds again, and levitated up out of the canyon, then redirected the wind to blow them across the sky toward Tyr.

The view from the sky was exhilarating. Actually being there was somehow more exciting than leaving their bodies on the ground and peeking at things through psionic vision. They flew high enough to reach cool air, and from that altitude the canyonlands passed beneath them like a wrinkled blanket sliding off a bed. The deepest valleys held patches of greenery at the bottoms, and some were obviously inhabited.

Tyr slid up from below the horizon like a blotch on the land. First came the pall of dust and smoke hanging over it, then came the city itself, its hills and towers and the dominating ziggurat ringed all around by a great stone wall. Jedra and Kayan lowered themselves to the ground when they were still a few miles out so they wouldn't attract attention, and walked over a low ridge to join the caravan road linking it to the other cities of Athas. As they approached the road they encountered a steady stream of people, but instead of the usual comings and goings around a city, everyone was headed inward. They didn't stop at the main gate, either, but veered off to the right around the fields.

"What's all the excitement?" Jedra asked one of the other walkers. He was an old man in a threadbare gray cloak, leaning heavily on a wooden staff held in his right hand.

"Don't you know?" the man asked incredulously. He cackled in glee and said, "It's game day, boy!"

"Game day?" Jedra asked, but a sinking feeling in his stomach told him all he needed to know. "Gladiator games?"

"Of course gladiator games!" The man thumped his staff on the ground. "You don't think I'd come all the way into town just to see somebody run a footrace, do you? Blood and guts! Brains on the sand! Yessir, that's entertainment."

Jedra paled. It wasn't his idea of fun, but he tried to put on an eager expression all the same. This would provide the perfect opportunity to enter the city without being noticed.

He and Kayan fell in beside the old man, who hobbled along on his good leg and his prop for the next half mile or so, but as they drew closer to the city his pace began to speed up and his staff barely touched the ground. "Hee hee," he cackled. "I'm like a kank headed to the barn! It does my old bones good to watch a gladiator get whacked. Nothing like it to get the juices flowing."

Jedra didn't ask whose juices he meant. He didn't bother to correct the man, either, but he suspected that ayan had a lot more to do with the old codger's sudden spryness than any amount of bloodlust.

"You got gypped," the old man said when he returned with the melon, but Jedra suspected he was merely put out that Jedra hadn't bought one for him as well. He didn't particularly care who ate the thing; he had bought it for looks.

The guards at the stadium gate paid no special attention to the three of them as they passed into the city. When asked their business, the old man said, "We're here t'see the games," and Jedra held up the melon to back him up.

"Don't throw that," one guard said, laughing. "You'll kill someone with that hard thing." But he let them through the gate. Just inside, hordes of merchants had set up booths and were hawking wares of all sorts to the even larger horde of spectacle-goers. The old man harumphed and grumbled his way past the jewelry and clothing stands, complaining bitterly about the poor craftsmanship and high prices. He sloshed his own waterskin gleefully at the water vendors and paused at the fruit stands only to malign the quality of the produce, but when he reached the barbecue pits he stopped and inhaled the greasy smoke as if it were the sweetest perfume.

He looked to Jedra. "Buy me a slab of that, boy, and I'll show you and your girl the best seats in the stadium."

Jedra wasn't sure he wanted the best seats, but if Kitarak were forced to fight today, he supposed a good view would be essential to helping him. How they could do that he didn't know, but they would have to try. So he bought the old man a greasy slice off a barbecued mekillot haunch that looked big enough to feed the entire city for a week, and they proceeded into the stadium.

Pike-wielding ushers directed them up into the top section of seats. Jedra thought at first that they were getting preferential treatment until he realized that the upper section provided shade for the lower one, which was closer to the floor of the arena. That suited him fine, though. As long as he could see, he didn't care to be close enough to smell the action as well. The old man led them up into the crowd, stepping on toes and nudging people aside with his staff as he climbed, eventually choosing a section of stone bench halfway up the stands and two-thirds of the way down from the palace toward the ziggurat.

"What's so special about these seats?" Jedra asked.

The old man bit into the meat Jedra had bought him, chewed, and said around the mouthful, "I told you I'd show you the best seats. So there they are." He pointed to the rows of balconies overlooking the stadium from the eastern wall of the palace, on the side of the stadium opposite the ziggurat. Gaily dressed templars and those nobles who were currently in favor with the sorcerer-king lined the balconies, ignoring the crowds below while they dined and drank before the games began.

The old man cackled at his own joke. "These, on the other hand, are the best that were left, and that's the truth. We'll still see plenty from here." He took another bite, letting the grease and sauce drip off the end of his grizzled chin.

Cart you believe this guy? Kayan asked, resting her head against Jedra's shoulder.

I'd be afraid to, Jedra replied. He gave Kayan a hug. He could sense her unease in this crowd. The last time she had been in a city, she had been among the templars. Jedra was used to life among the rabble, but Tyr was a strange city and knowing why he and Kayan were here made him even more nervous.

The crowd grew around them until the stadium was nearly full. The noise of thousands of conversations blended into a continual roar, much like the roar of the city Jedra had discovered in the second crystal world. Occasional fights broke out among spectators who couldn't wait for the action to start below, but the ushers quickly quelled them. The threat of their pikes put a peaceful stop to most disagreements, but they had to yank one drunken brawler up to the top of the stands and toss him over the side to break up one fight. The crowd roared its approval, then roared even louder when they turned back around and saw the crier walking out into the middle of the arena.

The crier raised his hands, and a hush settled over the crowd. He spoke, welcoming everyone to the games and announcing the first combatants, but Jedra didn't recognize either name.

The other people in the crowd, however, did. They roared their approval when a swarthy, leather-clad man bearing a club and a short sword climbed up the steps from the pens below the ziggurat and paced out into the middle of the arena, and they roared again when a lithe blonde woman in a breechcloth and halter and carrying a longer sword and a whip stepped out after him. The two took up positions about twenty feet from each other, the man flexing his arms and brandishing his weapons for the audience while the woman just stood there, her whip trailing behind her, ready for action.

Jedra fought to keep himself from throwing up. He'd heard that some gladiator games started with executions, but he'd never imagined that they would throw an untrained woman in the arena against a trained gladiator and make them fight to the death.

At a shout from the crier they sprang into action, and the woman instantly made Jedra realize he'd misjudged her. She lashed out with her whip and cut a gash in the man's hairy chest with her very first blow. The crack echoed across the stands, and the crowd cheered. The man stepped forward as if he hadn't even been hit, his short sword held out vertically before him, but he danced back when the woman flicked the whip toward him again. He leaned in and back, in and back, while she popped at his arms and legs with the lash. A few people booed him for his caution, but the man bided his time, learning the woman's rhythm. Then, in the middle of another motion just like all the others, he sliced out with his sword instead of backing off, and a three-foot piece of whip flew end-over-end over his shoulder.

The woman tried to change her rhythm to match the shorter whip, but it took her a few tries, and by the time she got it right the man had leaped toward her and thrown his club directly at her stomach. She staggered back, stunned, and the man swept in and stabbed her cleanly below her left breast before she could even raise her own sword to guard herself. When he pulled his sword free, bright red blood flooded out over her white belly, running down her leg and dripping to the sand. She looked up at him with wide eyes, then she folded over like a closed book and toppled to the ground.

While the crowd cheered, the gladiator bowed to the king and the templars, then to the stands on both sides of the arena. Then, almost tenderly, he picked up the woman's body and bore it out of the stadium. The way her arms and legs and head dangled limply from his cradling hands haunted Jedra for minutes after-right up until the next bloody execution of an elf who had been given a spear to defend himself against an armored dwarven gladiator with a double-bladed axe. The elf definitely had the reach on the dwarf, but the result was nearly the same. The moment the dwarf disarmed him, the fight was as good as over. Of course the crowd wasn't satisfied until the dwarf had hacked the elf's head completely free of his body, even though it took three swings to do it.

What will they do to me if I throw up? Jedra asked Kayan.

I don't know, but it probably wouldn't be good, she replied. Here. She put her hand over his stomach, and his inner turmoil receded somewhat. The horror he felt at the slaughter still remained, but at least now he wouldn't adorn the spectators around him with his lunch.

Thank you, he said.

Now that he wasn't so focused on his discomfort from the gore, he realized how hot he was. That was easy enough to fix; he used the same talent he had learned to keep Kitarak's cold-box frozen and created a layer of cool air around himself and Kayan. He noticed the old man still sweating freely in the sun and guiltily lowered the temperature a degree or two around him as well. The excess heat had to go somewhere, so he found a particularly unruly fan a few rows below and dumped it on him. The man gasped and fanned himself with a fold of his robe, and sure enough, after a few minutes he quieted down.

There were two more executions, and then the real games started. Professional gladiators entered the arena in pairs and hacked and sliced at each other on the sand below while the people in the stands leaped to their feet and cheered loud enough to drown out the clash of weapons and even the screams when one gladiator wounded another. Each match featured minor variations in sex or species or number of combatants, but they were all essentially the same mindless spectacle. Jedra let his thoughts drift off to run one more time through their plans to break Kitarak free, but his attention snapped back to the crier again the moment he heard the tohr-kreen's name announced.

Straining for the words over the restless crowd, he heard, "... accused of practicing sorcery within the boundaries of the city... sold at auction to the House of Rokur... now does battle with his native weapons, the gythka and the kyorkcha, against the defending champion, the half-giant Dochak of the House of Bran."

The crowd-including the old man-booed when Kitarak stepped out from beneath the ziggurat into the arena. He carried his expanding polearm in his upper left hand and the curved throwing weapon in his upper right, plus two small shields held in his lower hands. He bowed even though he was being booed. The crowd cheered for Dochak, an enormous hulk of sun-darkened flesh who stood taller and outweighed even the ten-foot-high tohr-kreen. Surprisingly, instead of the usual club or spear that half-giants generally used for weapons, this one carried a dejada, a throwing weapon that used a long, scooped basket for a sling to propel a variety of projectiles called pelota. He also carried a small shield in his left hand, the projectile-holding one.

"Oh, he's quick," Jedra assured him, but he was thinking, I hope he's quick enough.

The crier shouted "Go," and the battle started. Dochak immediately flung a pelota at Kitarak, who easily raised a shield to fend it off. Kitarak flung his kyorkcha at the half-giant, who raised his own shield. He barely clipped the edge of the spinning blade with it, but that was enough to deflect it and send it flying high into the air. The crowd gasped when it looked as if the weapon would land in the stands, but it curved around and spun back to Kitarak's outstretched hand.

He's using psionics, too, Jedra said to Kayan.

It looks like he is. They must let him do a little before they come down on him.

Jedra felt himself relax. If Kitarak could use psionics, then the battle was over already. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly while the half-giant threw a wicked, spiked pelota that stuck dead-center in Kitarak's right-hand shield, and another that veered away under psionic deflection and bounced with a loud crack off the stone wall below the king and the templars.

Kitarak threw the kyorkcha again, and this time it swooped low beneath the half-giant's shield and sliced deep into his left thigh before spinning around and returning to the tohr-kreen's hand. Dochak bellowed with rage as blood began to run down his leg. Taking advantage of the wound, Kitarak leaped forward, flicking his upper left hand to slide the gythka out to full extension, and brought it down in a blow that would have taken off the half-giant's head if he hadn't managed to shield himself in time. The multibladed hacking end of the polearm thudded into the wood and stuck there. Kitarak tried to wrench it free, but the half-giant reached out and snatched the metal handle before the tohr-kreen could work it loose. With one wrench of his meaty hand the half-giant crumpled the hollow tube and snapped it off, leaving the blade embedded in his shield and leaving Kitarak holding a much-shortened gythka with only the thrusting blade left on the opposite end.

The crowd roared, and Jedra groaned, but Kitarak might have planned it that way all along for all the dismay he showed. He merely whirled the gythka around and lunged past the half-giant's outstretched arms to stab him in the belly.

Dochak staggered back, limping on his wounded leg, but his vital organs were deeper than Kitarak had managed to penetrate. He hardly bled from the new wound. In fact, he acted as if he barely felt it. He loaded his dejada and flung the projectile in one smooth motion, and this time he connected, striking Kitarak in the upper right shoulder joint. Chips of chitinous exoskeleton sprayed out from the impact, and the pelota careened into the lower stands, striking a slave on the head and dropping him like a limp rag.

"That's another reason why these are the good seats," cackled the old man. "We don't have a row of slaves to stand between us and harm's way like the nobles do, so we need time to duck."

Jedra shushed him, his attention riveted on the battle. Kitarak was hurt! His arm had fallen to his side, useless, but he dropped his shield on that side and took the kyorkcha in his lower hand, then flung it at Dochak at the same close range. The spinning blade nicked the half-giant's neck, and this time blood flowed freely, cascading down over his shoulder and chest.

Kitarak backed off and retrieved the kyorkcha as it completed its circular path. He had to dodge another pelota, but the half-giant's aim and speed weren't what they had been at the start, and the projectile hit the sand behind him and bounced to a stop before it even reached the end of the stadium. The tohr-kreen kept his distance, waiting for the half-giant to bleed to death, but a few people began to shout, "Kill him!" and pretty soon the entire crowd took up the chant. A few pieces of rotten fruit flew over the edge of the balcony toward the tohr-kreen, and the old man even snatched up the melon Jedra had bought and heaved it forward, where it struck the same unfortunate fan that Jedra had overheated.

Jedra didn't care. He was suddenly even more afraid for Kitarak than he had been when the tohr-kreen was injured. A gladiator couldn't ignore such a demand from the crowd, at least not a slave. If he did, his owner would punish him for spoiling the game, probably by handicapping him so severely next time that his death would be certain. Kitarak must have known that too, but still he hesitated, clearly not wanting to strike the final blow. His opponent was dying anyway, though, and at last Kitarak bowed to the crowd's desire: he threw his remaining shield at the half-giant, spinning it edge-on toward his head, and when Dochak swept it aside with his own shield, Kitarak threw both the kyorkcha and the shortened gythka at him. Both weapons thudded home and stuck, the curved kyorkcha sticking out of the half-giant's forehead like a single upraised horn, and the gythka quivering from his breastbone, which it had penetrated clear to the hilt of the blade.

Kitarak bowed to the king as was required of the winner, then retrieved his weapons from the corpse and left the stadium. Jedra stood up and said, "Time to go stretch my legs." To Kayan he said, Come on, let's get out of here.

She grinned mischievously and said, Aw, I was just starting to enjoy it, but she stood and went along with him.

They left the old man cheering at the next gladiators-a pair of identical twin women fighting a heat-deranged erdlu-and worked their way down out of the stands and through the vendors' court into the city itself.

The streets were quiet. Everyone who would normally have been out was at the gladiatorial games, so Jedra and Kayan had the chance to check out Tyr without the normal hustle and bustle. It gave the city a rural feel, more like a large town than a major hub of commerce. The only thing that marred the afternoon's tranquility was the mountainous hulk of the ziggurat in the center of town. It dominated the skyline, a vast, malign presence that seemed to watch them no matter where they went.

They skirted it to the north, walking through the nearly silent tradesmen's district and along the edge of the equally deserted warrens before reaching the merchants' district and the great Caravan Way that led past the nobles' mansions to the city's main gate. The open market was still doing business, and Jedra was glad to see that not everyone had abandoned their normal lives to go watch people kill each other for sport. He and Kayan wandered among the stalls, Jedra for the first time in his life with enough money to buy whatever he wanted, but with no place to keep any of it. So they just admired the jewelry and the fine clothing and sniffed at the spices and perfumes from far-off lands.

Toward evening they found an inn called the Dragon's Tail that served good food, and they ordered a sumptuous meal-the first time Jedra had ever been waited on. They ate broiled cloud ray and drank expensive wine by candlelight, laughing as Jedra levitated his steak a few inches off his plate and made a crashing noise when he let it drop again, spraying vegetables all over the wooden table. He sliced off a bite of the light-colored meat and held it up on his fork. "This is my revenge for that morning in the elf camp," he said, and bit into it. "Mmmm." It was juicy and flaky and tasted almost buttery, a little like the sea bug he had eaten in Yoncalla's world.

"I wonder if the elves got tired of eating the cloud ray we killed before they moved on," Kayan said.

"I imagine they did," answered Jedra. "Hah. That seems like a whole lifetime ago, doesn't it?"

"It sure does." Kayan raised her wine glass in toast. "To the Jura-Dai, may they never run afoul of our likes again."

Jedra wasn't sure he wanted to toast the tribe that had kicked them out into the desert to die, but he supposed, now that he had survived the ordeal, he could let bygones be bygones. So he raised his glass and said, "May we never run across their likes again, either." He drained his glass, amazed at how the sweet white wine flowed so smoothly down his throat. He refilled both his and Kayan's glasses from the bottle and took another swallow.

"Have I ever told you how beautiful you are?" he asked.

"No," Kayan said. "Why don't you?"

Jedra laughed. "All right. You're beautiful. I like the way the candlelight sparkles in your eyes. And I like the way your mouth turns up at the corners when you're waiting for me to embarrass myself. And I like the way it puckers out when you're about to kiss me." He leaned forward and puckered his own lips in exaggerated fashion. She giggled, but she kissed him.

"I like the way your hair falls forward around the sides of your face," he went on. "It makes you look dark and mysterious."

"Does it?"

"Uh-huh."

"What else?"

Jedra laughed. "Let's see..." He examined her face the way they had examined the vendors' wares earlier that afternoon, squinting one eye and tilting his head. "Oh, yes, your nose. I like it. It doesn't look a thing like a beak."

"Oh, thanks!" Kayan leaned back and drank more wine, trying to hold a scowl.

"And your mind," Jedra said. "Haven't I mentioned your mind? I like that, too."

"Beast!" she said. "You haven't once mentioned my curvaceous body or my slender legs." "I was working my way down. Don't be so impatient." They looked at one another for a moment, then both burst into laughter.

Jedra shook the bottle, amazed to find the wine nearly gone. "I'd love it," he said, "but unfortunately I think we'd better keep our wits about us tonight. We have a big night ahead."

"Ah, I see," the innkeeper said. "Well, then, enjoy your meal." He turned away, his smile even wider.

Kayan mindsent, He thinks we're going to-to- The mental picture that came with her thoughts said what she couldn't bring herself to.

Jedra blushed, but he said, I'd certainly rather do that than go up against a nobleman's entire army.

Kayan appraised him silently, her eyes wide and dark in the dim light. "What, are you nervous?" she asked. He noticed she said it aloud, so he couldn't tell if she'd intended a double meaning or not.

So he said, "Who wouldn't be?" and took another bite of cloud ray.

They emerged from the inn at dusk. A few stars were already showing in the deepening sky, and a glow in the east promised a moon before long. Jedra and Kayan didn't plan to wait for it. They wouldn't need the extra light once they were mindlinked, and the darkness might help. They hiked up the hill on which the Rokur estate stood, trying to look like slaves returning home after a long day in the fields. They would have tried looking like nobles, but Jedra would have failed miserably at that, and Kayan had at least a little experience being a slave.

They found the compound easily enough; the landmarks they had memorized from their psionic inspection guided them directly there. Finding a secluded spot from which they could work proved more difficult, but they finally found a dark corner in the servants' alley that led to the back entrance of the compound, not far from the point in the wall nearest Kitarak's quarters.

As they squeezed into the shadows, which Jedra expanded with his light-manipulating ability, Kayan mindsent, This is exactly the sort of place the innkeeper expected us to wind up tonight, isn't it?

Something like this, Jedra admitted. He was definitely nervous now, and not because of Kayan's proximity. He touched the crystal he wore around his neck for luck, took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then took Kayan's hands in his own. Let's do it before I get too scared, he said.

Yes, let's, she said. Here goes. She leaned forward to kiss him, and at the same time as their lips touched, so did their minds. Mmmm. They separated their consciousness from their bodies and drifted through the wall. This is a good start.

That was practically the last thing that went right for them. They found Kitarak easily enough, but when they tried to telekinetically loosen the nut holding his restraining bolt to the wall, it resisted until they nearly twisted it off, and then it screeched like a banshee when it finally began to turn. The guards came instantly alert, and Jedra and Kayan had to flee the building to avoid being detected. They watched through their psionic vision from across the weapons practice field while dark tendrils of psionic force wove out into the night, seeking the source of the sound, but eventually the psionicists gave up and pulled back inside.

Jedra and Kayan slid back toward the building and peeked through the barred window. Kitarak and one of the other slaves-the human-were sitting up on their cots while the four psionicists faced them from their chairs, their eyes half-closed in deep concentration. The elf woman wasn't in the building.

Even with their eyes closed, the two old men looked more interested than they had last night. They and the younger women were definitely on alert. Jedra and Kayan could see the dark bubble of the psionic suppression field surrounding the prisoners, and a lighter, wider bubble of awareness surrounding the whole building. If they disturbed that, the psionicists would know they were there.

We'll just have to break the chains when we push over the building, Jedra said. All right, then, time for the diversion.

They rose up over the estate, looking for the best way to distract the largest number of soldiers. They could see where most of them were: relaxing in and around their own quarters after a long day. Some polished weapons, some played dice or card games, others simply sat outside in the cooling air and watched the sky change color. A few still stood guard in the towers in the main house and along the wall, and a few patrolled the compound as well.

The nobles who owned the estate were in their wooden house's central courtyard, lying in cool net hammocks while servants plied them with food and drink.

Maybe we can take care of them all at once, Kayan suggested when they saw the situation. The soldiers' quarters were built of square blocks of stone, but the nobles house had been built of wood to show off their wealth. And wood burned...

It didn't take long for someone to notice. The guards in the tower directly over the fire cried out in alarm at the first whiff of smoke, and the entire estate suddenly became a frenzy of motion. Soldiers ran from their barracks and servants boiled out of every outbuilding, most of them carrying water-soaked cloths or heavy leather hides for beating out the flames. They leaped in through the windows and doors, heedless of the smoke and flame, and flailed away at the fire until they had it nearly under control.

They've practiced this, Jedra said. Well, let's give them more. They moved through the mansion, setting fire after fire, straining against the magical protection spell with each one. Simply exciting the wood into flame with their own power proved too taxing to sustain, so they switched tactics, borrowing heat from the air and pouring it back into the wood. It was the same technique Kitarak used to keep his food cold, and it had the same effect: flakes of snow began to fall over the burning mansion.

That proved more distraction than the fire. Everyone outside stopped to stare up in wonder and feel the cold flakes melt on their outstretched palms, while the people inside screamed at them to come help with the fire. Jedra and Kayan kept it up for another few minutes, manipulating the crackling sound and flickering light of the fires to make explosions and lightning flashes and phantom attackers rushing out of the shadows to confuse the scene even more, then they abandoned the building and the servants and soldiers to their fate.

The soldiers were well trained; not all of them rushed to the fire. The ones in the guard towers stayed put- even the ones atop the burning mansion-and the ones on patrol took up positions near the front and rear gates and along the perimeter wall. Jedra and Kayan used Kayan's medical powers to incapacitate the ones on the side of the compound near Kitarak's quarters, giving them stomach cramps and blinding headaches and dizziness until nobody could move.

Time for step three, Jedra said, moving toward the gladiators' quarters. They peered inside again, cautiously; the psionicists had sent feelers out far into the night to warn them of attack. Kitarak and the other slave were lying flat on their cots, evidently knocked out cold to prevent them from attempting to escape.

Kitarak won't be able to help us! Kayan cried in alarm, but it was too late to back down. After the trouble they'd caused, the estate would never again be left so unguarded against psionic attack. They would just have to break Kitarak free by themselves.

There was no point in waiting. With a silent prayer to whatever gods were listening, they gathered their psionic power and shoved against the wall of the gladiators' quarters. The building shuddered under the blow, and slate fell from the roof, but it didn't go over. They hit it again, shattering the entire front wall, but still it didn't go over. Only when they smashed one of the side walls as well did the roof finally begin to crumble and fall in.

The psionicists inside thrust it away from them and their unconscious charges, letting the building crack open and fall away on all sides, but that took their combined power to accomplish and while they were doing that Jedra and Kayan struck directly at them. They attacked their convergent link first, trying to break the four psionicists apart so they couldn't draw on each other's power. They hadn't learned a direct method from Kitarak for that, so they tried their old visual methods, imagining the link as four ropes tied in a knot and themselves as a spinning kyorkcha slicing through the knot. They passed through like a knife through a waterskin, but their passage didn't accomplish quite what they expected. They broke the link all right, but the four psionicists each struck back at them individually. Jedra and Kayan felt four separate minds thrust at them, pressing for dominance and battering at their own link.

They could feel themselves slipping apart. Hold on! Jedra said, striking out telekinetically at their opponents. He tugged down more roof tiles and flung them at the psionicists, striking the old elf on the head and knocking him out. He felt Kayan using her medical skills to stop one of the young women's heart long enough to put her out of the battle, but by then the other two had linked up again and pressed the attack.

Jedra and Kayan's link grew weaker under blow after blow from the other psionicists. Jedra tried burning them, he tried blinding them with flashes of enhanced light, he even tried levitating them high into the air and dropping them, but they countered everything he threw at them. He felt the energy drain as Kayan tried her own specialties on them, but she was no more successful than he.

Then reinforcements arrived. Suddenly instead of two linked minds, there were three, then four again. Jedra thought maybe the two they had knocked unconscious had revived, but then there were five, then six. Their enormously enhanced power beat Jedra and Kayan back, then began to close around them. They didn't attack so much as suppress Jedra and Kayan's abilities, smothering their mindlink the way Kitarak had when he had stopped them from fighting each other back in his house. Where are they all coming from? Jedra asked as he fought to keep from being overwhelmed, but he realized the answer as soon as he asked the question. There had to be more of them resting at any given moment in order to keep a continuous guard over Kitarak. As demanding as convergence was, there had to be at least a dozen psionicists in the noble's pay.

No, they'll catch us! Jedra said, but Kayan was already trying to link with the unconscious tohr-kreen. She managed it, too, and they felt a surge of power as Kitarak woke, but the six combined psionicists bore down on them without mercy.

Run! Jedra pleaded, sensing their dark presence in his mind like a giant's hand on his skull.

His panicked mental command had the force of their combined power behind it; Kitarak's alien presence winked out again like a blown-out candle flame, and Kayan receded to the limit of perception. Jedra just had time to note that Kitarak's body had disappeared along with his mind before he felt the psionicists press through his mental barrier.

In desperation, he cut the mindlink and found himself back in the alley with Kayan. Her body stood stiffly beside him; she had obviously been captured. He didn't even try to go back after her, he merely wrapped his arms around her body and levitated them both into the air, then pushed off down the alley toward the city center. If he could get some distance between her and the psionicists, he might be able to break her free, and then they could blank their minds and hide in the warrens until they could make their escape.

He didn't even make it to the end of the alley before the psionicists struck again. Their tactics were the same as before; his levitation ability cut off in midair, and he and Kayan fell to the ground like a couple sacks of vegetables. Jedra felt a bone in his right leg snap, and pain shot through his whole body, but he struggled to his feet again and tugged at Kayan. There was no place to hide, but he had no other options.

He dragged her a couple of yards, pain lancing through his leg with each step, before he fell to his knees. He kept tugging on Kayan, but a moment later the alley gate banged open and torch-bearing soldiers poured through. They spotted the two fugitives instantly and ran up with swords drawn and ready.

The one in the lead-a heavy woman with soot all over her face and body, placed the point of her sword on Jedra's chest. He felt it dig through his tunic, felt it penetrate the skin beneath, felt it quiver there as her hand shook with fatigue and adrenalin.

"Go ahead," she said, clearly eager for the opportunity to run him through. "Try something."

Jedra looked up along the length of burnished iron, its angled planes reflecting the torchlight, to her face. There was no hint of pity there. To her, he was nothing more than a vandal and a thief in the night.

"Sorry," he said to Kayan. Slowly, with exaggerated caution, he lowered Kayan's limp body to the ground. "I'm sorry," he told her, even though he knew she couldn't hear him.