The Darkness Before the Dawn

Chapter Two

"You're kidding." Jedra stared at the chief as if he'd just said it was going to rain. "Anybody here can call anybody else a coward, and that person has to fight him? That's a tribal rule?"

The chief nodded. "It is the way of the desert."

"Well it's a pretty barbaric way as far as I'm concerned," Jedra said. He sighed heavily. "But we're your guests, so I guess we'll play by your rules." He untied his robe and handed it to Kayan, leaving himself free to move in only his breechcloth and sandals.

The elves cheered and whistled, excited that there would be a fight after all. Jedra heard rapid discussion in elvish, and saw money changing hands. Was someone actually betting on him? Or were they just betting on how long the fight would last? He didn't want to know.

You don't have to do this, Kayan mindsent through the din. Not for me. We can take our chances in the desert.

Jedra flexed his arms and legs to loosen them up. Adrenalin made him feel alert, but he knew it was a false high. His body was exhausted from hours of steady marching, and it wouldn't put out much more effort without a night's rest.

Even so, he said to Kayan, No, we don't know enough yet. We'd be dead by morning. At least this way one of us will survive. And who knows, maybe both of us will. If they do this all the time, it can't very mil be a fight to the death or there'd be nobody left in the tribe.

Kayan was realist enough not to protest any further. She said, At least let me share the last of my strength with you.

She could do that, Jedra knew. She had done it in the caravan when the slave master had punished him for attempting to escape. But even together they didn't have the strength to defeat Sahalik. Not physically, at any rate. And if they tried to fight the elf psionically, their unpredictable power could just as easily kill him as subdue him. Jedra might not have minded that on general principles, but he didn't think it would sit well with the tribe. No, he told her. Save it for after the fight. I'll need it more then anyway.

She looked into his eyes, an odd, almost proud smile on her face. Could she actually be excited by all this? I'll stay linked with you in case you need me, she sent.

No, Jedra said again. I'll do better without the distraction. He pulled his hair back and tied it in a knot so it would stay out of his eyes, then said aloud, "All right, let's get this over with."

He crouched down and held his arms out in what he hoped was a fighter's stance. He had never entered a contest like this before; all his previous physical conflicts had been sudden things, ambushes in the dark or other people's brawls that got out of hand. They had all been over just as quickly, for Jedra usually didn't stick around any longer than he had to. Too many street fighters ended up dead for there to be any future in it.

The chief backed away from Jedra and Sahalik, pulling Galar and Kayan back with him into the circle of elves. Sahalik grinned at Jedra; the place where his two teeth were missing looked like a gap in a fence. No, more like a hole in a block wall. The elf was easily twice Jedra's weight. "I will feed your bones to the kanks," he said in his deep voice.

That sounded like a formal insult. Jedra certainly hoped it was, anyway. He wondered what the formal reply was, but since he didn't know it, he merely said, "They'll be too busy feeding on your bloated carcass to care." Before Sahalik could react, he leaped forward and swung his right fist into the elf's stomach, putting all his weight behind it, then dodged to the left and dived to the sand. Sahalik roared with surprise and spun around to face Jedra again, but Jedra had already tangled his legs between his opponent's. Sahalik teetered for a second, waving his arms madly for balance, but he finally toppled to the side.

That gave Jedra the perfect opportunity to grab one of the elf's arms and wrench it around behind his back, but when he tried to push himself up to do it a sharp pain lanced up through his arm and he fell back to the ground. He didn't know how to hit someone properly: he had broken his hand.

Sahalik didn't waste any time; he was back on his feet in an instant, apparently none the worse for Jedra's punch. Jedra used his uninjured arm to push himself away just as Sahalik aimed a kick at his head, then he got to his feet and circled warily to the side, watching his opponent's eyes and trying to anticipate what he would do next.

Sahalik was waiting for just such a move. The moment Jedra's weight shifted, he kicked out with one of his long legs and caught Jedra in the ribs, knocking him backward onto the sand next to the fire. Jedra gasped for breath, but none came. He didn't have time for another attempt; Sahalik was upon him in an instant, aiming a roundhouse blow to the side of his head.

Jedra jerked back, instinctively kicking out as Sahalik leaned forward, and his sandal-clad foot caught the elf square in the face. His psionic force-projecting ability added to the blow, but not enough. Sahalik rocked back but he didn't go down, and he came forward again with murder in his eyes.

But Jedra wasn't there. He had scrambled back until he could get to his feet, then leaped straight over the fire, putting it between himself and Sahalik. Finally, he managed to draw a ragged breath.

"Coward!" Sahalik shouted, jumping over the fire after him, but Jedra had expected just that. While the elf was still in the air, he reached out with his good hand and swept Sahalik's feet upward behind him. Sahalik came down on his hands, and this time Jedra leaped on his back, coming down hard with both knees over the elf's kidneys and reaching with his good hand for Sahalik's left arm. He got the warrior's bulging forearm in his grip and managed to pull it out from under him, but instead of collapsing face first into the ground, the enormous elf rolled backward as he fell, pinning his own arm under himself but also knocking Jedra off balance.

Then Sahalik rolled over again-and wound up straddling Jedra, his knees on Jedra's arms. Jedra tried to kick at the elf's head, but the best he could manage was a knee in the back. Sahalik merely leaned forward, and then Jedra couldn't do even that. He tried to punch Sahalik psionically, but without Kayan's help his power was so weak the elf hardly budged.

"You fought better than I expected," Sahalik said. "But you still lost. And there is no prize for second place in battle."

Jedra could barely hear him over the shouting elves, but his meaning was clear enough even so, especially when he leaned still closer and gripped Jedra's neck in his massive right hand.

"Let us see how long you can hold your breath," the elf said, and he began to squeeze.

Jedra felt his throat constricting, first his windpipe and then even the blood supply to his head being squeezed shut. Bright red streamers began to swirl in his vision. He had only a few seconds left before he would lose consciousness, and he could hardly move a muscle to prevent it. His forearms and legs were the only things he could move, but they could not even reach Sahalik, much less do the elf any damage.

Let me help! Kayan's voice in his mind was overlaid with fear for his life.

Her panic, combined with his own, nearly made him accept her offer. Who cared if they blasted this hulk of an elf into bloody gobbets? But Jedra wasn't quite panicked enough to ignore the consequences of that.

No, Jedra told her, but that moment of contact gave him an idea. Their combined psionic power might be too dangerous to use, and his pushing ability was too weak to do much good by itself, but he did have one other talent he could employ on his own....

He focused his thoughts on Sahalik, forging a link with his adversary's mind, then when he saw the elf's eyes bulge with the same panic Jedra felt, he slapped his broken hand hard against the ground.

The pain that shot through his arm felt like molten lava running down the center of the bone. Jedra cried out in agony-but so did Sahalik. And for just an instant as the elf's muscles spasmed with empathic pain, his grip on Jedra's throat relaxed.

That was all the advantage Jedra needed. He heaved his body upward with all his might, overbalancing the elf and sending him over backward. Scrambling free before his opponent could grab him again, Jedra leaped over the fire to give himself a moment to recover his strength.

He had precious little left to recover. He gasped for air, his vision wavering even more than the flames before him, and his muscles all felt as if they were about to fall from his bones. He staggered to the left, struggling just to stay on his feet, but when Sahalik charged around the fire toward him he managed to run a couple of steps, then dodged sideways and stuck out his leg to trip the elf again.

This time Sahalik was ready for him. The elf warrior grabbed Jedra's outstretched leg, yanking it upward hard enough to pull his other leg completely off the ground too. Instead of letting him fall, Sahalik grabbed the other leg and spun around. Jedra felt his hands pass through the flames-once, twice, and a third time as Sahalik spun him around by his feet. He wondered if the elf warrior would throw him into the fire, but it soon became apparent that he had a more humiliating end in mind. Sahalik put all his effort into one more mighty swing, bringing Jedra's outstretched body down low, then releasing him on the upswing to fly completely over the heads of the astonished crowd.

Kay an was the first to his side. She fought through the cheering crowd and knelt beside him. Are you alive? she asked.

Barely, Jedra answered. He groaned as he tried to sit up, but she pushed him back down.

Lie still. Let me heal your injuries before you try to move.

Jedra felt her make deeper contact with his mind. It was still nothing like the total sharing they were capable of, but her healing power required a link sufficient to control his body's healing processes and to transfer some of her own ability to him. Jedra gladly gave over his control to her and let his mind drift wherever she directed it. The pain in his ribs and in his hand slowly faded, and the ache in his throat as well. However, before Kayan could complete the job, the elves turned to see what had become of the vanquished half-elf, and she had to withdraw.

The chief stepped over to Jedra's side and extended a hand to help him up. Jedra looked to Kayan, and she nodded. I think you'll be all right. So Jedra accepted the hand-with his left, since it would be some time before his right hand healed completely-and rose shakily to his feet, Kayan helping to support him on the other side.

"Well fought," the chief said. "And since the tribe rules only that you must fight, not that you must win, I declare you fit to travel with us as far as you like." He nodded to Sahalik, who had stalked over to listen, and said, "By your own actions, you are honor bound to treat him as one of us. See that you do."

Sahalik frowned, then nodded toward Kayan. "What of this one?"

The chief was taken aback. "You cannot mean to challenge her as well?"

"No," Sahalik said. "She is human, and could never be part of the tribe. She will always be an outsider. Outsiders in the tribe must have a protector, and so I claim protectorship over her by right of conquest."

"But I don't claim you," Kayan said.

"You will learn to," Sahalik said, his voice low and menacing.

Kayan asked the chief, "What's this protectorship nonsense? I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself."

The chief hesitated, his sense of decency obviously at war with his sense of self-preservation. He didn't look like a chief at all anymore, just a tired old man who stood to lose his tribe over a stupid squabble. "Sahalik is talking about an old custom," he said, "wherein an outsider lives with a member of the tribe in order to learn our ways. It is not always insisted upon, but since your own safety-and the safety of the tribe-often depends upon your knowledge of desert skills, it can be required."

"Especially in times when the outsider may be with us for some time," Sahalik said. "I would be more comfortable if I knew that this one followed our customs."

"I bet you would," Kayan said with a sneer.

Galar had been standing at the edge of the crowd; now he stepped forward and said, after a nervous gulp, "I will be her protector."

"Not unless you want to challenge me," Sahalik said.

"I-"

"Thanks, Galar," Kayan cut him off before he could get himself into trouble, "but there's no need for that." She looked up at Sahalik, towering over her by at least three feet. "You're just not going to take no for an answer, are you?"

He grinned wickedly. "I am not accustomed to it."

Kayan nodded. "All right then, if you won't leave me alone, let's get this over with." She let go of Jedra and stepped to Sahalik's side.

Jedra nearly fell over, but the chief held him up. "Wha-?" Jedra tried to say, but his throat was still too sore to allow speech. What's this? he demanded psionically. You're actually going to... to... with that barbarian?

Don't get your breechcloth in a knot, she thought back at him. We've tried it your way; now let's try it mine. She reached out and took Sahalik's hairy hand. "Come on, champion, show me this big tent of yours." The elves were totally silent as she led Sahalik away. The only noises Jedra could hear were the scrunch, scrunch, scrunch of their receding footsteps, the soft crackle of the fire, and the pounding of his own heart. Easily visible in the starlight, he could see the elf warrior hold open the flap of his tent for Kayan, and watched her step inside. The tent flap fell down behind Sahalik as he joined her.

For a moment he thought he had screamed, but then he realized that the noise he heard came from another throat. Sahalik's, by the resonance of it, though terror had raised his usual husky pitch an octave or so. His tent suddenly bulged outward as if a herd of mekillots were trying to escape, first on one side, then the other. Finally with a twang of uprooted stays it collapsed backward. The fabric parted with a loud rip, and Sahalik blundered out, only to collide with the very next tent.

It slowed him for barely a moment. Still screeching like a lost child, he trampled right over the hapless tent and continued straight into the night, his cries receding until they were swallowed by the desert.

Another lump in Sahalik's tent wiggled a bit more, and a muffled curse came from it, then Kayan found the door and straightened up through it. Standing there amid the deflated fabric, she planted her hands on her hips and said, "Anybody else think I need a protector?"

The chief-still supporting Jedra-met her halfway between the fire and the tent. "What did you do to him?" he demanded. The rest of the tribe gathered around, and the expressions on their faces were as grim as his.

Kayan shrugged. "I let him see his true nature. I held a mirror to his mind and showed him what a pathetic creature he is."

"If you have harmed him-"

"I didn't touch him. I didn't do any psychic damage, either. I just gave him something to think about. I guess he decided he wanted to do his thinking alone."

The chief considered for a moment, then turned to the side. "Galar, Ralok, go after him and see that he comes to no harm. Bring him back when he recovers his wits."

Galar and another elf immediately slipped out of the group and ran out into the darkness in the direction Sahalik had gone.

The chief turned back to Kayan. "You were provoked, but your actions may have endangered a member of the tribe. You do need a protector, if only to guard us from you." He laughed, but there was little humor in it. "Since I doubt if anyone else cares to dispute Sahalik for the honor, I will take responsibility for you myself."

Kayan looked as if she were about to protest that, too, but she finally took a deep breath and said, "All right."

The gathered elves murmured their approval at their chief's wisdom and began to disperse. The chief said to Kayan, "First I will show you how to erect Sahalik's tent and the other he knocked down. Then I will show you to your place in mine. You are to stay there when we are in camp, and you will march at my side when we travel. And when Sahalik returns, you will leave him alone."

"Gladly," Kayan said, "as long as he does the same for me."

"I will see that he does."

Jedra weaved outward, and Kayan reached out to steady him. "What of my companion?" she asked.

The chief sighed. "I suppose he should stay in my tent as well. Here, let us walk him there; I don't think he would make it on his own."

Jedra allowed them to drape his arms over their shoulders and carry him to the chief's tent, where they laid him down on a mat at least three times as thick and much softer than the one he'd slept on last night. Or maybe it just felt that way after all his injuries, but whatever the case he felt himself sinking into it, but never remembered hitting bottom.

He woke to find the tent brightly lit with the first rays of morning sun. The interior glowed with soft, diffused warmth, and the walls rippled gently with the morning breeze. Jedra rose up and rubbed his eyes. The chief lived in luxury compared to the elves in the common tent. Hanging dividers separated the interior into rooms, each open overhead to the roof of the tent. All the panels were decorated with elaborate stitchery or beadwork or painting, and the floor had been covered with thick furs. If the sorcerer-king of Urik were to spend a night in the desert, this was the sort of tent Jedra would expect him to have. His impression of the nomadic elves went up a notch as he took it all in. Kayan lay on a separate mat beside him, still inhaling and exhaling the long, soft breaths of deep sleep. Jedra felt wide awake and perfectly healthy, which no doubt explained Kayan's exhaustion. She had finished healing him during the night.

Psionics didn't require external energy, but that ecological nicety exacted its price on the psionicist. Every time Kayan or Jedra used their powers, it drained their own stamina. With mental contact and other simple skills that drain was hardly significant, but healing someone's injuries required a great deal from the psionicist. Only rest could restore what the healer had lost. Small wonder if Kayan slept until noon-provided the elves would let her. Jedra was surprised they had allowed either of them to sleep in as long as they had; according to Galar they were usually up and moving long before dawn.

He rose quietly and left the tent to see if he could find out what was going on, but the first elves he saw gave him such chilly looks that he didn't ask. He found the community tent and recovered both his and Kayan's knapsacks, leaving their old sleeping mats behind; then he followed his nose to the food tent where he picked up a couple more of the crumbly cakes and filled their waterskins for the day's hike. They hadn't had time for breakfast yesterday, but today nobody seemed in a hurry. Still none of the elves spoke with Jedra-in fact, when they saw him coming they got out of his way. Maybe they're just embarrassed at their behavior last night, Jedra thought. They should have been. Next time Sahalik decided to beat up on someone, Jedra would enjoy shouting "Fight, fight, fight!" as they had done and see how they liked it.

He took the food and knapsacks back to the chief's tent and set them down beside Kayan. He nibbled his cake slowly, watching her sleep. She looked so innocent there, her head resting in the crook of her arm and her face pressed into the mat, her small, round human nose pushed to the side and her straight brown hair falling over her eyes. Jedra let his gaze drift down over her loosely shrouded body. Even through her robe he could see how curvaceous she was. Small wonder Sahalik had been attracted. Jedra was, too, but at least he had the decency to wait for her to return his interest.

Or was it unwillingness to believe that she might actually feel the same way about him? Jedra had grown up on the streets; his home had been a nook in a wall at the end of a dead-end alley. People with his background usually didn't associate with templar women. His and Kayan's time together in a slave pen had brought them both down to the same social level-the very bottom-but it hadn't erased their pasts. Now that they were in the lap of luxury again, Jedra felt completely out of place, while Kayan would no doubt feel right at home.

Actually, considering her former station, she would probably think this was still roughing it. But would she accept it, and Jedra, as part of her new life? He couldn't make himself believe that she would.

There was their age difference to consider, too. Jedra was at least three years younger than Kayan, maybe more. He'd had to grow up fast to make it on his own in the city, but he was still naive about a lot of things that she had probably experienced many times. Did she find that attractive, or would she become bored with him? He didn't know that, either.

The richly appointed tent made Jedra nervous. He got up and went back outside, and this time he stopped the first elf he saw-one of the old women who couldn't get out of his way in time-and asked why the tribe wasn't moving out at dawn.

She peered at him through eyes gone white in patches, but Jedra got the impression she was looking deeper than the surface level anyway. Finally she sniffed and said, "We're waitin' on Sahalik. He's not back yet."

"Oh," Jedra said. He felt a mixture of relief and anxiety. He didn't necessarily want to see the big elf again, but on the other hand, if anything had happened to him, Kayan would be responsible. "How about Galar?" he asked. "Has he returned?"

The woman started to laugh, but it turned into a dry, hacking cough. When she got it under control she said, "Come and gone again, hours ago. The night creatures chased him and Ralok back to camp before they tracked Sahalik more than a mile, but they went back out as soon as it was safe."

"Oh," Jedra said again. No, this wasn't good at all. "Thank you," he told the woman, then he went straight back into the tent.

Kayan was still asleep. "Wake up," he said, shaking her softly by the shoulder. "Kayan, wake up." When she didn't stir, he shook her a bit harder, but she didn't respond.

Kayan, he mindsent. Mmmm? Kayan, wake up. We have to find Sahalik. Mmmm-mmmm. Come on, this is important! He shook her again, but she didn't awaken. He felt the mindlink break,

and when he tried again he couldn't make contact. Evidently Kayan had blocked him out. He didn't even know if she had understood him, or if she was just too much in need of sleep to be roused.

Well, maybe he could do something by himself. He didn't have nearly the control that Kayan had, but he could still make mental contact with people. Much as he hated the idea, maybe he could track down Sahalik and persuade him to return. Or failing that, he might at least be able to find out if the elf was all right.

Jedra tried to orient himself inside the tent. The fire pit was beyond the wall to his right, and Sahalik's tent was behind him and a bit to the right as well. Sahalik had run away from the fire and over another tent, which would mean he had gone more or less directly to Jedra's left. To the east. Jedra sat cross-legged on his sleeping mat facing that direction and closed his eyes so he could concentrate.

The first time he had gone on a psionic voyage, it had felt like he was dreaming. He had found himself face down in a crystal-clear pool of water, a pool so impossibly large he had actually floated in it. Far away at the bottom of the pool had been the desert floor, over which he had drifted like a cloud in a breeze. He tried to recapture that image now, tried to become a cloud, or a bird like the second time he'd gone voyaging with Kayan. Now that he was concentrating on it of course it was harder to do, but the camp was quiet and the tent peaceful enough; eventually he felt his consciousness drift free of his body and begin to rise.

The camp receded below him, the dozen or more sand-colored tents of varying sizes looking more like an outcrop of rock than anything. Puzzled, Jedra swooped down and realized that the camp was a rock outcrop, at least in his psionic vision. The insectlike kanks in their pens beyond the tents had become dung beetles, then metamorphosed into ants as he rose into the sky. Great.

He couldn't count on any correspondence with reality, then. Except for one thing: himself. He was still a half-elf in a light blue robe, seated in midair on a rectangular sleeping mat. He gripped the edges so he wouldn't fall off and directed the mat upward.

The elves themselves registered in the vision as long, slender, silvery funnels reaching upward toward him. Jedra knew from previous experience in the slave caravan that if he flew down any of those funnels he would find himself mindlinked with the person at the base of it, or at least making preliminary contact. When he and Kayan had done this while mentally joined the funnels had been great wide things, and when they flew down one they found themselves seeing through the eyes and hearing through the ears of whomever they encountered, but Jedra couldn't do that alone. Many times he couldn't even recognize who he'd contacted, in which case he couldn't make his presence known, but if it was someone he knew then he could usually at least send them a message.

He stopped rising when the elf camp was a mere speck in the desert. Sahalik had gone east, so Jedra turned toward the golden apple the rising sun had become and began to move across the crumpled gray cloth of the dunes. He saw two more funnels a few miles out-Galar and Ralok, no doubt-but he didn't see any more beyond that. Sahalik had been moving pretty fast, though; he could have gone a long way in an entire night.

The air blew Jedra's robe into billowing folds behind him. The fringe at the edge of the mat flapped in the wind, too, but the mat itself only undulated a little. Jedra slowly began to relax, but he never let go his grip on the edge. He didn't think falling off in a psionic vision would be fatal, but he didn't know for sure, and it was a long way down....

After he had traveled for ten or fifteen minutes straight east, he began to wonder if he had missed his quarry. At the speed he was flying, he must have covered a full day's march and then some; if Sahalik were out here, he should have found him by now. Of course Sahalik might not have continued straight east. He had been in a panic, after all; he might have started running in circles for all Jedra knew. So he turned to the south and flew along in that direction for a few minutes, then turned west for just a mile or two, then back north again. He swept back and forth through the dreamscape, crisscrossing the desert in search of any hint of a silvery funnel, but he found nothing.

At last, exhausted from the effort, he turned back toward the elf camp, thinking that he might be able to rouse Kayan and the two of them might be able to search more thoroughly. The sun was considerably higher now, but he banked around and put it behind him, then swept back across the desert, keeping his eye out for the rock outcrop that would be the tents. But after he'd flown a few minutes and still not found it he began to wonder if he had overshot. Or possibly he had gone too far north or south; he'd zigzagged back and forth so much he really didn't know where he was anymore. Well this is silly, he thought. All I have to do is open my eyes and I'll be back in the tent. He tried it, but he found that he had to close his eyes first to even make the attempt, and when he opened them he was right back in the vision. If he swung his arms below the mat he didn't encounter tent floor, either, just more air.

Sure enough, now that he was looking for that instead of the rock outcrop, he could see it clearly to the south. He directed his mat toward it, faster now because he could feel himself growing tired from the extended psionic voyage, but when he drew closer he realized he I had made a mistake. This funnel didn't issue from the ground; it came from a source high in the sky. Jedra veered to the side and circled around it. It looked like a tangle of thorny vines, a dense knot of sharp points that said clear as words: Do not touch. Jedra wondered what it looked like in the real world. Was it a creature of some sort, or maybe another psionicist or wizard flying between cities on kings' business? Maybe those thorns were the psionic representation of magical wards.

The silvery vortex twisted around toward him. Jedra wasn't sure if he wanted to make contact, but whoever it was might have spotted Sahalik. Whether or not that person would deign to speak with Jedra was anybody's guess, but Jedra didn't suppose it would hurt to try.

He flew into the maw of the vortex. The mat bucked, and Jedra hung on tight, but then he felt the familiar sliding sensation as he fell into contact with the other mind, and-

Wham.

Intense rage, directed straight at Jedra's unprotected mind. Rage and some kind of force as well; it felt as if his head were suddenly full of pressure, as if it were going to explode at any second. Pain and terror accomplished what his imagination had not: he tumbled off his mat to land heavily on his side-right on top of Kayan.

That in turn did what his earlier shaking could not. Kayan cried out in panic and struggled to sit up, shoving Jedra aside and striking out with her hands at the same time as she directed some sort of psionic attack at him. Jedra ducked her blow, but he couldn't duck the wave of unreasonable panic that passed through him, a brief surge of terror as if he'd just realized he was about to die. The sensation momentarily paralyzed him, and Kayan's shove sent him tumbling off her to the floor of the tent.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demanded.

Shaking his head to clear it-he wasn't going to die after all, it seemed-Jedra sat up and said, "I was looking for Sahalik."

"By climbing all over me?" she asked sarcastically.

"No, no, I fell on you when the-whatever it was attacked me."

"The whatever it was?" Kayan rubbed her eyes and looked around the interior of the tent.

"Not here," Jedra protested. "I was in a psionic vision, searching for Sahalik. I couldn't find him, but I saw what I thought might be another psionicist, so I thought I'd ask if he'd seen him, but when I tried to make contact he attacked me."

"Not surprising, if you approached him like you did me," Kayan said. She glowered at him a moment longer, then she saw the cake waiting for her at the head of her mat and her expression softened a bit. She picked up the cake and took a bite of it. Around a mouthful of crumbs she said, "So why were you looking for Sahalik? You want a rematch?"

Jedra was getting a little upset at her caustic attitude, but he told himself she had just been awakened suddenly and had jumped to a false conclusion, so he would give her a few minutes to come around. "He's still missing," he told her, "and the elves are worried about him. They've delayed the morning march until they can find him."

She laughed. "Hah, good luck to 'em. He's probably halfway to the Ringing Mountains by now."

"What do you mean? What did you do to him?"

Kayan ate another bite of cake. She watched Jedra as she ate, as if sizing him up to see how much she wanted to tell him. When she swallowed, she simply said, "I used an old templar trick we sometimes used on prisoners and such to make 'em cooperative."

"What kind of trick?" Jedra asked, but Kayan only smiled coyly and took another bite of cake.

"What's this?" Jedra asked. "Are you going to start hiding things from me now?"

She looked away at the stitchery on the tent wall beside her. "Is it hiding things to protect you from yourself?" She looked back at him, her expression serious. "Jedra, every time I teach you something, you use it to get into trouble. We need somebody with some experience at this to help us before we start playing with dangerous abilities."

"You think so?" Kayan flipped her hair back behind her ears with a haughty shake of her head. "Try living in a woman's body for a dozen years, and then maybe I'll listen to your advice. In my experience, men don't take no for an answer unless you make it very clear you mean it."

"You certainly made it clear enough to Sahalik. The trouble is, now the whole tribe is afraid of us."

"Is that necessarily a bad-?"

A cry from just outside the tent interrupted her. It was in elvish, a single word that sounded like "Chimbu!" Neither Jedra nor Kayan knew what it meant, but other voices picked up the cry and soon the whole camp was shouting it.

"Maybe Sahalik has come back," Jedra said. He was about to get up to go see, but before he had risen more than a few inches off his sleeping mat something made a swooshing sound that drowned out even the elves' cries of alarm, and a thick rope edged with spines slashed through the tent. If Jedra had been standing it would have taken off his head, but as it was the rope merely ripped away the top of the tent at the four-foot level. The remaining walls slumped to the ground like clothing taken off and dropped at day's end.

The sudden sunlight made Jedra squint, but a moment later the sun disappeared behind a triangular silhouette. Was that the top of the tent blowing away? No, the tent was over to the side, a small rag still dangling from the spikes at the end of the thick rope that issued from the base of the triangle. A quick twitch of the rope from side to side shook the tent free, and Jedra suddenly realized the rope was a tail, and the dark triangle was some kind of flying creature.

A loud boom rolled over the desert: the whip-crack of the thing's tail. Jedra revised his estimate of its size. The creature was enormous. It must have been a hundred feet across.

The elves were screaming in terror. Archers fired arrows at the thing, but the arrows seemed to slow just before they hit it, then fall back to the ground.

Over the cry of the elves, Kayan shouted, "That wasn't a psionicist you found while you were out looking for Sahalik, that was a cloud ray!"

Jedra felt a sinking feeling in his gut. "What's a cloud ray?" he asked, but he already knew the important thing: it was trouble.

Kayan confirmed it. "They're carnivorous, and they use psionic levitation to fly around looking for food. They normally leave people on the ground alone, but they hate other psionics users. When they encounter one, they almost always try to kill him."

Jedra looked at the creature again. It was mostly wing, with a thick ridge down the center between its bulging head and its whip tail. It was hard to tell with the glare of the sun directly behind it, but it looked like the underside was mostly white, blending into a light brownish green near the edges. Muscles rippled when it flapped its leathery wings. It couldn't have flown by just flapping alone-it was far too large and shaped wrong for that- but evidently that was how it maneuvered. It banked silently around, exposing the sun again. Jedra's eyes watered, and he sneezed.

"It hates psionicists? Then how do we fight it?" he asked, looking away.

"Not with longbows, that's for sure," Kayan said. The elves were figuring that out, too. Their arrows were doing more damage to the tribe when they fell back to the ground than to the cloud ray. The chief-standing among the warriors on a dune top-shouted something, and they tried firing over the top of the ray and letting their arrows fall on its upper surface, but the mysterious barrier slowed them from above, too.

The other elves began scattering out into the desert, either trying to get better angles to pierce the ray's invisible armor or just trying to get away before it came around and attacked the camp again. That would be soon; despite its size, the thing was fast. And deadly. Its spiky tail could cut a person in two without even slowing down.

"We've got to link up," Jedra said. "If we don't do something, it could kill the whole tribe."

He looked back up at the aerial monster, now turned to expose a mouth wide enough to swallow a dozen people at once. Four jet-black eyes, two on either side of the mouth, seemed to lock on to his own. The cloud ray flapped its wide, leathery wings again and began to descend, obviously not content with a single attack. "I think you're right," Kayan said.

The being they had become vibrated with energy. They felt it coursing through them in ever-strengthening pulses, bathing their psyches with sensual waves of delicious power. They were exultant, they were invincible, they were life itself, born to conquer the forces of death and destruction.

They rose upward from the desert floor, becoming a swift, powerful bird of prey. Overhead, the cloud ray was a lumbering balloon of flesh, wallowing through the air by comparison with their darting flight.

It holds the arrows off with an inertial barrier, the Kayan part of their combined being thought. If we can remove its shield, the elves can kill it.

With that thought, their perception of the cloud ray altered. Now they could see a green shroud enveloping its balloonlike form, nearly invisible when viewed straight on, but easily discernible around the edges. Kayan and Jedra climbed toward the creature, talons extended to rip the shroud apart, but when they reached it they found it sticky and resilient rather than easily shredded.

The cloud ray reacted instantly to their contact. Screeching in anger, it expanded its entire body, doubling in size almost instantaneously and slamming into them. They tumbled backward, flapping madly to stay aloft, and when they righted themselves and banked around they could see that the green shroud was even stronger than before.

The cloud ray swooped toward the ground, renewing its attack on the source of the psionic power that had approached it.

Don't let it get close enough to use that tail again! Jedra thought. If the ray made another pass, it could level the entire camp, him and Kayan included.

In the psionic vision the elven camp was a maelstrom of activity, the tiny vortices of intelligent minds darting about and tiny lightning bolts that had to be arrows rising up toward the cloud ray and bouncing off. Jedra and Kayan flew ahead of the ray, ignoring the lightning bolts, which passed right through their bird-of-prey body. They wouldn't feel any physical object unless it hit their real bodies in the tent; only psionic forces had any reality in the vision.

Everything they saw there was a manifestation of their minds. When the cloud ray expanded, it had been resisting their mental contact and strengthening its inertial barrier. Now as Jedra and Kayan tried to stop its descent by projecting a physical force against it with their minds, their own body in the vision grew larger with each wing-beat until they were as big, then even bigger than, the ray. With powerful strokes of their wings they blew it back into die sky, but the ray responded with a blast of wind that drove it back toward the ground.

Quick, push it down instead of up, they thought, and they swooped up and over its back, digging their talons into the sticky inertial barrier and flapping hard to shove it downward. The ray plummeted toward the elven camp, screeching with rage as it tried to reverse the winds, but it didn't have time. Jedra and Kayan managed to steer it away from the camp itself and toward a gap in the roiling vortices below, then they put everything they had into one last colossal wingbeat, driving it full speed into the sand.

They got more force than they expected. The cloud ray streaked toward the ground, and Jedra and Kayan barely managed to let go and veer aside before it hit.

The impact shook even the dreamscape. Thunder rolled across the desert, blasting Kayan and Jedra out of their link only to be tumbled across the floor of the tent by the real earthquake.

Slowly, their minds disoriented and their bodies aching with sudden fatigue, they staggered to their feet and looked around them. Not a single tent had remained upright. Pieces of canvas lay strewn across the sand for hundreds of yards; evidently the wind the cloud ray had produced had had a real counterpart. Elves lay strewn everywhere as well, most of them rising shakily to their feet now that the battle was over. The kank pen had been trampled and the kanks had fled, except for the ones that had been injured either by flying debris or by their fellows.

However, the worst scene of destruction by far was the site of the cloud ray's impact. It had hit with enough force to dig a crater, scattering gouts of sand and chunks of its body all around. Jedra was awestricken by the magnitude of what he and Kayan had done, but then he saw something that sickened him instead: one of the elves hadn't been able to dodge the flying debris. Only his lead and shoulders stuck out from the huge oblong mass of bone and flesh that pinned him down. It was the cloud ray's head, Jedra realized.

The elf wasn't dead. He screamed in pain and tried to wriggle free, but he was trapped. The other elves ran toward him and began digging frantically in the sand, trying to pull him out, but the immense weight of the head just sank it deeper with every handful they scooped away. The elves switched their digging to the downhill side of the head, trying to roll it off their companion, but it was so huge Jedra didn't see how they could budge it.

Kayan took a step toward the digging elves. "Maybe we can help now. Push the... thing aside, or..."

"No." Jedra grabbed her by the shoulder. "If we link up again, there's no telling what might happen."

"Then let's help dig. We can't just stand here and watch him die," she said, and she began picking her way through the wreckage of the tents toward the pinned elf.

Jedra followed her, but the elves stopped them when they drew near. "Get back," one warrior snarled, drawing his sword. "You've done enough damage. Harat is dying, thanks to you."

"I'm a healer," Kayan said. "I can keep him alive while you dig."

The warrior considered a moment, then stood aside, but he didn't sheathe his sword. "See that you do," he said, "or you will die with him."

Kayan sized him up with a look that seemed to say, "Not likely," but she didn't push it. Instead she bent down to the pinned elf. He was no longer screaming, but his face was still contorted in a grimace of pain, and his breathing was fast and shallow. His skin was pale, too, for an elf.

"I'm going to make you sleep," Kayan told him. "Try not to fight it. When you wake up, you'll be out of here, and all your injuries will be healed."

The elf shook his head. "I can't... feel my legs. Not even you can heal that."

"Don't be so sure," Kayan said, placing her hands on his head. The elf closed his eyes and his breathing slowed. When he was completely unconscious, Kayan turned to the elf warrior who still stood over her with his sword drawn and said, "You'd be more use to him digging. He's bleeding inside, and I can't stop that until we get him out of here."

The warrior growled something in elvish, but he sheathed his sword and walked around to join in the digging.

Jedra did the same. He had to stifle an involuntary laugh when he first saw how the elves were digging-they had bent down and were throwing sand backward between their legs like a pack of rasclinn burrowing for roots-but when he tried it himself he realized that was the best way to move a lot of sand in a hurry.

The sand was sticky and colored red with the cloud ray's blood. It smelled of metals and exotic spices. Jedra had expected it to smell awful, but the creature had been alive only minutes before; it hadn't had time to putrefy yet. Give it a day in the direct sun, though, and the stench from a carcass this size would be unbearable for miles around.

The ragged wall of flesh above him began to shift, and the elves leaped back out of the way. Jedra slipped and had a horrifying moment as he imagined it rolling over and trapping him, but one of the elves snatched at his arm and pulled him free just as the head rolled into the trench he had helped dig.

It had moved only a few feet, but that was enough to lift the other side off the injured elf and allow the diggers to pull him free. Kayan knelt beside him, running her hands along his torso and legs to assess his injuries while the elves looked on.

The chief had arrived and was scowling at the whole proceedings. Jedra tried to stay out of his way, but he knew he wasn't going unnoticed. Everyone who had gathered there kept eyeing him distrustfully and muttering to one another.

Kayan held her hands against the elf's abdomen and dosed her eyes. Jedra knew what she was doing now: pouring more of her own life energy into her patient while she tried to heal his bleeding and his spinal damage. Everyone else watched the elf for signs of recovery, but Jedra kept his eyes on Kayan. There was a limit to how much energy she could spare.

After a few minutes in the healing trance, she leaned back with a weary sigh and opened her eyes. "He'll live," she said to the chief. "He'll even walk again, but you should give him a couple of days to rest before you make him march the way we did yesterday."

The chief laughed bitterly and waved his arms to encompass the devastated camp. The elves who hadn't helped dig had erected a couple of the tents again, but most of the shelters were still in shredded heaps on the ground. "It will take at least that long before we can repair the damage," the chief said.

"Good," Kayan said. "Then let's get him out from under the hot sun and let him sleep."

Under her direction, six elves picked up the injured one and carried him carefully down into the camp, where they laid him inside one of the tents. Kayan went in to help finish his healing, and Jedra followed her. "How are you holding up?" he asked her.

Jedra knelt down beside her. "You've been putting out a lot more energy than I have; let's link back up and I'll share some of mine with you."

She considered it. He could see it in the way her eyes unfocused and her face relaxed for a second. Oh, yes, to merge their minds and become that supreme being again, to feel strength and power spread through them like fire through dry tinder....

She shook her head. "No. It always costs more than we get out of it."

True enough, Jedra supposed. But still he yearned for the experience, especially now when he was already drained from doing it once today. The memory of how it had felt overrode even the immediate here-and-now reminder of its price. He was glad Kayan had the willpower to resist it; left to himself he might not.

"All right," he said. "We'll sleep and recover our energy that way instead."

He lay down to attempt just that, but it seemed he'd hardly closed his eyes when he heard something thud to the ground just outside the tent. Then the door flap was pulled aside, and the chief stuck his head in the opening. "Come out," he said.

Jedra and Kayan exchanged a puzzled glance, then rose and stepped out of the tent. There on the ground just outside the door was the source of the noise they had heard: their knapsacks. Twenty or thirty elves stood silently in a semicircle around the tent door, and they didn't look happy.

The chief didn't waste time on a lengthy speech. "For saving Harat's life, we have decided to let you live," he said. "But only if you leave... now."