The Darkness Before the Dawn

Chapter Six

Irregular-shaped windows looked out through nooks in the rock, preserving the house's camouflage while providing even more light than in the skylit central room. Another circular cushion in the middle of the floor had the much-rumpled look of long use. It was obvious that Kitarak spent a great deal of his time here.

Kayan admired the library. "There are more books here than in the templar archives)" she said.

"More valuable ones, too, I'll bet," Kitarak said. "Some of these date back to the collapse."

"I'd love to read them," said Kayan, picking up a cracked leatherbound volume from one of die stacks and opening it carefully.

Her face fell, and Kitarak laughed his clicking laugh. "You're welcome to try, but first you'll have to learn the language. Don't worry; it took me only five years."

Kayan set the book back on the stack. Jedra didn't bother to pick up one; no matter what language it was written in, he wouldn't be able to read it. He had never learned that skill. Maybe he would be able to now, but by the sounds of it that would take a while.

All the rooms in the house were interconnected. Kitarak led Jedra and Kayan through a side doorway from the library into another room, this one much less orderly. A chest-high workbench ran along the circular outer wall, and on it rested the disassembled remains of more tinkercraft gadgets. Parts lay strewn everywhere, and more filled boxes on the floor. The odor of metal and oil was strong here.

"This is my workshop," Kitarak said. "Don't touch anything in here without my permission. Some of the equipment can be easily damaged, and some of it could easily damage you."

Jedra was about to pick up a twisted piece of metal from the workbench; he dropped his hand instead and backed away.

The next room was the kitchen. Kitarak had built a stove into the outer wall, and cabinets on either side of it provided work surface and storage. A wide basin had been set into one cabinet, and beside it a hand-pump provided water from a well dug directly beneath the kitchen. Trust Kitarak to have an indoor well, Jedra thought. He was relieved to see that it had just a single up-and-down handle; he wouldn't have to learn how to operate all that arcane machinery the tohr-kreen had used in the ruined city. Pots and pans hung from hooks overhead-nearly out of reach for Jedra, and definitely out of reach for Kayan.

"Can either of you cook?" Kitarak asked.

Kayan shook her head. "The templars all took their meals together. Slaves did the cooking."

Kitarak looked at Jedra, who said, "I've scorched many a lizard over a campfire, but I've never used anything like this."

The tohr-kreen made his rasping noise with his arms. "I can see there is much to teach you," he said.

Jedra was beginning to feel uneasy. It looked like he would have to learn reading, cooking, and maybe even tinkercraft along with psionics. How much else had he gotten himself into?

From the kitchen they went into the storage room. This was much cooler than the others, with no windows or skylights. In the dim light filtering in from the kitchen they could see sacks of vegetables hanging from hooks and a rectangular wooden chest nearly as tall as Kayan standing on end against the wall. When Kitarak opened its door, tendrils of white vapor wafted outward and a cold draft spread across the floor. Inside, haunches of meat were packed tight, and a pebbly white layer of frost coated them all. Jedra had seen frost only once in his life, on an exceptionally clear night after a cloudy day, when all the heat had radiated into the sky.

"Is this some kind of tinkercraft?" he asked.

Kitarak weaved his head from side to side. "No. I have tried for years without success to design a mechanical cold-maker. Instead, I must still use psionics to slow the dance of particles that makes things hot."

"I didn't know it was possible to make something cold," Jedra said. "Why don't the templars use it to cool our cities?"

Kayan said, "I don't think the templars know it's possible, either. At least I've never seen it done before." "There is another problem with your idea," Kitarak said. "The heat must go somewhere. With a cold-box, there isn't enough to worry about, but the heat from an entire city would be very hard to disperse safely. More likely it would burn the psionicist to ashes, and all the buildings around him as well."

"This will be your room," Kitarak said. "We can move most of this material into the workshop and store the rest outside." He shoved a wooden crate aside and stepped into the center of the room, where the hemispherical roof was high enough for him to stand erect. "You will need a bed if you wish to sleep. Will one be sufficient, or do you require two?"

Jedra blushed immediately. Kayan didn't turn red until she saw him doing it, but then she made up for lost time. She stammered, "I-um-one is fine with me. I mean, if that's all right with you."

"That would be fine," Jedra said, trying not to sound too eager, but then he wondered why not. He should let Kayan know that he was. "I'd like that very much," he said to her.

If Kitarak noticed anything unusual he didn't mention it. He merely bobbed his head up and down and said, "Very good. One bed, then. We can use one of the mats from the great room." He held his arms out, two of them forward and two to the sides, and said, "Clearing this out to make room for a bed will provide your first lesson. We will move it all without touching it."

Telekinesis, it turned out, was quite a bit like Jedra's existing ability to shove things around with his mind. It just required more control. Kitarak helped him with that, mindlinking with him and showing him how to imagine an object rising gracefully into the air and gliding through the house into the storeroom.

Merging minds with the tohr-kreen was nothing like doing it with Kayan. There was no sense of expanded ability or heightened awareness, only the extra presence guiding his thoughts. They weren't necessarily pleasant thoughts, either. Kitarak's mind worked differently than Jedra's. When he imagined grasping something in his hands, Jedra felt a wave of aggression sweep through him, as if every acquisition, no matter how small, were a form of conquest. It distracted him, and he was glad when Kitarak unlinked and let him proceed on his own.

At first Jedra had to follow along behind whatever he moved so he could make sure it didn't bump into walls, but once he learned the layout of the house he could stay in one place and simply imagine the whole trip. Kayan, on the other hand, couldn't get the hang of it. First Kitarak, and then Jedra, tried to explain to her how it felt when their minds grasped whatever they tried to lift, but the concept remained foreign to her. Even mindlinking didn't help. When Kitarak tried to link with her, Kayan began to shudder and breathe rapidly, and when Jedra tried it she couldn't concentrate on the telekinetic feeling amid the swirl of other sensations.

Her nervousness and frustration kept them from achieving perfect rapport, but it was still close communion. All right, Jedra said, let's just try it once while we're linked and see if you can feel what it's like that way.

I don't think that's a good idea, said Kayan. We're barely in control here.

Sure we are. I've got this down. It's easy, see? He focused their combined attention on a small crate of rocks-mineral samples or maybe even gemstones in the rough, knowing Kitarak-and imagined them rising into the air.

A sharp crack startled them, and sunlight suddenly streamed in through an extra hole in the roof. Rock chips and dust rained down around them, and a moment later the house echoed with dozens of impacts as the rocks from the crate fell back onto the roof. There was a crash of breaking glass from the main room, and Jedra looked in to see a stone bounce off the floor after smashing through one of the skylights.

Their mental convergence had shattered as well. They stood there in the storeroom, alone with their own thoughts, while Kitarak examined the new skylight in his house. At last the tohr-kreen looked down at them and said, "You do have a significant problem to overcome, don't you? Let us go outside and try it again."

They practiced all morning, but Kayan simply couldn't pick up the telekinetic power. Linked together, she and Jedra could send boulders clear over the rim of the canyon, but on her own she couldn't even budge a pebble. At last Kitarak put an end to the attempts. "It's clear you simply don't have that talent," he said as he lowered a new stone into place over the hole she and Jedra had made in his storeroom roof. She watched the head-sized rock drift lazily into place, followed by dozens of smaller ones to seal the gaps. "Damn it, it's not fair," she said, her face red from effort and anger. "You and Jedra can do it without even breaking a sweat."

"Yes, but-" She swallowed. "Not with Jedra." She looked over at him, standing helpless beside the tohr-kreen, and suddenly Jedra knew what she felt. They were supposed to be bondmates, supposed to share everything, but here was evidence of a fundamental difference between them that would never be reconciled.

It didn't have to be a problem, though. "We'll always be able to share whatever each of us can do," he reminded her.

"Sure," she said. "And we'll always be knocking holes in people's houses, or tipping over entire cities."

Kitarak rasped his arms together. "We will train you to overcome your lack of control."

"Like you trained me to lift things psionically?" Kayan turned away and stomped off toward the lone tree that grew on the other side of the house.

"Kayan?" Jedra took a step after her, but Kitarak grabbed him by the shoulder. Jedra winced, remembering what went through Kitarak's mind when he grasped something.

Kitarak released him again, however, and said, "Come, let us leave her to resolve her anger in her own way."

Jedra wondered if that was a good idea. In his experience, people who stomped away mad usually wanted to be comforted, but he didn't want to defy Kitarak, who was the teacher, after all. So Jedra reached outward with his danger sense, and when he found no threat to Kayan's safety he turned away and went back inside with the tohr-kreen.

He helped Kitarak pick up the pieces of skylight in the main room. They were shaped like the surface of a rock, but thin enough to be translucent, as if Kitarak had peeled a shell off one. From outside, the skylight would be indistinguishable from a regular rock. "How did you make this?" he asked.

"I will show you," Kitarak replied, taking a quadruple handful of pieces into his workshop. He placed them in a ceramic tray on the bench, then set a thick candle in a stone bowl beside the tray. "Can you light the candle?" Kitarak asked.

"I left my flint and steel in Urik," Jedra said apologetically.

"Hint and steel?" Kitarak said, sounding offended at the very idea. "Oh, no. Here. Look at the wick. Imagine it made of tiny particles, all of them wiggling about but never escaping. Now imagine them wiggling faster. Make them move faster and faster until they grow hot from the effort."

Jedra concentrated on the candle for a moment, trying to see it as Kitarak had described. It was difficult, since he had never considered before what something as simple as a candle wick was made of, but eventually he managed to think of it as a long thread of fine sand held together by some kind of flexible glue. He imagined the sand flowing back and forth along the wick, surging from one end of it to the other...

... and the wick burst into flame with a soft pop, all along the length of the candle. The wax slumped into a puddle, and the wick snuffed out again in the liquid wax.

"Very good!" Kitarak said. "But next time, focus on just the part sticking out the top." He held his upper hands around the cup and the wick lifted up again, then the wax flowed up to coat it and solidify in layers until there was none left in the bowl. "Try it again," Kitarak said.

This time Jedra got it right. When the candle was burning normally, Kitarak said, "All right, now we amplify the candle's heat and melt the glass."

"Why don't we just wiggle the glass particles until they get hot enough?" Jedra asked.

"Try it," Kitarak said.

Jedra did. He imagined one of the glass shards as another bunch of tiny sand particles, imagined them moving faster and faster and faster....

The glass began to glow a dull red color, but no matter how hard Jedra tried to move the particles faster, that was as hot as he could make it. He was getting plenty hot, though; sweat ran down his forehead and dripped off the end of his nose.

"That's enough," Kitarak said. "Don't wear yourself out."

Jedra took a deep breath and relaxed. "Why couldn't I melt it?" he asked.

"Because that way isn't very efficient," Kitarak replied. He set the candle closer to the tray. "Amplifying, on the other hand"-he waved both hands on his right side for emphasis-"takes what is already there and simply makes more of the same. Much more efficient. Now concentrate on the candle and imagine its heat flowing into the glass. Then once you get that, imagine more and more heat coming from it until the glass melts."

Another few minutes and the glass shards slumped into a puddle on the bottom of the tray. "Good," Kitarak said. "Now we simply form it into the right shape and let it cool." The molten glass bulged upward, inflating into a hemisphere, then crinkling into nooks and fissures to resemble the surface of a rock.

Jedra heard a thump from beyond the central room. It turned out to be Kayan closing the door; he heard her walk across the room to look in at him and Kitarak at the workbench. "Learning more tricks, I see," she said.

"Yes," said Kitarak. "Come, you may try it, too."

"No thanks," she said. "I've had enough disappointment for one day."

She turned to leave, but Kitarak spoke sharply. "No. You came here to learn, so you will learn. Come try this." The shell of glass hovered above the tray, then drifted toward Jedra. "Here," Kitarak said to him. "Take this- not with your hands!-and go put it in place."

Jedra levitated the fragile skylight carefully, conscious of Kayan's smoldering anger at his ability to do so, but unwilling to disobey Kitarak. He backed out of the workshop with the glass and took it outside, where he carefully climbed atop the house and cleared the hole until the new skylight fit snugly in place. The whole time he was working on the repair, he could feel Kayan's presence below him, her mind seething with resentment.

If anger could melt glass, he thought, she would have no trouble with this lesson.

Kayan didn't speak to him until that afternoon. Jedra had cleaned out the rest of the storeroom while Kitarak showed her how to melt glass, and he had floated a cushion from the main room into it for a bed. Since he was momentarily free to relax, he decided to try the bed for a short nap, the way he used to spend hot afternoons at home, but he had just lain down when Kayan stepped into the room.

He sat back up. "How did it go?" he asked.

She shook her head. "I evidently don't have any tele-kinetic ability at all."

"Oh."

She didn't come in and sit down, didn't react at all, so he stood up and held her in his arms. "I'm sorry."

She laid her head against his shoulder. "Me too."

"It doesn't matter," he said. "I can do it, and you'll always have me."

"Jedra, that's not the problem. I don't like knowing there's something I can't do." She pulled away from him, then crossed her arms over her chest.

"I'm sorry," he said again, not knowing what else to do.

She sighed. "I'll get over it," she said, then she turned away and went into the library.

But she didn't get over it. Not that day, nor any thereafter. Each passing day only produced another frustration for her as Kitarak tried one method after another to teach her what he knew of psionics. Some things she could pick up instantly, especially those powers that dealt with healing or metabolism in some way, and she was a quick study in the telepathic arts as well, but anything to do with telekinesis remained beyond her ability. It didn't matter to her that Jedra couldn't heal so much as a minor scratch, or that neither of them could teleport or even dream-travel the way Kitarak had done; no, all that mattered to Kayan was that Jedra could move things with his mind and she couldn't.

Kitarak held their training sessions in the central room, the "great room" as he called it. The three of them spent most of their time there, sitting on cushions while they learned how to manipulate light and sound, how to read minds and blank their thoughts from other mind-readers, and how to enhance their other senses. At least once a day he also took them outside into the dry canyon bottom and showed them how to fight with their minds and how to defend themselves from attacks both mental and physical.

After so much time together, they tended to seek out privacy during their few hours of free time. Kayan took to spending most of hers in the library, reading old books and ignoring Kitarak and Jedra whenever she could. At night she slept on the same bed with Jedra, but she might as well have been on the other side of the house for all the affection she showed. Jedra found himself wishing they were back in the desert again; at least it got cold enough there to require snuggling to stay warm.

Only when they joined minds did they have any kind of rapport. That was as good as ever, but it ultimately led to even more frustration because every time they did it they felt as if they'd resolved their problems, only to come down and find that they hadn't. They learned much about psionics that way, for Kitarak found teaching them easier when they were linked, but they both came to dread the long drill sessions, especially when the tohr-kreen focused on something they couldn't each do separately. And since Kitarak didn't need sleep, he drove them to exhaustion every day, which didn't help their frayed emotions either.

Finally one night, nearly two weeks after they had arrived at Kitarak's home, Jedra waited for Kayan to come to bed from another late reading session, and as she undressed in the dark he said softly, "Kayan?" He would have mindspoken, but even with practice in narrowing his focus, he didn't trust Kitarak not to listen in.

"Hmm?" Kayan paused in midmotion, a black silhouette against even greater blackness.

Jedra could have amplified the light reaching his eyes until he saw her as clearly as by daylight, but he respected her privacy. He looked up at the ceiling to remove the temptation and said, "Do you remember the first time we joined our minds just for pleasure?"

She finished pulling off her shirt, one she had made herself only a few days ago from an old cushion cover. "No," she said.

"That's because we never have."

"Yes, we did," she said, automatically gainsaying him.

"When?"

It took her a moment to come up with a reply, but she finally said, "That first night in the desert with Kitarak, when we kissed each other goodnight."

Jedra thought back to that night. It seemed a million years away, but he still remembered it clearly. "That was an accident," he said. "Not that I minded," he hastily added.

Kayan tossed her shirt into a corner and drew on her nightshirt: the robe the elves had given her, now laundered. "So what's your point?"

"My point is, why don't we do it again?"

"Because I'm tired," she said, sitting down on the bed. "And I'm in a bad mood, and I have a headache."

"All of which will go away instantly when we merge," he said.

"And all of which will come back to haunt me tenfold when we separate again," she replied.

"I bet it doesn't."

"What do you know about it? It's not your headache."

"Want to bet?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Jedra reached out and took her hand, using his light-amplification ability just enough to guide him. "It means I'm not exactly happy here either, Kayan. I had no idea it would be like this. I wanted to live happily ever after with you, not spend most of my time feeling guilty about what I can do or jealous of what you can do."

"There are no happily-ever-afters in this world," Kayan told him. But she didn't take her hand away.

Jedra pulled her gently back until she lay beside him. "So let's go to another one," he whispered. "Just for tonight. Forget Kitarak, psionics practice, and everything else. Let's spend tonight in our own world, just you and me and no cares whatsoever."

Kayan said nothing for quite a while. Jedra gave her time to think it over. He knew that any more coaxing would only make her decide against him. This had to be as much her idea as his in order for her to accept it, so he had to give her time to make her decision.

She was taking forever, though. He was afraid she had simply fallen asleep, but she finally rolled over to face him and said, "All right. Tonight let's mindlink just for the fun of it. No cares whatsoever."

Jedra let out a deep breath he hadn't even been aware he was holding. "Thank you," he said.

She laughed, the first time he had heard her do so in weeks. "Hang on to your hat," she said. "We may end up miles from here."

She leaned forward, and Jedra didn't need night vision to know that she was waiting to be kissed.

When their lips met, so did their minds. Warmth and excitement swept over them, the perfect blend of emotional and physical stimulus drawing them deep into new realms of sensation. Kitarak and his lessons, Kayan and Jedra's inequalities-all dwindled to insignificance in the face of the sudden, urgent imperative to experience every possible aspect of their convergence.

After that, things changed. Not entirely-if anything, they were even more competitive by day-but they spent their nights exploring new territory that even Kitarak didn't suspect existed. If he noticed, he didn't mention it, but he didn't ease up on them, either. When they began to fall asleep during their lessons he merely taught them how to suppress their bodies' need for sleep and continued with his instruction.

Jedra lost track of how many things he learned. Most of them were becoming instinctive after so much repetition. When he entered a dark room, he amplified what little light was there until he spotted a candle, then he agitated the wick into flame. When he needed to speak to Kitarak or Kayan, he did it telepathically unless they were already in the same room. When he wanted something, he detached a part of his mind to search it out, then brought it telekinetically to where he needed it.

And when he wanted a drink, he levitated water from the well, just as Kitarak had done when they had been with him in the ancient city. The tohr-kreen had laughed his clicking laugh when he explained how he had deceived them. "The pressure tank hasn't held air for millennia," he told them. "Only a psionicist or a mage could lift water through those rusty pipes." Then he had sobered and said, "Now, of course, it would take more than that."

Once again, Jedra felt guilty at the memory of the destruction he and Kayan had caused. They were learning how to control their power now, but that didn't erase what they had already done. Nothing could do that.

Only using the power better in times to come could make up for their earlier excesses and build their confidence in themselves.

Confidence came with practice, but that, Jedra soon learned, was not enough. Even though they now mind-linked for pleasure as well as for study, something still came between them. Kayan seemed aloof, as if she had somehow lost her respect for him. Maybe it was because they mindlinked for pleasure... or maybe it was something else.

He figured it out one evening when their studies were over and she had gone into the library as she usually did. Jedra usually went outside to relax after their training sessions, but the wind was blowing and he didn't feel like expending any more energy to still it, so he came back inside. Kitarak was busy in his workshop, so Jedra went into the library and sat beside Kayan on the cushion. She was sitting cross-legged, a book on her lap. She wore a simple tunic made from rough gray cloth she had discovered in the things they'd moved from the storeroom, but she looked good in it. And Jedra liked the way it rode up on her bare legs, now tanned a golden brown.

She looked up from her book, a thick, heavy volume with dark scrollwork in the margins and rows of black squiggles filling the centers of the pages.

"What are you reading?" Jedra asked.

She showed him the cover. More squiggles. "A history of the healing arts."

"Oh. Is it interesting?"

She frowned. "No, it's boring me to tears. That's why I'm reading it."

"Really?"

Her frown deepened. "Of course it's interesting. Don't you recognize sarcasm?"

Jedra felt himself turning red. "Sorry. I've never read a book, so I didn't know. I'd heard they could be boring, though."

"Maybe to your kind of people," Kayan said, "but they're never boring to someone who understands them."

"My kind of people?" Jedra asked. "What, half-elves? I've known half-elves who could read. One of my best-"

"I meant people who grew up in the warrens," Kayan said, slamming the book shut. "And who did you know who could read? Only templars and nobles are permitted to read."

For the first time in his life, Jedra suddenly felt ashamed of his past. Sleeping in an alley, scavenging for food, living day to day with no hope for the future-he'd never even seen a book until he was nine. Now he realized how that must look from Kayan's viewpoint, and how she must resent having somebody like him be able to do something she couldn't do. Not with Jedra, she'd said when Kitarak had asked if she'd ever felt inadequate before. At the time it had sounded as if she'd been frustrated because she loved him, but now he realized there was another interpretation. He could hardly believe it, especially after all they had gone through together. And the mindlink-would she merge with him if she felt that way? Not to mention the other things they had done?

He looked at Kayan, her face set in a scowl, and said, "One of the people I knew who could read was a noblewoman. She used to come to the market. Blonde. Slender. You could hear necks cracking all around wherever she went. She was married to one of the richest landowners in Urik, probably had a hundred personal slaves with perfect bodies who would have done anything she asked them to-but she took an interest in a friend of mine. He was an elven water vendor with a patch over one eye and a knife scar like a bandolier across his chest. Missing a few fingers, too. That didn't matter to Rowen-da. She used to dress up in disguise-I doubt it fooled anybody but her, but once a week or so she'd put on a tattered cloak and wear a veil and come spend a half dour with Merick in the back of his tent."

Kayan said, "Is there a point to this tender reminiscence?"

Nodding slowly, Jedra said, "She got some kind of thrill out of it. Merick did, too, but he didn't realize what was going on. He thought she really cared for him, right up to the day she grew tired of him and had him hauled off to the slave pens."

Kayan squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, they seemed to glisten with fire. "You think I'm slumming, is that it?"

"It doesn't matter what I think," Jedra said. "The important thing is whether or notion think you're slumming."

She didn't respond for a long time, merely let the book thump to the floor and lay back on the cushion, one hand over her eyes. After a long moment in which the only noise was the faint whistling of the wind flowing around the outside of the camouflaged house, she said, "I don't need this right now. Not on top of everything else."

"I don't either," said Jedra, "but something isn't right between us, and it's driving me nuts. At first I thought it was just jealousy because I could do telekinesis and you couldn't, but now I don't know. Jealousy I can handle, but if you think I'm not good enough for you, if I'm eventually going to be rejected because I can't read or I've got bad table manners or something, then I don't see any point in prolonging the agony."

She raised her hand off her eyes. "Jedra, you don't know what you're talking about."

"I hope I don't," he said, but his stomach felt tied in knots. She hadn't denied what he'd said.

Unwilling to push it any further, he left her alone with

\ her book. Kitarak was in his workshop, building some unfathomable piece of tinkercraft, so Jedra went back to his and Kayan's room and sat cross-legged on the cushion there. He tried to clear his mind and just relax for a few minutes, but the harder he tried, the more frustrated he became. He couldn't shake the feeling that someone was in the room with him. He wondered if Kayan or Kitarak were trying to read his mind, but he knew from experience what that felt like, and this wasn't the same. This was something else, something less directed, something...

Something in the knapsack he had carried with him all through the desert. He levitated it off the hook by the door and brought it to his lap, where he opened it up to find the crystals he had taken from the ruined city.

He had forgotten all about them in the turmoil of fatigue and emotion since he had arrived here. The one he wore on the thong around his neck had become such a familiar companion that he no longer noticed it, but now he took the other two-the ones with the strange presence to them-out of the pack and held them in his hand. He concentrated on them, trying to sense what kind of energy they might contain that made them register like living beings, but they didn't respond to his mental probes. He tried every method Kitarak had taught him, but nothing told him any more than he already knew.

He stood up and carried the crystals through the kitchen into the workshop, where he found Kitarak bent over a tiny geared device of some sort. The tohr-kreen looked up when he entered. "Yes?"

"I just remembered these crystals," Jedra said, extending his hand. "They've got some odd kind of presence to them, but I can't figure out what. I thought maybe you could."

Kitarak glanced at them. "Ah, those. I told you before, they're probably just magical talismans. Either that or they're empowered gems used for storing psionic energy." He clicked his mouth in laughter. "Given what you and Kayan are capable of together, you certainly don't need anything like that." He turned back to the device on his workbench. "Look here!" he said proudly. "I have nearly repaired this clock. I need only make one more gear, and I believe it will run."

Kitarak obviously wasn't interested in Jedra's crystals. Jedra looked at the tohr-kreen's tiny nest of overlapping wheels with the same lack of enthusiasm. He couldn't imagine how it could do anything, much less run anywhere, but he would take Kitarak's word for it.

Power-storage crystals, eh? He tried tapping into one, imagining its energy flowing into him, but nothing happened. Maybe it was more like a mindlink. He tried that, and this time he got a glimmer of contact. It felt as though there might actually be something to link with, as if there were more than simple energy inside. He tried a little harder, pushing for linkage...

Hey! Kayan's angry shout startled him out of contact. What do you think you're doing? she demanded.

Trying to mindlink with one of these crystals, he said.

Sure you are, she said, acrimony oozing from her voice. You're trying to force yourself on me. Well, where I come from, that's called mindrape. And the next time you try it, I'll squish your filthy intrusive brain out through your ears, you got it?

Kayan, that's not what I-

Stay out of my head!

Sudden pain flared in Jedra's skull. He clutched his head and rocked backward in agony, then Kitarak's training took hold and he shielded his mind from her attack.

A thump and a crash sounded from the workshop, then Kitarak stomped into the great room. "What is going on here?" he bellowed, his voice amplified psionically until it rattled the stones in the roof.

Jedra leaned out through the doorway. "I, uh, I was trying to link with those crystals, but I evidently slipped and pushed myself on Kayan instead." She stuck her head out from the library, and he told her, "Really, | Kayan, that's what happened."

"Sure."

Kitarak looked at Jedra, then at her. "You made me ruin the gear I was making," he told her.

She hung her head. "I'm sorry."

"You should be." Kitarak rasped his arms against his sides loud enough to make Jedra and Kayan wince. "You two have the worst control of anybody I've ever had the misfortune to tutor. Jedra, your attempt to mindlink- whether aimed at Kayan or not-was the clumsiest I've felt since I stepped on a baby tembo. No wonder she blasted you. I was just about to do it myself. But you"- he looked back at Kayan-"your unfocused tantrum was even worse. It had all the subtlety of a detonation spell. I am ashamed to call you students if this is the way you use my teaching."

"I'm sorry," Kayan said again.

"Me, too," said Jedra, nearly writhing with embarrassment. "I didn't mean to bother anybody."

"Well, you did," said Kitarak. "And so did you," he said to Kayan. He rasped his arms again, then stepped farther into the room. "Sit down," he said, gesturing at the cushions. "Join your minds. I will teach you control or die in the attempt."

Kayan lingered in the doorway. "I don't think I-"

"Sit down!" Kitarak's voice jerked her into action, and she practically leaped for the cushions. Jedra didn't wait to be told a second time.

"Converge," Kitarak told them.

Jedra looked at Kayan. Her eyes smoldered with pure hatred. All the same, Jedra felt the familiar tingling in his mind that signaled her presence, so he closed his eyes on her physical form and let his mind touch hers.

They linked, but their agitation kept them from merging completely. I'm really sorry, Jedra said as soon as he realized he hadn't lost his identity in the union this time.

I bet, she replied.

Kitarak's mind joined them, a cold, dark, alien presence even less comforting than their own uneasy intellects. Calm yourselves, he said. We will start with a simple probe. Both of you, see if you can find what I'm visualizing. Kitarak's presence winked out as completely as if he had never existed. He had shielded himself.

Kayan? Jedra asked.

What?

I really wasn't trying to-

Drop it. Kitarak's waiting. Are you going to try to break through his shield, or are you going to just sit there whining?

Damn it, I'm trying to apologize!

I don't want your apology. I don't want anything from you, understand?

The emotions boiling through the link hurt far more than her words. Jedra felt her contempt for him like a physical wound in his guts. Worse, he felt her own pain and knew he had caused it. He had hurt her deeply with his foolish remark about slumming.

He shouldn't have forced her, not so soon after his earlier disaster trying to establish contact with the crystals. Get away from me! she snarled, and she lashed out at him with her mind.

Jedra suddenly found himself in complete panic. His heart pounded as if it would tear itself free from his. chest, and he felt certain that horrible, agonizing death would come in the next instant. He tried to shield himself from it, but Kayan's attack swept through his mental barrier as if it weren't even there. She had become the avenging angel of death, come to torture him until he cried out for death as sweet release.

He tried to flee, but in convergence his body was only an abstraction, and wherever he could go mentally she could easily follow. His panic mounted, drowning out rational thought and leaving only the animal core of his being to act instinctively against the threat.

He felt energy surging back through the mindlink, a wave of raw power directed at the source of his panic. Still linked, he felt it strike Kayan and blast into her unshielded mind like a sandstorm through a tent, ripping her consciousness to tatters and scattering it to the winds. He felt her scream in terror, felt her strike back in her own last-ditch effort, and...

... and nothing. Their linked minds suddenly stopped feeling anything, stopped sending or receiving or even thinking. They existed as two separate points of view suspended in nothingness.

Then time started again, and Kitarak's voice said, That is enough. Jedra felt the mindlink break, and he found himself back in the tohr-kreen's great room, shivering with muscle spasms and soaked in sweat.

Kayan looked pale as a zombie. Jedra panicked all over again, afraid he had killed her, but she finally took a deep, shuddering breath and opened her eyes.

Kitarak didn't seem to care about their physical condition. "You disgrace me," he said as soon as they could hear him. "Both of you. You ignore your lessons, preferring to battle instead, and when you do you nearly kill one another. If I hadn't suppressed your abilities, you would have killed one another. What were you thinking?"

Jedra clenched his muscles to stop them from shivering. "I wanted to show her that I hadn't meant anything before, but when I tried she hit me with-I don't know what she did, but I suddenly felt like I had to escape, and since I couldn't do that, I struck back."

Kayan neither denied nor agreed with his explanation. She just closed her eyes and took deep breaths.

"I see," Kitarak said. "You wanted to show her that you meant no harm, so the first thing you did when she took offense was try to kill her."

"No!" said Jedra. "I didn't mean to hurt anybody; I just panicked."

"And you?" Kitarak asked Kayan. "Do you have an equally miserable excuse for your behavior?"

"He grabbed me," she said. "I told him to leave me alone and he didn't listen."

Kitarak looked up at the roof. "Dragons forbid that Jedra not obey your every whim," he said. When neither of them replied, he looked back down and growled, "Argh. This is pointless. You've got me doing it now."

He got up and walked into his workshop. They heard rattling and sliding sounds from within, and Kitarak said through the doorway, "That is probably appropriate, since I no doubt share the blame. I have been driving you too hard."

His sudden turnabout left Jedra speechless.

Kitarak said, "The rigors of psionic study have been too stressful for you, particularly since you need to develop your personal bond better in order to use it. I was foolish not to see that before now." He emerged from the workshop with his backpack, into which he stuffed a handful of books that floated out from the library and a few cooking items that did the same from the kitchen.

"What's that for?" Kayan asked.

"I am giving you a vacation," Kitarak said. "Your psionics training is suspended until you solve your personal problems and become true clutch-mates."

"You're leaving?"

Kitarak tied closed the top of his pack. "Your powers of deduction are truly amazing," he told her. To both of them he said, "You may call for me to return when you are ready to continue your education, but you had better be truly ready. In the meantime, you will find food enough in the pantry to keep you for months, if you are frugal with it. Jedra, you must remember to keep the cold-box from warming up, and Kayan, you must prevent the vegetables from spoiling." Jedra hardly heard him. The cold-box and the vegetables could vanish in a puff of smoke for all he cared.

But Kitarak could leave, and he did, dragging his pack to the door and pausing there only long enough to say, "By the way, I was visualizing a rain cloud." Then he hoisted his pack onto his back and stepped outside, closing the door solidly behind him.