by Ryan Hughes
"We don't need to. Other people already know how. They can teach us."
"But what if they didn't?" Jedra insisted. "What if this were something brand new? Shouldn't we try to learn how to control it on our own?"
Kayan shifted her position on the unyielding floor.
"That's a nonsense question," she said. "Other people do know how to control it."
"I'm just saying 'what if?'."
"And I'm saying it's a pointless question. We need to find a psionics master, not speculate on what we'd do if there weren't any."
"I guess." Jedra picked up a bone-white fragment of a statue-a nose, it looked like, though the tip of it was missing-and turned it over in his hand. "Where do you suppose we ought to start looking?"
"Tyr is still the closest city," Kayan said.
Jedra nodded. "Tyr. Everything in my life seems to be pushing me to go there. I'm not sure I want to give in to it." "Why not?"
"I have a bad feeling about it."
She laughed. "You were headed there as a slave. That might color a person's attitude a bit."
Jedra laughed with her. "It might at that." His laughter dwindled away quickly, though, and he said, "I still have a bad feeling about it."
"We don't have to stay there," Kayan said. "We've got money; we could buy passage on a caravan to Altaruk or Gulg or Nibenay or somewhere."
"And hope the Jura-Dai don't decide to attack it," Jedra said. He tossed the nose across the central aisle, where it bounced off a column and shattered into even smaller fragments on the floor.
The rattling sound continued long after the pieces had come to rest, and it took a moment for Jedra to realize that he wasn't hearing ghosts. Kitarak was returning. The tohr-kreen ducked down to make it through the doorway, then took off his pack and rested it against the column beside the one Jedra and Kayan were using.
"Have any more luck?" Kayan asked him.
"None, regrettably," Kitarak said. He took one of his waterskins from his pack and drank a few sips-the first water they had seen him drink since they'd given him their own. When he was done he put the skin away and said, "I think this city is nearly mined out. It is too close to the hinterlands."
"Is that where you're from?" Jedra asked.
Kitarak's lower arms jerked suddenly and scraped against his thorax, producing a scritching sound. "I couldn't say."
Touchy subject? It didn't matter. They weren't going to the hinterlands anyway. Jedra said, "Kayan and I were just talking about our plans. Thanks to you we've got food and water enough to make it to Tyr, if we start this evening."
"Tyr?" Kitarak turned his head first left, then right. "What do you expect to find in Tyr?"
"A psionics master, we hope," Jedra said. "Or failing that, at least passage to another city where we might find one."
"Psionics?" Kitarak looked away. "You mentioned that before. Said you could stop me with it if I attacked you. Could you?"
"Yes," both Kayan and Jedra said in unison.
Kitarak clicked his mandibles. Laughter? "Prove it," he said.
"What?" Jedra reached out for his spear, but Kitarak stepped forward and pinned it to the floor with one of his clawed feet.
"Prove to me that you have this power."
"Why?" asked Kayan. She looked unblinkingly at Kitarak, and Jedra realized she was getting ready to use her healing power on him somehow. Or maybe she would do to him what she'd done to Sahalik.
"I wish to see it." "No, you don't," she said. "Trust me."
"Who said anything about traveling together?" asked Jedra.
Kitarak rasped his lower arms against his thorax again. The vibration it produced was unpleasant, ear-piercing. "You said you were going to Tyr. So am I. Unless you plan to take a less direct route than I, we will be traveling together."
What now? Jedra mindsent to Kayan.
I don't know. I'm not sure I want him traveling with us.
Me either, Jedra said. On the other hand, he knows the countryside, and I still don't get any feeling of hostility from him, even now. He'd probably be good to have along, if we can just convince him we're not lying about our power.
Kayan said, Hah. Convincing him won't be a problem; keeping him alive while we do it will be the trick.
Maybe not, Jedra said. He's not like Sahalik; we might not have to be quite so direct with him.
What do you have in mind?
He smiled. Well, we're in a ruined city already. What's one more ruin?
Aloud, he said, "All right. You want a demonstration, we'll give you a demonstration. Come on outside." He stood up, leaving the spear and his pack where they lay. He offered Kayan a hand up, and the two of them walked out into the street.
Kitarak left his pack inside as well. He stood beside them in the street, cocking his bulbous-eyed head this way and that, while Kayan and Jedra blinked to regain their vision in the sudden light.
Link up, Jedra sent. He took Kayan's hand in his own, remembering that physical contact had strengthened the link before.
The rush was like a wind blowing through them, spreading well-being through every cell of their bodies. They felt their minds merging again, felt themselves become a new being. With Kitarak so close by, they tried not to imagine themselves with any kind of physical body, lest their psionic wings or claws do him inadvertent damage before they could get clear. Instead, they concentrated on the city before them, bringing every stone and every shadow into sharp focus. This time, now that they had seen it with their own eyes, they saw it as it was now, rather than in its former glory.
It was still impressive. The tallest remaining tower, nearly six stories high, stood only four or five buildings away, halfway down the next block on the same street on which they stood. Jedra and Kayan turned toward it, stretching out with their power, letting it flow through them, upward and outward. They raised their hands to help direct it, palms out, arms slightly bent. They could almost feel the stone walls against their hands. A little more concentration, and they could feel the stone. They felt every crack, every joint, every rectangular window for the entire six stories on the side that faced them.
Then they pushed.
The building groaned. The massive wall resisted. Jedra and Kayan pushed harder, and slowly, inexorably, the wall tipped away from them. It didn't go over in one big slab; instead it buckled in the middle, and the top half, suddenly relieved of its support, broke into its constituent blocks and rained down like a sudden hailstorm.
The ground shook, and thunder rolled down the street. The lower half of the collapsing wall smashed through interior partitions as if they weren't even there, gutting the building, then twisting to the right as it toppled inward and knocking out the back wall as well. The whole building shuddered, and more stones fell. Then the third wall, the far one, crumbled away from the others and crashed down on the building behind it.
The fourth wall stood for a moment, a massive, six-story monolith with the ragged ends of floors sticking out from the side, then it tipped inward and did what the others failed to do: fell in one piece all the way to the ground.
Dust billowed up, obscuring the entire far end of the street. Jedra and Kayan struggled to keep their balance when the quake hit, and the renewed body awareness brought them out of their link.
They hadn't been merged long enough for the letdown to be as severe as before. They were able to stand and watch the dust cloud rise above the other buildings while they waited for the noise to die down enough to allow speech. It didn't die right away, though, and finally they realized why: The shaking had weakened the next building closer to them, and it was going down, too. This one was only three stories high-it was the one in which Jedra had found the crystals-but it fell with nearly as much impact as the first.
Kitarak didn't know they had only caused the first collapse directly; He turned toward them and shouted, "Stop it!"
Run! Kayan mindsent as she whirled around and did just that, dodging boulders and leaping through the rubble while the gr
ound shook and more stones fell from the buildings all around them.
Kitarak was already in motion, but rather than sprinting down the street after her he ducked into the building they had just been inside. Jedra and Kayan's packs flew out the doorway, then Kitarak reappeared, dragging his own pack behind him.
Jedra grabbed both his and Kayan's packs and ran off after her. A section of cornice fell off the front of the building beside them and shattered, sending fragments everywhere. He felt a sting in the side of his right leg, but he kept running.
Kitarak passed him within twenty feet, leaping high on his powerful back legs even with his pack weighing him down. He ran all the way to the end of the block, through the intersection, and paused in the rubble beyond where the building on the right side of the street had already collapsed. Kayan stopped next to him, and so did Jedra a moment later. They turned around to watch the last of the buildings-including the one they had been resting in only a few minutes earlier-thunder to the ground.
Jedra was horrified at the destruction they had unleashed. True, the city was abandoned and nearly ruined anyway, but to see building after building destroyed because of something he did made him want to scream in frustration. He hadn't planned it this way. He couldn't let Kitarak know that, however. When the rumbling finally stopped, they stood together in stunned silence for a moment before Jedra said, "Was that enough of a demonstration for you?"
The tohr-kreen clicked his mandibles again and again, as if having trouble speaking. Finally, his voice still full of clicks and buzzes, he said, "You didn't have to do that! Throwing a single boulder across the street would have been enough!"
Kayan, picking up Jedra's cue, said, "We wanted to make sure there was no doubt."
Kitarak looked from them to the dust cloud-now drifting eastward on the breeze-and said, " 'Be careful what you ask for; you might get it.' I did ask, didn't I?"
"You did," Jedra still felt guilty, but if Kitarak wanted to take responsibility for their mistake, let him. Maybe it would keep him from demanding any more demonstrations. "So are you ready to leave for Tyr now?"
Kitarak turned his compound eyes toward Jedra. This time there was no doubt what emotion his expressionless face was hiding. "Whether or not I am ready," he said, "we must leave in any case."
"Why?" asked Jedra.
"Because you have destroyed the well."
Chapter Five
They had arrived from the south, climbing over piles of rubble for hours to reach the heart of the city. Now Kitarak led them westward along pathways he and others had cleared, and they reached the rocky plain beyond its edge in half that time. Turning to survey the ruins behind them, Jedra felt an immense sadness sweep through him. At one time, millennia ago, this had been a thriving center of life for thousands of people. What catastrophe had put an end to it? He would probably never know. But he would always know what had finished it off. The memory of all those high towers crashing to the ground would haunt him forever.
Nothing of value had survived. They had checked to be sure, but Kitarak had been right; the wellhead had been buried under tons of stone blocks. It would take hundreds of people with levers and ropes to dig down to it, and the likelihood that any of the pumping machinery had survived was practically nil. And without a water source, not even scavengers would come anymore. The city now belonged totally to the desert.
Kitarak turned away without a word and led the way into the vast rocky plain. He took long, slow strides, covering eight or ten feet at a time. Jedra and Kayan took three or four steps for every one of his, and soon they were puffing and panting to keep up.
Jedra had refused Kayan's offer to heal his leg where it had been cut by the flying debris. It was only a surface wound over the calf muscle; he could let it heal naturally rather than tire her out. He almost wished he had let her do it, because the salt in his sweat was making it sting like crazy. His other muscles were complaining just as badly, though. "You've got to slow down," he finally gasped. "We're not going to make it another mile at this pace."
"I don't care," said Jedra. "We can't walk this fast."
The tohr-kreen rasped his arms against his thorax again. Jedra was growing certain that was his way of showing agitation. "Can't your psionic power give you more endurance?" Kitarak asked.
"No," Jedra said. "At least I don't think so. Kayan?"
She was bent over, hands on her knees. She shook her head without looking up. "No, it can't. Maybe for a little while, but we'd just tire out even faster in the long run."
"How about levitation? Can't you lift and move yourselves with the same force you used to level the city?"
"I don't think that would get us much farther either," she said, straightening up. "We can explore mentally, but we always come back to where we started. Our bodies never go anywhere in the first place."
"Hmm," Kitarak buzzed. "This power of yours doesn't seem very useful for practical things."
"That's why we're looking for a mentor," Jedra said. "Somebody who can help us learn how to... ah... do more with it." He didn't want to admit that it was out of control most times.
"Toward what end?"
The question caught Jedra by surprise. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, what do you want to use the power for?"
"I don't know," Jedra said. "How about levitation, for starters?"
"Very good," Kitarak said. "Clever." He turned away and began walking again, but more slowly.
Over his spiny shoulder, he said, "What else can you do, besides push buildings over?"
How much do we want to tell him? Jedra mindsent to Kayan.
Don't let him know we can communicate without speaking, she sent back. Or mind-merge. We may need the advantage if he's not what he seems.
I agree.
Kitarak was waiting for an answer. Apparently he could see ahead and back at the same time; he didn't stop walking, but he didn't turn his head forward again, either. Aloud, Jedra said, "I can sometimes tell when people are watching me. Especially if they're a threat."
"That sounds useful," Kitarak said. It was hard to tell when his voice carried sarcasm, but he seemed sincere this time. "Anything else?"
Kayan said, "I can heal most wounds, if they're not immediately fatal."
"That definitely sounds useful. Can you heal a tohr-kreen?"
"I don't know. You want to hurt yourself and find out?"
Kitarak actually seemed to consider it. He tilted his head from side to side and rattled his mandibles like a person clicking his tongue. "No," he said at last. "Advance knowledge might lead to foolish risk-taking. I will proceed on the assumption that you cannot, and hope to be pleasantly surprised if I need your services." "Good idea," said Kayan.
"Of course." Kitarak said nothing more for a few minutes, merely turned his head to the front again and hiked on through the rocks at his steady pace. Now that he had slowed down, Jedra was glad to follow his lead; he didn't like being first in line through unfamiliar territory. But the tohr-kreen wasn't through. He turned his head back again and said, "Do you lust for power?"
This time it was Kayan who said, "What?"
"In my experience, there are two reasons for seeking knowledge," Kitarak said. "Simple curiosity and thirst for understanding is one, and lust for the power that knowledge can bring is the other. Which is your reason for seeking a mentor?"
"I-don't think it's either one," Kayan said.
"Neither one! How can that be?"
"I've already got the power," Kayan said. "I just want to find out how to use it better."
Kitarak clicked excitedly. "Aha, you dodge the question. Why do you want to use it better?"
"Because!" Kayan said in exasperation. "I don't like being ignorant. It's frustrating and it's dangerous."
"Good," Kitarak said. "Indeed, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. You have a certain wisdom about you. It's crude and unpolished from too little introspection, but you do understand the basic issue. How about you, young Jedra? Wh
at are your reasons for seeking a mentor?"
"Power," Jedra said immediately. "Greed. I want to rule all of Athas with an iron fist."
"Do not take up gambling. You lie poorly," Kitarak said, but he turned away and left Jedra alone, which was what Jedra wanted.
All the same, as they hiked on toward the afternoon sun the tohr-kreen's question hung in his mind. Why did he want to learn more about psionics? It wasn't just because his power was dangerous; he could simply stop using it if that were the case. No, there was definitely an allure to it that kept him coming back. Especially when he and Kayan joined minds. Every time they had done so it was because of some emergency or other, but he yearned for the time when they could do it for the sheer joy of the union. To share their thoughts and their emotions-to share everything that made them who and what they were-without fear of repercussions.
Even after he'd met Kayan, he hadn't thought of love. Circumstance had made them traveling companions, even bondmates, but even so they hardly knew each other. Could they... ?
No, their attraction was purely mental. It couldn't be love.
Then he remembered the kiss their first night alone in the desert, and the one the following day. How could he have forgotten that? He'd seen enough in his years on the street to know that a kiss-or even much more than that-didn't mean someone was in love, but it was one more piece of evidence in a growing list. He and Kayan seemed to argue a lot for lovers, but Jedra had seen that before, too. It wasn't impossible...
He was so preoccupied with his thoughts that he plowed right into Kitarak's bulbous abdomen when the tohr-kreen stopped suddenly. He nearly fell over, but managed to catch himself on Kitarak's pack.
"Sorry," he said, blushing. "I wasn't watching where I was going."
"Obviously," Kitarak said. "Fortunately, I have been. We are entering flailer territory, so be on sharp lookout."