by Ryan Hughes
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.
Chapter Seven
The silence in the great room was thick enough to slice into wedges. Jedra looked at Kayan, and she looked at him, but neither of them wanted to start the accusations they both knew were coming. A gust of wind rattled one of the skylights, and Jedra reached up telekinetically through the roof and rearranged the rocks holding the glass shell in place, the motion dislodging a pinch of grit that pattered on the cushion between him and Kayan.
She seemed to know what he was doing even though he hadn't looked up. "Yes, show off, why don't you," she said.
He shook his head. "I was trying to save the skylight."
"Like you were trying to mindlink with a crystal?"
"Yes! Yes, I was. Here, see for yourself." He nearly levitated one of the crystals from the bedroom, but then he thought better of that and got up to get it himself. Both of them were right where he'd dropped them on the cushion; he picked up one and brought it back out to the great room.
"See?" he said, holding it out to Kayan. "There's something strange about this. I can sense some kind of energy in it, almost as if it's alive. I was trying to mind-link with it when you got mad at me."
She hardly looked at the crystal. "So it's my fault, is that what you're saying?"
"What?" Jedra sat down across from her again.
"You were just minding your own business when I blew up at you. So it's my fault that we fought, and that Kitarak left. That's what you think, isn't it?"
Jedra looked down at the crystal. "Well, I was trying to mind my own business, but I guess I was probably thinking about you, too, so that's why I accidentally mind-linked with you instead."