by Ryan Hughes
"Where?"
"I don't know. Maybe we can find another bread tree." Kayan was about to say something, but a deep rumbling noise drowned her out. "Was that thunder?" she asked when it faded.
Jedra looked out over the ocean, where a dark gray cloud had boiled up seemingly out of nowhere. "Well, if that cloud is any indication, it is," he said. Thunderstorms were rare on Athas, but not impossible; Jedra had been in two of them over the course of his life, and he remembered both vividly. Kayan looked up at the cloud in surprise. "Where did that come from?" she asked. "It wasn't there a minute ago."
She nodded.
"And somehow, this place picks up our thoughts and makes them real. So now the world is mad at me."
Lightning forked down out of the cloud into the ocean, and a half minute later thunder rumbled again. The storm was approaching fast. Even so, Kayan said, "Come now, you can't think an entire thunderstorm is directed at you."
"I don't think I'll stick around to find out." Jedra scanned the flat beach for shelter, but there wasn't any. "Come on," he said, and he jumped into the air.
Kayan apparently decided not to make a target of herself just to prove a point. She joined him, and they flew together back toward the forest. The storm was advancing faster, though, blotting out the unnaturally bright sun, and when the flashes and the booms came only a few seconds apart it became apparent that it was going to catch them. "We aren't going to make it," Kayan said.
"You've got a better idea?" Jedra asked.
"Yeah." She pointed to their left, up the coastline "The city."
Its tall spires had beckoned them all day, but there had been too many other wonders to investigate first. Now that the need for shelter had become foremost, however, this suddenly seemed like a good time to check it out. Jedra and Kayan banked around and raced up the coast, the thunderstorm flashing and booming along behind them.
"It's definitely following us!" Jedra announced when he risked a look back.
Wind buffeted them as they flew headlong toward the towering buildings, and just as they reached the outskirts of the city the rain hit. Big, fat globules of cold water struck their faces and bare arms like gravel in a gale, drenching them almost instantly and nearly blinding them in the process. Under there! Jedra mindsent, grabbing Kayan's arm and diving toward a three-story rectangular building that had a deep colonnade around all four sides. They swooped in under its cover and landed behind one of the columns, then ran for the open doorway near the middle of the long side.
Lightning etched shadows of the entire row of columns into the inner wall, and thunder shook the ground in the same instant. Jedra and Kayan piled through the doorway just as another lightning bolt hit close enough to light up the inside of the building, revealing a double row of columns with statues interspersed between them.
This is the same building we were in with Kitarak in the ruined city, Jedra thought, picking himself up off the marble floor.
Another lightning flash confirmed it. The same columns flanked the wide center aisle, and the same statues, once smashed to rubble, now stood whole. Jedra reached out to one of them and touched its nose. Was this the one he had tossed casually into the pile of debris? Evidently the crystal world was modeled after the real city during its height. Lightning flashed again and again and thunder shook the building, but they were safe inside its massive stone walls. They waited out the storm just inside the door, wincing at the lightning and thunder and watching the rain spatter into puddles on the stone streets.
This is too much to believe, Jedra said after the worst of the storm had passed. Rivers and oceans and thunderstorms all in one day.
Has it been just a day? Kayan asked. It seem longer. She leaned her head against his chest. I'm tired.
You're just hungry, he said. You didn't eat any of the sea creature. Let's find you something to eat, and I'll bet you'll feel better.
Maybe, she said. Why don't we just go back home for dinner?
The rain was letting up now. Jedra led her back outside to the covered colonnade, saying, "Oh, we can't leave yet. There's so much to see! Have you noticed that this is the same city as the one where we met Kitarak?"
"No, I hadn't." Kayan looked out at the buildings up and down the street, some of them seven or eight stories high.
Jedra said, "It looks different because none of them have fallen down yet, but that one down there"-he pointed to one of the tall ones-"is the one we pushed over. And that means the courtyard with the fountain should be over there." He shifted his arm to the right.
"What difference does that make?"
"There should be trees there," he said. "And if we start wishing for it now, at least one of them should have food on it."
"Now that you've said not, I bet it won't."
They walked out into the last of the rain, enjoying the sharp stings of cold drops on their skin. They walked down the street half a block, crossed over and went through the gap between two tall buildings, and sure enough, there was the open courtyard with the fountain. And surrounding the fountain was a ring of trees, each one bearing a different kind of fruit.
"There you go," Jedra said proudly. "Whatever you like, the crystal world provides."
"How about warmth?" Kayan said. "I like rain, but it's kind of cold."
A moment later the clouds began to break up, and the unnaturally bright sun shone through again.
"Good enough?" Jedra asked.
"It'll do," Kayan said, but she was smiling again.
They strolled from tree to tree, sampling the exotic fruits. When they had eaten their fill, Kayan lay back in the soft green grass and said, "Nap time."
Jedra felt a little tired, too. "That's a good idea," he said, lying down beside her. He cast about psionically for danger but didn't detect anything, so he folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes and listened to the gurgling fountain and the peep of birds in the trees until he fell asleep.
* * *
The sun was going down when he woke; it was the cold that had awakened him. Jedra sat up groggily and rubbed his eyes, then gently shook Kayan's shoulder.
"Time to get up," he said.
Kayan didn't stir.
"Come on," he said, shaking harder. "There's still plenty of city to explore." He didn't really feel like it-he mostly wanted to just go back to sleep-but he supposed they would perk up if they ate again.
Kayan still didn't move.
"Kayan?" Suddenly afraid, Jedra looked to see if she was breathing, and he relaxed a little when he saw her chest rise and fall. Her breaths were very shallow, though, and far apart,
Kayan, he mindsent. No response. He tried linking with her, but they had already been linked before they came into this world, and nothing more happened.
She couldn't have been poisoned; she had checked the food carefully before she ate any of it. So what was the problem?
Jedra wasn't doing so well, either. He felt faint, and his vision swirled as if someone had stirred the world with a spoon. A couple of deep breaths helped, but not for long; the moment he tried to stand, his eyes went dark and he fell back down.
Kayan! he mindsent again. "Kayan!" He knelt beside her and shook her shoulder, pinched her arm, even rugged her into a semi-upright position, but the effort nearly tumbled him into unconsciousness again.
They both fell back to the grass. Jedra tried to sit up again, but he couldn't manage even that. He tried to break their mental link with the crystal, but there was none to break. Once they had burst through into this world, they had stayed without effort. It would probably take a similar effort to leave, but they were too exhausted now to do it.
The world swirled around him. Fighting disorientation, he tried again to mindlink with Kayan, attempting to cut through the mysterious lethargy with a burst of psionic power, but he couldn't feel her presence. He felt something out there, some flicker of response far away in the vast crystal world, but he couldn't maintain it for more than a second.
The effort d
rained him even further, but that in itself provided an idea. If trying to mindlink tired him, then breaking the existing link with Kayan might give him more energy.
He concentrated on the mind-shielding technique that Kitarak had taught him, the one for stopping unwanted psionic contact. Closing his eyes so the swirling world wouldn't distract him, he carefully built up a barrier. He felt the contact with Kayan growing weaker, stretching out until the link finally broke and with a final wave of vertigo he tumbled back to reality in Kitarak's library.
It was dark. The candles had all burned out and it was still night, or it was night once again. Jedra tried to see with psionic vision, but there wasn't enough light to amplify. He tried to levitate a candle from one of the other rooms, but he didn't have the energy for it. He had to crawl into the great room for a candle, light it with the last of his power, and bring it back to the library.
Kayan lay on the cushion, sprawled on her side as if she had tumbled there without any attempt to break her fall. Her face and arms and legs looked thin and angular, the skin draped in folds over her bones. She looked like one of the starving street beggars who were so far gone that nobody bothered to feed them anymore.
"It wasn't real," he whispered. "None of it was real. Not even the food." And in the real world, he and Kayan had been mindlinked for at least a day, burning energy at dozens of times their normal rate. It had had the same effect on them as going without food for weeks.
"Kayan," he said, shaking her. Kayan.
She didn't move, except to draw in another slow, shallow breath. He tried to mindlink with her again, but he couldn't reach her. Her mind wasn't there-it was still in the crystal. And now that he had broken their link she was completely out of reach.
Chapter Eight
His first impulse was to shatter the crystal and let her out, but he didn't know if that would work. It wasn't just a box holding her mind captive; it was an entire world. She might die in the cataclysm that would surely wrack it if he damaged the crystal. He didn't know if death in there would mean anything outside, but he didn't want to risk it. Not yet.
He looked at the crystal lying there on the floor in front of him. Such a tiny thing to hold such wonders- and to present such a trap. He was afraid to touch it now, for fear he would cause earthquakes inside. If he started another chain reaction of falling buildings, Kayan could be caught in it.
No, the first thing to do was to stave off starvation before he collapsed as well. He would be no use to her at all if he let that happen. He crawled into the kitchen and pulled himself up to reach the water jug on the counter, drank a long, sloppy draught from that, then he opened the easiest cabinet to reach-the grain bin-and sat down in front of it to munch a handful of the dry seeds. When that began to take effect he stirred enough to shuffle into the pantry and eat a sack of nuts and a raw erdlu egg, which in turn revived him enough to thaw one of the inix flanks from the cold-box and devour that half raw.
He took a water flask and an erdlu egg back into the library for Kayan, but without a conscious mind running her body he couldn't get her to take any of either. Finally he just dribbled a little water into her mouth and counted on reflex to make her swallow, and when she'd done that a couple of times he switched to the erdlu egg and kept feeding her tiny spoonfuls of it until she had eaten the whole thing.
Erdlu egg was one of the most nourishing foods he knew of. Less than an hour after he'd eaten his, Jedra began to feel stronger; and Kayan recovered some of her color as well. He fed her another one, hoping she would regain consciousness inside the crystal and break her link with it, but when another hour passed with no change in her condition he lay back on the cushion and tried to mindlink with her again. If he could reach her, maybe he could pull her back out of the crystal.
Her presence was so faint it was hardly detectable, but when he concentrated he could sense it. It was a little like the crystal itself had been: faint and hard to reach. However, now that he'd had some experience breaking through the barrier into it, he knew what to look for. He imagined reaching through and touching Kayan, envisioned his hand penetrating the barrier that separated them and his whole body following through until he stood beside her again in the grassy courtyard.
He felt the barrier resist, then a moment of dizziness, and he was there. It was much easier the second time.
The moment his vision cleared, however, he realized he'd made a mistaken assumption. He hadn't gone straight to the courtyard. He was back in the clearing in the forest where they had originally arrived. Only this time the trees weren't in a loose ring at the edge of the grass; they had moved closer and now leaned toward him with menacing branches and dangling vines.
Was Kayan mad at him again? She'd called up the thunderstorm last time she was angry; if she'd regained consciousness and thought Jedra had abandoned her. she might have turned the world against him again. It might not even have been a deliberate decision.
Wind rattled the branches and made them swoop back and forth overhead. The vines swung madly, some cracking like whips as the branches flung them back and forth. Jedra ducked a particularly low one, but he felt another thump into his back and coil around his waist.
Get off! he commanded it, thinking that the world should obey his wishes too, but the vine clung stubbornly. Another one swooped down and grabbed his right arm. He pulled it free with his left hand, but more and more vines snared his arms and legs faster than he could fight them off.
Kayan, call them off! he mindsent. Kayan!
She didn't respond. Something did, though. The vines yanked Jedra into the air, and thunder blasted out of a clear sky. Cursing and trying to stay upright, Jedra tried everything he could think of to escape, but he couldn't make the vines burn or freeze solid and he couldn't break them either psionically or with his own physical strength. He was trapped.
Time to leave, Jedra thought. He built up his mental barrier again to block the mindlink with the crystal world, but the world refused to fade. Either he didn't have the strength to build a complete barrier, or else the barrier didn't make any difference now.
The footfalls and the roaring grew closer. Jedra saw a treetop disappear, and a moment later the loud crack of its trunk breaking reached him. He heard more trees topple over, then the last one separating him from the creature crashed to the ground, and he got his first glimpse of the beast.
It was some kind of dragon. It had scaly, purplish green iridescent skin, and stood erect on two enormously powerful rear legs, with a long, massive whip tail stretching out behind. Its body was at least thirty feet tall, and its head was a scaly oblong slashed across by a toothy mouth easily big enough to swallow Jedra in one gulp. Its forearms were short in comparison with its legs, but they were still at least six feet long and heavily muscled. They ended in cruel claws, and Jedra recognized the limp form clutched in them.
"Kayan!" he screamed.
The dragon bellowed at him, its hot, fetid breath washing over him and making him choke. Jedra struggled against the vines, but they clung tight. He tried mind-linking with Kayan again, and this time he felt a faint response.
Kayan, wake up! he sent.
Mmm?
The dragon lifted her up to its eye level and peered at her through first one, then the other of its foot-wide pupils. Then it lowered her toward its toothy mouth and opened its jaws.
Jedra shoved at its arms psionically, pushing them aside, then he tugged at Kayan and wrenched her free of the dragon's grasp. It bellowed an ear-splitting roar and lunged after her, but Jedra swept her aside. The motion set him swinging wildly from the vines, and Kayan nearly smacked into a tree trunk, but he managed to bring her around just in time and fly her out of the monster's reach.
But not out of the trees' reach. Dozens of vines whipped out and snared her, and Jedra could do nothing to stop them. Within seconds she hung beside him in the trees, while the dragon bent low to examine them both.
It rubbed its hands together like a gourmet contemplating a sumpt
uous meal, and a thick rope of drool spilled over its teeth. It grunted softly-for a thirty-foot dragon-and its nostrils flared in and out with its excited breaths.
Jedra? Kayan's voice said in his mind. Her mind-sending was weak, but she was conscious.
I'm here, he sent. He tried again to link with her, and this time he was rewarded with a rush of sensation. Fatigue and anger washed through him, but fear overrode them both.
The dragon backed up a step. It opened its mouth again, and Jedra braced himself for another roar or even a blast of flame, but instead it spoke in a deep, rumbling voice. "Worship me," it said, "and I will spare you."
The language was one that Jedra had never heard before, but he realized he was understanding it through Kayan's mind. He mindsent to her, What is this thing?
I don't know, she replied. I just got here.
The dragon roared again. "Worship me!" it bellowed.
"Who are you?" Jedra shouted back.
"I am Yoncalla, lord of all creation." The dragon held its head high and bellowed at the sky. Wind swirled, and thunder boomed.
"Pretty impressive," Jedra admitted, but he was thinking that Kayan had called up a thunderstorm without even intending to. In this world, practically anything was possible.
"I will impress you more," Yoncalla said, and the dragon body began to elongate. The arms and massive legs shortened and the head narrowed, while the body stretched out and up until it was a sixty or seventy foot snake. Its five-foot-wide body coiled around and around until the head was once again level with its dangling captives, and its forked tongue flickered out and waved just in front of their faces. Its eyes had become yellow slits that didn't blink.
"I can be whatever I choose," the snake said, its improbably flexible lips forming the words. Jedra had no doubt it could. He and Kayan probably could as well, if their enhanced appearance earlier was any indication, but they still didn't know how to control this bizarre world.
Wonderful, she said. I'm open to suggestions, if you've got any.
Last time I was able to have by breaking our mindlink, but you stayed behind. And when I came back, I didn't link with you first. I think the crystal has its own kind of link.