The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,102

in the guard towers stayed put—even the ones atop the burning mansion—and the ones on patrol took up positions near the front and rear gates and along the perimeter wall. Jedra and Kayan used Kayan’s medical powers to incapacitate the ones on the side of the compound near Kitarak’s quarters, giving them stomach cramps and blinding headaches and dizziness until nobody could move.

Time for step three, Jedra said, moving toward the gladiators’ quarters. They peered inside again, cautiously; the psionicists had sent feelers out far into the night to warn them of attack. Kitarak and the other slave were lying flat on their cots, evidently knocked out cold to prevent them from attempting to escape.

Kitarak won’t be able to help us! Kayan cried in alarm, but it was too late to back down. After the trouble they’d caused, the estate would never again be left so unguarded against psionic attack. They would just have to break Kitarak free by themselves.

There was no point in waiting. With a silent prayer to whatever gods were listening, they gathered their psionic power and shoved against the wall of the gladiators’ quarters. The building shuddered under the blow, and slate fell from the roof, but it didn’t go over. They hit it again, shattering the entire front wall, but still it didn’t go over. Only when they smashed one of the side walls as well did the roof finally begin to crumble and fall in.

The psionicists inside thrust it away from them and their unconscious charges, letting the building crack open and fall away on all sides, but that took their combined power to accomplish and while they were doing that Jedra and Kayan struck directly at them. They attacked their convergent link first, trying to break the four psionicists apart so they couldn’t draw on each other’s power. They hadn’t learned a direct method from Kitarak for that, so they tried their old visual methods, imagining the link as four ropes tied in a knot and themselves as a spinning kyorkcha slicing through the knot. They passed through like a knife through a waterskin, but their passage didn’t accomplish quite what they expected. They broke the link all right, but the four psionicists each struck back at them individually. Jedra and Kayan felt four separate minds thrust at them, pressing for dominance and battering at their own link.

They could feel themselves slipping apart. Hold on! Jedra said, striking out telekinetically at their opponents. He tugged down more roof tiles and flung them at the psionicists, striking the old elf on the head and knocking him out. He felt Kayan using her medical skills to stop one of the young women’s heart long enough to put her out of the battle, but by then the other two had linked up again and pressed the attack.

Jedra and Kayan’s link grew weaker under blow after blow from the other psionicists. Jedra tried burning them, he tried blinding them with flashes of enhanced light, he even tried levitating them high into the air and dropping them, but they countered everything he threw at them. He felt the energy drain as Kayan tried her own specialties on them, but she was no more successful than he.

Then reinforcements arrived. Suddenly instead of two linked minds, there were three, then four again. Jedra thought maybe the two they had knocked unconscious had revived, but then there were five, then six. Their enormously enhanced power beat Jedra and Kayan back, then began to close around them. They didn’t attack so much as suppress Jedra and Kayan’s abilities, smothering their mindlink the way Kitarak had when he had stopped them from fighting each other back in his house. Where are they all coming from? Jedra asked as he fought to keep from being overwhelmed, but he realized the answer as soon as he asked the question. There had to be more of them resting at any given moment in order to keep a continuous guard over Kitarak. As demanding as convergence was, there had to be at least a dozen psionicists in the noble’s pay.

Quick, break our link and shield ourselves so they can’t find us! Jedra told Kayan just as she said, Quick, try to wake Kitarak so he can help!

No, they’ll catch us! Jedra said, but Kayan was already trying to link with the unconscious tohr-kreen. She managed it, too, and they felt a surge of power as Kitarak woke, but the six combined psionicists bore down on them without