The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,105

without dulling his senses first, so he felt the agony of every injury again as they repaired it, but they were also expert at keeping him from escaping into unconsciousness. He wondered if they would allow him to mindspeak with Kayan. Maybe if he tried they would knock him out.

Are you all right? he sent.

Fine, she sent back, the sarcasm dripping from the single word. But I’d be a lot better if you hadn’t bungled our escape.

Me? he said, nearly forgetting his pain in his surprise. I didn’t bungle our escape. You wouldn’t let me try until it was too late.

Oh, so it’s my fault we were captured?

Well, it certainly isn’t mine!

The psionicists chose that moment to clamp down on their exchange. Jedra felt their shield fill his mind like water filling a glass, forcing out any other contact. “Let me speak,” he said aloud.

One of the psionicists, the older of the two women, said, “You can talk all you want to out loud, but you’ll limit your use of psionics to the battlefield. We won’t have you plotting an escape right under our noses.”

So, they hadn’t heard his and Kayan’s exchange; they had only sensed that they were mindspeaking. Kitarak’s training had evidently paid off in that respect, at least; they weren’t broadcasting for all to hear anymore. That was something to remember for later, if they ever did find a chance to plan an escape.

Kayan mumbled between puffed, bleeding lips, “You mean I could have used psionics against that elf bitch?”

The woman laughed. “No, we wouldn’t have let you do that, not in practice. But use everything you’ve got when you fight in the arena. There’s only one prize for second place in the games.”

She looked like a kindly mother giving her daughter a good piece of advice, and her cheery tone of voice added to the illusion, but she was talking about death. And Jedra and Kayan were both still in pain—pain the psionicists could have masked with a thought.

“How can you do this to people?” he gasped. “You’ve been in our minds. You know what it feels like.”

“Yes, we do,” the younger psionicist said. “And now so do you. You know how much pain you can take and still function. That’s the most important lesson any gladiator can learn. It will keep you from giving up when you could still fight on.”

“Great,” Jedra said. “Now I know, so could you please make it go away?”

The younger one shook her head. “No. You need to know how long you can stand it.”

* * *

That, it turned out, would be for the rest of his life, or so it seemed. For the next three days Jedra was in constant pain, from his partially healed leg to the bruises that Sahalik kept fresh during each practice session.

There were three sessions per day, some with weapons and some with bare hands, and during each one the burly elf did everything he could to humiliate Jedra as well as beat him senseless. When they fought with blunted wooden swords Sahalik slid around behind him and spanked him with the flat of his blade, and when they fought with spears Sahalik tripped him up and poked at him like a curious boy pokes with a stick at a dead animal.

“You’re pathetic,” the elf told him during one practice when they were using clubs. “You couldn’t fight a one-legged blind man with one arm tied behind his back.”

“I don’t want to fight a one-legged blind man,” Jedra gasped, his breath having momentarily fled from an attack to the solar plexus. “I don’t want to fight anybody!”

“No, I don’t suppose you do,” Sahalik said, swinging his club almost casually at Jedra’s head. Jedra ducked, but not soon enough to keep Sahalik’s blow from grazing his scalp and leaving another bruise. “You are a coward. That’s too bad, because you’re going to have to fight anyway, and it’s always easier when you enjoy it.”

A few yards away, Kayan shouted in pain as the elf woman, Shani, hit her just as badly.

“Enjoy it?” Jedra demanded angrily. “How can anybody enjoy causing someone else pain?” Sweat ran into his eyes, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

“Oh, that’s easy. The same way you enjoyed making a fool out of me in front of my tribe,” Sahalik said. He swung his club at Jedra again, and though Jedra blocked the blow—no, parried it, he reminded himself—the vibration in the wood made his hand go