The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,24

as the head rolled into the trench he had helped dig.

It had moved only a few feet, but that was enough to lift the other side off the injured elf and allow the diggers to pull him free. Kayan knelt beside him, running her hands along his torso and legs to assess his injuries while the elves looked on.

The chief had arrived and was scowling at the whole proceedings. Jedra tried to stay out of his way, but he knew he wasn’t going unnoticed. Everyone who had gathered there kept eyeing him distrustfully and muttering to one another.

Kayan held her hands against the elf’s abdomen and dosed her eyes. Jedra knew what she was doing now: pouring more of her own life energy into her patient while she tried to heal his bleeding and his spinal damage. Everyone else watched the elf for signs of recovery, but Jedra kept his eyes on Kayan. There was a limit to how much energy she could spare.

After a few minutes in the healing trance, she leaned back with a weary sigh and opened her eyes. “He’ll live,” she said to the chief. “He’ll even walk again, but you should give him a couple of days to rest before you make him march the way we did yesterday.”

The chief laughed bitterly and waved his arms to encompass the devastated camp. The elves who hadn’t helped dig had erected a couple of the tents again, but most of the shelters were still in shredded heaps on the ground. “It will take at least that long before we can repair the damage,” the chief said.

“Good,” Kayan said. “Then let’s get him out from under the hot sun and let him sleep.”

Under her direction, six elves picked up the injured one and carried him carefully down into the camp, where they laid him inside one of the tents. Kayan went in to help finish his healing, and Jedra followed her.

“How are you holding up?” he asked her.

She shrugged. “All right. Tired, but I’ll be fine after another night’s sleep.”

Jedra knelt down beside her. “You’ve been putting out a lot more energy than I have; let’s link back up and I’ll share some of mine with you.”

She considered it. He could see it in the way her eyes unfocused and her face relaxed for a second. Oh, yes, to merge their minds and become that supreme being again, to feel strength and power spread through them like fire through dry tinder…

She shook her head. “No. It always costs more than we get out of it.”

True enough, Jedra supposed. But still he yearned for the experience, especially now when he was already drained from doing it once today. The memory of how it had felt overrode even the immediate here-and-now reminder of its price. He was glad Kayan had the willpower to resist it; left to himself he might not.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll sleep and recover our energy that way instead.”

He lay down to attempt just that, but it seemed he’d hardly closed his eyes when he heard something thud to the ground just outside the tent. Then the door flap was pulled aside, and the chief stuck his head in the opening. “Come out,” he said.

Jedra and Kayan exchanged a puzzled glance, then rose and stepped out of the tent. There on the ground just outside the door was the source of the noise they had heard: their knapsacks. Twenty or thirty elves stood silently in a semicircle around the tent door, and they didn’t look happy.

The chief didn’t waste time on a lengthy speech. “For saving Harat’s life, we have decided to let you live,” he said. “But only if you leave…now.”

Chapter Three

They made it almost a mile before Kayan collapsed. In the hot middle of the day with the relentless sun beating down on them, Jedra was surprised she’d made it that far. He wasn’t sure how much farther he could go himself, but the chief’s final words had kept him walking long after he normally would have stopped.

“If we ever see you again,” the chief had said, “we will bury you up to your necks in the sand and let the carrion eaters feast on your roasted brains.”

That’s gratitude for you, Jedra had nearly said, but he had decided to hold his tongue while he still had one. Some of the elves wanted blood.

Galar had come to their rescue one last time, insisting that the tribe give them food and water enough to keep