The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,47
there weren’t any.”
“I guess.” Jedra picked up a bone-white fragment of a statue—a nose, it looked like, though the tip of it was missing—and turned it over in his hand. “Where do you suppose we ought to start looking?”
“Tyr is still the closest city,” Kayan said.
Jedra nodded. “Tyr. Everything in my life seems to be pushing me to go there. I’m not sure I want to give in to it.” “Why not?”
“I have a bad feeling about it.”
She laughed. “You were headed there as a slave. That might color a person’s attitude a bit.”
Jedra laughed with her. “It might at that.” His laughter dwindled away quickly, though, and he said, “I still have a bad feeling about it.”
“We don’t have to stay there,” Kayan said. “We’ve got money; we could buy passage on a caravan to Altaruk or Gulg or Nibenay or somewhere.”
“And hope the Jura-Dai don’t decide to attack it,” Jedra said. He tossed the nose across the central aisle, where it bounced off a column and shattered into even smaller fragments on the floor.
The rattling sound continued long after the pieces had come to rest, and it took a moment for Jedra to realize that he wasn’t hearing ghosts. Kitarak was returning. The tohr-kreen ducked down to make it through the doorway, then took off his pack and rested it against the column beside the one Jedra and Kayan were using.
“Have any more luck?” Kayan asked him.
“None, regrettably,” Kitarak said. He took one of his waterskins from his pack and drank a few sips—the first water they had seen him drink since they’d given him their own. When he was done he put the skin away and said, “I think this city is nearly mined out. It is too close to the hinterlands.”
“Is that where you’re from?” Jedra asked.
Kitarak’s lower arms jerked suddenly and scraped against his thorax, producing a scritching sound. “I couldn’t say.”
Touchy subject? It didn’t matter. They weren’t going to the hinterlands anyway. Jedra said, “Kayan and I were just talking about our plans. Thanks to you we’ve got food and water enough to make it to Tyr, if we start this evening.”
“Tyr?” Kitarak turned his head first left, then right. “What do you expect to find in Tyr?”
“A psionics master, we hope,” Jedra said. “Or failing that, at least passage to another city where we might find one.”
“Psionics?” Kitarak looked away. “You mentioned that before. Said you could stop me with it if I attacked you. Could you?”
“Yes,” both Kayan and Jedra said in unison.
Kitarak clicked his mandibles. Laughter? “Prove it,” he said.
“What?” Jedra reached out for his spear, but Kitarak stepped forward and pinned it to the floor with one of his clawed feet.
“Prove to me that you have this power.”
“Why?” asked Kayan. She looked unblinkingly at Kitarak, and Jedra realized she was getting ready to use her healing power on him somehow. Or maybe she would do to him what she’d done to Sahalik.
“I wish to see it.”
“No, you don’t,” she said. “Trust me.”
Kitarak hadn’t made a move for his own weapons, but he didn’t step back off of Jedra’s, either. “I don’t mean to be threatening, but if we are to be traveling companions, I must know what you are capable of.”
“Who said anything about traveling together?” asked Jedra.
Kitarak rasped his lower arms against his thorax again. The vibration it produced was unpleasant, ear-piercing. “You said you were going to Tyr. So am I. Unless you plan to take a less direct route than I, we will be traveling together.”
What now? Jedra mindsent to Kayan.
I don’t know. I’m not sure I want him traveling with us.
Me either, Jedra said. On the other hand, he knows the countryside, and I still don’t get any feeling of hostility from him, even now. He’d probably be good to have along, if we can just convince him we’re not lying about our power.
Kayan said, Hah. Convincing him won’t be a problem; keeping him alive while we do it will be the trick.
Maybe not, Jedra said. He’s not like Sahalik; we might not have to be quite so direct with him.
What do you have in mind?
He smiled. Well, we’re in a ruined city already. What’s one more ruin?
Aloud, he said, “All right. You want a demonstration, we’ll give you a demonstration. Come on outside.” He stood up, leaving the spear and his pack where they lay. He offered Kayan a hand up, and the two of them walked out into the street.