The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,60

skylights. In the dim light filtering in from the kitchen they could see sacks of vegetables hanging from hooks and a rectangular wooden chest nearly as tall as Kayan standing on end against the wall. When Kitarak opened its door, tendrils of white vapor wafted outward and a cold draft spread across the floor. Inside, haunches of meat were packed tight, and a pebbly white layer of frost coated them all. Jedra had seen frost only once in his life, on an exceptionally clear night after a cloudy day, when all the heat had radiated into the sky.

“Is this some kind of tinkercraft?” he asked.

Kitarak weaved his head from side to side. “No. I have tried for years without success to design a mechanical cold-maker. Instead, I must still use psionics to slow the dance of particles that makes things hot.”

“I didn’t know it was possible to make something cold,” Jedra said. “Why don’t the templars use it to cool our cities?”

Kayan said, “I don’t think the templars know it’s possible, either. At least I’ve never seen it done before.”

“There is another problem with your idea,” Kitarak said. “The heat must go somewhere. With a cold-box, there isn’t enough to worry about, but the heat from an entire city would be very hard to disperse safely. More likely it would burn the psionicist to ashes, and all the buildings around him as well.”

Kitarak closed the door again and led them into the last room, this one also used for storage. This was the catch-all room, however. It looked like a junk dealer’s stand in the market. There was a pile of sticks for the fire, a stack of tools, cloth sacks of unknown contents, and more various possessions scattered about than Jedra had ever seen in one entire home. Like the artifacts and tools in the other rooms, most of the collection was metal. No doubt about it, Kitarak was rich. For the first time, Jedra felt inclined to believe his claim to nobility.

“This will be your room,” Kitarak said. “We can move most of this material into the workshop and store the rest outside.” He shoved a wooden crate aside and stepped into the center of the room, where the hemispherical roof was high enough for him to stand erect. “You will need a bed if you wish to sleep. Will one be sufficient, or do you require two?”

Jedra blushed immediately. Kayan didn’t turn red until she saw him doing it, but then she made up for lost time. She stammered, “I—um—one is fine with me. I mean, if that’s all right with you.”

“That would be fine,” Jedra said, trying not to sound too eager, but then he wondered why not. He should let Kayan know that he was. “I’d like that very much,” he said to her.

If Kitarak noticed anything unusual he didn’t mention it. He merely bobbed his head up and down and said, “Very good. One bed, then. We can use one of the mats from the great room.” He held his arms out, two of them forward and two to the sides, and said, “Clearing this out to make room for a bed will provide your first lesson. We will move it all without touching it.”

* * *

Telekinesis, it turned out, was quite a bit like Jedra’s existing ability to shove things around with his mind. It just required more control. Kitarak helped him with that, mindlinking with him and showing him how to imagine an object rising gracefully into the air and gliding through the house into the storeroom.

Merging minds with the tohr-kreen was nothing like doing it with Kayan. There was no sense of expanded ability or heightened awareness, only the extra presence guiding his thoughts. They weren’t necessarily pleasant thoughts, either. Kitarak’s mind worked differently than Jedra’s. When he imagined grasping something in his hands, Jedra felt a wave of aggression sweep through him, as if every acquisition, no matter how small, were a form of conquest. It distracted him, and he was glad when Kitarak unlinked and let him proceed on his own.

At first Jedra had to follow along behind whatever he moved so he could make sure it didn’t bump into walls, but once he learned the layout of the house he could stay in one place and simply imagine the whole trip. Kayan, on the other hand, couldn’t get the hang of it. First Kitarak, and then Jedra, tried to explain to her how it felt when their minds