The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,61
grasped whatever they tried to lift, but the concept remained foreign to her. Even mindlinking didn’t help. When Kitarak tried to link with her, Kayan began to shudder and breathe rapidly, and when Jedra tried it she couldn’t concentrate on the telekinetic feeling amid the swirl of other sensations.
Her nervousness and frustration kept them from achieving perfect rapport, but it was still close communion. All right, Jedra said, let’s just try it once while we’re linked and see if you can feel what it’s like that way.
I don’t think that’s a good idea, said Kayan. We’re barely in control here.
Sure we are. I’ve got this down. It’s easy, see? He focused their combined attention on a small crate of rocks—mineral samples or maybe even gemstones in the rough, knowing Kitarak—and imagined them rising into the air.
A sharp crack startled them, and sunlight suddenly streamed in through an extra hole in the roof. Rock chips and dust rained down around them, and a moment later the house echoed with dozens of impacts as the rocks from the crate fell back onto the roof. There was a crash of breaking glass from the main room, and Jedra looked in to see a stone bounce off the floor after smashing through one of the skylights.
Their mental convergence had shattered as well. They stood there in the storeroom, alone with their own thoughts, while Kitarak examined the new skylight in his house. At last the tohr-kreen looked down at them and said, “You do have a significant problem to overcome, don’t you? Let us go outside and try it again.”
They practiced all morning, but Kayan simply couldn’t pick up the telekinetic power. Linked together, she and Jedra could send boulders clear over the rim of the canyon, but on her own she couldn’t even budge a pebble. At last Kitarak put an end to the attempts. “It’s clear you simply don’t have that talent,” he said as he lowered a new stone into place over the hole she and Jedra had made in his storeroom roof.
She watched the head-sized rock drift lazily into place, followed by dozens of smaller ones to seal the gaps. “Damn it, it’s not fair,” she said, her face red from effort and anger. “You and Jedra can do it without even breaking a sweat.”
Kitarak put the last of the patch into place, then turned to her. “Our brains are all unique. That means we each have abilities that others do not, and others have abilities that we do not. This is a fact of life. Surely you have experienced it before.”
“Yes, but—” She swallowed. “Not with Jedra.” She looked over at him, standing helpless beside the tohr-kreen, and suddenly Jedra knew what she felt. They were supposed to be bondmates, supposed to share everything, but here was evidence of a fundamental difference between them that would never be reconciled.
It didn’t have to be a problem, though. “We’ll always be able to share whatever each of us can do,” he reminded her.
“Sure,” she said. “And we’ll always be knocking holes in people’s houses, or tipping over entire cities.”
Kitarak rasped his arms together. “We will train you to overcome your lack of control.”
“Like you trained me to lift things psionically?” Kayan turned away and stomped off toward the lone tree that grew on the other side of the house.
“Kayan?” Jedra took a step after her, but Kitarak grabbed him by the shoulder. Jedra winced, remembering what went through Kitarak’s mind when he grasped something.
Kitarak released him again, however, and said, “Come, let us leave her to resolve her anger in her own way.”
Jedra wondered if that was a good idea. In his experience, people who stomped away mad usually wanted to be comforted, but he didn’t want to defy Kitarak, who was the teacher, after all. So Jedra reached outward with his danger sense, and when he found no threat to Kayan’s safety he turned away and went back inside with the tohr-kreen.
He helped Kitarak pick up the pieces of skylight in the main room. They were shaped like the surface of a rock, but thin enough to be translucent, as if Kitarak had peeled a shell off one. From outside, the skylight would be indistinguishable from a regular rock. “How did you make this?” he asked.
“I will show you,” Kitarak replied, taking a quadruple handful of pieces into his workshop. He placed them in a ceramic tray on the bench, then set a thick candle in a stone bowl beside