in itself fraught with risk. He could easily come to depend on their mental convergence, becoming like the dream addicts in the city’s warrens who used magical spells or the essences of various plants to keep their minds on an alternate plane while their bodies slowly wasted away.
Jedra brought his thoughts back to the present. There was plenty to occupy his mind here: the sights and sounds and smells of the desert were rich and varied. He had always envisioned the desert as an endless stretch of sand and nothing else—and near the road where generations of travelers had eaten or burned whatever had once lived, it was—but out in the deep wilderness there was a surprising amount of vegetation. To be sure, all of it was armored better than most gladiators against the harsh climate and the myriad hungry animals who would eat anything that couldn’t defend itself, but there was a weird beauty to the spikes and darts and scales that adorned the plants. Some of them were taller than even the elves, with multiple arms reaching out for dozens of feet around them. Jedra noticed that the elves never walked under one of those, and he realized why when he saw one of the arms swish downward toward a kank that had drifted too close. The arm thudded into the kank’s pack and stuck there, the pack impaled on the arm’s many spines, and it only released its grip when the kank leaped away and its weight threatened to rip the arm from the tree.
Everything is dangerous out here, Kayan mindsent, even though she and Jedra were walking side-by-side. Psionic speech was easier than talking with a dry mouth.
Things are dangerous everywhere, Jedra answered. Remember what it was like in Urik, with people ready to rob you the first time you lowered your guard? We just need to learn a new set of rules here, that’s all.
I suppose so. I just feel so vulnerable out here. So exposed.
Jedra chuckled. Kayan was all but indistinguishable, draped from head to foot in the billowy yellow robe that Galar had given her. The elves had warned her not to expose so much as the tip of her nose to the sun, for with her fair skin it would blister and peel within hours. Jedra risked no more than she did, for he’d been a city dweller, too, and he knew that even his elven ancestry wouldn’t protect him until he’d built up some resistance to the fierce and unforgiving sun.
You think it’s funny? she asked.
A little, Jedra admitted. Not just our clothing, either. Here we are, the dread psionic warriors who took on a caravan master and a mage all by ourselves, two untamed talents whose biggest problem is that when we join our minds together we’re too powerful to control, and yet we’re nearly helpless in the desert.
That’s not funny, that’s pathetic, Kayan said. She trudged along dispiritedly for a few minutes, then added, All right, I can see the irony in it, but I still don’t like feeling ignorant.
At times like this, Jedra was glad for the mindlink. He’d never had any kind of formal education; words like “pathetic” and “irony” would have gone right over his head in a regular conversation, but under the mindlink he received the meaning of the words as well as the words themselves. He took a minute to think about the new concepts and fix them in his mind.
Up ahead, a young elf boy was proudly playing with a wooden sword his father had given him. Jedra watched him approach a short, wide-trunked cactus and slice off its thorns with a series of smooth strokes along the surface, then stab the cactus near the top and run once around it to cut the cap free. Then the boy reached inside and drew out a handful of white pulp. He held it overhead in his fist with his thumb pointing downward, and when he squeezed, a stream of water ran down the thumb into his mouth.
There, Jedra said. You see? Yes, everything here is dangerous, but everything is—he used another word he’d learned from Kayan—everything is vulnerable, too. We just have to learn how to take advantage of the desert’s weaknesses.
Before it takes advantage of ours, Kayan said dubiously.
The boy ran happily onward to catch up with his father. Evidently the remains of the cactus were open to anyone; one of the women in front of Jedra stopped beside it and reached in