The Darkness Before the Dawn - By Ryan Hughes Page 0,92

for bloodstains, but your mind was evidently convinced you were being stabbed in that other world, so it recreated the wounds you felt while you were there.

I’d just as soon it hadn’t, he replied. But thank you for repairing the damage. Can I sit up now?

Go ahead.

Jedra did, holding on to her arm for support, but rather than let go when he made it upright he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

Thank you, he said, and then aloud he echoed it. “Thank you.”

“Just don’t do it again,” she murmured.

“What, this?” He kissed her again.

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.” He reached over and picked up the crystal off the floor beside the blood-drenched sleeping cushion. He hefted it in his hand, contemplating its fate. The way he felt right now he could smash it to splinters, but when he tried to throw it against the stone wall he couldn’t bring himself to do it, even to as outrageous and unfriendly a world as that. Psionics didn’t work there; he couldn’t know if all those millions of people were truly mindless, or if he just couldn’t sense them. And the immortal who’d created them, if that’s how the world had come to be… no matter how crazy he’d grown in his millennia of isolation, it wasn’t Jedra’s place to judge him.

But he didn’t want to leave it for someone else to stumble across. He got up and took the crystal into the kitchen, where he stuck it in through the pump spout and levitated it all the way down the shaft, past the lifting valve, and on into the deep recesses of the well.

There. The inhabitants could go on about their bizarre business without hurting anyone now.

As long as he was in the kitchen, he began preparing a meal. He took more inix steaks out of the cold-box—pausing to still the heat that had leaked into it while he’d been away—and rummaged through the vegetable storage bins until he found the makings for stew, Kayan joined him, helping cut things and putting everything into a pot that Jedra heated psionically, and within a half hour the whole house smelled wonderful. They were both suddenly ravenous; they sat down across from each other at Kitarak’s oversized table and began to devour the stew like tigones at a fresh kill.

The last of the daylight had faded by the time their stew finished cooking; they ate by candlelight. After his second bowl, Jedra looked across the table at Kayan’s shadowy form and said, “Do you forgive me?”

“For what?” she asked, her spoon half raised to her mouth.

“For everything.”

“That’s a lot to forgive someone for.”

“I suppose.” He took another bite. “On the other hand, think how virtuous it’ll make you feel.”

“Hmm. That’s a point.” She ate another few bites. “I know what you’re thinking.”

Jedra laughed. “Then tell me so we’ll both know.”

“You’re thinking we should ask Kitarak to come back and finish teaching us what we need to know.”

He hadn’t been thinking that—he’d only wanted to reconcile with Kayan—but now that she mentioned it, that did sound like a good idea. “Do you think he’d come?” he asked. “It’s only been a few days.”

Kayan shrugged. “All we can do is ask him and see.”

“All right.” Jedra reached out his right hand and took her left. “Let’s see if we can find him.”

Their mental union felt like old times—the intense rush of pleasure, the complete blending of their personalities, the orders-of-magnitude increase in their power. They concentrated on the unique signature of Kitarak’s mind and sent their message radiating out to find him wherever he had gone: We’re ready for you to come home now.

With mindsending they couldn’t tell where their target was, or even if he had heard them, but they kept their minds open for a response, which was only a few seconds in coming.

I’d love to, but I’m temporarily indisposed. I’ve been captured and forced into the gladiator games in Tyr. Along with his words came an image of the tohr-kreen standing outside the city’s walls, so absorbed in measuring the northness with his tinkercraft jernan that he didn’t notice the soldiers until they had completely surrounded him.

We’ll come get you out, they told him.

That will be difficult, Kitarak said. They have four psionicists in conjunction at all times to keep me under control. In fact, I’m surprised they haven’t detec— His voice cut off in midword.

Looks as if they just did. Jedra and Kayan imagined themselves hovering over the city,