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Maybe. And maybe it just wants us to revive it so it can use us for food They eat elves, remember? I'll bet it wouldn't turn down half-elf, or even human in its present state. I don't sense any danger from him, Jedra said. Not even when I try to imagine him healthy again. He tried to think about it logically, though. Thri-kreen were carnivores, true enough. Is there any way to
tell psionically if he's telling the truth? he asked.
She nodded. Yes, if you know how to do it. Unfortunately, that's not one of my skills.
Oh.
Just one more reason why we need a master to train us. With our combined power we should be able to find out what he had for breakfast three years ago, but we don't know how.
Jedra sloshed his waterskin. Then we'll have to do it without psionics.
Kayan stared past his shoulder at the insectile creature. It stirred feebly, then quieted again. Finally she shook her head. I don't know how I let you talk me into these things, but all right, let's try it. We certainly don't have much to lose.
When the thri-kreen saw them returning with their waterskins, it croaked, "Your generosity... will be returned... a thousandfold."
"I'll settle for full packs and a guide out of the desert," Jedra said as he held the waterskin up to the thing's mandibles. It took him a moment to figure out how to pour the water without spilling any, but there was no hurry. He dribbled a few drops at a time into the creature's hard mouth and let them run down the back of its throat.
When his waterskin was empty he took Kayan's and poured its contents into the thri-kreen's thirsty mouth as well, then handed the empty skin back to her. She held it up to catch the last drops on her tongue, then put it away in her pack.
They didn't have to wait long for the water to take effect. The thri-kreen lay back for a couple of minutes while the pulsations in its abdomen grew stronger, then slowly, deliberately, it put its four hands down on the ground and pushed itself erect. Its backpack teetered precariously, but the creature used its upper two arms to steady the load while it came to its feet.
He held the spear ready. Not quite pointed toward it-he didn't want the creature to think he was challenging it-but he made sure he could bring the stone point to bear quickly if he had to.
Get ready to link, he sent to Kayan, then aloud he said, "You should know that we can stop you psionically as easily as we revived you, if that becomes necessary."
The thri-kreen opened and closed its mandibles with a clicking sound. "Commendable," it said. Its voice was much richer now, deeper and with more volume. "One should always be prepared. However, I am not thri-kreen, as you have mistakenly assumed. I am tohr-kreen. Related, but more... civilized. We do not harm other intelligent creatures."
I've heard of them, Kayan mindsent. They're like priests or something. Loners. They don't come into cities much, and they're not nearly as aggressive as regular thri-kreen.
"Good," Jedra said aloud. He lowered the spear a few inches. "Do you have a name?"
"Kitarak," the tohr-kreen said. The name was more clicks than anything, but it fit a human tongue well enough.
"I'm Jedra," Jedra said, "and this is Kayan."
"Charmed," Kitarak said. "Or not, as the case may be. You are psionicists, rather than mages."
Jedra wasn't sure if that was supposed to be a joke. "Uh, right," he said. "So if you're civilized, you'll stick to your bargain. We gave you the last of our water; it's time you showed us this well of yours."
The tohr-kreen clacked his mandibles again. "Ah yes, the well," he said. "A deep subject. Come." He turned to the right and began walking through the rubble with a quick, darting stride.
For someone who had only minutes before been dying of dehydration, Kitarak could move fast. It was all Jedra and Kayan could do to keep up. Occasionally they lost sight of him behind a large boulder or the remnant of a building, but fortunately his enormous pack squeaked with every step he took, so they could home in on the noise even when they couldn't see him. At last the noise stopped, however, and they came cautiously around a corner to see him lowering his pack to the ground and bending over a pile of stones at the base of a relatively well-preserved building. It still had two walls, at any rate, and part of a third.
The other buildings around them were in even better shape. They were much larger, too; some of them rose five or six stories. Jedra looked around at their placement, and realized they were standing in the same spot where the courtyard fountain had been in their psionic vision.
The tohr-kreen began removing the piled-up stones. With his four arms, that didn't take long; by the time Jedra and Kayan had arrived and removed their own packs, he had exposed a piece of machinery of some sort, Jedra recognized a pump handle and spout, but that was about the only thing he recognized. Three more levers stuck out of a flat plate on the ground, and a set of toothed gears connected a two-handed crank to a vertical shaft that also went into the ground beside the levers.
Finding machinery amid such ruins was surprise enough, but Jedra was even more astonished when he realized that everything but the pump handle was made of metal. If he could carry even one of those levers or gears back to Urik, he could name his price from any weaponsmith in town.
"How did this manage to survive the scavengers?" he asked.
Kitarak twisted his long neck so first one eye, then the other, looked toward Jedra. With their multiple facets, it was impossible t
o tell just what he was looking at. "It is worth more as a pump," he said. "Those of us who know how to use it are careful to hide it from those who don't." He worked the pump handle up and down a few times, bringing forth a squeak of rusty metal but no water, then he pulled one of the levers beside it toward himself and bent over to spin the crank with his lower set of arms. The gears squeaked, too, but the shaft turned, and deep underground something vibrated.
"The water is too deep to pump directly," Kitarak said while he worked the crank. "Atmospheric pressure will only raise water thirty-five feet at this elevation. So we must pressurize the containment vessel to provide more lift."
"Right," Jedra said. He hadn't understood a word of what Kitarak had said. He looked over to Kayan, but she merely shrugged her shoulders as well.
