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What?
I really wasn't trying to-
Drop it. Kitarak's waiting. Are you going to try to break through his shield, or are you going to just sit there whining?
Damn it, I'm trying to apologize!
I don't want your apology. I don't want anything from you, understand?
The emotions boiling through the link hurt far more than her words. Jedra felt her contempt for him like a physical wound in his guts. Worse, he felt her own pain and knew he had caused it. He had hurt her deeply with his foolish remark about slumming.
He shouldn't have forced her, not so soon after his earlier disaster trying to establish contact with the crystals. Get away from me! she snarled, and she lashed out at him with her mind.
Jedra suddenly found himself in complete panic. His heart pounded as if it would tear itself free from his. chest, and he felt certain that horrible, agonizing death would come in the next instant. He tried to shield himself from it, but Kayan's attack swept through his mental barrier as if it weren't even there. She had become the avenging angel of death, come to torture him until he cried out for death as sweet release.
He tried to flee, but in convergence his body was only an abstraction, and wherever he could go mentally she could easily follow. His panic mounted, drowning out rational thought and leaving only the animal core of his being to act instinctively against the threat.
He felt energy surging back through the mindlink, a wave of raw power directed at the source of his panic. Still linked, he felt it strike Kayan and blast into her unshielded mind like a sandstorm through a tent, ripping her consciousness to tatters and scattering it to the winds. He felt her scream in terror, felt her strike back in her own last-ditch effort, and...
... and nothing. Their linked minds suddenly stopped feeling anything, stopped sending or receiving or even thinking. They existed as two separate points of view suspended in nothingness.
Then time started again, and Kitarak's voice said, That is enough. Jedra felt the mindlink break, and he found himself back in the tohr-kreen's great room, shivering with muscle spasms and soaked in sweat.
Kayan looked pale as a zombie. Jedra panicked all over again, afraid he had killed her, but she finally took a deep, shuddering breath and opened her eyes.
Kitarak didn't seem to care about their physical condition. "You disgrace me," he said as soon as they could hear him. "Both of you. You ignore your lessons, preferring to battle instead, and when you do you nearly kill one another. If I hadn't suppressed your abilities, you would have killed one another. What were you thinking?"
Jedra clenched his muscles to stop them from shivering. "I wanted to show her that I hadn't meant anything before, but when I tried she hit me with-I don't know what she did, but I suddenly felt like I had to escape, and since I couldn't do that, I struck back."
Kayan neither denied nor agreed with his explanation. She just closed her eyes and took deep breaths.
"I see," Kitarak said. "You wanted to show her that you meant no harm, so the first thing you did when she took offense was try to kill her."
"No!" said Jedra. "I didn't mean to hurt anybody; I just panicked."
"And you?" Kitarak asked Kayan. "Do you have an equally miserable excuse for your behavior?"
"He grabbed me," she said. "I told him to leave me alone and he didn't listen."
Kitarak looked up at the roof. "Dragons forbid that Jedra not obey your every whim," he said. When neither of them replied, he looked back down and growled, "Argh. This is pointless. You've got me doing it now."
He got up and walked into his workshop. They heard rattling and sliding sounds from within, and Kitarak said through the doorway, "That is probably appropriate, since I no doubt share the blame. I have been driving you too hard."
His sudden turnabout left Jedra speechless.
Kitarak said, "The rigors of psionic study have been too stressful for you, particularly since you need to develop your personal bond better in order to use it. I was foolish not to see that before now." He emerged from the workshop with his backpack, into which he stuffed a handful of books that floated out from the library and a few cooking items that did the same from the kitchen.
"What's that for?" Kayan asked.
"I am giving you a vacation," Kitarak said. "Your psionics training is suspended until you solve your personal problems and become true clutch-mates."
"You're leaving?"
Kitarak tied closed the top of his pack. "Your powers of deduction are truly amazing," he told her. To both of them he said, "You may call for me to return when you are ready to continue your education, but you had better be truly ready. In the meantime, you will find food enough in the pantry to keep you for months, if you are frugal with it. Jedra, you must remember to keep the cold-box from warming up, and Kayan, you must prevent the vegetables from spoiling." Jedra hardly heard him. The cold-box and the vegetables could vanish in a puff
of smoke for all he cared.
But Kitarak could leave, and he did, dragging his pack to the door and pausing there only long enough to say, "By the way, I was visualizing a rain cloud." Then he hoisted his pack onto his back and stepped outside, closing the door solidly behind him.
