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She had turned her back to him and was fussing with something under her robe. A sudden warmth spread over Jedra when he realized she was removing her halter and breechcloth.
And she knew just what he was thinking. Don't you go getting ideas, she sent to him. This cursed leather itches, that's all. I'll sleep better wi
thout it.
Of course, Jedra sent. He refrained from adding, Never mind that I'll not sleep at all now....
Fatigue soon proved him wrong. He closed his eyes to give her more privacy, and when he opened them again the tent wall beside him was aglow with the first light of day.
* * *
The elves broke camp within minutes of rising. Nobody stopped for breakfast; they just rolled up their mats, collected their other personal belongings and stuffed them into their knapsacks, then packed up the tents and other equipment, tied it all onto the kanks, and set off into the desert at a brisk walking pace. They didn't follow the road, but headed straight over the dunes to the west. They spread out in a long string, the scouts and faster walkers in the lead, and the rest trailing back for nearly a quarter mile. Warriors armed with swords and longbows scattered themselves along the line to provide protection for everyone in case of an attack. Nobody rode the kanks-elves considered that dishonorable-but after the first few miles the adults began to trade off in carrying the younger children. Even so, Jedra found himself pushing to keep up, and Kayan with her shorter legs was sweating and straining even harder than he was.
Jedra tucked his thumbs under his knapsack's shoulder straps to help support the weight. There wasn't much in it: just his sleeping mat and what few personal belongings he had taken from Dornal, the mage who had sold him into slavery. He and Kayan had killed Dornal in the psionic battle that had erupted when the elves attacked the caravan. Jedra also carried the magical talisman that had gotten him into trouble in the first place: a piece of glass that had been created when a templar's magical lightning bolt struck the sand. The glass magnified things. Images, the heat of the sun, possibly even psionic power. As Jedra trudged along with it in his pack, he began to wonder if it was somehow magnifying its own weight as well.
He tried to ignore his discomfort by remembering the sensation of power he had felt when he and Kayan linked minds. She had taught him how to do it when she realized he needed her experience to control his wild talent, but neither of them had expected the incredible enhancement that came with their communion. Alone, he could send mental messages and sense when he was being watched and even push things around with his mind when he was sufficiently motivated, and she could heal wounds and cure illness, but together they commanded psionic power beyond the scope of most masters. They had used it to search far across the desert for the Jura-Dai even though their bodies were trapped in the slave caravan in the midst of a sandstorm, and they had used it again to help win the battle when the elves had finally arrived to free their tribesman.
That had been at once the most wonderful and the most horrible moment of Jedra's life. Battling on a psychic plane, where mental images were more important than reality, Jedra and Kayan had envisioned themselves as a swift, sleek-winged hawk flying and swooping among the nearly insubstantial shadows of the elves and slavers fighting below. They weren't alone in the vision, however. The slave master's psionic manifestation had been a great whirlwind that sucked up everything in its path, and the elves' psionicist had been an eagle with sharp, ripping talons and beak. The mage, Dornal, had been there as well, a dark, constantly evolving bat that spit lightning bolts ahead of it as it swept through the vision. The bat had killed the eagle and dissipated the whirlwind almost without effort, but Jedra and Kayan had flown above it and used their combined power to trap the bat beneath a sheet of glass. Then, almost as an afterthought, they had bent the barrier into the same shape as Jedra's lightning glass, and the bat had burst into flame.
The thrill of that victory was like nothing either of them had experienced before. They felt smarter and more powerful than anything else in the world. They broke their contact reluctantly, and then only because they knew from previous experience that they were using up their bodies' strength at a phenomenal rate.
Coming back to the normal plane of existence had felt like losing half their intelligence, but that had not been the worst shock. When they had gathered enough strength to visit the mage's quarters they had seen the real-world effect of their psionic battle: The elves' psionicist was dead, and Dornal had been burned beyond recognition, his body little more than a greasy skeleton on the deck. The wooden floorboards had barely been scorched, but later they had found three more people burned to death in the cabin below. They might well have been slavers, or they might have been innocent passengers-there was no way to tell. In either case, it was obvious that Jedra and Kayan had killed them, and that the power they had thought under control was in fact wild and dangerous.
They had vowed then to find a true psionics master, one who had studied the mental arts for years and who could teach them how to control their rogue talent. They had also vowed not to use it again until they knew what they were doing, but Jedra's mind burned with the desire to link with Kayan's again. Not the simple contact that allowed them to communicate, but the complete, mind-expanding intermingling of thoughts and abilities that would allow them to become one single being again, enormously powerful, enormously intelligent....
Enormously dangerous. He wrenched himself away from that line of thought. An obsession of such intensity was 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.
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 th
e cactus were open to anyone; one of the women in front of Jedra stopped beside it and reached in for her own handful of watery pulp, then walked on, sucking at it as she went. Jedra was thirsty, too; he followed her lead and reached into the cavity in the center of the cactus, scooped out a handful of the cool white, fibery pulp, and handed it to Kayan, then dug out another for himself. It smelled fresh and faintly spicy, and when he held it overhead and squeezed it a stream of sweet nectar ran down his thumb onto his tongue. It tasted wonderful: a sugary wetness that refreshed him instantly and seemed to pour energy into every muscle in his body.
We'll learn, Jedra sent. The elves will teach us how to survive in the desert, and then we can begin our search for a psionics master to teach us how to control our wild talent. "Mmm," Kayan said, but she said it aloud so Jedra had no idea how she meant it.
The elves traveled steadily through the morning hours, but when the sun drew high overhead and the heat began to grow oppressive, they stopped, repitched their tents, and ate another meal before sleeping through the hottest part of the day. Jedra was grateful for the rest; his legs were aching already from the strain of walking so many miles in loose sand, and before they stopped he had been feeling faint from lack of food.
"Hah, today you've had it easy," Galar told him as they sat on the sand under a canopy and devoured leftover inix and some kind of crumbly brown honeycake full of nuts and dried fruit. "Normally we begin before dawn, but we got a late start this morning because of die festivities last night."
