The Darkness Before the Dawn (Dark Sun: Chronicles of Athas 2)

Kayan said, "I don't think the templars know it's possible, either. At least I've never seen it done before." "There is another problem with your idea," Kitarak said. "The heat must go somewhere. With a cold-box, there isn't enough to worry about, but the heat from an entire city would be very hard to disperse safely. More likely it would burn the psionicist to ashes, and all the buildings around him as well."

"This will be your room," Kitarak said. "We can move most of this material into the workshop and store the rest outside." He shoved a wooden crate aside and stepped into the center of the room, where the hemispherical roof was high enough for him to stand erect. "You will need a bed if you wish to sleep. Will one be sufficient, or do you require two?"

Jedra blushed immediately. Kayan didn't turn red until she saw him doing it, but then she made up for lost time. She stammered, "I-um-one is fine with me. I mean, if that's all right with you."

"That would be fine," Jedra said, trying not to sound too eager, but then he wondered why not. He should let Kayan know that he was. "I'd like that very much," he said to her.

If Kitarak noticed anything unusual he didn't mention it. He merely bobbed his head up and down and said, "Very good. One bed, then. We can use one of the mats from the great room." He held his arms out, two of them forward and two to the sides, and said, "Clearing this out to make room for a bed will provide your first lesson. We will move it all without touching it."

* * *

Telekinesis, it turned out, was quite a bit like Jedra's existing ability to shove things around with his mind. It just required more control. Kitarak helped him with that, mindlinking with him and showing him how to imagine an object rising gracefully into the air and gliding through the house into the storeroom.

Merging minds with the tohr-kreen was nothing like doing it with Kayan. There was no sense of expanded ability or heightened awareness, only the extra presence guiding his thoughts. They weren't necessarily pleasant thoughts, either. Kitarak's mind worked differently than Jedra's. When he imagined grasping something in his hands, Jedra felt a wave of aggression sweep through him, as if every acquisition, no matter how small, were a form of conquest. It distracted him, and he was glad when Kitarak unlinked and let him proceed on his own.

At first Jedra had to follow along behind whatever he moved so he could make sure it didn't bump into walls, but once he learned the layout of the house he could stay in one place and simply imagine the whole trip. Kayan, on the other hand, couldn't get the hang of it. First Kitarak, and then Jedra, tried to explain to her how it felt when their minds grasped whatever they tried to lift, but the concept remained foreign to her. Even mindlinking didn't help. When Kitarak tried to link with her, Kayan began to shudder and breathe rapidly, and when Jedra tried it she couldn't concentrate on the telekinetic feeling amid the swirl of other sensations.

Her nervousness and frustration kept them from achieving perfect rapport, but it was still close communion. All right, Jedra said, let's just try it once while we're linked and see if you can feel what it's like that way.

I don't think that's a good idea, said Kayan. We're barely in control here.

Sure we are. I've got this down. It's easy, see? He focused their combined attention on a small crate of rocks-mineral samples or maybe even gemstones in the rough, knowing Kitarak-and imagined them rising into the air.

A sharp crack startled them, and sunlight suddenly streamed in through an extra hole in the roof. Rock chips and dust rained down around them, and a moment later the house echoed with dozens of impacts as the rocks from the crate fell back onto the roof. There was a crash of breaking glass from the main room, and Jedra looked in to see a stone bounce off the floor after smashing through one of the skylights.

Their mental convergence had shattered as well. They stood there in the storeroom, alone with their own thoughts, while Kitarak examined the new skylight in his house. At last the tohr-kreen looked down at them and said, "You do have a significant problem to overcome, don't you? Let us go outside and try it again."

They practiced all morning, but Kayan simply couldn't pick up the telekinetic power. Linked together, she and Jedra could send boulders clear over the rim of the canyon, but on her own she couldn't even budge a pebble. At last Kitarak put an end to the attempts. "It's clear you simply don't have that talent," he said as he lowered a new stone into place over the hole she and Jedra had made in his storeroom roof. She watched the head-sized rock drift lazily into place, followed by dozens of smaller ones to seal the gaps. "Damn it, it's not fair," she said, her face red from effort and anger. "You and Jedra can do it without even breaking a sweat."

"Yes, but-" She swallowed. "Not with Jedra." She looked over at him, standing helpless beside the tohr-kreen, and suddenly Jedra knew what she felt. They were supposed to be bondmates, supposed to share everything, but here was evidence of a fundamental difference between them that would never be reconciled.

It didn't have to be a problem, though. "We'll always be able to share whatever each of us can do," he reminded her.

"Sure," she said. "And we'll always be knocking holes in people's houses, or tipping over entire cities."

Kitarak rasped his arms together. "We will train you to overcome your lack of control."

"Like you trained me to lift things psionically?" Kayan turned away and stomped off toward the lone tree that grew on the other side of the house.

"Kayan?" Jedra took a step after her, but Kitarak grabbed him by the shoulder. Jedra winced, remembering what went through Kitarak's mind when he grasped something.

Kitarak released him again, however, and said, "Come, let us leave her to resolve her anger in her own way."

Jedra wondered if that was a good idea. In his experience, people who stomped away mad usually wanted to be comforted, but he didn't want to defy Kitarak, who was the teacher, after all. So Jedra reached outward with his danger sense, and when he found no threat to Kayan's safety he turned away and went back inside with the tohr-kreen.

He helped Kitarak pick up the pieces of skylight in the main room. They were shaped like the surface of a rock, but thin enough to be translucent, as if Kitarak had peeled a shell off one. From outside, the skylight would be indistinguishable from a regular rock. "How did you make this?" he asked.

"I will show you," Kitarak replied, taking a quadruple handful of pieces into his workshop. He placed them in a ceramic tray on the bench, then set a thick candle in a stone bowl beside the tray. "Can you light the candle?" Kitarak asked.

"I left my flint and steel in Urik," Jedra said apologetically.

"Hint and steel?" Kitarak said, sounding offended at the very idea. "Oh, no. Here. Look at the wick. Imagine it made of tiny particles, all of them wiggling about but never escaping. Now imagine them wiggling faster. Make them move faster and faster until they grow hot from the effort."

Jedra concentrated on the candle for a moment, trying to see it as Kitarak had described. It was difficult, since he had never considered before what something as simple as a candle wick was made of, but eventually he managed to think of it as a long thread of fine sand held together by some kind of flexible glue. He imagined the sand flowing back and forth along the wick, surging from one end of it to the other...

... and the wick burst into flame with a soft pop, all along the length of the candle. The wax slumped into a puddle, and the wick snuffed out again in the liquid wax.

"Very good!" Kitarak said. "But next time, focus on just the part sticking out the top." He held his upper hands around the cup and the wick lifted up again, then the wax flowed up to coat it and solidify in layers until there was none left in the bowl. "Try it again," Kitarak said.