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

Kayan left him to his meal and walked down to the water. She slipped off her sandals and walked closer, letting a wave wash over her feet.

"Yeow!" She jumped back as if she'd been stung.

Jedra dropped the bug leg and ran toward her. "What happened?"

"It's cold."

"Oh." He walked on down toward where she stood and bent over to run his hands through the receding water. It was cold enough to raise bumps along his arm. He cupped his hands and took a drink of it, but spit it back out. "Ugh, it's salty, too."

"What?"

"Taste it. It's salty." Jedra got a sudden idea and went back to the cooked water bug, broke off another leg, and brought it back to the edge of the ocean. He twisted open the leg and waited for the water to come back, then he bent down and dipped the creamy white meat in it. Now when he took a bite, it was perfectly seasoned.

"You're doing that just to get me, aren't you?" Kayan demanded.

"No," said Jedra. "I'm really hungry. You should try some of this, too."

"I can't."

She seemed sincere. Jedra lowered his arm. "Well, then, let's find you something else."

"Where?"

"I don't know. Maybe we can find another bread tree." Kayan was about to say something, but a deep rumbling noise drowned her out. "Was that thunder?" she asked when it faded.

Jedra looked out over the ocean, where a dark gray cloud had boiled up seemingly out of nowhere. "Well, if that cloud is any indication, it is," he said. Thunderstorms were rare on Athas, but not impossible; Jedra had been in two of them over the course of his life, and he remembered both vividly. Kayan looked up at the cloud in surprise. "Where did that come from?" she asked. "It wasn't there a minute ago."

She nodded.

"And somehow, this place picks up our thoughts and makes them real. So now the world is mad at me."

Lightning forked down out of the cloud into the ocean, and a half minute later thunder rumbled again. The storm was approaching fast. Even so, Kayan said, "Come now, you can't think an entire thunderstorm is directed at you."

"I don't think I'll stick around to find out." Jedra scanned the flat beach for shelter, but there wasn't any. "Come on," he said, and he jumped into the air.

Kayan apparently decided not to make a target of herself just to prove a point. She joined him, and they flew together back toward the forest. The storm was advancing faster, though, blotting out the unnaturally bright sun, and when the flashes and the booms came only a few seconds apart it became apparent that it was going to catch them. "We aren't going to make it," Kayan said.

"You've got a better idea?" Jedra asked.

"Yeah." She pointed to their left, up the coastline "The city."

Its tall spires had beckoned them all day, but there had been too many other wonders to investigate first. Now that the need for shelter had become foremost, however, this suddenly seemed like a good time to check it out. Jedra and Kayan banked around and raced up the coast, the thunderstorm flashing and booming along behind them.

"It's definitely following us!" Jedra announced when he risked a look back.

Wind buffeted them as they flew headlong toward the towering buildings, and just as they reached the outskirts of the city the rain hit. Big, fat globules of cold water struck their faces and bare arms like gravel in a gale, drenching them almost instantly and nearly blinding them in the process. Under there! Jedra mindsent, grabbing Kayan's arm and diving toward a three-story rectangular building that had a deep colonnade around all four sides. They swooped in under its cover and landed behind one of the columns, then ran for the open doorway near the middle of the long side.

Lightning etched shadows of the entire row of columns into the inner wall, and thunder shook the ground in the same instant. Jedra and Kayan piled through the doorway just as another lightning bolt hit close enough to light up the inside of the building, revealing a double row of columns with statues interspersed between them.

This is the same building we were in with Kitarak in the ruined city, Jedra thought, picking himself up off the marble floor.

Another lightning flash confirmed it. The same columns flanked the wide center aisle, and the same statues, once smashed to rubble, now stood whole. Jedra reached out to one of them and touched its nose. Was this the one he had tossed casually into the pile of debris? Evidently the crystal world was modeled after the real city during its height. Lightning flashed again and again and thunder shook the building, but they were safe inside its massive stone walls. They waited out the storm just inside the door, wincing at the lightning and thunder and watching the rain spatter into puddles on the stone streets.

This is too much to believe, Jedra said after the worst of the storm had passed. Rivers and oceans and thunderstorms all in one day.

Has it been just a day? Kayan asked. It seem longer. She leaned her head against his chest. I'm tired.

You're just hungry, he said. You didn't eat any of the sea creature. Let's find you something to eat, and I'll bet you'll feel better.