He concentrated on the mind-shielding technique that Kitarak had taught him, the one for stopping unwanted psionic contact. Closing his eyes so the swirling world wouldn't distract him, he carefully built up a barrier. He felt the contact with Kayan growing weaker, stretching out until the link finally broke and with a final wave of vertigo he tumbled back to reality in Kitarak's library.
It was dark. The candles had all burned out and it was still night, or it was night once again. Jedra tried to see with psionic vision, but there wasn't enough light to amplify. He tried to levitate a candle from one of the other rooms, but he didn't have the energy for it. He had to crawl into the great room for a candle, light it with the last of his power, and bring it back to the library.
Kayan lay on the cushion, sprawled on her side as if she had tumbled there without any attempt to break her fall. Her face and arms and legs looked thin and angular, the skin draped in folds over her bones. She looked like one of the starving street beggars who were so far gone that nobody bothered to feed them anymore.
"It wasn't real," he whispered. "None of it was real. Not even the food." And in the real world, he and Kayan had been mindlinked for at least a day, burning energy at dozens of times their normal rate. It had had the same effect on them as going without food for weeks.
"Kayan," he said, shaking her. Kayan.
She didn't move, except to draw in another slow, shallow breath. He tried to mindlink with her again, but he couldn't reach her. Her mind wasn't there-it was still in the crystal. And now that he had broken their link she was completely out of reach.
Chapter Eight
His first impulse was to shatter the crystal and let her out, but he didn't know if that would work. It wasn't just a box holding her mind captive; it was an entire world. She might die in the cataclysm that would surely wrack it if he damaged the crystal. He didn't know if death in there would mean anything outside, but he didn't want to risk it. Not yet.
He looked at the crystal lying there on the floor in front of him. Such a tiny thing to hold such wonders- and to present such a trap. He was afraid to touch it now, for fear he would cause earthquakes inside. If he started another chain reaction of falling buildings, Kayan could be caught in it.
No, the first thing to do was to stave off starvation before he collapsed as well. He would be no use to her at all if he let that happen. He crawled into the kitchen and pulled himself up to reach the water jug on the counter, drank a long, sloppy draught from that, then he opened the easiest cabinet to reach-the grain bin-and sat down in front of it to munch a handful of the dry seeds. When that began to take effect he stirred enough to shuffle into the pantry and eat a sack of nuts and a raw erdlu egg, which in turn revived him enough to thaw one of the inix flanks from the cold-box and devour that half raw.
He took a water flask and an erdlu egg back into the library for Kayan, but without a conscious mind running her body he couldn't get her to take any of either. Finally he just dribbled a little water into her mouth and counted on reflex to make her swallow, and when she'd done that a couple of times he switched to the erdlu egg and kept feeding her tiny spoonfuls of it until she had eaten the whole thing.
Erdlu egg was one of the most nourishing foods he knew of. Less than an hour after he'd eaten his, Jedra began to feel stronger; and Kayan recovered some of her color as well. He fed her another one, hoping she would regain consciousness inside the crystal and break her link with it, but when another hour passed with no change in her condition he lay back on the cushion and tried to mindlink with her again. If he could reach her, maybe he could pull her back out of the crystal.
Her presence was so faint it was hardly detectable, but when he concentrated he could sense it. It was a little like the crystal itself had been: faint and hard to reach. However, now that he'd had some experience breaking through the barrier into it, he knew what to look for. He imagined reaching through and touching Kayan, envisioned his hand penetrating the barrier that separated them and his whole body following through until he stood beside her again in the grassy courtyard.
He felt the barrier resist, then a moment of dizziness, and he was there. It was much easier the second time.
The moment his vision cleared, however, he realized he'd made a mistaken assumption. He hadn't gone straight to the courtyard. He was back in the clearing in the forest where they had originally arrived. Only this time the trees weren't in a loose ring at the edge of the grass; they had moved closer and now leaned toward him with menacing branches and dangling vines.
Was Kayan mad at him again? She'd called up the thunderstorm last time she was angry; if she'd regained consciousness and thought Jedra had abandoned her. she might have turned the world against him again. It might not even have been a deliberate decision.
Wind rattled the branches and made them swoop back and forth overhead. The vines swung madly, some cracking like whips as the branches flung them back and forth. Jedra ducked a particularly low one, but he felt another thump into his back and coil around his waist.
Get off! he commanded it, thinking that the world should obey his wishes too, but the vine clung stubbornly. Another one swooped down and grabbed his right arm. He pulled it free with his left hand, but more and more vines snared his arms and legs faster than he could fight them off.
Kayan, call them off! he mindsent. Kayan!
She didn't respond. Something did, though. The vines yanked Jedra into the air, and thunder blasted out of a clear sky. Cursing and trying to stay upright, Jedra tried everything he could think of to escape, but he couldn't make the vines burn or freeze solid and he couldn't break them either psionically or with his own physical strength. He was trapped.
Time to leave, Jedra thought. He built up his mental barrier again to block the mindlink with the crystal world, but the world refused to fade. Either he didn't have the strength to build a complete barrier, or else the barrier didn't make any difference now.
The footfalls and the roaring grew closer. Jedra saw a treetop disappear, and a moment later the loud crack of its trunk breaking reached him. He heard more trees topple over, then the last one separating him from the creature crashed to the ground, and he got his first glimpse of the beast.
It was some kind of dragon. It had scaly, purplish green iridescent skin, and stood erect on two enormously powerful rear legs, with a long, massive whip tail stretching out behind. Its body was at least thirty feet tall, and its head was a scaly oblong slashed across by a toothy mouth easily big enough to swallow Jedra in one gulp. Its forearms were short in comparison with its legs, but they were still at least six feet long and heavily muscled. They ended in cruel claws, and Jedra recognized the limp form clutched in them.
"Kayan!" he screamed.
The dragon bellowed at him, its hot, fetid breath washing over him and making him choke. Jedra struggled against the vines, but they clung tight. He tried mind-linking with Kayan again, and this time he felt a faint response.
Kayan, wake up! he sent.
Mmm?
The dragon lifted her up to its eye level and peered at her through first one, then the other of its foot-wide pupils. Then it lowered her toward its toothy mouth and opened its jaws.
Jedra shoved at its arms psionically, pushing them aside, then he tugged at Kayan and wrenched her free of the dragon's grasp. It bellowed an ear-splitting roar and lunged after her, but Jedra swept her aside. The motion set him swinging wildly from the vines, and Kayan nearly smacked into a tree trunk, but he managed to bring her around just in time and fly her out of the monster's reach.
But not out of the trees' reach. Dozens of vines whipped out and snared her, and Jedra could do nothing to stop them. Within seconds she hung beside him in the trees, while the dragon bent low to examine them both.