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

Kitarak didn't see them looking in, for there was nothing there to see. Their bodies were still back at his house in the canyon. The psionicists might detect their presence if they looked, but they were worried about trouble from Kitarak, not from outside. Jedra and Kayan could take advantage of that. They slipped around to the back of the house to where the bolt in the wall stuck out through the stone. A large iron washer and a nut held it in place. Jedra and Kayan concentrated their telekinetic power on the nut, but it was rusted tight, and they couldn't muster enough force at such a long distance to budge it. Nor could they affect anything inside the building at all; the suppression field stopped their power as well as Kitarak's.

We'll have to get closer so our power will be stronger, Jedra said as they withdrew so as not to alert the psionicists to their presence.

They rose up until they could see the entire city again, memorizing the location of the noble's estate. If they came in through the city's main gate, the caravan gate, it would be high to their left.

They had seen what they came to see. Every moment they stayed linked was costing them energy, so with the speed of thought they returned to Kitarak's house, and without pausing this time, they broke their link. They sagged back onto their chairs, tired and suddenly depressed.

"What were we thinking?" Jedra asked, leaning back and holding his hand to his forehead. "We can't just march into Tyr and break Kitarak out of an armed estate. We're strong, but we're not invincible." "No," Kayan said, "but we are responsible."

She said, "I mean we're morally obligated to try. Kitarak left the safety of his own home because of us."

Jedra nodded. "That's true." He took a deep breath and straightened up. "But we won't do him any good if we don't have a plan."

"Then let's get busy and make one."

They finished the entire pot of stew while they plotted a three-pronged attack. First they would create a diversion, to draw the bulk of the soldiers away from the slave quarters. They would use Kayan's medical power to sicken anyone who remained so they couldn't fight, and then they wo

uld use telekinesis to knock down the slave quarters. The psionic guards would prevent the falling rubble from harming themselves or their charges, but while their power was being used for that, they would be vulnerable to mental attack. If Jedra and Kayan let Kitarak know who was responsible for the commotion, he would undoubtedly join in and help overpower the guards, and then the three of them could make their escape.

"What if they move him?" Jedra asked.

Kayan got up and took her bowl to the sink. "Then we modify the plan at the rime."

"What if the psionicists are stronger than we are?"

"Nothing is stronger than we are," she said, washing out the bowl with water from the jug. "They might have better control, but this doesn't require a lot of precision."

Jedra took his bowl and the stew pot over to the sink and held them upside down, then telekinetically pulled the debris from them and dropped it into the drain. He was uncomfortable with her degree of confidence, but he supposed she might be right at that. They had slammed a cloud ray to the ground and leveled an entire city by accident; they should be able to handle four distracted psionicists.

Even so, he shuddered when he thought about it. Kitarak's training hadn't affected one thing: Jedra still hated fighting, no matter how good the odds.

* * *

They left at first light the next morning. They had loaded their backpacks with supplies, but they were supplies for surviving in a city, not for crossing the desert. To do that they held on to each other tightly, joined minds again, and levitated up out of the canyon, then redirected the wind to blow them across the sky toward Tyr.

The view from the sky was exhilarating. Actually being there was somehow more exciting than leaving their bodies on the ground and peeking at things through psionic vision. They flew high enough to reach cool air, and from that altitude the canyonlands passed beneath them like a wrinkled blanket sliding off a bed. The deepest valleys held patches of greenery at the bottoms, and some were obviously inhabited.

Tyr slid up from below the horizon like a blotch on the land. First came the pall of dust and smoke hanging over it, then came the city itself, its hills and towers and the dominating ziggurat ringed all around by a great stone wall. Jedra and Kayan lowered themselves to the ground when they were still a few miles out so they wouldn't attract attention, and walked over a low ridge to join the caravan road linking it to the other cities of Athas. As they approached the road they encountered a steady stream of people, but instead of the usual comings and goings around a city, everyone was headed inward. They didn't stop at the main gate, either, but veered off to the right around the fields.

"What's all the excitement?" Jedra asked one of the other walkers. He was an old man in a threadbare gray cloak, leaning heavily on a wooden staff held in his right hand.

"Don't you know?" the man asked incredulously. He cackled in glee and said, "It's game day, boy!"

"Game day?" Jedra asked, but a sinking feeling in his stomach told him all he needed to know. "Gladiator games?"

"Of course gladiator games!" The man thumped his staff on the ground. "You don't think I'd come all the way into town just to see somebody run a footrace, do you? Blood and guts! Brains on the sand! Yessir, that's entertainment."

Jedra paled. It wasn't his idea of fun, but he tried to put on an eager expression all the same. This would provide the perfect opportunity to enter the city without being noticed.

He and Kayan fell in beside the old man, who hobbled along on his good leg and his prop for the next half mile or so, but as they drew closer to the city his pace began to speed up and his staff barely touched the ground. "Hee hee," he cackled. "I'm like a kank headed to the barn! It does my old bones good to watch a gladiator get whacked. Nothing like it to get the juices flowing."

Jedra didn't ask whose juices he meant. He didn't bother to correct the man, either, but he suspected that ayan had a lot more to do with the old codger's sudden spryness than any amount of bloodlust.

"You got gypped," the old man said when he returned with the melon, but Jedra suspected he was merely put out that Jedra hadn't bought one for him as well. He didn't particularly care who ate the thing; he had bought it for looks.

The guards at the stadium gate paid no special attention to the three of them as they passed into the city. When asked their business, the old man said, "We're here t'see the games," and Jedra held up the melon to back him up.

"Don't throw that," one guard said, laughing. "You'll kill someone with that hard thing." But he let them through the gate. Just inside, hordes of merchants had set up booths and were hawking wares of all sorts to the even larger horde of spectacle-goers. The old man harumphed and grumbled his way past the jewelry and clothing stands, complaining bitterly about the poor craftsmanship and high prices. He sloshed his own waterskin gleefully at the water vendors and paused at the fruit stands only to malign the quality of the produce, but when he reached the barbecue pits he stopped and inhaled the greasy smoke as if it were the sweetest perfume.