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

The crystal at his neck felt warm against his skin. He wanted to enter it himself and see how Kayan was doing, but he knew that would be dangerous. The crystal itself might be dangerous, but while he was inside with her he couldn't guard their bodies, either, and they could both wind up dead in the real world. That might prove to be merely an inconvenience if Kitarak could do the same trick for them both that he evidently had done for Yoncalla, but Jedra was still not convinced.

It felt strange, sitting beside his lover's body while the sun slowly tracked its way down the western sky, not knowing whether to grieve at her death or rejoice at her narrow escape. He settled for simply waiting; he would have plenty of time later to do whatever seemed appropriate.

Kitarak and Yoncalla arrived just before dark. Jedra heard them coming before he saw them. The former immortal was evidently less than pleased with his new body; he cursed a steady streak of unfamiliar epithets as they worked their way through the uneven terrain, and Kitarak occasionally said things like, "It was the best body I could get you at the time." and "Be glad I didn't put you into a kank."

The tohr-kreen rounded the flank of the hill. "Ah, there you are," he said. "And Kayan as well, in both her separate states. Good." He walked up to Jedra and extended a lower hand. "It is good to see you again. Many belated thanks for your rescue, and my apology for taking so long to return the favor."

"Just so long as you can revive her," Jedra said, squeezing the tohr-kreen's chitinous claw.

"If she made it into the crystal as I directed her to, then I can."

Yoncalla came stumping up on his short legs, panting for breath, and said, "Don't sound so smug about it, bug-face. You're good, but you didn't exactly solve all my problems." He looked Jedra up and down and said, "You could, though. That's a decent body you've got. I'll take it."

"You will do no such thing," Kitarak said. To Jedra he said, "Don't worry. I taught him our language and how to mindspeak, but I didn't teach him how to transfer himself from body to body."

"He's afraid I'll get loose and take over all of Athas again," Yoncalla said. He shook his head sorrowfully and added, "Not that I'd want this sorry excuse for a world. You certainly weren't exaggerating when you described it to me, were you boy?"

"Um, no," Jedra said, uncomfortable with speaking to the immortal in a body he'd seen killed two weeks earlier. To Kitarak he said, "I would have thought he'd know how to make the transfer already."

Kitarak shook his head. "The people of his time knew how to store the mind in specially made crystals, but it was tinkercraft, not psionics, that allowed them to do it, and they never mastered the reverse process. You need psionics to merge the mind with the body again."

"You mean there's actually something we can do better now than the ancients could?" Jedra asked incredulously.

"Don't be deceived by appearances," Kitarak said. "Progress never stops entirely, even in the midst of degeneration. We may not be as civilized as the ancients, but our medical abilities are far better than anything available before."

Yoncalla snorted. "That depends on your point of view. Your precious psionic medicine made me a dwarf." To Jedra he said, "What do you want for it?"

"What?" Jedra asked.

"Your body. If I can't take it, then I'll buy it from you. How much do you want?"

Jedra blushed, as if the immortal had suggested something indecent, as indeed he might have. The concept was too new for Jedra to know for sure, but the very idea seemed revolting. "It's not for sale," he said. "I'm not for sale."

"Sure you are," Yoncalla said. "Everybody has a price."

Jedra couldn't imagine enough wealth to make him trade his own body for a dwarf's. But some people might. And others-maybe even Yoncalla-would no doubt murder for a new body. What kind of nightmare were they about to loose on this already-grim world? Jedra said to Kitarak, "I'm just beginning to realize how dangerous this thing we've discovered is. Maybe we should bury these crystals back in the rubble where we found them." And Yoncalla with them, he added psionically, so the immortal couldn't hear him.

"Before we revive Kayan?" Kitarak asked. When Jedra spluttered for an answer, he said, "Your moral objection rests on shaky ground, doesn't it?"

It did at that. Could Jedra deny everyone else the opportunity to escape death after he had used the knowledge to rescue his love? Not and remain the kind of person he wanted to be. But neither could he let Kayan spend the rest of eternity imprisoned in a crystal, knowing he could save her.

"Of course we should revive Kayan," Jedra said. "She's counting on us. But nobody else knows this ability exists. Maybe we should keep it that way."

Yoncalla laughed. "Impossible, boy. I tried to suppress life-defiling magic, and look at how much success I had." He waved his arms to encompass the barren hillside.

Kitarak turned his head so a faceted eye faced Yoncalla. "Your people were responsible for this?"

"Uh... indirectly," Yoncalla said nervously.

"You will tell me about it. I and many others are still trying to repair the damage you did."

"I didn't do anything," Yoncalla protested. "I tried to stop it. It was-"

"Wait a minute," Jedra said. "Let's revive Kayan first. Then we can save the world."

"You are right," Kitarak said. "First things first." He bent down over Kayan and placed all four hands on her body. A soft blue glow spread from them into her, and her slack muscles began to tighten again. The ugly red wound over her heart closed, and the color came back to her skin. "Good," Kitarak said. "She prepared for this. She stopped her body's life processes before you did, so your sword wound merely caused local damage. The rest of her is still fine." He continued running his hands back and forth over her, coaxing her body into life again. Finally she shuddered once all over, and her chest began to rise and fall with regular breaths.

Jedra nodded. He felt a certain reluctance after what had happened to him before in the crystals, but his desire to see Kayan again-and to rescue her if she was in danger-was far stronger. "It may take me a while to find her," he said, "but if we don't come out soon, you'd better come after us. We may be in trouble."