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

Kayan nodded. "All right then, if you won't leave me alone, let's get this over with." She let go of Jedra and stepped to Sahalik's side.

Jedra nearly fell over, but the chief held him up. "Wha-?" Jedra tried to say, but his throat was still too sore to allow speech. What's this? he demanded psionically. You're actually going to... to... with that barbarian?

Don't get your breechcloth in a knot, she thought back at him. We've tried it your way; now let's try it mine. She reached out and took Sahalik's hairy hand. "Come on, champion, show me this big tent of yours." The elves were totally silent as she led Sahalik away. The only noises Jedra could hear were the scrunch, scrunch, scrunch of their receding footsteps, the soft crackle of the fire, and the pounding of his own heart. Easily visible in the starlight, he could see the elf warrior hold open the flap of his tent for Kayan, and watched her step inside. The tent flap fell down behind Sahalik as he joined her.

For a moment he thought he had screamed, but then he realized that the noise he heard came from another throat. Sahalik's, by the resonance of it, though terror had raised his usual husky pitch an octave or so. His tent suddenly bulged outward as if a herd of mekillots were trying to escape, first on one side, then the other. Finally with a twang of uprooted stays it collapsed backward. The fabric parted with a loud rip, and Sahalik blundered out, only to collide with the very next tent.

It slowed him for barely a moment. Still screeching lik

e a lost child, he trampled right over the hapless tent and continued straight into the night, his cries receding until they were swallowed by the desert.

Another lump in Sahalik's tent wiggled a bit more, and a muffled curse came from it, then Kayan found the door and straightened up through it. Standing there amid the deflated fabric, she planted her hands on her hips and said, "Anybody else think I need a protector?"

* * *

The chief-still supporting Jedra-met her halfway between the fire and the tent. "What did you do to him?" he demanded. The rest of the tribe gathered around, and the expressions on their faces were as grim as his.

Kayan shrugged. "I let him see his true nature. I held a mirror to his mind and showed him what a pathetic creature he is."

"If you have harmed him-"

"I didn't touch him. I didn't do any psychic damage, either. I just gave him something to think about. I guess he decided he wanted to do his thinking alone."

The chief considered for a moment, then turned to the side. "Galar, Ralok, go after him and see that he comes to no harm. Bring him back when he recovers his wits."

Galar and another elf immediately slipped out of the group and ran out into the darkness in the direction Sahalik had gone.

The chief turned back to Kayan. "You were provoked, but your actions may have endangered a member of the tribe. You do need a protector, if only to guard us from you." He laughed, but there was little humor in it. "Since I doubt if anyone else cares to dispute Sahalik for the honor, I will take responsibility for you myself."

Kayan looked as if she were about to protest that, too, but she finally took a deep breath and said, "All right."

The gathered elves murmured their approval at their chief's wisdom and began to disperse. The chief said to Kayan, "First I will show you how to erect Sahalik's tent and the other he knocked down. Then I will show you to your place in mine. You are to stay there when we are in camp, and you will march at my side when we travel. And when Sahalik returns, you will leave him alone."

"Gladly," Kayan said, "as long as he does the same for me."

"I will see that he does."

Jedra weaved outward, and Kayan reached out to steady him. "What of my companion?" she asked.

The chief sighed. "I suppose he should stay in my tent as well. Here, let us walk him there; I don't think he would make it on his own."

Jedra allowed them to drape his arms over their shoulders and carry him to the chief's tent, where they laid him down on a mat at least three times as thick and much softer than the one he'd slept on last night. Or maybe it just felt that way after all his injuries, but whatever the case he felt himself sinking into it, but never remembered hitting bottom.

* * *

He woke to find the tent brightly lit with the first rays of morning sun. The interior glowed with soft, diffused warmth, and the walls rippled gently with the morning breeze. Jedra rose up and rubbed his eyes. The chief lived in luxury compared to the elves in the common tent. Hanging dividers separated the interior into rooms, each open overhead to the roof of the tent. All the panels were decorated with elaborate stitchery or beadwork or painting, and the floor had been covered with thick furs. If the sorcerer-king of Urik were to spend a night in the desert, this was the sort of tent Jedra would expect him to have. His impression of the nomadic elves went up a notch as he took it all in. Kayan lay on a separate mat beside him, still inhaling and exhaling the long, soft breaths of deep sleep. Jedra felt wide awake and perfectly healthy, which no doubt explained Kayan's exhaustion. She had finished healing him during the night.

Psionics didn't require external energy, but that ecological nicety exacted its price on the psionicist. Every time Kayan or Jedra used their powers, it drained their own stamina. With mental contact and other simple skills that drain was hardly significant, but healing someone's injuries required a great deal from the psionicist. Only rest could restore what the healer had lost. Small wonder if Kayan slept until noon-provided the elves would let her. Jedra was surprised they had allowed either of them to sleep in as long as they had; according to Galar they were usually up and moving long before dawn.

He rose quietly and left the tent to see if he could find out what was going on, but the first elves he saw gave him such chilly looks that he didn't ask. He found the community tent and recovered both his and Kayan's knapsacks, leaving their old sleeping mats behind; then he followed his nose to the food tent where he picked up a couple more of the crumbly cakes and filled their waterskins for the day's hike. They hadn't had time for breakfast yesterday, but today nobody seemed in a hurry. Still none of the elves spoke with Jedra-in fact, when they saw him coming they got out of his way. Maybe they're just embarrassed at their behavior last night, Jedra thought. They should have been. Next time Sahalik decided to beat up on someone, Jedra would enjoy shouting "Fight, fight, fight!" as they had done and see how they liked it.

He took the food and knapsacks back to the chief's tent and set them down beside Kayan. He nibbled his cake slowly, watching her sleep. She looked so innocent there, her head resting in the crook of her arm and her face pressed into the mat, her small, round human nose pushed to the side and her straight brown hair falling over her eyes. Jedra let his gaze drift down over her loosely shrouded body. Even through her robe he could see how curvaceous she was. Small wonder Sahalik had been attracted. Jedra was, too, but at least he had the decency to wait for her to return his interest.

Or was it unwillingness to believe that she might actually feel the same way about him? Jedra had grown up on the streets; his home had been a nook in a wall at the end of a dead-end alley. People with his background usually didn't associate with templar women. His and Kayan's time together in a slave pen had brought them both down to the same social level-the very bottom-but it hadn't erased their pasts. Now that they were in the lap of luxury again, Jedra felt completely out of place, while Kayan would no doubt feel right at home.

Actually, considering her former station, she would probably think this was still roughing it. But would she accept it, and Jedra, as part of her new life? He couldn't make himself believe that she would.

There was their age difference to consider, too. Jedra was at least three years younger than Kayan, maybe more. He'd had to grow up fast to make it on his own in the city, but he was still naive about a lot of things that she had probably experienced many times. Did she find that attractive, or would she become bored with him? He didn't know that, either.