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

Kitarak went on without pause. "Unfortunately the cistern leaks after ail these many centuries, so I must pump fast to keep it pressurized. In another century or two, I fear someone will have to descend into the tank itself to replace the seals."

"In another century?" Jedra asked incredulously. "You seriously think this thing will last that long?"

"Why not?" Kitarak replied. "It has lasted until now. I and other travelers have had to repair the handles, and once a valve stuck on the lifting piston, but other than that-"

Kitarak bent down farther and switched from his lower arms to his upper ones on the crank. "It is tinkercraft," he said. "An ancient discipline, lost to time for all but we few scholars who struggle to keep it alive."

Kayan had been watching silently the whole time. Now she spoke up. "I've heard of it. It's the opposite of magic. Or of psionics for that matter. Using mechanisms to replace sentient beings. Some say it helped bring on the destruction of Athas."

Kitarak stopped cranking for a second. The below-ground vibration stopped as well, and now they could hear a faint hissing from around the base of the levers. Then Kitarak resumed cranking. "Not so," he said. "Not so to all your points, except possibly the first. Magic is a lazy attempt to duplicate tinkercraft without the hardware. What magicians don't understand is that every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Every act of creation is an act of destruction. Each spell they employ uses life-force, which is then gone forever. It is magic that destroyed Athas. Not tinkercraft."

Kayan looked like she might have argued the point, but just then the pipe began to gurgle. "Ah, we have built up enough head!" Kitarak said happily. "Now we can help it along a bit." Switching to his lower arms on the crank again, he used his upper ones to work the conventional pump handle. "Get your waterskins ready," he said. "When it comes, it will be a deluge."

Jedra and Kayan quickly dropped their packs and dug out their waterskins. They were none too quick; Jedra had just gotten his unstoppered when a fount of rusty water gushed from the spout, then a heavy stream of clear, cold water splashed onto the rocks. He and Kayan thrust their waterskins beneath the stream side by side, holding them there until they filled completely. Water!

They splashed it over themselves and drank thirstily from their cupped hands.

Kitarak pulled back on another of the levers and stopped pumping. The flow dwindled to a stop while he rummaged in his pack for his own waterskin-water-skins, it turned out. He had five of them, each twice the size of Jedra or Kayan's. "If you don't mind..." he said, holding the skins out to the two of them, then he turned back to the pump and the crank. He threw the lever forward again, and water flowed once more.

Jedra and Kayan filled Kitarak's waterskins as well, then drank their fill and splashed each other with the remainder. At last, soaking wet and exuberant at their success, they began splashing Kitarak as well.

"Hold!" he cried out. "What are you doing? Did I ask for a shower?"

"Yes," Kayan said, giggling. "I'm sure I heard you. Right, Jedra?"

"Of course," he said, scooping a double handful of water and throwing it over the tohr-kreen's iridescent back.

"Stop that!" Kitarak said. He stopped cranking and pumping, but the water continued to flow, and Jedra and Kayan continued to splash him and each other.

"What wasteful creatures!" Kitarak said, backing away. "I suppose you will wish to bathe next."

Jedra laughed. "No thanks. We did that a couple of nights ago."

The water finally quit running out of the spout, so Jedra and Kayan backed away and sat side by side on a rock, laughing and wringing the water from their robes. "I can't believe it," Kayan said. "We actually found water here. Who would have thought?"

Kitarak's entire body quivered, spraying water droplets everywhere. "Did I not promise you?" he asked.

"Well, sure," Kayan said, wiping the spray from her face. "It just didn't seem very likely, that's all, especially when we found you collapsed there."

"Understandable," Kitarak said. "But as you have seen, appearances can be deceiving." He stepped over to his pack, which leaned up against one of the surviving walls of the pump house, and untied a many-bladed gythka head from the bundle of tools below the bag. Normally a long pole separated the two wicked blades, but this one had only a stub of a shaft, leaving barely room to grasp it. Not for long, though. Kitarak held it overhead, then spun it quickly, and with a hiss of sliding metal the shaft seemed to magically extend itself until it was nearly eight feet long.

Jedra backed uneasily toward the b'rohg's spear, which now seemed pitifully inadequate against the expanding gythka, but Kitarak paid no attention to him. The tohr-kreen bent down to his pack again and untied the curved, spiky throwing weapon, then stood and said, "Guard the pump. I will go hunt for food." Before Jedra or Kayan could reply, he leaped straight over the wall- nearly fifteen feet-and came down with a clatter on the other side. They heard him kick off again, then all was silent.

"What do you think?" Jedra asked. "Do you trust him?"

Kayan laughed. "Do we have a choice?" "We could make a break for it while he's gone."

Jedra had no answer for her. Tyr was the closest city they knew of, and it was at least five days away. They had water enough now-barely-but no food.

Kitarak had said he would hunt for some. He'd kept his promise about the water; maybe he would do the same with food.

As they waited for him to return, they heard occasional animal squeals that suggested he was doing just that. Jedra tried following him psionically, but he couldn't see clearly on his own what the tohr-kreen was doing, and he didn't think it was important enough to link up with Kayan to try it. When the sun dropped below the horizon and Kitarak still hadn't returned, they flapped their robes to dry them before the night grew chilly, then settled into the protected corner of the pump house to take turns sleeping and standing guard.

* * *

Kitarak returned at dawn, bearing a rope from which dangled a slender, six-legged leathery kip at least a foot and a half long, a scaly z'tal lizard nearly that large, and a round, furry jankx as big as Jedra's head.

"Breakfast," Kitarak said nonchalantly, as if he had merely brought them an erdlu egg. He put Jedra and Kayan to work cleaning his kills while he set up another piece of tinkercraft from his pack. This was a metal grate surrounded by thin, curved mirrors that reflected sunlight from all sides onto it. He set the contraption in a shaft of light that slanted down into the well house from between two buildings across the way. The morning sun wasn't particularly hot yet, but when Kitarak placed a strip of jankx meat on the grate, it immediately began to sizzle.