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

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Jedra said. Kitarak's blue glow was definitely fading now. It no longer illuminated anything around him, only his own features. He looked cold, both physically and emotionally. His bulbous eyes never blinked, and his narrow, hard-surfaced head displayed no feelings that Jedra could read. Jedra wondered what kind of a mentor this alien creature would be, whether or not they would have enough in common to allow for true communication. Would Kitarak actually teach them what they wanted to know, or did he have his own agenda?

"What do you get out of this?" Jedra asked him.

"Satisfaction," Kitarak said after a moment. "You are inquisitive, and you have potential. I would enjoy helping you develop your skills. Also, I have not had clutch-mates for many years."

"Companions."

"Oh."

"So, do you want to return with me to my home and learn how to use this talent of yours?"

Jedra and Kayan looked at one another for a moment, trying to read in each other's expressions what they couldn't say aloud or in the mindlink. The trouble was, Jedra had no idea what he wanted to say. He didn't trust the tohr-kreen as far as he could throw him, but on the other hand, this was probably the best-maybe the only- offer they were going to get.

He looked beyond Kayan to the crater with the flattened tokamak at the bottom of it, then to Kitarak, still glowing with faint blue light. If he hadn't protected himself from Jedra and Kayan's excess psionic force, he would have been killed along with the id fiend. Their original reason for looking for a mentor hadn't changed; they were still dangerous.

But they might become more dangerous still, from some people's viewpoint, once they learned how to control their gift.

"What if you decide later on that we're a threat?" he asked. "Will you try to kill us then?"

Kitarak picked up his gythka from where he had placed it when Kayan had been healing his leg. He grasped it just below each head and twisted the shaft, and the metal tubes slid into one another again, shortening the weapon to less than two feet in length.

"Despite your facetious comment earlier about ruling the world," he said, "I don't believe that will become necessary. If it does, however, then yes, I will."

"Great."

"To do anything else would be uncivilized," Kitarak said. "That is one of the things I will teach you. I ask you for the final time: Do you choose to learn from me, or not?"

Jedra took a deep breath. Despite that unsettling admission, there could only be one answer, so he gave it: "Yes."

"Kayan?" the tohr-kreen asked.

She nodded. "Yes, certainly. But can it wait until morning? I'm exhausted."

Kitarak clicked merrily. "Yes, by all means, sleep. That will aid us immeasurably in returning to my home."

"You don't have to get sarcastic just because you don't have to sleep," she said.

"No, no," said Kitarak. "I meant it sincerely. The first thing I will teach you is how to dreamwalk." He walked over to where he had been sitting before the attack, picked up his ancient artifact and his pack, and brought them back to where Jedra and Kayan waited. "Lie down next to each other, like you were before," he told them.

They did as he said. Kitarak placed all three of their packs beside them, then knelt down next to their hea

ds.

"I will put you into a light trance," he said. "You will dream, but don't try to direct it in any way, or you will wind up somewhere else. Let me control the vision."

"All right," Jedra said. He couldn't have slept now if he had to, not on his own, but Kitarak extended clawed lower hands to touch his and Kayan's temples, and Jedra felt himself growing sleepier. Within seconds, his breathing had slowed, and he drifted away.

Light suddenly blossomed as if he had just opened his eyes to daylight, but he hadn't. The sensation wasn't quite the same anyway. His field of view was broken up into dozens of hexagons, each one overlapping the next just a little so there were no blind spots, but it wasn't a smooth picture like he normally saw. The colors weren't right, either. The rocks were bright yellow, and the sky was deep purple. The stars were still out, shining much more brightly than usual, and each one was a different color. Jedra recognized some of the constellations, but now the tip of Drini the dwarf's nose glowed red, and his eyes were different shades of blue.

He was seeing the world through Kitarak's compound eyes, he realized. They were more sensitive than human or even elven eyes, but if this mosaic of separate images was how a tohr-kreen saw the world, then Kitarak could have it.

The field of view changed. Long, spiky, chitinous arms reached out as if from Jedra's own body, drew on the tohr-kreen's enormous backpack, and cinched the straps tight. Without turning, Jedra could see to the side where two short, fleshy creatures put on ridiculously small packs of their own. Himself and Kayan, he realized. This was how they looked to Kitarak: small, fragile, their flesh unpleasantly exposed and quivering on their bones when they moved. It was an unflattering image. From Kitarak's viewpoint, Jedra watched himself take one of the tohr-kreen's extended arms while Kayan took another, then the three of them began walking to the southwest. It wasn't a normal pace; each step they took moved them hundreds of yards in a long, smooth glide. They slid over boulderfields as if they weren't there, rising and falling over the rolling hills with a hypnotic rhythm that matched their pace.

Jedra tried to ignore it all and just remain a passive observer, but once he saw a flicker of motion off to the right, and their smooth stride faltered for a moment. They veered toward the source of the distraction, but Kitarak pulled them back onto the straight course before they reached it. A good thing, too; as they passed it Jedra saw another flailer feasting on the remains of some unfortunate animal.

The terrain grew more rugged the farther they went. The hills grew higher, and the valleys between them steeper. Some had become true canyons, the ground suddenly dropping away in sheer cliffs hundreds of feet deep. There would often be no warning that one was there until the dreamers were right on top of it. Such terrain would have proved nearly impassable to travelers on the ground, but Kitarak's pace never faltered; he stepped over the chasms as if they were merely cracks in his path.

We wouldn't have made it on our own, Jedra thought when he saw them. He got no reply; this was evidently not like a mindlink.