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

Jedra lost track of how many things he learned. Most of them were becoming instinctive after so much repetition. When he entered a dark room, he amplified what little light was there until he spotted a candle, then he agitated the wick into flame. When he needed to speak to Kitarak or Kayan, he did it telepathically unless they were already in the same room. When he wanted something, he detached a part of his mind to search it out, then brought it telekinetically to where he needed it.

And when he wanted a drink, he levitated water from the well, just as Kitarak had done when they had been with him in the ancient city. The tohr-kreen had laughed his clicking laugh when he explained how he had deceived them. "The pressure tank hasn't held air for millennia," he told them. "Only a psionicist or a mage could lift water through those rusty pipes." Then he had sobered and said, "Now, of course, it would take more than that."

Once again, Jedra felt guilty at the memory of the destruction he and Kayan had caused. They were learning how to control their power now, but that didn't erase what they had already done. Nothing could do that.

Only using the power better in times to come could make up for their earlier excesses and build their confidence in themselves.

Confidence came with practice, but that, Jedra soon learned, was not enough. Even though they now mind-linked for pleasure as well as for study, something still came between them. Kayan seemed aloof, as if she had somehow lost her respect for him. Maybe it was because they mindlinked for pleasure... or maybe it was something else.

He figured it out one evening when their studies were over and she had gone into the library as she usually did. Jedra usually went outside to relax after their training sessions, but the wind was blowing and he didn't feel like expending any more energy to still it, so he came back inside. Kitarak was busy in his workshop, so Jedra went into the library and sat beside Kayan on the cushion. She was sitting cross-legged, a book on her lap. She wore a simple tunic made from rough gray cloth she had discovered in the things they'd moved from the storeroom, but she looked good in it. And Jedra liked the way it rode up on her bare legs, now tanned a golden brown.

She looked up from her book, a thick, heavy volume with dark scrollwork in the margins and rows of black squiggles filling the centers of the pages.

"What are you reading?" Jedra asked.

She showed him the cover. More squiggles. "A history of the healing arts."

"Oh. Is it interesting?"

She frowned. "No, it's boring me to tears. That's why I'm reading it."

"Really?"

Her frown deepened. "Of course it's interesting. Don't you recognize sarcasm?"

Jedra felt himself turning red. "Sorry. I've never read a book, so I didn't know. I'd heard they could be boring, though."

"Maybe to your kind of people," Kayan said, "but they're never boring to someone who understands them."

"My kind of people?" Jedra asked. "What, half-elves? I've known half-elves who could read. One of my best-"

"I meant people who grew up in the warrens," Kayan said, slamming the book shut. "And who did you know who could read? Only templars and nobles are permitted to read."

For the first time in his life, Jedra suddenly felt ashamed of his past. Sleeping in an alley, scavenging for food, living day to day with no hope for the future-he'd never even seen a book until he was nine. Now he realized how that must look from Kayan's viewpoint, and how she must resent having somebody like him be able to do something she couldn't do. Not with Jedra, she'd said when Kitarak had asked if she'd ever felt inadequate before. At the time it had sounded as if she'd been frustrated because she loved him, but now he realized there was another interpretation. He could hardly believe it, especially after all they had gone through together. And the mindlink-would she merge with him if she felt that way? Not to mention the other things they had done?

He looked at Kayan, her face set in a scowl, and said, "One of the people I knew who could read was a noblewoman. She used to come to the market. Blonde. Slender. You could hear necks cracking all around wherever she went. She was married to one of the richest landowners in Urik, probably had a hundred personal slaves with perfect bodies who would have done anything she asked them to-but she took an interest in a friend of mine. He was an elven water vendor with a patch over one eye and a knife scar like a bandolier across his chest. Missing a few fingers, too. That didn't matter to Rowen-da. She used to dress up in disguise-I doubt it fooled anybody but her, but once a week or so she'd put on a tattered cloak and wear a veil and come spend a half dour with Merick in the back of his tent."

Kayan said, "Is there a point to this tender reminiscence?"

Nodding slowly, Jedra said, "She got some kind of thrill out of it. Merick did, too, but he didn't realize what was going on. He thought she really cared for him, right up to the day she grew tired of him and had him hauled off to the slave pens."

Kayan squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, they seemed to glisten with fire. "You think I'm slumming, is that it?"

"It doesn't matter what I think," Jedra said. "The important thing is whether or notion think you're slumming."

She didn't respond for a long time, merely let the book thump to the floor and lay back on the cushion, one hand over her eyes. After a long moment in which the only noise was the faint whistling of the wind flowing around the outside of the camouflaged house, she said, "I don't need this right now. Not on top of everything else."

"I don't either," said Jedra, "but something isn't right between us, and it's driving me nuts. At first I thought it was just jealousy because I could do telekinesis and you couldn't, but now I don't know. Jealousy I can handle, but if you think I'm not good enough for you, if I'm eventually going to be rejected because I can't read or I've got bad table manners or something, then I don't see any point in prolonging the agony."

She raised her hand off her eyes. "Jedra, you don't know what you're talking about."

"I hope I don't," he said, but his stomach felt tied in knots. She hadn't denied what he'd said.

Unwilling to push it any further, he left her alone with

her book. Kitarak was in his workshop, building some unfathomable piece of tinkercraft, so Jedra went back to his and Kayan's room and sat cross-legged on the cushion there. He tried to clear his mind and just relax for a few minutes, but the harder he tried, the more frustrated he became. He couldn't shake the feeling that someone was in the room with him. He wondered if Kayan or Kitarak were trying to read his mind, but he knew from experience what that felt like, and this wasn't the same. This was something else, something less directed, something...

Something in the knapsack he had carried with him all through the desert. He levitated it off the hook by the door and brought it to his lap, where he opened it up to find the crystals he had taken from the ruined city.