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

Kayan said, "Wait a minute. You know about Athas?"

Yoncalla's laugh shook the ground. "Of course I know about it. I owned it, until my physical body could no longer be sustained. Tell me, how fares it now?"

Kayan looked to Jedra. Jedra shrugged and said, "Not very well, compared to this. It's mostly desert, and your city is a complete ruin."

The fifty-foot immortal balled his fists, and tiny bolts of lightning flashed in a halo around his head. "What! A ruin? How did that happen?"

"It was that way when we found it," Jedra said. He neglected to mention that he and Kayan had finished it off.

Yoncalla shook his head. "My city. My glorious city. And the world is... a desert?"

"That's right."

"It was those damned mages, wasn't it?" Yoncalla asked, but he didn't wait for a response. "I knew they would get greedy. I should have crushed them all the moment they learned to power their spells with the energy of life." He swept his hand through the top of a tree beside him, snapping it off with a loud crack of splintering wood. "Maybe I should do that yet."

"Uh, that might be kind of hard to do," Jedra said. "They're running things now, and this world exists in a crystal no bigger than my thumb."

"I know that," Yoncalla said. He snapped his fingers and thousands of similar crystals fell out of the sky like hail. "New worlds, all of them," he said, "but all are subordinate to mine. Just as you are now. I am the master here."

He keeps repeating that, like he's trying to convince himself it's true, Kayan said. I'll bet he hasn't had a visitor in here since the cataclysm.

Probably not. Jedra tugged on the vines binding his hands. They tightened around his wrists with more strength than he could summon to pull them free. If he and Kayan were going to get free, they wouldn't be able to do it with brute force.

Yoncalla staggered back as if Jedra had struck him, his right leg snapping off a tree in the process. He didn't even notice. "What? They still live?"

"Some of them," Jedra said. "About half of them were dead."

"Only half?" Yoncalla reached out to a treetop for support. "I thought-it has been thousands of years! Millennia, all alone. I was sure they had all perished."

"Not yet." Jedra would have crossed his arms if the vines had let him. "I've got one more live one in the very next room."

"Who is it?" Yoncalla's eyes glittered. He leaned forward eagerly.

"I don't know," Jedra said. "I haven't entered it yet."

Yoncalla laughed. "You had best take care when you do. Few immortals are as benevolent as I."

Kayan shook her tethered hands at him. "You call this benevolent?"

"I do." Suddenly Kayan's body sagged in her restraints.

Her hair turned white and her face wrinkled, and her eyes glazed over with a milky film.

"You see what I am capable of?" said Yoncalla.

Kayan! Jedra sent, struggling to free himself, but she replied, I'm fine. None of this is real. It's all appearances here. In fact, I'm beginning to get an idea...

Her body grew younger again, and she said to Yoncalla, "You could learn a few things about dealing with women." She gestured with her hands and the vines lowered her gently to the ground and released her.

Hey, how did you do that? Jedra tugged frantically on his own vines, but they didn't budge.

I just wished for it, Kayan said. That's apparently how this place works.

"You cannot escape me," Yoncalla said. As he spoke, the grass grew up around Kayan and snared her legs.

She looked down at it and the grass turned brown and brittle. She kicked free of it and stood there in front of Yoncalla's right foot, her head barely reaching his shin. "I'd love to play longer," she said, "but I'm sorry, I really have to be going." A hole opened up in the ground, and she jumped into it.

"No!" Yoncalla shouted. He stomped on the hole, but she was already gone. Jedra felt the mindlink grow more tenuous, stretching out as if over a long distance, but it didn't break. Kayan's voice, nearly drowned out in the sudden wind that shook the tree, said to him, Just wish to be free.