The Darkness Before the Dawn

Chapter Eight

His first impulse was to shatter the crystal and let her out, but he didn't know if that would work. It wasn't just a box holding her mind captive; it was an entire world. She might die in the cataclysm that would surely wrack it if he damaged the crystal. He didn't know if death in there would mean anything outside, but he didn't want to risk it. Not yet.

He looked at the crystal lying there on the floor in front of him. Such a tiny thing to hold such wonders- and to present such a trap. He was afraid to touch it now, for fear he would cause earthquakes inside. If he started another chain reaction of falling buildings, Kayan could be caught in it.

No, the first thing to do was to stave off starvation before he collapsed as well. He would be no use to her at all if he let that happen. He crawled into the kitchen and pulled himself up to reach the water jug on the counter, drank a long, sloppy draught from that, then he opened the easiest cabinet to reach-the grain bin-and sat down in front of it to munch a handful of the dry seeds. When that began to take effect he stirred enough to shuffle into the pantry and eat a sack of nuts and a raw erdlu egg, which in turn revived him enough to thaw one of the inix flanks from the cold-box and devour that half raw.

He took a water flask and an erdlu egg back into the library for Kayan, but without a conscious mind running her body he couldn't get her to take any of either. Finally he just dribbled a little water into her mouth and counted on reflex to make her swallow, and when she'd done that a couple of times he switched to the erdlu egg and kept feeding her tiny spoonfuls of it until she had eaten the whole thing.

Erdlu egg was one of the most nourishing foods he knew of. Less than an hour after he'd eaten his, Jedra began to feel stronger; and Kayan recovered some of her color as well. He fed her another one, hoping she would regain consciousness inside the crystal and break her link with it, but when another hour passed with no change in her condition he lay back on the cushion and tried to mindlink with her again. If he could reach her, maybe he could pull her back out of the crystal.

Her presence was so faint it was hardly detectable, but when he concentrated he could sense it. It was a little like the crystal itself had been: faint and hard to reach. However, now that he'd had some experience breaking through the barrier into it, he knew what to look for. He imagined reaching through and touching Kayan, envisioned his hand penetrating the barrier that separated them and his whole body following through until he stood beside her again in the grassy courtyard.

He felt the barrier resist, then a moment of dizziness, and he was there. It was much easier the second time.

The moment his vision cleared, however, he realized he'd made a mistaken assumption. He hadn't gone straight to the courtyard. He was back in the clearing in the forest where they had originally arrived. Only this time the trees weren't in a loose ring at the edge of the grass; they had moved closer and now leaned toward him with menacing branches and dangling vines.

Was Kayan mad at him again? She'd called up the thunderstorm last time she was angry; if she'd regained consciousness and thought Jedra had abandoned her. she might have turned the world against him again. It might not even have been a deliberate decision.

Wind rattled the branches and made them swoop back and forth overhead. The vines swung madly, some cracking like whips as the branches flung them back and forth. Jedra ducked a particularly low one, but he felt another thump into his back and coil around his waist.

Get off! he commanded it, thinking that the world should obey his wishes too, but the vine clung stubbornly. Another one swooped down and grabbed his right arm. He pulled it free with his left hand, but more and more vines snared his arms and legs faster than he could fight them off.

Kayan, call them off! he mindsent. Kayan!

She didn't respond. Something did, though. The vines yanked Jedra into the air, and thunder blasted out of a clear sky. Cursing and trying to stay upright, Jedra tried everything he could think of to escape, but he couldn't make the vines burn or freeze solid and he couldn't break them either psionically or with his own physical strength. He was trapped.

Time to leave, Jedra thought. He built up his mental barrier again to block the mindlink with the crystal world, but the world refused to fade. Either he didn't have the strength to build a complete barrier, or else the barrier didn't make any difference now.

The footfalls and the roaring grew closer. Jedra saw a treetop disappear, and a moment later the loud crack of its trunk breaking reached him. He heard more trees topple over, then the last one separating him from the creature crashed to the ground, and he got his first glimpse of the beast.

It was some kind of dragon. It had scaly, purplish green iridescent skin, and stood erect on two enormously powerful rear legs, with a long, massive whip tail stretching out behind. Its body was at least thirty feet tall, and its head was a scaly oblong slashed across by a toothy mouth easily big enough to swallow Jedra in one gulp. Its forearms were short in comparison with its legs, but they were still at least six feet long and heavily muscled. They ended in cruel claws, and Jedra recognized the limp form clutched in them.

"Kayan!" he screamed.

The dragon bellowed at him, its hot, fetid breath washing over him and making him choke. Jedra struggled against the vines, but they clung tight. He tried mind-linking with Kayan again, and this time he felt a faint response.

Kayan, wake up! he sent.

Mmm?

The dragon lifted her up to its eye level and peered at her through first one, then the other of its foot-wide pupils. Then it lowered her toward its toothy mouth and opened its jaws.

Jedra shoved at its arms psionically, pushing them aside, then he tugged at Kayan and wrenched her free of the dragon's grasp. It bellowed an ear-splitting roar and lunged after her, but Jedra swept her aside. The motion set him swinging wildly from the vines, and Kayan nearly smacked into a tree trunk, but he managed to bring her around just in time and fly her out of the monster's reach.

But not out of the trees' reach. Dozens of vines whipped out and snared her, and Jedra could do nothing to stop them. Within seconds she hung beside him in the trees, while the dragon bent low to examine them both.

It rubbed its hands together like a gourmet contemplating a sumptuous meal, and a thick rope of drool spilled over its teeth. It grunted softly-for a thirty-foot dragon-and its nostrils flared in and out with its excited breaths.

Jedra? Kayan's voice said in his mind. Her mind-sending was weak, but she was conscious.

I'm here, he sent. He tried again to link with her, and this time he was rewarded with a rush of sensation. Fatigue and anger washed through him, but fear overrode them both.

The dragon backed up a step. It opened its mouth again, and Jedra braced himself for another roar or even a blast of flame, but instead it spoke in a deep, rumbling voice. "Worship me," it said, "and I will spare you."

The language was one that Jedra had never heard before, but he realized he was understanding it through Kayan's mind. He mindsent to her, What is this thing?

I don't know, she replied. I just got here.

The dragon roared again. "Worship me!" it bellowed.

"Who are you?" Jedra shouted back.

"I am Yoncalla, lord of all creation." The dragon held its head high and bellowed at the sky. Wind swirled, and thunder boomed.

"Pretty impressive," Jedra admitted, but he was thinking that Kayan had called up a thunderstorm without even intending to. In this world, practically anything was possible.

"I will impress you more," Yoncalla said, and the dragon body began to elongate. The arms and massive legs shortened and the head narrowed, while the body stretched out and up until it was a sixty or seventy foot snake. Its five-foot-wide body coiled around and around until the head was once again level with its dangling captives, and its forked tongue flickered out and waved just in front of their faces. Its eyes had become yellow slits that didn't blink.

"I can be whatever I choose," the snake said, its improbably flexible lips forming the words. Jedra had no doubt it could. He and Kayan probably could as well, if their enhanced appearance earlier was any indication, but they still didn't know how to control this bizarre world.

Wonderful, she said. I'm open to suggestions, if you've got any.

Last time I was able to have by breaking our mindlink, but you stayed behind. And when I came back, I didn't link with you first. I think the crystal has its own kind of link.

The snake had become a round, furry blob about fifteen feet thick. Gravity flattened it on top and bottom, and a single eye on a stalk protruded like a flower from the top. A round mouth below looked like a rodent burrow in the creature's sandy brown hide.

The mouth spoke. "Worship me."

Don't laugh, Jedra warned.

Kayan tugged on the vines holding her in the air. That won't be hard.

They needed to know more about this place and about this bizarre being who had captured them. Aloud, Jedra said, "We hardly know you. You're Yoncalla, lord of creation, but who is that? Where did you come from?"

The furry blob expanded like a balloon. "I am the original being. I built this world with the power of my own mind."

Kayan asked, "And you live here all alone?"

The blob shrank again. "There were once many of us, each with our own world. We crossed back and forth at will, and we fought great battles. But one by one the others grew frail and died, until only I remain. I am the last of the mighty conquerors, the last immortal."

The blob stretched out again, growing arms and legs and a regular head until Yoncalla stood before them, a fifty-foot-tall, perfectly proportioned human. He was nude, and his skin was tanned bronze over his entire body. His muscles rippled as he bent down to put his head on Jedra's and Kayan's level, but then he evidently thought better of it and with a wave of his hands the trees holding them grew upward instead.

Now they dangled over an even greater drop, but that seemed to be the least of their worries.

"This was my original form," Yoncalla said. "Pleasing, is it not?"

"Very," Kayan said.

What? Jedra demanded. He's a musclebound freak.

Kayan shrugged. I'm just humoring him.

Yoncalla said, "In this form, I was king of all Athas. I ruled the entire land with an iron fist."

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.

What do you think I've been doing? he demanded, but he realized what she meant. He'd tried psionics and he'd struggled against the vines, but he hadn't actually tried to manipulate the crystal world on its own terms. He imagined it now, trying to visualize a way out. Instead of Kayan's hole in the ground, he imagined the wind whirling around him, enclosing him and carrying him off through the crystal sky.

Sure enough, the vines snapped like string, and the wind bore him aloft. Yoncalla made a desperate lunge for him, but Jedra's whirlwind surged upward and the would-be god's oversized hand swept by yards below.

"Don't leave me!" Yoncalla shouted. "If you stay, I'll worship you!"

Then the whirlwind reached the sky. Jedra felt the same disorientation as before, and he found himself in Kitarak's library again. Kayan was struggling to sit up beside him.

We're still linked, she said.

He nodded. They were both so tired they hardly felt it, but he knew what would happen when they

separated. Promise you won't hate me, he said. I'll try.

He reached out and took her in his arms. It felt like hugging a skeleton. Her face was all harsh angles and sagging skin, but he kissed her anyway. The mindlink momentarily strengthened, then weakened again when they drew apart.

Here goes, Kayan said.

Her presence faded from Jedra's mind, and all the troubles of the world came crashing down to replace it. Of two worlds. He thought of Yoncalla, suddenly abandoned again after millennia of isolation, and he felt bad for doing that to him. If he hadn't been so weak, he might have tried to go back.

And then there was what he had done to Kayan. He couldn't look at her. She got up and staggered into the kitchen, but even though his stomach screamed for food, he stayed in the library.

How long had he been gone this time? The candle had only burned down an inch or so-not even an hour then. An hour, and all he had eaten had been used up. No wonder Kayan had fallen unconscious before he did; she hadn't eaten before they entered the crystal, and they had been gone for nearly a day.

He thought briefly of calling for Kitarak. He and Kayan obviously needed their mentor. But the tohr-kreen had been gone only a couple of days; he probably wouldn't return even if Jedra could contact him, which was unlikely. Kitarak probably wouldn't lower his shield for a week, just to make sure Jedra and Kayan truly solved their differences before they called him back.

Jedra went into the kitchen just long enough to take a drink and pick up another bag of nuts. Kayan's bulging eyes followed him as he went past her, but she said nothing. That was all right. He didn't know what to say to her, either.

Kayan slept in the library again, Jedra got up periodically to check on her, but her breathing remained steady and she didn't convulse the way he'd seen some starving people do. She'd evidently gotten food soon enough to prevent permanent damage. He left her to heal in her sleep.

When the morning sun finally began to filter through the skylights, Jedra wondered if they had been covered with sand. The light was deep red, almost like candlelight. But when he checked the skylights he saw that they were clean, and then he realized he was seeing normal sunlight. His eyes had adjusted to the brilliant sun inside the crystal, and now Athas's coppery red cinder seemed dull by comparison. He hoped he would grow used to it again, or he would be spending the rest of his life in dim twilight.

Hot, dim twilight. Even inside the stone house the temperature rose with the sun, but when Jedra went outside to relieve himself the intense heat felt like a physical force beating down on him. He had never realized just how oppressive it was until he'd sampled another world.

But that one was just the construction of a crazy person's mind. Such a thing probably couldn't exist... or could it? Legend told of a time when Athas's sun was brighter, and Kayan had said that the Sea of Silt was once an ocean. Who could say?

Jedra always went around to the back of the house to urinate, giving the tree that grew there a little more water, but today when he rounded the side of the rock pile he stopped short when he saw what had happened: The storm had toppled the tree. Its trunk had splintered about three feet off the ground, and the top had fallen with enough force to break two of its three big limbs. The remaining one rose into the sky like a tree itself, but its leaves had all been ripped loose, leaving only the skeletal branches.

Jedra walked up to it and snapped off a twig. Brittle. The fierce desert heat had already baked it dry. Jedra stood there and idly broke the twig into pieces while he contemplated the bare corpse of Kitarak's shade tree. This was how everything on Athas ended-everything that escaped being eaten, anyway-bare and dry under the hot sun. Like the sun-bleached piles of bones that he and Kayan had seen in the deep desert, marking the lairs of underground cacti. Only the cacti themselves escaped the relentless rays of the dark sun.

That wouldn't stop them from dying, though, Jedra realized. Sand cacti had an even more prolonged death awaiting them, for after they trapped and fed on a desert creature, they had no way to get rid of the pile of bones. Nothing else would venture near, and the cactus would eventually starve to death, probably after sending forth seeds-most of which would in turn be eaten by scavengers before they could germinate.

Jedra sighed. It was all part of a bigger whole, he supposed, but that didn't make it any less depressing.

The sorcerer-kings cheated death with their magic, but if any of the legends were to be believed they usually died all the more horribly for it when their time finally came. And if Yoncalla was a fair representative of the ancients' method of achieving immortality, then that was hardly better. Immortality for Yoncalla seemed to be little more than the chance to go stir-crazy amid his own creations.

It might still beat the alternative. Jedra turned away from the tree and looked out across the sandy, rock-strewn ground to the steep canyon walls. Down here in the bottom of the gorge it was easy to forget that the rest of the world existed, but Jedra knew it carried on as usual. Someday he would have to venture back out into it, and even his psionic training couldn't guarantee him a better life than what he'd had living on the streets of Urik. The only certainty out there was the knowledge that the moment he let down his guard, someone or something would be waiting to exploit his moment of weakness.

His full bladder reminded him that he had come out here for a reason. He cast out with his danger sense, thinking wryly how ridiculous it would be to be caught with his pants down by some desert animal, but the only impression he got of life came from a couple hundred yards off, at the base of the canyon wall, and even that wasn't dangerous. In fact, its psionic impression was one of warmth and contentment.

This I've got to see, he thought as he finished his business and walked toward the consciousness he had sensed. He approached it cautiously, but his danger sense continued to tell him there was no threat so he climbed over the rocks near the base of the canyon wall until he found what he was looking for. There, in a tunnel burrowed beneath a boulder, was a jankx den, with two slender, golden babies curled up around each other, their long snouts tucked beneath their paws as they slept.

Jedra knelt there looking at the babies and wondering what to do with them. He had always thought of jankx as food animals, and relatively troublesome ones at that, since they had poison spurs in their paws, but he couldn't eat these two babies. Nor, he realized, could he just leave them to starve. But he couldn't bring them food in their den, because a scavenger would eventually find them and they wouldn't have any defense. He was just coming to the realization that he would have to build some kind of cage and take care of them until they matured when his danger sense finally twinged and he looked up to see a pair of lean, gray zhackals loping down the canyon toward him.

He immediately reached into the den with his tele-kinetic power and lifted the baby jankx out. They awoke and began to squirm, making tiny, high-pitched squeaks. The zhackals' ears perked up, and they increased their speed, running straight for Jedra. He took off toward the house, but he'd only gone a few steps before he realized that he wouldn't make it before they reached him. Not in the kind of shape he was in. He kept running anyway, trying to get as close as he could before he had to turn and fight.

When he looked over his shoulder again he saw three more zhackals emerging from farther up the canyon. There was no way he could stand up against that many. Maybe he and Kayan together could, but not now, not this quickly. He had time for only one thing, and he did it without hesitation: He threw the jankx babies into the path of the foremost two zhackals.

He was afraid they would ignore the smaller prey, but zhackals preferred not to fight when they didn't have to. These were content with a smaller meal; the two chasing Jedra skidded to a stop and grabbed the jankx by their tails, flipping them playfully into the air and catching them again in their fanged mouths.

Disgusted with himself as much as the zhackals, Jedra ran the last few yards to the house and stood by the door, panting, while the other zhackals caught up to the first two and joined in the fun. Jedra considered pelting them with rocks now that he was safe, but it was too late to save the baby jankx so it seemed a pointless gesture. Let the zhackals have their snack. The babies would have died anyway, so it really didn't matter. Except that Jedra felt even worse than if he had never known they existed. He glanced over at the downed tree, shook his head, and went back inside.

Kayan was in the kitchen, working the pump handle up and down to refill the jug they kept on the counter, but her arms were so frail she couldn't get up any speed and nothing was coming out of the spout.

"Here, let me get that for you," Jedra said, reaching down into the well psionically to lift some water out.

"I can do it," she snapped at him.

He reeled back as if she'd slapped him. "I was just trying to help."

"Yeah."

He considered telling her about the baby jankx and the zhackals outside, and about the tree, but with the mood she was in he decided to wait. He turned away, but realizing he couldn't stand the thought of another day of angry silence, he turned back around and said, "I'm sorry I got us in trouble again. You know I didn't mean to."

She nodded. "I know. But you still just about got us killed."

"Yes, I did," he said. "And you saved us both and I'm very grateful and I don't want to fight anymore. I can't stand it when you reject me like this."

Water finally started dribbling into the jug. Kayan kept pumping as she said, "It won't kill you."

"How do you know?"

"I'm a healer. I know these things." When the jug overflowed she stopped pumping and turned to face Jedra. "Look, I just need some time alone, all right? The last couple of days have been just as hard on me as they have on you. I'll be all right, but not if I have to hold your hand all the time."

"I wasn't asking you to hold my hand."

She shook her head. "Arrgh! Can't you get it through your thick head? That was a metaphor."

"All right, all right." Jedra shook his head and retreated into the bedroom.

He tried to rest and regain his strength, but when he lay back on the cushion he remained wide awake. He could hear every sound Kayan made in the kitchen, and he noticed every nook and bump in the arched stone ceiling overhead. He became aware of another nagging presence in the room, too: The crystals beckoned him like a marketplace prostitute. Yoncalla's tugged the strongest, but the other one held the allure of complete mystery. What kind of world might be inside it? Would it be another paradise, inhabited by another insane immortal, or might it be something completely different? Right now he was in the mood for different.

He ate a hearty meal first, just in case. He didn't think it would matter nearly as much this time since he wouldn't be linked with Kayan while he was gone, but it wouldn't hurt to stoke up anyway.

Assuming he went anywhere, of course. Without Kayan's extra power to help him, he might not be able to break through the crystal's barrier. Still, curiosity made him try. He lay back on the cushion so he wouldn't fall over this time when his mind left his body, set the crystal beside him, and concentrated on entering it.

Yoncalla's world was a continual distraction. Every time Jedra felt the unknown world's barrier weakening, he felt himself slipping toward Yoncalla's world instead. Finally he levitated the offending crystal into Kitarak's study just to put a little distance between him and it, and when he tried again the distraction seemed a little less. He still had to be very careful which crystal he entered, but when he finally felt the barrier give way, he was sure it was the new one.

There was the same moment of disorientation as before, then he opened his eyes to harsh blue light coming from rectangular panels overhead. He was in a cave of some sort-no, it was another enormous stone building. And this one was full of people.

They were everywhere, and all on the move. Men and women of all ages, even children-everyone seemed to have a destination and strode purposefully toward it. They all wore unfamiliar clothing, mostly tight-fitting pants and shirts made of smooth, brightly dyed cloth, and none of them paid the slightest attention to each other. Jedra stood a foot taller than most of them, and though he was the only one not hurrying anywhere, they ignored him, too.

The place smelled like too many unwashed bodies. A constant, low-level rushing sound of voices and footsteps masked a deeper rumble that was more felt than heard. Jedra watched people come and go from stairways leading down into subterranean catacombs, but he didn't feel like seeing what was down there. He felt too closed in already. He had to get out. Wide stairs led up from the main floor to doors on all sides; Jedra fell in behind a large bearded man in a dark overcoat, letting him clear a path through the throng until they made it outside.

It was brighter than Jedra had expected. From inside, under that glaring blue light, it had seemed dark out- and it was indeed night-but he could still see clearly. Bright glowing lanterns atop poles provided plenty of light, and more light spilled from buildings lining the street.

And what a street! The rushing noise here was even louder than inside. Just a few feet from the narrow walkway on which Jedra and a thousand other people stood, hundreds of multicolored beasts careened past, following one another in a dizzying stampede from right to left. Their eyes glowed too brightly to look at, and they growled as they passed.

Jedra stepped back, but he bumped into one of the people streaming by. "Wal finida graben!" the man growled at him, hardly breaking stride. More people shoved past, jostling Jedra aside until he stood by the edge of the street again. Even that was no refuge, however; a man and a woman stepped up beside him, almost into the path of the rushing beasts, and the man raised his arm in a casual wave. He called out, "Gimpel!" and one of the creatures-a yellow one-stopped for him, eliciting angry outcries from the ones behind it. Only when the man reached out and opened a door in its side did Jedra look closer and realize it was a chariot. It had no draft animals or slaves pulling it, so it must have been magically powered. The man and his woman climbed inside, and the chariot roared away with them both inside, leaving Jedra in the throng.

Jedra had thought that Athas was depressing, and that Yoncalla was mad, but this was the insane world. There were too many people, and there was too much activity for anyone to follow. Jedra felt panic closing in on him. He had grown up in a city, but even on market days Urik had never been like this. He needed to get out of this mob. He considered going back home, but he'd only been here a few minutes, and he hadn't really learned anything about the place yet. If he could just find someplace quiet to observe it all from, he could at least try to figure out what was going on.

A woman laughed when she saw the expression on his face. Jedra blushed and turned away. All right, so the buildings were tall. They would still make a good refuge. He raised his arms and gave a little leap, expecting to fly the way he had in Yoncalla's world, but he just plopped back to the gray stone walkway. He heard laughter around him, and for the first time the people nearby stepped aside to give him room.

"Thanks," he said, and tried again, directing his thoughts in a concentrated wish: fly. He didn't have any better luck this time, though, and now the people around him laughed outright. A few pointed at him and spoke more unfamiliar words, but Jedra didn't have to know the language to know what they were saying. They thought he was crazy.

Well, that was one piece of information, then. People couldn't fly in this world. That would explain all the chariots. Blushing furiously now, Jedra began walking through the crowd. The first few people gave way before him, but the ones behind them didn't know that he was the source of the commotion, or even that any commotion had gone on, so he had to jostle his way along with the rest of them.

He'd gone less than a hundred paces before someone shouldered him aside and he lost his balance. Without thinking, he stepped out into the street to keep from falling over. One of the yellow chariots brushed by him, its hard flank banging painfully into his thigh and knocking him back. The chariot blared angrily as it continued past, and Jedra fell against one of the metal light posts. He clutched it for dear life, which brought forth more laughter from the people on the walkway, but he didn't care. Better safe and embarrassed than dead beneath a chariot.

His leg hurt. His heart was pounding, and his breath was coming in tight little gasps. It was time to leave. Jedra imagined a hole in the gray stone walkway through which he could fall out of this mad world...

... but no hole appeared.

I wish to be out of here, he thought, but nothing happened.

Hmm. This place obviously followed different rules. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on finding a pathway out of it, but when he opened them he was still in the throng of people and chariots. And nobody spoke his language, so he couldn't even ask for help.

Suddenly he realized he was being an idiot. He had a perfectly good method of communication he hadn't even tried. Do you understand me this way? he mindsent to a man passing by, but the moment he tried it he realized that wouldn't work. He couldn't sense the man's mind at all.

Confused, he turned his attention to another person on the walkway beside him, but he felt no mind there either. He tried to contact another and another, but he got nothing from any of them. Were they all zombies? Magically animated corpses? Or were they something else entirely?

Jedra closed his eyes tight against his mounting anxiety, but the city's noise still crashed in on him. He held his hands over his ears, but that barely muted it. How could people live in such a place? It would drive him crazy to be in such a hectic environment all the time.

Maybe that was why nobody here seemed to have a mind. To escape the insanity around them, they had all retreated into some inner world, leaving their bodies behind to carry on without them.

Worlds within worlds within worlds... the possibility frightened him more than anything else he had seen here.

He had to get out of this place. Now. If he couldn't leave the entire world, he could at least leave the city.

With renewed determination, he stepped into the flowing river of people again and began to walk.

He lost track of how many streets he crossed, how many thousands of people he passed on the walkways, how many chariots roared past him. His leg flashed with pain at every step, but the rest of him felt numb. He tried dozens of times to escape back into the real world-his world-but remained trapped within the frantic city. At last he stepped from a canyon of giant buildings to see a line of darkness before him. All he had to do was cross one more busy street, and beyond it waited an expanse of unnaturally even grass stretching off toward a copse of trees. He waited for a gap between the chariots and sprinted across, ignoring their angry bleats, then he hopped the low stone wall separating the street from the grass and continued to run past the few startled people walking beside a pond until he reached the edge of the trees. Beneath the trees' protective cover he found a rock to sit on, and he closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

His tension began to drain away. There had to be a way out of here; he just hadn't tried the right thing yet. If psionics didn't work, then maybe magic would. He probably just needed to find a mage who could work the spell for him. He would search for one soon, but for now he would just relax. When his heart quit pounding, he would go on.

"Hevar," a voice said right by his side. Jedra jumped up and swung around to see a boy a couple years younger than himself standing there, his hands balled into fists and held ready in front of him. Behind him stood four more even younger boys, all in unmistakably aggressive poses. All five wore dark, tight-fitting clothes, making them difficult to see in the dim light.

Jedra hadn't sensed them at all. Of course not-his psionic danger sense was just as dead as all his other abilities. Suddenly sweating, he backed away slowly, hands held out palms-forward in a gesture of peace, and said, "Sorry. I didn't know this was your place. I'll leave." The boy who had spoken said, "Kemali non vanada." His tone of voice made it sound like a command, and sure enough, the others spread out to block Jedra's escape. Jedra had witnessed the same sort of thing before in Urik. He had never had to fight there, though; his danger sense had always warned him in time.

"Look," he said, his voice wavering, "I don't want to fight you. I just want to go home."

The leader of the boys laughed and said, "Delan." He reached out and tugged on the sleeve of Jedra's tunic. The other boys laughed with him. One of the boys who had flanked him said, "Marada delor?" and Jedra turned to say, "Sorry, I don't under-"

The first boy hit him in the left side of the head. Jedra's teeth clacked together, biting into his cheek and tongue, and his ear rang. "Ow!" he shouted, jumping back to avoid another blow, but one of the boys behind him hit him in the side, and another in the back. He whirled around and struck at them, fear making him swing wildly, but his longer arms let him connect solidly with one's chest even so.

"Hooda!" the leader shouted, hitting Jedra in the head again. Jedra spun around and punched him in the nose, two quick, almost instinctive jabs, then he whirled around to face whoever else was close. It was nearly impossible to keep all five boys at bay; they danced forward and back, one or two leaning in and striking while he protected himself from another. Blows fell on him nearly constantly, mostly on the sides and back, but a few landed on his head and face.

His elven ancestry did at least give him the advantage of reach. He didn't know how to fight well, but he was fast, and he could snap a fist in past his attackers' guard without letting them get close enough to return his punches. And now he was getting mad. Through his rising anger he noted with satisfaction that the leader was at least bleeding from both nostrils, even while he tasted blood flowing freely from his own. This couldn't last, though. He couldn't win against five people, even if they were just children.

That realization transformed his anger back into terror. "Help!" he shouted. He looked past the boys to the open grass, but the only person he saw was hurrying away.

His plea brought forth more laughter from the boys. They shouted something, but their words blended together in Jedra's ringing ears. Another fist from the side hit him in the right eye, and his vision on that side burst into a shower of light. Screaming in pain, Jedra kicked out sideways with his right foot and felt it connect solidly with the stomach of the boy who had hit him. Jedra heard the boy go down. He spun around, punching and kicking to drive the others back, then he leaped through the gap he had just opened in their ring.

Only he hadn't hurt the boy on the ground as badly as he'd thought. The boy grabbed Jedra's leg as he jumped over him, and Jedra toppled off balance and fell to the ground. He wrenched his foot free and jumped up to run again, but it was too late. The others had entrapped him again.

And now they were angry. They had just been playing with him before, but he had fought back too well; now the leader reached to his waistband and withdrew from a pocket a dark folding knife, which he snapped open with a practiced flick of his wrist. Jedra heard the snick of four more knives opening. His heart seemed ready to tear itself from his chest. He kicked out frantically at the boy he'd knocked down, trying once again to make an escape, but the boy dodged back, and before Jedra could recover and turn, he felt a sudden burst of searing pain in his left side.

Blood bubbled out through the slash in his tunic. Jedra clasped his hand over the wound, but another hot flare ripped along his right arm, then another in his back. He screamed and kicked out again and again, trying to drive the boys back without exposing his arms or face, but they merely slashed his legs until he could barely stand. Then he saw a silvery blur slide toward his left eye, felt a hot streak of pain slide up his cheek-and his eye went dark.

His right eye gave him only blurred shadows. Jedra kicked and swung his fists blindly, fighting by feel now, but even though he connected again and again, the knives slashed him relentlessly. He felt them plunge deep into his belly and sides, felt them slice his left ear, felt them slam to the hilt in his chest. He didn't even notice when he fell over; his mouth was just suddenly filled with dirt.

Light and noise receded. The fiery knife wounds became mere stings. Jedra knew he was dying.

This is one way to escape, he thought as he felt the final knife slide into his heart. But where do I go from here?