There was definitely a presence of some sort in that corner, though. Jedra stepped closer and reached out to touch one of the crystals in the framework. It was about the size of his thumb and milky white in color, one of eight identical crystals mounted at the corners of an open cube. They had been mounted there, at any rate; three of the top four had fallen off after their supports had rusted through, and now lay on the stone slab.
The presence definitely came from the crystals-four of them, anyway-two in the framework and two on the table. The other four, as well as all the others in the room, were just crystals, like ones Jedra had seen worn countless times for ornamentation or used as magical talismans.
Jedra wondered what had been done to them to make them register to his psionic sense as though they were alive. Had some ancient magician stored life energy in them to power one of his spells? Jedra could hardly imagine a dead crystal holding much life energy, but maybe something happened when they were linked together, the way he and Kayan drew upon more power when they mindlinked than they could produce separately.
Or maybe the crystals were psionic. Jedra concentrated on one of them, but he didn't sense any contact. The mysterious life-force continued undisturbed.
The squeak of Kitarak's backpack and the scritch of clawed feet on stone came down the hallway.
"Kitarak," Jedra said when the tohr-kreen drew near, "I've found something in here."
The tohr-kreen stuck his bulbous head in the doorway. "Oh, those," he said when Jedra held up one of the crystals. "Yes, I saw them. Crystals. Hah. Magical foolery. They're nothing. Come see what I've found." He waved something metallic in one claw, then headed on out of the building into the light.
Kitarak was showing off his discovery to Kayan. It was a short tube with a piece of glass at one end, mounted on what looked like a wedge taken out of a small wheel. A tarnished mirror about the size of a coin stuck out of the top of the wedge, and another one was mounted on one side, right in front of the tube.
"It's a jernan," Kitarak said. "Part far-seer and part angulator. Used for determining northness."
"Determining what?" Kayan asked.
"Northness. One's position north or south on the surface of the planet."
"The what?"
"The planet. Athas. Our world."
"Oh."
"Athas is round," Kitarak said impatiently, sensing that his explanation was going astray somehow. His voice grew more abrupt, filled with clicks and buzzing. "You can tell where you are on the surface by measuring how high the sun is in the sky. That's called your northness. The ancients had a way of measuring eastness as well, which is the position around the globe in the direction it spins, but that depended upon accurate timekeepers, and we no longer-"
"Athas is round?" Kayan asked.
"Of course it-" Kitarak stopped. "Never mind." He held the piece of tinkercraft up to his compound eyes, then lowered it again. It had obviously been designed for humanoid eyes. "Never mind," he said again.
Their exploration took on a slower pace after that. Kitarak found a few more incomprehensible ancient artifacts, but they were all in bad repair. Jedra didn't even know what to look for, and after he discovered a nest of stinging insects in one pile of debris he no longer bothered to search.
By midday, he and Kayan had sought refuge from the heat inside one of the few buildings that still had a roof, while Kitarak went into another across a wide, relatively rubble-free street. The building they sheltered in had once been magnificent. Rows of columns ran down either side of a central aisle toward a raised dais at the end opposite the door. Pedestals between the columns had once held statues, now shattered into marble fragments on the floor. There were no benches or even large blocks to sit on, so Jedra and Kayan sat on the floor with their backs to a column, glad of the cool stone and the shade, but not only because of the heat. All those stone blocks outside reflected a lot of sunlight, and it was hard on the eyes.
They didn't speak to one another for a few minutes. Kayan leaned back against the column and closed her eyes, so Jedra dug into his pack and took out the crystals he had found earlier. Two of them still radiated their mysterious essence, but the third was just a dead stone. As far as he could tell it was just a regular crystal, like the ones people wore for luck.
He could use some luck. He put the other two crystals back, then removed one of the leather tie-downs from the side of his pack and wrapped it tightly around the dead stone, tying it snug so the crystal couldn't fall out. He hung it around his neck, adjusting the leather cord so the crystal rested in the hollow between his collarbones. He didn't feel any luckier now, but who could tell?
He leaned back against the column, his shoulder brushing Kayan's. The soft rustle of his clothing echoed quietly in the ancient building, but when he sat still he could hear the quiet murmurings of air moving through the open windows and doors, or the creak of stones shifting as they heated up under the relentless sun. It was eerie. Jedra imagined those sounds to be the ghosts of the former inhabitants, peering at him from just out of sight.
The longer he listened, the more nervous he became. Anything was preferable to this. He finally worked up his courage and said, "Are you still mad at me?"
Kayan opened her eyes. "I was never mad at you," she said automatically. She looked up at Jedra, then shrugged. "Well, all right, maybe a little. But not for long. I just don't like it when somebody comes up with a wild theory and then assumes that it's just as valid as all the knowledge that's been taught for centuries."
"Oh." Jedra thought that over for a minute or two. When the silence threatened to overwhelm him again, he said, "I'm not arguing, but isn't that where new knowledge comes from? People making up theories?"
She frowned. "Actually, I'm not sure if there can be any new knowledge. The ancients knew just about everything. We've forgotten a lot of it, but I think that's mostly for the good, considering what they did
"You really think that?" Jedra asked incredulously. "You think we're better off ignorant?"
"Maybe." She shrugged. "Ignorant of some things, anyway."
He tried to compose his thoughts. He didn't want to annoy her again, but this was a side of Kayan he had never suspected. She'd been so eager to find a mentor who could teach them more about psionics, he'd just assumed she would be eager to learn anything. "What about us?" he asked. "Our ignorance is dangerous. We've killed people because we don't know what we're doing when we merge our minds. Are you saying we shouldn't try to figure out how to control it?"
"We don't need to. Other people already know how. They can teach us."
"But what if they didn't?" Jedra insisted. "What if this were something brand new? Shouldn't we try to learn how to control it on our own?"
Kayan shifted her position on the unyielding floor.
"That's a nonsense question," she said. "Other people do know how to control it."
"I'm just saying 'what if?'."
"And I'm saying it's a pointless question. We need to find a psionics master, not speculate on what we'd do if there weren't any."
"I guess." Jedra picked up a bone-white fragment of a statue-a nose, it looked like, though the tip of it was missing-and turned it over in his hand. "Where do you suppose we ought to start looking?"
"Tyr is still the closest city," Kayan said.
Jedra nodded. "Tyr. Everything in my life seems to be pushing me to go there. I'm not sure I want to give in to it." "Why not?"