"I have a bad feeling about it."
She laughed. "You were headed there as a slave. That might color a person's attitude a bit."
Jedra laughed with her. "It might at that." His laughter dwindled away quickly, though, and he said, "I still have a bad feeling about it."
"We don't have to stay there," Kayan said. "We've got money; we could buy passage on a caravan to Altaruk or Gulg or Nibenay or somewhere."
"And hope the Jura-Dai don't decide to attack it," Jedra said. He tossed the nose across the central aisle, where it bounced off a column and shattered into even smaller fragments on the floor.
The rattling sound continued long after the pieces had come to rest, and it took a moment for Jedra to realize that he wasn't hearing ghosts. Kitarak was returning. The tohr-kreen ducked down to make it through the doorway, then took off his pack and rested it against the column beside the one Jedra and Kayan were using.
"Have any more luck?" Kayan asked him.
"None, regrettably," Kitarak said. He took one of his waterskins from his pack and drank a few sips-the first water they had seen him drink since they'd given him their own. When he was done he put the skin away and said, "I think this city is nearly mined out. It is too close to the hinterlands."
"Is that where you're from?" Jedra asked.
Kitarak's lower arms jerked suddenly and scraped against his thorax, producing a scritching sound. "I couldn't say."
Touchy subject? It didn't matter. They weren't going to the hinterlands anyway. Jedra said, "Kayan and I were just talking about our plans. Thanks to you we've got food and water enough to make it to Tyr, if we start this evening."
"Tyr?" Kitarak turned his head first left, then right. "What do you expect to find in Tyr?"
"A psionics master, we hope," Jedra said. "Or failing that, at least passage to another city where we might find one."
"Psionics?" Kitarak looked away. "You mentioned that before. Said you could stop me with it if I attacked you. Could you?"
"Yes," both Kayan and Jedra said in unison.
Kitarak clicked his mandibles. Laughter? "Prove it," he said.
"What?" Jedra reached out for his spear, but Kitarak stepped forward and pinned it to the floor with one of his clawed feet.
"Prove to me that you have this power."
"Why?" asked Kayan. She looked unblinkingly at Kitarak, and Jedra realized she was getting ready to use her healing power on him somehow. Or maybe she would do to him what she'd done to Sahalik.
"I wish to see it." "No, you don't," she said. "Trust me."
"Who said anything about traveling together?" asked Jedra.
Kitarak rasped his lower arms against his thorax again. The vibration it produced was unpleasant, ear-piercing. "You said you were going to Tyr. So am I. Unless you plan to take a less direct route than I, we will be traveling together."
What now? Jedra mindsent to Kayan.
I don't know. I'm not sure I want him traveling with us.
Me either, Jedra said. On the other hand, he knows the countryside, and I still don't get any feeling of hostility from him, even now. He'd probably be good to have along, if we can just convince him we're not lying about our power.
Kayan said, Hah. Convincing him won't be a problem; keeping him alive while we do it will be the trick.
Maybe not, Jedra said. He's not like Sahalik; we might not have to be quite so direct with him.
What do you have in mind?
He smiled. Well, we're in a ruined city already. What's one more ruin?
Aloud, he said, "All right. You want a demonstration, we'll give you a demonstration. Come on outside." He stood up, leaving the spear and his pack where they lay. He offered Kayan a hand up, and the two of them walked out into the street.
Kitarak left his pack inside as well. He stood beside them in the street, cocking his bulbous-eyed head this way and that, while Kayan and Jedra blinked to regain their vision in the sudden light.
Link up, Jedra sent. He took Kayan's hand in his own, remembering that physical contact had strengthened the link before.
The rush was like a wind blowing through them, spreading well-being through every cell of their bodies. They felt their minds merging again, felt themselves become a new being. With Kitarak so close by, they tried not to imagine themselves with any kind of physical body, lest their psionic wings or claws do him inadvertent damage before they could get clear. Instead, they concentrated on the city before them, bringing every stone and every shadow into sharp focus. This time, now that they had seen it with their own eyes, they saw it as it was now, rather than in its former glory.
It was still impressive. The tallest remaining tower, nearly six stories high, stood only four or five buildings away, halfway down the next block on the same street on which they stood. Jedra and Kayan turned toward it, stretching out with their power, letting it flow through them, upward and outward. They raised their hands to help direct it, palms out, arms slightly bent. They could almost feel the stone walls against their hands. A little more concentration, and they could feel the stone. They felt every crack, every joint, every rectangular window for the entire six stories on the side that faced them.
Then they pushed.
The building groaned. The massive wall resisted. Jedra and Kayan pushed harder, and slowly, inexorably, the wall tipped away from them. It didn't go over in one big slab; instead it buckled in the middle, and the top half, suddenly relieved of its support, broke into its constituent blocks and rained down like a sudden hailstorm.
The ground shook, and thunder rolled down the street. The lower half of the collapsing wall smashed through interior partitions as if they weren't even there, gutting the building, then twisting to the right as it toppled inward and knocking out the back wall as well. The whole building shuddered, and more stones fell. Then the third wall, the far one, crumbled away from the others and crashed down on the building behind it.
The fourth wall stood for a moment, a massive, six-story monolith with the ragged ends of floors sticking out from the side, then it tipped inward and did what the others failed to do: fell in one piece all the way to the ground.
Dust billowed up, obscuring the entire far end of the street. Jedra and Kayan struggled to keep their balance when the quake hit, and the renewed body awareness brought them out of their link.
They hadn't been merged long enough for the letdown to be as severe as before. They were able to stand and watch the dust cloud rise above the other buildings while they waited for the noise to die down enough to allow speech. It didn't die right away, though, and finally they realized why: The shaking had weakened the next building closer to them, and it was going down, too. This one was only three stories high-it was the one in which Jedra had found the crystals-but it fell with nearly as much impact as the first.
Kitarak didn't know they had only caused the first collapse directly; He turned toward them and shouted, "Stop it!"
Run! Kayan mindsent as she whirled around and did just that, dodging boulders and leaping through the rubble while the ground shook and more stones fell from the buildings all around them.
Kitarak was already in motion, but rather than sprinting down the street after her he ducked into the building they had just been inside. Jedra and Kayan's packs flew out the doorway, then Kitarak reappeared, dragging his own pack behind him.
Jedra grabbed both his and Kayan's packs and ran off after her. A section of cornice fell off the front of the building beside them and shattered, sending fragments everywhere. He felt a sting in the side of his right leg, but he kept running.