What do you mean? Jedra demanded, parrying another blow. Dead is dead!
Tell that to Yoncalla. She attacked again with a straight-in lunge that he parried easily, forcing her sword arm out to her side and leaving her wide open for a fatal stab to the heart. He backed away instead, and the crowd booed.
Damn it, Kayan said, I did that on purpose. Next time take advantage of it.
What?
She frowned. Kill me, you fool, or we'll never get out of here alive!
Then she broke contact. Her presence vanished like a blown-out candle flame, as if she had already died. Her body stood slack, her arms twitching with the crowd's attempts to control her, but Kayan was no longer home. The crystal around Jedra's neck, however, suddenly radiated her presence. She had made the transfer, trusting in Kitarak's ability to somehow revive her body and put her mind back into it as he had apparently done with Lothar's body and Yoncalla. Jedra didn't have nearly as much faith in their mentor as she did, but she had forced his hand, because without her there to continue the fight he had only one option.
This had better work, he mindsent to Kitarak. Then, weeping with fear and frustration, he knocked Kayan's sword aside and plunged his own blade straight through her armor and into her heart.
Chapter Twelve
The audience roared as if they had all shared in the final blow. In the last few minutes of the battle Jedra had nearly forgotten the whole city full of people surrounding him, but now he looked up at the stands, where everyone stomped and cheered and waved their hats. When he pulled his sword free from Kayan's chest and they saw the blood covering the end of the blade they went wilder still. Even Kitarak and Lothar/Yoncalla were on their feet, and Jedra heard Kitarak's voice in his mind saying, Well done. Now take her body and meet us outside the city. Along with the tohr-kreen's voice came an image of a secluded spot between two hills not far to the east.
"I grieve with you," the elf warrior said. "But you did what you had to, like a true warrior. Come with me to the desert and live with the Jura-Dai."
Jedra shook his head. All is not what it seems, he mind-sent. He sent the image that Kitarak had given him and said, Meet us there tonight.
Sahalik gave nothing away. "As you wish," he said, nodding.
Jedra pushed past him and the other gladiators who crowded around to see the body, but one of the psionicists who guarded the gladiators, a stocky, gray-haired, no-nonsense sort of woman, stopped him before he reached the tunnel to the other side of the ziggurat.
"She's dead," Jedra told her.
"I'll determine that," she replied. She touched her hand to Kayan's forehead, then to the bloody wound in her chest. She frowned, perhaps sensing that something wasn't quite right, but at last when she could find no sign of life she said, "Yes, you seem to have done the job. Where are you taking the body?"
"Out into the desert," Jedra replied. "To give her a decent burial."
"Scavengers will get her within a day no matter how deep you dig," the woman said. "You'd be better off letting us bury her here."
She said it kindly, but an image formed in Jedra's mind of a mass grave, a pit full of decaying bodies, most of them slaves who had died on the ziggurat. He shuddered at the thought of Kayan lying among them, even if Kitarak couldn't revive her body.
"No," he said. "She's mine, and I'll take care of her." He pushed past the woman, following the torch-lit corridor beneath the ziggurat until he emerged out the other side, then he marched straight on through the nearly deserted city and out the caravan gate. The guards there gave him no trouble over leaving the city with a dead body in his arms; in fact, when they saw who he was and whom he carried, one of them laughed and held out his hand to the other, saying, "Hah, I win. Pay up."
The rendezvous spot was at least three miles out of town. Jedra found it easily enough, but he ached in every muscle by the time he got there. He'd tried levitating Kayan's body, but the drain on his energy was worse that way than if he simply carried her, so he'd finally bowed to necessity and slung her unceremoniously over his shoulder, holding her legs against his chest and letting her head and arms dangle over his back.
She hadn't begun to stiffen yet. Jedra didn't know if that was normal or if Kayan had done something to prevent it before she had... vacated her body, but when he laid her on the ground he was glad that she didn't stay folded up in the position in which he'd carried her. He arranged her on her back with her arms folded over her chest, then sat down on a rock beside her to wait for Kitarak and Yoncalla and Sahalik to arrive.
The crystal at his neck felt warm against his skin. He wanted to enter it himself and see how Kayan was doing, but he knew that would be dangerous. The crystal itself might be dangerous, but while he was inside with her he couldn't guard their bodies, either, and they could both wind up dead in the real world. That might prove to be merely an inconvenience if Kitarak could do the same trick for them both that he evidently had done for Yoncalla, but Jedra was still not convinced.
It felt strange, sitting beside his lover's body while the sun slowly tracked its way down the western sky, not knowing whether to grieve at her death or rejoice at her narrow escape. He settled for simply waiting; he would have plenty of time later to do whatever seemed appropriate.
Kitarak and Yoncalla arrived just before dark. Jedra heard them coming before he saw them. The former immortal was evidently less than pleased with his new body; he cursed a steady streak of unfamiliar epithets as they worked their way through the uneven terrain, and Kitarak occasionally said things like, "It was the best body I could get you at the time." and "Be glad I didn't put you into a kank."
The tohr-kreen rounded the flank of the hill. "Ah, there you are," he said. "And Kayan as well, in both her separate states. Good." He walked up to Jedra and extended a lower hand. "It is good to see you again. Many belated thanks for your rescue, and my apology for taking so long to return the favor."
"Just so long as you can revive her," Jedra said, squeezing the tohr-kreen's chitinous claw.
"If she made it into the crystal as I directed her to, then I can."
Yoncalla came stumping up on his short legs, panting for breath, and said, "Don't sound so smug about it, bug-face. You're good, but you didn't exactly solve all my problems." He looked Jedra up and down and said, "You could, though. That's a decent body you've got. I'll take it."
"You will do no such thing," Kitarak said. To Jedra he said, "Don't worry. I taught him our language and how to mindspeak, but I didn't teach him how to transfer himself from body to body."
"He's afraid I'll get loose and take over all of Athas again," Yoncalla said. He shook his head sorrowfully and added, "Not that I'd want this sorry excuse for a world. You certainly weren't exaggerating when you described it to me, were you boy?"
"Um, no," Jedra said, uncomfortable with speaking to the immortal in a body he'd seen killed two weeks earlier. To Kitarak he said, "I would have thought he'd know how to make the transfer already."
Kitarak shook his head. "The people of his time knew how to store the mind in specially made crystals, but it was tinkercraft, not psionics, that allowed them to do it, and they never mastered the reverse process. You need psionics to merge the mind with the body again."
"You mean there's actually something we can do better now than the ancients could?" Jedra asked incredulously.
"Don't be deceived by appearances," Kitarak said. "Progress never stops entirely, even in the midst of degeneration. We may not be as civilized as the ancients, but our medical abilities are far better than anything available before."