Yoncalla snorted. "That depends on your point of view. Your precious psionic medicine made me a dwarf." To Jedra he said, "What do you want for it?"
"What?" Jedra asked.
"Your body. If I can't take it, then I'll buy it from you. How much do you want?"
Jedra blushed, as if the immortal had suggested something indecent, as indeed he might have. The concept was too new for Jedra to know for sure, but the very idea seemed revolting. "It's not for sale," he said. "I'm not for sale."
"Sure you are," Yoncalla said. "Everybody has a price."
Jedra couldn't imagine enough wealth to make him trade his own body for a dwarf's. But some people might. And others-maybe even Yoncalla-would no doubt murder for a new body. What kind of nightmare were they about to loose on this already-grim world? Jedra said to Kitarak, "I'm just beginning to realize how dangerous this thing we've discovered is. Maybe we should bury these crystals back in the rubble where we found them." And Yoncalla with them, he added psionically, so the immortal couldn't hear him.
"Before we revive Kayan?" Kitarak asked. When Jedra spluttered for an answer, he said, "Your moral objection rests on shaky ground, doesn't it?"
It did at that. Could Jedra deny everyone else the opportunity to escape death after he had used the knowledge to rescue his love? Not and remain the kind of person he wanted to be. But neither could he let Kayan spend the rest of eternity imprisoned in a crystal, knowing he could save her.
"Of course we should revive Kayan," Jedra said. "She's counting on us. But nobody else knows this ability exists. Maybe we should keep it that way."
Yoncalla laughed. "Impossible, boy. I tried to suppress life-defiling magic, and look at how much success I had." He waved his arms to encompass the barren hillside.
Kitarak turned his head so a faceted eye faced Yoncalla. "Your people were responsible for this?"
"Uh... indirectly," Yoncalla said nervously.
"You will tell me about it. I and many others are still trying to repair the damage you did."
"I didn't do anything," Yoncalla protested. "I tried to stop it. It was-"
"Wait a minute," Jedra said. "Let's revive Kayan first. Then we can save the world."
"You are right," Kitarak said. "First things first." He bent down over Kayan and placed all four hands on her body. A soft blue glow spread from them into her, and her slack muscles began to tighten again. The ugly red wound over her heart closed, and the color came back to her skin. "Good," Kitarak said. "She prepared for this. She stopped her body's life processes before you did, so your sword wound merely caused local damage. The rest of her is still fine." He continued running his hands back and forth over her, coaxing her body into life again. Finally she shuddered once all over, and her chest began to rise and fall with regular breaths.
Jedra nodded. He felt a certain reluctance after what had happened to him before in the crystals, but his desire to see Kayan again-and to rescue her if she was in danger-was far stronger. "It may take me a while to find her," he said, "but if we don't come out soon, you'd better come after us. We may be in trouble."
Yoncalla said, "You fear another mad immortal?"
Jedra looked at him. Even in a dwarf body, the immortal looked smug. The wild look in his eyes made him appear a little crazy yet, too.
"You learn to fear everything in this world," Jedra said. He fingered the crystal around his neck. "Even the other worlds within it."
Yoncalla laughed. "The storage crystals follow the rules of their creators," he said. "This one may be completely different from the ones you have visited before."
"That's encouraging," Jedra said. He lay down on the ground so his body wouldn't topple over when he lost conscious control of it, and he concentrated on the crystal. He tried to mindlink with it, pushing at the barrier between himself and Kayan until it eventually gave way.
He found himself in a brightly lit forest. Not as bright as Yoncalla's world, but the sunlight streaming through the wide leaves was brighter than the reddish glow that fell on Athas. It made yellow streaks in the mist that rose from the damp ground, ground on which a thick carpet of deep green moss grew. Jedra took a couple steps and felt it compress beneath his feet, giving him a springy, almost jaunty gait that made him smile even though he still held himself alert for trouble.
He heard water flowing nearby. Water, and a voice raised in song. Kayan's voice. Jedra walked toward her beneath the trees, bouncing with each step, until he came to the edge of the stream. He stood atop a short cliff above a wide pool; it was maybe ten feet straight down to the water. And in that pool, glowing in the unfiltered sunlight, floated Kayan. The water was perfectly clear; Jedra could see the surface only by the waves Kayan made as she swept her arms out in front of her and scissored her legs lazily, pulling herself slowly through it. Her armor and underclothing lay in a pile on a flat rock a few feet upstream from Jedra.
"Hello!" he called to her, surprised that he could speak with such a sight before him.
She flinched, sending a big ripple out in a ring around her. Then she looked up and said, "You came for me."
"I did."
"Come on the rest of the way," she said, grinning mischievously.
"Into the water?" Jedra looked for a path down to the edge of the pool, but he saw none. The pool itself looked far deeper than he was tall; Kayan seemed to be floating just fine in it, but he had no assurance that he would fare as well. "I'll come to the edge for you," he said. "How do I get down there?"
"Jump," she said. "It's all or nothing in this world."
"Oh? You've explored it?"
"I did better than that. I made it."
"You made it? How?"
She leaned back in the water and pushed herself along with her hands. Swirls of light and shadow played across her body as she moved. "It was empty when I got here," she said. "Dark, with nothing to stand on. So I wished for a sun, and ground, and when I got that I wished for the rest. Do you like it?"
Jedra pulled his eyes away from her long enough to take in the stream flowing over the rocks at the head of the pool, the trees with their long branches full of wide, parasol leaves, and now that he looked for them, the birds flitting from branch to branch. "like it?" he asked. "It's beautiful. I can't believe I'm wearing this whole thing around my neck."
He looked back at Kayan, who had turned over and now pushed herself along on her stomach with gentle kicks of her legs. "Me, either," she said.
Jedra felt uncomfortable watching her suspended in the clear water, with so much seeming emptiness below. "Aren't you afraid of falling to the bottom?" he asked her.
She laughed. "The water holds me up. I don't know if this is something I made up too, or if I could do this out in the real world, but either way it's fun. Come on, try it." She stopped pushing herself through the water and beckoned to him with both hands.
Just in time for Kayan to splash another face-full of water on him.
"Hey!" he yelled, windmilling his arms in an attempt to stay afloat. The water was cool against his bare skin.
"Hey, yourself," she said, giggling and splashing him again.
She was doing it on purpose. Well, two could play that game. Jedra could hardly see through his wet eyes, but he slapped the water in her direction and was rewarded with a scream of surprise. She splashed him again, but he protected his eyes with his arm this time. She was close; when he saw a white leg shimmer beneath the water he held his breath while he ducked under and caught it, then tugged her under with him.