At first Jedra had to follow along behind whatever he moved so he could make sure it didn't bump into walls, but once he learned the layout of the house he could stay in one place and simply imagine the whole trip. Kayan, on the other hand, couldn't get the hang of it. First Kitarak, and then Jedra, tried to explain to her how it felt when their minds grasped whatever they tried to lift, but the concept remained foreign to her. Even mindlinking didn't help. When Kitarak tried to link with her, Kayan began to shudder and breathe rapidly, and when Jedra tried it she couldn't concentrate on the telekinetic feeling amid the swirl of other sensations.

Her nervousness and frustration kept them from achieving perfect rapport, but it was still close communion. All right, Jedra said, let's just try it once while we're linked and see if you can feel what it's like that way.

I don't think that's a good idea, said Kayan. We're barely in control here.

Sure we are. I've got this down. It's easy, see? He focused their combined attention on a small crate of rocks-mineral samples or maybe even gemstones in the rough, knowing Kitarak-and imagined them rising into the air.

A sharp crack startled them, and sunlight suddenly streamed in through an extra hole in the roof. Rock chips and dust rained down around them, and a moment later the house echoed with dozens of impacts as the rocks from the crate fell back onto the roof. There was a crash of breaking glass from the main room, and Jedra looked in to see a stone bounce off the floor after smashing through one of the skylights.

Their mental convergence had shattered as well. They stood there in the storeroom, alone with their own thoughts, while Kitarak examined the new skylight in his house. At last the tohr-kreen looked down at them and said, "You do have a significant problem to overcome, don't you? Let us go outside and try it again."

They practiced all morning, but Kayan simply couldn't pick up the telekinetic power. Linked together, she and Jedra could send boulders clear over the rim of the canyon, but on her own she couldn't even budge a pebble. At last Kitarak put an end to the attempts. "It's clear you simply don't have that talent," he said as he lowered a new stone into place over the hole she and Jedra had made in his storeroom roof. She watched the head-sized rock drift lazily into place, followed by dozens of smaller ones to seal the gaps. "Damn it, it's not fair," she said, her face red from effort and anger. "You and Jedra can do it without even breaking a sweat."

"Yes, but-" She swallowed. "Not with Jedra." She looked over at him, standing helpless beside the tohr-kreen, and suddenly Jedra knew what she felt. They were supposed to be bondmates, supposed to share everything, but here was evidence of a fundamental difference between them that would never be reconciled.

It didn't have to be a problem, though. "We'll always be able to share whatever each of us can do," he reminded her.

"Sure," she said. "And we'll always be knocking holes in people's houses, or tipping over entire cities."

Kitarak rasped his arms together. "We will train you to overcome your lack of control."

"Like you trained me to lift things psionically?" Kayan turned away and stomped off toward the lone tree that grew on the other side of the house.

"Kayan?" Jedra took a step after her, but Kitarak grabbed him by the shoulder. Jedra winced, remembering what went through Kitarak's mind when he grasped something.

Kitarak released him again, however, and said, "Come, let us leave her to resolve her anger in her own way."

Jedra wondered if that was a good idea. In his experience, people who stomped away mad usually wanted to be comforted, but he didn't want to defy Kitarak, who was the teacher, after all. So Jedra reached outward with his danger sense, and when he found no threat to Kayan's safety he turned away and went back inside with the tohr-kreen.

He helped Kitarak pick up the pieces of skylight in the main room. They were shaped like the surface of a rock, but thin enough to be translucent, as if Kitarak had peeled a shell off one. From outside, the skylight would be indistinguishable from a regular rock. "How did you make this?" he asked.

"I will show you," Kitarak replied, taking a quadruple handful of pieces into his workshop. He placed them in a ceramic tray on the bench, then set a thick candle in a stone bowl beside the tray. "Can you light the candle?" Kitarak asked.

"I left my flint and steel in Urik," Jedra said apologetically.

"Hint and steel?" Kitarak said, sounding offended at the very idea. "Oh, no. Here. Look at the wick. Imagine it made of tiny particles, all of them wiggling about but never escaping. Now imagine them wiggling faster. Make them move faster and faster until they grow hot from the effort."

Jedra concentrated on the candle for a moment, trying to see it as Kitarak had described. It was difficult, since he had never considered before what something as simple as a candle wick was made of, but eventually he managed to think of it as a long thread of fine sand held together by some kind of flexible glue. He imagined the sand flowing back and forth along the wick, surging from one end of it to the other...

... and the wick burst into flame with a soft pop, all along the length of the candle. The wax slumped into a puddle, and the wick snuffed out again in the liquid wax.

"Very good!" Kitarak said. "But next time, focus on just the part sticking out the top." He held his upper hands around the cup and the wick lifted up again, then the wax flowed up to coat it and solidify in layers until there was none left in the bowl. "Try it again," Kitarak said.

This time Jedra got it right. When the candle was burning normally, Kitarak said, "All right, now we amplify the candle's heat and melt the glass."

"Why don't we just wiggle the glass particles until they get hot enough?" Jedra asked.

"Try it," Kitarak said.

Jedra did. He imagined one of the glass shards as another bunch of tiny sand particles, imagined them moving faster and faster and faster....

The glass began to glow a dull red color, but no matter how hard Jedra tried to move the particles faster, that was as hot as he could make it. He was getting plenty hot, though; sweat ran down his forehead and dripped off the end of his nose.

"That's enough," Kitarak said. "Don't wear yourself out."

Jedra took a deep breath and relaxed. "Why couldn't I melt it?" he asked.

"Because that way isn't very efficient," Kitarak replied. He set the candle closer to the tray. "Amplifying, on the other hand"-he waved both hands on his right side for emphasis-"takes what is already there and simply makes more of the same. Much more efficient. Now concentrate on the candle and imagine its heat flowing into the glass. Then once you get that, imagine more and more heat coming from it until the glass melts."

Another few minutes and the glass shards slumped into a puddle on the bottom of the tray. "Good," Kitarak said. "Now we simply form it into the right shape and let it cool." The molten glass bulged upward, inflating into a hemisphere, then crinkling into nooks and fissures to resemble the surface of a rock.

Jedra heard a thump from beyond the central room. It turned out to be Kayan closing the door; he heard her walk across the room to look in at him and Kitarak at the workbench. "Learning more tricks, I see," she said.

"Yes," said Kitarak. "Come, you may try it, too."

"No thanks," she said. "I've had enough disappointment for one day."

She turned to leave, but Kitarak spoke sharply. "No. You came here to learn, so you will learn. Come try this." The shell of glass hovered above the tray, then drifted toward Jedra. "Here," Kitarak said to him. "Take this- not with your hands!-and go put it in place."