Galar took Jedra and Kayan aside after the song and led them toward the tents. "My apologies for not thinking of it earlier," he said, "but now I will find you some spare clothing and a place to sleep."

"Thank you," Kayan said, her words nearly lost in a wide yawn.

Jedra was afraid that he and Kayan would be imposing on Galar all night, but the elf led them to an enormous tent wherein dozens of elves had already rolled out sleeping mats and were snoring softly. Candles glowed in protected alcoves at either end of the tent, providing just enough light to see by but not enough to keep anyone awake. In their soft light, Jedra could see that the tents, unlike the clothing the elves wore, were grayish tan, the color of sand, so they would blend in with the desert.

More sleeping mats waited in a pile near the doorway, each tucked into a knapsack with a name or a design woven into the closing flap at the top. Galar searched though the stack, pulling two knapsacks from it and handing them to his friends. They were made of heavy, durable cloth, and the mats rolled up inside them were even thicker. Both showed signs of wear along the exposed edges.

"Won't their owners miss them?" Jedra asked as Galar sorted through a basket of clothing beside the pile of bedrolls.

"Not any longer," Galar said. "These belonged to people killed in the battle. They are the property of the entire tribe now."

"Oh." Jedra looked at his knapsack again. He couldn't read the elven script, but it wouldn't have mattered if he could. He didn't know any of the people who had died today. So why did he suddenly feel reluctant to sleep on this mat?

Galar noticed his concern and said, "Do not trouble yourself. Everything has its cost, and the Jura-Dai knew that before they attacked the caravan. We all live and die for the good of the tribe; without raids such as these we would soon starve to death in the desert." He pulled a long yellow robe out of the basket and held it up to Kayan. Made for an elf, it was about three feet too long for her. "You will have to tuck a fold under the belt to avoid tripping," Galar said, "but there is plenty of cloth here to keep you warm at night, and the light color and the looseness of it will help keep you cool by day."

"That will be nice." Kayan took it from him and draped it over her shoulders. Galar pulled a light blue robe from the basket for Jedra, then waved an arm toward an unoccupied stretch of floor near one wall of the tent. "Sleep well," he said, "but not too well. We break camp at dawn." With that, he turned and left them to their rest.

They stepped gingerly over sleeping elves to the bare spot and unrolled their mats. Jedra lay back on his with an audible creaking of joints. Ok, this feels good, he mind-sent to Kayan.

She had turned her back to him and was fussing with something under her robe. A sudden warmth spread over Jedra when he realized she was removing her halter and breechcloth.

And she knew just what he was thinking. Don't you go getting ideas, she sent to him. This cursed leather itches, that's all. I'll sleep better without it.

Of course, Jedra sent. He refrained from adding, Never mind that I'll not sleep at all now....

Fatigue soon proved him wrong. He closed his eyes to give her more privacy, and when he opened them again the tent wall beside him was aglow with the first light of day.

The elves broke camp within minutes of rising. Nobody stopped for breakfast; they just rolled up their mats, collected their other personal belongings and stuffed them into their knapsacks, then packed up the tents and other equipment, tied it all onto the kanks, and set off into the desert at a brisk walking pace. They didn't follow the road, but headed straight over the dunes to the west. They spread out in a long string, the scouts and faster walkers in the lead, and the rest trailing back for nearly a quarter mile. Warriors armed with swords and longbows scattered themselves along the line to provide protection for everyone in case of an attack. Nobody rode the kanks-elves considered that dishonorable-but after the first few miles the adults began to trade off in carrying the younger children. Even so, Jedra found himself pushing to keep up, and Kayan with her shorter legs was sweating and straining even harder than he was.

Jedra tucked his thumbs under his knapsack's shoulder straps to help support the weight. There wasn't much in it: just his sleeping mat and what few personal belongings he had taken from Dornal, the mage who had sold him into slavery. He and Kayan had killed Dornal in the psionic battle that had erupted when the elves attacked the caravan. Jedra also carried the magical talisman that had gotten him into trouble in the first place: a piece of glass that had been created when a templar's magical lightning bolt struck the sand. The glass magnified things. Images, the heat of the sun, possibly even psionic power. As Jedra trudged along with it in his pack, he began to wonder if it was somehow magnifying its own weight as well.

He tried to ignore his discomfort by remembering the sensation of power he had felt when he and Kayan linked minds. She had taught him how to do it when she realized he needed her experience to control his wild talent, but neither of them had expected the incredible enhancement that came with their communion. Alone, he could send mental messages and sense when he was being watched and even push things around with his mind when he was sufficiently motivated, and she could heal wounds and cure illness, but together they commanded psionic power beyond the scope of most masters. They had used it to search far across the desert for the Jura-Dai even though their bodies were trapped in the slave caravan in the midst of a sandstorm, and they had used it again to help win the battle when the elves had finally arrived to free their tribesman.

That had been at once the most wonderful and the most horrible moment of Jedra's life. Battling on a psychic plane, where mental images were more important than reality, Jedra and Kayan had envisioned themselves as a swift, sleek-winged hawk flying and swooping among the nearly insubstantial shadows of the elves and slavers fighting below. They weren't alone in the vision, however. The slave master's psionic manifestation had been a great whirlwind that sucked up everything in its path, and the elves' psionicist had been an eagle with sharp, ripping talons and beak. The mage, Dornal, had been there as well, a dark, constantly evolving bat that spit lightning bolts ahead of it as it swept through the vision. The bat had killed the eagle and dissipated the whirlwind almost without effort, but Jedra and Kayan had flown above it and used their combined power to trap the bat beneath a sheet of glass. Then, almost as an afterthought, they had bent the barrier into the same shape as Jedra's lightning glass, and the bat had burst into flame.

The thrill of that victory was like nothing either of them had experienced before. They felt smarter and more powerful than anything else in the world. They broke their contact reluctantly, and then only because they knew from previous experience that they were using up their bodies' strength at a phenomenal rate.

Coming back to the normal plane of existence had felt like losing half their intelligence, but that had not been the worst shock. When they had gathered enough strength to visit the mage's quarters they had seen the real-world effect of their psionic battle: The elves' psionicist was dead, and Dornal had been burned beyond recognition, his body little more than a greasy skeleton on the deck. The wooden floorboards had barely been scorched, but later they had found three more people burned to death in the cabin below. They might well have been slavers, or they might have been innocent passengers-there was no way to tell. In either case, it was obvious that Jedra and Kayan had killed them, and that the power they had thought under control was in fact wild and dangerous.