Kayan still didn't move.

"Kayan?" Suddenly afraid, Jedra looked to see if she was breathing, and he relaxed a little when he saw her chest rise and fall. Her breaths were very shallow, though, and far apart,

Kayan, he mindsent. No response. He tried linking with her, but they had already been linked before they came into this world, and nothing more happened.

She couldn't have been poisoned; she had checked the food carefully before she ate any of it. So what was the problem?

Jedra wasn't doing so well, either. He felt faint, and his vision swirled as if someone had stirred the world with a spoon. A couple of deep breaths helped, but not for long; the moment he tried to stand, his eyes went dark and he fell back down.

Kayan! he mindsent again. "Kayan!" He knelt beside her and shook her shoulder, pinched her arm, even rugged her into a semi-upright position, but the effort nearly tumbled him into unconsciousness again.

They both fell back to the grass. Jedra tried to sit up again, but he couldn't manage even that. He tried to break their mental link with the crystal, but there was none to break. Once they had burst through into this world, they had stayed without effort. It would probably take a similar effort to leave, but they were too exhausted now to do it.

The world swirled around him. Fighting disorientation, he tried again to mindlink with Kayan, attempting to cut through the mysterious lethargy with a burst of psionic power, but he couldn't feel her presence. He felt something out there, some flicker of response far away in the vast crystal world, but he couldn't maintain it for more than a second.

The effort drained him even further, but that in itself provided an idea. If trying to mindlink tired him, then breaking the existing link with Kayan might give him more energy.

He concentrated on the mind-shielding technique that Kitarak had taught him, the one for stopping unwanted psionic contact. Closing his eyes so the swirling world wouldn't distract him, he carefully built up a barrier. He felt the contact with Kayan growing weaker, stretching out until the link finally broke and with a final wave of vertigo he tumbled back to reality in Kitarak's library.

It was dark. The candles had all burned out and it was still night, or it was night once again. Jedra tried to see with psionic vision, but there wasn't enough light to amplify. He tried to levitate a candle from one of the other rooms, but he didn't have the energy for it. He had to crawl into the great room for a candle, light it with the last of his power, and bring it back to the library.

Kayan lay on the cushion, sprawled on her side as if she had tumbled there without any attempt to break her fall. Her face and arms and legs looked thin and angular, the skin draped in folds over her bones. She looked like one of the starving street beggars who were so far gone that nobody bothered to feed them anymore.

"It wasn't real," he whispered. "None of it was real. Not even the food." And in the real world, he and Kayan had been mindlinked for at least a day, burning energy at dozens of times their normal rate. It had had the same effect on them as going without food for weeks.

"Kayan," he said, shaking her. Kayan.

She didn't move, except to draw in another slow, shallow breath. He tried to mindlink with her again, but he couldn't reach her. Her mind wasn't there-it was still in the crystal. And now that he had broken their link she was completely out of reach.

Chapter Eight

His first impulse was to shatter the crystal and let her out, but he didn't know if that would work. It wasn't just a box holding her mind captive; it was an entire world. She might die in the cataclysm that would surely wrack it if he damaged the crystal. He didn't know if death in there would mean anything outside, but he didn't want to risk it. Not yet.

He looked at the crystal lying there on the floor in front of him. Such a tiny thing to hold such wonders- and to present such a trap. He was afraid to touch it now, for fear he would cause earthquakes inside. If he started another chain reaction of falling buildings, Kayan could be caught in it.

No, the first thing to do was to stave off starvation before he collapsed as well. He would be no use to her at all if he let that happen. He crawled into the kitchen and pulled himself up to reach the water jug on the counter, drank a long, sloppy draught from that, then he opened the easiest cabinet to reach-the grain bin-and sat down in front of it to munch a handful of the dry seeds. When that began to take effect he stirred enough to shuffle into the pantry and eat a sack of nuts and a raw erdlu egg, which in turn revived him enough to thaw one of the inix flanks from the cold-box and devour that half raw.

He took a water flask and an erdlu egg back into the library for Kayan, but without a conscious mind running her body he couldn't get her to take any of either. Finally he just dribbled a little water into her mouth and counted on reflex to make her swallow, and when she'd done that a couple of times he switched to the erdlu egg and kept feeding her tiny spoonfuls of it until she had eaten the whole thing.

Erdlu egg was one of the most nourishing foods he knew of. Less than an hour after he'd eaten his, Jedra began to feel stronger; and Kayan recovered some of her color as well. He fed her another one, hoping she would regain consciousness inside the crystal and break her link with it, but when another hour passed with no change in her condition he lay back on the cushion and tried to mindlink with her again. If he could reach her, maybe he could pull her back out of the crystal.

Her presence was so faint it was hardly detectable, but when he concentrated he could sense it. It was a little like the crystal itself had been: faint and hard to reach. However, now that he'd had some experience breaking through the barrier into it, he knew what to look for. He imagined reaching through and touching Kayan, envisioned his hand penetrating the barrier that separated them and his whole body following through until he stood beside her again in the grassy courtyard.

He felt the barrier resist, then a moment of dizziness, and he was there. It was much easier the second time.

The moment his vision cleared, however, he realized he'd made a mistaken assumption. He hadn't gone straight to the courtyard. He was back in the clearing in the forest where they had originally arrived. Only this time the trees weren't in a loose ring at the edge of the grass; they had moved closer and now leaned toward him with menacing branches and dangling vines.

Was Kayan mad at him again? She'd called up the thunderstorm last time she was angry; if she'd regained consciousness and thought Jedra had abandoned her. she might have turned the world against him again. It might not even have been a deliberate decision.

Wind rattled the branches and made them swoop back and forth overhead. The vines swung madly, some cracking like whips as the branches flung them back and forth. Jedra ducked a particularly low one, but he felt another thump into his back and coil around his waist.

Get off! he commanded it, thinking that the world should obey his wishes too, but the vine clung stubbornly. Another one swooped down and grabbed his right arm. He pulled it free with his left hand, but more and more vines snared his arms and legs faster than he could fight them off.

Kayan, call them off! he mindsent. Kayan!

She didn't respond. Something did, though. The vines yanked Jedra into the air, and thunder blasted out of a clear sky. Cursing and trying to stay upright, Jedra tried everything he could think of to escape, but he couldn't make the vines burn or freeze solid and he couldn't break them either psionically or with his own physical strength. He was trapped.