Archon Read Free Page B

man’s grin grew wider. “You’ll know soon enough.”
    “Should we tie ’em up, Lervie?” another archer asked.
    “Nah,” said the man — Lervie, apparently. “They won’t do anything that might injure the lady. Just use your arrows to keep ’em in line. Now get goin’!” He shouted that last part and motioned with a quick twitch of the arrow.
    Unfortunately, Lervie was right: they had no choice but to follow. Taemon set his mind to finding a way out of this. If it were just him, he could chance doing something reckless, like charging the leader and hoping the others would be too surprised to stop him. But there was Mam to think about. And Drigg and Amma. Still, there had to be a way out of this.
    Under the archer’s watchful eye, Taemon rose to his feet and inched closer to the quadrider. Perhaps he could push it over and distract Lervie long enough for them to get away. But a quadrider must be immensely heavy — far too heavy for him to tip over on his own.
    If only he still had psi! He could tip the quadrider over with ease. Or better yet, they could pile into the quadrider and tear out of these woods before the archers knew what was happening. And Mam would be at the colony and under the care of the healers in no time.
    Stop it!
Useless, stupid thoughts like that weren’t going to help. He had to think of a plan that had at least a chance of working, even if it was slim.
    Still, the urge to drive the quadrider and get the blazes out of there was overwhelming, and the image of the engine came unbidden to his mind — the gears, the springs, the coils that stored energy as the driver gradually released it to the transmission. Before he realized what he was doing, Taemon reached out for psi. As if he had it. As if it had never left him.
    An automatic response,
he thought.
Like trying to turn on the lights even when you know the power is out. A mindless attempt at the impossible.
    But the engine roared to life.
    The noise startled him and everyone else. The archers momentarily lowered their arrows.
    Taemon’s mind was reeling. Had he actually started that engine? There was one way to find out. In his mind, Taemon held the image of the doors opening and gave the order:
Be it so.
    All four doors swung open.
    How had he done that? He pondered the impossibility of it for an entire second before snapping into action. The archers reacted, too. They raised their bows, and Taemon used psi to deflect the arrows harmlessly into the trees. Amma and Drigg hustled Mam inside the quadrider and settled her into the backseat. Drigg climbed in beside her, and Amma took the passenger’s seat.
    Taemon flung himself into the front seat, closed the doors, and threw as much psi as he dared into the engine. The quadrider rocketed forward, tires squealing as it sped past the archers.
    Drigg leaned forward in the backseat. “What happened back there? I’m not complaining, mind you, but I’d really like to know who’s driving this thing and how.”
    “I’m driving,” Taemon said, not daring to turn around.
    “How in the Great Green Earth can you do that?” Amma shouted over the roaring of the wind through the broken windshield.
    “I don’t know! My psi is back. Is yours?”
    Amma was one of the few people in the powerless colony to have had psi before the Fall, though it had been a carefully guarded secret. Her family had been in charge of protecting a hidden library; there would have been deadly consequences if it had fallen into the hands of the city dwellers. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened. A stupid mistake on Taemon’s part had led to Elder Naseph and Yens discovering the library, and the books had been looted.
    Amma frowned in concentration. Taemon wondered what she was trying to move with her mind. Was it working?
    She blew out a breath. “No. How is this happening? Did the adrenaline trigger your psi somehow?”
    “I’ve never heard of adrenaline, but there’s no mistaking the feel of psi,”