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only a hair's breadth short of killing strength.
    Jain felt a moment of hope as she saw Va'del
surge forward with a strength and speed that had been missing from
his practice techniques a few moments before, but it quickly became
evident he couldn't maintain such a fast tempo. Only a heartbeat or
two later it became obvious the advantage was shifting back to
Be'ter.
    Fi'lin spun around to see what everyone was
watching, and drawing his own practice blade, sprinted across the
massive cavern towards them. "Half strength, you fools!"
    For a split second Jain clung to the hope the
weapons master would get there in time to stop the fight, but
Va'del was completely on the defensive now. While Fi'lin was still
more than ten feet away the younger boy went down, his slowing
defenses failing to stop one of Be'ter's blows, which crunched into
his ribs with bone-crushing force before the backstroke slammed
into his right leg.
    Be'ter seemed to pause for a heartbeat before
his weapon licked out once more towards Va'del's lightly-protected
face. Jain felt her world tremble as what even she knew was a
killing blow raced towards the only person who'd really loved her
since her parents had given her up to the Daughters. Miraculously,
Fi'lin's blade knocked Be'ter's sword away and then swooped back in
and disarmed Be'ter of both his practice weapons.
    Jain found herself at Va'del's side unsure of
how she'd made it there. Fi'lin looked at the sickly gray hue and
broken bones of the fallen trainee and bellowed for a
stretcher.
    The tears filling her eyes blurred her
vision, hiding Va'del's gasping form and making it impossible to
see the light slap that Fi'lin administered to penetrate her near
hysterics. "Can you block pain, foolish child?"
    Trying to pull herself together, Jain nodded,
and reached out to pull in the necessary power as one of her
instructors came running up. The familiar burning of the raw power
focused Jain's thoughts. Reflexes she'd spent a third of her life
developing took over as she stopped the pain signals racing along
Va'del's nerves from completing their trip to his brain.
    Pain blocking was just minor enough of a
working that Jain was still able to stumble along with the
stretcher as she powered it, but before she'd taken more than a few
steps, she was grateful for the strong arm that snaked around her
waist to help guide her. It had never before seemed that the
healers' rooms were so far away from the practice area.
    Just as Jain thought she was about to lose
control of her working, the arm guided her to a chair. She
collapsed into it gratefully, turning almost all of her attention
to keeping the pain block up, maintaining only a slight awareness
of what was going on around her as she'd been trained to do.
    Alone inside her mind except for worry over
Va'del, and the white-hot power she was channeling, Jain almost
didn't hear her name when a familiar voice called it out for the
second time.
    "You go ahead and keep that pain block up,
Jain, but don't you dare strain yourself. If you don't let us know
when you start getting tired, I'll see that you're soundly
switched. Do you understand?"
    Jain suppressed a surge of annoyance. The
voice was one she somehow knew needed to be obeyed, so she mumbled
something that passed for an affirmative.
    As it always did for Jain when she was
touching the power, time seemed to move slower than normal. As a
result, the multiple color cycles it seemed like passed while she
was blocking Va'del's pain probably really only represented half a
color cycle or so. All the same, Jain had developed the fine
tremble that was the first sign of exhaustion by the time she
noticed a decrease in the signals making their fiery way along his
nerves.
    They must have repaired most of the damage.
They've probably drugged him by now as well.
    A few moments later someone shook her, and
Jain opened her eyes to find Ah'bi's tired eyes looking her over
critically.
    "I thought I told you not to push