Gorinthians (15 page)

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Li had shed her extra layer
of clothing as they descended the mountains into the warmer
lowlands. They had been traveling for three exhausting days down
the mountains, stopping for only enough time for them to sleep a
couple of hours. The three youths had dark circles under their
eyes, which were also tight with the strain of uncertainty. Cha’le
mentioned to the black-swathed stranger that they could not just
say “Hey you,” thereby asking his name without actually phrasing a
question. He looked at her with those dark-hooded eyes. They
constantly seemed to be deciding whether he would just kill them to
get them out of his way or ignore them. After a long, unpleasant
silence, he had said that they could call him Lochnar. As far as Li
could tell, he had not slept once since they met him. Maybe he did
not need sleep.

After the second day of
their journey, the stranger had swathed his entire face in black
cloth and donned a set of black gloves. Li also sensed that the
holes she had felt in his
yar
were in different places now. She gazed at his
back uneasily, wondering what he was. He had not opened up any more
than he had when they first met him. The three youths were too
tired to talk to each other and Lochnar had nothing to
say.

As the horizon began to
lighten in the North, they crested one of the foothills and found
themselves staring down on the village of Millport. Li was
surprised at how small it was. After being raised in Chasel Ri’
Aven, she came to expect other cities to be relatively the same
size. There could not be more than a few thousand people living in
the sleepy village below them.

“
These rural folk are a
superstitious lot,” Lochnar growled softly. “I will not be visible
to your eyes until we reach the other side of the village. Before
he finished speaking, he flickered and vanished.

Li looked at the other two
questioningly, but Lendel just shook his head resignedly and
continued moving toward the town. They all stopped dead as the
sound of an alarm bell reached their ears. People began to stumble
out of their houses in the village, staring at the watchtower where
a guard was yanking the pull rope frantically and shouting at the
top of his lungs. Some of the people in the village spotted them
and began pointing toward them excitedly. They looked terrified,
even at this distance.

“
Fools,” Lochnar muttered
and Li heard him spit.

They all halted, staring in
consternation at the small village that had turned into a kicked
anthill. Some of the Guardians claimed that they had been to
Millport in disguise and talked to the people. She had not heard
they reacted like this to strangers.

“
What should we do?” Cha’le
asked urgently, abandoning Lochnar’s rule of no
questions.

“
Keep going,” Lochnar
snapped irritably. “They think that you are phantoms from the
mountain. Just tell them that you are travelers from Shalilayo and
that you are looking for a special plant that grows on this
mountain.”

Li’s mouth was dry as she
looked at the other two. Lendel was nodding slowly, but Cha’le was
frowning in thought. After a moment, she glanced at Li and winked.
Li worked moisture back into her mouth. She always had felt like a
coward around Cha’le, but sometimes Li thought that Cha’le would
try to make a joke while plummeting to her death. Being afraid of a
mob of frightened villagers was only sensible she told herself
firmly, even if Cha’le is as crazy as she pretends.

The four of them walked
carefully down the hill to the village below. They slowed down at
the edge of the village, making it obvious they meant no harm. A
short, chubby man with a bald pate strode out of the mob that was
beginning to gather at the mouth of the main road. He stopped a
good twenty paces short of them and looked at them
doubtfully.

"Have you come from the
mountain?" he demanded with an uncomfortable glance at the
mountains looming behind them. He was wearing a pair of dark
trousers with a shirt that had been hastily tucked in and boots
that went to mid-calf but were still unlaced.

"From Shalilayo," Lendel
replied stepping a little in front of the others. "We are gathering
some roots that we had been told grew in this mountain range.” His
thumbs were looped through his belt, well away from his sword
hilt.

"Crevance," the short man
bellowed, "come over here!” He stood tapping his foot impatiently
as the man called Crevance made his way through the crowd, his feet
dragging.

"Do you mind explaining why
you felt it needful to awake the rest of us?" he asked mildly, at
odds with the dangerous glint in his eyes. "Perhaps you are
beginning to find your position in this community onerous and
desire to create some excitement for the rest of us,
hmmm?"

Li found the odd way the
short man spoke fascinating. It was very precise; more so than she
would have thought for a small village like this.

"No, governor, not at all,"
Crevance protested weakly. "There was another person with them and
he just vanished into thin air! I didn't imagine it!" he finished
with an angry growl.

The crowd was listening
intently to the exchange. At Crevance's reply, many of them laughed
while most of them shook their heads muttering about being woken up
in the early morning hours. Fully half of the crowd wore only their
undergarments. They began to return to their homes quickly as they
realized their lack of clothing.

Frowning at the departing
crowd, the short man turned back to them. “I apologize for the
unseemly welcome," he said with a cordial smile as he studied them
each from head to toe. "My name is Berdrin Char, Governor of West
Realm. I welcome you to the town of Millport, a welcome that I hope
is not standard practice when I am not here."

"Thank you," Lendel murmured
politely. "I am Lendel and this is Cha'le and Li. We appreciate
your intervention."

"Not at all," Berdrin
replied dryly. "I believe that they become weary of keeping watch
and so stimulate themselves with enough ale for anyone to see a
phantom.” Squinting at the Western horizon where the sun was just
beginning to climb into the sky, he motioned them to follow him.
"Come and have some breakfast with me, and you can tell me about
life in the capital."

Li tried to shake her head
at Lendel without being seen, but he just nodded to Berdrin Char,
thanked him for his hospitality and began to follow. Li looked at
Cha'le to see what her reaction would be. Her eyes shone with
excited anticipation, much the way they did right before someone
fell into one of her jokes. Li felt around with her
yar
, and realized for the
first time that she could not sense Lochnar anywhere. She wondered
if he were still there--hiding his
yar
--or if he had abandoned
them.

They followed Berdrin Char
down the main street where, deciding it was too late to go back to
bed, a few villagers stared at them as they walked by. They
continued down the main street until they reached another street
that was just as wide crossing horizontally. The house that Berdrin
Char led them to was on the corner of the intersection of the two
main streets. The house itself was three stories high and twice as
large as any of the other buildings that were in the village. It
had broad wooden columns--carved into scrolling artwork by a master
craftsman--supporting the front of the building. There was a small
garden in the front and a pathway that led up to the front door.
Berdrin Char led them around to the back of the building, where he
said the kitchens were located, and took them into a room at the
back.

Inside, there was a long
table large enough to seat forty people. As they sat down at the
table, Berdrin Char walked into the kitchens that adjoined their
room and asked for breakfast. He returned with his shirt properly
tucked in, sat down at the head of the table and studied them. Li
began to feel nervous as the silence stretched out. A servant
brought them water to drink and returned to the kitchen. Li did not
need Lendel's warning glance to refrain from drinking the
water.

"What news have you from
Shalilayo?" Berdrin Char inquired as he sipped from his glass of
water. "We hear very little here in the back country."

"I couldn't tell you
anything new, governor," Lendel replied with his arms folded in
front of him. "We have been away for a long time now. We hoped for
information on current affairs ourselves as we returned to
civilized lands."

"Ah," Berdrin Char said,
smiling into his glass. "Aside from a new guild master, we have
heard of nothing new."

Li watched her brother in
amazement. If she did not know him, she would never guess he was
lying through his teeth. Cha'le was also staring at him as if he
had sprouted horns.

"Will you be traveling to
Shalilayo from here by ship?" Berdrin Char asked them casually. Li
felt a kind of probing in the questions he asked. His dark eyes
seemed to glow with an inner light that made Li feel like there was
someone else behind those eyes that watched her.

"Perhaps further down,"
Lendel replied easily. "We have some colleagues we are meeting up
with first.” Though Lendel appeared relaxed, Li could see he had
not moved his right hand more than a few inches away from his sword
hilt.

"I see," Berdrin Char
murmured smoothly, contemplating them as he sipped from his glass.
Li had a feeling he had been expecting someone to come down out of
the mountains. She also did not think they were the ones he
expected.

Servants appeared from the
kitchens, breaking the silence with clattering platters of ham and
eggs as well as toasted bread with jam. Li barely stopped herself
from drooling as the smells wafted across to her. They had barely
eaten as they descended the mountains, snatching only enough to
keep them going at the breakneck pace that their silent guide
set.

"Please eat," their host
urged them. "It is the least I can do to absolve our village of
your rude welcoming."

Li reached out with
her
yar
to sense
the food, looking for properties that should not be there. She had
eaten these foods enough to recognize any irregularities in
their
yar
.

The difference was
immediately evident. The eggs had been seasoned liberally with
something that was foreign to her, but she knew what the effect of
the substance would be from the make-up of its
yar
. It was very like Rootsnare,
except that it would sever the body from its spirit or similarly
damage it. She wondered if Berdrin Char thought that they were
helpless or if there was something hidden deeper that she could not
sense. She reached into the seasoning with her
yar
to change the properties to
something safe when she realized the trap. She would have to change
the properties of each individual grain of seasoning, which would
take hours.

She looked inquiringly at
Cha'le, who also realized the complications that making the food
safe presented. Before either of them could say anything, however,
Berdrin Char’s head fell onto his plate while the rest of him sat
upright. Li gasped, staring wide-eyed at him as he suddenly burst
into a flame that consumed him in seconds. He left no ashes nor did
his chair show any scorch marks.

"Gorinthian scum," muttered
a voice coming from behind their late host’s chair. "It is time to
go. Now."

Unexpectedly, Li could feel
a small part of Lochnar’s
yar
. It was just large enough that
she could follow him even if she could not see him. She stood up
unsteadily and began to follow. She saw Lendel glance uneasily at
the empty chair at the head of the table and knew that he was
wondering the same thing that she was. What would have happened had
we refused to eat the food?

As they left the building,
some of the villagers waived at them. Most, however, ignored them
and continued about their business as if no one else existed. They
followed the sense of Lochnar’s
yar
as he led them through different intersections.
They eventually arrived at the outer edge of the village opposite
the side they had come in on. They began making their way down the
South road.

"We need to meet
your
friends
tomorrow morning," Lochnar told them, investing the word
friends with scorn.

They just nodded mutely and
followed. They were too tired and hungry to argue. They still had
not had a decent meal or a decent night’s sleep for four
days.

"What I wouldn't give for a
bath," Li muttered to herself. Cha'le flashed her a quick smile and
nodded fervently. The two of them were still dressed in the same
clothes in which they had left Chasel Ri’ Aven and by now they were
covered in grime from travel. Li's dark hair was gnarled with
tangles and her face was smudged with dirt. Cha'le looked even
worse, with her light blonde hair filled with dirt and twigs. Her
innocent face was beginning to take on a gaunt cast and her already
slender frame seemed ready to wilt. Lendel's normally handsome face
was also covered in dirt and his hair looked like a collapsed
haystack.