Gorinthians (16 page)

They continued down the
South Road for the rest of the day and night. They had fewer breaks
than they had before Millport and when evening came, they did not
stop to make camp until well into the early morning hours. They
were just reaching a place where the road came within fifty paces
of the river that they had been paralleling when Lochnar finally
called a halt. He gestured for them to follow him off the road and
walked over to a small copse of trees next to the river. Li tried
to settle down to the ground gracefully, but her legs gave out
beneath her and she sat down with a thump. Beside her she heard
Cha'le drop as well, followed by Lendel.

---

As the three exhausted
youths fell asleep, Lochnar began the nightly routine of scanning
the area for enemies, a practice he had been doing for centuries
now. He was not looking forward to the meeting in the morning.
Terrance had a way about him that rubbed him the wrong way, which
made every meeting a thorn in his side. He had a feeling that he
would be seeing his daughter as well, something he really did not
look forward to.

As he neared the western
edge of the trees, he felt a familiar resonance as he scanned ahead
with his
yar
.
Pausing, he quickly scanned the entire perimeter to see if anyone
else was approaching from the other directions. Sensing nothing, he
went out to meet the new arrival, flexing his fingers with the
desire to throttle someone.

"Lochnar!" Thistledown
shouted jovially as he approached the camp. Lochnar winced even
though he knew he was the only one that could hear the shout. If
his own continued existence did not depend on it, he would have
killed Thistledown where he stood.

"Still playing the faithful
hound I see," Lochnar said contemptuously.

Thistledown strolled up to
where he waited, unperturbed by the cold reception. He wore his
brown country trousers--held up with suspenders--over a grey farm
shirt. His black boots went up to mid-calf and were caked in grime
and mud. The way that he chose to look disturbed Lochnar almost as
much as the way that he chose to act. To some, the folksy character
was disarmingly charming. An idiom did not exist that Lochnar
despised more, however.

"Still your cheerful old
self, I see." Thistledown said with a sunny smile. "Are the others
here?"

"No," Lochnar replied
acidly, "I ran out of food on the way and decided to make something
useful out of them.” Lochnar felt his already black mood darkening.
Asking questions that you already knew the answer to was one of the
dumber human traits.

Thistledown laughed as if he
had made a joke and walked into the camp to survey the slumbering
trio. "They look pretty worn out.” He sounded concerned, another
stupid human trait.

"They are still alive,"
Lochnar growled, sounding not entirely pleased by the fact. "Are
you just here to irritate me or is there a reason that you dropped
in?"

"Terrance sent me to lead
you to the cottage," Thistledown replied, still fussing over the
state of the three youths. "Did you have any trouble on your way
down?"

"No," Lochnar replied
shortly, spitting on the ground next to him.

Thistledown looked at him
for a moment longer, sensing that he was not telling the whole
truth. "Well, that’s good to hear," Thistledown said finally. "We
found some interesting critters on our way down. Terrance thinks
they were waiting to meet you."

Lochnar grunted without
saying anything. He would not play Thistledown's game of prompting
him for details. Thistledown apparently realized that he was not
going to ask any questions. Lochnar felt a stab of satisfaction at
the flash of irritation that swept across Thistledown’s
face.

"Somehow, the Gorinthians
have discovered how to create their own hosts," Thistledown said,
his face slightly puzzled. "They won't need to be able to
use
yara
to force
their way into these hosts, because they don't have a protective
aura. They were also about twenty feet tall and made out of some
kin’ of ore.” He finished with a significant glance at Lochnar's
side, where he kept his sword. He and Thistledown were the only
known living people that could see it now.

The sword had been made
before the cataclysm of the old world, when Gorinthians were all
but indestructible. One of the Derinians had crafted it in such a
way that if the wielder beheaded a Gorinthian, it would not only
kill the host, it would also unravel one of the elements that made
up the Gorinthian spirit. This caused it to consume the host in a
spiritual flame. Before the Derinian was able to share the secret
of their making with the rest of his order, he was killed by one of
the Arachna. Arachna were assassins that derived their name from a
spider that had never been seen by anyone living but invariably
left a small web around the bite. The assassins also left a small
woven pattern of hair harvested from previous victims.

Lochnar ignored the obvious
point that Thistledown tried to make. Even if his sword could not
kill the stone men of whom he spoke, he would find a way. It was no
surprise Gorinthians laid ambushes for him. Aside from Terrance,
there was no other person who had killed as many Gorinthians as
Lochnar.

"Your daughter is at the
cottage," Thistledown spoke up suddenly. "She claimed she wouldn’t
let us leave with Celdic alone."

Lochnar did not answer, but
his silence was eloquent. He hoped that he was wrong and that it
was another teacher accompanying Terrance. As usual, hope was a
vain ideal on which to depend.

Lochnar stared at
Thistledown with the gaze that most of his dead enemies had
received before the killing blow. "If you mention our special link
to her, I will kill you."

"Wouldn't dream of it, ol'
chap," Thistledown replied, completely unfazed. "In fact, I would
be just as happy if never another soul learnt of it."

Lochnar glanced back at the
slumbering forms, grimacing at the delay they caused with their
constant need of sleep and sustenance. It had been so long ago
since he had suffered from the same limitations that he did not
remember what it was like. He turned away from Thistledown and
began his circuit of the surrounding area, more to avoid the near
proximity to Thistledown than any concern of an intruder. It was
with some surprise that he felt a form skulking at the outer edges
of his
yar
, as if
it knew it would be identified if it came any closer.

In a flash, he had
unsheathed his sword and let go of the world around him so that
both his
yar
and
physical body vanished from site. He scanned the other directions
with his
yar
,
looking for signs of an ambush. Sensing nothing, he pulsed between
the fabric of this world and the spiritual plane, a trick that
enabled him to cover short distances in the space of a second. A
moment later, he was high up in the tree that he had previously
been standing next to, gazing toward the intrusion. He could sense
it clearer from his perch in the tree. It was clearly not human,
though he was not sure what it was. Its
yar
was so twisted up and tangled
that it did not seem possible for it to function within a
body.

Using the inner voice that
he shared with Thistledown, something that he had almost never done
before, he whispered into the stillness, "Get the children out of
here."

There was a moment of
startled silence and then he sensed Thistledown quietly waking the
youths and urging them out of the small copse of trees. Lochnar
silently moved from tree to tree, trying to see the form of the
creature that skulked around their camp. As he reached the edge of
the trees where he sensed the tangled mess of the creature’s
yar
, he saw a crouched
woman staring into the trees where the others were. To say that she
was disparate would have been a gross understatement. She wore
tattered rags instead of clothing and squatted barefoot in the
dirt. Her hair was as long as her waist, but it looked like it had
never seen a brush. She made small grunting noises, sometimes
followed by a half-legible word as she slowly ambled back and forth
at the edge of the trees.

Lochnar felt his veins
ignite with white-hot rage as he realized what she was. He had only
met two other women in this state because they almost never
survived the ordeal. He would have been in that same state had
Terrance not appeared when he had. Lochnar’s race did not feel
pity, but he had killed both of the other women that he had found
like this. He knew that he would have to do the same thing to this
one.

As he prepared to leap to
the ground and take her head from her shoulders, she looked up at
him with her cat-like eyes, recognition lasting only a moment
before she scampered off into the distance.

Screaming in fury, Lochnar
leaped to the ground and used his
yar
to strike every tree within
sight. As fast as he could, he howled with the need to kill and
torched everything within range. Pouring his
yar
deep into the earth, he sent his
shout through the very crust of the planet. "Jerard!” he screamed.
“Wherever you go, I will find you and make you suffer for
eternity!"

---

On a newly risen island in
the Cordaln Sea, Jerard smiled in pleasure as he heard the cry of
rage echoing through the bedrock below him.

Chapter 10

Thistledown stood in shock
as he heard Lochnar’s voice whisper in his head, "Get the children
out of here.” Lochnar almost never used the link that had been
forged between them.

Without pause, he hurried
over to the slumbering youths and shook them awake. “It’s me,
Thistledown,” he whispered urgently. “No time for questions, get
your stuff and follow me. Quietly!”

The three of them groggily
grabbed their packs and hurried after him, thankfully without
demanding to know what was going on. He jogged slowly in the
opposite direction of Lochnar, as quickly as he felt the youths
could keep up in their exhausted state. As they reached the road
and turned South, Thistledown felt a white-hot flash in his mind,
something that he came to recognize in Lochnar as murderous rage.
He slowed down a little, trying to decide whether he should return
to help or not. Before he could make up his mind, the white-hot
flash in his mind turned to molten lava so intense that Thistledown
brought his hands to the sides of his head in pain.

From behind them, they heard
a cry of rage unlike anything any of them had ever experienced.
Immediately, all of the trees in the clearing burst into flame. A
moment later, he heard Lochnar shouting deep into the planet’s
crust.

“
What’s the matter?” Li
asked, watching him worriedly.

“
Nothing,” Thistledown
replied pulling his hands away from the side of his head. “Keep
moving. We are almost there.”

“
What about Lochnar?”
Cha’le asked concernedly. “Is he in trouble? Maybe we should go
back.”

“
Nothing that he can’t
handle,” Thistledown replied tersely. “If we go back right now he
will probably kill us.” Thistledown knew that it was more a
certainty than a probability.

“
I will be just as happy
without him,” Lendel muttered from where he was, bringing up the
rear.

Thistledown led them over to
a small game trail that brought them off the South Road and into a
thicket of brambles. “Follow me,” he commanded over his shoulder
before disappearing into the seemingly solid wall of
brambles.

The three of them looked at
each other silently for a moment before following. As Lendel walked
through behind them, the wall of brambles disappeared to leave an
open clearing.

---

The mid-morning sunlight
streamed through the trees and onto the field that surrounded the
cottage. Celdic sat on the small step in the doorway, quietly
organizing his thoughts. He knew Selindria was keeping something
from him. He had a knack for knowing when someone was lying,
something you had to learn quickly when you had a sister like
Cha’le. Celdic thought about some of the revelations that Selindria
had told Jalorm and him. Is it really possible that my mother and
father are not who I thought they were? Celdic wondered. After the
last two days, I would believe anything I suppose.

Terrance returned shortly
after Selindria finished talking to the two youths. Thistledown was
nowhere to be seen, however. When Celdic asked where he went,
Terrance told him that he was going to a short reunion, something
that seemed to greatly amuse Terrance, if the twinkle in his eyes
was any guide. He told him they would talk later, after he had
talked alone with Selindria. Celdic praised the luck that had saved
him from that meeting. Selindria was not what Celdic thought of as
an angry person, just very overprotective where her students were
concerned.

Celdic idly wondered what
Lendel was doing right then. The two of them had planned to explore
the passes near the Chasel this very night. Inevitably, thinking of
Lendel meant thinking of Li, the one person that he had been unable
to keep from his thoughts since he had left. The part he felt
missing from him when he left grew until he now felt like he was
missing a whole section of his middle. I hope that I can see her
again, he thought wistfully.