Gorinthians (39 page)

"Riah, it's me, Selindria."
Selindria's voice had a catch to it and Li saw that she had tears
streaming down her face. Riah stared at Selindria with confused
eyes, "Srina?" she asked with a lopsided grin.

"Yes, it's your sister."
Selindria's voice was broken with heartache that radiated from her
Aura like huge discs with razor edges. "We are here to make you
better."

"Keep moving," Thistledown
urged them as they tried to stop and watch the exchange. Terrance
pulled out his Chasel and dug it into the ground. Li felt a
powerful surge, as if the ground were shifting. Terrance pulsed
with a power Li had never seen before. It was so vast she could not
comprehend the depth of the raw energy rushing into him, as if he
had tapped into an ocean. Riah let out a scream as Terrance snared
her in a wall of suddenly-hardened, water-dense air. A second form
immediately appeared beside Riah's first form and Li saw a fork of
energy shoot out of Terrance into Selindria, and then into the form
which had materialized next to Riah. The new form bore only a vague
resemblance to the creature next to it, as if it were the finished
product and Riah was a mold that had somehow gone wrong. Li could
feel Riah's
yar
diminishing as Terrance continued pouring energy into her,
working with elements so complex Li shuddered at the time it must
have taken to gain so much skill. Riah's screams were changing
slightly, as if she were in torment too great for her body to give
voice to. Li could feel the small glow of a
yar
begin to glow inside the form
next to Riah, and realized Terrance was somehow moving her spirit
into the new host.

The air around them
crackled with power, with a loud buzz that hurt Li's ears. The air
around them felt as if it were alive, causing all of her hairs to
stand on end. The newfound
yar
in the form next to Riah continued to grow
stronger as Riah's steadily diminished. Thistledown led them over a
hill, and they lost sight of the phenomenon, though Li could still
feel everything with her
yar
.

"What is going on?" Lori
asked Thistledown in a frightened voice. "Why are we leaving
them?"

Thistledown glanced back at
Lori without slowing down, "Terrance is trying to save Riah's life.
Her spirit has been twisted and tortured to the point that he
cannot heal it by normal means. They are rebuilding it as best they
can."

Li could tell he was not
telling them everything. Why would they have to leave if all he was
doing was healing her? They were just returning to the road when Li
remembered the strange creatures that had been watching them. She
reached out with her
yar
to see where they were, and let out a small scream
as she sensed the speed at which their tracks were making in the
ground as they raced toward them. A moment later, Lochnar
materialized at her side, shoving her backword roughly, as he
struck out with his arm in front of him. Blood shot up in a red
fountain, and suddenly they could see what looked like a giant
lizard flopping around on the ground next to its now-severed head.
Before Li had a chance to recover from her surprise, Lochnar
disappeared again, reappearing fifteen feet away as he hacked a
second head off with his invisible sword. Li whirled as she heard
Jalorm shout behind her as a third creature threw him twenty paces
out onto the field to the right side of the road. Before Jalorm hit
the ground, the reptilian creature leaped into the air with its
middle claw extended. In a sudden blur that was too fast for her
eyes to see, but which she felt with her
yar
, Jalorm sprang backward as the
beast landed where he had fallen. He sprang forward again at
lightning speed, slashing with his sword. His heavy sword bit
deeply into the side of the creature, but it spun and snapped at
him with six-inch teeth. The wild snapping of the monster’s teeth
caught only air as Jalorm jumped backward quicker than thought. A
second later, Jalorm launched himself at the creature’s back,
pulling a long dagger into his hand as he soared through ten feet
of air, driving the dagger into the creature’s skull as he
landed.

Li could feel the impression
of three sets of tracks racing away from them as Lochnar killed a
fourth. It had happened so quickly that Celdic and Lendel had
barely begun to run forward with their swords drawn. Thistledown
stood in front of her, Jesha and Cha'le protectively. His hands
were wrapped around a strange black orb that had started glowing
blue.

"Is everyone all right?"
Jalorm demanded as he made his way back over to them, limping
slightly.

"Everyone but you," Celdic
said with a nervous laugh, "So that's what it means to have the Jen
De La."

As Jalorm rejoined them,
Thistledown reached down to feel his leg with his fingers for
several moments. When he was done, Jalorm flexed his leg several
times and thanked Thistledown for the healing. Back at the Tar Ri’
San, only the most advanced teachers could perform the kind of
healing that Li had seen Thistledown and Terrance do.

Lochnar appeared next to
them again, radiating violence so intensely that Li almost stepped
back. "I killed the other four," he said in a tight voice. "They
left one to watch several hundred
yar
ds back. I have a feeling there
are a lot more of these things on their way." Turning, he spat on
the ground and started walking down the road toward North
Fork.

The others followed
reluctantly, looking behind them where they could still feel a
titanic struggle raging as Terrance and Selindria tried to save
Riah. Li tried to watch Thistledown without seeming to. She did not
know what kind of bond he shared with Lochnar and Terrance, but she
knew one existed and that his expression would be a good indication
of how their friends were faring. At the moment, his face was tense
with concentration as he continued following Lochnar, his eyes
looking all around without actually seeing anything. About an hour
after their encounter with the strange creatures, she felt an odd
spike in the level of energy behind them. She looked quickly at
Thistledown and saw his eyes widen in shock. Then she felt the
energy source disappear completely. The sudden silence was
deafening.

"They are gone," he
whispered to himself in shock. Lochnar was too far ahead of them to
have heard him, but at the same moment, he glanced back at
Thistledown with a look Li thought might be regret, and then he
turned and continued.

They could see the town of
North Fork in the distance, as well as a large dust cloud on the
road between the town and them. Li reached out with her
yar
, gasping in surprise
as she felt the road filled with hundreds of armed men. She looked
at Thistledown, wondering if he had sensed them yet. He had a
troubled frown on his face, and he seemed to be arguing with
himself under his breath. Before he could reach a decision with
himself, Lochnar stopped in the road and halted their
party.

"Shall we go around them, or
through them?" Lochnar asked coolly, with an arched
eyebrow.

"What are they doing?"
Thistledown asked, studying the dust cloud as it drew
closer.

"Searching for someone,"
Lochnar replied with a scowl. "Possibly us."

"Let's wait to the side and
let them pass," Thistledown said after a moment of thought. "We can
steal one of the soldiers from the back of the column to
question."

Lochnar grunted and started
on the road to their left. Li felt cold inside, wondering if
Terrance and Selindria were still alive. When the energy
disappeared, so had the sense of Selindria and Terrance. Lochnar
led them to a ravine, where they settled down inside of it to wait
for the troops to pass by. As she sat waiting, Li reached out with
her
yar
, trying to
feel any trace of Terrance or Selindria. With a sense of shock, she
realized that there were four other people at the spot they had
left Terrance and Selindria, in addition to the now-regular
yar
of Riah.

"Who are they?" Li asked
Thistledown.

Before he could reply,
Lochnar began blistering the air with curses and then disappeared.
Thistledown's eyes grew wide in recognition as he felt the four
newcomers.

"We need to go back,"
Thistledown said abruptly. "Quickly now.” He turned and began
trotting back the way they had just come.

Chapter 22

Morindessa studied the land
around them with narrowed eyes as they let their horses slow their
pace to a walk. She felt a growing sense of dread the further south
they traveled. It was a feeling she came to recognize as a threat
at the outer edges of her
yar
's ability to reach. In the
distance, she could feel a person's
yar
that was wildly out of control.
It twisted and turned haphazardly, like that of a madman’s. Through
all of the confusion that emanated from the strange
yar
, there was something
very familiar about it.

Jesha looked up at her more
and more frequently during the last hour, sensing her uncertainty.
Morindessa was surprised at how well Jesha could sense with
her
yar
, growing
up outside of a Zeran village. She must have learned much of it
while she was very young.

Raising her hand, Morindessa
called a halt and pulled a small wooden box out of her saddlebags.
She slid the top off which revealed two rows of small glass vials
filled with colored liquids. Pulling out the clear one labeled
Spirit’s Bane, she unscrewed the top and let one drop fall on her
tongue.

"Put a drop of this on your
tongue,” she told the others as she lightly lifted Jesha's chin
with her finger, letting a drop fall on her little, outstretched
tongue. Nudging her horse in the ribs, she moved over to Ferrich
and Seranova.

"What is it?” Seranova asked
somewhat apprehensively, looking at the vial warily.

"It's called Spirit's
Bane.” Morindessa showed her the label on the vial. "It will hide
our
yar
so people
can't sense us."

Ferrich rubbed the tip of
his nose. "Why the strange name?"

Morindessa shrugged, "I
don't know. It doesn't really keep Spirits away; It just keeps them
from being able to see you."

Ferrich pursed his lips as
he tasted the small drop. "Interesting. I couldn't tell you what it
tastes like, though. It's not sweet or bitter, sour or
tangy."

Morindessa smiled to herself
as he continued describing his analysis of the substance. She
thought it might be his earnestness that she was attracted to. He
seemed to see everything in life with an enthusiasm and energy that
would have drained most people. "Your spirit is interfering in the
usual taste sense, Ferrich," she explained with a smile. "The drop
on your tongue actually soaked through your tongue and into your
spirit, which has a much broader range of sensations than your
tongue."

Ferrich paused in his
analysis, looking at her in surprise. "Oh.” He closed his mouth,
thinking for a moment. "How many more sensations?"

"When we arrive at Chasel
Ri’ Aven, I will show you a few of them,” Morindessa promised him
with a small mysterious smile.

Ferrich looked at her for a
moment, trying to keep his face under control, without much
success. Jesha giggled as his ears turned red enough to cook on,
while he seemed unable to break his gaze from her own direct
stare.

"I don't mean to interrupt,
but is there a reason we are trying to hide our
yar
?" Seranova asked with a mixture
of amusement and impatience.

"Yes.” Morindessa looked
back up the road, the way they were traveling. "There is something
up ahead I am concerned about. We need to go around it."

"Something you can't
handle?” Seranova exclaimed in disbelief. "I was beginning to think
such a thing didn't exist."

"It's not myself I am
worried about,” Morindessa replied, giving Seranova a level stare.
"If one of you makes a mistake there may be nothing I can do to
protect you."

Seranova held her stare for
moment, finally nodding in understanding. Morindessa knew Seranova
was going to be difficult. She was more headstrong than any three
people. Morindessa was sure that without her fiery spirit, she
would never have made the discoveries she had, but it could also
cause problems if she began questioning everything Morindessa did.
She would need to have a talk with her later, and try to avoid that
possibility.

They moved off the road and
began making a wide arc around the area Morindessa sensed the
unknown danger. The landscape around them was strangely quiet, the
noon air seeming to hold its breath. Morindessa squinted down at
the ground, where she could see several large, three-toed tracks,
with a sharp claw sticking into the dirt on the middle toe.
Frowning, Morindessa tried to think of what kind of creature made
that track. Riah and Lochnar had taught her most of the creatures
that existed on this continent and she was certain none of them
made this kind of track. She could sense nothing with her
yar
, so whatever they
were must have moved on. She thought of dismounting in order to
study the tracks further when the ground shook slightly, causing
some of the last year’s seed to fall from the sage branches.
Morindessa reigned in her horse as it shied nervously, spinning
around the sagebrush as the branches trembled. A moment later,
Morindessa felt a burst of energy so strong it staggered her
imagination. No one's
yar
was that strong. It was impossible!