Gorinthians (43 page)

Chapter 24

Morindessa ignored the
sharp sting of branches whipping her face as she rushed through the
thick tangle of cedar trees and sage that separated her from the
road. She could feel Jesha’s
yar
ahead of her; close enough that she should be able
to see her soon. She tried to control her emotions, before they put
both Jesha and herself in more danger than they were already in.
Removing her fear of what they might have done to Jesha, however,
was as easy as cutting off one of her fingers. There would be
plenty of time for rage after Jesha was safe.

Her long legs were swiftly
closing the distance between her and Jesha’s captors, when she felt
them slow to a halt ahead of her. Morindessa slowed down and
approached cautiously, slipping between the trees like a ghost.
Lieutenant Sanders was standing on the road with Jesha over one
shoulder, facing the thick brush he had just exited, where
Morindessa slowly snaked through the last few remaining bushes.
There was a second man next to Lieutenant Sanders, dressed in silks
fine enough for any lord, with a slightly curved sword belted to
his side. His face was almost inhuman, white-skinned and marked on
either cheekbone with a triangular shaped symbol. Morindessa gave a
start when she saw his eyes. They were dark brown, with no pupils
or whites. He towered over Lieutenant Sanders by a good six inches,
though Sanders himself would have been accounted a tall man.
Morindessa gave a second start as she realized she could not feel
his resonance or any kind of
yar
emanating from him. It did not matter; he would
have to die as well, regardless of what he was. Those questions
could be answered later.

Launching herself through
the last line of cedar trees, Morindessa swept toward the
alien-looking stranger, guessing he would be the more dangerous. He
stood staring at her as she rushed toward him, though it was
difficult to tell if he were looking at her, since he did not
possess any pupils. His expression never changed as he watched her
quickly close the distance, his stance never shifting. Lieutenant
Sanders was already backing away from her fury, his eyes widening
in alarm at her sudden appearance.

Morindessa brought her
dagger up at the last second in an underhanded jab at the tall
form’s throat. Her eyes widened in surprise as her dagger passed
through insubstantial air, causing her to fall forward slightly.
She brought her knee up toward his groin as she prepared for the
sudden impact, and felt her next shock as his hand darted out and
grabbed her throat in a death grip that threatened to make her pass
out. She brought her palm up sharply at his elbow, expecting the
sharp crack of bone. Her eyes widened in panic as her hand passed
right through where his elbow should have been. She struck out with
her
yar
, causing
sharp detonations of air where his head and chest should have been.
Her
yar
had no
more effect than her knife had. His expressionless face changed
slightly. He smiled a cruel smile, his dark eyes making the smile
seem more macabre. A moment later Morindessa felt an uncomfortable
pressure begin building in her head and chest, as well as an
alien
yar
enter
her body. Before she had time for shock to settle in, she began
fighting with everything she knew, her legs kicking in the empty
air at the form’s chest, at the same time as her
yar
attacked the
new
yar
that had
begun forming inside her. She felt a dual sense of panic, and
realized that whatever being was trying to take over her body could
feel her violent attempts to block the intrusion, and was worried
that she might succeed. As she felt the other being’s anxiety, she
renewed her efforts to block the thing from her body. She had no
idea what she was doing as she flailed about with a part of
her
yar
that she
had not known existed. She felt several odd-popping sensations, and
suddenly her arms and legs stopped kicking. Stark terror
overwhelmed her remaining emotions as she realized that she had
lost control of her motor functions. She lashed out with the last
of her strength and was rewarded with a sharp concussion making it
so she could not feel with her body anymore. The creature that held
her by the throat gave out a sharp keening sound as he was hurled
backward through the air more than twenty paces. When he hit the
ground, he did not stop, but slipped through the solid earth as if
it were air as well.

Morindessa looked around
herself, her vision oddly blurred. She tried to look over to where
Lieutenant Sanders had stood with Jesha over his shoulder, but her
head would not obey her. She suddenly realized that the
other
yar
she had
felt was still in her body and that it had taken control of most of
her functions. She could feel its Spirit sliding up and down her
skeletal structure where it had attached itself after breaking her
own connection. Her own Spirit felt like a pair of clothing that
had been merely pinned to her body, flapping around her body as it
moved, instead of causing her body to move. The creature possessing
her body seemed to be feeling it out, as if it were unused to the
sensation. Morindessa felt violated beyond anything she thought
possible as she felt the alien Spirit shifting through her body,
brushing against her own spirit in the tight enclosure of her body.
If she could have vomited, she would have.

She felt irritation flicker
through the other Spirit as it realized that she was still
attached, however precariously, as well as puzzlement. She had a
feeling that it had no idea of how to rid itself of her.

“
Is it you, or Morindessa?”
Lieutenant Sander's voice demanded behind her. She felt herself
being turned as the other Spirit turned her body to face Sanders,
who stood holding Jesha up in front of him with a knife to her
throat.

“
It’s Dimitri,” her voice
replied of its own accord. It had a strange clipped accent that
made her voice sound like a different person. Her arms raised
themselves in front of her face and she felt her eyes gazing at
them wonderingly. She could also feel the other Spirit’s wonder as
it reveled in the new sensations of a mortal body.

Lieutenant Sanders lowered
the knife slightly. “We had better leave before any of the others
show up.” He kept staring back in the thick brush toward the
camp.

“
Yes, we need to leave,”
Dimitri agreed, focusing on the land around him. “Where are your
men?”

“
The main body will be in
the town of North Fork,” Lieutenant Sanders replied, unable to keep
his gaze from traveling over her body as he stared at
her.

Morindessa felt her body
begin moving down the road toward North Fork. She tried to attach
her flapping Spirit to her skeletal structure again, but it was
like trying to make a piece of cloth stick to the wall. She could
feel amusement dripping from Dimitri as she fumbled with her
tattered Spirit, which only fueled the rage burning deep within
her. She reached out with her
yar
to try to cause an air detonation that would break
her leg, but felt a confining tightness around her
yar
that kept it from
reacting. She felt her rage ebb slightly as the first traces of
helpless despair began filling her awareness.

“
When is your master going
to join us?” Lieutenant Sanders asked casually, but Morindessa
could almost feel the waves of uneasiness emanating from
him.

“
Soon,” Dimitri promised
without elaborating. Morindessa could feel the fear in Dimitri when
he thought of his master, though he attempted to keep the fear from
her face.

The two of them stopped as
they heard the sound of horses moving toward them. A moment later,
thirty mounted men came cantering around a bend in the road,
reigning in when they saw Lieutenant Sanders. He walked up to one
of the soldiers and dumped Jesha over the front of the saddle. “You
two can walk from here,” Sanders told two of the soldiers,
motioning for them to dismount.

After Sanders and Dimitri
had mounted the new horses, the fox-faced Lieutenant motioned the
other soldiers to follow as they rode back toward the town of North
Fork. Morindessa spent the entire ride trying to push through the
odd barrier holding her
yar
from expanding, trying to find some kind of
weakness. The dripping amusement from Dimitri only spurred her to
continue searching for a way to escape.

“
I have never had a woman’s
body before,” Dimitri told Sanders as they made their way through
the town’s wooden gate. “Perhaps you and a few of your soldiers
could accommodate me tonight, and help me break it in.”

Sanders face reddened as his
eyes filled with lust. “I don’t have a problem with that.” He
looked back at the massively muscled captain behind him. “Do you
have a problem with that, Captain Jork?”

Captain Jork shook his head
slowly, licking his lips like a goat as he stared at Morindessa’s
body greedily. Morindessa tried to stifle the rising panic that
threatened to erase all thought, knowing that it would only
increase Dimitri’s satisfaction, but she couldn’t seem to stop the
terror from flooding through her mind as she hung frozen in limbo,
forced to watch helplessly as this animal defiled her
body.

---

Lochnar studied the tracks
on the road, frowning in puzzlement. He could see where Morindessa
had run forward to attack someone, but then her tracks came to an
abrupt halt, and were only partially visible through the imprint of
where her body had fallen. He could see one other person’s tracks,
obviously the one who had captured Jesha from the awkward gate he
had taken, but from everything he could see, there must have been a
third person. The most confusing variable was the set of
Morindessa’s tracks that followed the abductor’s tracks, without
any sign of struggling or coercion. Lochnar could not fathom why
Morindessa would suddenly join the abductor, of her own free
volition. There was something very wrong.

He squinted at the sun that
was slowly sliding behind the Eastern horizon, grimacing at the
possibilities. A moment later, he was stepping out of the physical
realm into the realm of negatives, and then back into the physical
realm, a mile closer to North Fork. He continued jumping ahead,
sometimes a few thousand feet, sometimes several miles. The realm
of negatives had no absolutes to it. What was a mile once could be
five miles the next time. Before the sun had even finished
disappearing behind the horizon, he was already in the town of
North Fork.

He reached out with
his
yar
, feeling
for Morindessa’s resonance. He swore loudly as he found nothing
that resembled her resonance, causing several farmers passing on a
wagon to look at him askance. He reached out again, looking for
Jesha’s resonance, this time finding a match to what he remembered
of Jesha. He opened a link to the realm of negatives, allowing it
to flood into the physical realm around his being, wiping out any
traces of his
yar
and resonance. Walking quietly through the mostly empty
streets of North Fork, Lochnar made his way toward the inn at the
North Gate where he felt Jesha’s resonance. The street in front of
the three inns by North Gate was filled with horses that the
officers had picketed in front of the large buildings.

Lochnar slipped through the
front door as a rumpled-looking sergeant walked out of the inn. The
common room was full of soldiers drinking and gambling. A young,
tawny-haired woman sang a bawdy song on a small stage at the end of
the room. Lochnar ignored the soldiers, moving instead up the
stairway to the second story. There were two soldiers standing
guard outside the room where he felt Jesha, both of them staring at
the door across the hall from them as if they could see through it.
Lochnar quietly closed in on them, jabbing each of them in throat
in quick succession, then grabbing them and slowly lowering them to
the floor to avoid the noise of their bodies collapsing.

As he reached for the door
handle to the room that Jesha was in, he heard Morindessa’s voice
in the room across the hall. He paused, listening with a frown as
he pulled his hand away from Jesha’s door handle.

“
This chit is still a
virgin,” Morindessa’s voice said scornfully on the other side of
the door, “so you had better take it easy. If I feel any pain, you
are going to feel it ten times more, Sanders.”

Lochnar’s frown deepened.
Morindessa’s voice was the same, but he recognized the accent too
well. Leaning back, Lochnar kicked Morindessa’s door open, pulling
out his invisible sword as he walked into the room. Sanders stood
in front of a bed, naked from the waist down, staring at the door
in shock. He saw the two dead soldiers lying in the hallway and
hurriedly snatched his short sword from a small table. He ran
toward the door half-naked, staring right through the place where
Lochnar was. Lochnar did not even bother cutting him down with his
sword as he passed, but slammed his palm in a cutting motion
against Sanders neck. Sanders immediately dropped to the wood floor
like a sack of meal. Morindessa had been lying on the only bed in
the room, completely naked. She was just in the act of standing up
when Sanders dropped. She froze, and Lochnar could feel the
Gorinthian’s
yar
reaching out to feel the room. He moved toward the Gorinthian,
not even thinking of it as Morindessa now that he knew for sure
that it was a Gorinthian, and raised his sword to strike its neck
as it stared through him. Just before he began the swing, he
realized he could feel Morindessa’s
yar
inside the body still. He backed
silently away, trying to puzzle out what had happened. He could
feel the Gorinthian’s
yar
covering her entire body, but at the same time, he
could feel Morindessa’s
yar
, all disjointed as if it had been
disconnected somehow. That would explain why he had not felt her
resonance.