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  Celdic was silent for a moment as they crossed the field toward the Staff Hall. "On one condition,” Celdic said at last, watching her sideways.

  Li looked at him curiously, her dark brown, almost black eyes making his pulse quicken. "All right, what?"

  "I will let Lendel win if you tell me what it is that Lendel said he would tell me if I won.” Celdic smiled as Li came to an abrupt halt, chagrin painting her features. "So, is it a deal?” Celdic asked with one eyebrow raised slightly.

  "Oh, that.” Li regained her composure, frowning at him, "I'm not sure I know what he is referring to. You know how he can say one thing and mean something else."

  "Oh, I think you know what he was referring to,” Celdic declared confidently as they continued following Celdic and Cha'le. "I think what it comes down to is this: do you want to tell me or do you want Cha'le to tell me?"

  "That's cruel, Celdic,” Li admonished with a playful punch to his shoulder. "How about a truce? If you let Lendel win first, then I will tell you what I said last night."

  Celdic pretended to think it over, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "What assurance do I have that you will keep your part of the bargain?” he asked pointedly.

  Li drew herself up. "You would question my word?” she demanded indignantly, her dark eyes appearing hurt, yet amused at the same time.

  "I would be a fool not to,” Celdic countered dryly. "I know you too well."

  Li studied him silently, her almond-shaped eyes calculating. After several moments of silent inspection, she seemed to make a decision. "I asked Cha'le if you had ever kissed a girl."

  Celdic frowned doubtfully, searching her eyes for a trace of falsehood. "That's all? You just wanted to know if I had ever kissed a girl?"

  "No," Li smiled a small smile. "I told you the first part of the conversation as an assurance. Now you have to lose the duel with Lendel before I tell you the rest."

  "Fair enough,” Celdic gave in.

  "Are you two waiting for the Elders to get done with their meeting?” Lendel demanded impatiently from where he waited next to the Staff Hall.

  Celdic sighed and joined Lendel near the building. Lendel casually strolled up to the window outside the Staff Hall where the teachers would gather and began to lean toward the wall as if for support. Celdic saw the vines covering the walls begin to undulate and rapidly extend toward Lendel. Jumping forward, Celdic grabbed Lendel and jerked him back away from the expanding vines.

  Lendel swore as he turned toward Celdic. “What’s the matter?”

  Celdic pointed at the vines. “You just about joined the foundation of this building."

  Lendel glanced down at the writhing vines and blinked. “Thanks Celdic. I owe you one.”

  “I’ll make sure to write it down somewhere,” Celdic replied dryly. “Now what?”

  Li and Cha’le were staring intently at one of the bricks on the wall. A moment later Celdic could feel their yars working together as Li changed the moisture content in one of the bricks in the wall, while Cha'le remolded it so a small hole appeared allowing sound to escape. Learning to eavesdrop through building walls by changing their malleability was one of the first things Cha’le had discovered on her own after going to the Tar Ri’ San. Cha’le and Li had perfected the art of spying on others to a science.

  Suddenly Li gasped and tried to jump back. The vines on the wall had changed color until they were the same color and texture as the grass, and had slowly crept along the ground until they wrapped themselves around each of the students’ ankles. Feeling a rising panic, Celdic tried to jerk back, but tripped and fell as the vines gave a sharp pull that dragged him over to the wall. More and more vines began to wrap themselves around him as he tried to fight the ones that fastened themselves to his legs. He could hear the sounds of struggle from either side of him, as well as Lendel blistering the air with curses. He lost interest in what Lendel was saying as another vine fastened around his neck and pulled his back tight against the wall. Barely able to breathe, he felt another vine wrap around his wrists as another formed a gag around his mouth. Then he felt a pinprick in the small of his back and he began to lose consciousness. Starting to panic in earnest, he began to flail about with his waning strength. With a last desperate thought, Celdic pushed with all of his might against the back of the wall. Immediately he felt wide-awake, and with a loud detonation, the vines around him burst apart.

  Jerking away from the wall, he began searching frantically for Li. She lay unconscious next to his sister and Lendel. Celdic realized that almost all of the vines along the entire wall had been destroyed. The vines that remained were withered and dead.

  As Celdic reached down to shake Li and the others awake, the doors to the council opened and through them flowed a stream of Elders. They stopped a few feet from where Celdic and his unconscious companions lay at the foot of the wall, eyeing the destruction grimly.

  “Explain the meaning of this!” demanded a very old and disheveled Elder. There were wisps of white hair sticking out in different directions, making him appear slightly mad.

  Celdic straightened carefully, sure that all chances of him becoming a Guardian were floating away with the morning wind.

  “We came over here to practice the sword and I knocked Lendel back into the wall, sir," Celdic lied, trying to sound earnest. "The vines tried to kill us!”

  “They didn’t try to kill you; they did what they were supposed to do,” a second white-haired Elder said in disgust. To his disappointment, Celdic saw that it was Elder Tashon. Elder Tashon sat on the council that chose Guardians.

  “I want to know why you were practicing the sword over here, when you know it is forbidden to use this part of the Practice Field," Elder Tashon demanded, his eyes narrowing.

  “We didn’t realize we were getting this close, sir,” Celdic answered, trying to sound convincing.

  Tarya Selindria walked around the upset Elders, intently examining the after-effects of Celdic’s final burst of energy that had left the vines withered and dead.

  “What happened to the Snake Vines?” she asked, gazing at him with the same intensity with which she scrutinized the vines.

  “I am not sure,” Celdic replied with an uncomfortable shrug. “I must have killed them when I finally broke free.”

  “Impossible,” declared Tarya Ontros flatly. He was the instructor in Rajan plant properties. “A team of draft horses couldn’t even break one of these vines.”

  Celdic looked at him helplessly, at a loss for how to explain what happened. The stares the teachers and Elders directed at him ranged from speculative to alarmed. Glancing behind him, he saw his sister and friends still lying unconscious on the ground.

  “What about them?” Celdic asked, gesturing at the comatose trio. “What is the matter with them?”

  Tarya Ontros dismissed them with a glance. “They are just unconscious. Snake Vine uses a small thorn to inject venom that incapacitates the victim for a few hours. The question I am interested in is why you are still conscious. You should be lying among your friends dreaming of prison cells. Why are you not?”

  Celdic felt sweat begin to run down his back as the assembly of mostly white-haired Elders stared at him unblinkingly. Feeling like his back was against the wall, he felt something inside of him snap.

  “You are the expert, not me. I should be asking you! I just spent the last ten minutes trying to stay alive, not knowing if my friends and sister are dead or not and all you can do is stare at me like I am some kind of criminal!” Celdic realized that he was shouting and closed his mouth. He felt like molten fire was running through his veins. He had not been this angry as far as he could remember. Again, he felt as if there were some kind of small sun glowing inside of him and the air around him was alive.

  The Elders and instructors were staring at him in shock, some in genuine fear. No one ever talked to the Elders that way. Tarya Selindria did not share their shock. She looked amused and one of her eyebrows was slightly upraised.

/>   Stepping in front of the other Elders, Selindria laid a calming hand on Celdic's shoulder. "It's all right,” she said reassuringly. Glancing over her shoulder at the Elders, she said in tones that brooked no argument, "I will talk with Celdic about what happened later. In the meantime, let’s give him some space. If any of you have questions for him, leave them with me and I will ask him. He is one of my pupils and I will not have any of you badgering him with unnecessary questions."

  Several of the white-haired men appeared on the verge of arguing with her. However, she met their demanding stares with her own intense gaze. As a group, they finally glanced away, muttering to themselves about respect and shaking their heads. A few of the Elders seemed relieved at the dismissal.

  Celdic gave Tarya Selindria a grateful nod and knelt down next to his three companions. They looked like they were indeed dreaming of prisons, twisting around on the ground as their hands groped blindly around them.

  As the group of Elders and instructors began dispersing, Celdic puzzled over their odd behavior. The fear that was evident on some of their faces when he lost his temper made no sense at all. The relief that bloomed on some of their faces when Tarya Selindria interceded was the most puzzling. Celdic wondered what they had discussed to put them so out-of-sorts. He jumped as he heard a throat clear behind him and realized that he had voiced the last thought aloud.

  Tarya Selindria stood behind him, watching with her inquisitive, catlike eyes. "You will all find out soon enough so there is no harm in my telling you. A stranger has breached the barrier and managed to get past the Guardians. We received the message early this morning."

  Celdic felt stunned. "Did he kill the Guardian?"

  Tarya Selindria raised an eyebrow inquiringly. "He?"

  "The stranger,” Celdic replied trying to cover his slip. "It was a he, right?"

  Tarya Selindria nodded, watching him suspiciously. "No, he didn't kill Galvin. He just rendered him unconscious long enough to get past. We have no idea how he knew he was there. Galvin is one of our best."

  "When will he get here?” Celdic asked with a frown, wondering if the intruder would turn out to be the man that he saw in the vision that morning.

  "At the rate that he is going, by tomorrow afternoon,” she replied, her eyes troubled. "There is something that I need to talk to you about. I feel it is something that you should know before there is an accident and you unknowingly do something worse than kill Snake Vine. I think that you have the Jen De' La."

  Chapter 4

  Tarya Selindria and Celdic sat down on the grass next to his slumbering companions. Every few minutes one of the still forms would twitch or emit a small sound of displeasure.

  "Is there any way that we can wake them?" Celdic asked.

  Tarya Selindria shook her head. "The only thing that could wake them would not be finished until they were already awake anyway."

  "So where do we start?" Celdic asked tentatively. "I thought that people who had the Jen de' le were only born every ten centuries or so."

  Tarya Selindria studied him silently with her cat-like eyes, as if she were weighing him mentally, deciding how much to tell him. She absently brushed a lock of stray hair back behind her ear and cleared her throat before beginning.

  "The Jen de' le is an enigma and always has been. No one knows very much about it. There is no pattern or order to the way it works. Sometimes five people with the Jen de' le have been born in a hundred years and other times there has been as many as a thousand years between a single one. You are the second living that I know about."

  "There's more, isn't there?" Celdic asked with a sudden insight. "The Elders would not have been acting the way they were if they just thought I had the Jen de' le."

  Again, Tarya Selindria looked like she was deciding how much to tell him. "According to the records, most people that are born with the Jen de' le have nothing more than extra physical abilities and sixth senses. You seem to have the ability to control things with your yar that would be far too difficult for anyone else to do without the aid of a compound. However, you do not have any control over it. It seems to be instinctive, just like the physical attributes that characterize the Jen de' le. Instead of having a burst of strength or speed or some other physical attribute, you have an outburst of power from your yar. There are some other things going on that I do not really understand, but the thing that has some of the Elders worried is the possibility you will have an outburst of temper and unleash a tidal wave of power that could be very destructive. I think that is rubbish. Your instincts would guide you to protect yourself from whatever was harming you, not lash out blindly.” Pausing, Tarya Selindria appraised him with a penetrating gaze, "How do you feel about all of this?"

  Celdic pondered the question, absently watching a dandelion bob around in the light breeze. Something did not fit. He could not put his finger on it, but there was definitely something missing.

  "I don't know,” Celdic replied slowly. "I will have to think about it. I think we are overlooking something." Celdic plucked the dandelion from the ground and blew the seeds away. The seeds drifted across the field on the gentle breeze with the sun sparkling off them. Noticing that the sun was moving toward the western horizon, Celdic realized that a lot of time had passed already.

  "Do you think they will wake soon?" Celdic asked.

  "They will start stirring as soon as the sun sets,” Tarya Selindria assured him, glancing at the lowering sun. "Snake Vines harvest their energy from sunlight. The venom from the snake vine will keep a victim down until it loses its power source. Taking them into a deep cave would also be a way to wake them, but that is beyond the effort necessary when the sun will set soon."

  As the sun crept lower, a middle-aged man that Celdic did not recognize approached them. He wore the white robes of an Elder's Apprentice, with the emblem of a staff crossing a sword on the breast. The emblem signified that one day he would be an Elder on the Defense Council.

  "Tarya Selindria, your presence has been requested at the Citadel,” the newcomer said, looking at the slumbering youths curiously.

  Gracefully rising from her cross-legged position, Tarya Selindria looked down at Celdic, "Will you be all right watching over them alone until they wake?"

  Celdic nodded silently, watching Li twist on the ground with a small crease of frustration on her forehead.

  "Then I will see you tomorrow morning,” she told him, turning and gliding after the man who had brought the summons.

  Wondering what it would be like to be in the same room with the Chasel, Celdic found himself once again trying to make sense of the short series of events that had so suddenly interrupted their normal lives.

  ---

  Cha'le's eyes snapped open as she sucked in a large breath and exhaled it explosively. Slowly sitting up, she looked around and saw Lendel and Li lying next to her. She looked up at the wall where the vines had snared them. I wonder if I could plant some of this under someone's chair? Cha'le thought, shuddering slightly as she recalled the miserable nightmare she had of being trapped in an invisible cell.

  "Are you all right?" a familiar voice asked from behind her. Startled, she spun around to see Celdic watching her with a relieved expression on his face.

  "I am now,” Cha'le mumbled, feeling groggy. "I had the most horrible dream."

  "Let me guess,” Celdic said with a glance at Li and Lendel, "you were trapped in a cell."

  "How did you know that?" Cha'le asked in surprise.

  "The Elders came out of their council to see us, along with some of the instructors,” Celdic replied darkly, still feeling an unreasonable anger at the Elder’s imperious demands for an explanation. "They said the plant that attacked us was a Snake Vine and that its venom makes you dream of being trapped."

  Feeling a rising panic, Cha'le looked around quickly. "The Elders were here? They found us? Where are they now?"

  "They have bigger fish to fry tonight," Celdic replied shortly. "They went up to the citadel to
hold another council."

  "What happened?" she demanded, trying to make sense of her brother’s cryptic answers.

  Celdic sighed. "It is going to take a while to explain, so I will wait for the other two to wake before I start. That should be any moment now."

  Shaking her head to clear the troubled remnants of her uneasy slumber, Cha'le stood up and walked over to where Lendel lay. Kneeling over him, she pushed his long hair out of his face. "Wake up Lendel," she said softly. "We are waiting for you."

  "That won't work-" . . . ," Celdic began, but cut off as Lendel jerked upright with a shout.

  "What happened?” Lendel demanded, echoing Cha'le's earlier question.

  "He won't tell us until Li wakes up," Cha'le said with exasperation.

  "It's not that easy,” Celdic began, but cut off again as Li began to stir. Hurriedly, he knelt down beside her and helped her into a sitting position. "Are you all right?" he asked, with what Cha'le felt was a lot more concern than he had used when asking her.

  "I think I am going to have a headache, but other than that I think I am all right," she mumbled dazedly, pulling her long dark hair out of her face. Leaning against him, she sighed. The small curve of her lips showed a hint of a smile. Suddenly, she straightened and began looking him over. "Are you all right? Did you get hurt at all?"

  "I am fine,” Celdic assured her with a tight grin.

  "And he was just getting ready to tell us what happened," Cha'le prodded impatiently.

  "All right,” Celdic said with a sigh. "Calm down. I am getting to it."

  For the next half hour, Celdic retold the events that had taken place during their induced slumber, including his conversation with Tarya Selindria and her theory that he had the Jen de' le. When he finished, Cha'le felt completely flabbergasted. Looking at her companions, she saw they looked how she felt. How could she have spent her whole life with him without noticing anything? He had always been very normal, almost too normal, aside from his inability to use his yar. From the day he had learned to read, one would rarely see him without a book. Even on the practice field where he spent the majority of his time learning combat, he always had a book resting near. And an intruder! Never before had someone slipped past the Guardians and wards set to keep intruders out of the Mountain city.