Gorinthians Read online

  “How many of these wave-gaps are there in this mountain?” Selindria inquired with a twist to her mouth, as if she were tasting the word.

  “Quite a few, actually,” Thistledown returned in his high voice. “Originally they were made for emergencies so the Guardians could report from the border much quicker, should an army invade.”

  Celdic could immediately see the advantage of such a tool. He wondered how it was kept such a secret that even Selindria did not know of them. A glance at Selindria showed that the same thought had occurred to her.

  “How is it that I have never heard of these shortcuts?” Selindria questioned, her cat-like eyes narrowing.

  “As I understand it, the Guardians have secrets that they only share with other Guardians.” Thistledown shrugged. “Even the Elders don’t know all of their secrets; except, of course, for the ones that used to be Guardians themselves.”

  Celdic could only shake his head in wonder. There seemed to be no end to the surprises regarding his ignorance of his homeland. What he thought of as a very simple lifestyle turned out to be more complex than he ever imagined. He needed time to think, to meditate through all that he learned in the last day. Glancing up at the horizon Celdic could make out Lunitra, the larger of the two moons that orbited the planet, creeping over the plains to the North. They would need to bed down soon and then he would be able to put everything together. He had always been quick at adapting after he had time to study a challenge out in his mind and come to understand it from all sides. He had always surprised his instructors at the Tar Ri’ San when he left class as clueless as the other students, and then came back the next day with a perfect understanding of the subject. Selindria had told him once that he had a gift for understanding that went beyond mere intelligence and that his mind did not work in the same way as those around him. She thought it might account for his difficulty in using his yar, though she did not say how.

  Celdic slowed down, a feeling of foreboding tingling up his spine and into the base of his skull. Terrance had also slowed, his stance immediately wary. The others looked at Terrance questioningly, noticeably unaffected by the phenomenon that Celdic and Terrance alone appeared to be experiencing. Celdic looked around them, trying to determine from where the ominous feeling emanated. They had reached the lower stretches of the foothills and the trees had thinned out to a sparse forest with meadows interspersed throughout. Large boulders were clustered throughout the forest, varying from the size of a small cottage, to the size of a large house. Celdic realized that the feeling of foreboding felt as if it came from the boulders. As he peered closer at one of the larger boulders, about twenty feet from them, it unexpectedly unfolded into a nightmare. It stood at twenty feet with arms as large as tree trunks and legs even larger. Its limbs were covered in the orange moss that grew on rocks in the mountains, giving it the appearance of clothing, but there was no head to the enormous creature. Headless or not, it appeared to know where they were. It raised a fist as if to smash them into the ground.

  Celdic felt a rapid concussion go through the air that carried the lowest tones of a subterranean boom with a counter pitch that could shatter the thickest glass. Had it been directed at Celdic, he was sure that his skull would have exploded. The monstrosity in front of them reeled back as cracks appeared throughout its huge form. Celdic looked to his right to see Selindria gazing intently at the thing, the way she did when she was using her yar. As he watched, the air between the beast and them shaded as if there was tinted glass between them. An ear-shattering explosion followed this as the monster blasted apart into chunks of shrapnel that bounced harmlessly off the tinted shield between them. The shrapnel continued on, snapping trees like wheat from a scythe as they hurled through the air. Many of the other creatures, which had begun to unfold, were also knocked over by the blast. Celdic felt something recede into the distance at enormous speed before fading from his awareness altogether.

  Terrance had pulled something out of one of his pockets and now held it in his hand, pointing down toward the ground. It looked like a steel ball with a spike sticking out of it. Terrance drove it into the ground as the other creatures recovered and began to move toward them. Selindria was turning to the next closest of the creatures when Celdic felt the sense of overwhelming power that he had felt at the Altar of Guardia rush past him and his companions, making a wide arc that swept through all of the stone giants. As the wave swept through them, they crumbled into fine powder and blew away with a sudden wind that gusted through the devastated forest.

  Jalorm was still crouched, ready to attack with a long mace that he must have thought would be his only chance against beings made of stone. Slowly he stood up, his eyes still wide with the adrenaline rush that always came before combat. Celdic burned with the shame of his inaction. He had just stood there, stunned with the immensity of the creatures, unable to even draw a weapon.

  “What were they?” Jalorm asked somewhat shakily. Celdic had always been friends with Jalorm, who had left the Tar Ri’ San four years before Celdic. Celdic was glad that Jalorm was not as calm as Selindria and Terrance appeared to be. Thistledown was already making himself comfortable on Celdic’s pack again.

  “Gorinthians,” Terrance grunted with a frown. “Somehow they managed to make their own hosts.” He looked troubled as he stared at the remains of the first one that Selindria had blasted. “This is something new. Always before, they had to inhabit human hosts that were made to house spirits. It seems that they have discovered a way to enter the world before yara has healed completely.”

  “What does that mean?” Jalorm looked just as troubled. “Will we be facing entire armies of stone giants?”

  “Not unless they have learned how to reproduce with these new hosts,” Terrance answered with a dry chuckle. “There were very few Gorinthian’s left when they were banished near the end. Their numbers have only diminished since then.”

  Terrance readjusted his pack and started down the path again. “Let’s keep moving. The border is just ahead.”

  As they started down the path through the blasted trees and shrubs, Thistledown began singing a bawdy song about a highborn lady dallying with a troll. Celdic’s ears grew redder as the song progressed while Terrance’s eyes crinkled with quiet mirth. Selindria also looked amused, while Jalorm looked as uncomfortable as Celdic. The second time around, Terrance joined the singing, punctuated frequently with laughter at the more obscene aspects of the song. It was at these parts that Thistledown cried out even louder, as if to make sure that the best parts were not missed.

  Trying to find a way to ignore the song, Celdic turned to Jalorm. “When did you first meet Terrance?”

  Jalorm looked glad of the excuse to do something besides listen to the song that had climaxed to the highborn lady riding the dwarf around the bedchamber like a horse. “He showed up while I was on watch during my first year,” Jalorm replied loudly, trying to talk over Thistledown’s high-pitched cries coming from behind Celdic’s shoulder. “I recognized him as soon as he came near of course, but it was still a shock.”

  Celdic shook his head. He must be talking about the bond. Celdic thought about telling Jalorm that he shared no part in that bond, but decided to keep it to himself. He would just think that I was a freak or something. A little voice in the back of his mind piped up that it might be true. “Why did he come to see you?”

  Jalorm looked into Celdic’s eyes for a moment before answering. “He thought that I had some special talents that he said would be useful if I learned how to use them.” Jalorm scratched his scraggly-bearded chin thoughtfully. “He told me that I would need to go on a journey in the not-too-distant future and that he needed to make sure that I was prepared for the journey.”

  “What special talents?”

  Jalorm gave him that searching look again, as if wondering how he would react. Finally, he heaved out a deep breath, “I suppose that you will find out sooner or later. I have the Jen De’ La.”

  Celdic’s
eyes widened in surprise. He would have never guessed Jalorm would have the Jen De’ La, the elemental power that so few were born with. The power, triggered from fear or excitement, caused someone with the Jen De’ La to move at speeds impossible for normal mortals to achieve and possess strength much greater than the ordinary person. Most who were born that way were dangerous to be around because of their unpredictable nature. He had known him for most of his life and he had never shown any signs of it. He said as much, and Jalorm nodded slightly.

  “I learned to control it to a degree when I was still very young. The Elders knew about it and so took extra precautions in training me on the combat field. That is why Tarya Selindria taught me alone.” The last he said with a sheepish grin, and no wonder. The others had been told that he had progressed too far to combat with the other students, and so, had to be privately tutored by Tarya Selindria.

  “She wants us to call her just Selindria now,” Celdic offered in a low voice. It still sounded strange just saying her name without the honorary title.

  As quiet as he had said it, she still heard her name and glanced over at them. Sometimes Celdic thought her ears were sharper than her eyes, which was saying a lot. She opened her mouth to say something when Terrance’s singing cut off.

  “Here we are,” he exclaimed with satisfaction. The path opened into a clearing where a medium-sized cottage stood; smoke already climbing out of the chimney. Celdic looked around suspiciously. He would have sworn that there had not been a cottage down here when they were descending the foothills, especially with smoke coming out of the chimney. As they drew closer, he felt an odd sensation flow through him, as if he had passed through some invisible screen. Surprisingly, the worry of the past couple of days seemed to fade. His heart felt as light as it ever had, maybe more so.

  Chapter 7

  Celdic looked around him in wonder. “What is this place?”

  The others, aside from Selindria, were also inhaling deeply, as if the very air was nectar to their lungs that filled them with peace and wellbeing.

  “This is home,” Terrance explained with a smile that seemed more relaxed than it had from the time that Celdic had met him. “It isn’t much, but make yourselves comfortable. Dinner should almost be ready.” He went through the front door, beckoning the others to follow.

  Inside was a medium-sized entry room with chairs scattered throughout. The walls were made of a substance that Celdic did not recognize. The unique substance radiated warmth that filled him to his core. The furnishings were plain, if finely made. Small tables sat next to the chairs on which people could set their drinks. There were several doorways along the walls to their left that Celdic assumed led to the bedrooms and washroom. The kitchen and dining room were extensions of the main entry room, with sturdy beams supporting the roof between the rooms.

  They unlatched their packs, set them on the ground in the sitting room and followed Terrance as he herded them to the dining room table. They sat down in high-backed padded chairs, still feeling a blissful sense of comfort and security. Terrance walked into the kitchen and began to bring the cook pots of food to the table. When Selindria saw what he was doing, she rose and began to fetch the teapot, ignoring his protestations that she sit down and relax.

  About this time, Celdic realized that he had not seen Thistledown since crossing the strange boundary in front of the cottage. “Where is Thistledown?” he asked, his brow creasing in perplexity. “He was just over my shoulder in my pack.”

  Just then, the front door opened again and a man came in whistling tunelessly. Celdic gave a start of surprise. It was Thistledown, except that he was big now. He still had those fanged teeth and sharp claws on his hands, but now that he was the same size as the rest of them, he looked more human and less monster.

  Thistledown stopped as Celdic stared at him. “You would think that you had never seen me before,” he said with a short bark of a laugh. “It’s as if I didn’t spend the whole day riding over your shoulder.”

  “But you’re big!” Celdic blurted out before he could stop himself.

  “You can't get anything past this one,” Thistledown said seriously to Terrance.

  Celdic’s ears reddened slightly as everyone at the table began to laugh, but the feeling of well-being was too strong for embarrassment to last and after a moment he began to chuckle with them. He was starting to catch on to the way that Terrance and Thistledown would either make a joke, or give an explanation that made no sense if they did not want to talk about something.

  They spent the rest of the evening relaxing in the sitting room with Thistledown reciting stories of his heroic--if slightly exaggerated--deeds as he traveled across the continents meeting strange creatures in even stranger lands. Celdic was not sure if any of it was true, but he had always liked a good story and so did not question him on any of the irregularities.

  Selindria seemed more interested in the stories than Celdic would have thought. She was watching Thistledown intently, which did not go unnoticed by Thistledown, resulting in even more embellishment. Her eyes were intense, like a stalking lion. This was a look that Celdic was used to seeing when they were on the combat field. Jalorm grinned expectantly as Thistledown reached the climax of his current story. At the moment, he had slain a Swamp Dragon, rescued Terrance from a Serratar and saved a village from a rampaging herd of Skias. As with his other stories, he ended this one with himself as the hero, Terrance as his sidekick and a beautiful Lady offering him her undying devotion, which he modestly refused.

  Celdic had never heard of any of these creatures. He wondered if they were made up with the rest of the story. Thistledown had described a swamp dragon as a giant lizard that spat poison at its victims, paralyzing them so that it could eat them alive because it would not eat dead meat. It only lived in the vast swamps on the very southwestern corner of the Zeran continent. He had described a Serratar as giant bird of prey whose beak was razor sharp like the cutting edge of its wings, which could behead a man and horse alike in a swooping dive called the Wind of Death. He did not describe what herds of Skias were and Celdic felt surprised at his own disappointment at missing the description.

  Celdic decided that it would be a good time to ask a question that had been bothering him since the attack of the stone giants. “How do you kill a spirit?” he asked Terrance, who was lounging with his feet on an ottoman, with eyes half-lidded as if he were asleep.

  “You can’t,” he replied without opening his eyes all of the way. “The matter that spirits are created from is eternal. There is no force that can kill it.”

  “But you said earlier that some of the Gorinthians have been killed,” Celdic protested. “Aren’t they beings of spirit?”

  Terrance shook his head slightly without raising it, “I said they had been destroyed, not killed. Spirit can be destroyed, after a fashion.” He finally opened his eyes all of the way to look at Celdic. “The spirits that inhabit our bodies are very complex and mature spirits in the grand scheme of existence. As you know, working with compounds from the Rajan Gardens, there are beings of varying levels of spiritual complexity. Some spirits are so elemental they have no power to act on their own. They only exist until something changes them or compounds them with other spiritual elementals. Once, longer ago than you can possibly imagine, you and I were nothing more than a spiritual elemental, without thought, personality or character. Not all of the things that make us unique and who we are existed when we were in that state. When I say that the Gorinthians were destroyed, I am talking about the disintegration of their spirit down to the basest elements.”

  Celdic, along with Selindria and Jalorm, stared at him in horror. Celdic could not fathom anything worse than the end of who he was, like being blended into a mixing pot to make a different recipe since the first one did not work.

  Terrance looked back at them calmly. “Remember, those who we are fighting against will not bother destroying your soul. They can and will, however, tear it open and change it to somet
hing evil, like them. I would destroy my own soul before allowing that to happen to myself or any of you.”

  Even in the warmth of the cottage there was a chill that ran down Celdic’s spine at the certainty in Terrance’s voice that he would do just as he had said. Would I want to live, knowing that I would become one with the enemy? After thinking about it for a moment, Celdic realized that either way, the things that made him who he was would be gone. The only difference was that if the Gorinthians caught him, he would become a monster, hurting those that he had once loved. Hurting Li. That thought was enough to convince him he would rather be unmade than remade to evil.

  Clearing his throat, Terrance stood up. “I think that we should all get some sleep. We have a long, long road ahead of us.”

  Terrance showed everyone to the different rooms adjacent to the sitting room. Everyone except for Thistledown, that is, who seemed to already know his way around. He made his way to the room in the back corner of the cottage. Terrence led Celdic to the room at the opposite end of the cottage, with Jalorm and Selindria in the rooms between his and Thistledown’s.

  Celdic’s room was comfortable, if plain. He walked to the bed in the corner and pulled his boots off before lying down on the bed with a sigh. It had been a very tiring day, both mentally and physically. He tried to think about all that he had heard throughout the day, tried to make sense of the mess his world had become. Quickly, however, sleep overcame him with dreams of Swamp Dragons and giant birds wielding swords attacking him.

  ---

  In the valley of Chasel Ri’ Aven, three dark shapes moved slowly through the twilight, laden with heavy packs that made them look like beasts of burden out grazing. The sky was overcast, making the darkness around them almost palpable enough to touch. The darkness did not seem to bother or hinder the trio as they walked slowly, but confidently, up the trail that led to the Altar of Guardia.