Gorinthians (12 page)

“
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 something 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.

“
You haven’t said how you
plan to get past the Guardians on the border,” Cha’le’s voice
whispered out of the darkness.

“
Just trust me,” Lendel
whispered patiently, as though he had already been through this
discussion.

Cha’le glanced at Li, who
rolled her eyes despairingly toward the heavens. “I wouldn’t trust
you if I had you tied in a sack,” Li said dryly.

They had stolen some of the
Everlight vapor that was in the Guardian storehouse before they
left, so they would be able to find their way in the dark. It was
not the first time Cha'le had sneaked into the Guardian's private
stores, so she was fairly good at it. They made good time as they
crossed the summit up to the Alter of Guardia and then down the
steep slopes that led down into the lowlands. Lendel would stop
them from time to time as they made their way down the mountain to
make sure they were still following Celdic's tracks.

Cha’le collided into
Lendel’s back, almost knocking him over as he came to a halt in
front of her. “Why have we stopped?” she asked
impatiently.

Lendel gestured toward the
ground in front of him, “There is another set of tracks that joined
the others; another Guardian from the looks of it.”

Li walked closer and
crouched down to study the tracks. “It looks like he joined them,”
she said slowly. “Some of Celdic’s tracks are stepping into his, so
he must have joined their party.”

“
Who was on duty tonight?”
Lendel asked as he began down the trail again.

“
Jalorm, Silneresti and
Gresty were covering this section.” Cha’le replied absently. She
had overheard Captain Jorbran passing the information on to Elder
Gibbons earlier that night. Cha’le seemed to be lost in another
world for the moment.

“
What is it?” Lendel asked
curiously.

“
I think that it might have
been Jalorm,” she replied uncertainly. “I overheard him talking
with Tarya Selindria once when they were doing his private
training.” She paused again, “I think that he has the Jen De’
La.”

Lendel let out a loud
guffaw. Cha’le and Li both made shushing noises at him, but he just
ignored them. “The Jen De’ La? Jalorm? He is the most ordinary
person I know! There is no way that he could have the Jen de’ le.
Everyone would have known by now.”

“
If you would close your
mouth and let me finish,“ Cha’le said dryly, “I heard her giving
him instruction on how to control his emotions so that he could use
Jen whenever he wanted to, instead of whenever instinct took over.
I am assuming that she meant Jen de’ le."

“
Even so, I don’t--” Lendel
cut off and stopped walking again, studying the ground. “Another
set of tracks,” he said in surprise.

“
These don’t belong to a
Guardian,” Li stated emphatically. “These tracks weren’t made by
anyone from Chasel Ri’ Aven. We don’t make soles like this on any
of our boots.”

Cha’le looked at her in
consternation. “A Gorinthian from one of the towns?” she whispered
worriedly.

“
Maybe,” Lendel returned
doubtfully. “It could be anyone. Let’s see if the prints keep
following Celdic’s.” Lendel stood up and continued down the trail
as the other two followed. They did not go very far before they saw
all of the tracks veer off the main path and into the thick foliage
to the left.

“
Where were they going?”
Lendel wondered aloud.

Li pushed passed him, “Well,
let’s find out, shall we?” She glanced back at him to make sure
that he was coming and then continued on with Cha’le bringing up
the rear.

They traveled for another
quarter hour before all but one set of tracks dead-ended in the
side of a small hill. Cha’le walked around the perimeter of the
small hill looking for some sign of where they went.

“
Where did they go?” Li
asked in confusion.

“
Indeed where?” a voice
responded behind them. The three youths spun around, instinctively
pulling their weapons from their sheathes. A man of middle years
stood before them, wearing unrelieved black trousers, shirt and
coat with gleaming black boots that rose to just below his knee.
His hands were empty and, as far as Cha’le could see, he had no
weapons on him. He gazed at them with eyes as black as the night
around them, towering over even Lendel by a hand or more. His face
was so alien to anything that Cha’le had ever seen that she
wondered if he were even human. The differences were very subtle,
but there were so many of them that it gave the overall appearance
of a non-human. His eyes were angular, set inside of deep sockets,
with a nose that did not miss being too large and pointed
ears.