Gorinthians (4 page)

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
yar
s 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?"