Gorinthians (5 page)

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.

"Did you tell Tarya
Selindria about your dream?" Lendel asked curiously. His
shirtsleeve had a small tear in it from his struggle with the Snake
Vines and a small laceration on his forearm created a slight stain
on his shirt.

"No, I was hoping to keep
that between us," Celdic replied dryly, with a meaningful glance at
Cha'le and Li.

"Oh,” Lendel said, looking
slightly abashed. "Just pretend that you didn't hear that,” Lendel
said to the two women.

Cha'le's eyebrow had already
shot up and Li had automatically assumed the hands-on-hips
stance.

"Why don't you go ahead and
tell us what you are talking about right now and save us all a lot
of arguing,” Cha'le suggested in a sweet voice that contrasted the
sudden hardening of her large blue eyes. "In the end you will tell
us."

Sighing, Celdic gave Lendel
a hard look and then turned back to Cha'le and Li. "I have had some
really odd dreams for the last couple of months. They are so vivid
they seem real. Last night when I was washing my face in the
washbasin, I went into a kind of trance. I saw a stranger enter the
west divide. It was as if I was the Guardian. I went to apprehend
him and suddenly I was staring into the wash basin
again."

Cha'le and Li stared at him
with a mixture of incredulity and skepticism.

"So you think the stranger
that Tarya Selindria mentioned is the man you saw?" Li asked
doubtfully, watching Celdic carefully.

"It seems to stretch
coincidence just a little too far, don't you think?" Lendel asked
them pointedly. "I mean, what are the odds that Celdic has what he
thinks was a vision of someone breaching the barrier and the next
day we find out that someone has?"

Li was tapping her slender
finger to her exquisite lips thoughtfully. "It does make sense,”
she agreed finally. She took a deep breath, "I guess the real
question is how Celdic had this vision? I have not ever heard of
anything but the Chasel that could predict the future. Could it be
trying to work through him for some reason?"

Cha'le felt her skepticism
gradually fading. She had lived with Celdic long enough to know
what he was thinking by the expressions on his face. The uncertain,
slightly strained look in his blue eyes made Cha'le hesitate to
question him further, before he had more time to think it out for
himself. "I think we better continue this discussion tomorrow. Our
parents are probably already looking for us, especially if they
heard what happened. Maybe Celdic will have another vision tonight.
I will keep an eye on him tonight to see if anything odd is
happening with his
yar
."

Celdic gave her a grateful
nod, picking up the practice swords they had brought with them
earlier. Lendel and Li nodded reluctantly, obviously wanting to
discuss the subject further, but they followed her as she began
walking toward the path at the other end of the practice
yard.

"Do we still have time for
our duel?” Lendel asked Celdic hopefully.

"No, I don't think so,”
Cha'le said quickly, not giving Celdic a chance to answer. "We are
probably already in trouble."

"Since when has that
bothered you?” Lendel laughed, his blue eyes twinkling. He had such
an infectious smile that she could not stop herself from joining
his laughter.

"Very rarely,” Cha'le
admitted, smiling at Lendel fondly. He brought his hand up to
scratch his head, and, once again, Cha'le saw the blood stained
tear in his shirt. Moving closer to him, Cha'le took hold of his
heavily muscled arm in her small hands. "We need to do something
about this."

"It's just a scratch,”
Lendel muttered, trying to pull his arm away.

Cha'le tightened her grip.
"Scratches don't bleed like this.” Cha'le examined the cut closely,
wincing at the sight. It ran vertically from his wrist to his
elbow, with blood oozing out to saturate his sleeve. The cut did
not seem very deep, certainly not deep enough to continue bleeding
this long. "I think that something in the Snake Vine is preventing
your body from healing it,” Cha'le said worriedly. "We need to see
a healer."

"My mother should be able to
fix it,” Lendel assured her confidently. "She was a healer for
several years before she began working for the Department of
Agriculture."

"Let's get you home then,”
Cha'le said briskly, picking up the pace. She reached out with
her
yar
, feeling
his resonance. She could feel the warmth of his familiar resonance
emanating from his body as strongly as ever. However, a slightly
discordant overtone accompanied his resonance, as if there were two
beings inside of Lendel's body.

Lendel looked at her
questioningly when he saw the worried look on her face. "What is
it?"

Cha'le shook her head, "I
don't know. Hopefully your mother will know more.” Cha'le decided
that it was time to talk about something else, before she worked
herself into a frantic ball of worry.

"Has your dad made any
progress with his study on the Rajan Gardens losing their
strength?" Cha'le asked Li, who was once again brushing shoulders
with Celdic.

"A little," she replied,
taking Cha'le's hint to talk about something else. "He thinks that
the gardens are getting bigger and that whatever force makes them
the way they are is spreading out over a larger radius, causing the
force to thin."

"Bigger?" Celdic’s eyebrows
shot up. "How does he figure that?"

"Lendel knows more about it
than I do," Li replied, glancing at Lendel. He seemed to be lost in
thought and did not respond until Cha'le nudged him.

"What?" he asked, looking
around at them.

Celdic repeated the question
as they turned down the street that led to the gates.

"Oh, that.” Lendel's face
brightened with interest. "There is a boundary marker where the
normal landscape begins changing into the Rajan Gardens that was
put in place to keep people from accidentally walking into the
Gardens and getting hurt. In the last five years, the effects of
the Rajan Garden have spread to about a mile beyond the Boundary
Marker."

Celdic stared at him. "How
is it that this has been kept so quiet? I would have thought that
it would be the main topic of conversation. I mean our whole
lifestyle depends on the Gardens."

"I have no idea," Lendel
shrugged. "I thought it was just another project they were working
on. I do not think we are in that much danger of losing the
gardens. The Gardens are probably just going through a cycle or
something."

Celdic shook his head. "I
think we would have a record of it if the Gardens had ever gone
through a cycle before."

Waving to the two heavily
armed watchmen that stood at the gates, the four of them continued
up the path into the small forest outside of the city. Cha'le was
so preoccupied with this latest revelation about the Gardens that
she did not even notice how tense the watchman were, and that the
walls had twice as many watchman as usual.

When they arrived at the
meadow where they met in the morning, Cha'le turned to Lendel and
hugged him tightly. "Take care of that cut as soon as you get
home,” she commanded firmly. "I am already going to be up all night
worrying about, but I will feel better if I know that you are
taking it seriously."