INBORN (The Sagas of Di'Ghon) (27 page)

Hope shrank to dust as
Keriim gave her another squeeze. He pulled her close, letting her feel the entire length of his hard body pressed against hers. There was something hard and bumpy right in the middle of the man’s chest.

What bubbled to the surface of her soul
then was born on the breeze of desperation so complete that it could not be described. Her heart pounded in her chest, driving away all other sound. Her very essence screamed for rescue. However, the name she was calling out wasn’t that of the deadly Gabril and his twin flashing swords. It wasn’t the crafty old Lars Telazno who had mastered powers that she was only beginning to understand. It wasn’t Jorel, and it definitely wasn’t Harkanin.

The name
surprised her, elated her, and sent a new wave of tears bursting from the corners of her eyes all at the same time.

The name
gagged in the base of her throat was…

Thaniel.

Outstretched

The wagon swayed to a sudden stop. Both he and Jorel were straining their ears to make out the muffled conversation outside when someone crashed down on the upper deck above them. The force of the man’s landing shook the wagon so much that Jorel and Thaniel crashed against the hard walls of the tiny compartment. Dusty rays of gloomy light speared between the joints in the floor boards and around the now barely open trap door. It let just enough light through for Thaniel to see Jorel holding his eye with one bloody hand and the barely open trap door with the other.

The wagon
axles creaked with every step of whoever was rummaging through it only inches above them. Peeking out from Jorel’s fingers was the edges of a bloody gash that ran across his eyebrow and cheek at a rakish angle.  Blood dripped off his fingers onto the door he was poised over. It pooled there for a moment. But then in a disastrous moment of terror, the wagon lurched as the soldier stepped to one side. Blood ran over the side of the door.

From a crack just below his face Thaniel could see it spill onto the slick stone street below. More fell in steady heavy drops. Most of it landed on a low spot where a trickle of water running down the street washed it away almost instantly. It ran right for the horse’s hooves beside the wagon. Some didn’t. Instead, like a crimson sign in the sun, it
stood out on a high spot, where the small rivulets of run-off never touched. If the wagon hadn’t been there, the ever-present heavy mist coming off the huge water wheel would have probably washed it away. Thaniel didn’t know which was worse. Either way, once the soldiers saw the blood they were finished.

Thaniel was afraid to breath
e. His ears strained to catch a snippet of the conversation between Harkanin and the soldiers, but the roar of the great water wheel drowned out any hope of him hearing anything else. From his vantage point Thaniel watched the pink water flow under the horse shoes only a few feet away.

The wagon lurched
into motion.

Thaniel let out a sigh.

Once they were a ways away he took his eyes off the street below. When he looked up, Jorel was struggling to keep his eyes open. There was a huge knot on his forehead that looked big enough to burst. His eyes closed in a very long slow blink, like his eyelids weren’t working right, and when he opened them again, only the whites shown in the semi light.

Without warning, the door flew open and Jorel tumbled out of the hole. It happened so fast that Thaniel never had a chance to even reach for him. Thaniel wiggled his head out of the hole.

Behind the wagon, Jorel rolled, belly to back. Blood trailed wherever he went. His head was a crimson mess.

Thaniel slipped out of the door and fell onto the street with a grunt of pain. The wagon never slowed. Thaniel shouted for Harkanin but knew even as he did it that it fell on deaf ears. This close to that water wheel the man wouldn’t have heard him if he was sitting next to him. The immaculately painted rig lurched up the street toward the main tannery building, the trap door swinging open below.

Thaniel turned back toward Jorel. He was still rolling, although he was moving even faster now, and with every revolution he tumbled closer to the edge of the street. The blood drained from Thaniel’s face. The street they were on ran right along the edge of the gorge. Where the pavers stopped the gorge fell away almost at a sheer drop. Just a few feet past the edge, the water wheel towered into the sky. For a moment the sight of the thing caught Thaniel off guard. From far away it looked like it was hardly turning, but this close, it was a daunting sight. Something that big shouldn’t move that fast. Giant paddles whizzed up out of the gorge at alarming speed. The sound of it was deafening.

Jorel was heading right for it.

Thaniel bolted, slipped in Jorel’s blood, and hit the stone hard. He scrambled back up, feet churning. Jorel was only a few feet from the edge.

Thaniel ran with everything he had.

He knew it was hopeless. In his peripheral vision he could see men on horses coming. If he made it to Jorel before he rolled over the edge of the cliff, he would never be able to carry him up the street faster than three men on horseback.

But it was Jorel.

Thaniel leaped for him, hands outstretched.

Cool Trick

Jorel’s lids fluttered open and the world seemed way too bright. The light felt like knives in his eyes. On top of that, it was really cold.  Everything hurt. His head pounded like an excruciating drum.

Water ran down his face, making it hard to see who had hold of his hand. He looked really familiar. He must have been hurt because there was blood all over him. It ran off his face and down his arm. It ran onto Jorel’s arm from his. Jorel knew he knew him but everything felt fuzzy, like somebody had stuffed his head with wool.

It would come to him. Jorel was good with names.

Whoever he was, he was screaming something. His mouth was open real wide. No words came out. Instead there was only this loud roar. It sounded like it came from everywhere all at once. It rumbled inside him. Kind of like thunder when you were too close to the lightning strike.

Cool trick... Thaniel.

That was it. His name was Thaniel.

Why

Thaniel gripped Jorel’s wrist with one hand and held onto a paving stone with the other. If he let go of Jorel, his friend would plunge into the gorge. If he let go of the stone, Jorel’s weight would pull them both over the cliff.

The mist, churned by the rush of the great wheel as it spun only ten feet away, swirled below Jorel like a hungry wraith. It seemed to pull at his feet, slowly tugging its prey out of Thaniel’s grasp.

“Use your other hand.” Thaniel screamed.

Jorel just hung there limply with his eyes glazing in and out of reality.

“I’ve got you.” He reassured him.

Jorel didn’t even seem to understand where he was.

“Climb up.” Thaniel raged, knowing he couldn’t hold on to his friend forever. Already he felt his strength beginning to wane. It didn’t help that Jorel’s hand seemed limp, as if he didn’t care that he was about to fall hundreds of feet down into the gorge.

Thaniel screamed at him.

Jorel was bleeding profusely from a ragged lumpy gash that ran across his forehead and one of his eyes. The blood ran down his face and neck, covering the front of his shirt in bright crimson.

Then it happened. As the giant water wheel turned
, one of its wide wooden paddles whizzed by. Air and gritty water blasted them, pulverizing Jorel’s blood into a pink mist. Thaniel hadn’t even noticed the icy spray of the gorge until Jorel’s blood, still hot from his veins, sprayed warm across his exposed face and hands.

Blood was slippery.

A second later Jorel’s limp hand just slid through his grasp and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. His heart felt like it would sink out of his chest and dive into the wet stone he was still lying on as he watched his only real friend slip into oblivion. His arms didn’t pinwheel. In fact there was no physical response from Jorel at all that would have told anyone he actually knew he was falling to his death. Jorel slowly faded down into the mist with one hand reaching up as if he still trusted the one who had him. He wore a slight grin on his face as if someone said something funny. To Thaniel, it felt like the world was ripping apart a piece at a time. The seconds it took Jorel to slip away seemed to last forever.

Thaniel never stopped screaming. He didn’t know what he was saying, if it was anything intelligible at all. The memory of the words simply would never resurface. Maybe it was because as Jorel fell away, just before the mist took him, Thaniel watched the light in his friend
’s eyes finally bloom with recognition.  Thaniel’s face would be the last thing his friend saw. In some other circumstance it might have been thought of as a good thing. To look upon someone familiar as life fled. He didn’t see any blame in his friend’s half blank stare. In fact he wasn’t really sure Jorel knew he was in trouble at all. Yet, all Thaniel could think about was that Jorel’s last thought would have been a question.

“Why did Thaniel
let go?”

Finally

There was no doubt Thaniel was a powerful inborn. How they found the boy so fast was a mystery. Regardless, now that the old man knew he existed, it couldn’t be helped. The two of them wouldn’t just walk away without a fight.

Dispatching them might be a challenge Ghile would normally be up to. Yet, he’d been waiting up in Ontar Hold for decades for something to happen. In a small remote location like Ontar Hold, feeding on any kind of regular basis was impossible without eventually attracting unwanted attention. Over the years he’d slowly grown weaker. On the way down from Ontar he only fed twice, neither of which was human. First a wolf, then the ox, yet still he was nowhere near his full strength. Humans provided so much more sustenance than mere animals. 

The Guild desired speed. All haste they said. Yet, he’d been in service long enough to live a few lifetimes. Countless missions in their name had taught him that sometimes a man had to slow down in order to achieve his goals at all. He needed to feed now.

Ghile focused on his surroundings.

The first thing he noticed was the entire tannery trembling beneath his feet. There was something out of place about it. It just felt… wrong. He realized the sensation had been growing steadily for the last couple minutes. His teeth ached with the vibration. His head swiveled up at movement above him. A piece of clapboard popped loose and twisted away into the white mist below.

Fighting the urge to flee from the reeking odor that permeated every inch of the place, he cocked his head to one side. Something was definitely wrong here. The water wheel was so large that it was hard to tell exactly, but he was sure it was turning a lot slower when he got into town.

His eyes fastened on a couple men scurrying up a ladder that led down into the gorge below the tannery. They ran in panic. One of them actually knocked over a barrel of putrid grease in his haste to get away. The second man was flopping around in the slippery stuff, falling every other step until he made it around a corner and disappeared from view. Both of them were big strong men. The teeth in his hands ached and pulsed with need. Ghile breathed, exhaling his anticipation back. These men were out in the open where he could be seen. He couldn’t have that, but something told him he had just gotten lucky.

Then, he saw them.

Ghile ducked into an alcove and slid into the deep shadows the maze of machinery on the top side of the tannery was clustered with. He gripped the figurine in his pocket as he watched the two scan the crowd.

The two swords crisscrossing over the larger man’s back named him the Circle. Which meant the graying old man he stood beside was his master, the member of the Order. He hadn’t gotten a good look at them in the dark of the woods, but now that he had
, he was glad he’d decided on trickery rather than an outright fight. Not every member of the Order had a Circle as a protector, especially not one who could wield the dual blades of Oryk. This one must have been something special.

They’d picked the perfect spot. There was no going around them. Ghile sat back, feeling his arms flex with the anticipation of feeding.

Without the maskstone statue, any Order trained inborn that possessed
flesh
would sense him in a heartbeat. His arms were the problem. For at least half a week after feeding they would pulsate with an afterglow of power. They would outshine every other living thing around him. In winter this might not be a problem. Nothing a pair of gloves and heavy sleeves couldn’t cover up. But a member of the Order hunting for him in the summer would be looking for gloves as much as he would be scanning the crowd for a man with glowing hands. Ghile cursed his luck. This freakish heat wave might be the death of him.

The masking properties of the little carved statue were definitely worth killing for. The statue absorbed the pulsating amber glow that would make him stand out in the crowd and coat him in the warm honey color every other living thing emanated. As long as he stuck close to humans, he would blend in almost seamlessly. Like a white sheep in a snow storm.