Gorinthians (59 page)

The air hummed like high
voltage as Thistledown and Riah continued their unseen battle with
Jerard. He felt Li’s resonance next to him. Cha’le was slightly
behind him. If the three of them could distract him enough for
Thistledown to break through Jerard’s defenses, they might have a
chance. Lendel was still standing in the honorary guest section,
swinging his head back and forth uncertainly. If they survived
this, he was going to beat some sense into Lendel.

The dissonance was growing
stronger as Celdic drew closer to Jerard. The other man spared a
momentary glance for him, his eyes calculating. He did not seem to
be wearing out as Thistledown was. He seemed to be warming
up.

A sudden wave of fear hit
Celdic so hard that he unconsciously stepped backward, cowering
slightly. The fear intensified, followed by a sense of hopelessness
that made Celdic almost plead for his life. They had no chance
against a person of this power. Why were they still fighting? The
result was inevitable: they would all die.

Celdic felt the same power
surge within himself he had felt the day he had tried to eavesdrop
on the Elders and became ensnared in the Snake Vines. There was a
bright flash, and the feeling of fear and hopelessness were gone.
The nobles Jerard had frozen in place around him were suddenly able
to move again. They made a mad dash for the exit, ignoring the
cries of their fellow nobles who were still rooted to their chairs.
Jerard watched Celdic carefully as he continued his advance. He
seemed uncertain, his eyes glancing between Thistledown and Riah.
The dissonance was so strong that Celdic felt his Spirit vibrating
from the noise. Jerard seemed to be having trouble focusing as
well, as if he could feel the same dissonance radiating through
him.

Celdic felt Jerard tighten
several of the tentacles wrapped around some of the nobles. A
moment later, bodies were flying through the air toward
Thistledown. He tried to jump backward, but just as he began his
leap, a sword blade slid through his stomach from
behind.

“
Here is for your secret
society,” Captain Kerns said softly, his eyes burning with hate.
“Tell your brother that I never liked him when you see him
--.”

Captain Kerns never finished
what he was saying. In mid-sentence, Thistledown reached over his
shoulder and tore out the man’s throat with his clawed fingers.
Captain Kerns had done enough damage, though. Just as the bodies of
the air-born nobles began landing on Thistledown, there were
several loud detonations. Celdic felt the same swirling sensation
he had felt when Terrance dissolved the Gorinthian Spirits. It took
Celdic a moment to realize Thistledown was doing it to
himself.

Destroy the catalyst.
Celdic glanced back at the three-dimensional triangle, wondering if
the thought had been his own, or if Thistledown had spoken directly
in his mind. Celdic risked a glance at Jerard as he turned to the
catalyst. Thistledown was no longer a problem as far as Jerard was
concerned. He now faced Riah with a triumphant gleam in his strange
eyes. Riah gasped as Jerard focused the full force of his power on
her alone. She screamed a scream that gave Celdic chills. Celdic
ran toward the catalyst, unsure if he was running from Riah’s
screams or from the sense of urgency of the voice in his head.
Thistledown had shown him how to destroy it earlier. Focusing
his
yar
, Celdic
pulled on a concentrated point just below the cavity where the
Chasel was supposed to rest.

The ground lurched beneath
his feet and a dull, booming sound echoed up from what seemed miles
inside the planet’s crust. Jerard turned away from Riah to stare
wide-eyed at Celdic. His orange eyes burned with pure madness. He
felt some kind of pressure begin building in the back of his head
as Jerard stocked toward him. Sighing, Celdic waited for the
inevitable as Jerard drew inexorably closer.

Celdic jumped backward in
surprise as Jerard’s head sailed through the air, almost hitting
him. He sensed the swirling sensation of a drain close by as
Lochnar’s sword decomposed Jerard’s spirit. A moment later, there
was a stampede of nobles as their invisible bonds dissolved. Their
faces filled with utter terror as they trampled each other to get
to the exits.

Lochnar no longer seemed to
have a vacant piece of Spirit in one part of his body. Instead, it
seemed to pulsate wildly so that at one moment his arm did not seem
to exist, and then his leg or torso. He stood over the remains of
Jerard, an expression of inhuman satisfaction on his harsh
face.

Riah slowly rose to her
feet and lurched over to where Lochnar towered over Jerard’s
remains. Her beautiful face was haggard from her earlier struggle,
but her eyes filled with concern as she approached her father.
“What is the matter, father?” she asked urgently, her
yar
scanning his
body.

Lochnar stood silently for a
moment, staring at the sword that only he could see. “When you were
captured by Jerard before, I was not far behind you. I attacked him
and attempted to free you. At the time, I was no match for his
power. He tried to reconstruct my Spirit so that it would serve
him. Terrance and Thistledown showed up in the middle of his
reconstruction and he fled. My resonance no longer resonated
regularly, though. It shifted throughout my body, some of it
resonating on a different realm than ours. My organs were unable to
function properly because they randomly moved to different realms.
Terrance created a link between Thistledown and I that made it
possible for me to stay grounded in this realm. Now that
Thistledown is gone, the link is also gone.”

Riah stared at her father in
wonder, and Celdic could only agree. Lochnar was not the kind of
person who enjoyed receiving help from someone else. It was a shock
he had accepted Terrance and Thistledown’s aid at all. It would
also explain the towering contempt Lochnar directed at
Thistledown.

Lendel had not moved from
the honorary guest section. His eyes showed a sudden understanding
when Lochnar finished speaking. Celdic glared at Lendel, though his
friend appeared unaware of his burning gaze. Lendel was due for a
long talk after his display with Jerard. Celdic hoped Jerard was
responsible for the way that Lendel had been acting, because if he
was not, Celdic was going to beat some sense into his thickheaded
friend.

“
What can I do to help?”
Riah asked her father quietly. “Can you walk me through what
Terrance and Thistledown did before?”

Lochnar shook his head. “It
was half-experimental when Terrance did it. I have no idea how he
did it.”

“
How long do you have?”
Riah asked, trying to keep any emotion out of her voice.

“
Several days,” Lochnar
replied unconcernedly. “It doesn’t matter now. I lived to
accomplish my greatest achievement.” He finished with a nod at
Jerard’s headless corpse.

Ferrich was beginning to
stir. He shook his head groggily, and then winced. “I feel like I
just survived a night on the rack.” He looked around blearily.
“Where is Morindessa? What happened?”

“
She is safe,” Riah assured
Ferrich, “though she will probably share your misery when she
awakes.”

Lori was standing where
Thistledown had stood before he dissolved. “Where is Thistledown?”
she demanded, a small tear in one of her eyes. “Why hasn’t he
returned yet?”

Riah sighed, and all of the
sorrow in the world seemed to reside in her sigh. “He is gone Lori.
He sacrificed himself to save us.”

Lori tried to say something
else, but it seemed to stick in her throat as silent tears ran down
her cheeks. Li walked over to comfort her, but Lori stepped away
quickly, raising a hand for Li to stay away. Li watched her
uncertainly for a moment before moving over to check on Morindessa.
The dark-haired assassin was sprawled in a contorted knot like a
contortionist. Celdic could feel her resonance humming loudly
though, an indication that she was healthy.

The large audience hall was
empty aside from their strange party and Princess Sentina, who
stood staring with wide eyes at everything around her. There were
several bodies left behind in the room, victims of the stampede for
safety by the other nobles. All that was left of the Catalyst was a
small mound of rubble. The sense of power that had reverberated
from the ground around it was now gone. Celdic wondered if he had
been hasty in destroying it, now that Jerard was dead.

“
Where did you go?” Riah
asked her father curiously.

“
I went to find Terrance,
in case we failed,” Lochnar admitted grudgingly. “The last place I
felt his presence was in the Negative Realm.” He paused for a
moment. “All I found was his body, drifting in the darkness. His
Spirit was gone.”

Riah gasped in dismay, “He’s
dead?”

Lochnar shook his head,
frowning slightly. “His body had gone into hibernation. He left it
on purpose. Before I had time to find his Spirit, Thistledown began
dissolving, so I had to return before my link to this realm was
lost.”

“
Did you bring his body
back?” Celdic asked intently.

Lochnar looked at Celdic
silently, his gaze calculating. Something in that look made Celdic
nervous, though whether it was the intense black eyes having their
usual disconcerting effect, or the hint at some knowledge about
himself, Celdic was unsure. “His body remains in the negative
realm. If I had taken it, there is a good chance he would not be
able to find it again.”

“
How long can his Spirit
stay outside of his body?” Celdic asked quietly.

“
A week at the most,”
Lochnar replied unconcernedly. “After that, his body will begin
deteriorating.”

Celdic felt empty inside,
which was something he had never felt before. It felt like someone
had bored out a hole where his stomach used to be. In the week
since leaving Chasel Ri’ Aven, he had lost his father, his favorite
teacher, and a newfound friend. Where was the justice in the world?
Why were all of these good people lost for a foolish power
struggle? Why could people not just learn to live in harmony?
Celdic felt a layer within himself harden as he faced the answer
squarely. Justice only existed where a good person was willing to
stand up for it. He would not let the lesson of his father’s life
be lost on him. If he did not stand up for something, then he stood
for nothing.

Chapter 32

Sabine kept looking over
her shoulder as she made her way down the
Rue de Chabrol
. She usually walked home from work on a much safer route, but
she had become distracted while following a shorthaired, black cat.
For some reason she was fascinated with cats. She did not own one,
because her propriétaire did not allow pets. When she was at work
at Chartier’s, where she worked as a waitress, the cooks would
often berate her for feeding scraps to cats behind the building.
There was something about the graceful way that a cat moved, not to
mention the strange vertical eyes, which fascinated her. Her
co-workers regarded her as odd, even freakish, because of her
strange obsessions.

Her co-workers also regarded
her as odd because she did not seem to care what her peers thought
of her. She had just turned twenty and had still never been on what
could be called a date. She was attractive, far more so than many
of the girls she had grown up with that seemed to have no trouble
at all finding dates. Dating was something in which Sabine had
never been interested. She knew she should have been, but there
were no feeling or urges in her that made her want to seek out the
company of other people.

She was not, however,
unaware of the fact that she was attractive, which was one of the
reasons she was nervous at finding herself on Rue de Chabrol. It
was a place where women should not walk alone at this time of
night. The black cat had jumped over a fence a block ago, and now
Sabine realized that she had no idea how to get back.

She studied the buildings
curiously as she passed them, forgetting her nervousness as the
style of the buildings drew her interest. The building that she
stopped in front of was little more than a pile of rubble with long
weeds growing through the eroded stone. Sabine missed a step as she
saw a still form lying on the ground, almost hidden in the tall
weeds of the rubble. She crept closer, looking around nervously.
Someone was laughing raucously several buildings over, but there
was no one in her immediate vicinity. Was this a victim, or could
it be a trap? Sabine crept closer to the still form, hoping
devoutly that she was not about to see her first corpse.

It was a woman, dressed in
black trousers and a black blouse that seemed barely large enough
to cover her enormous bosom. Sabine stared at her face, and if she
were any other woman, it would have been with envy. Sabine had
never seen a face this beautiful. It was inhuman in its beauty.
Sabine continued to stare at her, fascinated. The woman’s slow
moving chest meant she was still alive, Sabine was glad to see. The
woman had long, black hair that fanned out around her pale face.
Sabine reached out hesitantly and shook the woman’s shoulder.
Slowly, as if it took great effort, two eyelids opened up to reveal
a pair of cat-like eyes. Those strange eyes were blurry and
uncomprehending.