Gorinthians (23 page)

Sucking in air, Morindessa's
grip tightened around Riah’s neck until she must have been choking
her. However hard she tried, she could not get the scream out that
was trying to emerge. The black-clad nightmare was glaring at her
with murder in his eyes.

"She is lost, and in my care
until I can find her parents," Riah replied firmly. "Relax father.
She is something that is necessary."

Far from relaxed, the man's
eyes blazed, his mouth twisting in distaste. But he said nothing
more, turning and walking down the street.

So had begun her training in
the finer arts of theft, murder, stealth and fighting. Riah had
begun teaching her, while the black clad man whose name she had
never learned stated from the outset that he would not teach her
anything. Riah seemed to know which buttons to push however. All it
took was a technique being shown somewhat imperfectly, and he was
there to show them how they were doing it wrong, and how to do it
the right way. They had spent ten years in the city, leaving
occasionally for visits to some of the neighboring cities where
Riah and her father would meet with various people whose identity
she had never discovered. Riah had always been like an older sister
to her, giving her advice about men, teaching her how to deal with
her father's black disposition, and protecting her until she had
learned to protect herself. In those ten years, Morindessa had come
to love Riah more than she would have loved any sister. Oddly
enough, she had even come to love Riah’s father, in a rather
distant manner. She had woken up one morning in a small house that
they were living at in the merchant's district of Shalilayo to a
small note that she could recite to this day.

Morindessa,

We must leave you now. I do
not know if we will ever see you again. If there were any other
option, I would take you with us. I love you like the daughter that
I could never have and hope that you do well.

Riah

It had been signed in a
scrawl that was barely legible, and there were tearstains on the
letter. Morindessa had never seen either of them again. She often
wondered what happened to them. At first, she had felt betrayed,
thinking that she had done something to drive them away. It was not
until years later that she was able to realize the secret life that
they had lived was much different from other people. There was
something dangerous in their lives of which she was unaware. It
would be even years later that she realized the compassion that
Riah had shown her that day in the streets. Many women had looked
longingly after her that first day, as if they wished there were
something they could do, but their own lives had kept them from
reaching out to her.

As Morindessa watched the
soldiers begin passing her with Ferrich, she was suddenly reminded
of the day that Riah had rescued her from the streets and taught
her to use the gifts that she had been born with. Ferrich’s face
was white with fear, and his hands were trembling slightly. His
eyes stared into empty space, wide with apprehension as if he could
see something that none of the other people in the street could
see. Morindessa felt as if a lead ball had been dropped into her
stomach. Ferrich was an innocent. She had a feeling that something
very bad was about to happen to him.

Before she knew what she was
doing, Morindessa was moving toward Captain Kerns, who was leading
the guard detachment. She planted herself in front of him with her
hands on her hips, her expression coolly imperious. He raised his
hand slightly and the column of soldiers came to a halt.

"I must ask you to stand
aside, my lady," Captain Kerns commanded in a firm voice. "I have
orders from the king to take whatever measures are necessary to
ensure that this man is delivered immediately. I would not want any
harm to come to you." The threat was barely veiled; confirming
Morindessa's suspicions that something unpleasant was about to
happen to Ferrich.

"I am afraid the plans have
changed, Captain Kerns." Studying the soldiers that were watching
the interruption with the interest of men who were very bored,
Morindessa reached out with her
yar
and began readying several surprises for them. As
she did so, Ferrich jerked out of his stupor, stared at her in
shock, and began studying what she was doing. She realized suddenly
that he could see what she was doing, though from the perplexed
frown on his face, he did not know what it was she was doing. "I
have been sent to release him.” Riah had always told her to avoid
outright lying if possible.

"Sent by whom?" Captain
Kerns demanded with a frown.

"Why don't we just call it a
higher power than either of us, and leave it at that Captain?" she
replied with a pleasant smile, "That way no one needs to get their
hands dirty."

"Is that so?" Kerns asked
with an upraised eyebrow, "You are that dangerous, are
you?"

In the flash of a second his
sword was out of its sheath and striking at her head. She did not
bother moving until his sword was almost upon her. Leaning back at
lightning speed so that she was just beyond the point where the tip
of his sword would pass, she brought her foot up in a swift kick,
connecting just below his ear. He collapsed in a heap, twitching
slightly on the cobbled ground.

The other soldiers stood in
stunned silence for a moment before clawing for their sword hilts.
Morindessa set the last web of her
yar
down into the complex arrangement
that she had created beneath the ear of each of the soldiers,
causing a small concussive detonation of sound to explode right
behind their heads. At once, twenty soldiers fell limply to the
ground with a clatter of weapons and armor.

The square around them had
begun emptying as people realized that someone was practicing the
Arcane Arts. Amid shouts of fear, Morindessa seized Ferrich’s hand
and dragged him after her. He was staring in shock at the limp
soldiers around him, an almost wondering expression on his face. He
stumbled into a shambling run as she dragged him through the
streets toward the North gates.

"Where are we going?” he
panted, his face red from exertion that his body was unused to. His
calves were burning from the climb from the Pit.

"We have to leave the city,"
Morindessa told him shortly. "The king will be sending more
soldiers after us."

Ferrich reached out and
grabbed her shoulder lightly, "Why did you do that? Why did you
help me?" His puzzled expression reminded her that the nobles never
did anything unless it benefited them.

"Because once I knew a
little eight-year-old girl that was in trouble," she replied
slowly, looking around them for any sign of pursuit. "Someone
stopped and rescued that little girl and gave her a life that she
never could have had otherwise. I am merely repaying the debt." She
turned back to him, "We must hurry. The king will have the gates
closed soon."

"Where are we going?" he
asked curiously, hurrying to follow.

"To a place that a friend of
mine once told me about," she replied over her shoulder. "It's
called Chasel Ri’ Aven."

Chapter 13

Twilight descended over
Laketown, a small port town near the northern tip of Lake Magnus.
The two moons that courted each other across the night sky were
both full, a phenomenon that only occurred once every eleven
centuries. The mammoth lake glowed with an ethereal light as it
mirrored the lunar luminescence. In the eerie light, a slim,
dark-cloaked figure carried a large pack and moved slowly toward
the lake on the outskirts of the town.

Seranova paused as she
reached the lakeshore, setting the bulky pack of equipment on the
ground next to her. Peering cautiously back toward the village of
Laketown, she watched for any sign that someone had followed her.
After several minutes of sitting perfectly still, listening for any
snap of a branch or rustle of leaves, she turned to her pack and
began unloading the contents. She was not very worried about
someone following her on this night, but she had always believed
that a little caution went a long way toward a long life. The local
villagers were a superstitious lot and among other things, believed
that the full moons portended evil deeds. This night, they had
locked themselves in their homes.

The contents of her pack
were almost as odd as their owner. The first thing to come out was
a perfectly round log that had a hole sticking through the side of
it. Next came two slabs of Prenium that were shaped to fit onto
human feet. It took some effort to pull the Prenium away from the
other objects. Prenium was attracted to everything, the way that
magnets were attracted to each other. It was also the heaviest
material on the planet. If the villagers knew that she owned the
precious ore that only nobles could afford, they would have dragged
her before a magistrate in a heartbeat. After the odd-shaped
Prenium came what appeared to be a long hose, made from bamboo and
sheep bladder. She attached the hose to the hole in the side of the
log and pulled it through until it stuck out the other side. She
continued pulling the hose out of the pack long after the pack
should have been empty, as if there were a bottomless pit inside of
it. When the end of the hose finally emerged, she had over a
hundred feet of semi-flexible pipe drawn out along the shore.
Walking back to her pack, she sat down and removed her sandals,
which she replaced with the Prenium slabs that she strapped to her
bare feet. Reaching into her pack once more, she rummaged for a
moment before pulling out a handful of what appeared to be crushed
herbs. Tossing her head back, she brought the herbs to her mouth
and swallowed quickly, grimacing at the fishy taste.

Still sitting on the shore,
she stretched to reach behind her where the log sat with the top
six inches of the hose sticking out, and pulled it over to the
water's edge. Standing up, she pulled the long cloak off her,
revealing an odd array of small weighted bags that hung from her
waist, empty except for the bottom section that she had lined with
Prenium to make the bags sink. She remained clothed in trousers
that she had cut off above the knee and a coat in which she had
sewn small bubbles of sheep’s bladder, making small air pockets
throughout the lining. She struggled into the water, straining to
lift her Prenium-weighted feet. Pulling the end of the hose over to
her mouth, she fitted it through a headband that she strapped
around her head which held the hose in place. Setting the log into
the water so that the other end of hose was pointing into the air,
she slowly made her way down the shore, cringing slightly from the
cold water and preparing for the immediate drop that she knew lay
within a span of the shoreline. A moment later, she was plunging
down into the depths of Lake Magnus like a rock, with the hose
trailing off the edge of the shore and following her
down.

As she descended deeper into
the depths of the black lake, she felt the pressure build around
her skull as the weight of the water all around her tried to crush
her. A few moments later, her feet thumped on the bottom of the
lake, causing a small cloud of silt to swirl up around her. She
stood on the lake bottom for several minutes, waiting for the herb
mixture that she had made to take effect, enabling her to see in
the pitch black around her. Slowly, the lake bottom began to glow a
light yellow color. The fish swimming around her appeared to glow
with a greenish tinge, giving her the impression that she was
drifting in the night sky amidst the stars and other celestial
bodies.

She had spent the last
fifteen years exploring the depths of Lake Magnus, from the time
that she had invented her first underwater breathing tube. From the
time that she was old enough to talk, the other villagers had
regarded her as odd. She always had strange ideas and she did not
show proper respect for the men in the village, scorning those that
pressed their interest too far. Many of them had gone to her
parents to try to force her into a marriage, but her father had
adamantly refused any such demands. Seranova had been the rising
star of her father’s life, greater than any son that he could have
had. He saw past the traditions and superstitions they had been
raised in. He saw into her heart that overflowed with eagerness
when a new idea was introduced to her and took as much or more
pride in her discoveries as he would have a son. Her mother had
also raised her with the belief that there was nothing she could
not figure out if she put her mind to it. They did not worry that
she had not married as she reached her twenty-fifth year, just
telling her that there were more important things in some people's
life than marriage. She had certainly never given marriage a second
thought. It would mean an end to her exploring, an end to her
inventions and a life of boredom raising children, something that
gave her nightmares just thinking about.

Bringing herself back to the
present, Seranova realized that her Everglow-enhanced vision had
finally taken full effect. Taking a moment to get her bearings, she
began clanking away from where the bank dropped far above her. It
was said that the lake had formed after an enormous earthquake had
shaken the continent two thousand years ago, causing a small
mountain range to rise out of the ground far to the South. Where
the lake was now, had been a flat grassland with small villages
scattered across it. When the earthquake struck, the ground had
caved in for a two hundred mile stretch, fifty miles wide,
revealing the giant body of water, now called Lake Magnus. As a
lake, it was unique. Most lakes increased in depth the closer that
you came to the middle, being formed in the low basins of valleys
by rivers that fed one end while exiting the other end. Lake Magnus
was a sheer drop from the bank all the way to the bottom, never
changing depth from the center to the shore. Seranova knew that
after dropping for fifty feet, the lake continued under the bank
further than she could see. She also knew that it was much more
than an underground cavern that had filled with water. Under the
silt that had built up on the bottom was a material that she had
never seen, as hard as the Prenium that she wore strapped to her
feet. She had found a fortune in antiques from the ancient
civilization, her bottomless pack being one of her most
treasured.