Gorinthians (50 page)

“
Let’s move on then,”
Captain Jorbran commanded, moving into the thick vegetation in
front of them.

“
It would be best if only
three of us go,” Dedran suggested firmly. “The Garden grows
restless in the afternoon hours. The more strangers that appear
here, the more negative attention we will attract.

“
Very well.” Captain
Jorbran stopped, turning to the other Guardians. “The rest of you
wait here until we return. If we are not back before midnight, send
Leo to the city to inform the Council.”

“
Here, take this.” Dedran
handed a small piece of what looked like straw to one of the
Guardians. He held up another identical piece, “This is the other
half. If I die while I am holding this, then yours will
wilt.”

“
What is it?” Leo asked
curiously.

“
A new invention,” Dedran
explained, turning to the path. “It doesn’t have a name
yet.”

Captain Jorbran followed
Dedran, wondering how many other inventions were lurking around
without names.

Chapter 28

Captain Jorbran studied the
garden around him as he followed Dedran. He had not been to the
Rajan Gardens since leaving the Tar Ri’ San. Gardeners only took
students to the outer edge of the Gardens, where it was safe for
them to view it. Captain Jorbran was not quite sure of what to
expect in the inner garden, where only the Gardeners ventured. The
part of the garden they were currently traveling through did not
look very different from what lay outside of the garden: evergreens
interspersed with small clearings surrounded them and thick
undergrowth crowded around the towering pines. Captain Jorbran
recognized the ferns, red berry bushes and maisen scrub.

“
How far is it?” Captain
Jorbran inquired. He was looking for something that indicated a
defining line between the normal plants and the wild plants that
grew in the inner gardens.

“
Another hour,” Dedran
replied without looking back.

After another quarter hour,
Captain Jorbran began to notice a few new plants that he had never
seen. Giant trees that dwarfed the evergreens slowly replaced them.
Eerie, silver light began emanating beneath the large canopy of
giant trees. Peering up into the giant branches, Captain Jorbran
realized that the leaves were a metallic silver color, reflecting
sunlight down into the undergrowth.

“
Are these the silver leaf
trees?” Captain Jorbran asked in awe.

“
Yes,” Dedran answered
without looking up at the glittering leaves.

Captain Jorbran thought
that he detected a note of wry amusement in Dedran’s tone.
Of course they were the silver leaf trees, Jorbran
thought to himself with a silent chuckle. Some of his men had
nicknamed him Captain Obvious, though they did not think he knew
that.

The leaves from the silver
leaf tree were used to make armor for the Guardians. Silver leafs
were stronger than the best steel they could make, and much
lighter. Captain Jorbran noticed that all of the remaining
evergreens were dying. “What is killing the evergreens?”

“
Insidiuons,” Dedran
replied in disgust. “The evergreens have no protection from
them.”

“
What are insidiuons?”
Ornico asked curiously. He had been staring at the enormous silver
leaf trees with the same awe as Captain Jorbran.

“
It’s a small thorn that
preys on other hosts,” Dedran answered, his eyes constantly
searching the forest around them. “It burrows inside of trees,
shrubs, flowers and even some animals. Once inside, it begins
draining the host of nutrients. It usually takes several years
before the effects begin to show. By the time you discover it is
inside of you, it has already begun imitating your resonance, so it
is almost impossible to find.” Dedran gestured at the evergreens.
“The Rajan Garden has grown larger in the last century. As the
garden expanded, the insidiuons found their way to the
evergreens.”

“
They don’t appear to
affect the silver leafs,” Captain Jorbran observed. All of the
silver leaf trees seemed healthy.

“
There is a fungus called
the morlan tor that grows on silver leafs,” Dedran replied. “Once
it covers the tree, it hardens until it is almost as hard as the
silver leafs. The insidiuons cannot penetrate the morlan
tor.”

Captain Jorbran began to
revise his opinion of the Gardeners. Obviously, the garden was as
dangerous as they said it was. As they continued moving deeper into
the forest, the evergreens disappeared altogether, and other
strange shrubs appeared. Thick brambles surrounded many of the
clearings, some of them filled with the desiccated corpses of
animals. Captain Jorbran moved closer to the bramble, trying to
determine what kind of creature it had snared.

“
You will be joining that
carcass if you get any closer to the morning gory,” Dedran
commented almost conversationally.

Captain Jorbran stopped,
noticing the way the branches on the brambles began quivering as he
came closer. Studying the animal corpse with his
yar
, he could feel the
three-inch long spikes sticking into it. The rest of the branches
on the bramble were bare of thorns, appearing harmless.

“
The thorns only come out
in the morning when an animal is snared,” Dedran explained. “Most
of the animals that end up in there are chased in by other
predators.”

Captain Jorbran felt a
slight shiver run down his spine. It would be suicide to enter this
garden in ignorance. The more he learned about the Rajan Gardens,
the less he liked them. Falling in behind Dedran again, they
continued deeper into the deadly garden. He began seeing flickers
in the thick foliage beyond his vision. Reaching out with
his
yar
, he sensed
the presence of several creatures that appeared to be following
them in a broad circle. He had spent many years in the forests
surrounding Chasel Ri’ Aven as a Guardian. As he studied the
resonance of the creatures following them, he could not match them
to any of the creatures he was familiar with. A few of the animals
resembled the resonance of wolves, though these creatures seemed to
be more intelligent. He could sense the creatures using
their
yar
to
communicate with each other in a crude language, similar to what
Guardians used to coordinate searches with scouts. These creatures
were at least twice the size of a wolf as well.

“
Are these animals
dangerous?” Ornico asked, nervously fingering his sword.

“
They shouldn’t be, with me
here,” Dedran said frowning slightly. “You can never tell with
strangers though. Hectres are extremely intelligent. Most packs
consider humans too much trouble to attack, but if they think you
are helpless, they usually become more interested. They know that
the two of you are not helpless, so my guess would be that they are
just curious.”

Captain Jorbran watched
Dedran suspiciously. He could feel Dedran's
yar
responding to the Hectres in the
same manner of communication the Hectres were using. He had a
feeling that some of the local wildlife following them were there
at Dedran’s request. Dedran had always had a tendency toward the
melodramatic. When they were in the Tar Ri’ San, he would pretend
to know less than he really did. When the time came for the monthly
skill test, he would miraculously transform into one of the most
knowledgeable and adept students. Pulling the carpet out from under
people's feet was a talent Dedran had honed to a razor
edge.

Ornico was several years
younger than Dedran. His face was taut with alertness as he
searched the surroundings with his eyes, as well as his
yar
. Captain Jorbran
caught his eye. He rolled his eyes to the sky. Ornico grinned
sheepishly back at him, relaxing slightly. Ornico would make a good
officer someday. He had a quick mind and a solid discipline that
the Guardian Council prized so highly.

They continued for another
half hour before reaching a twenty-foot high wall of green hedges.
The wall of hedges curved slightly to either side. Captain Jorbran
realized the wall made a giant circle around the stump. Dedran led
them along the outer perimeter of the wall until they reached an
opening.

There were no trees within
the inner circle of the hedge wall. The ground was a soft loam that
gave the impression of being alive. Stone benches made a dotted
ring around what must have been the stump. If he had not expected
to see a stump, he would not have recognized it as such. It was
easily fifty feet across. It looked like a large platform adorned
with bark on the sides for decoration, rather than the remains of
what had been the world’s largest tree. Sunlight shown down through
the open sky above and lit the entire clearing. Floating motionless
in the center of the Stump was the image of a portly, old man with
wispy shoulder-length brown hair. He wore a tattered brown robe of
homespun wool and leather sandals. As Captain Jorbran moved closer,
he could see the man’s penetrating brown eyes staring into the
distance.

“
Ornico, I want you to
soul-bind him if anything goes wrong,” Captain Jorbran instructed
the young Guardian. “I am going to inspect him.”

“
I will come with you,”
Dedran announced, reaching up to the chest-high stump and pulling
himself up.

Captain Jorbran hurriedly
pulled himself up and the two of them slowly closed the distance on
the intruder. Reaching out with his
yar
, Captain Jorbran began studying
the image in front of him. There was no resonance emanating from
the man. It was as if he were a reflection. In the center of the
apparition, there was a hard knot of Spirit. Feeling it gave him
the sensation of a whirlpool.

Coming to a stop a pace in
front of the old man, Captain Jorbran reached out to tap him on the
shoulder, but his hand fell through the man's shoulder as if it
were air. Pursing his lips, Captain Jorbran reached down to where
the man's navel would have been. The hardened knot of Spirit seemed
to be located there.

He felt a moment of shock as
his hand felt something solid. Before he had a chance to recover
from his shock, he felt a sudden pull, as if someone had roped him
and was trying to pull him in. A sense of panic began rising from
his stomach as he realized that it was his Spirit that was being
pulled, not his body.

“
Ornico, soul-bind Captain
Jorbran, now!” Dedran shouted urgently from where he stood behind
the old man.

Captain Jorbran gasped as
the force of the spell-binding wrapped around his Spirit. It was
never a pleasant sensation. His Tramnel no longer felt like it was
being ripped from his body, but he could still feel a connection to
whatever it was that had snared him. Once again, he felt the sense
of a whirlpool. This time, a Spirit seemed to be swirling toward
him through the vortex. Captain Jorbran tried to remove his hand
from contact with the knot of Spirit on the apparition; however,
his arm did not seem to want to obey the command.

A moment later, Captain
Jorbran felt the Spirit merge with the image in front of him. There
was a deafening detonation that shook the ground and Captain
Jorbran found himself flying through the air. He hurriedly expelled
the wind from his lungs before he landed, trying to minimize the
delay of having his wind knocked out of him. With a loud thump, he
landed on the soft loam with a grunt. A sharp pain in his right arm
and chest bespoke broken bones. Ignoring the damage, he hurriedly
stood up and whipped his sword out of its scabbard, gasping at the
sharp pain in his ribs. Dedran was nowhere to be seen. The
soul-binding had broken at the time of the explosion. The backlash
from breaking his soul-binding had knocked Ornico out.

The intruder was still in
the middle of the stump, but he was no longer floating. He stood
gazing at his hands in wonder. Captain Jorbran thought he heard him
say, “Well I’ll be damned, it worked.”

Pulling himself back onto
the stump was not really on option with his damaged limbs. A
throwing knife would not be any use at fifty feet. Captain Jorbran
hunched over so that the edge of the Stump hid him and he began
making his way toward Ornico. If he could wake the young Guardian,
he might be able to distract the intruder long enough for Ornico to
kill him.

He had only moved a few feet
before the intruder called out to him.

“
I say, that was an awfully
decent thing you did there,” the man said in a polished voice. “I
must apologize for the broken bones, but you weren’t supposed to
grab my spirit-anchor with your hands. You could have killed us
all.”

Straightening, Captain
Jorbran watched the strange man cautiously as he walked toward the
edge of the Stump. He had not felt the robed man's
yar
reach out, yet the
man had known he was there. “Who are you?”

“
There is always time for
formality later,” he replied briskly. “First, we should see to
fixing those bones of yours.”

The portly man grunted
slightly as he jumped down from the Stump. “I must say, I have
gotten out of shape. Let’s see that arm first.”