As they finished covering the last few traces of their short camp, Riah and Lori were both conscious again, though Riah's beautiful features looked haggard. Thistledown pulled one of the horses over to where she sat, stopping to stare into the horse’s eyes for several moments before turning to Riah.
"You will need to ride Nenstle," Thistledown told Riah firmly. "With luck, Lochnar will be waiting for us at North Fork with the other two."
Riah nodded wearily, rising gracefully, despite her battered condition, and climbed onto Nenstle's back. Thistledown watched her carefully for several moments before turning toward the road.
Chapter 24
Morindessa ignored the sharp sting of branches whipping her face as she rushed through the thick tangle of cedar trees and sage that separated her from the road. She could feel Jesha’s yar ahead of her; close enough that she should be able to see her soon. She tried to control her emotions, before they put both Jesha and herself in more danger than they were already in. Removing her fear of what they might have done to Jesha, however, was as easy as cutting off one of her fingers. There would be plenty of time for rage after Jesha was safe.
Her long legs were swiftly closing the distance between her and Jesha’s captors, when she felt them slow to a halt ahead of her. Morindessa slowed down and approached cautiously, slipping between the trees like a ghost. Lieutenant Sanders was standing on the road with Jesha over one shoulder, facing the thick brush he had just exited, where Morindessa slowly snaked through the last few remaining bushes. There was a second man next to Lieutenant Sanders, dressed in silks fine enough for any lord, with a slightly curved sword belted to his side. His face was almost inhuman, white-skinned and marked on either cheekbone with a triangular shaped symbol. Morindessa gave a start when she saw his eyes. They were dark brown, with no pupils or whites. He towered over Lieutenant Sanders by a good six inches, though Sanders himself would have been accounted a tall man. Morindessa gave a second start as she realized she could not feel his resonance or any kind of yar emanating from him. It did not matter; he would have to die as well, regardless of what he was. Those questions could be answered later.
Launching herself through the last line of cedar trees, Morindessa swept toward the alien-looking stranger, guessing he would be the more dangerous. He stood staring at her as she rushed toward him, though it was difficult to tell if he were looking at her, since he did not possess any pupils. His expression never changed as he watched her quickly close the distance, his stance never shifting. Lieutenant Sanders was already backing away from her fury, his eyes widening in alarm at her sudden appearance.
Morindessa brought her dagger up at the last second in an underhanded jab at the tall form’s throat. Her eyes widened in surprise as her dagger passed through insubstantial air, causing her to fall forward slightly. She brought her knee up toward his groin as she prepared for the sudden impact, and felt her next shock as his hand darted out and grabbed her throat in a death grip that threatened to make her pass out. She brought her palm up sharply at his elbow, expecting the sharp crack of bone. Her eyes widened in panic as her hand passed right through where his elbow should have been. She struck out with her yar, causing sharp detonations of air where his head and chest should have been. Her yar had no more effect than her knife had. His expressionless face changed slightly. He smiled a cruel smile, his dark eyes making the smile seem more macabre. A moment later Morindessa felt an uncomfortable pressure begin building in her head and chest, as well as an alien yar enter her body. Before she had time for shock to settle in, she began fighting with everything she knew, her legs kicking in the empty air at the form’s chest, at the same time as her yar attacked the new yar that had begun forming inside her. She felt a dual sense of panic, and realized that whatever being was trying to take over her body could feel her violent attempts to block the intrusion, and was worried that she might succeed. As she felt the other being’s anxiety, she renewed her efforts to block the thing from her body. She had no idea what she was doing as she flailed about with a part of her yar that she had not known existed. She felt several odd-popping sensations, and suddenly her arms and legs stopped kicking. Stark terror overwhelmed her remaining emotions as she realized that she had lost control of her motor functions. She lashed out with the last of her strength and was rewarded with a sharp concussion making it so she could not feel with her body anymore. The creature that held her by the throat gave out a sharp keening sound as he was hurled backward through the air more than twenty paces. When he hit the ground, he did not stop, but slipped through the solid earth as if it were air as well.
Morindessa looked around herself, her vision oddly blurred. She tried to look over to where Lieutenant Sanders had stood with Jesha over his shoulder, but her head would not obey her. She suddenly realized that the other yar she had felt was still in her body and that it had taken control of most of her functions. She could feel its Spirit sliding up and down her skeletal structure where it had attached itself after breaking her own connection. Her own Spirit felt like a pair of clothing that had been merely pinned to her body, flapping around her body as it moved, instead of causing her body to move. The creature possessing her body seemed to be feeling it out, as if it were unused to the sensation. Morindessa felt violated beyond anything she thought possible as she felt the alien Spirit shifting through her body, brushing against her own spirit in the tight enclosure of her body. If she could have vomited, she would have.
She felt irritation flicker through the other Spirit as it realized that she was still attached, however precariously, as well as puzzlement. She had a feeling that it had no idea of how to rid itself of her.
“Is it you, or Morindessa?” Lieutenant Sander's voice demanded behind her. She felt herself being turned as the other Spirit turned her body to face Sanders, who stood holding Jesha up in front of him with a knife to her throat.
“It’s Dimitri,” her voice replied of its own accord. It had a strange clipped accent that made her voice sound like a different person. Her arms raised themselves in front of her face and she felt her eyes gazing at them wonderingly. She could also feel the other Spirit’s wonder as it reveled in the new sensations of a mortal body.
Lieutenant Sanders lowered the knife slightly. “We had better leave before any of the others show up.” He kept staring back in the thick brush toward the camp.
“Yes, we need to leave,” Dimitri agreed, focusing on the land around him. “Where are your men?”
“The main body will be in the town of North Fork,” Lieutenant Sanders replied, unable to keep his gaze from traveling over her body as he stared at her.
Morindessa felt her body begin moving down the road toward North Fork. She tried to attach her flapping Spirit to her skeletal structure again, but it was like trying to make a piece of cloth stick to the wall. She could feel amusement dripping from Dimitri as she fumbled with her tattered Spirit, which only fueled the rage burning deep within her. She reached out with her yar to try to cause an air detonation that would break her leg, but felt a confining tightness around her yar that kept it from reacting. She felt her rage ebb slightly as the first traces of helpless despair began filling her awareness.
“When is your master going to join us?” Lieutenant Sanders asked casually, but Morindessa could almost feel the waves of uneasiness emanating from him.
“Soon,” Dimitri promised without elaborating. Morindessa could feel the fear in Dimitri when he thought of his master, though he attempted to keep the fear from her face.
The two of them stopped as they heard the sound of horses moving toward them. A moment later, thirty mounted men came cantering around a bend in the road, reigning in when they saw Lieutenant Sanders. He walked up to one of the soldiers and dumped Jesha over the front of the saddle. “You two can walk from here,” Sanders told two of the soldiers, motioning for them to dismount.
After Sanders and Dimitri had mounted the new horses, the fox-faced Lieutenant motioned the other soldiers to
follow as they rode back toward the town of North Fork. Morindessa spent the entire ride trying to push through the odd barrier holding her yar from expanding, trying to find some kind of weakness. The dripping amusement from Dimitri only spurred her to continue searching for a way to escape.
“I have never had a woman’s body before,” Dimitri told Sanders as they made their way through the town’s wooden gate. “Perhaps you and a few of your soldiers could accommodate me tonight, and help me break it in.”
Sanders face reddened as his eyes filled with lust. “I don’t have a problem with that.” He looked back at the massively muscled captain behind him. “Do you have a problem with that, Captain Jork?”
Captain Jork shook his head slowly, licking his lips like a goat as he stared at Morindessa’s body greedily. Morindessa tried to stifle the rising panic that threatened to erase all thought, knowing that it would only increase Dimitri’s satisfaction, but she couldn’t seem to stop the terror from flooding through her mind as she hung frozen in limbo, forced to watch helplessly as this animal defiled her body.
---
Lochnar studied the tracks on the road, frowning in puzzlement. He could see where Morindessa had run forward to attack someone, but then her tracks came to an abrupt halt, and were only partially visible through the imprint of where her body had fallen. He could see one other person’s tracks, obviously the one who had captured Jesha from the awkward gate he had taken, but from everything he could see, there must have been a third person. The most confusing variable was the set of Morindessa’s tracks that followed the abductor’s tracks, without any sign of struggling or coercion. Lochnar could not fathom why Morindessa would suddenly join the abductor, of her own free volition. There was something very wrong.
He squinted at the sun that was slowly sliding behind the Eastern horizon, grimacing at the possibilities. A moment later, he was stepping out of the physical realm into the realm of negatives, and then back into the physical realm, a mile closer to North Fork. He continued jumping ahead, sometimes a few thousand feet, sometimes several miles. The realm of negatives had no absolutes to it. What was a mile once could be five miles the next time. Before the sun had even finished disappearing behind the horizon, he was already in the town of North Fork.
He reached out with his yar, feeling for Morindessa’s resonance. He swore loudly as he found nothing that resembled her resonance, causing several farmers passing on a wagon to look at him askance. He reached out again, looking for Jesha’s resonance, this time finding a match to what he remembered of Jesha. He opened a link to the realm of negatives, allowing it to flood into the physical realm around his being, wiping out any traces of his yar and resonance. Walking quietly through the mostly empty streets of North Fork, Lochnar made his way toward the inn at the North Gate where he felt Jesha’s resonance. The street in front of the three inns by North Gate was filled with horses that the officers had picketed in front of the large buildings.
Lochnar slipped through the front door as a rumpled-looking sergeant walked out of the inn. The common room was full of soldiers drinking and gambling. A young, tawny-haired woman sang a bawdy song on a small stage at the end of the room. Lochnar ignored the soldiers, moving instead up the stairway to the second story. There were two soldiers standing guard outside the room where he felt Jesha, both of them staring at the door across the hall from them as if they could see through it. Lochnar quietly closed in on them, jabbing each of them in throat in quick succession, then grabbing them and slowly lowering them to the floor to avoid the noise of their bodies collapsing.
As he reached for the door handle to the room that Jesha was in, he heard Morindessa’s voice in the room across the hall. He paused, listening with a frown as he pulled his hand away from Jesha’s door handle.
“This chit is still a virgin,” Morindessa’s voice said scornfully on the other side of the door, “so you had better take it easy. If I feel any pain, you are going to feel it ten times more, Sanders.”
Lochnar’s frown deepened. Morindessa’s voice was the same, but he recognized the accent too well. Leaning back, Lochnar kicked Morindessa’s door open, pulling out his invisible sword as he walked into the room. Sanders stood in front of a bed, naked from the waist down, staring at the door in shock. He saw the two dead soldiers lying in the hallway and hurriedly snatched his short sword from a small table. He ran toward the door half-naked, staring right through the place where Lochnar was. Lochnar did not even bother cutting him down with his sword as he passed, but slammed his palm in a cutting motion against Sanders neck. Sanders immediately dropped to the wood floor like a sack of meal. Morindessa had been lying on the only bed in the room, completely naked. She was just in the act of standing up when Sanders dropped. She froze, and Lochnar could feel the Gorinthian’s yar reaching out to feel the room. He moved toward the Gorinthian, not even thinking of it as Morindessa now that he knew for sure that it was a Gorinthian, and raised his sword to strike its neck as it stared through him. Just before he began the swing, he realized he could feel Morindessa’s yar inside the body still. He backed silently away, trying to puzzle out what had happened. He could feel the Gorinthian’s yar covering her entire body, but at the same time, he could feel Morindessa’s yar, all disjointed as if it had been disconnected somehow. That would explain why he had not felt her resonance.
After several moments, when no ideas formulated, he walked over to her and struck her on the neck, knocking her out cold. He would have to take her to Thistledown and hope that the little gnome had some ideas. He pulled some clothes on her before throwing her light form over his shoulder, walked across the hall to Jesha’s room and kicked the door in.
The room was small, with a single bed and small round table with two chairs next to the window. Jesha was on the floor in a heap, with thick blood crusted up in her light hair above her eyes. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, and her breath came out raggedly. Lochnar set Morindessa down on the ground next to him and pulled Jesha up to a sitting position in front of him. As softly as a feather, he began probing the large gash in her forehead with his fingers. Lochnar’s eyebrows rose in surprise that she was still alive when he felt the large crack in her cartilaginous skull. He reached out with his yar and began mending the bone back together, before slowly lacing the tissue together as well. She still had too little blood left in her body to last very long, and her body was fevered from the beginnings of an infection. She would also have to wait on Thistledown. Lochnar never had been good at healing people. He spent most of his time killing people, so there was little reason to learn how to heal them.
For the third time in a week, he used the inner link that he shared with Thistledown, growling to himself in irritation. “Come to the Lucky Door in North Fork.” He tried to put a small sense of urgency in the sending.
He could feel the soldiers on the ground floor becoming steadily drunker as the evening progressed. Lochnar closed the door, walked over to the window next to the table, and looked down into the street where several soldiers were trying to charm some of the local women, succeeding as often as not. Still staring out the window, Lochnar began probing Morindessa with his yar, trying to puzzle out the unexplainable presence of her own spirit in a body that a Gorinthian had dominated. It was troubling that the Gorinthian had been able to break through her aura without the aid of yara. Morindessa’s Spirit was filled with relief so strong that Lochnar half expected her body to awake. Her Spirit was obviously still aware of her surroundings, even though her body was unconscious, which meant her Spirit must have been separated from her body even more than Lochnar first believed. Lochnar continued studying her body, where it should have fastened to her Spirit. The Tramnel had been burned off her legs and arms, and there was only a small amount left on the rest of her skeletal structure. The Gorinthians did not use the outer shell of Tramnel that grew along the skeletal structure, enabling a Spirit to latch on to a body and grow with it. Jerard had created what he called Trenchants for the Gorinthians,
small barbs of coarse spiritual matter that penetrated deeply into the soft core of Tramnel, making an anchor for the Gorinthian spirit to attach to the body with. Somehow, the Gorinthian would have to be removed from her body, and her Tramnel would need to be repaired so that it could attach to her body once more.
Lochnar turned toward the door as he felt several of the drunken soldiers moving up the stairs. Their voices were loud and boisterous, interspersed with drunken laughter.
“Lieutenant, are you through with her yet?” one of the drunken soldiers bawled from down the hall. “We want a turn, too!”
Lochnar waited until they were entering the room across from him before quietly opening the door and moving behind the four inebriated men. They were staring stupidly at Sander’s comatose body on the floor when Lochnar entered, whipping his sword out and beheading the first man in one swift motion. Before the remaining three soldiers had a chance to start moving, their heads were already rolling across the floor to join the first. Wiping his blade on Sander’s motionless form, Lochnar re-sheathed his sword with a sense of satisfaction. For some reason, killing people always seemed to calm his nerves down.
Lochnar heard movement in the room where he had left Morindessa and Jesha. After making a quick scan of the room with his yar, Lochnar strode back across the hall to the other room, closing the door behind him. Jesha was shaking Morindessa lightly, trying to rouse her.
“Leave her be,” Lochnar growled, scowling at the small Zeran.
Jesha gave a start when she saw him scowling down at her, but a moment later, she was hovering over Morindessa again, squeezing her hand. “I can still feel her in this body, and she needs a friend,” Jesha said in her dual-toned Zeran voice.
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