Gorinthians by Justin Mitchell Page A

years. Have
you ever been here before?"
    Celdic wondered if Terrance
had just read his mind. Nodding, Celdic told him of his last visit
here with Lendel and the odd phenomenon. When he finished,
Thistledown let out a low whistle.
    "You are lucky to still be
here,” Terrance said gravely. "You tapped into yara without any knowledge of what
you were doing. It is about as dangerous as opening the door of a
dam without being killed from the current. This Altar was made for
tapping into more of the yara without being overwhelmed, but it sounds like you
bypassed the Altar and went straight to the core.” Terrance looked
slightly impressed.
    "Are you saying that I can
use the planet’s yar ?” Celdic asked incredulously.
     
    " Yara ,” Terrance corrected absently.
"And yes, you can use yara ."
    "Impossible,” Selindria
said flatly. "No human can use yara . Even non-humans are extremely
limited in their ability to use yara and their generations are much
fewer."
    "That is true, with a few
exceptions,” Terrance admitted calmly. "However, I do believe
Celdic is one of those exceptions."
    "Celdic is from Chasel Ri’
Aven,” Selindria protested. "They are all of pure human
descent."
    "What are you talking
about?” Celdic interrupted. "Why does it make a difference how many
generations exist for determining whether a person can feel yara ?"
    They both looked at him in
surprise. They had obviously forgotten that he was there.
Thistledown chuckled evilly as if it were some kind of
joke.
    "We'll get to that in a
minute,” Terrance said brusquely. "I need to take care of something
before we leave."
    Terrance walked up to the
Altar and put his hands in a small indention on either side that
Celdic realized was made for the palm of a hand. Terrance's eyes
grew suddenly brighter and Celdic felt a huge surge of power coming
from the Altar into Terrance. For the first time in his life,
Celdic could see something’s yar . There was more power pouring
into Terrance than Celdic would have believed was possible. There
were threads splitting off from Terrance in all directions,
shooting into the ground and up into the sky. Even as the threads
buried themselves into the mountains and disappeared from sight,
Celdic could still feel every tendril of power as it twisted and
turned. It reminded him of a root burrowing into the ground. It was
going into people as well, Celdic realized. He could feel it going
into various Elders and other people that he knew. There was
something odd about the pulse of the tendrils that Celdic did not
understand. The scope of what was happening was so complex it
astounded Celdic’s mind that a person could manage something so
complicated. Terrance's face was glistening with sweat and his eyes
were tight with concentration. His neck muscles were corded with
strain, as if the effort was physical as well as mental. The
tendrils slowly began to pull back toward the Altar where Terrance
stood. It looked like he was exerting as much effort to pull
everything back as it had taken to do whatever it was he had done.
Finally, as the last tendril pulled back within Terrance, the power
surge that Celdic had sensed rushing through Terrance abruptly cut
off.
    Feeling slightly shaken,
Celdic looked at Selindria with a questioning look. There was shock
wide in her eyes, another expression that Celdic had never seen on
her face. After a moment, she seemed to come back to
herself.
    "I felt that,” she
commented, sounding impressed despite herself.
    "I think everyone felt
that,” Celdic replied with a somewhat strained laugh.
    Terrance staggered away from
the Altar to sit on a rock by the fire pit. Selindria wordlessly
handed him a water skin, which he accepted with a grateful nod and
promptly drained. He sat panting for a few minutes as he caught his
breath. Eventually, he arose again and handed the water skin back
to Selindria with murmured thanks.
    "I suppose we better start
moving again if we want to make it to the boundary by