Gorinthians by Justin Mitchell Page B

nightfall,”
Terrance said as he scanned the horizon before them. He hoisted up
his pack and began walking down the trail.
    Selindria had been patiently
waiting for him to start moving again before barraging him with
questions. She had such a preoccupied look on her face that Celdic
had held off some his own questions.
    "What exactly did you do?”
Selindria finally asked him, her expression a blend of curiosity
and suspicion.
    Terrance gestured at
Thistledown, who had managed to perch himself on Celdic's pack
again. "I will let him explain it to you. I need some time to
recover."
    Thistledown stood up
eagerly and cleared his throat. "I will need to give you a little
bit of background in order for the answer to that question to make
any sense.” He paused and then added, "A lot of background in
Celdic's case. The Altar of Guardia is only one of many Altars like
it scattered throughout the world. When Terrance first started the
Derinian Order, one of the members discovered that a person could
tap into more yara by creating a conduit that embedded itself deeply into the
planet's crust. Terrance took that discovery one step further and
found that if these conduits were placed in specific places around
the world, a person could unite their power.” Thistledown rolled
his eyes. "He spent weeks on the chalkboard playing with formulas
and mathematical figures before he could make it work."
    Terrance finally looked back
at them scowling. "What does this have to do with her question?” he
demanded.
    Thistledown blinked and then
laughed. "I just wanted them to know how the Altars were first
created."
    Terrance shook his head in
resignation. "The Avenry were put in this valley for several
reasons. One of the most important was to protect the human
bloodline. There will be those that can use yara who will soon try to alter the
Avenry. What we did back at the Altar was create a shield that
connects all of the Avenry together with a kind of energy. I have
hidden the building blocks that make up their physical bodies in an
algorithmic code that pulses through the energy link, disguising
their true identities.”
    Celdic suddenly remembered
the pulsing that he felt as the tendrils of power emanated from the
altar. “Is that what that pulsing was? A code?”
    Terrance nodded, looking
pleased for some reason. “It was a trick that I learned in another
lifetime, in another place.” He slowed down as they came to the
edge of the hill. “They have what you could call a reinforced aura
now. They will not be able to use their yar as effectively any more, but they
are immune to the Gorinthian’s power, as well as others that would
try to change them.”
    “ It is all downhill from
here,” Selindria said, as she began walking down the thickly
vegetated path. “You should have plenty of energy to tell me why
that was necessary.”
    Terrance muttered something
to himself. Celdic thought he heard something about a mule, but
could not be sure. “The people of Chasel Ri’ Aven were put here as
Guardians.” Terrance said when he had finished muttering. “They
have forgotten they are guardians of more than the Chasel. They
guard the pure blood of the human race, some of the only human
blood that will be able to sense yara . We quarantined them from the
rest of humanity and kept close to the Rajan Gardens so they could
preserve a seed with the ability for humans to touch yara once the planet has
healed.” Terrance gestured to the valley down below them. “The
humans down there will never touch yara on their own. It has been bred
out of them because generation after generation passed away without
sensing enough of the planet’s spirit to bond to it. For a long
time after the Sundering, nothing would grow except in the Rajan
Gardens. It was three hundred years before people could begin
traveling throughout the continents again.”
    Terrance walked for a while
in silence, brooding over the past. Celdic shuddered, thinking of
what it must have