by Cathi Shaw
Mina gasped. Teague and his adopted brother were close. She couldn’t imagine him ever turning against Caedmon. In fact, she could hardly believe Teague would turn against anyone. He was a happy-go-lucky sweet boy. And a gifted musician. She remembered what fun they had had playing songs together the previous year. It was hard to imagine an angry or bitter Teague. It just didn’t seem to be in his character to say a bad thing about anyone. Suddenly she was just as worried as Thia.
Thia nodded. “Something is happening to Teague. He was angry with me last time I dreamwalked with him.” Her voice caught and she paused for a moment before adding softly, “And that has never happened before.”
Meldiron’s green eyes were serious. “We’ll start our trip to the Eastern Mountains at first light. We may have delayed too long.”
They sat in silence for a while, then Arion and Meldiron began discussing the swiftest route East. She was amazed at how quickly they could shift their focus. One moment they were planning a secret expedition to Nasseet and the next they were deciding the fastest route eastward. Mina sat and listened to her brother and Arion plan out the trip in detail. But before they retired for the night another thought occurred to her.
“Arion?” she said quietly. They stopped talking and looked at her. “What happened to your kinsman? The only survivor of the attack besides you.”
A kind of shutter seemed to drop over Arion’s face. “He disappeared three weeks ago,” he answered evasively.
Meldiron looked concerned. “Do you think he was contacted by the Elder council?”
Arion shook his head dismissively. “I’m not sure.”
Meldiron shrugged and returned to the map they’d been pouring over.
Mina continued to watch Arion though. Something told her he knew what had happened to the missing Elder but he wasn’t going to tell them – at least not yet.
He must have felt her watching him because Arion looked up and met her eyes. She shivered when she saw how cold the expression was in the pale green depths of his eyes.
Mina excused herself to retire for the evening a short time later. Thia had already gone to their room to pack up her belongings. But as Mina was about to mount the stairs, a strong hand closed over her wrist and pulled her into an alcove below the stairs.
Mina gasped when she saw it was Arion.
“Leave the questions alone, Princess,” he said menacingly. “Meldiron doesn’t need to know the answers.”
Mina stared at him, shocked to see that his handsome face was cruel.
“Do you know how long and hard my brother has been searching for you?” she asked in disbelief.
“Your brother must be protected,” he said savagely. “Don’t ask questions that will only end up causing him pain.”
With that he released her and bounded past her up the stairs.
Mina rubbed her wrist and watched him go, wondering what he meant. How could what he knew cause Meldiron pain? It was a question that she intended to uncover the answer to.
CHAPTER FOUR
They left Sailsburg as the sun crept over the sails in the harbor the next morning. A wave of excitement crested over Mina as they guided their horses along the road out of town. To travel the Five Corners had been her lifelong dream and now it was coming true, even if it was under less than ideal circumstances.
Mina’s excitement dampened at bit when she caught sight of her sister’s pinched face. Thia, who hated riding, had not complained as they’d mounted their horses. It was a testament to how desperate she was to reach Teague. Mina hoped the journey would prove swift and uneventful for Thia’s sake. She had noticed that her sister hadn’t slept for most of the night and couldn’t help wondering if it was because she didn’t want to encounter Teague in a dream. While Thia had been close lipped about what had actually happened in her last dreamwalk with Teague, Mina sensed there was more her sister was keeping to herself about their friend.
Sailsburg had a number of roads into town - one from the West, one from the North and one from the East. When they arrived on the coast almost a month go, they had entered the coastal city by the Northern gate, now they were leaving it along the Eastern road and Mina was stunned by the difference in landscape.
She remembered from the maps that Arion and Meldiron had consulted the night before that the Eastern road followed the sea for about a hundred kilometers before it turned inland and took a North Eastern passage. Mina looked out at the cerulean water that was dancing and sparkling to her right and filled her lungs with a deep breathe of the fresh salty air.
She couldn’t help wondering what they would find in the Eastern part of their country. So far she had been extremely surprised by the differences in the terrain in the different places she’d traveled. Her home in the Lowlands was all lush, green forests, Séreméla was a tropical paradise, although she didn’t know how much of that was due to magik or naturally occurring. And Sailsburg was a warm idyllic city by the sea.
As they left the outskirts of the city, Mina was stunned by the great sand dunes that rose by the road. She’d never seen anything like them and she wondered how far the dunes extended. They seemed vast.
When she said as much to Meldiron, he nodded. “They are amazingly extensive; however, they are dying.”
Mina looked at him incredulously unable to believe that such magnificent landforms could be in danger of disappearing.
“It’s true.” Her brother told her when he saw the skepticism on her face. “They used to stretch much further inland but over the years the sea takes a bit of them back.”
Mina stared at the sparkling ocean as it gently lapped at the shore and wondered how it could devour something as vast as the dunes. Clearly the sea had more mysteries than she realized.
They continued along the road until mid-day when they halted for a meal. Mina was thrilled when Meldiron led them off the road into the dunes, just far enough that they wouldn’t be spotted. Although there was no indication that they were being pursued, travelling this close to the harbor that freely traded with Nasseet meant they had to take precautions.
She dismounted and knelt to run her fingers through the sand that made up the dunes. It was fine and silky, slipping through her fingers and being caught up easily by the light breeze that was blowing. What an amazing place this was.
“Mina, come on, we don’t have all day to sightsee. Let’s have our lunch and get back on the road.” Meldiron called to her.
Reluctantly Mina joined the others. It was really her only complaint about travelling with her brother – he never let her stay long enough in one place to really soak up her surroundings.
They had just settled down on a small sand dune when they heard a strange cry.
“What was that?” Meldiron asked Arion. He shrugged indicating he didn’t know.
“Was it a bird?” Mina asked.
Thia shook her head. “It sounded like someone in pain.”
Meldiron and Arion looked at one another and stood. The sound came again and they starting in the direction of the noise, their hands on their swords.
Mina scrambled to her feet and followed them as they edged further into the dunes. She almost crashed into Arion when they abruptly stopped. The dark Elder glared at her over his shoulder. Mina stood on her tiptoes to see what they were blocking from her view.
Lying on the sand there was the most pitiful creature Mina had ever seen. With translucent skin, a hairless head and red weeping eyes, it was clearly a girl from Nasseet. She was naked. But Mina had never seen a Hunter in such distress.
Lying uncovered in the sun, her thin skin had blistered and begun to weep. It looked almost as though she’d been dumped here to die. At first, Mina couldn’t tell if the girl was conscious but as Meldiron stepped closer she flinched and that strange cry escaped her lips again.
Arion pulled his sword from his scabbard.
“No!” Mina said stepping in front of him, unable to believe that he would kill so easily.
“We don’t
know why it’s here, we have to assume it is a threat,” he said coldly. “Get out of my way, Princess Minathrial.”
But to Mina’s relief, Meldiron gave his kinsman a hard look. “Don’t be ridiculous, Arion, she is hardly a threat.” He removed his shirt and covered the poor girl with it, to shield her skin from the burning sun.
Mina winced when she saw sand crusted in her thin skin.
“I’ll get Thia,” she said, turning and running back to where her sister was resting with the horses.
Thia was a gifted healer and she was going to need all her skill to help the Nasseet girl. Mina quickly explained what they’d found and Thia was on her feet in seconds. Mina grabbed Thia’s bag and they hurried back to where the girl was lying. She was unconscious when they returned but Meldiron was sitting near her in the sand. Mina noticed that Arion had stalked off to the far side of the dune and was looking broodingly over the ocean.
Thia didn’t speak but went right to work assessing the girl.
“Will she live?” Meldiron asked and Mina was surprised to hear the anguish in her brother’s voice. He was trained as a soldier, she didn’t expect him to be so affected by suffering.
Thia did not reply right away. “We need to get her off this hot sand. Mina, there’s a blanket in my bag, can you grab it?”
When Mina had spread the blanket on the sand, Thia motioned for Meldiron to lift the now unconscious girl onto it. As the extent of her injuries were exposed, Mina cringed. Much of her fragile skin seemed to have blistered so badly the flesh beneath was exposed. Thia shook her head and then dug through her bag.
She pulled out a variety of jars of salve and herbs and began covering the girl’s skin with the medicines in them. After she had finished, Thia carefully bandaged the injuries with linen and then she looked up.
“We need to get some liquid in her. The burns are only one thing, she is also severely dehydrated.”
Mina reached into the bag and pulled out her canteen.
Thia took it and held it up to the unconscious girls lips but she was only able to dribble a few drops into her mouth.
“Can we move her?” Meldiron asked.
Thia pursed her lips considering. “Not far if we want her to live.” She looked up at them. “We’ll have to make camp here until she is well enough to travel.”
“Then what?” Mina couldn’t help asking.
“Then we take her with us,” Thia said softly.
Arion turned back to them abruptly. “Why would we do such a thing?” he demanded, rage simmering in his voice.
“Because… ” Thia said quietly as she gently lifted the girl revealing her left shoulder. “She, too, is Marked.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Teague paced his chamber restlessly. His last dreamwalk with Thia had left him anxious and irritable. Why was she not coming to the Refuge in the Eastern Mountains? It was like they were trying to keep her away from him. And he needed Thia right now. He’d never needed her more. Caedmon was gone - had been gone almost from the moment they arrived. He was on yet another mission to find more Marked children for Bellasiel and Omen to train.
Teague stopped pacing and shook his head in disgust. He’d seen enough of what they were doing with the children to know it was wrong.
Bellasiel tried to tell him that they were helping those children. She reasoned that as Marked Ones they would have to be prepared to defend themselves from enemies for the rest of their lives. But what Teague had seen when he’d stumbled into the common area two days ago made his stomach churn.
Children as young as three years of age were gathered in military formation in the vast cavern, a relict of when this place had been a great silver mine and had been stripped of its precious metals. They lived underground now, out of necessity, with daylight only seen on the rare occasions when a load of supplies was brought to them. That, too, was something Bellasiel insisted was for their own safety but it didn’t take a genius to know that children needed to have fresh air and sunshine to thrive.
Teague had been growing more and more suspicious that the plan Bellasiel had laid out for them in Séreméla was only a small part of the story. There was no way they could have prepared this place, an old abandoned mine, in the manner that it had been prepared had they not been working on it for years.
The original mining tunnels and caverns had been reinforced and expanded. Teague looked around the chamber that he had been given. Elder architects were legendary for being able to work with nature to produce some of the most stunning buildings ever created. Here instead of working with trees and water, as was their norm, they’d worked with rock and mountain. Teague was sure they’d played a role in creating this place. There was no other explanation for its design.
Despite it being entirely underground it was magnificent. The detail that had gone into the rooms was stunning. Even by torchlight Teague recognized that.
But the beauty of this place did not shake Teague’s unease. He sat down on his bed and put his head in his hands. Why was Thia not coming? She kept making excuses. A black thought entered his mind. Was Thia staying away because that’s what Bellasiel and Omen wanted? Was she following orders and purposely staying away from him?
He shook his head immediately, trying to clear such thoughts from his brain. Thia would never do that to him. He could trust her, if no one else.
Caedmon was a different story. His brother seemed to have bought wholeheartedly into this little plan that Bellasiel had cooked up for them. He was only too eager to disappear at regular intervals with Kiara and bring back more of the children they found. They’d brought so many young ones to the Refuge, Teague was beginning to question their methods. Did they merely steal the children? Did they even talk to the parents? Some of the children were extremely distressed when they arrived.
Not that Bellasiel had let Teague see too many of the children after they arrived. She was very careful to keep him far away from their barracks. But Teague could still hear the littlest of them crying for their mothers at night. The mineshafts carried all sorts of noises. That’s how Teague had discovered the training area. When he had questioned its existence with Bellasiel and Omen, they had used their fancy talk to move his mind away from his suspicions.
They’d been doing that from the start. Neither of them liked to be questioned and when Teague asked even the most innocent of questions, they would steer the conversation away. Or worse tried to rationalize his worries.
Omen said his suspicions were because of the constant stress he was under from the Draíodóir. Omen had once trained with the Draíodóir. Teague had been surprised when he met him. He was a gaunt grey man - there was no other way to describe him. He had no hair, grey eyes, and a grey beard. He wore all grey clothing. Even his skin had a faintly grey tinge to it but Teague didn’t know if that was from the poor lighting in the mine or the fact that his skin merely reflected his clothing.
It was rare for one to have left the Draíodóir training. The Draíodóir recruited their members from a young age; Teague himself had started training with them when he was only six. The Draíodóir often were the only family their members could recall. One did not just leave them. There were probably only a handful of men who had done so over the last hundred years. And Omen was one of those men.
Teague didn’t know how many years Omen had spent training with the Draíodóir but it was clear that he’d been at least as advanced (if not as skillful) as Teague when he left. And he seemed to have been able to break all ties with the brotherhood, which should have been encouraging to Teague but only made him more suspicious of the older man. Omen insisted he was trying to help Teague break his own ties from them. A job that was proving excruciatingly difficult and one Teague could only describe as a miserable experience.
The first task Omen wanted to help Teague achieve was to build a rock solid mental block in his mind. Because all Draíodóir were linked mentally, Omen rationalized that it would be the only way for Teague’s mind to be truly free. Then they
could start severing the ties to the Draíodóir one by one. Even Omen recognized and admitted the monumental task that lay before them.
Teague had been seen as especially important to the Draíodóir, not just because he was a Marked One but also because of his special abilities. He was one of the most talented Draíodóir novices to ever have been found - and that had been when he was six. The Draíodóir claimed to not know the reasons that Teague was so gifted but after Thia had told him about their time with the People and revealed that Teague and her were actually Halfings, he suspected that it was his genes that made the difference. But Omen didn’t know about that. Teague and Thia had kept their origins a secret from everyone except their siblings. Celeste, the leader of the Undergrounders, had insisted on secrecy and Thia felt bound by her promise to the People to keep it. Teague, who had been manipulated for years by the Draíodóir, was only too happy to keep her secret. There were few people he trusted and Thia was one of them.
Despite Omen’s claims that he wanted to help him, over the last few weeks Teague had become more and more distrustful toward the older man. Sometimes he’d felt manipulated by him. Other times he’d caught Omen watching him with an almost eager gleam in his dull grey eyes. And last week, he’d come across Omen and Bellesiel talking in urgent whispers. He’d not caught what they were saying but there was something about their tone and the way they stopped immediately when he arrived that pricked his suspicions even further.
Despite his distaste for the man, Teague had to admit that Omen’s teachings had been somewhat successful. Within days of arriving at the Refuge Teague had been able to easily construct the mental wall that blocked his mind from the other Draíodóir. Bellasiel had been especially relieved when Omen and Teague had told her it was done.
For Teague it was odd. For the first time since early childhood, his mind was empty. The Draíodóir mind connection had been a part of him for so long that he suddenly felt lonely. It was hard to explain the connection to others. It wasn’t as if the Draíodóir could read his thoughts or command him to do things; it was more like his connection to Thia when she was close. They could communicate. Omen had insisted it was more than just communication; he claimed the Draíodóir were manipulating Teague.
