Finding Refuge: The Marked Ones

by Cathi Shaw

  “It is the sea,” he acknowledged flatly as he pulled out a long handled spade from the leather bag at his feet.

  “Yes, isn’t it amazing?” Mina breathed dreamily.

  He was scanning the sand for something and didn’t answer. Mina shrugged. Although she didn’t know much about him yet, Arion didn’t strike her as the type to enjoy the wonders of the world around him. She felt a momentary stab of pity for him and all he was missing.

  She began to walk towards that white line that marked where the water met the shore, leaving Arion behind. As she got closer the sea sprayed coolly her in the face and joy rolled through her as the power of the ocean became obvious. Mina closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the salt tainted air, happiness coursing through her.

  “Hello,” she whispered to the sea and then started walking into it. The water gently lapping at her bare toes was surprisingly warm despite the coolness of the ocean mist. A giggle escaped her lips as she began to wade into the salty depths, drawn by the pull of the magical water.

  Suddenly she felt a rough hand on her shoulder pulling her back. Mina opened her eyes, the ocean’s magical spell shattered. She was up to her thighs in the water. Arion turned her around.

  “What?” she asked irritably.

  “Out,” he said grimly, as he pulled her back to the shore.

  “I was just enjoying the moment,” Mina protested.

  “By wading to your death?” he asked angrily, his expression dark.

  Mina stared at him in surprise. He really was angry with her. She didn’t understand. All she’d done was greet the sea.

  “Tell me this, Princess Minathrial, can you even swim?”

  Mina pressed her lips together. Okay so she’d never had the chance to learn how to swim. “I wasn’t going to go in that far.”

  He looked at her hard. “Are you sure? You didn’t seem inclined to stop.”

  Mina was silent.

  “We collect the clams over here,” he threw over his shoulder as he walked back to where his tools had been left. Mina watched him, her joy shattered.

  He looked back at her. “Come on, Princess,” he called firmly.

  Sighing Mina followed him. “Why don’t you call me Mina? Princess is a bit much, don’t you think?”

  Arion didn’t answer her. Instead he picked up his shovel and dug deep into the sand. Then he reached into the hole and began pulling out the shellfish.

  Mina exclaimed in delight and quickly picked up the shells he tossed at her feet.

  “Put them in the sack,” he instructed gruffly and continued to dig the clams out of the wet sand.

  After he’d dug up a small pile of the clams he stopped and turned to the East. The sun was just beginning to peak over the horizon and the sky was a beautiful shade of pink. Mina watched in surprise as Arion’s features softened and he gazed at the sky with a look of such wistfulness that something in her chest twisted. He truly was beautiful with the morning sun on his face. For once he looked young and carefree.

  “Do you know what your name means, Minathrial?” he asked suddenly, his eyes still on the sky.

  She shook her head, suddenly eager for the information. “It has a meaning?”

  Arion smiled sadly. “In the Elder language it means hope.” He turned to her then and Mina’s breath caught. His body was silhouetted against the horizon, his eyes hidden in shadow. “You are the princess of hope to our people. And you would throw the meaning of your name away carelessly.” Disappointment echoed through his words.

  Mina felt a stab of guilt roll over her. It was followed quickly by a spurt of anger that surprised her. “I didn’t know the meaning of my name,” Mina pointed out, frustration running through her. “You can stop being so high and mighty, Arion. How do you expect me to know my heritage when I wasn’t raised as an Elder? It might be what I am physically but mentally I’m a girl from the Lowlands. I have been called Mina all my life. The words Princess or Minathrial are foreign to me. When someone calls me by those names, I don’t feel as if they are talking to the real me.” She waved her hand in front of her searching for the right words. “It feels artificial. I don’t know what you expect me to be.”

  He set his mouth grimly then turned and began to gather up his tools. She noticed that he left great pauses in conversations. Mina found the silence jarring. She pushed down her impatience and forced herself to wait for his reply. It wasn’t until they were heading back to the camp that it finally came.

  “I expect you to be our princess. But you’re right I do forget that you are the Lost One. I suppose we all expected you would be returned to us knowing our ways.” He stopped and looked at her. “Will you forgive me for being unreasonable with you?”

  Mina was surprised. She hadn’t taken Arion for one who would apologize lightly. “Of course I will. Will you call me Mina? All my friends do.”

  Arion shook his head. “I am not your friend. You are my princess and I will only call you Minathrial.”

  Mina felt a pang of hurt at his words. What did he mean he wasn’t her friend? It sounded like he wasn’t even willing to consider that they might one day become friends. As though their fate were already decided.

  “From the time you were a small girl, I have sworn to protect you,” Arion explained as if he had heard her unspoken thoughts and his words explained everything. “But if it makes you more comfortable, I will refrain from calling you princess.”

  Mina shrugged. “Well, it’s better than nothing,” she agreed. “Deal.” She held out her hand.

  Arion looked at her hand with a puzzled expression. “You shake it,” she explained. “Like you’re agreeing to something. It is a Lowland tradition.”

  He looked at her dubiously. “You, Minathrial, are nothing as I imagined,” he said wryly. For a moment Mina couldn’t help wondering what he had expected her to be but before she could ponder that thought for more than a few seconds, he was tentatively taking her hand in his. Mina pumped his hand, enjoying how his strong fingers closed around her own. He held her hand for a moment longer after they finished shaking, then abruptly pulled away.

  Mina followed him giving up for the moment on trying to figure out the mystery that was Arion.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Thia winced as she pulled a dressing from the Hunter-girl’s skin. Parts of the girl’s thin skin stuck to the linen, causing blood to ooze to the surface. But most of her injuries were healing. Thia could feel the girl watching her with those strange red eyes as she went about her work. The girl never made any sound except when the pain got too much and then small whimpers, the kind an injured animal would make, slipped from her lips.

  In fact the girl was silent most of the time except when Arion or Mina came near her. Whenever either of them came within the vicinity, she became agitated and would hiss and mutter in her own language until Thia feared that she’d do harm to herself. It was obvious why the girl feared Arion as he still made it clear that he thought they should let her die. But Thia couldn’t fathom why she was so stressed by Mina. And poor Mina was heartbroken. She just wanted to help but she’d come to the conclusion that her presence was only making matters worse so she stayed away. And Thia noticed her sister was spending more and more time with Arion.

  Thia wasn’t sure how she felt about Mina’s attention to the tall, dark Elder. Arion was reserved to the extreme and one could easily see him as cold and uncaring but Thia had seen how his pale eyes followed her sister and softened slightly when Mina exclaimed over a new discovery. Obviously her sister was already special to the Elder. And because of that Thia thought he might be not as unfeeling as he appeared.

  On the other hand, it was clear that he didn’t approve of the Nasseet girl. He still spoke of leaving her behind on a regular basis. Thia knew he didn’t like Hunters but his hatred seemed extreme. And she wondered if it had something to do with Mina? She couldn’t say why that thought entered her mind but once it did she couldn’t shake it.

  Despite the fact that Thi
a still wanted nothing more than to get back to Teague, she knew that they wouldn’t be able to move the girl for at least a week. Teague would just have to hold on for a little bit longer. Thia couldn’t risk the girl’s life. She just hoped she wasn’t putting Teague’s life in jeopardy by delaying.

  Surprisingly, it was Meldiron who seemed to have a calming influence on the Hunter girl and so he often sat with her allowing Thia to take breaks from her nursing.

  It was on the third day after they’d found her that the girl first spoke. Thia and Meldiron had just decided that she mustn’t speak their language when she surprised them by speaking aloud.

  “Thank you,” she said softly, her words heavily accented with the hissing quality that Teague had described the Hunters as having.

  Thia had hurried to her side. “You can understand us?” she asked, frantically trying to remember if they had said anything offensive near her. She remembered Arion’s latest tirade about leaving her to die and felt a pang of remorse.

  She nodded painfully. “Yes. I speak your language.”

  “What is your name?” Meldiron asked.

  “Xyrisse.”

  Thia held a cup of water up to the girl’s lips. She drank thirstily.

  “Thank you,” she said again after she’d drained the cup.

  “We are trying to decide the best way to get you back to your people,” Meldiron told her. “We thought if we took you back to Sailsburg we might be able to find a merchant vessel from your homeland.”

  Xyrisse looked horrified. “You can’t send me back to Nasseet,” she said, her voice panicked.

  Thia reached out and touch her shoulder gently. “If you don’t want to go back, we won’t make you,” she said soothingly hoping to calm her down.

  Xyrisse closed her eyes in relief.

  Meldiron spoke. “We thought you’d want to go home,” he explained.

  Xyrisse opened her strange red eyes and looked at him. “You can’t send me back,” she insisted. “They are the ones who left me for dead.

  #

  Over the next few days, Xyrisse told her story to Thia and Meldiron. She was too weak to talk for any length of time but finally they began to understand why she did not want to return to her homeland.

  Xyrisse had been raised in a family with a high status in Nasseet. She was one of only a few children ever born in that country with the Mark. But despite the Mark being clearly visible on her translucent skin, she was not discriminated against nor was her life ever in danger due to it.

  Xyrisse explained that on Nasseet the highest status was to train as a Hunter. Only a handful of individuals were born with the skills needed to be a Hunter.

  “What are those skills?” Meldiron had asked.

  Xyrisse smiled grimly. “The ability to teleport, of course. The ability to sense an enemy over far distances. And the ability to kill by feeding.”

  “Feeding?” Thia asked weakly, feeling mildly sick to her stomach.

  “Essentially absorbing the enemy’s life force,” Xyrisse explained.

  Thia remembered how Mina had almost died at the hands of a Hunter and suppressed the urge to shudder in revulsion.

  From birth, Xyrisse had been identified as one of the Hunter candidates of her generation. There were six other children born in the same decade as her who were likewise identified. Hunter training began at an early age and typically Hunters were proficient at their skills by their late teens.

  Although Xyrisse had trained as a Hunter, she had started to have misgivings about the life expected of her at age 15.

  “Why?” Meldiron queried.

  She shook her head. “Part of our training required that we teleport with an active Hunter and join him or her on the kill. Too many of those kills were of innocent children.” She looked at them with her red eyes. “Based on your friend’s reaction to me, I assume you are aware that my people have been loaning out our Hunters as assassins for your extermination of the Marked Ones.”

  Thia and Meldiron both nodded.

  “I did not think it was right to kill children. Even for the prices that were being paid. The Hunters I trained with did not agree with me.” She paused. “When I told my father that I would not, could not, train with them anymore, he was livid. And the League of Hunters themselves became … aggressive with me.”

  Thia looked at her. “How so?”

  Xyrisse smiled sadly. “I had a little brother,” she said softly, her crimson eyes pooling with tears. “They threatened his death unless I agreed to continue my training.” She trailed off, falling silent as pink tinged tears dripped down her cheeks.

  “What happened?” Meldiron asked gently.

  “They killed him. In front of me and with my father’s approval.”

  Thia gasped. She couldn’t imagine a parent allowing such a thing.

  “When it became clear that I would not, even under the most extreme threats, agree to train, they decided to dispose of me.”

  “But why didn’t they just kill you?” Meldiron asked.

  Xyrisse looked at him steadily. “You don’t understand. They wanted me to suffer for my insolence. They sentenced me to what is the most painful death to my people: the sun. They brought me over the sea and dumped me in the dunes two days before you came upon me.”

  “But you can teleport, why did you stay in the sun?”

  Xyrisse laughed bitterly. “They made sure I would not be able to escape before they left me.”

  Thia and Meldiron exchanged a look, neither of them understanding.

  “They drugged me with Thistelhorn – a plant that grows on Nasseet and is known to inhibit teleporting.”

  Thia took her hand. “I’m so sorry.”

  Xyrisse sighed. “It is not your fault.”

  Meldiron looked concerned. “What about your Mark? Did they never consider killing you because of it? After all they were hired to kill Marked children.”

  Xyrisse shook her head. “They were only consigned to kill Marked children in the Five Corners. The people of Nasseet don’t consider the Mark a threat.”

  Thia spoke up. “Can I ask why you are afraid of Arion and Mina?”

  Xyrisse laughed bitterly again. “The one you call Arion would kill me if he could. Is it any wonder I don’t want him near me?”

  Thia nodded in understanding. “But why Mina? She’s my sister and I’m sure she is no threat to you.”

  Xyrisse’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve misinterpreted my reaction to your sister.” She paused and seemed to be searching for words. “She attracts me,” she finally said.

  Meldiron looked shocked.

  “What do you mean?” Thia asked carefully.

  “It is hard to explain. Let me ask you this: has she ever had contact with a Hunter?” Xyrisse asked

  “Yes,” Thia admitted. “She was attacked last year.”

  Xyrisse looked surprised. “How did she survive?”

  Thia exchanged a look with Meldiron. She didn’t know how she felt about divulging information about Teague.

  “The attack was interrupted by a Draíodóir,” Thia finally said. She didn’t need to name Teague specifically.

  Xyrisse nodded. “That might explain it. It’s faint, the attraction to her is fading but any Hunter in the vicinity would be able to sense her. It’s hard to put into words, the feeling. There is an overwhelming urge to drain her of her life spirit, to feast on it.”

  Thia looked at Xyrisse, horrified.

  “I would not choose to do that,” Xyrisse assured her. “But it is uncontrollable for a Hunter once the process has been started. She is recovering?”

  Meldiron nodded. “She is much better than she was when she first came to Séreméla.”

  Xyrisse went on. “In time it will fade completely but for now she is in extreme danger from Hunters and you must keep her away from me. I would advise against letting her travel alone in this area. Hunters often come to this shore.”

  “But we’ve been on the coast for more than a month no
w, in Sailsburg,” Meldiron pointed out. “We didn’t even see a Hunter in the whole time we were there.”

  Xyrisse nodded. “That makes sense.” When Thia and Meldiron exchanged a puzzled look, Xyrisse elaborated, “In a large city it is almost impossible for the Hunters to find a Marked One. That’s why the killings always occur in isolated areas. People think it’s so there will be no witnesses.” Xyrisse paused and laughed hoarsely. “Hunters do not care about witnesses. The only reason for not attacking in a large urban center is that it is too difficult to pinpoint a Marked One. Their energy blends with everyone else’s.”

  Meldiron looked at Thia, his expression grim. “I will tell Arion,” he said. “I don’t think we should tell Minathrial why she needs an escort at all times. We don’t want to frighten her any more than necessary.”

  Thia nodded in agreement.

  “Arion will take his duty to the princess seriously.” He paused looking troubled. “Too seriously in some cases. I also would suggest that we not tell him about Xyrisse’s attraction to Minathrial.”

  Thia didn’t need convincing. She’d seen Arion’s hatred of Xyrisse first hand. She could just imagine how much worse it would be if he knew what she’d just told them.

  “We will need to take you with us though, Xyrisse,” Thia told her. “You’ll have to travel with Mina.”

  “I’ll keep Xyrisse with me on the journey,” Meldiron said.

  Xyrisse nodded. “That should help. As I mentioned the worse is fading with her and sometimes it dissipates quickly. Sometimes it takes more time.”

  “When do you think we’ll be able to start on the journey again?” Meldiron asked Thia.

  Thia looked at Xyrisse. “Her burns on her legs are still quite bad. If she has to ride, I would say another week.”

  Meldiron nodded. “Here’s another thought then. Do you think we should send Minathrial and Arion on ahead of us? If Hunters frequent this shore as much as Xyrisse suggests, then Mina is in grave danger while she is here.”

  Thia frowned. She was frustrated beyond belief at having to linger so far from Teague but what Meldiron said about Mina made sense.