The Banished of Muirwood (36 page)

Her raging heart began to quell as she lived again in the memory. Before she knew who he truly was. Before the illusions of her life were shattered. She could still hear the labored breathing of the sailors as they rowed, but their words were slurred, as if heard from beneath water. She felt one of Sabine’s hands gripping hers, her other arm wrapped tightly around her shoulders as she stroked Maia’s damp hair. But in her mind, she was in that small village as she and Collier began to dance. He had taught her a new dance, the Volta, and she remembered how it had felt when his strong arms lifted her high and twirled her around. The simple, pure joy of it.

So much had happened since then. So many surprises. So many disappointments. But Maia savored the memory, the feel of his hand in hers. She had not kept anything of his except for the single pair of earrings. She wished she still had the crumpled lily he had left in her saddlebag. She thought of his eyes, his handsome smile that had a certain cocksureness to it. She admired his thick dark hair and wondered at the little scar on his cheek. She sank deep into the memory, reveling in every detail.

Her heart ached for what would happen to him. After being held hostage in Paeiz as a child, he valued freedom above all things. Now, because of her, he was a prisoner once more. How cruel was the past. How painful. She heard his laughter in her mind and squeezed it tightly to her bosom.

Maia—are you there?

Her heart shuddered. She could almost feel him. There was darkness and cold. It was an unlit cell. She could hear the wind whistling through the eaves. Through the bond they shared, she could feel his anguish, his misery. His accusation.

Maia, why? Why?

The dinghy butted into the hull of the
Holk
. She opened her eyes, wiped a trickle of saltwater from her cheek, and craned her neck. The ship was enormous, the wood slimed and crusted with barnacles.

“Hoy! Hoy! Up! Hoy! Hoy! Up!”

Hooks were fixed to the front and rear and suddenly the dinghy broke free of the waves’ clutches. It rocked and reeled and Maia feared the winds would spill her into the deadly surf below.

“Are you all right, my child?” Sabine asked in her ear. “You look forlorn.”

She turned to her grandmother and embraced her. “I hear him in my mind too,” she said miserably. “I hear my husband’s thoughts. I want to answer him . . . if only to tell him I am sorry.”

Sabine smiled sadly. “Every choice we make that brings us closer to the Myriad Ones is a choice that alters our course. But it is your decision, Maia. I cannot make it for you.”

Maia wanted desperately to respond to him. It tortured her to let him think the worst of her. But she had given herself completely to the Medium, and it had rescued her from Ereshkigal. Could she renege on her commitment so soon? The feelings nearly strangled her. Slowly and sadly, she shook her head no. “I will not,” she whispered.

Sabine gave her an understanding look—one that showed she had carried heavy secrets herself. “The voices will fade in time. At Muirwood, you will not hear the whispers of the Myriad Ones or your kystrel. Ereshkigal has no dominion there. It was sealed up as a safe haven for you, as a place for refuge and peace.”

“Mother is there,” Maia replied eagerly, struggling to put aside thoughts of Collier. “I fear she is in danger.” She remembered suddenly her vision of the kishion. She looked at her grandmother. “Is she safe?”

The look in Sabine’s eyes said the words her mouth could not.

To my dear one, Marciana, I give you my love, my high regard for your courage, and my deepest wishes for your happiness. I fear that happiness is an emotion you have felt little during your life thus far. I was raised a wretched in the Aldermaston’s kitchen at Muirwood Abbey instead of as a Princess of Pry-Ree as was my birthright. Yet I knew more happiness in the simplicity of that life than I have found in the burdens and cares of leading others. To be a leader is to be alone. I have counsel for you, great-great-great-granddaughter who was named after my husband’s sister. Choose wise counselors to guide you. Wisdom is the Gift you need most of all, for you will face dilemmas and troubles that I never experienced. You will also endure heartaches unique to yourself. Bear these with patience, Maia. Pain passes in time and forges character. The Dochte Mandar of your day think that by depriving humanity of the awful emotions—grief, suffering, despair—they can prevent the recurrence of the Blight. It is not true. Depriving your father and mother of the chance to let their private grief teach them love and compassion sowed the seeds of their marriage’s failure. If these sad emotions are endured—and accepted—patiently, they teach us wisdom and compassion. You have struggled all your life to contain your tears because your father once praised you that you did not weep as a babe. Maia, there is healing in weeping. There is balm in tears. An Aldermaston once said: Tears at times have the weight of speech. I weep for you as I scribe these words. Though I have never met you, I love you, Maia.

I know you have a brand on your shoulder. You will live with the grief of the consequences of that all your life. But there is a sacred duty you must fulfill. When the abbeys were destroyed in my era, I made a Covenant that Muirwood would be rebuilt, that the gates of Idumea would be opened anew that the dead may pass on from this second life. This is the rite of the Apse Veil. It also allows mastons to travel great distances between abbeys. The longer the Veil remains closed, the more unrest will occur in the kingdoms. The dead wander among us. They grow impatient in their banishment. They speak to the living through the Dark Pools. You must open the Apse Veil. I give you this charge. By Idumea’s hand, make it so. Remember—sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

—Lia Demont, Aldermaston of Muirwood Abbey

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Muirwood

M
aia’s eyes were wet with tears and she wiped them on her gown sleeve, then ran her palm over the smooth aurichalcum page. The
Holk
swayed, its mighty beams creaking and groaning like an ancient man feeling his age. The tome was heavy in her lap, the words illuminated by light streaming in from the round window of the cabin.

“There is no shame in tears,” Sabine Demont said softly, reaching out and caressing Maia’s hand.

Maia felt the little tremors bubbling up inside her. “How well she knew me,” Maia said faintly, her eyes swimming. “As if she had walked alongside me in silence all these years.” She swallowed. “Lia had the Gift of Seering. It amazes me.”

Sabine stroked her arm. “Her father had it. It does not always pass from one generation to the next. Without the full powers of the abbeys, it is an increasingly rare Gift. So many powers of the Medium have not been manifested since her generation.”

“Why is that?” Maia asked, dabbing away the moisture from her eyes.

“I do not know,” Sabine said, her voice fading. “When you read the tomes, you will discern that some generations are more flush with the Medium than others. There are individuals, like Lia Demont, who rise up to do great things. Then several generations pass with little notice. Occasionally a generation comes that burdens the world with evil. History is like a river, I think. There are seasons that occur over and over. Sometimes the waters are swollen and violent. Sometimes placid.” She smiled at Maia and hugged her. “We live in turbulent waters, Maia. When your father abandoned his oaths, he issued a new season. We must all endure the rapids now.”

Maia looked down at her hands. “Are you . . . disappointed in me, Grandmother?”

There was silence, and Maia felt her cheeks begin to burn with shame.

“Do not mistake my quiet, Maia,” Sabine said, her voice choked with emotion. Tenderly, she traced her fingers through Maia’s long hair. “You have never had children, so you cannot understand. Someday you will. There is nothing you could do that would make me stop loving you. I wish with all my heart that every parent felt this way. Unfortunately, you had a father whose love was conditional on obedience. I think he inherited that from his father. So many choose to bind themselves to the traditions of their fathers. Even if those traditions are wrong and harmful. But I know . . .” Her voice broke with emotion. “I know how your
mother
felt about you. There is no stronger love than a mother’s love. Except perhaps a
grandmother’s
.” She smiled and hugged Maia again, who hugged her fiercely in return. Tears spilled down both their cheeks.

Maia swallowed, feeling the anxious churn of her emotions. She
knew
her mother was dead, that they had parted until the second life was over. She wept with that knowledge, wishing she could have at least said good-bye. Thanked her for sending her a message through the wanderer Maderos. She let herself feel the emotions, even though they were painful. She let herself cry.

“Do you know what will happen next, Grandmother?” Maia asked. “Lia’s tome is blank after that last part.”

Sabine wiped her own eyes and gave Maia a thoughtful look. “No, I do not know. As you said, the rest of her tome is empty. My Gift of Seering is focused on the past. That is what I can see most clearly, the time that happened just prior to the Scourging. I know what the abbeys used to look like, so I have visited the various kingdoms to help with the rebuilding. But I am blind as to the future.”

Maia closed the tome and set it on the table. “The tome was not as long as I thought it would be. How long did she live?”

“We know she was a grandmother,” Sabine said in a small voice. “She mentions her granddaughter in her tome. This was the granddaughter who sailed back to Comoros and began to rebuild Muirwood. It was when her granddaughter was born that she began having visions of us specifically, I think. There is something about the birth of children that makes the whispers of the Medium particularly powerful. She saw our future and began to scribe that tome for us. She gave the tome to her granddaughter to take with her when she sailed across the sea. It was then given to me. That was
my
mother.” She sighed. “Lia foresaw that if the mastons did not return, the Naestors would completely overrun the land and make returning impossible. Lia saw something else in the future she only hints at. She foresaw that because of the hetaera, women would be forbidden to read.”

“Yes, yet you learned to read,” Maia said. “You mentioned the Ciphers.”

“Yes. As you saw in the tome, Lia was the Aldermaston of Muirwood before she left. She instructed that
anyone
would always be permitted to read and engrave at Muirwood Abbey. Even the wretcheds. To keep this hidden from the Dochte Mandar, the girls’ lessons are given in the cloisters at night, after all the male students are abed. During the day, they are taught languages and other skills. But their instruction in the Medium and the tomes is done in secret. In the past, all the children of the rulers were sent to Dochte Abbey to study. Now that instruction happens at the chief abbey in every realm. For Comoros, it is Muirwood. You were
meant
to study there, Maia. You were supposed to go there when you were twelve, but your father refused to send you after your mother took sanctuary there. You have missed the opportunity to learn there in your youth, but you were tutored by Walraven to read. Now you must learn the art of engraving. It will not be difficult for you.”

“Tell me,” Maia said. “Can Chancellor Walraven truly be trusted? My heart is unsure. I feel . . . betrayed by him, yet I also believe he is on our side. I am sorely conflicted.”

“Of course you are,” Sabine said, patting her arm. “You have every reason to be distrustful. He is a senior member of the Victus. They are the ones who control the politics between the kingdoms. They scheme and plot amongst themselves to choose which kingdoms will go to war against each other and to provoke the outcome they desire. They broker the truces and arrange for the payment of ransoms and the murder of rivals. They are superstitiously hostile against the mastons, fearing any power that they cannot manipulate or control.

“You see, Maia, when the first ships returned, the Naestors laid a cunning trap. They welcomed the mastons as the rightful rulers of the land. They had learned a great deal from the artifacts left behind . . . and developed some small, distorted understanding of the rituals and customs. They revered knowledge and hoarded these artifacts, like the Leerings we passed when we left. The jewelry you were wearing, the necklaces and rings and bracelets. That was melted aurichalcum, Maia—the melted tomes from the ancient generations, fashioned by goldsmiths into jewelry. The Dochte Mandar believe that those jewels have great power because of what they were made from. But the power of the Medium is not transmitted that way.” She shook her head and chuckled.

“It was the intent of the Naestors all along,” Sabine continued, “to enslave the mastons. They suspected, because of the Earl of Dieyre’s writings, that they would return someday, and they feared losing the abandoned kingdoms they had claimed. When the mastons returned, they greeted them with celebrations and festivals and honors. The Naestors acceded the lands and abandoned cities to the mastons with the intent of re-creating the kingdoms of the past and restoring the fallen realms to their previous glory. You see, they lacked so much of the knowledge the mastons possessed—how to build, how to make music, how to restore the ruins that were left behind. Their only request was for their own religion—that of the Dochte Mandar—to remain among the populace, allowing the people to decide between it and the maston ways. The goal of the Dochte Mandar was to learn the crafts they did not know, corrupt the mastons through generosity, and then turn on the mastons and enslave them before the abbeys were finished. They suspected, and rightly so, that not
all
the mastons had returned. They began seeking Assinica, knowing it existed, and sent multiple expeditions into the sea from Naess to hunt for it. They were not willing to risk that the balance would be destroyed and the mastons would conquer them.”

Maia stared at her grandmother. It was difficult to keep up with so much information, but it meshed well with what she had learned in Lia’s tome and from her predictions of the future and with what Corriveaux had said to her.

“But according to Lia’s tome, your mother kept it secret,” Maia said, “that the Apse Veils were still closed. She knew that if the abbeys were rebuilt, not only would the doorway to Idumea open, but also the doorways that connected the various abbeys . . . including Assinica.”

“Exactly! The Dochte Mandar have efficient spies and can move information quickly between the kingdoms, but never as quickly as the mastons could move when the abbeys were fully functioning. They fear this most of all, that they will lose their power over the populace once the Veils open. They would rather destroy the abbeys again than relinquish the power and wealth they have accumulated. They are so desperate to prevent this, Maia, that they were willing to unleash the hetaera in order to stop it.” Her face was grave and serious. “I was able to persuade Chancellor Walraven of this finally. You see, I was at Muirwood when your father and mother’s marriage was on trial. I was there in secret, or your father would
never
have come. As the High Seer, I would never sanction the divorce.”

“I did not even
know
you were the High Seer,” Maia said, shaking her head. “It has been a great secret. I knew very little of my mother’s Family in Pry-Ree except for a few cousins I met when I was younger. And I heard you were an Aldermaston.”

Sabine smiled. “There is a great deal of resentment because the High Seership has remained in Pry-Ree. It was held in Avinion during Lia’s time. Hautland aspires for it. They are building a grand city, as you know. But as you also know, coin corrupts the heart. Riches are an illusion. I do not tarry in one kingdom for very long, so the petitions must follow me where I roam. I was lured to Naess recently . . . This is grim news, but I must share it with you.” She took Maia’s hands and stroked them. “Our brothers and sisters in Assinica grew worried since our long absence. They were expecting that the Apse Veils would be opened by now, that our kingdoms would rejoin. They feared we were enslaved to the Naestors, so they sent a ship to seek after us.” She shook her head. “That ship was blown by a storm and discovered by the Naestors, who abducted and murdered them when they learned who they were. There was a tome on board the vessel, which they brought back. They could not read it, for the language was written in a cipher—a code. Only someone with the right Gift could read it. They invited me, as the High Seer, to come to Naess and read a curious tome they said they had discovered. Their intent, as you know, was to get me to read and translate it before using you to murder me.” She smiled sadly. “What they did not know was that Lia had forewarned me about your condition. And Lia knew, as I did, that you would not succumb to their offer of power, just as Lia did not succumb when they tried to win her favor.”

There was a firm pounding on the door of the cabin. Sabine Demont rose from the bedside and walked to the door. When she opened it, Argus squeezed through and padded up to Maia for his ears to be scratched. His tongue wagged faithfully.

“By Cheshu, lass,” Jon Tayt muttered, “get your own hound!”

“What is it, Jon?” Sabine asked.

“Yesterday you wanted to know when we sailed past Pry-Ree. It was glorious seeing the Myniths again, even from the ship. I long to hunt in those woods again. But you asked this morning that I tell you when we reached the coast of Comoros and the Belgeneck River leading to Muirwood. And so we have.”

“Thank you. Well done. Come, Maia. Come see your new home.”

Maia rose from the bed, wearing her wretched’s dress, and joined Jon Tayt and Sabine on the deck of the
Holk
. The huge ship lumbered up the thick chasm of the river. The air was brackish and musty, but the aching chill of the dark lands of the Naestors lay far behind them. The forest on each side of the river reminded her of the cursed lands of Dahomey. It was not what she had expected, and it conflicted with her memories of her kingdom. The trees were a maze of twisting, black oaks, thick with lichen and moss and overhung by creeping mist. The ship creaked and yawned, and she could hear the waves lapping against the hull as it advanced into the river’s mouth.

“Now where is there a more sick and twisted wood, I ask you?” Jon Tayt said with a scowl. “And this is where I am to be banished next, my lady?” He coughed in his fist. “Ach, this is not a forest, but a swamp.”

Maia could hear the buzz of mosquitoes and the clack of insects. A heron swept overhead, gliding on the breeze. She rested her arms on the railing, feeling the breeze ruffle her hair as she watched the river expectantly.

“It is the Bearden Muir,” Sabine said, her mouth pursed in a dream-like smile. “It rains a great deal in this Hundred. And the rivers swell and flood. It has its own beauty.”