by Jeff Wheeler
Books by Jeff Wheeler
The Covenant of Muirwood Trilogy
The Banished of Muirwood
The Ciphers of Muirwood
The Void of Muirwood
The Legends of Muirwood Trilogy
The Wretched of Muirwood
The Blight of Muirwood
The Scourge of Muirwood
Whispers from Mirrowen Trilogy
Fireblood
Dryad-Born
Poisonwell
Landmoor Series
Landmoor
Silverkin
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Jeff Wheeler
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by 47North, Seattle
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Amazon, the Amazon logo, and 47North are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503945326
ISBN-10: 1503945324
Cover design by Ray Lundgren
Illustrated by Magali Villeneuve
To Tom, Jordan, Dale, and Steve
(and Madge)
Before your great-grandfather and I boarded the Holk and left the forsaken shores . . . Before the Scourge destroyed every living soul save one . . . Before the waters of a new land lapped against the hull, or our skiff crunched into the sand . . . Before the first boot plunged into the mud . . . Before all of these things happened, great-granddaughter, I made a Covenant. I promised the Aldermaston that my posterity would return and rebuild the ruins of Muirwood Abbey. I made a Covenant that the Apse Veil would be restored and that his soul would finally find rest in Idumea. With the Apse Veil closed, the abbeys are shut off from one another and the dead are stranded on this world, unable to return to their rightful home. But I made my oaths before the visions began. It was only later I foresaw that another people would claim our country before our posterity returned. There is much I must explain to you. The Covenant must be fulfilled, or all is lost. I lay this burden on you.
—Lia Demont, Aldermaston of Muirwood Abbey
CHAPTER ONE
Kystrel
Maia watched from the window seat as Chancellor Walraven’s eyes turned silver. The councillor reposed on a stiff wooden bench against the wall, lanky and relaxed, his aging body covered in the black cassock of the Dochte Mandar. Incongruously, he wore brown leather clogs over his dark stockings. A golden tome sat open in his lap, and one of his hands stroked the gleaming aurichalcum page; the other hand rested crosswise against his breast, just under the kystrel that hung from a chain around his neck. His wispy gray hair was askew, and a thin trimmed beard adorned his jaw.
As he invoked the magic of the kystrel, whispers of the Medium swept through the tower cell and filled the turret. Maia felt a shudder shoot through her, the sensation tinged with excitement and fear. Every time she watched him use the kystrel, that same nervous feeling squirmed to life as she stared into his glowing eyes. His gaze was fixed on the corner of the turret, where several books bound in leather had been stacked haphazardly. Aisles and aisles of books, tomes, chests, and urns cluttered the circular space. The only window in the tower was above her seat, and she could feel the dusky light bathe her small shoulders as she looked on with utter fascination.
Maia was nine years old and she was a princess of Comoros, the only child of her parents. On her name day, she had been bequeathed the name Marciana after a distant ancestor related to her Family, but her father had taken to calling her Maia, and it had not bothered her in the least.
Scuttling noises sounded from the stairwell. Maia shivered involuntarily and kept her legs tucked tightly underneath her, despite the pinpricks of pain that shot down to her ankles from staying in the same position for so long. She gazed in wonder as the first arrival appeared from behind a worn leather book, drawn forth by the kystrel’s magic. Dark beady eyes and twitching whiskers announced the arrival of the mouse. Then another appeared. And another.
As Chancellor Walraven sat idly, absently stroking the tome, the rodents began to flood the turret floor. The air jittered with squeaks and rustling as the mice began to file toward the chancellor, sniffling around him as if he were a piece of sweetmeat. Soon the floor writhed with gray fur and twitching pink ears. The feeling of power lingered in the air, thick and palpable, and the chancellor’s silver eyes focused on the doorway, his expression weary yet firm. He shifted on the bench, and the wood groaned softly beneath him.
“Do you sense the Medium, Maia?” he asked her in a soft voice. “Do you feel its power holding them in thrall?”
“Yes,” Maia answered in a hushed voice, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling. Part of her feared that some of the mice would leap up onto the window seat, but she knew that she needed to control her fear or else they would. She sat stone stiff, eyes watching the mass of mice in fascination.
“The mice must obey the summons from the kystrel. They cannot help themselves. They are drawn to it. They cannot think right now. All they can do is feel. If I asked you to open the window, I could fill them with fear and make them rush off the edge and plunge to their deaths. And they would, Maia. They would.”
“Kara Cook would thank you for it,” Maia said, a twinkle in her eye. She shuddered with revulsion at the teeming mass that only continued to grow. A few rats began to appear, their whiskers even longer, their front teeth like saws.
The feeling in the chamber began to ebb as if it were water draining from a tub. As the Medium dispersed, the spell broke. The mice and rats scrambled with chaos and fled the turret down the steps, cascading over each other like pond waves. Maia started when several tried to leap onto her lap, but she shooed them back into the avalanche.
Maia tried to calm herself, touching first her heart and then the jeweled choker around her neck. She gulped down huge breaths of air, waiting for her nerves to calm.
“To use the Medium, one must be able to control their thoughts and emotions,” the chancellor said. He shook his head. “You are not ready yet, Maia.”
A pang of disappointment stabbed her, and she tried not to grimace. “Not yet?”
He scratched his cropped whiskers, making a scratching sound. “You are still young, Maia. Years of turbulent emotions lay ahead of you. Wait until you are say . . . thirteen, hmmm? Turbulent emotions aplenty then! No, I will let you read the tomes, even though it is forbidden, but I cannot trust you with a kystrel until you are much older. The old Dochte Mandar failed because they used the kystrels’ power unwisely. The maston tomes have taught us the proper way to use the Medium, and we must ensure that kystrels are only wielded by those who will not abuse them, whether intentionally or not. You, my dear, are not yet ready.”
Maia sighed deeply. She wanted a kystrel. She wanted to prove she could be trusted with one. Many maston families could still use Leerings to invoke the Medium, but for reasons no one understood, mastons had grown weaker with the Medium over the centuries. The only way to channel real power through the Medium was by using a kystrel, and kystrels were only used by the Dochte Mandar. Still, Maia was not ungrateful for her rare position and her treasured secret.
None of the girls of the seven realms were allowed to learn the secret art of reading and engraving. That was a privilege only allowed to boys and men. B
ecause of something done in the past, something related to the Scourge that had destroyed so many people, women were not trusted to learn how to use the Medium by reading ancient tomes, and it was absolutely forbidden for a woman to be given a kystrel. Some women, because of their lineage, were strong enough in the Medium that Leerings obeyed them, and that was considered acceptable. Those women could become mastons. Women could be trained at abbeys to speak languages, learn crafts and music, but nothing more. Except for Maia, and she knew that it was because her father was the king, and he made his own rules.
Maia uttered a Pry-rian epithet about patience.
Walraven scratched his beard again. “You must have inherited the Gift of Xenoglossia from your ancestors, child. How many languages do you speak now?”
“Dahomeyjan, a little Paeizian, and our language, of course,” Maia replied, sitting up straight and smiling broadly. “I can read and scribe them all. I wish to learn the language of Pry-Ree, my mother’s homeland, next. Or the language of Naess. Which would be better?”
“You are only nine, child. I find Naestor particularly excruciating. There are too many runes to memorize.” He tapped his finger on the polished golden tome in his lap. “You must never let on that you can read, Maia. I would be put to death if my brethren of the Dochte Mandar discovered our secret.”
Maia twirled some of her dark hair and gazed at the chancellor with concern. “I would never betray you,” she said gravely.
He smiled. “I know, child. The Medium broods on me. You are destined for great things. I think it is quite probable that you will become the Queen of Comoros someday.”
Maia felt a spasm of dread. “What about my mother’s confinement? Do you have a premonition of evil about the baby, Lord Chancellor?”
Walraven combed his fingers through his wiry gray hair. “I will always tell you the truth, Maia. You were the firstborn, a daughter. By law and custom, you cannot rule even if there are no male heirs. Your mother has had three stillborn children after your birth.” The words sent another shudder through Maia, and a terrible surge of guilt nearly strangled her. Still, she did not cry. Her father had once boasted to an emissary from Paeiz that his daughter, Maia, never cried.
“Was it my fault?” Maia asked in a calm serious voice.
“Who can say for certain? Perhaps it is the Medium’s will for your mother to bear no other children. Even now, we await the word.” He waved his hand toward the mounds of parchment on his desk. “I have missives to write, instructions to send, curiosity to sate. Every ruler of every kingdom wishes to know the sex of the child and if it is born living. Do you see that pile on the edge of my desk? It is an offer of marriage from the King of Pry-Ree if the babe is a boy. A vast sum. The King of Dahomey has several daughters, quite old already, and you can be sure he would send a parchment and a cask of jewels to secure an alliance with the young prince, just as he did for you.” A wise smile split his mouth. “He may still begrudge the past, but he is clever enough to value a relationship with a stronger kingdom.”
Maia smiled ruefully at the thought of her marriage. When she was two years old, the King of Dahomey had sired his heir and promptly made an alliance with Comoros, binding the two children with a plight troth. The troth was retracted years later after a trade agreement fell apart between Dahomey and Paeiz, a conflict that had ended in a brutal war.
Maia had always known her marriage would be political. Even at nine, she harbored no illusions about that. However, she trusted Chancellor Walraven and knew him to be a shrewd man . . . and a caring one. He was her father’s closest advisor, her personal tutor, and a prominent Dochte Mandar even outside their kingdom.
Maia smoothed the front of her dress over her aching knees. “Do you have any plans for me . . . to marry?” she asked him, trying not to betray her conflicted feelings on the subject.
“Hmmm?”
She saw that he was cocking his head, his ear angled toward the open door.
“Are there any negotiations underway for . . . my marriage?”
“Not presently,” Walraven replied. “You are a handsome lass, if a bit shy. There are certainly no shortages of offers for your hand. But it would not be politically prudent to finalize anything until it is clear whether or not your mother will give birth to an heir. As your father’s advisor, I must steer the ship the way the winds are blowing, not where I wish them to blow. If I judge them properly, you will one day rule this realm even though no woman ever has. That will make a difference in who I select as your consort, do you not think?”
Maia could hear shuffling feet coming up the turret stairwell. Chancellor Walraven stood and hefted the tome onto his desk, shoving aside a stack of parchments to make room. He frisked the front of his cassock and gazed through the window pane, out over the mass of shingled roofs and belching chimneys. The sky was a soot stain outside.
It was one of her father’s knights who breached the threshold. Carew. His face was damp with sweat, his eyes haunted with emotion, and Maia knew just from looking at him that the babe was dead. Her stomach shriveled at the thought, and she felt the ache press against her heart. She wanted a sibling, even if it meant losing her chance of becoming Comoros’s queen one day. She had always enjoyed the company of other children, but though she never lacked for playmates, every other child in the kingdom was inferior to her in rank and station. She knew the other children had all been trained to agree with her. To let her win at their games, to fawn over her ideas and her desires.
She hated that.
To her mind, it was nothing more than luck that had made her a princess. She considered everyone her equal unless they proved themselves not to be. Maia was competitive by nature, she wanted to win on her own merits, not because someone else let her. As a result, she did not have many friends her own age. Most, like the chancellor, were much older and wiser.
“The babe . . . is stillborn,” Carew said between gasps. He hung his head and shook it. “A boy. You must come down and console my master. He is beyond himself with grief.”
“I will come presently,” Walraven said gravely. Maia watched him as he peered out of the window again, steeling himself for the encounter to come. His jaw muscles clenched, and his hands fidgeted, but he took a calming breath and then turned toward the knight. “Come with me, Maia.”
She was shocked and pleased that he would invite her on such an errand. She clambered off the window seat and felt dagger slashes of pain shoot down her legs. Rubbing her calves, she began hobbling down the steps after the chancellor.
Maia’s heart was on fire with conflicting emotions. Her little brother was dead. Or perhaps he had never truly been alive, though she remembered pressing her palm against her mother’s abdomen and feeling his gentle kicks. The memory seared her heart, threatening to destroy her composure. Her mother’s previous miscarriages had happened long ago, when she had been too young to feel them keenly. This burden was much harder to bear without breaking, but she had to be strong for her parents. Yet there was a slender, guilty part of her that was almost . . . excited. For the last year, the chancellor had been preparing her to be her father’s heir, but his training had been more discreet lately given her mother’s pregnancy. Would she be given the chance to rule on her own right and not as a result of whom she married? The idea of becoming queen one day was sweet on her tongue, sweet as crispels, and it conflicted with the bitterness of the moment. She wondered if she was truly a wicked child for having such thoughts.
When they reached the main corridor, they marched vigorously. Moans and wails were already starting to echo throughout the castle as news spread. Her parents’ grief would be shared by everyone. Maia clutched her stomach as an awful, constricting feeling clutched at her chest. She kept close to the chancellor’s heels and together they mounted the steps to another turret. Leerings began to illuminate the way as they climbed, bathing the steps in cool, smokeless light. Around and around the
y climbed, and soon Maia could hear voices. The handsome knight shook his head and refused to go any farther. He crumpled into tears. Still Maia did not weep. She merely followed the chancellor as he walked around the man.
When they reached the landing at the top of the turret, Maia could hear her father’s voice. That he was suffering was obvious—his voice was husky and ferocious.
“Why did I even marry you?”
Her eyes went wide with shock as she took in the meaning of the words. She had never heard him say such a thing, and was stunned silent.
The chancellor paused at the threshold, his eyes narrowing with anger. His face became a mask of calm, his lanky body stiffening with resolve as he held out an arm to prevent her from entering the room.
Maia could hear her mother’s sobs. “Forgive me, Husband. Forgive me. It . . . I . . . please . . . forgive . . . me. My child! My son!” There was a torrent of tears, gulping and swallowing and hissing breaths.
“To see you in such pain!” her father moaned. “It would have been better if we had never . . .” His voice trailed off and he coughed violently. “How could the Medium fail us . . . again? My thoughts were fixed. So were yours. It begins . . . with a thought, that is what they say. And all the vigils that were held to strengthen our connection to the Medium . . . the whole city was holding vigil!” His voice rose like thunder. “How could it fail us like this? What, in Idumea’s name, does it expect from us?”
“No . . . no . . . it is not . . . no . . . the Medium . . . it is not . . . the Medium’s . . . fault, Husband.” Her mother was babbling.
Maia shrunk, experiencing a dread that she had never felt before. Her parents had always made her feel comforted and safe. Hearing them so distraught, so wild, frightened her.
“I thought,” her father said venomously, “that if we obeyed the will of the Medium, our line would be secured. This is the fourth stillborn! It must be a sign that our marriage is cursed.”
