The Banished of Muirwood

by Jeff Wheeler

He set down the bag and rubbed his hands together. “Chilly being up so high. How do you stand it? Let me see, I can mix a tincture that always is useful in such occasions.”

  He hummed to himself and fetched his leather bag. Maia sat on the edge of the bed and watched as he lifted out certain ingredients, squinted at some of them, then added them to the basin of his mortar, which he’d settled on the small table near her bed. Lady Shilton stood nearby, fidgeting.

  “Some warm water, madame,” the apothecary said over his shoulder to Lady Shilton.

  She nodded and descended back down the steps. The apothecary looked at a small vial and added a few drops to the mixture, still humming as he went. “Rude man, I tell you,” he started to murmur, though it was clear he expected no response. “Walking into him was like walking into a brick wall. I am no small cub myself and he knocked me on my arse. Had a vicious look in his eyes, but he did stop and help me up and make sure nothing was broken. Will have a bruise on my backside, I fear.” He rubbed himself gingerly.

  Lady Shilton returned and the apothecary smiled and took the cup she offered him. He dumped the powder from his mortar bowl into the water, then mixed it with a cut of ginger root from his bag. “A little treacle is often a good additive,” he said with a grin. “But this will do in a trice. Drink it down, Lady Maia. It will help calm your innards.”

  Maia took the tea and drank it. It was bitter and burned her throat a little, but she had expected the flavor to be revolting and it was not. She had drunk half the cup when another round of cramps started.

  She hurriedly set the cup down, wincing.

  “Feeling another pang?” the apothecary asked. “You just drank it. It takes some time for the fluid to run through your bowels. I will stay until it works.”

  Lady Shilton smoothed the back of her hand against Maia’s forehead.

  The cramping in her bowels became more violent and severe.

  “I do not feel well,” Maia said, moaning. Her stomach started to heave.

  “You look paler,” the apothecary said, his expression wrinkling with concern. “Have you eaten anything today?”

  “Just some bread,” Maia said, holding her arms against her stomach. She was going to be sick.

  “The basin!” the apothecary shouted, sweeping up the half-full bowl that Maia had used to wash herself. He got it to her just as her stomach emptied. She clutched the bowl and vomited noisily into it, her stomach wrenching with knife-sharp spasms.

  Maia saw spots dancing in front of her eyes. Her temples throbbed and a strange chalk taste coated the back of her throat. She gagged again, hunched over, and retched a second time. The pain in her stomach twisted and wrenched, as if two sailors were playing tug-of-war with it.

  “Mikael? What is wrong with her?” Lady Shilton demanded.

  “I know not,” he said, flummoxed. “This has never happened before.”

  “What did you give her?”

  “A remedy I have used countless times. It usually takes a little while to start providing relief, but I have never seen this result before.”

  Maia’s ears were ringing and their voices became muffled. The bread had entirely left her stomach, but she was not hungry for anything. The queasiness was worse than if she were being tossed about on a ship during a storm. Maia moaned with the pain, clutching the bowl even though it was nearly full of her own bile.

  “Celena! Celena!” Lady Shilton screamed down the steps, summoning a cavalcade up the stairs. Maia felt the room spin around her. Her mouth itched. It was hard to breathe.

  “What did you give her, Mikael? What did you give her?”

  “Everything I gave her is to tame. To quell a stomach, not to upset one!”

  “My lady, I am here,” a woman’s voice said. “What is wrong? Ugh, is Maia sick?”

  “Fetch another basin. Quickly! A large one! Go, Celena. Mikael, what is happening?”

  “I know not! I have never seen this! I have no cure for what I do not know!”

  The commotion in the room grew hysterical. There was stomping and yelling. Noises coming in and out of focus as Maia’s mind turned to mush. She was sick several more times, expelling noisily but producing little more than bile and spittle. The muscles in her stomach were tender from the ravaging spasms. The ringing in her ears blended with the shouts and jostling.

  Maia lay on the bed, gasping through the ordeal. In time, the jabs of pain subsided and the quivering stilled. When she next became aware, she was drenched in sweat and covered in several blankets. She opened her eyes and they felt stiff and pasty.

  Slowly, she became aware of the murmuring voices around her. There was a new voice, one she did not recognize.

  “Thank you, Healer. That will be all. Bootwain and valerianum. Yes, thank you. You may go now. I will report to Chancellor Crabwell.”

  “Doctor Willem, I swear what I told you is true,” said Mikael Healer in a nasally whine. “I gave her nothing that I would not dose my own daughters with.”

  “Thank you, Healer. That is all. You may go.”

  “Do you think it was poison?” murmured Mikael as he backed away. “I did not poison her! I swear it on my own soul! Lady Shilton, you know I would not do such a thing!”

  “Of course not, Master Mikael,” Lady Shilton said. “I will defend you. You have served my family for years. Do you think it was poison, Doctor Willem?”

  “I shall make my report to the chancellor,” the doctor replied gravely. “You may go. Both of you.”

  “She is stirring. Maia? Are you awake?” It was Lady Shilton’s voice.

  She murmured in assent and rubbed her eyes to open them.

  “You will tell the doctor, Maia. Tell him that I—”

  “Enough, madame!” the doctor bellowed. “Out!”

  The apothecary and Lady Shilton retreated down the attic steps, muttering bleakly as they left.

  The doctor was a big, barrel-chested man with a fringe of white hair around the sides of his head and a waxy bald top that glistened with sweat. He sat on a small stool next to her bed, which had been brought up since she did not have a stool. His meaty hands folded and his voice was deep and grave when he spoke.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better,” she answered. “I started my flux last night.”

  “Lady Shilton told me. I saw the bloodstain on the gown . . . if you can call it a gown . . . over there.” He chuffed. “Living up in the attic of a drafty house. No heat. No brazier. No wonder you are sick and pale. My name is Willem Bend. I am going to recommend to your lord father that you be allowed to exercise. I think rowing on the river would increase your stamina and strength more than doing chores. Archery as well, for your muscles. You are young and need to spend more time out of doors. You are too pale. That should help a great deal.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Maia said gratefully.

  He smoothed a lock of hair from her face. “I also plan to tell the chancellor and your father that you were poisoned.”

  Maia swallowed, remembering the chalky taste in her mouth—the sudden and unstoppable nausea. Her thoughts starting to spin wildly.

  “I do not believe it was Lady Shilton or her bumbling apothecary.” His voice was quiet, raspy. “But you must be on your guard, Lady Maia. If any food tastes strange to you, you should not eat of it. Drink only water. I think the lord chancellor will start an investigation. If someone wanted you dead, they may try again when they learned they have failed.”

  He leaned forward and then rose, his brow wrinkling. “This concerns me deeply. I must speak to the king about this matter. Do you have a message for him?”

  Maia stared at him, her eyes wide. It was a rare opportunity. “Tell him that I love him. I wish he would let me see my mother.”

  He frowned, his eyes stern and severe. “I will,” he agreed with a thick voice. “But I do not
believe he will agree.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Armada

  Maia awoke in a bed. She blinked and looked around, finding herself in a strange place with no recollection of how she had come to be there. Even though this had happened to her regularly since leaving the lost abbey, it was still a jarring sensation. The sheets smelled faintly of purple mint. The bed had four large posts draped with creamy linen veils. Panic thrummed inside her heart and she quickly sat up. She was lying atop the sheets and comforter, still clothed—thank Idumea—but she noticed she was now dressed only in the burgundy gown that Jon Tayt had given her. The tattered gown she had worn underneath was gone. She was baffled at how kindly she seemed to have been treated. It would not have surprised her to have awoken in chains.

  Quickly, she scooted off the edge of the bed and nearly stumbled when she hit the floor as the bedstead was much higher than she had anticipated. The room was small and paneled in dark wood wainscoting. There was a single window on the far wall across from the bed, and though thick velvet curtains covered most of it, she could see a faint dawn light. She hurried to the window and pulled the curtain aside.

  It was just before dawn. How much time had passed? She had no idea. The window opened onto a rear alley, very narrow. Maia brushed hair from her eyes, trying to quell the feeling of panic. She gazed down at the alley and realized she was on an upper floor. The buildings on either side of hers were quite narrow and two levels high, each with steep shingled roofs. The windows were roughly the same size and shape and all the ones on the upper floors, hers included, had planter boxes just outside growing an assortment of wildflowers. Gutters and sluices lined each rooftop with spouts to pour water down into the gullies below. Farther down the street the road bent, revealing another row of houses with steep roofs and gabled windows. Behind one of these, she saw another house, perhaps four stories high, with a triangular roof. She craned her neck to see beyond the large house and caught sight of a huge scaffolding and a tower under construction. There were no workers on the scaffolding.

  “Where am I?” she whispered, touching the glass. The buildings on her side of the street were made of brick. On the other side, the walls were daubed with white plaster and supported by stained wooden beams. The streets below were immaculately clean—the cobblestones looked as if they had been brushed the night before—which was odd for an alley. A few lazy streams of smoke came from some of the chimneys.

  Maia pushed away from the window and examined the room. Other than the tall four-post bed, there was a small couch where she found her other dress, her pack, and her boots. There was a corner table on the other side with two small wooden chairs. On the table was the leftover tray from the previous night’s meal—cold chicken bones, sprigs of asparagus, and a few crushed lime rinds. She rubbed her stomach and did not feel hunger. There were two goblets at the table. Two sets of dishes.

  She stared at the remains of the meal she did not remember eating, her insides twisting with worry, her mind full of fog. She struggled to remember. There had been a snowstorm. A snow cave. She and Jon Tayt had fled across the mountains into Hautland in search of Rostick, where she was to meet with one of her . . . her husband’s trading ships. They had been hunted and trapped in the mountains and she had caused an avalanche. She remembered a man pulling her out of the snow. His face was a blur in her mind, but she could easily envision his royal tunic and furred cloak. He spoke Hautlander. Then blackness consumed her world. The Myriad One had taken control again. As she wrung her hands, she wondered how long it had lasted, how many days she had been unconscious, and what had befallen Jon Tayt and Argus. They had not borne the brunt of the avalanche, but even though she respected her friends’ survival abilities, she worried about their safety.

  Desperate to escape, she whirled and ran to the door. It was locked. She wrested it, but despite her best efforts, it would only jiggle.

  She had been locked inside a room? She searched for other signs that would help her understand where she was. Could this place be Rostick? She remembered asking the man to take her there, though of course it had been the other who had spoken the question.

  The morning light slowly flooded the room through the parted curtain. What should she do? Wait in the chamber for the man to come back?

  But why would he have locked her in?

  She was already feeling uneasy and now dread flooded in. Perhaps he had come to his senses after she had fallen asleep and could no longer manipulate his feelings. Could he have fled to summon the Dochte Mandar?

  That decided her. She had to leave.

  Maia tried the door handle again. The door itself was sturdy and she lacked the strength to force it open. What other options did she have? Her eyes went back to the window and she remembered how she had climbed out of the garret window in Lady Shilton’s house to see her father. She went to it and it opened freely, without even the hint of a squeal. The scent of the flowers in the planter box filled the room. Maia stared down and judged that the street below was too far to jump. She rushed over to the bed and pulled down the long veils and began tying them together. Then she added some of the bed sheets and fastened one end to one of the sturdy posts.

  Her stomach churned with worry as her ears detected the sound of movement on the lower floor. Boot falls thudded and tromped. Voices murmured. Maia hurriedly stuffed her spare gown into her pack and flung it closed. She swung it around her shoulders and then took the makeshift rope to the window and tossed it down. After testing the strength of the knots, she climbed up onto the window sill and quickly climbed down to the street below.

  The air was chill—the alley still full of shade. She started down the cobbled road toward the place where she had seen the scaffolding. As the highest structure in the vicinity, it would give her a good view of the city. She pulled her cloak hood over her head and folded her arms, walking briskly. The alley was empty.

  She realized she had more than one problem. She could not speak Hautlander, and she did not know where she was. Opening her mouth to others would quickly reveal her as a foreigner. She knew that all the kingdoms were perpetually at war with each other, and if her identity was discovered, she would be a ransom target. If they discovered her brand, she would be dead.

  At the end of the street, she turned and walked through several more twisting alleys before she reached the scaffolding. There was something familiar about the place. She had never been to Hautland before, but it felt as if she had dreamed of it. The scaffolding surrounded the construction of an abbey, that was plain enough. Maia stared up at the progress, the stone blocks seated on top of each other. There were large wooden cranes and ropes and pulleys, and huge barrels and crates were strapped down nearby. She could hear the lowing of oxen, but they were fixed in pens nearby and all the manure had been swept and brushed away. What a clean city.

  The abbey was long and very skinny and tall, jutting up above the houses like a giant spike. Maia walked around the grounds, amazed at the construction. Even though it was not finished, she could see the finished abbey in her mind’s eye, with a huge spike-like steeple that was high enough to pierce the clouds. It was a different design than she had seen in any of the other kingdoms she had visited. It was bold and sharp, like a sword thrusting up through the heart of the city.

  Maia thought it would help get her bearings if she had a better view, so she walked over to the nearest portion of scaffolding and started to climb. She ascended platform after platform, rising up until she was higher than the lowest rooftops. Then she went higher still, climbing up above the larger mansions. The wind teased the edges of her cloak, but the movement helped keep her warm. From above, it was a strange and interesting city; with so many steep-roofed buildings crammed together she could hardly see the streets. The roofs were so steep in pitch, she could only see the edges like blades of grass.

  Turning around and gripping the scaffolding poles, she opened her mouth in wonder as
she continued to survey the city beneath her. Three more abbeys were under construction, each one with the same spike-like steeple. She quickly got her bearings and, by turning around, realized that she was on an island, surrounded by a river. It was roughly a circle, though lopsided, and every part of it was covered and paved. The ground was relatively flat, not at all like the island abbey of Dochte. But she could tell that the Hautlanders were hastily building a city to rival that of the ancient Dahomeyjan abbey. Towering walls surrounded the island, and huge wedge-shaped battlements had been built on the other side of the river, with an enormous jagged moat carved into the ground. The city was protected by two channels of water, she realized—the river, meandering north among green hills spotted with trees and, not too far distant, the sea. She was on the northern coast of Hautland. It amazed her.

  Rostick.

  She stared at the intricate design of the fortifications, the newness of the construction. It seemed as if the entire kingdom had gathered together in this one bend of the river to raise an edifice that would fulfill a defensive purpose while also serving as an outpost for trade. There were the docks! Though the walls separated the docks from the city, she could see the masts of ships down below. And beyond the bridges and battlements, manors and halls, she could see at least seven towers and a fortress that overlooked the mouth of the river at the north edge of the city. And there were more ships by that fortress—hundreds of them. It was an armada. She had not realized so many ships could even exist, let alone be anchored together in a single massive harbor.

  She stared at the docks, the bridges, the abbeys, trying to puzzle the pieces together. It was all new construction, not broken remnants from the past. There were shipyards everywhere. Why so many? What would these ships be used for?

  The answer came to her—clear and undeniable. Invasion. These were warships, not fishing vessels. They intended to wage war. Her heart panged with dread. These were new. They would be sailing for Comoros to humble her father for expelling the Dochte Mandar from his realm. Her mind filled with the possibility of every kingdom attacking Comoros, just as Comoros had humbled Pry-Ree in the distant past.