The Wretched of Muirwood

by Jeff Wheeler

  “What did Maderos mean about having a vigil?” Lia asked, while batting another insect away from her face.

  “I do not know,” Colvin answered sullenly, scanning the trees. The mud was slippery for the stallion’s hooves, and his full attention was brought to bear on guiding it.

  “I have heard of vigils before,” Lia said. “They happen at the abbey. Learners abandon sleep for something they treasure – something they desire. It is common before taking the maston test.”

  “You no longer shock me with your knowledge of the mastons’ customs,” he said over his shoulder.

  “But surely you have an idea what Maderos meant?”

  “He was talking about my sister Marciana in Forshee who does not know I am here. Or he was speaking of you. By all that is…does this river never end? Can we not cross it yet?”

  “If he was talking about me, then you need to teach me how,” Lia said. “I have never done one before. I have gone without eating. And some nights I am restless and cannot sleep. But I do not think that is the same as a vigil.”

  “It is not.”

  “Then will you tell me?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  His voice was rude and annoyed. “Because I am struggling to keep the stallion from faltering! It requires concentration, which you ruin with your persistent questions. Can you never be quiet?”

  Anger surged inside Lia again, and she was glad to be seated behind him so as not to see the impatience stamped on his face. That would have made her angrier still. Did he not think she noticed the sucking mud and the exhausting effect on the weary stallion? Her own stomach was in knots. Maderos’ words whispered back and forth in her mind. She wanted to talk about them, to better understand what they were about. Half of what he had said were riddles.

  Looking down at the orb, she saw that it had stopped working. For a moment, there was panic in her heart. True, perfect, helpless panic. Show us the safe way to Winterrowd, she pleaded with it. The spindles whirred and moved back, pointing south, following the river. She closed her eyes, grateful.

  “I am sorry for distracting you,” she mumbled. In her mind, she added pethet. “The spindles are turning. Hold a moment!”

  “Are they? Let me see.” He turned in the saddle and they both watched as the spindles turned and pointed into the river. “Here?” Colvin said warily.

  The river was smooth, not choppy, but the depths were indeterminable. A sharp, clacking sound came from upstream, startling them. Then it was gone.

  “Hold on tightly,” he said. “If the horse starts to swim, it may throw us off. You hold me, and I will keep hold of the bridle. Tighter – good. Clutch that thing tightly as well. Do not drop it. We may never find it again. Can you swim?”

  “No,” Lia said, her stomach fluttering.

  “There is a first - something I can do that you cannot. If we go under, do not panic. Do not cling to me too hard. I can bring you to the other side. If you squeeze me too hard, I will not be able to swim myself. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, biting her lip.

  “Then we cross,” he said, tapping the stallion’s flanks and nudging it into the water. It balked, snorting warily at the scum-flecked pool. Colvin tisked with his tongue and stamped harder, guiding the stallion off the riverbank. The mud was loose and slick and Lia felt her insides churn like butter as the horse began thrashing. With a splash and heave, her legs were soaked, then up to her waist. The gritty dress clung to her, the weight of the water crushed against her hips. She squeezed Colvin in a panic.

  “It is all right!” he shouted. “Just hold the orb! Hold it tight!”

  “Can horses swim?” she said, nearly choking with fear. The saddle was slippery and she felt herself going off the back.

  “Of course they can! Hold tighter, you are slipping. Slipping!”

  He caught her arm as the motion and lapping waves swept her. His fingers dug into her bones and it hurt, but he managed to pull her back up on the saddle.

  “Just do not drop the orb! Do you have it? Good. The water is cold. It is all right. There we are, it is not that deep after all. Do you feel steady?”

  “I am,” Lia whispered, feeling ashamed of her fear. The stallion bucked a little, but the river was not that deep at the point and it was soon churning through the muddy gap without swimming. After crossing the midpoint of the river, the stallion lunged up the far bank, and again Lia had to hold tight or fall off. The reeds slapped at them as they advanced up the slope to slightly more stable ground.

  Colvin sighed with relief. “We will rest here a moment. Climb down.” He followed and landed in the squishy mud. His pants and tunic were soaked as well. “Let us walk a ways and let the horse rest,” he said, patting the stallion’s neck. “He will need his strength if the sheriff’s men catch up to us. Though how they would find us in this swamp is beyond me. Are you all right?” he said, noticing her scowl finally.

  Lia looked down at her skirt. The lower half was no longer blue, nor was her cloak, but dark with brownish, grayish sludge, and clung to her uncomfortably. Part of her sleeve was torn, probably when he grabbed her arm to keep her from sliding off. Her shoes were filling with ooze. Looking back, she could no longer see Muirwood, though she thought she could see the Tor saluting them in the distance.

  “Well enough,” she said with as much tartness as she could muster and stamped past him.

  * * *

  Lia was exhausted, cold, miserable, and above all, thirsty. There was no clean water to drink, nothing but brackish, cloudy pools that even the stallion avoided. In her mind, she thought of the lion’s head Leering and wished she had drank more from it. The thought of the clear, cool water tormented her. The sun was setting, and they had reached a small hillock to pass the night above the ankle-deep waters permeating the Bearden Muir. The vast swamp stretched in every direction. The land looked inhospitable. There were no signs of human life, other than their own. The hillock had three gnarled and diseased oaks crowning it and the turf was thick with sharp-pointed desiccated leaves laying beyond the reach of the foul waters.

  Colvin huffed the saddle off the stallion and carried it up the hillock, straining with the weight of it. Lia would have helped, but she sat against the trunk of one of the oaks, hugging her knees and trying not to cry again. She hated crying, and she had succumbed to tears during the day. Silently, her loneliness and grief dropped from her lashes unnoticed on Colvin’s shirt. He might die at Winterrowd, and then where would she go? Not back to the abbey. Never to Muirwood. She had stolen the Cruciger orb. The Aldermaston would never forgive her.

  “You can use this,” he said with a grunt, plopping the saddle next to her. “As a pillow tonight.” He breathed heavily and bent over, planting hands on knees, and gulping air.

  “My arm is the only pillow I have ever known,” she said sullenly. “I am a wretched. We sleep on rush-matting on the floor.”

  He nodded brusquely and then opened the saddle bags and withdrew three apples. His hands her filthy, but he extended them to her first. “Which one do you wish to eat? This one is the most scarred. It will be the sweetest then, by your measure?”

  “Then let the horse have it,” she said. “It labored the most to carry us this far.”

  He gave her a disdainful look. “As you wish it then,” he said with a snort, tossing her one of the other ones and started down the hillock. She wiped the apple clean, as well as she could on her sleeve, and held it to her nose. The smell of the swamp overruled most of her senses, but there it was – the hint of its scent, still clinging to the skin. She took a bite. The moment the juice touched her tongue and the flesh crushed in her mouth, an even deeper sadness filled her and spread as she swallowed. She gazed at the deepening gloom, knowing soon it would be darker than any night of her life. The flavor was Muirwood. She pressed some of its unblemished skin against her nose again and inhaled, choking back sobs as she tried to eat it. Her throat was so parched, the juice only tant
alized it. As tears dripped from her lashes again, she watched Colvin stroking the horse’s mane while it fed on the apple. Why could he not understand what was torturing her?

  All her life she had been raised at Muirwood. She had never realized how much safety there was in its smells, its habits, even its mottled stone. She missed Pasqua and her fussing and scolding. She missed seeing the Aldermaston in his gray cassock, looking up from a tome when she would arrive with a tray bearing his supper. She missed the laundry nearby and having a spare dress so she could clean a soiled one. All that day she had slowly realized that she lived in the most beautiful and perfect place in all the world. The Bearden Muir was desolate, frightening, and overwhelming in its vastness. As a fugitive, she had to leave the abbey behind. Memories would be her only comfort, and they were not enough.

  Colvin mounted the hillock again, his face pinched with fatigue. He looked grim in the blood-stained tunic, his face a mess of dirt, bruises and whiskers. The shirt she had cleaned for him days before was fit to be burned as was the blood-stained tunic from Maderos.

  He sat by the saddle, a little away from her, holding the last apple.

  “Are you still hungry?”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “What is the matter?”

  Everything since you came into my life, she wanted to say, but remained quiet. She said nothing.

  “I have been too harsh,” he said with a stern look. “To you. I am…I am sorry.”

  “It must hurt you to apologize to someone like me, Colvin,” she said softly, then added spitefully, “I am glad of it.”

  Her thrust riled him again. Anger flashed in his eyes. “I am a blunt-speaking person,” he said. “I speak the truth, no matter how hard it is to hear it. I do not seek apology that your questions were bothering me. They were. I spoke what I felt, just as you do. I had no intention of bringing a girl like you with me. I would not consider it now but for Maderos’ counsel. Where I go, there will be war. And I did not come all this way for nothing. Those thoughts have…preoccupied my mind today. You are the only one that can take me to my destination, no matter how I wish I could have left you behind in a safer place.”

  “I have no doubt that you have been distracted today,” she said, tearing another bite from the apple. She chewed it viciously.

  “What is vexing you?” he asked.

  “Can you not imagine?”

  “My rudeness? Or what you perceive as rudeness?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “From the moment you awoke in my kitchen, I have had little else but rudeness from you. But I still helped you.” She did not want to cry in front of him, but the thought of sobbing filled her with fury, and she clung to it desperately, choking the desire.

  “Though I am skilled with the Medium,” he said, “I am not gifted with reading thoughts. If you would tell me, then tell me! How can I guess what you are thinking?”

  She lowered the apple, still savoring its flavor, yet suffering as well. “I left my home today,” she whispered. “I will not be welcomed back. Believe me, your rudeness is great indeed, but not great enough to afflict me so much. I suffer because I miss Muirwood. I long to see it again. All my life, I wanted to be away from its walls. Now that I am, I can think of nothing but wanting to go back. Each footstep brings me farther from the place I love the best.” Her voice choked up and she could only whisper, “And nearer to the thing I fear the most.”

  “And what is that?” he said seriously, his eyes finally showing a spark of sympathy at last.

  “That despite anything I may do, you will still die at Winterrowd, and I will have nothing left in the world. You promised me your man might teach me to read. But you may lose all to the king’s fury. Even your steward! Then I have gambled everything to achieve a dream…” She paused, bowing her head. “But in my waking, to have lost everything instead.”

  His eyes were as dark as shadows. “It is you who do not understand. You are a silly girl. You bound me by the Medium. You will get what I promised you, even if I do not live to fulfill it in person. Did you not feel the Medium when I gave you my oath? By Idumea, it feels a lifetime ago! What a day. What a haunting day.” He closed the saddle bag snugly and then turned back to face her again, leaning forward. “The truth of the matter is that you were and are no longer safe at Muirwood. You were not safe the moment the sheriff came looking for me. It is not a haven for you. Not while the sheriff seeks you. What I do not understand is what he wants from you. There are sordid reasons, for certain, but would he risk the Aldermaston’s wrath, or brave a festering marsh like this, without sufficient provocation or motivation? What I cannot understand is why, what reason he could have?”

  Her eyes bored into his. “He may think I have his medallion.”

  Colvin was silent, his eyes widening.

  “The night he stole into the kitchen. He was using it against me…making me fear him. I saw a chain around his neck and when I snapped it off, the fear left me. He chased me out of the kitchen, but then Jon Hunter arrived. When I went back, I hid it.”

  He rose to his feet instantly. “You did not mention that when you told me. You said you saw the amulet, but you did not…did he…did he hurt you?”

  She nodded. “A little. I might have hurt him worst though. I scratched his face.”

  He stared again. “If he thought you had the medallion, would not he also presume that you gave it to the Aldermaston? Surely he is more powerful in the Medium than the sheriff!”

  “That presumes there is trust between the Aldermaston and I. The sheriff could probably see there is little. By hiding you, did I not prove my lack of loyalty? Scarseth stole it when he betrayed me. He has it.”

  Colvin breathed deeply. “And through the Medium, I just took away his voice. If the sheriff thinks you still have it…of course he will want it back. A thwarted man is dangerous.”

  Lia closed her eyes again and rested her forehead on her arms. “There is something else,” she mumbled.

  “What?”

  “When the sheriff first came – the morning we snuck into the orchard – I was in the kitchen with the Aldermaston there and Pasqua. He…he said that he knew my father. He told me that night, in the dark, that he was one of the ones who had murdered him.”

  Colvin looked at her intensely. “Did he say who your father was?”

  She shook her head. “But he made me believe that I might be a Demont.”

  Again, he looked stunned. “Did he say as much?”

  “Only that the blood of my Family was still on his sword. That they were cruelly punished after their deaths. My grandfather, my father, my uncle were all killed. Just like the Demont family at Maseve. I had never even heard of Demont before the sheriff came.”

  Colvin paced a moment, brooding over what she had said. The sky was nearly black, the horse just a shadow at the base of the hill. He walked back and forth near her, struggling with his thoughts. He glanced up, stopped, then stared back the way they had come.

  The moonlight gleamed off the river, making it turn silver. But on the far bank, there were torches and lanterns, pinpricks of light against an impenetrable black field. At least a dozen lights, swarming like fireflies.

  “Almaguer,” he whispered. There was fear in his voice.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO:

  Fear

  Lia had received a new blanket as a nameday present from Pasqua when she was ten. She had outgrown her childhood one, and she loved that she did not need to curl up her legs in order to keep them covered. The blanket had its own smell after so many years in the kitchen. She took care of it, folding it every morning and storing it in a wicker basket. That was where it still was – alone in the basket, until another tall, spindly wretched would claim it.

  Those were Lia’s thoughts as she fell asleep, shivering, in the Bearden Muir, wrapped in a wet cloak, dress damp, on hard, poky ground amidst a thousand brittle oak leaves. The torches and lanterns of Almaguer’s men had remained on the far side of
the river and had not moved for several hours. In fact, a bright campfire shone in the distance, luring her with a false promise of warmth. Colvin had promised to wake her at midnight so that she might have a turn watching the sheriff’s camp.

  Exhausted, she fell asleep, but it was a fitful sleep. She knew she was uncomfortable, her back and legs aching, yet her mind was somewhere else – back at the kitchen with Pasqua, hurrying to prepare the evening meal for the Aldermaston. Memories flitted by, a jumble of past conversations, both spoken and unspoken ones. Then she was back, gazing down at herself on the hillside, her face pale, spattered, and gritty. Colvin was asleep leaning against the tree trunk, hands folded in his lap peacefully. She envied him that. A whisper sounded in the dark, and the crunch of leaves and twigs. Almaguer, robed in black, advanced up the hill, a gleaming sword in his hand. She knew it was him for his eyes glowed silver, illuminating small circles that only just touched his cheeks. Moonlight revealed the medallion around his neck, and blackness emanated from it, stealing through the mistless night and engulfing the hillock like a shroud.

  Lia felt like a leaf, hovering on the wind. She screamed but no sound came out. She had to warn herself, to wake herself. The more she tugged at the immaterial bonds, the more the night breezes puffed her this way and that. She saw Colvin stir, but he slept – he did not waken. In her mind, she screamed out to him as Almaguer advanced up the hill, straight towards them. Colvin slept soundly – peacefully. Wake up! Wake up! she screamed in her mind. She pulled at the invisible threads separating her from her shivering body. Still Almaguer approached, the magic from the medallion wreathing in the air like smoke. Only the smoke had shapes – of men, of beasts – like wolves stalking in the dark, each with gleaming eyes of silver.