The Void of Muirwood

by Jeff Wheeler

  A small smile curled the corner of Murer’s mouth. A sad smile. She sighed and breathed no more.

  Maia gently set her down on the hard stone. She touched the cold hand, watching for a moment. Then, shakily, she stood and turned to face the hetaera Leering. The sigil burned and hissed angrily, glowering at her. Her injured arm burned now that the battle was done.

  She silenced the Leering with her mind and closed the water Leerings that had summoned and drained the seawater. They obeyed her.

  As she stood there in her drenched gown, staring at the cooling sigil of the entwined serpents—the one that had been unwittingly branded on her shoulder—she realized a deep truth. There was only one Family in all the seven kingdoms that was immune to the plague. Collier was a reckless swordsman because he could not be killed by a sword or a dagger. She doubted he even knew the truth. The kishion’s wound had not been mortal. And she realized with sweet joy that she could kiss him, and she could kiss his Family, and she could one day even kiss her own children because they would share in his protection.

  Closing her eyes, she sank to the stones on her trembling knees, overcome by an immense feeling of gratitude. The Medium had never deserted her. It had guided her path all along.

  Thank you, she whispered in the silence of her mind. Her heart was overflowing. Collier was alive. And he was not as injured as she had supposed. You did not have to bless me this much. I would have served your will regardless.

  Rising from her prayer, her arms stinging with pain, she walked up the ramp to the doors, determined to face the kishion and seal the hetaera’s lair forever.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Hunted

  When Maia emerged from the tunnel after revoking the door Leering’s power, which would prevent others from entering the lair, the sun shone down on her in blinding rays, forcing her to raise her uninjured arm to shield her eyes. She strained for sounds to help her understand what had happened, but the story was laid out before her. There was a dead man guarding the porch. Her kishion had won the battle.

  She stepped away from the corpse, sick of death, and wandered a short way from the entrance. The kishion approached her from a distance, his face hardened with determination and strength. In one hand he clutched the chains of several kystrels, the medallions swaying as he walked. She had fastened the one she had taken from Murer to her girdle, and it hung against her leg. His rucksack was slung over his shoulder. The kishion stared at her as he approached, his grave expression shifting to one of worry.

  “You are bleeding,” he said, rushing up to her worriedly. He looked over her shoulder at the dark tunnel, as if expecting another enemy to emerge.

  “Murer is dead,” Maia said.

  The kishion stared at her in astonishment. “You killed her?”

  Maia could read his thoughts in his expression. He could not believe she, of anyone, would harm another person. She gripped her cut arm tightly, wincing from the pain. “She fell on her own blade.”

  “After stabbing you, it seems,” he said. Then, taking her by the arm, he led her away from the opening, back toward the little garden they had visited on their first journey. “The Dochte Mandar are all dead, even the one who ran away.”

  She was appalled by his brutal efficiency. They reached the small stone enclosure, and he quickly knelt in the soft turf and swung his rucksack loose. Inside, she saw a blue-stained leather bag of powdered woad, some needles and gut thread, and small strips of cloth for bandages.

  “Sit here.” He gestured next to him.

  She obeyed, but she did not feel at ease. As she watched the sinking sun, a feeling of urgency thrummed inside of her. She had to return to Muirwood. Collier was still alive. Her people were in grave danger, and she felt the Medium warning her that it was time for her to leave the kishion.

  He looked at the wound on her shoulder first, grunting at the size of it, and told her he would need to stitch it. He offered her a piece of root to dull the pain, but she shook her head no.

  “If you will not chew it, then hold perfectly still,” he warned her. “The needle will hurt as it goes through.”

  She nodded and shifted so that her back faced him. He undid some of the lacings of her gown and pulled the fabric down to expose the skin of her upper back. Then, with deft and experienced hands, he began to stitch the gut strings through her flesh. She flinched and hissed at first, but he worked quickly, and the pinch of pain became familiar. Once he was finished, he dabbed the area with woad to help stifle the bleeding and covered it with a bandage. He then covered her up with the dress.

  “Let me see the arm. Those look painful.”

  Indeed they were. Maia untied the cuff string and pulled the sleeve up to reveal the angry red slashes on her arm and elbow. Taking out his water flask, the kishion undid the stopper and bathed away the dried blood. His eyes looked so determined as he bent over her wounds. How could a man with violent hands use them in such a tender way? Images swarmed in her mind of their many journeys together. She was no longer disgusted by his severed ear and his grim scars. There was a man behind the hard flesh. A man who had somehow, despite years of killing, managed to grow the semblance of a heart.

  His gray-blue eyes glanced up at her once, but when he caught her gaze on him, he glanced away and scowled down at the gashes he tended. He scrubbed one of the cuts clean and began stitching it, his fingers handling the implements with skill and precision. How many of his own wounds had he treated the same way?

  “You must let me go,” Maia said softly, daring to speak the words that burned on her tongue.

  His eyes flicked up again. He finished tending to one of the cuts and leaned back on his heels, eye level with her. He wiped his nose, his expression stony.

  “There is plenty of food here,” he said, sweeping his hand toward the gardens. “Strawberries. Peaches. The greens poking up over there are carrots, I think. The Leerings in this garden produce food. We have enough to survive here forever.”

  Maia looked into his eyes imploringly. “I cannot stay!”

  His mouth turned angry and wrinkled into a frown. “It may take some time before you see I am right,” he said flatly. “Perhaps it will not happen until the Medium has destroyed everyone else. You are safe here.”

  “I am not safe here,” Maia argued, shaking her head. “The Medium brought me here to stop Murer. But now it bids me to go.” She stared at the sun, watching as it slowly dipped across the trees, the light still blindingly brilliant. Suddenly, starkly, she knew something terrible would happen if the sun went down and she had not yet departed.

  “Convenient,” he said with a snort. “It always does what you wish it to do. I brought you here, Maia. If others come, then I will take care of them.”

  She felt the urgency grow more intense. “Please! You must let me go! The Medium is warning me to depart this instant.”

  He looked incredulous. “And where would you go? No ship is waiting for you. You want to cross the mountains again into Dahomey? I murdered their king.”

  She put her free hand on his wrist. “I know you believe you are doing right, but you must trust me,” she said, then cast her eyes around the ruins, the moss-covered rocks and trees. There was a haunting beauty to the place, a feeling of ancient splendor ruined. In her mind’s eye, she could see the ruins as Muirwood. No, she could not let that happen to her abbey. Not after all the sacrifices that had been made to rebuild it.

  “You are a naïve young woman,” the kishion snorted angrily, pulling his arm free of her grasp. He stood and began pacing in the garden, his expression turning angrier by the minute. “You want to forgive those who betray you. Pardon those who persecuted you.” His scowl became menacing. “I watched you from the window, Maia. At Lady Shilton’s manor. I saw how they treated you.” His jaw began to quiver with suppressed rage. “Your father was so easily manipulated by Deorwynn. She is the one who summoned me. It was her connections with the Victus who arranged it. But she was too greedy; she wanted her own
child to rule as empress. I poisoned you . . . but not to kill you. I could not . . . I did not want to hurt you.” His face twitched with suffering. “I . . . care for you. I have never . . . cared for anyone.”

  She could almost see the thoughts swirling around his mind. Their journey together from Comoros to the lost abbey had changed him. She had gone from being another assignment to someone he cared for personally. She had never treated him as others did. The more experiences they had shared together, the more her kind ways had broken down his defenses. Maia could sense all of this—his confusion, his gratitude, his possessiveness. He wanted to re-create that perfect trust they had once shared. He had brought her back to this place for exactly that reason. But she realized that he would only find death here—if he did not release her, the Medium would destroy him.

  Her heart grieved for him, panged for his loneliness and abandonment. He had saved her life multiple times. Even though he had killed those she loved, he had done it to help her, to push her on top of a throne he felt she deserved in a world hungry for power.

  “But you have hurt me,” Maia said, rising. She clenched a fist and tapped her heart. “After what you have done, I can never trust you again. You cannot be with me! This fancy you have is a dream from which you must wake!”

  “You would rather see your friends tortured to death?” he scoffed.

  “I would rather die saving my people,” she answered. “Please . . . you must let me go. You must choose it, before it is too late.”

  He gave her a firm and angry scowl and shook his head. “You will feel differently later. I will not give you up so easily.” He gestured to her wounded arm and said gruffly, “Let me treat those cuts. It will not take long.”

  She knelt again, her heart wringing with worry and compassion. She felt the Medium’s disapproval. It brooded above her like a storm cloud. She knelt and watched the sun sink into the sky as he tended her. His head bent close to the wounds, his movements efficient and skilled. The wounds gave a dull ache and itched terribly. She let him heal her, for there was nothing else she could do. He would not willingly let her go. He never would.

  As she stared at the crown of his head, bent over her, the idea whispered in her mind. She could kiss him. She had no weapons. She would not use her kystrel again. But her lips were a weapon. With one kiss, she could incapacitate him with sickness.

  No, she pleaded in her heart, staring up at the sky. Please do not make me!

  A kiss of betrayal. A kiss that would end his life.

  As if he heard her thoughts, his head suddenly jerked up. His face was so near, his look wary and concerned. How easy it would be to dip forward and do it. It almost seemed as if he longed for it. As if he might kiss her himself—to rid his heart of misery.

  Please! Not like this. I do not want to kill him.

  Then she heard the noise. He heard it as well. It was the sound of a twig snapping, or a small branch crackling. Someone was coming toward them from down the hill. Maia turned to look at the woods as the kishion rose into a crouch, his healing hands wrapped around two knives.

  “Someone is here,” the kishion whispered. He gestured toward one of the fruit trees. “Hide.”

  Maia slipped away, keeping low, and quickly stole between the laden branches of an apple tree.

  The kishion vaulted over the short wall and landed in a crouch behind a shaggy oak tree.

  There was a whistle of metal, and a throwing axe embedded in the tree bark near the kishion’s head. Maia had heard that sound before.

  Jon Tayt lumbered into view. His face was sweating, his beard full of brambles, and he was dressed in his hunting leathers and bracers. The look in his eyes was frightening.

  He pulled another throwing axe from his belt hook.

  The two men stared at each other warily.

  “I suppose we must get this over with,” Jon Tayt growled.

  The kishion said nothing. Maia stared at the hunter, her heart overflowing with joy and hope. In her mind, Maia thought, Jon Tayt Evnissyen . . . I Gift you with speed. I Gift you with cunning. I Gift you with strength . . .

  Then, like a snake striking, the kishion leaped around the other side of the tree and hurled one of his daggers at Jon Tayt’s head. The hunter dived to the side, the blade just missing his ear, rolled back to his feet like a boulder tumbling, and loosed another axe at the kishion.

  Maia covered her mouth, staring at the two hunters who had become the hunted. Though it terrified her to see them in such danger, something told her this reckoning had been fated from the start.

  The men rushed each other. Jon Tayt blocked the kishion’s overhand thrust and kneed him in the stomach. Then the two men hammered into each other, and Maia felt true panic since the kishion was the faster of the two. Jon Tayt’s head rocked back from a strike with the other man’s elbow, but the canny hunter stomped on the kishion’s foot and tackled him into a tree. Fragments of wood exploded from the impact, and both men clawed and grappled with each other. There was no room for weapons now—they fought with arms, fingers, heads, and hips. Jon Tayt slammed the kishion into the tree a second time, and Maia saw his grimace of pain from the blow.

  The kishion flipped Jon Tayt over his back, making the hunter crash hard against the fallen branches and rocks. The man grunted in pain, but he managed to hook the kishion’s boot with his own and yank him down as well. Scrabbling up quickly, both men tried tackling each other, grunting and hissing as they sought to shift leverage, gripping anything they could seize, and Jon Tayt managed to lift the kishion off his feet and slam him down on the rocks.

  Maia winced with the pain of the landing, winding her way toward them. The kishion looked stunned and dazed, and Jon Tayt’s hands were suddenly around his throat, choking him. The hold was broken by a quick jab to Jon’s neck, and the two broke apart, panting and wheezing. Jon held his side and shuffled away as the kishion yanked the axe from the tree, giving the hunter a precious moment to draw another one from his belt.

  The two men lunged at each other again, the axe blades glinting in the sunlight as they swung at each other. The clash of the blades was jarring, and then the kishion dropped low and hacked his blade into Jon Tayt’s meaty leg, eliciting a howl of pain. Blood flowed from the deep wound, and the look of agony on the hunter’s face made Maia shudder. She started toward the men at a run, determined to fling herself over Jon Tayt’s body—she would not see another friend murdered.

  Then Jon Tayt swept his axe down and lopped off the kishion’s arm at the elbow while it still held the axe haft. The kishion roared with pain and staggered backward. He saw one of his daggers on the ground and jumped on it, fumbling with the blade to pick it up and throw it.

  Jon Tayt’s axe whistled twice, the blade burying itself in the kishion’s chest.

  He struggled to rise for a moment and then slumped to the ground, landing on his back. He lay still, eyes open and staring. His chest quivered with pain, but he could not breathe.

  He was dying when Maia reached his side.

  She gripped his dirty hand, tears stinging her eyes and falling hotly down her cheeks. The skin was still warm, but there was no strength in his grip. He had always offered that hand to her, to help her, to fight her enemies, to steer her through a crowd. Maia was not prepared for the devastation she felt when she realized she would never be able to see him again. She hung her head, the tears dripping from the tip of her nose onto his neck.

  He blinked rapidly, unable to speak, and she watched as the life spark began to cool. She smoothed the hair from his forehead with one hand, gripping his remaining hand with her other, remembering how he had always stood at her side and tried to help her. She would never forget him. Her throat was so thick, she could not speak the words in her heart.

  The tremors in his body stopped. He died gazing into her eyes, a small smile on his face.

  We have the chancellor, Richard Syon. He left the abbey grounds to sue for peace, warning that the Medium would deliver them, and he surr
endered himself to us. He is a short, fat man, completely contemptible in his false meekness and humility. I told the fool that there would be no truce. I told him that we fully expected the Medium to be summoned. It would be summoned by us. In consequence of his fool’s bravery, I said we would tie him to a stake, flay his back open, break his ribs out, and burn his entrails as he died. This is called the Blood Eagle. I told him we would do this when the sun sets. And then at midnight, after he was dead, we would fulfill our oath and destroy the inhabitants in a Void. I reminded him that the tower on the Tor commemorated another Aldermaston who had watched his abbey burn.

  —Corriveaux Tenir, Victus of Dahomey

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Blight Leering

  Jon Tayt yelled in pain as he torqued the two sticks, tightening the leather thongs wrapping his leg. The blood stopped flowing from the gaping wound on his leg, much to Maia’s relief. He muttered terrible oaths in Pry-rian, his face a mask of suffering and fury, and tied off the sticks to keep pressure on the wound. He then collapsed back on the gorse, panting, his chest heaving.

  Maia had fetched the woad and began to treat the cut on his brow and his smashed nose, using a handkerchief to mop the blood from his bearded cheek.

  “Fine . . . kettle . . . of fish,” he wheezed with hardly enough strength to utter it.

  Maia felt tears swim in her eyes. “You came for me,” she said in amazement.

  “Was never . . . far . . . behind,” he chuffed. He lifted his head a little and stared down at the leather thongs wrapped around his leg. “By Cheshu, a lucky stroke. Hit the bone,” he added with a wince. “But he suffered worse, I warrant. Never liked . . . that fellow much.” He gave her a hard look. “Never threaten a man’s hound.”

  Maia stifled a sobbing laugh. “How did you reach me so quickly?”

  He took some deep breaths to steady himself, lying still. “I will be brief, for once, because I am not much in the mood . . . for talk. I happened upon Collier at the Battleaxe. What a fine name for an inn! He was near death, poor man, and swooned from the loss of blood. I did what I could for him and then brought him to a wagon bound for Muirwood. I was a bit . . . impatient with the wagon master, grant me that, but I got him to the abbey straight away. They all laid hands on him. Maston stuff. He roused enough to tell us he had named you his heir in the event of his death, and then charged me to go after you. I came on the Argiver.”