The Scourge of Muirwood (28 page)

The feelings in her heart made her tremble with dread. She had never felt so terrified, so alone, so abandoned. They were feelings, but they were not real. Yet they were real. They slithered through her defenses.

Lia stared at him. “I am already reborn. I died at Muirwood. You cannot kill me.”

There was delight in his smile. “Remember, child. To surive the ordeal you must forge a kystrel. It is the only thing that will save you when the light of the torch burns out. The light is the only thing that will keep the serpents from biting you. If they bite you, you will die. Take her to the garden.”

As the Aldermaston turned away from her to walk away, Lia glanced down at the thing Colvin had pressed into her hand. It was the cemetery ring she had given him to wear. The ring she had worn as a child since the storm. Even amidst the despair, fear, and doubt, she clung to the thread of knowledge that the ring represented.

* * *

“They brought Lia to the Leering stone at dusk tonight. We could see it from the balcony as they marched her through the hedge maze. I remember how it felt. The anticipation and dread. Colvin was upset but I soothed him. He watched as the Aldermaston handed her a torch and she was lowered into the pit. The stone was pushed to cover the opening. She will be there all night. Colvin says he will hold vigil instead of dancing. I will keep him company and soothe his fears. I will stay in his room all night. He does not understand where we are or what is happening. I whispered in his ear that I wanted to leave Dochte Abbey. I whispered that we needed to find a way to escape. He believes me. He believes everything I tell him. It will all be worth it, when he is mine.”

- Ellowyn Demont of Dochte Abbey

* * *

As the stone lid of the Leering scraped into place, Lia experienced the sense of utter abandonment. She was in a grave, a narrow slit of a tunnel that stank of rot and decay. Long wriggling centipedes twisted in the exposed earth. There were mushrooms everywhere, spongy brown with black splotches. The air was stale and fetid. Lia wanted to cover her mouth, but the shackles on her wrists and ankles prevented her. She wore the ring beneath her bodice and felt its firm edge against her skin. The walls were pocked with holes and as Lia began to walk, she could sense the eyes staring at her from within the holes. There were hundreds of holes and she could hear the sound of slithering coming from all sides, even above her. She clenched the torch tightly, swinging it as she walked to illuminate the path ahead. The narrow crooked shaft opened to a small round room. A power from that room summoned her. It was the pull of ancient Leerings, vast in power and centuries old.

Leaving the narrow shaft, she entered the room. Immediately the feeling of blackness intensified. The room was full of Leerings, carved into the pillars. It was like the Apse Veil at Muirwood, except the images were different. There were six Leerings, all human-like faces, all women’s faces. The expressions were all savage, tortured. There were no doors or archways, only the six pillars on the walls. But there was something beyond the room, beyond the walls – a Leering she could not see with her eyes, but she could see it in her mind. It was a stone Leering with the symbol of two entwined serpents burning with fire. It was awake, eager for her presence. A deep longing filled her and made her shudder. She heard slithering noises and swung around, scattering light down the shaft. The ground was thick with snakes, sliding towards her, tongues testing the air. When she turned with the light, the black coiling serpents hesitated. Some hissed at her and it was as if she could understand them.

Learn of us, sister.

Join us, daughter of Ereshkigal.

Know us, mother of abominations.

The mewling sound of the Myriad Ones filled her senses and she shuddered with the nuzzling of them, as black as soot. Lia turned and faced the Leerings again, walking around the small circle to get a better look at them. Six faces, each with a different expression – none of the expressions were good. She realized that they were the guardians of the last. She would not be able to visit the final Leering until she had mastered these. The Medium throbbed within each of the six. They were Leerings carved by an Aldermaston, so long ago – anciently. They had been assembled to this place by the hetaera, but they were not crafted for evil. They were each unique, different. It reminded her of the maston training.

Lia wiped her forehead on her arm and saw a serpent gliding by her foot. She swung the torch at it and the creature darted back with the hiss and swish of the flame. How long would the pitch burn? She knew that there would not be much time. The room was shaped like the Apse Veil. It was a mimicry of the maston order. At Muirwood, the Leerings had all spoken at once and she had taken the oaths to silence them. None of them were speaking to her. What was she to do?

Lia approached one of them, its face twisted into a grimace of torment. She licked her lips, wondering if she should touch it. The Medium throbbed in the room, slamming against her mind as she hesitated. She was here for a reason. There was a part of the hetaera ritual she needed to understand. But she should not succumb to it. She knew she had to resist its lure. With trembling hand, she reached forward gingerly to touch it. The torch wavered in her other hand.

As she touched the stone, her mind opened up and she gasped with amazement at the strong feelings emanating from the rock. The Leering was carved into an expression of hunger, a woman starving to death. She felt her own stomach as it had been for days, fed on meager crumbs instead of the wonderful variety of Pasqua’s fare. In her mind, she saw a desperate mother with starving children, pleading and begging for stale bread. The mother had nothing to give the children. The many children. Her husband was missing or dead. There was no wood for a fire and it was winter – the middle of winter. There was nothing left to eat. Her children were starving. Lia could see the woman in her mind, could see her clutching at Lia’s skirts in desperation and realized that the woman was her, in the future. She saw the strands of curly gold hair, the worn lines on her face, the terror of death by hunger.
Please give me something to feed my children!
Please do not let them die! Have pity on us! Please! I will give anything – anything! Please, a little morsel for my children. Please! There are so many to feed!

Lia would have done anything herself to shut the screams from her ears. Then she felt it – the answer throbbing beneath the panic. She must give up something. She must give part of herself. She recognized the feelings contained in the Leering. It contained the fear of want. She needed to overcome it.

Lia was a wretched, not a noble, but she had never known hunger until she had left Muirwood Abbey. There was always enough to eat at the Abbey. Pasqua had never let her or Sowe go hungry, not even as a punishment. Hunger had afflicted her on her travels, but with her skills as a hunter, she knew where to find thimbleberry bushes or catch game. Food was scarce, but she had never experienced the fear of want before.

Please save us! Please! A morsel only. Just a morsel! For my children! Only for them!

She tried to take her hand off the Leering, but she could not. It was fastened tight, the feelings growing more desperate. The children were sobbing and tugging at her clothes. What could she do? Then the Leering spoke in her mind. She had to offer something – a part of herself. Something she did not need. That would feed the suffering woman and her children.

Lia thought a moment and then then insight came. She would give the chains off her wrists.

Instantly they disappeared. The Leering was tamed.

As Lia looked down, she saw snakes weaving around her ankles. The serpents filled the chamber, sliding and weaving through the tangled fray. She swung the torch down, her hands fully free now that the chains were gone. The serpents retreated again, hissing savagely at her. Her heart shuddered with dread and fear, but she did her best to control it. Just seeing the snakes made her want to scream. Carefully, she moved to the next Leering. It was an expression of remorse, of guilt. Lia stared at it, preparing her feelings to be overwhelmed again.

Then she began to understand.

There was nothing to be feared from them except what they represented. There were six penultimate fears that troubled the world. Every imaginable fear could be linked to one of these. The Leerings were important because a hetaera faced the training to overcome her fears. By overcoming fears, they could make the final oath that would bind them to the Myriad Ones forever. Overcoming their fear would help them make the final covenant.

Lia reached out and touched the second Leering. Immediately she was swarmed by the sound of jeering laughter. It was mocking, cutting, humiliating. In her mind, she saw a wealthy palace full of beautiful girls wearing expensive clothes and dazzling jewelry. They were all mocking one girl. She was not dressed like the others – she was in hunter rags, filthy, her hair spattered with dirt and sticky with…cider? Lia saw herself, cowering before the onslaught of the humiliation. There was Pareigis among them – and Reome – and even Marciana. There was Sowe, a disdainful look on her mouth, a condescending look that made Lia feel as if she were the ugliest girl in the world. They laughed and scoffed at her. They snubbed her. They pointed at her feet, the shackles at her feet and tittered with wicked delight at how uncomfortable she was. The fear of shame.

She would have given anything to stop the sound of laughter. Lia knew what to do. She surrendered the shackles at her ankles. As she thought it, they disappeared.

Lia opened her eyes. Part of the room was glowing now. In the center of the room behind her came the aura and heat of fire. She had not noticed before, but there had been a hollow in the center of the floor, an indentation in the rock – a whorl pattern. It was full of shimmering metal, the liquid metal of the chains now reduced and purged by great heat. The metal bubbled and smelled acrid. It was a kystrel being forged.

She gasped with shock as she realized another purpose of the Leerings. The kystrel was being forged out of her own fears. The Leerings took her feelings away from her and implanted them within the amulet.

Confusion struck her. Was she doing the right thing? She hesitated, but felt the throb of the Medium again, guiding her to the next Leering. The torchlight was fading, the pitch being consumed.

The next face was full of pockmarks. Lia bit her lip and reached out to it. Again she was plunged into a swarm of emotions. The fear of sickness and disease. The fear of plague. She smelled rotting flesh. She heard the hum and buzz of flies swarming all over her body. Lia recoiled, disgusted by the feeling. The air had a putrid stink to it. Fever raged through her body – Lia could never remember ever feeling so terrible. Every bone and muscle ached. Her stomach and insides clenched and twisted. Her throat burned with fire. She had to surrender something. To give a part of herself. Her outer garments – her cloak and girdle. With the thought, she realized that each surrender stripped her of something more and more important and made it easier to lose something else. It was like the story she had heard as a child, one that Pasqua told that came from the Aldermaston, about the lark who gave up her feathers for treats until it could no longer fly. After losing her cloak, what would she lose next? She had no possessions – no knives or gladius. Not even the bracers – but she had her leather girdle and cloak. She gave that and the festering feelings vanished.

Lia’s breath came in shuddering gasps. Each time she had quelled the Leerings, she felt a giddy sense of excitement swelling inside her. It was billowing, growing stronger with each one. Her thoughts warned her of the danger. Being free of those fears brought with it a sense of triumph and glee. With the kystrel around her neck, she would never go hungry. She would never get sick. She would never be taunted again. It gave her the power over all those things. It had the power to banish any fear – any at all. She blinked with the magnitude of the thought. What a temptation. The snakes were still coming in, slithering through the stones, hissing at her. Part of her no longer feared them.

Lia touched the next Leering, one with a face so worn away by time that she could hardly tell it was a woman. As her fingers grazed the stone, she saw herself as a shriveled old hag, stooped with age. She was sitting in a cushioned chair, speaking to someone…but she could not remember their name. She was desperately trying to recall the name, but she could not. It was an old man, a man she should know. A man with a brooding face and silver hair. She should know his name. She had spent a lifetime with him. What was his name? Why could she not remember it? Her heart spasmed with fear. There were faces of little ones surrounding her, patting her hands – her wrinkled, fragile hands. She stared at the splotches on her skin, the tangled veins. The fear of losing her beauty and body. The fear of losing her memory. The fear of age.

What did she have to quell the Leering? What could she give? Her clothes? Lia wrestled with the decision. What would be required of her next? Her chaen? The ring at her neck? Yet she was trapped, unable to release the stone unless she gave something up. She would be trapped in that vision, those thoughts, until the fire guttered out and the snakes bit her. She had to do something. She had to act.