The Banished of Muirwood (37 page)

Jon Tayt sniffed. “Well, I hope there is wild boar in these woods. With all those oak trees, there are bound to be acorns.”

“Plenty of wild pig,” Sabine said. Maia could see she was lost in a vision, her eyes seeing something the others could not.

Maia touched her grandmother’s shoulder. “What do you see?”

Sabine sighed, her voice soft and thick with tears. “I can see them in my mind’s eye, child. Lia and Colvin. Marciana and Kieran Ven. I see them leaving these shores on a ship like this one.” She swallowed thickly. “There she is on the deck. So young. Like you. She has wild hair, like my mother’s. There she is, Maia.” Tears flicked down from Sabine’s lashes. “She is looking right at us. Oh, by the
Medium
! I see her waving. She is waving to us.”

Maia felt tears sting her eyes. She put her arm around her grandmother’s shoulders and hugged her close. She wanted to kiss her, as a child to a mother. She wanted it so badly that the desire began to burn inside of her. There was a tingle of heat on her shoulder and a sizzle of pain. A feeling of anger and rage and blackness churned inside her heart.

Maia wondered if that feeling would ever abandon her fully. “I feel her again,” she whispered in her grandmother’s ear.

“Use your thoughts to tame your feelings,” Sabine whispered back. “Remember, Maia, it begins with a thought.” She lifted her hand to the river, waving to someone whom none of them could see.

Maia swallowed and began to focus her attention, crushing the evil brooding inside her soul. “How did Lia die?” she asked, staring at the river waters.

“No one knows,” Sabine said, wiping away her tears. She turned to face her granddaughter. “She disappeared after my mother’s name-day ceremony, leaving behind her tome and the Cruciger orb. She was never seen again. I think the Medium took her to Idumea to see her father and her mother at last.” She sniffled. “Ah, there—you can just see the abbey through the mist! There is Muirwood!”

Maia gripped the edge of the rail as the mist began to part and dissolve. She saw the abbey grounds, the tall but humble spires. Sunlight momentarily blinded her. A feeling of warmth and safety settled across her shoulders like a blanket. The anger inside her heart was quenched, and the heaviness she had lived with all her life faded away. Her heart thrilled at the sight.

Welcome
, it whispered.

EPILOGUE

L
ady Deorwynn stared at her husband’s sleeping face. She saw the lines and grooves, the wrinkles that marred his countenance. He was aging before her eyes, the strength of his body beginning to fail. She stared down at him, feeling a familiar sense of loathing and disgust. It was exactly how she had come to feel about her first husband before she had arranged to become a widow. She smoothed the front of her nightclothes, feeling the bulge in her middle and the quickening butterflies dancing in her womb. She blinked, wondering abstractedly whether the child was even his. His arm was sprawled across the pillow and he murmured something unimportant—gibberish.

She stepped away from the bedstead and strode over the plush fur rugs toward the anteroom. There, at his desk, was a stack of scrolls and missives, the most important of the day, left by Chancellor Crabwell. She broke the seals and quickly began reading the messages. She did not fear being discovered by her husband. He did not know she could read. She perused each one, scanning the contents quickly, memorizing the important details. Rumors were spreading across the other kingdoms. Rumors of an abbey burning in Mon. Rumors of Dahomey preparing to invade. Rumors of the hetaera returning. She frowned, her beautiful lips straining into a snarl. Where
was
that girl? Why had she not returned to Comoros?

Lady Deorwynn set the last of the missives down, and her thoughts turned dark and anxious. What if Marciana failed to become one? Would that cause the Victus to change their plans? Would they seek another to take her place? Her thoughts went to her own daughter, Murer. She could become the empress. She was in the succession, a Princess of Comoros now. Could that be arranged? Her stomach was giddy with both excitement and fear. So many things could go wrong.

She reached for the cup of wine on her husband’s table, her thirst suddenly fiery in her throat as she lifted it to her lips.

“You may not want to drink that,” said a voice from the shadows.

Lady Deorwynn’s hand shook with a spasm of fear, sloshing the wine on her wrist and the table, staining some of the letters.

“By the Rood!” she hissed angrily. She knew the voice.

Her eyes distinguished him in the shadows of the antechamber, sitting in one of her husband’s chairs, lounging like a cat. The kishion. It was so dark she could not see his face. Not that she wanted to. He was riven with scars and had a contemptible manner.

“Is it poisoned?” she whispered harshly, setting down the wine cup with a trembling hand.

“Not this time,” the kishion murmured. There was something in his voice. Something dangerous.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, annoyed. This time the fear started in her stomach and shot down to her ankles. “Have you been there this whole time?” She tried to sound outraged, but she was trembling violently.

“I did not wish to disturb you, madame,” the kishion said, rising languidly from the chair. “So I waited.”

“How dare you!” Lady Deorwynn spat at him.

“I dare much,” the kishion said, walking toward her. His boots made no sound. Her heart spasmed with dread. She never should have arranged for such a man to enter the kingdom. She had held second thoughts from the start, especially when his poison failed to kill Maia in her mother’s manor house. Careless. He was recklessly careless.

She saw his face as he reached the rim of the candle’s light. He was smiling in a crooked way. He looked . . . drunk.

“Why are you here?” Lady Deorwynn demanded. “Where is Marciana? Did you bring her back, or do the Naestors want to keep her?”

“I do not know where she is,” he said with a shrug. “But she is the one who burned Cruix Abbey. She razed it to ashes. She has
become
.” He scratched the edge of his mouth with a finger. Then he looked at the scrolls and papers scattered about the desk. He took one of them up and then tossed it aside. “Another will arrive in the morning,” he said. “Your enemy is finally dead. She gasped her last yesterday after struggling with a terrible fever. A few drops of poison on her lips.”

Lady Deorwynn’s eyes widened with shock. “Who ordered you to kill her?”

“No one,” the kishion replied. Again, that half smile that mocked her. “She needed to be . . . removed. You must persuade your
husband
to give the lands and manor houses and castles to his firstborn. Maia is to inherit.”

Lady Deorwynn’s trembling increased. A pit of fear stabbed inside of her. “Her estates were already confiscated and given to the new Earl of Forshee and three other men. They will revolt if stripped of those incomes. You are mad.”

“Quite possibly,” the kishion replied, chuckling. Then his eyes turned deadly earnest. “See it done, Lady Deorwynn. You never know when your next drink will be your last.” He picked up her husband’s goblet, saluted her with it, and drained it in a single swallow.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The origin of this story goes back to December 1998. I was a night-shift supervisor at Intel’s R&D factory in Santa Clara, California. After getting home from working a twelve-hour shift, I would promptly go to bed and sleep for a few hours. One day, I had a very vivid dream about an evil father, his daughter, and a skilled protector who was assigned to guard the girl. I awoke from the dream with the thoughts bubbling inside and hurriedly scribbled notes on some paper near my bed and then fell back asleep. When I woke up to my alarm later, I could hardly remember anything about the dream until I looked at the notes. This was the origin of Maia’s tale.

What struck me about the story as I pondered it was that the evil man’s daughter was the heroine
and
the villain—only she did not know that she was the villain. Her actions and intentions along the way were to help solve a problem, restore an ancient magic, but she seemed to cause havoc and destruction wherever she went.

In 2002, my friends and I started publishing
Deep Magic
, a fantasy e-zine. We needed stories, so I wrote a novella called
Maia
for one of the earlier issues. The novella was intended to be the villain’s backstory, and I had planned to write the novel from Jon Tayt’s point of view. I even tried a few chapters with that in mind, many years ago. Later, I came up with the idea for
The
Wretched of Muirwood
and decided to use that as the history to Maia’s story. So even though I wrote the novels about Lia and Colvin first, I already had the novella
Maia
in hand. That novella became the source material for my graphic novel,
The Lost Abbey
, which Jet City Comics published, and are the events that precede
Banished
.

I enjoyed writing from Maia’s point of view, and the story certainly took some twists that I did not expect. One of my all-time favorite books is
A Little Princess
by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I love the story of Sara Crewe and how she goes from being a rich man’s only child to a destitute pauper and that, even though she lives in squalor in the attic of Miss Minchin’s school, she overcomes by focusing on her thoughts and using her imagination. In
The Banished of Muirwood
, Maia actually is a princess who loses her station. As you will discover in Book Two,
The Ciphers of Muirwood
, her troubles have not ended.

I am glad I slept next to a drawer with paper and could capture the raw seeds of this story. You never know when a random dream will blossom into a novel.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to all the staff at 47North and Amazon Publishing for the continuous excellent partnership and collaboration. It has been a life-changing journey for me that led to leaving my twenty-two-year career at Intel to write full time. Also thanks to my early readers for their feedback, input, and encouragement: Gina, Emily, Karen, Robin, Shannon, and Rachelle. I also would like to thank the fabulous Angela Polidoro, whose input and enthusiasm improved the book and made it better. And finally, a shout out to Lisa from Vermont for driving to New York City for my first author signing at Comic Con 2014!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © Kim Bills

Jeff Wheeler took an early retirement from his career at Intel in 2014 to become a full-time author. He is, most importantly, a husband and father, and a devout member of his church. He is occasionally spotted roaming hills with oak trees and granite boulders in California or in any number of the state’s majestic redwood groves.

Visit the author’s website:
www.jeff-wheeler.com