The Scourge of Muirwood (Legends of Muirwood #3)

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.

She could see why a girl would be tempted to follow the trail. The fear of growing old and decrepid. Could the kystrel keep her forever young? She felt the surge of the Medium and the horrible truth it showed her. The kystrel could create the illusion of youth. It could make someone feel young, even if they were not. It was a deception of the cruelest kind. By being a maston, by learning the full depths of the Medium, she could forge a new body that would be forever young. A kystrel could not offer her that – only the illusion of it.