The Wretched of Muirwood (Legends of Muirwood #1)

Lia knew he was right, but that did not make the taste any less bitter. The Medium had its own will. She covered her mouth as another round of sobs forced their way to her lips. Jon Hunter was someone who had mattered in her life. She enjoyed teasing him, matching wits with him, trying to outsmart him. But he was gone. His beard and hair, always so disheveled, his clothes mud-spattered and wrinkled. Perhaps it was fitting that he died in the middle of the Bearden Muir.

What would the Aldermaston say? She dreaded having to tell him, that because of her, Jon was dead. How would he react? Would his temper burst into flames or would he be all coldness and regret? He had sent Jon to bring her back. Kneeling by the body, she fidgeted with the end of his leather belt. The Aldermaston would be furious, she decided. He might even banish her from the Abbey permanently.

She did not want to leave the body in the Bearden Muir, but they lacked the means of transporting it. Instead, she chose to bring something of his back to Muirwood. He was a wretched too, yet she wanted others to remember him as she always would.

Reaching out, she began untying his belt.

“What are you doing?” Colvin asked.

“He died saving us,” Lia said, freeing the buckle. “The abbey needs a new hunter now. I want to bring back with me what I can carry. Part of who he was. We never waste things in the abbey.” Tears trickled down her cheeks. “The new hunter will need these things. I will never forget him. Never.” She brushed her eyes.

“Nor will I.”

Lia took the parts that made him a hunter in her eyes. The leather girdle and belt he always wore. The gladius and ash bow. A home-made leather quiver stuffed with arrows. Even the shooting glove and bracers that protected his arms from the bowstring. She garbed herself in his implements, for there was no other way to carry the items. It was strange, wearing those things that made him who he was. The gladius had a certain feel in her hand. The leather had a smell. On summer days he had let her and Sowe practice archery in the orchard which resulted in huge purple bruises on their elbows. Tears stung her eyes again. It was too much to bear.

While she dressed, Colvin took his rucksack with the food and then gently removed the arrows sticking into the body and cast them aside. He arranged the body on higher ground, and then knelt by it.

“Close your eyes,” he told Lia.

“What are you going to do?”

Colvin sighed. “I am going to give him a maston’s burial. You should not see the sign.”

Lia approached and stood near him and shut her eyes. A part of her heart burned with pain, as if the thicket from the night before was still blazing inside her. There was so much about mastons and their customs she did not know. As a wretched, she never would. It was unfair, but such was the way of the world. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, because part of her was just rebellious enough to be tempted to peek.

His voice was thick with emotion, but grew stronger. “By Idumea’s hand, I do not know all the words. I am a young maston still. But I kneel and through the Medium dedicate this ground in the Bearden Muir as the final resting place of Jon Hunter. By the Medium I invoke this, that when the time of his reviving has come, at some future dawn, he may be restored, every whit. May we always remember this final spot that others may remember what he did for us. That they may remember him through our words. Make it thus so.”

“Make it so,” Lia whispered. She opened her eyes and stared once again at the ashen face. Tenderly, she knelt and kissed his bearded cheek. Then they began fetching stones to cover him up.



“One of my favorites passages is found in the Tome of Isius. I encourage all my learners to memorize it, for it holds secrets even I struggle to comprehend: ‘Let a maston be humble before the Medium, without guile, and he will receive of its fullness. Power which shall manifest unto him the truth of all things, and shall give him, in the very hour, what he should say. And these signs shall follow him—he shall heal the sick, banish the Myriad Ones, and be delivered from those who administer deadly poison. He shall be led on paths where serpents cannot sting his heel. And he shall mount up in the imagination of his thoughts as upon eagles’ wings. And if the Medium wills that he should raise the dead, let him not withhold his voice. But only if the Medium wills it.’”





- Cuthbert Renowden of Billerbeck Abbey



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CHAPTER TWENTY NINE:


Eve of Winterrowd





Winterrowd was a ill-looking fishing village surrounded by water on three sides, nestled within the convergence of two strong rivers that emptied into the sea. Lia had never seen the sea before. She had never imagined an expanse of water so vast and blue and never-ending. The harbor was thronged with small vessels.

Haze filled the sky above Winterrowd, and Lia realized it was from a hundred cookfires. Thousands of soldiers swarmed in the town.

“Is it over?” Colvin whispered in shock, turning the horse’s head with a subtle jerk to the reins. “Are we too late?”