The Blight of Muirwood

Yes!

The final Leering fell silent for a moment. Touch the white stone, it whispered.

Lia sat up in the ossuary, staring at the billowy curtains of the Apse Veil. The white stones shone like noonday sun, almost blinding her with the intensity. She approached one of the inlets and reached out her hand. It was glowing white-hot, but she did not fear it. Reaching out, she cupped it in her hand and peered at it.

In the midst of the blaze a light and fire, a single word appeared on the stone.

A word she could not read.

* * *

“There is no anger above the anger of a woman. For her thoughts are more vast than the sea, and her counsels more deep than the great ocean.”

- Gideon Penman of Muirwood Abbey

* * *

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN:

Apse Veil

As Lia stared at the single word, she trembled with panic. She could not read it. She could not read anything. Why had the Aldermaston thought she could pass the maston test? She had come so far, taken so many oaths only to stumble now at the end. The Leerings she quelled. The white veils of the order covered her. How could she stop when it was so close? A few squiggly lines in a burning stone halting her purpose. She stared at them, amazed and defeated. To have come so far.

Anger and frustration boiled inside of her. This was not fair! She was a wretched. How could she be expected to pass a test that required reading? She stared at the word again, intently, the light burning her eyes. She winced at the brightness. She felt a prickle of discomfort in her hand. The stone was getting hotter.

She realized what was happening. The Medium was starting to retreat, to abandon her. Her thoughts were driving it away. The protection it provided slowly withdrew. She thought a moment, calming her heart and her anger, forcing herself to think. Why would the Aldermaston have sent her if he knew she would fail? She knew him too well. He would not have sent her unless he believed she would succeed. A memory drifted through her mind of when she first held the Cruciger orb and writing had appeared on its smooth surface. Colvin had stared at the writing, but he could not read it because it was written in Pry-rian and he did not know Pry-rian. The marking on the stone was not the same elliptical pattern of the Pry-rian language – what she had seen on the orb. What language was it written in then?

Another memory surfaced. When she and Colvin had fled from the sheriff’s men, they had hidden in the gardens outside the Abbey grounds and met Maderos. He had looked at the orb and understood the writing, even though he had never studied Pry-rian.

Do not doubt. Never doubt. I cannot read Pry-rian. It is a forgotten language now by so many. Though I cannot read the words, I was understanding what it said, little sister. The Medium whispers it to me as it does with many ancient languages.

Then she understood, as if a stroke of lightning came out of the sky and struck her mind. Even a maston would not know the word written on the stone, for it was written in the most ancient of languages – the language of Idumea, the tongue of the race of the Essaios. The test was whether or not one would despair. No matter how many tomes were studied, none of them were written in this language. It was a language that had to be felt, a language only the Medium could teach her.

It begins with a thought. She knew what she wanted. It burned fiercely inside of her. I want to become a maston. I need to pass the Apse Veil. She stared at the stone in her hand. It no longer burned her. She stared at the word patiently, waiting for the Medium to supply the answer to the riddle. She knew it would come. It had always come to her. The name of a spiky weed in the midst of the Bearden Muir. The recipe for tartarelles. The proper way to milk a cow or tether an arrowhead to a shaft. Knowledge had always come to her, whispering to her. She breathed deeply, inhaling the Medium with each sigh. She was patient. She waited, keeping her mind open to thoughts she knew would come.

They came as an image – a Muirwood apple. She saw herself holding it, tasting it, savoring it. Within each apple, a crown of five seeds. Each seed containing within it the potential to become a new apple tree. Each tree containing the possibility of producing thousands of apples, each with the possibility of producing trees, over and over, generation after generation. Never ending. Never beginning.

Fruitful.

The Medium whispered the name to her. What a brief, innocent little word. But the enormity of the thought of it drowned her imagination with its poignancy. She was but a seed right now. In the ossuary, she had been buried below the ground. A future transformation awaited her. A future more impossibly wondrous than she could imagine. A future the Myriad Ones were forever jealous of for they could never enjoy it. They were the very opposite of the word. The white stone blazed violently, stunning her with light and pain. It was so bright it burned her hand like a hot coal, so she set it back on the inlet of stone. She rubbed her palm. The skin was red and flaming. She looked closer. The burn had left a pink mark on her skin in the center of her palm. She stared at the stone, realizing it was no accident.