The Banished of Muirwood (Covenant of Muirwood, #1)(107)
“Do you know what will happen next, Grandmother?” Maia asked. “Lia’s tome is blank after that last part.”
Sabine wiped her own eyes and gave Maia a thoughtful look. “No, I do not know. As you said, the rest of her tome is empty. My Gift of Seering is focused on the past. That is what I can see most clearly, the time that happened just prior to the Scourging. I know what the abbeys used to look like, so I have visited the various kingdoms to help with the rebuilding. But I am blind as to the future.”
Maia closed the tome and set it on the table. “The tome was not as long as I thought it would be. How long did she live?”
“We know she was a grandmother,” Sabine said in a small voice. “She mentions her granddaughter in her tome. This was the granddaughter who sailed back to Comoros and began to rebuild Muirwood. It was when her granddaughter was born that she began having visions of us specifically, I think. There is something about the birth of children that makes the whispers of the Medium particularly powerful. She saw our future and began to scribe that tome for us. She gave the tome to her granddaughter to take with her when she sailed across the sea. It was then given to me. That was my mother.” She sighed. “Lia foresaw that if the mastons did not return, the Naestors would completely overrun the land and make returning impossible. Lia saw something else in the future she only hints at. She foresaw that because of the hetaera, women would be forbidden to read.”
“Yes, yet you learned to read,” Maia said. “You mentioned the Ciphers.”
“Yes. As you saw in the tome, Lia was the Aldermaston of Muirwood before she left. She instructed that anyone would always be permitted to read and engrave at Muirwood Abbey. Even the wretcheds. To keep this hidden from the Dochte Mandar, the girls’ lessons are given in the cloisters at night, after all the male students are abed. During the day, they are taught languages and other skills. But their instruction in the Medium and the tomes is done in secret. In the past, all the children of the rulers were sent to Dochte Abbey to study. Now that instruction happens at the chief abbey in every realm. For Comoros, it is Muirwood. You were meant to study there, Maia. You were supposed to go there when you were twelve, but your father refused to send you after your mother took sanctuary there. You have missed the opportunity to learn there in your youth, but you were tutored by Walraven to read. Now you must learn the art of engraving. It will not be difficult for you.”
“Tell me,” Maia said. “Can Chancellor Walraven truly be trusted? My heart is unsure. I feel . . . betrayed by him, yet I also believe he is on our side. I am sorely conflicted.”
“Of course you are,” Sabine said, patting her arm. “You have every reason to be distrustful. He is a senior member of the Victus. They are the ones who control the politics between the kingdoms. They scheme and plot amongst themselves to choose which kingdoms will go to war against each other and to provoke the outcome they desire. They broker the truces and arrange for the payment of ransoms and the murder of rivals. They are superstitiously hostile against the mastons, fearing any power that they cannot manipulate or control.
“You see, Maia, when the first ships returned, the Naestors laid a cunning trap. They welcomed the mastons as the rightful rulers of the land. They had learned a great deal from the artifacts left behind . . . and developed some small, distorted understanding of the rituals and customs. They revered knowledge and hoarded these artifacts, like the Leerings we passed when we left. The jewelry you were wearing, the necklaces and rings and bracelets. That was melted aurichalcum, Maia—the melted tomes from the ancient generations, fashioned by goldsmiths into jewelry. The Dochte Mandar believe that those jewels have great power because of what they were made from. But the power of the Medium is not transmitted that way.” She shook her head and chuckled.
“It was the intent of the Naestors all along,” Sabine continued, “to enslave the mastons. They suspected, because of the Earl of Dieyre’s writings, that they would return someday, and they feared losing the abandoned kingdoms they had claimed. When the mastons returned, they greeted them with celebrations and festivals and honors. The Naestors acceded the lands and abandoned cities to the mastons with the intent of re-creating the kingdoms of the past and restoring the fallen realms to their previous glory. You see, they lacked so much of the knowledge the mastons possessed—how to build, how to make music, how to restore the ruins that were left behind. Their only request was for their own religion—that of the Dochte Mandar—to remain among the populace, allowing the people to decide between it and the maston ways. The goal of the Dochte Mandar was to learn the crafts they did not know, corrupt the mastons through generosity, and then turn on the mastons and enslave them before the abbeys were finished. They suspected, and rightly so, that not all the mastons had returned. They began seeking Assinica, knowing it existed, and sent multiple expeditions into the sea from Naess to hunt for it. They were not willing to risk that the balance would be destroyed and the mastons would conquer them.”
Maia stared at her grandmother. It was difficult to keep up with so much information, but it meshed well with what she had learned in Lia’s tome and from her predictions of the future and with what Corriveaux had said to her.
“But according to Lia’s tome, your mother kept it secret,” Maia said, “that the Apse Veils were still closed. She knew that if the abbeys were rebuilt, not only would the doorway to Idumea open, but also the doorways that connected the various abbeys . . . including Assinica.”