The Banished of Muirwood (Covenant of Muirwood, #1)(6)
Yes, you are Marciana Soliven, Corriveaux thought to her. We seized your ship and crew. Whilst you slept, I sent soldiers ahead with two hunters. Do not think you can escape me. Yield, Lady Marciana.
Maia’s whole body trembled with fear and rage. She flexed her will against theirs and felt the resistance start to budge. Corriveaux scowled, his brooding look turning darker. I see you. You cannot outmatch the resources of the King of Dahomey. We will hunt you down, my lady. Trust that. You cannot escape. When the soldiers arrive, you will surrender to them. You will instruct your protector to hand over his weapons. You will . . .
Maia squeezed her eyes shut, trying to blot out the Dochte Mandar’s thoughts. Despite her best efforts, they embedded themselves into her consciousness like runes carved into a rock. He was forcing his will on her, commanding her to obey his instructions. A raw compulsion gripped her, and she knew that if she saw those men, she would obey.
“My lady?” the kishion asked, looking up at her, at last sensing something was amiss.
She could not speak. Her tongue clove to her mouth. She looked down at him, her eyes pleading.
Leave me alone, Maia thought in desperation. Do not interfere.
I cannot hold her, the second Dochte Mandar thought with a groan of mental anguish.
We have her, Corriveaux thought. With both of us, we can tame her. Do not slacken your thoughts!
The grip on her mind tightened further, sending a piercing shard of agony into her skull. She began to moan, feeling her will crumble. Her knees were shaking, and the rest of her body started to convulse. She hunkered inside herself, summoning reserves of strength and determination. She would battle them off. There was no choice. She was willing to die in her quest, but not this soon.
Lady Marciana, you will surrender. You will surrender. You will surrender!
Her breath gushed out of her as the kishion tackled her away from the waymarker and landed on top of her. With her connection to the Leering abruptly broken, she felt herself free of the torturous grip on her mind. She was soon hyperventilating, gasping for breath.
“They found us!” she gasped through chattering teeth. “The Dochte Mandar are in the woods!”
“Where?” he asked, getting up quickly and pulling her with him. He unsheathed a blade and whirled around, staring into the dark woods.
“The way we came,” she said, pointing west. “I saw them in my mind. They said they have our ship and crew. They knew we were camping by the boulder, so they sent men ahead, including two hunters. We must flee, but where? Now we have no way of crossing the water.”
Her heart pounded with confusion. This was a foreign land. It was the land where death was born.
“If the ship was taken, then the west is closed to us. We have no choice—we must go north and cross Dahomey on foot.”
Maia knew he was right, though she dreaded it with all her heart. An ancient rivalry existed between Comoros and Dahomey. The ruler of Dahomey was an ambitious and ruthless young king who had sworn to humble her father and subdue Comoros, not only for daring to expel the Dochte Mandar, but also for breaking the long-ago plight troth binding him to Maia. What the King of Dahomey did not know was that her father’s kingdom was already rife with violence and unrest. And now its fate rested on her shoulders, the banished daughter her father had disinherited.
Grabbing their supplies, Maia and the kishion started away from the Leering and plunged into the woods. There was no use running and tiring themselves needlessly. Their pursuers had traveled all night in the dark—they would be weary and confused. An oily black feeling swirled in Maia’s mind as they made their way, an imprint of the Dochte Mandar’s intentions. She had never encountered a person with such a forceful will before, let alone two. Worse, there might well be more of them traveling with the soldiers. If the Dahomeyjans knew they were facing a woman with a kystrel, they would have sent sufficient men to bind her powers.
Maia swatted at a tree branch, her heart pounding with the effort of hiking. She had always been fascinated by maps of the known kingdoms and had studied them all her life, memorizing the names of cities and provinces, tracing mountains and forests with her finger. What she remembered from her childhood studies was that more than half of Dahomey was still uninhabitable. Nature itself had turned against the kings and queens of this land, and the Blight that had destroyed all the kingdoms still reigned. Deadly serpents and poisonous spiders had proliferated in the cursed part of the kingdom, making it impossible to settle. There were communities throughout the northern part of Dahomey, but very few in the southern hinterlands. She could not remember a single name of any of the villages or towns.
She realized, with dread, that there were three other kingdoms blocking her way to Naess, the seat of the Dochte Mandar—Hautland, Paeiz, and Mon. The latter was a coastal kingdom that could probably be avoided, but there was no other way, except by ship, to pass around the other kingdoms. And all had been hostile to her father since the day he drove the Dochte Mandar from Comoros.
They walked with determination born of desperation. Maia was sturdy and had survived the dangers they had faced thus far. With each slogging boot step, she pushed herself hard, not deigning to complain or utter curses. There was too much to do. They had to outdistance their pursuers, find supplies, and race toward their goal as quickly as they could.
Her stomach cramped with the strain of the pace they kept, and her throat seared with thirst as the sun climbed and arced across the sky, filtering through the dusky leaves and moss-ridden boulders scattered throughout the way. There was no sign of any habitation. No waymarkers to guide the path.