In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1)

by Ballintyne, Ciara

  “Ellaeva.”

  He mangled her name with a thick and clumsy tongue, but still it shot a shaft of sunlight through the clouds around his head. He shuddered, a horse stung all over by flies. His mouth worked soundlessly. Then he spoke, louder this time. “Ellaeva.”

  Without conscious volition, he put his free hand to her cheek and leaned forward to kiss her. His lips brushed hers, sending a shock tingling through his skin.

  The fog burned off in the hot ignition of emotion, and he rocked back in his chair. He took everything in all at once: the rumpled bed; his dirty and disarrayed clothes; the lank hair hanging around his face; the unkempt state of his rooms; the woman sobbing before him, tears streaming down her face—the beautiful, amazing woman who was death’s Battle Priestess.

  In an instant, the raw emotion of all the memories he’d relived thundered into him, unbuffered by the now dissipated fog. The memory of Zaheva’s death hit him with all the power of that first discovery of her body in the snow, and grief, new and raw and untempered by time, swallowed him whole.

  Sitting there, he sobbed and shook for a dead wife, while a very-much-alive priestess dedicated to death held him and cried her own tears into his hair.

  Ellaeva stared down at Lyram, sleeping peacefully now in clean sheets. Her hand twitched, and she forced it still at her side. Had any of the servants noticed her involuntary move to smooth his hair? A quick glance revealed them all still busy straightening and tidying the room, one sorting the scattered papers and another painstakingly reassembling Lyram’s armour on its racks.

  A storm of unfamiliar emotion still raged inside her, and she struggled with them. Her lips burned where Lyram had kissed them; her heart burned with the memory of being called Zaheva. She clenched her jaw against the tears pricking her eyes.

  Footsteps hurried in the hallway outside, and Everard appeared. Panting for breath, he leaned against the doorframe, until Galdron appeared behind him and pushed him gently into the room.

  “Is he—? Did you—? Leinahre suddenly ran off!” Everard sucked in another breath.

  “Ahura’s tits!” Ignoring the look of shock on Everard’s face, she swung away to pace the length of the room, her sword bumping against her leg with each step. Having an immediate problem re-energised her and offered a welcome distraction from the unpleasantness lurking in her heart. “The breaking of the spell warned her off. Well, there’s only so many places she can hide in a castle under siege. At least if we clean out all her stores, she’ll not be able to cast any more hedge witchery. Then we can smoke her out of wherever she’s holed up.”

  “The catacombs. She ran down into the catacombs.”

  Ellaeva hissed through her teeth. “I’ll have to track her down.”

  Though the task was an annoyance, a distraction she didn’t need from the siege, perhaps it would be enough to numb her own pain. Even now, she was aware of the ache in the background. How did people deal with this? What was the point of love if all it did was hurt so much?

  She slammed to a halt. Love. She shook her head, aware of Everard regarding her with keen interest. No. It can’t be. It better not be. Even if Lyram returned the sentiment, which clearly he did not, love was not permitted to her—save for love of Ahura. The death goddess was a jealous mistress. The ache in her breast grew a sharp, bleak edge of despair. Death would be better than the retribution of Ahura.

  “We might none of us be around to track her down,” Galdron said from the doorway. Weariness etched his face, but he stood straight at parade rest with his left hand on his sword hilt and his helm under his right arm. Sweat dampened his tousled ginger hair.

  “What’s happening?” Ellaeva clenched her own sword. They’d careened from one thing to another lately, with no break and no respite. Lyram would be horrified when he recovered enough to be briefed.

  “We think the sappers are at the moat’s edge. They could be inside the castle walls within days. You asked to be informed.”

  The news went through her like a bolt of lightning. At the moat’s edge. If she was going to stop them, it must be there, at the boundary of the castle. When it came to building wards, clear delineations like walls and moats and other boundaries worked best and required the least power. Despite that, she would be taking a foolhardy risk to try and ward the enemy soldiers from the castle, and one that could kill her. Right now, that risk of death did not seem so terrible compared to the hopeless despair growing within.

  “What do you think will happen if they get inside the walls?”

  Galdron’s face turned bleak, and even Everard’s usually severe expression deepened.

  “In war, a commander might keep prisoners of war alive for bargaining power... for ransom, for whatever leverage he might get out of them,” the captain said, the line of his mouth matching the droop of his moustache. “That’s if he was canny and saw an advantage. But the Gallowglaighs are mercenaries posing as Velenese and not likely to want survivors who could talk. If a great war is what they want, then only great atrocities will get them there. In my opinion, they’ll kill everyone. The women can expect a bad few days of it first, though.”

  Though it matched her own assessment, she flinched to hear it put so baldly. Her own life balanced against those of everyone here. Well, wasn’t that what she was for? To give her life so others might live? She’d be a fool to expect anything else.

  But not like this, a voice whispered in her head. Not to give your life foolishly to save just anyone from anything.

  She ignored her own admonition, even though it was true: a Battle Priestess ought to only give her life to defeat great evil.

  Not to escape her own pain.

  Before she realised she’d made the decision, her feet were carrying her towards the door. “I’ll go to the cloister, to the altar.”

  Using the centre of power of her goddess might improve her chances of survival. Then again, if Ahura judged her intentions as impure, the entire exercise might fail.

  “If it all goes bad, if this costs me my life, tell Lyram...” Tell him what? None of the words springing to mind seemed appropriate, especially not entrusted to the care of another. “I... tell him what happened.”

  She turned hard on her heel, almost stumbling as she went. The heat of her blush burned her cheeks. Please, Ahura, let neither Galdron nor Everard follow me or try to stop me.

  They muttered behind her, but she reached the landing and slammed the door to Lyram’s suite. The boom echoed throughout the stairwell.

  Sir Janun, climbing the stairs with Kastyn in tow, stared at her with his bushy eyebrows halfway up his forehead. Kastyn’s mouth hung agape. He looked paler than shock could account for, and terribly thin. Some of the heat in her cheeks came from hot tears, and she scrubbed them away, dragging her hood up over her head. Without a word, she pushed past them and descended into the bowels of the castle.

  Consumed by her own thoughts, she passed through the doors and checks to the cloister mechanically. What responses she’d given to the door priestesses, she could not remember, but she found herself in the altar room without really knowing how she came to be there.

  The abbess stood alone before the altar in the blazing room, her hands folded inside the sleeves of her robes and a knowing look in her eye, almost as if she’d been waiting for Ellaeva. “So, child, you found the truth inside your own heart at last, did you?”

  Ellaeva recoiled, the memory of Lyram’s kiss burning incriminatingly on her lips. Did her sin show upon her face? Not the kiss, which he’d initiated, and she’d accepted only to break a spell—but her response?

  “I saw it in you when first you came,” the abbess said. “Though I knew you were as yet unaware. I tried to warn you.”

  “A warning? Is that what you call your words to me?” Ellaeva took a deep breath and swallowed the rest of her vitriol, seeking peace within the roil of unchecked emotion. “I am here to seal the lower levels against incursion by the sappers.”

  “I know. I dreamt this
day, dreamt it every night for a month before I ever met you.”

  “Dreamt it? Why would you—?” Ellaeva sucked in a sharp breath.

  The crone nodded. “Aye, I will die this day.”

  It was the one gift Ahura gave all her priestesses: knowledge of the day of her death. All her priestesses except her chosen one, that is.

  “I know more than you think, child,” the abbess said. “I will die this day, but you must yet choose your course. Will you take the easy path and flee into the oblivion of death, or battle your temptation?”

  “The goddess will judge me,” Ellaeva said, struggling to keep her voice steady. Was the abbess’s impending death a sign that she too would die here, that her wards against the spectres would fail? No Battle Priestess knew the day of her death; if she did, she would lose all hope in an otherwise hopeless existence.

  The abbess shrugged and stepped aside and shuffled towards the door. “Ahura be with you, child.”

  When the door clicked shut behind her, Ellaeva still stood staring at the altar, only peripherally aware of the dozens of candle flames flickering on the walls. Her knees trembled momentarily. What if the goddess turned away from her? What if, instead of honourable death, she received only a discharge from her duties? Years ago she’d longed for just that, but little would change even if she were granted it now. Her parents were still dead, and she had no friends, just a useless pining for a man wedded to his dead wife. She’d be honourless, and both major temples would turn their backs on her, writing her name into the roster of those lost to grace. The few offences that caused the gods to turn their gaze away were so heinous that not many would deal with the graceless.

  She forced one foot forward, then the other. Her feet dragged as though encased in lead shoes. One step at a time, she pushed herself on until she stood at the altar. With unsteady hands, she placed the sword on the cold stone. From her pocket, she retrieved the three shards of stone she’d painstakingly collected from the walls for this purpose, and a piece of blue thread. The pink limestone glittered in the blaze of light filling the room. She positioned the stones carefully around the sword, one for each wall of the triangular castle, and ran blue thread around the edges to represent the moat. The better the visualisation, the better her chances of survival. She squinted at her handiwork. At best it was still a poor representation of the castle and the moat.

  She knelt clumsily, and leaned forward to pray over the weapon. Such prayer could be conducted urgently, but the damage she suffered would be less if she connected with the goddess cautiously.

  The slow thoughts of the goddess engulfed her, and time lost meaning. Ellaeva fixed her mind on her need: on shutting the sappers out, making the ground surrounding and below the moat impenetrable to shovels and explosives. The tremendous thoughts touching her took on a tinge of curiosity, and she laid out the danger—the threat to Lyram—in stark detail. Not thinking about a thing was nearly impossible, and inevitably the memory of the kiss and her guilt and shame oozed to the top of her mind.

  But the sense of the goddess was already fading away like the presence of a giant sinking back into slumber. In its wake came a swell of power. Ellaeva clutched at the edge of the sacred altar, a groan tearing from her throat. The power filled her, thrummed within her body, drawing her taut as a bowstring. The very fabric of her body strained to contain the monstrous energy within, and she fought to direct the power to where it was needed. It threatened to tear free, to scatter ineffectually in a dozen directions.

  She moaned and swayed against the altar. She clung so tightly to the coarse stone that blood oozed from her torn fingers. The power built within, and she teetered on the brink of total annihilation and failure. Pain needled at her, a million tiny blades inserted into her skin at the same instant. The blinding white points of pain intensified into agony, and the next moan tilted upwards into a ragged scream.

  The pain sharpened again, and she balanced on the razor’s edge, a misstep away from disintegration. On that cusp, she threw back her head and shrieked. Rational thought broke down into a jumble of impressions. A woman singing a lullaby in a deep, throaty voice. The feel of arms clasping her to a warm, loving body. Lyram’s blue eyes, staring intently into hers in the instant before the kiss. The cold alien emotions of the goddess.

  The moat.

  The memory came back to her as though from a million leagues away, a million times a million, a greater distance than she could encompass. The red hot pain almost seared it from her mind entirely, and she clung hard to the recollection even as she rode the raging white-water of power surging unrestrained through her.

  The moat.

  With an ear-splitting wail, she directed the energy into the representation of the castle, into the shape of her desire. Red light flashed into existence, bathing the walls in blood. It snapped from her with the force of a released arrow, surging across the room in an expanding triangle.

  Something was wrong. The light brightened too fast, reaching an intensity so great she closed her eyes, yet her eyeballs still burned in the red brilliance. The energy screamed as it tore across the room in a crescendo so high and shrill her ears rang, and then the sound passed beyond human hearing. The room trembled, shaking her from her feet. Even as she fell, a second concussion struck the room in the opposite direction, a backlash of power shrinking back towards the altar. It flung her across the room, tumbling her head over heels.

  Her head struck the floor and a sharp pain burst in her skull. The metallic taste of blood flooded her mouth, and something warm and wet trickled down her cheeks and her neck. Nothing but silence came to her.

  She reached for the goddess and felt nothing but pain singing in every nerve ending. Deep exhaustion suffused her. The ward failed.

  She failed.

  Lyram’s eyes cracked open to darkness lit only by the flicker of a solitary candle flame in the outer sitting room.

  “Ellaeva?” The pathetic croak was barely audible, and a turn of his head revealed no one nearby to hear it anyway. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Ellaeva?”

  Though weak as a man a month in his sickbed, he fumbled the heavy bedclothes aside and dragged himself into a sitting position. As his bare feet touched the cold stones of the castle floor, Everard bustled into the room, kilt and plaid perfectly arranged and his insignia of rank on the shoulder of his black, military jacket.

  “Sir, you’re not ready to be rising from the bed yet.” His aide seized the blankets and began pulling them back up.

  Lyram swatted at him ineffectually. “Leave off, Everard. Where’s Ellaeva?

  Everard’s face became a blank mask behind his glasses for a fraction of a section before he continued trying to chivvy Lyram into bed. “On the walls or some such, I’m sure, sir. I’ll send her when she’s a moment.”

  Lyram caught his aide’s hand. “Stop, Everard. Stop! Where is she?”

  The crumpling of his aide’s usual severe dignity was a terrible sight to behold and curdled Lyram’s insides.

  “The cloister, sir. There’s sappers tunnelling under the moat, or trying.”

  “What? Sappers?” Lyram shook his head. What was happening? Had he been ill? By the look on Everard’s face, there was something worse. “What is it? Speak.”

  Everard’s face fell into miserable lines, and he fidgeted absently with a button on his jacket. “She’s gone to beseech the aid of her goddess, to try and seal the sappers out, sir. She said... she said it might kill her.”

  Lyram surged to his feet.

  “Sir, stop!” Everard caught him, trying to propel him backwards to the bed. “You’re not well.”

  Lyram batted at him, trying to shake his aide off. “Everard, enough! Get off me.” He twisted aside, managing to break his aide’s grip, and stumbled to the floor. The timber pressed rough against his bare flesh. Scrambling back to his feet, he snatched a blanket from the bed to wrap around his mostly naked form. Everard protested again, but his words disappeared in the rush of blood in L
yram’s ears.

  Without bothering to respond, Lyram staggered out the door and down the stairs, leaning heavily against the walls of the narrow stairwell. His fumbling steps echoed in the dim confines. He passed the well room and kept going deeper, headed for the cloister.

  Would the priestesses let him in? The air of the underground tunnels brushed cool against his skin as he exited the stairwell and lurched onwards. Too late he thought of taking a torch from the stairwell, but he refused to turn back, ploughing on through the darkness eased only by the blue-green lights of the glow worms.

  When he reached the iron door, he pounded on it with his fist, shouting incoherently, until the door priestess appeared. With her face shrouded within the shadows of her hood, he couldn’t tell if he’d met her before or not, and he didn’t care.

  “Let me in.”

  “The order admits no—”

  “Let me in, Chalon damn you, or by his balls you’ll regret it. Even now your very own Battle Priestess might be dying on the altar of your goddess. Do you want that? Then who will stop the spectres and the necromancer within the walls? You? Me?” He banged on the door again, drowning out her protests. The echoes repeated back to them and died away. “Unless you’re prepared to take up her sword yourself, open this death-damned door!”

  The window slammed shut, though whether she intended to comply or report him to the abbess he couldn’t say.

  After a long, tense moment, the rattle of chains releasing echoed through the tunnel, and the door swung open. The priestess stood in the shadows against the wall, but as he passed, she seized his hand and squeezed.

  “Her holiness passed by an hour ago. If it’s not already too late...” Her hand tightened into points of pain against the bones of his hand. “Go to the altar room.”

  He nodded, disentangled his hand, and hurried down the hall with heavy feet and his blanket flapping.