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

by Ballintyne, Ciara

  The corridors of the cloister were empty—at this hour many of the priestesses were apparently already abed. Doggedly, he drove himself past silent, sealed doors.

  A shrunken form lay crumpled on the floor before the closed door to the altar room. Ellaeva…? Lyram rushed forward. He dropped to his knees to push back the hood, revealing the face of the abbess. Her eyes stared sightlessly in death. He sucked in a sharp breath, and then lurched to his feet and threw open the door to the altar room. The familiar blaze of candlelight spilled through the doorway.

  Across the room, Ellaeva lay in a heap, facedown on the marble floor.

  Crying out, he hurried to her and almost fell alongside her. He rolled her over, and his heart slammed into a gallop at the sight. Blood fanned down her cheeks from her eyes and nose. More blood clotted her ears and her hair, and had pooled where she lay. Her skin was pale and waxy. He groped beneath her chin for a pulse.

  After too long a moment, one soft thud of her heart touched his fingers. Another long moment passed before the next. Her heart beat, but too slow and weak. Only the barest breath of air touched his fingers when he held them to her nose. Chalon’s mercy, was she dying? Anguish swept through him at the thought. Losing one woman in twelve months was one woman too many.

  He slid his arms under her limp form and tried to lift her, but staggered and fell back to the floor, his blanket half hanging from his nearly nude body. Too exhausted to stand again, he lay beside her and drew her into an embrace.

  “Help me,” he cried, a soft mewling in the silence of the grotto. “Help me!” The words echoed more strongly this time.

  Lyram sagged over Ellaeva’s still form, his fingers pressed against her fading heartbeat. Tears streamed down his face, falling to hers and mixing with the blood. The last time he did this, the blood was dry and the woman cold and unbreathing.

  “Hold on,” he whispered into her ear, smoothing the hair away from her face. “I’m here.”

  When she answered him only with silence, he began to pray to Ahura.

  From the open door came the patter of running feet. The sound grew closer and louder, and then a familiar voice, “Sir? Sir, where are you?” followed by the objections of women.

  Lyram almost wept with relief. “Here, Everard, here. Hurry!”

  “Leinahre?” Lyram sat dumbfounded in his sitting room, a glass of red wine untouched in his hand.

  “I’m afraid so, sir,” Everard said, shifting uncomfortably on the divan opposite.

  Galdron only nodded, his expression grim, then tossed back his own glass of wine in one gulp.

  Why? Why would she do it? The betrayal from a loyal servant stung more than he expected.

  Lyram’s chair faced the bedchamber, giving him a clear line of sight to where Ellaeva lay motionless in the bed. To sit and do nothing tore him apart from the inside, but he’d cleaned the blood from her, and now there was nothing else to be done—no wounds to be dressed, no illness to be treated. The passage of the power of the goddess had abused her, and all they could do was wait to find out if it would kill her. From time to time, he murmured prayers, sometimes to Chalon, or Istural, but mostly to Ahura. Begging for mercy seemed the only thing to do, even if she was the wrong deity to beg it of.

  The early morning sunlight through the arrow slits illuminated ruby specks within the deep wine. At least since the passing of the witching hour, Ellaeva’s breathing had appeared to strengthen.

  “And you say she fled into the catacombs?” Lyram asked.

  Everard, staring into the depths of his glass with a brooding expression, shivered. “Aye, sir.”

  “Alert the soldiers. She’ll make an appearance eventually for food or water. Ensure the stores are guarded, and the well, so we can catch her if she comes sneaking around. A woman with no more resources than a concoction given her by her benefactor shouldn’t be too hard to catch.”

  Everard looked up, eyes widening. “Benefactor? You don’t think she acted alone?”

  “With an army at my gate, an otherwise loyal servant takes action to enslave me to her will. You think the two are unconnected?” Lyram shook his head. “My suspension of disbelief does not stretch that far. I’m certain she acted on orders from another—not that I’ll grant her any mercy for it.”

  Galdron twitched violently. “What about the Rahmyrrim? Couldn’t the necromancer be behind this?”

  Lyram hesitated. It was a possibility he hadn’t considered, but a reasonable suggestion given Ahura had dispatched her own Battle Priestess to protect him from the priest of Rahmyr.

  “Surely it’s more likely the prince is behind this?” Everard said. “Her holiness said the potion Leinahre used was hedge witchery, not Rahmyrrim magic.”

  Lyram sighed and rested his chin against his hands. Trying to untangle this unholy mess made his head pound. “That’s Ellaeva’s purview—if she ever awakes. Galdron, tell the men I’m recovered enough from my illness to inspect the troops this afternoon.”

  Galdron stood and saluted, then hesitated. Sweat glistened on his skin in the dim light. “Sir, I... I was on my way to Ellaeva with the news when I heard, and you’ve been ill, and now...”

  Lyram didn’t want to think about how close Ellaeva lay to death any more than Galdron wanted to say it, and his words came out sharp. “Out with it, man. If you have something to say, then say it. I am the commander of this castle, and I don’t have time to be ill.”

  Galdron flushed and pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. “I found this in the barracks, jammed between two stones in a back corner. Wouldn’t even have seen it if I didn’t drop my pipe.”

  Lyram unfolded the scrap of paper to see familiar handwriting: Bradlin’s.

  What is taking so long? You assured us your magic was equal to the task. You have two days to deliver the castle and Aharris to us or the deal is off.

  He caught his breath. “Bradlin is communicating with the necromancer?”

  “It seems so,” Galdron said, his voice grim.

  Everard craned his neck, trying to read the paper, and Lyram passed it to him.

  “I can’t say as I’ve noticed anyone behaving suspiciously, but before she holed up in here, Leinahre was in and out of the barracks changing dressings on the wounded still fit for duty,” the captain said. “She’d have had access to that message.”

  Lyram shook his head, dazed by this sudden information. “You’re suggesting Leinahre is in league with Drault and the necromancer? It seems a bit of a stretch, since she was here with me for so long.”

  “Or she is the necromancer.” Everard dropped the paper on the desk and wiped his fingers on his kilt.

  Lyram looked askance at him.

  “What?” Everard lifted an eyebrow. “It has to be considered. I suggested as much to Ellaeva, and she said no, but it’s worth mentioning again in light of this.”

  “Leinahre...?” He considered the sweet young woman he’d known, with huge blue eyes over tremulous lips, then shook his head. “I can accept that someone else was behind her actions, but Leinahre a Rahmyrrim? I think not.”

  “Or it could be anyone else with access to the barracks,” Everard said. “It seems a strange place to hide the note though. Why hide it at all, for that matter? It could have been easily destroyed.”

  They exchanged looks, and Lyram shrugged. There didn’t seem to be a good explanation.

  Galdron saluted sharply. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’ll leave you to your discussions while I tend to the soldiers.”

  Lyram nodded and waved him off.

  When the door closed behind him, he turned back to his aide. “You told me what Leinahre did, but you didn’t tell me how you fixed it. In fact, you deliberately avoided it. Why?”

  Everard froze, his fingers tightening on the glass cradled in his palms. “I— We—”

  “Who? You and Ellaeva?”

  The story rushed out of Everard, and Lyram listened in astonishment.

  “She pretended to be Zaheva?”
How dare she, to presume to so easily fill the void left by his wife? And how in the name of Chalon did Everard get her to agree with his mad plan? That explained all the rouge and powder that came off Ellaeva’s face when he washed the blood away.

  “She had to, because the only way to break the spell is with love and—”

  “Love broke the spell?”

  Everard nodded, but Lyram stared into the ruby depths of his wine glass. His memories since Ellaeva took the arrow on the raid of the enemy camp were fuzzy, as though seen through fogged glass or heavy snow, but he remembered snippets. A woman coming to him here in these rooms. Recognising Zaheva. Then remembering she was dead, and experiencing the uncut anguish and grief all over again, like her death didn’t lie almost a year in the past now. That moment was cruel and sharp as a razor to the neck. He forced himself to relax his grip on the wine goblet. The knuckles of his hand had turned white.

  It was true that love had broken the spell for him, but not because he saw Zaheva. In fact, when he had recalled her death, the spell had begun to draw him back under, suffocating him in a warm blanket of forgetfulness and inaction.

  No, the spell broke when he recognised Ellaeva—when he kissed her, in full knowledge of her identity.

  “This is insane.” Everard grabbed at Lyram with both hands, trying to stop him buckling the baldric on. “You saw the men, you did an inspection, and now you should go back to bed!”

  Candles burned around the sitting room to ward away the encroaching shadows of twilight, but none burned in the bedchamber where Ellaeva still lay. The passage of another half-day had restored her a little, and she breathed deeply and regularly now.

  “The necromancer is working with Bradlin.” Lyram gently disentangled himself from Everard and yanked the tongue through the buckle. “If we can’t find him in here, maybe I can find something in the camp—something in Bradlin’s tent, or even on his person. Worst case, maybe I can make him tell me who the Rahmyrrim is.” And maybe, if he was lucky, he’d find evidence of how Drault and Traeburhn had conspired against him—or something he could use to counter-blackmail Drault, if nothing else, while he tried to figure this whole thing out.

  “Then send someone else!” Everard stood with his hands on his hips and his face mule-stubborn beneath his fringe of greying hair.

  Lyram shook his head and turned away to pull his boots on, hiding his face from Everard’s scrutiny. He stamped his feet to settle them in the leather, and tried to block out the voice of fear still in his heart. Why did his aide fight him so vehemently? Could the necromancer be someone so close to him... like Galdron or Everard?

  He glanced at Ellaeva, lying still in the bed. She would tell him to send someone else too, but this was too personal. The threads ran from here all the way back to Zaheva’s death. Drault had killed her—would he now kill Lyram? Black magic might let him escape without even a hint of blame laid at his door.

  “I’m going,” Lyram said. “Unless you intend to lock me up and throw away the key. Sit with Ellaeva for me.”

  He crossed over to the unconscious priestess and took her hand in his. He hesitated before letting go. Did her fingers twitch in his? But she remained still. After a long moment, he stooped and brushed his lips across her forehead. Foolish to pine for what he could not have, for what Ahura might strike him dead for even contemplating.

  And yet, this might be his last opportunity to kiss her.

  The thin, fading sunlight of dusk did nothing to dispel the cold. Lyram crouched in the dark, flat on his belly in the wet grass, and peered at the enemy camp. His clothes were damp and reeked of rotten eggs, courtesy of the marsh behind the castle. He’d been forced to trek through the muck after discovering the enemy sentry line along the old wall was too tight for him to sneak through. The gamble had paid off, though: the bog offered sufficient protection for Sayella to justify a lighter guard. Certainly this was the only place she couldn’t run mounted patrols.

  He drew his knife from his belt and waited. A sense of unease, of being watched, made him glance over his shoulder. Nothing. He settled back, staring back towards the camp perimeter. A half hour lying here had given him a good understanding of the sentry patterns, in addition to a cold chill sunk so far in his bones it would take hours in front of a fire to warm him.

  As he’d hoped, the sentries were fewer on this side of the camp. Though the Gallowglaighs had more soldiers than the castle did, they also had a significantly longer perimeter to guard, leaving them stretched thin.

  When the next sentry appeared right on schedule, Lyram dashed forward and, before the man could react, drove the knife into his throat. The sentry gargled and choked, blood flooding down his chest. Lyram dragged him into the shadows, knowing he had only moments before the next sentry came into view. There was no time to do more than stuff the man under a bush, swing the Gallowglaigh cloak around his shoulders to hide his lack of armour, and stride into camp.

  Bradlin’s pavilion lay only twenty yards or so from this side of the camp. The viscount must consider the stink of bog worth it for the protection it offered his back; no significant assault of any kind would come through it, and Lyram could attest to that. Mud caked him to the thigh.

  Bloodied knife in hand, he crept around to the back of the viscount’s tent and began prising one of the pegs out of the hard ground. If he interrogated the viscount, he preferred the guards not even know anyone was in there besides Bradlin himself.

  The pegs had been hammered hard into the ground. Muttering curses under his breath, he kicked at one with his boot heel, trying to loosen it. If he couldn’t get one or two pegs out, enough to let him slide under the edge of the canvas, he’d be forced to cut a hole instead, and that was a little too conspicuous.

  “I thought you’d have taken the castle by now.”

  The voice, deep and testy, froze Lyram in place for an instant before he realised it came from inside the tent. He let his breath out slowly.

  “This delay is inexcusable,” the voice said. “The prince wanted a quick resolution to this matter, and instead things are careening close to disaster. The Velenese are pressing the marriage suit, and the king is eager for the match, with no sign of the negotiations falling through. The Earl Alamus is undoubtedly stuffed in a box and on his way here by now. What do you propose that I do with him once he gets here and the castle is still standing, pray tell?”

  Traeburhn. A hot flame of anger seared through him, burning the cold of the bog away in a sudden flush of emotion. Abandoning the peg, he scuttled closer to the tent fabric. His blade was sharp, but it took effort to force the point through the heavy water-proofed canvas.

  Bradlin said something too low for Lyram make out the words.

  “I don’t care to hear your excuses!” Traeburhn said. “If word goes out that Alamus is missing before his corpse is found on this battlefield, how do you suppose we’ll pin all this on Velena?”

  Lyram sawed a small hole in the canvas, the knife rasping against the rough fibres. Alamus was the Velenese earl who supposedly fathered Sayella, and never acknowledged her birth—and one of the dissidents against the peace. Had Traeburhn kidnapped him? Tension knotted his shoulders. Filled with the same sense of being watched again, he glanced furtively around behind him. Seeing nothing, he put his eye to the small hole.

  The brilliance of candlelight blinded him, and he blinked rapidly to help his eyes adjust. The viscount’s plate armour, carefully placed on its rack, blocked his view.

  Ahura’s tits. Lyram edged sideways a pace or so and carefully made another cut in the canvas, flinching at the coarse sound. When he finished, he paused a long moment, scouring the darkness in either direction. No one else lurked here behind the viscount’s tent.

  He put his eye back to the tent. Traeburhn lounged in a camp chair in the tent’s centre, alongside a brazier, and Bradlin stood before him, his head bowed. Lyram’s already scalding anger surged higher, and he clenched his left hand in the dirt and gravel beneath his feet. Ti
ny pebbles dug hard into the flesh of his palm, distracting from the almost irresistible urge to put a blade in Traeburhn’s chest. His breath whistled through clenched teeth. If he started with Traeburhn, where would it end? With a knife in Drault’s chest? It was high treason to attack the heir apparent.

  He tightened his grip on the knife. He didn’t care anymore. Zaheva was dead, and Ellaeva was injured. Carefully, he inserted the blade back into the canvas and began widening the cut, forcing himself to use slow controlled movements. If he worked too quickly, the noise would surely alert the occupants, if not any nearby guards.

  A hand seized his wrist.

  Lyram bit his own tongue, stifling a yell, and turned the knife on the shadowed figure holding his wrist. His attacker caught his wrist with one hand, deflecting the blow, and pushed the concealing hood down to reveal a face.

  Ellaeva.

  He sagged back to the ground, caught between bewildered laughter and cursing. His blood was still up from the shock.

  Her grim visage didn’t appear the least bit apologetic. “Don’t,” she whispered. “You would never forgive yourself the dishonour of rashly murdering the duke, no matter your reasons.”

  He scowled at her then wiped the expression from his face. It probably made him look mulish and sullen like Kastyn.

  “This way.” She jerked her head, tugging him away from the tent and into the cover of a nearby stand of trees.

  She crouched against the bole of a tree, staring out into the darkness at Bradlin’s tent.

  “You were unconscious.” He couldn’t keep the accusatory note from his voice.

  Her lips curved in a thin smile. “Such a slow learner. I was awake. I simply knew that if you were aware of that, you wouldn’t share your intentions with me. I waited until I was sure you weren’t coming back, and then I followed.”

  The bloody woman had been watching him the entire time. Damn her. “You advised me to ‘just choose’ between my obligations. Now you say you don’t like my choice?”