Wait…. What had Leinahre said, back in the oil store? I assume you’re down here to destroy the revenants. She’d never told Leinahre the technical term for shamblers, had she? She frowned and turned towards Leinahre. “You said revenants, not shamblers—”
The other woman lunged over her keg with a small knife in her hand. Ellaeva hit her with a stiff-armed punch in mid-air. Leinahre sprawled back against the barrel, caught herself, and launched back to the attack. Ellaeva spun, striking the other woman with a roundhouse kick that hurled her into a wall. Almost immediately, the woman—the Rahmyrrim—flipped from her back to her feet and dropped into a crouch, poised with her knife before her.
For a long moment, they stared at each other, each a lioness assessing her opponent. Then Leinahre whirled and dropped over the edge into the stairwell. Her footfalls pattered away into the depths.
Ellaeva took two steps after her, and stopped, sensing that Lyram was flagging, worn down by relentless fighting. There was no time to hunt down Leinahre. Cursing under her breath, she shoved her keg into motion again. The unwieldy thing bounced and rolled down the sloping tunnel, careening off walls and bumps.
She found Lyram sooner than expected. He’d been forced back by the press of shamblers. A few chunks of dead flesh and body parts strewed the floor, but none of the revenants appeared totally incapacitated. Instead, the mob of shamblers slowly forced him backwards.
“Oil!” she shouted as she covered the last hundred yards.
He spun, and raced to her. With the hilt of his sword, he stove in the barrel top. Oil spilled sluggishly from the breach, and he hefted the keg in a wide arc. Great splashes of oil covered the horde of shamblers, who still pushed forward like the incoming tide.
Ellaeva yanked the brand from her belt and crouched on the tunnel floor. Glancing at the revenants closing the distance, she fumbled in her belt pouch for flint and steel. When they spilled into her hand, she set to striking a spark. The first few fell uselessly to the earth of the tunnel floor. Then, as Lyram cast the empty keg aside with a great echoing crash, one lit on the oil-soaked rags on the brand’s head. The torch whooshed alight with a great blast of heat against her chilled cheeks.
She cast aside her flint and steel, seized the brand, and leapt to her feet. As Lyram held the mob at bay with his sword, Ellaeva drew her arm back and hurled the flaming torch over his head.
The brand flew true, arcing high and falling into the centre of the oil-soaked shamblers. The sudden explosion of heat and light sent her stumbling back, shielding her eyes from the painful brilliance. Sweat sprang from every pore. Lyram reeled past her and collapsed against the wall.
The shamblers kept on shambling. Wreathed in fire, their flesh ran like melting wax and their fat popped and sputtered. The tunnel filled with the stink of burning flesh. The dead were still trying to reach them, even as the fire consumed them. Slowly, the shamblers collapsed soundlessly into charred piles of bones and scorched flesh.
Ellaeva sank to the tunnel floor beside Lyram as the last of the revenants disintegrated into embers. His exhaustion ran as deep as her own, the bone-deep weariness echoing from the back of her head and amplifying her own need for rest, but the problem couldn’t keep any longer.
She turned to him. “Leinahre is the Rahmyrrim.”
The flames consuming the shamblers snapped and popped. Still resting against the wall, Ellaeva watched as Lyram kicked at the edges of the fire, stooping now and then to toss body parts back in to ensure they were consumed. She’d told him about Leinahre’s attack, and then he’d just... walked off. The feel of him in her head told her nothing; he felt tight as a bowstring.
The pounding in her skull was starting to abate, but exhaustion from channeling the power of the goddess through the sword still dragged at her eyelids. For a moment she almost let them slide closed, but then forced them open again. If she closed her eyes, she would sleep.
Lyram turned abruptly on his heel and walked over to stare down at her. She craned her neck to meet his gaze.
“And you’re sure?” he said. “I don’t understand. Leinahre’s family has owed fealty to mine for centuries, and she came to serve in our household years before she became my wife’s secretary.”
Ellaeva stood and stretched her back out, trying to remain calm. Lyram would sense any agitation. However, the breath she took was ragged despite her best efforts, and her stomach knotted up. She would need to confess her lie, the untruth that had seemed so small and insignificant when she began but which now loomed between them. He was not for her, not in this life, and yet she shrivelled to think his regard for her might wane. A lover was forbidden her, but he was still the closest thing to a friend she ever had.
“There are two possibilities,” she said. “Either she’s not Leinahre, and the Rahmyrrim has killed her and is using an illusion to look like Leinahre, or Leinahre has actually been a sleeper agent all these long years, corrupted either before or after she joined your household. The Rahmyrrim use them only occasionally, because the priest—or priestess in this case—is essentially a lost resource to them until whatever long game they are playing comes to fruition. Such investments are only made for truly high stakes.”
Lyram’s eyes grew round in the light of the dying flames. “Dragon’s balls, Ellaeva, what do they want with me? How far back does this go? You must know! You came here to stop this.”
Her cheeks flushed hot with embarrassment, and she dropped her eyes. She cleared her throat. “Actually... I didn’t.”
Unspoken astonishment filled the heavy silence, and she peeked at Lyram. If anything, his eyes widened further than before.
“What do you mean? You didn’t what?”
She’d never witnessed a raw rage from him, only heard the edges of it while he fought Traeburhn. Now unrestrained anger bled down the link between them, roiling with his blank failure to understand.
“A Battle Priestess is constrained by her duty. I lack the freedom to go wherever I please or do whatever I want. And yet... I am human.” She began to pace as she collected her thoughts. “Did you know my parents were murdered? I am an orphan. Half of all Battle Priestesses are. The easiest time to slay the chosen of Ahura is before she comes into her own powers, if the Rahmyrrim can identify her. For me, the priestesses of death arrived only just in time to spirit me away from harm. That day, my apprenticeship began.”
“You want revenge.” Lyram’s voice fell flat into the darkness.
“Justice. I want justice.”
“Semantics. Call it revenge or justice, but you want the man who murdered your family dead. And you came here to get it? Then what? My men got caught in the middle of a private war between you and the Rahmyrrim? How much of what has happened is only because you came here?”
She whirled on him, her jaw set. “I did not bring this siege here! And while I believe the Rahmyrrim is tangled in this private war, I didn’t know anything about it when I came here. Ahura gave me a premonition about a necromancer in Caisteal Aingeal an Bhais. But it was me that foolishly misread it and came here for my own reasons, when really she sent me to save you.”
Lyram shook his head. “All this time I thought you were here trying to help us, trying to help me, and it was all a lie. I trusted you, and then you used that trust against me. I even thought you ca—”
He cut off and eyed her sideways, as well he might. He knew she cared as well as she knew he cared for her. But the anger still simmered, mixed with hurt, fear and betrayal.
Her lie gave him a convenient target for his otherwise directionless anger.
“I helped you,” she said, her voice soft. “I just lied to you about why. And now it’s turned out I was righter than I knew.”
She thrust a second brand into the smouldering remains of the shamblers until the rag-wrapped head ignited, then turned her back on him and headed towards the stairwell.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Leinahre,” she said. “She went deeper into the catac
ombs. And if you want the answers to your questions, you’ll come too.”
Though it galled him, Lyram only hesitated a moment before following. Damn her for always being right.
They descended to the next level where the castle middens were located, and not much else except unmapped catacombs. His sense of her was cold and hard and slick, like snow slightly thawed and refrozen.
Damn her logic. Damn her unfeeling heart. It’s not so easy for me to turn my feelings on and off.
Ellaeva held the torch high to cast as much light as possible, revealing a myriad of tunnel branches. The slanting shadows all around them danced in the flickering torchlight. Her movements were strong and sure as she picked one and headed down it, but her back was tense.
“How do you know this is the right one?” he whispered as he followed her.
“I can sense her.” Ellaeva spoke in a soft voice, though louder than his. “She took care to conceal her true nature above ground, but down here she must feel safe. She’s been this way too many times, unguarded and unwarded, and her passing has left a sense of her darkness in the rock. I’m sorry, but I don’t think she’s using an illusion. At least, there’s no sense of one among the residual magic here, and there should be if she felt safe enough to work her powers this deep. I think she’s a sleeper agent. You need to accept that the woman you knew never existed—she was a façade, a front—and reconcile yourself to the fact that Leinahre is in truth a religious zealot in service to a cruel god. She is not the innocent young girl you knew.”
He scowled. How to reconcile the Leinahre he’d known for more than ten years with a priestess of the evil goddess of decay? He shook his head, unsettled by the notion.
Ellaeva kept talking, bitter disappointment sharp in her voice. “However, she’s not the priest I seek. She’s too young, and a woman besides.”
Despite himself, he felt a twinge of sympathy for her. She’d been alone so long, and this quest of hers was likely the only thing she could call her own. Should he...? No. Although he’d almost told her—almost spilled the secret, unthinking—in Traeburhn’s camp.
The darkness of the tunnels pressed in on them, more oppressive after Ellaeva’s statement. He loosened his sword in its scabbard then drew the blade free all the way. Ellaeva left hers sheathed, but he wasn’t the bloody Battle Priestess of the bloody death goddess, dammit. The fact she didn’t even look at him galled, and the hard, slickness of her didn’t even change.
All business. That’s all she ever was.
“Do you think we’ll find more shamblers here?”
“No. I think she kept them here when she made them, but she would have moved them all to the upper levels for her endgame.” She jabbed the torch towards the ceiling.
“What is her endgame?”
“Control of you is the only thing that makes sense to me. That’s what the potion gave her. If she’d had just a little more time for the potion to fully take hold, she’d own you completely by now. Unorthodox to use a hedge witch’s glamour, but undeniably effective.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “She could have poisoned you as easily as spelled you, if she’d wanted to kill you. It’s control she wanted.”
“I didn’t kill my wife.” He blurted the words before even realising he was going to. “I... uh. Since we’re sharing secrets....”
She looked at him evenly, as if he hadn’t just changed the subject all of a sudden. “You’ve never denied it before.”
“Drault said if I denied it, he’d produce evidence that I killed her and ruin my family. I don’t know what evidence, but I was at the scene. How hard to make it seem as if I held the knife? No one could account for my whereabouts that afternoon. This is why I can’t accuse Drault of Zaheva’s murder. He’ll turn it back on me.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice. “You can’t tell anyone. I just.... just wanted you to know. In case we die down here.”
She reached out and took his hand, and he let her. When she squeezed once and tried to let go, he clung to her a little longer.
“I’m not going back up without you,” he said, feeling her steel herself for the debate, knowing she was going to make the argument before she even spoke the words.
The tiny pulse of surprise from the bundled emotions didn’t satisfy.
“I’m not. Nothing you can say will change my mind.”
Her lips thinned, but when she nodded, he let go of her hand.
The tunnel branched into four, and she hesitated at the crossroads.
“Leinahre came here a lot,” she said. “Down all these tunnels. These two more than the others, though.”
They were the outermost tunnels, and appeared to lead off in totally different directions. He regarded them dubiously. “I guess we split up.”
“Or search them one by one.”
“Which will take longer.”
A distant thud reverberated through the tunnels, shaking a shower of dirt loose from the ceiling.
Ellaeva looked up. “Traeburhn is going to attack again.”
“He won’t let up until the castle is taken now,” Lyram said. “He thinks I’m dead, but he still needs me to ‘officially’ die in the siege. He plans to take the castle and plant my body there.”
“Shame he has no body.”
“A minor detail, of which he is likely unaware.” He glanced upwards. If the attackers had nearly filled the moat in the last attack, how long before Traeburhn seized the castle? Maybe he should go back to the walls....
The ball of Ellaeva’s emotions tightened with anticipation, and he shot her a look. “We don’t have time to dally down here. I say we split up.”
She didn’t like it. Her black eyes narrowed, and she pressed her lips together so hard they turned white. But in the end she nodded. “You take the torch.”
He put his hands behind his back and shook his head. “Keep it.”
“I can see in the dark.”
“Not completely.” Leaving a woman alone in the dark with an evil priest didn’t seem right, even if she was Ciotach an Bhais. “I’m not taking it.”
If anything, that annoyed her further, and she turned on her heel and chose a tunnel without further discussion.
Lyram sighed and headed for the other.
His eyes adjusted to the darkness slowly, and he found himself able to see enough. There must be an ambient light source. Curious, he studied the rock walls. They emitted the faintest light, too dim to glow but enough to turn the deep darkness into a dark grey twilight. Overhead, the blue-green lights of glow worms twinkled against a black roof.
The air was cool and still, and the tunnel travelled straight and true through the rock without any deviations or branches. The floor beneath his feet sloped down slightly, carrying him deeper into the earth, and each step sent showers of sand slithering over rock. Somewhere nearby, water gurgled.
Ahead, a faint green light appeared. Lyram frowned, halting a moment. After a moment, he carried on, trailing his hand along the rock wall to his left.
The green luminescence grew stronger as he approached. Lyram slowed and placed his feet carefully to avoid the faintest scuff of boot against stone. Was someone there? Or was this just some cave wonder?
The tunnel turned sharply into a small grotto. Glowing green mushrooms covered the walls. The bright light made him squint until his eyes adjusted. On the far side of the cave, a tiny stream trickled into a pool.
And at the pool’s nearest edge knelt Leinahre.
Lyram lunged across the cave with an inarticulate sound of rage. She half-turned as he came, and he caught her by the throat, lifting her into the air and slamming her down into the floor. The air whooshed out of her, and then her knife grazed his neck. He seized her wrist, slamming her hand against the rough sand-covered stone until she gasped and released the hilt. He straddled her chest and caught the other hand, pinning her to the ground.
“You’re dead!” Her eyes stared wide into his, pupils dilated in shock.
“Why?” his shout
rang off the rock walls. “Why, damn you! Ten years!”
She stared back at him silently, her eyes unreadable and her initial shock fading. A slight, cruel smile twisted her mouth, and the arrogant tilt of her head gave the impression she looked down her nose at him. Though her features were familiar, nothing of Zaheva’s secretary remained in this visage. Her big blue eyes no longer made her appear innocent and vulnerable, having turned flint hard and cold as ice.
“Why did you do all this? I trusted you!”
“It was my job to make sure you trusted me.” Her lips moved after she finished speaking, as though she licked them, but there was no sign of her tongue.
“But why? I am no crusader in any holy war. Was it the throne you were after? Others are closer than I.”
She shrugged, that small smile still playing on her lips. “We don’t want to control Ahlleyn. We want to control you.”
“But why?” What value did he have apart from the kingdom? In frustration, he pounded her hands against the stone floor.
The expression on her face didn’t change. Gods, what rituals did a Rahmyrrim go through to reach priesthood? Nothing occurred to him that would compel her to talk—at least, nothing he could stomach doing, and especially not to a woman. No matter how he looked at her, he couldn’t stop seeing a woman instead of the priest of an evil god.
“Because, somehow, in some way we don’t yet understand, you are the key to destroying her.”
A slight tingle ran down his arms, almost like energy building. What was she doing? Was she trying some magic?
The scene before him jolted, the cave fading away to be replaced by…something else.
Leinahre, wringing her hands, blinking tearfully at the prince. “Please, Your Highness, I beg of you. My lord is to meet his lady by the east gate an hour before dusk. Will the hunt be back in time?”
In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1) Page 35
