“Did a good job of teaching me, because that’s their calling, but they, too, resented me. I had nothing resembling normality in my life.” A hard edge crept into her voice, and she turned abruptly away from the door, yanking again on her baldric and straightening her sword with sharp movements.
In any one else, he’d call the emotion anger, but he’d previously seen nothing but cold rage from her, and this felt uncontrolled. He tried to imagine a childhood without hugs and comfort, and something stirred deep in him, a kind of black fury he’d not felt since finding Zaheva in the snow. Everything since had been hollow, but now he found himself driven to protect this woman from things that could not be guarded against.
“We can’t possibly effectively search the catacombs ourselves,” she said, approaching the door. “But we better look at least.”
“None may pass here,” the priestess said.
“We have the permission of the abbess,” Ellaeva said. “We wouldn’t have come down this way unless she allowed us passage past the altar.”
The silence stretched. Darkness concealed the features of the priestess, but Lyram felt her gaze, studying each of them in turn. Finally, she grudgingly reached for the door.
“Do you hear something?” he said.
Ellaeva and the priestess turned to regard him.
“Like what?” Ellaeva said.
“I don’t quite know. A scratching, or a shuffling maybe? Perhaps I imagined it. I can’t hear anything now.”
She held his gaze a moment and then, shrugging, addressed the priestess. “Unlock the door, please.”
The priestess threw the bolts, and Lyram seized the handles and hauled. The heavy door started to swing open, stiff hinges protesting with a long drawn-out groan that echoed off the walls. Rust cracked and flaked away as the hinges were slowly forced into motion.
Ellaeva reached for the edge of the door to add her strength to Lyram’s, nodding her thanks to the doorkeeper as the portal swung open ponderously.
A skeletal hand, flesh hanging from the bones, grabbed her wrist and yanked her staggering into the darkness.
Lyram released the door and lunged for Ellaeva, colliding instead with the doorkeeper as she scrambled backwards away from the portal. He thrust her away from him, threw himself headlong into the darkness, and caught the trailing hem of Ellaeva’s robe. A horrible slobbering moaning filled his ears. The stink of putrefaction choked him, and the hollow planes of a skeletal face emerged from the shadows.
Yelling, Lyram flung himself backwards. With his hand firmly entangled in Ellaeva’s robe, he dragged her with him from the darkness.
A nightmare of bones held together by tendons and draped in strings of rotting flesh emerged with her. He gagged on the stink and wound his hand more firmly in Ellaeva’s robe, propelling them further backwards. Its bony fingers dug into her flesh. Her free hand scrabbled desperately for her sword.
Lyram tripped and stumbled backwards, toppling them all to the floor. The impact slammed the breath from him, then Ellaeva landed on him, driving from his lungs what little air remained to him, and the rotting monstrosity came down on top. Through stars dancing in his vision, he saw the doorkeeper scurrying back down the hallway towards the altar.
Ellaeva shrieked, fighting ineffectually with the animated corpse as they rolled off Lyram. One claw-like hand remained locked around her wrist, and the other reached for her throat. The thing’s teeth gnashed. Empty eye sockets gaped sightlessly.
She flailed in desperation, kicking her legs, and rolled back over Lyram. He groaned as the weight squashed him against the floor, and Ellaeva and the skeleton rolled away again in a tangle of black robes and thrashing limbs.
Lyram turned onto his side, trying to catch his breath. His stomach still rebelled from the dreadful stink of wet death. Aching like he’d been flattened by a stampede, he staggered to his feet and wrenched his sword from the scabbard.
Ellaeva tried to stand, but every time she got her feet under her, the skeleton yanked her back down. It sprawled across the floor in a collection of barely held together bones, gripping her wrist with what seemed like an impossible degree of strength. Ellaeva panted with effort.
Lyram lurched across the floor towards them, lifting the sword. The thing saw him and released Ellaeva so suddenly she collapsed backwards. The crack of her head hitting the ground echoed in the corridor. The skeletal hand lifted protectively as the sword smashed down.
The bones splintered at the wrist, but the rotting corpse didn’t notice. It rolled across the floor, other hand reaching for Lyram’s ankle. He skipped back, risking a glance at Ellaeva. She lay still on the floor. Ahura, is her skull broken? His heartbeat raced in his throat. The thing climbed to its feet with bewildering speed and threw itself at him.
He lunged, but the sword passed clean through the thing’s rib-cage, scraping against bone. When he tugged, the blade was stuck fast between two ribs, refusing to budge. Its remaining hand brushed his face. He recoiled from the touch of rotting flesh, the stink filling his nostrils, and abandoned the sword. With one hand locked around the skeleton’s wrist, he fought to find purchase somewhere on its bones with the other. His fingers slipped free and stripped a piece of rotting flesh from a rib. Reflexively, his hand jerked away from the wet putrescence.
Gritting his teeth, he seized a collarbone. Step by step he forced the thing backwards, trying to ignore the slimy slipperiness beneath his fingers. The grinning skull snapped at his face, but fell short.
He pushed the skeleton into the doorway. Ellaeva appeared, seizing the hilt of his sword and tugging ineffectually.
“Hold tight!” he shouted. Releasing the skeleton, he kicked the thing square in its pelvis. The blade rasped free, and the monstrosity stumbled away into the darkness.
Lyram threw himself at the door. The rusted hinges groaned as it began to close. Ellaeva swung his sword through the narrowing opening. Steel scraped against bone. Lyram redoubled his efforts.
A skeletal hand emerged from the darkness of the catacombs. Screaming, Ellaeva swung the clan sword two-handed, shattering several finger bones. The hand retreated and the iron door boomed shut.
With his body pressed hard against the cold iron, Lyram slammed all the bolts home.
Ellaeva collapsed to the floor, the clan sword cradled in her lap. Lyram sank down beside her. A hollow booming echoed from behind the door as the thing beat against the iron.
He said nothing for a moment, trying to regain his breath. His head lolled sideways. Ellaeva’s eyes slid closed, and her chest heaved. Livid red scratches ran down her neck and across her cheeks from the grasping skeletal fingers.
Something brushed his hand, and he glanced down. A couple of tiny finger bones twitched across the ground. With a yell, he scooped them up and flung them away.
“Fire,” Ellaeva said, her voice faint. “We’ll need to burn them.”
Farther away again, the hand he’d severed inched its way across the stone floor towards them.
Closing his eyes, he pressed his face against the cool metal of the door and fought the dizzying nausea flooding him. “What was that?” His voice emerged thick, as though his mouth were stuffed with food. He swallowed, and bile burned his throat.
“A revenant. Essentially an animated corpse. In the Ghoul Wars of the second millennia, the armies of Ahura called them shamblers.” Her hair had pulled free of its bindings, and she tried to brush strands free from her face. They clung to her skin instead, damp with sweat. “Thousands of them were made back then. Now, it’s a trick some Rahmyrrim are fond of, but one granted only to the most powerful. Our adversary is very powerful. Tenth tier at least. Not many rise so high.”
Why does she sound so pleased?
“Animated corpse,” he said, voice dull. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?” The queasiness redoubled in strength. “Can they be killed?”
“Generally only with fire.” She passed the sword back to him. “Or hacking it to pieces, but you see ho
w well that works. Better to leave it locked up for now.”
He took the blade, grateful she’d managed to save it. The sword had significance for the entire clan. “Should we expect more?”
A frown pinched her brow. “Maybe. This one was old—well, the corpse used was old. A practice piece, I’d say. I wouldn’t want more of them within the walls. I suggest you instruct Leinahre to burn all our dead, not just those suspected of being ill.”
He saw the merit in the suggestion, but what would he tell the men? Burning the dead, instead of giving them a proper burial, would hit morale bad. Bad enough they already burned the infected.
“And pray we see nothing worse,” she added.
“Worse?”
“Most necromancers who can raise revenants can also create spectres.” She shook her head even as he opened his mouth to speak. “Even burning the dead won’t help us then. It’s a perversion of the spirit rather than the flesh. The mere touch of a spectre is death, either immediately or within several days, depending on the strength of will of the person touched. But it is inevitable, and all those touched become spectres themselves.”
“Fantastic.” He heaved a sigh, climbed to his feet, and extended a hand to Ellaeva.
She accepted, allowing him to haul her to her feet.
The red scratches on her neck mesmerised him. He’d seen something like it, and recently—sometime after the death of Zaheva.... A memory jangled but refused to coalesce. So much in those early days had been lost in the haze of whisky fumes.
He released her hand. “I see the priestesses are rushing to our aid.”
She laughed. “I am the one meant to protect them.”
After collecting the wriggling fingers and severed hand in a makeshift sack made of his plaid, they walked back through the cloister in silence. Lyram carried the twitching sack with his arm outstretched.
The altar lay abandoned, and all the doors down the halls were closed. A few bolts slammed home as they passed. Lyram ignored them, lost in the fugue of failed recollection.
The outermost iron door guarded by the rude priestess lay abandoned. Lyram unbolted the door, hauled it open for Ellaeva to pass out of the cloister, and dragged it closed behind them.
Eventually they came to the walled-up meat store and began the ascent. Weariness beat at Lyram, and aches and pains from the conflict. Ellaeva stumbled up the stairs, her feet catching on every second riser or so. He steadied her by the elbow as best he could in the narrow confines of the stairwell. Her eyes were glazed, probably from the hard knock to the head, and the scratches on her neck were even more inflamed.
“Is it catching?” The thought made him nervous. “That thing can’t make more like itself?”
She lifted her head enough to smile at him. Her face was abnormally pale. “No. It’s fuelled by magic, and magic alone. Unlike the illness we checked, once the sustaining spell collapses, the revenant dies. To create more, the necromancer must cast a new spell.”
Footsteps echoed in the stairwell. A light flickered from the stairs above them, and Everard appeared, torch held aloft. Lines furrowed his brow, but his expression eased into a relieved smile at sight of them.
“Thank Chalon,” he said. He carried a roll of paper tucked under his arm. “We assembled the soldiers, and I found the map, but then you didn’t come...”
He stared at Ellaeva, swaying on her feet. She wouldn’t stay upright much longer.
“Dismiss the soldiers,” Lyram said. “We’re denied access to the cloister. Then bring hot water, cloths and bandages to my suite, and send for Leinahre. And burn this—don’t open it under any circumstances.”
Everard took the sack. “You want me to burn a perfectly good plaid?”
“Without question,” Lyram said.
Everard nodded and scrambled to obey. His hasty footsteps receded up the stairs. He’d follow the orders to the letter.
Ellaeva moaned and teetered on the step. Lyram caught her arm and studied her face more closely. Concussed, by the look of her. He bent and scooped her into his arms. Though tall for a woman, she made a light burden.
He began climbing the stairs again, headed to his suite. Her robes trailed against his knees, and her head lolled over his right arm, exposing her throat and the livid scratches from the fingers of the corpse.
Where had he seen that before? He racked his brain, trying to force the memory.
At court. Yes.
He’d been barely vertical, stricken by grief and soaked with the whisky he’d used in vain to numb the pain. Too many people had crowded around. Someone, somewhere, in that crowd, had borne scratches like these. But who?
The memory came to him like lightning in a clear sky, and he stopped, Ellaeva hanging limp in his arms.
Traeburhn.
Lyram paced his chamber restlessly. On every circuit, he stopped at the arrowslits in the curved wall of the bedroom to peer outside, in case there was an attack, or as if even from this distance he might recognize the familiar figure of Traeburhn himself among the enemy soldiers. Ellaeva lay on his bed, lapsed into unconsciousness.
What did Traeburhn’s scratches mean? Someone had scratched him, and viciously. Probably a woman, since most men kept their nails pared short.
Another circuit, another look out the arrowslit.
Given the chancellor’s rather well-known disregard for the willingness of his bedfellows, scratch marks weren’t necessarily unusual. The way in which he tossed gold about to soothe ruffled feathers meant no one spoke of it.
He paused by the bedside and pressed the back of his hand to Ellaeva’s forehead. Cool. Her chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. He moved on, restless. What’s taking Everard so long?
Traeburhn’s injuries might have continued to pass unremarked, except that Lyram saw them a bare day after Zaheva’s murder.
Surely he hadn’t—?
The thought didn’t bear considering. Lyram had sworn death and vengeance against all those responsible for his wife’s murder, but to act against Traeburhn outside the law was a capital crime, and to bring formal charges... I’d receive no justice that way. The duke possessed too much money and power. And there was Drault and his threats of blackmail. Would he make good on them if Lyram moved against Traeburhn? If anything, that lent more weight to the argument that Lyram was best off eliminating the prince than risking his family.
I am loyal to my king.
What if his loyalty meant his wife went unavenged? What if protecting his family meant committing treason?
The door opened, distracting him from the conundrum. Everard manoeuvred his way into the room, burdened with a large basin of steaming water. He clutched a bundle of towels to his side with an elbow.
Lyram darted into the sitting room, past the comfortable warmth of the fire on the hearth, and took them from him.
“I’ll take that.” Everard set the basin down on the small table next to the bed and tried to take the towels back.
“I’ll do it.” Lyram clung to the towels, waving Everard over to the bedside. He sat in the ladder-back chair alongside the bed, dipped the corner of a towel in the basin, and began cleaning the welts on Ellaeva’s neck. A few bled, and he wiped the blood away with care.
Everard hovered. “Sir, are you sure you don’t require assistance?”
“No.” The word came out sharper than he’d intended, but she deserved to be looked after by someone who cared. He offered Everard a smile to take the sting away. “But lift her head, will you, so I can check the back of her skull.”
Everard circled to the other side of the bed and lifted her head with care.
Lyram probed the bone. A slightly sticky lump adorned her skull. She’d bled, but not much.
The door opened again, and Leinahre glided into the room. Her face darkened as she took in the scene. Lyram paused with his hands on Ellaeva’s head.
“Does her holiness require my assistance?” Her tone was cool enough to raise frost.
Lyram blinked and wave
d for Everard to lower Ellaeva’s head. Maybe Leinahre really didn’t like her. “No, I have this under control, but I needed to talk to you about the dead. The bodies must be burned.”
Her eyebrows lifted, and Everard gasped.
“Burn them, my lord?” she said.
“Sir, Leinahre, sir—how many times must I tell you.”
“I am not one of your soldiers, my lord.”
He sighed and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Yes, burn them. Say it’s the illness—all bodies must be burned to prevent the spread of illness.”
“But that’s not the truth?”
“No, and we won’t be discussing this further. I know the bodies of the dead are in the cool store, pending burial in the catacombs at first opportunity, but the catacombs are closed until further notice. Please burn the bodies as a matter of urgency.”
Expressionless, she nodded. “I’ll tend to it straight away, my lord.”
She turned on her heel with surprising sharpness. The bang of the door not quite slamming echoed after her.
Everard arched one eyebrow behind his glasses. “Women.”
“Women, Everard? Really?”
The thready but dry tone pulled Lyram’s gaze to the bed. Everard stood like a starving dragon hatchling with his mouth agape.
Ellaeva’s eyes half-opened. With obvious effort, she forced her eyelids all the way up and struggled to sit. “What happened?”
“You hit your head hard. A touch of concussion, I suspect. You should rest.”
Ellaeva wobbled her head side to side on the pillow. “No time for rest.”
He sighed. “You’re right. Everard, fetch some broth from the kitchens.” He wagged a finger in admonishment at Ellaeva. “You should at least eat. You’re pale as snow.”
“Food!” She sat up abruptly, groaned and clutched her head, then fell back. “We need to talk about the castle’s lack of food. You promised.”
“I had hoped for better circumstances than these...all right.” He propped her up with some pillows as Everard departed, and she nestled into them with a sigh.
In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1) Page 15