“Lyram.” She shook his hand, trying to attract his attention.
His empty eyes drifted over to her and settled on her face without recognition, without even a spark of life. His limp fingers didn’t move. He registered her presence but didn’t really see her, and the way his eyes, once so full of life and laughter and even pain, looked through her made her cringe again. She set her shoulders back.
“Lyram, it’s Ellaeva.” When not even a flicker of recognition lit his slack features, she steeled herself and spoke again in the Ahlleyn accent. “Ciotach an Bhais.”
A muscle in his cheek jumped and his eyes enlivened fractionally. They switched left and right in his face a few times before finally settling on her. The hand in her palm twitched.
“Zaheva?” He breathed the word so softly she barely heard it.
She squeezed her eyes closed. He still didn’t see her, only his dead wife. This time the dam walling away her emotions burst, and she lowered her head until her forehead pressed against his leg. A hand clumsily stroked her hair, and she cried all the harder, knowing he sought to soothe a woman almost a year in the grave. She didn’t want much—couldn’t expect much in this lonely life allotted her by fate—only that someone might perceive the woman behind the fearsome name and reputation, a lonely, friendless woman, and care. Lyram had, and now that was gone. Taken from her by Leinahre.
The door clicked open behind her. In the still moment of silence that followed, Ellaeva scrubbed her face dry. When she stood to face Leinahre, it was the Left Hand of Death who arose, her jaw clenched so hard her teeth ached.
“Get away from him.” Leinahre’s voice came low, hard and angry as Lyram lapsed again into vacant quiescence. Leinahre stood in the doorway, her earlier composure shattered by the naked anger contorting her features. The blood had drained from her face, leaving her white with fear, and the two emotions battled for control of her expression. She clasped Lyram’s clan sword loosely in one hand.
The other woman lunged across the room, startling Ellaeva into stepping back. The bed pressed hard against her back, and she side-stepped as Leinahre closed with her. The sometime secretary collided with the bed but turned immediately, the sheathed sword held clumsily as a cudgel.
“He’s mine now.” A snarl twisted her lips. “Mine, and you can’t have him.”
“You want him like this? What for?” Ellaeva backed away, circling as Leinahre turned, always keeping the enraged woman before her. She risked a glance behind her, not wanting to be pinned down. Lyram’s chair blocked further retreat, but if needed she could flee over the bed.
“I’ve seen the way you look at him. You want him for yourself.”
Ellaeva stiffened, then forced a laugh, but it rang hollow in her ears. “Would you cross the goddess of death?”
The bald statement left a deep ache in her chest. This unasked-for service to death left her with nothing to call her own, no family, no friends, and no lover: a fate that would not, could not, ever change or end—except in death.
Leinahre wrenched the sheath free of the sword and slashed at Ellaeva with a wild swing of her arm, forcing her back. Ellaeva retreated one step and stopped, grinding her teeth.
This ends now.
She drew her sword, the blade ringing as it came free of the scabbard, and Leinahre’s eyes widened as though she’d forgotten in her anger that Ellaeva was armed. Ellaeva swung the blade at the awful woman, knocking the clan sword free of her lax grip. It skittered across the floor and came to a stop against the bed.
Leinahre scurried into the other room.
Something creaked from behind, and Ellaeva risked a glance over her shoulder.
Lyram rose to his feet, stooped, and retrieved the clan sword from the floor. Did the sword trigger some recognition in him?
He swung the sword at her.
Ellaeva wrenched her own blade back into position, her heart thundering in her ears as his sword clanged against hers hard enough to numb her arm to the shoulder. The blow jarred her back and the still fresh wound there. She gritted her teeth.
He attacked with methodical strokes and relentless rhythm, almost workman-like, and she faltered and fell back, each blow and parry wrenching fresh pain from her back. No finesse or strategy showed in his attack; he forced her backwards with sheer brute strength and size.
Sweat dripped into her eyes as she gave ground, one step, two steps, faster than she liked. Her strength flagged quickly, worn down by two days of battle and sleepless nights and sapped further by the pain in her back. A quick glance revealed Leinahre in the corner, well out of way of the combatants, watching with an unholy kind of grim elation on her face.
Ellaeva’s boot caught on the edge of the rug at the border between sitting room and bedchamber, and she almost fell.
Lyram didn’t falter, only swung the blade again.
She changed her recovery, instead throwing herself to the ground. The impact with the wooden floor drove the breath from her lungs and sent agony shooting through her back. Gasping, she rolled, but not before a boot landed hard in her ribs. She grunted, kept rolling through the pain, and scrambled to her feet before he kicked her again. Half-hunched against the sharp stabbing in her abdomen and her back, sword still clutched in one hand, she retreated towards the door. Damn him, she wasn’t equipped to fight him—not now, not in her condition.
She took one look at him bearing down on her, no more intelligent than the mindless shamblers in the catacombs.
Anger curdled in her stomach, together with a wrenching desolation that left her hollow and aching. Ahura curse Leinahre to the pit for what she’d done.
I will make you pay.
But today was not her day to collect.
Though the decision tore her heart and soul in half, for the second time in two days she turned tail and fled.
Battered, bruised and sick to her soul, Ellaeva trudged up the grand stair, her eyes fixed on the red-and-gold Tembran patterns passing repetitively below her feet. Her decision was logical, rational and well-reasoned. Retreating made sense. Pursuing a strategy with no hope of success was senseless, so regrouping and attacking again another day was the best course. She found no solace in that knowledge.
A pair of empty blue eyes blazed in her memory. Lyram was alive—but dead to everything he ever was and everyone he ever knew. Everard was right. This wasn’t normal.
Her instincts screamed at her to kill Leinahre, but after the way Lyram had leapt to her defence, would that even cure him? What if his condition persisted even after Leinahre died? Not all magic died with the creator. Not everything unexplainable was caused by magic.
The stair runner came to an end, the red-and-gold pattern giving way to the bare timber of the banqueting hall and an atmosphere laden with misery. More wounded lay moaning on pallets than she remembered, wrapped in blankets and their own agony. The tallow candles thankfully didn’t cast enough light to properly illuminate the scene. The sweet stink of infection and rot lingered in the air, mixed with the burnt fat and smoke from the candles, and despite the spiced incense burning in pots around the room. A castle woman, her tartan kirtle spattered with blood, checked each pot, removing the spent sticks and replacing them. Other women, both servants and sisters from the cloister, moved among the men, offering water and the limited comfort of a reassuring word. Some of them made the sign of Ahura, touching the brow, lips, and breast. Now that Leinahre had abandoned her post, the castle had no one with any skill to tend these soldiers.
Ellaeva came round the bannister at the head of the stairs. Before her stood the bench where Leinahre usually prepared her herbs—and where Lyram once squeezed her hand, offering reassurance in a shared moment of horror and heartache. Before him, when was the last time someone voluntarily touched her? The rumours of her power, that she could kill with a touch, were too widespread. The last time someone touched her in comfort was easier to remember.
Never.
Fresh tears pricked her eyes, and she dashed them away wi
th one hand, clenching the other against the overwhelming sadness and girding herself in anger. This was Leinahre’s fault.
“Your holiness!” Everard sprang from the shadows near the entrance to the spiralling tower stair, his face more animated than ever before and his eyes bright behind the wire-rimmed glasses.
She recoiled, startled. His enthusiasm left her even more desolate and fatigued.
“Leinahre came here.” He rushed the words out, then cleared his throat and straightened his clothes, as if recalled to the dignity of his position.
Ellaeva sighed. So much for that. All the evidence would be gone. “I thought as much. I went to Lyram while she was distracted—”
“I got here first,” he said, triumphant. “Took everything away two days ago and hid it so I could search it without fear of her interfering. Chalon, I never saw her so mad as she was just now. She blamed me, but what was she going to do in front of a room full of witnesses? Accuse me of stealing her illegal herbs?”
Ellaeva straightened from her defeated hunch. “What? What did you find? Show me!”
“I’m not sure—that’s why I wanted you to look it over. But there must be something important for her to be so furious.” Everard scurried between the pallets of wounded and dying men towards the withdrawing room, waving for her to follow him.
“I took everything off her bench and stashed it here,” he said, pushing the door open. “She took the commander’s sword—I didn’t think to lock it away—but I already had all her herbs.”
The room lay shrouded in darkness. Dusk had come and gone, and with the hearth unlit, a distinct chill hung in the air.
Abandoning his usual dignified stateliness, Everard hurried around the room, igniting each beeswax candle with a tallow taper from the banquet hall, while Ellaeva waited in a numb stupor. No wonder Leinahre was so enraged when she returned to Lyram’s suite, knowing that Everard had thwarted her by taking her belongings. He must have something important to her. He must have.
The aide unlocked a cupboard in a carved teak sideboard opposite the cold fireplace and pulled a canvas sack from within. He placed it on the brocade cushion of a scrollwork chair and turned to carefully move the strategic maps and the troop counters off the table, making plenty of room.
She stepped close as he upended the sack onto the table top with a clatter. Several items skittered across the polished surface. Pouches of herbs predominated the haul, which included a mortar and pestle, a knife for trimming herbs, several chipped clay cups for administering medicines to the sick, a cluster of rolled and clean bandages, and a half dozen bottles and jars of lotions and other liquid preparations.
“I didn’t know anything about herbs two days ago,” Everard said. “I had to find a book of herb lore in the library. I managed to identify some of the common herbs, but there are other things here that don’t match any descriptions. When I realised that, I decided I needed you to look at them.”
“Did Leinahre bring all these with her from the capital?” Ellaeva pulled the tools and bandages from the clustered mess and set them aside as being of little interest. She picked up a pouch.
“I think so. She always dabbled a little in herbs, and the Lady Zaheva encouraged her. She tended many of the minor and day-to-day household scrapes and complaints.” He picked up a bottle and peered near-sightedly at the wax sealing stopper. “This is one of the ones I couldn’t identify.”
Ellaeva opened the pouch in her hand. The crushed leaves of a harmless plant used to treat wounds against infection filled the tiny sack.
“All the pouches contain normal and easily identifiable herbs,” Everard said, “but I couldn’t find any description that matched the contents of this.” He proffered the bottle. It was made of a glass so dark a brown as to be almost black.
She took the bottle. The dark glass obscured what lay inside, but when she shook it gently the contents gurgled. The wax seal on the cork was broken. At some point in its life, this bottle had seen use.
The stopper was wedged in tight, but she wiggled it loose. Before it came free, she paused, fixing Everard with a stern look. “Step back. Who knows what this is. I am protected, and you are not.”
The aide retreated to the far side of the room, his complexion a pasty white.
When he could go no further without leaving the room, she eased the cork from the bottle and lifted it to her nose. She inhaled a fraction, opening her senses to the goddess. Everard busied himself needlessly straightening his sporran.
A pleasant scent reached her nostrils. Most of its components escaped her, but she recognised amber, patchouli and tobacco. Through her heightened holy senses, the scent evoked a sudden giddiness and a hot flush in her loins. Lyram’s face flashed through her mind, then another image, of the time she saw him naked. Heat spread through her cheeks, even as the ache in her groin deepened.
She shoved the stopper back in the bottle, grimacing. “This is a love philtre of a particularly nasty construction. Although not strictly part of a Battle Priestess’s canon, my studies touched on these briefly.”
“So this is not Rahmyrrim magic?” Everard pulled his glasses free with one hand to rub at the bridge of his nose with the other, the disappointment plain on his face.
“Hedge witch magic, no more. The powerful variety—the forbidden kind—but it involves no black gods. Such a philtre is not easy to come by, but there are still several places inside the kingdom borders she could obtain it. I suspect most if not all purveyors of such items are to be found within the walls of the capital—they cater to very select clients. This would account for the behaviour we witnessed, but most hedge witchery involves several doses. If this is the last of it, and we assume she administered the final dose after I was wounded, how did she get the previous concoctions into him?”
Everard froze in the midst of polishing his glasses, and his mouth worked fruitlessly for a moment before he forced some words out. “Would they... Would they be draughts like that?”
The uneasiness in his voice pulled her gaze up from the pile of herbs. “Liquids, yes,” she said slowly. “Why?”
One hand held his forgotten glasses, but the other gripped the table as if to stop him falling. “The commander had”—he swallowed hard—”trouble sleeping. On the road here, more often than not he drank himself to sleep, and often enough after we arrived too. When he showed no sign of stopping, I started dosing him with sleeping potions in the whisky. There were a... a few times Leinahre said she needed to make more and only gave me one dose.”
The memory flashed back, of Leinahre passing something to Everard in the courtyard, glimpsed out a window while she waited for Lyram to wake.
Everard groaned and shoved his glasses back onto his face, blinking as his eyes refocused behind the lenses. “Chalon have mercy, I did this. I gave her the opening she needed.”
“Lyram’s exile gave her the opening she needed, not you. She couldn’t have done this in the capital without someone noticing, someone powerful. Here, no one has the authority to overrule him if he behaves out of character.” How many things had Zaheva’s death and Lyram’s exile made possible? This siege wouldn’t have occurred without either, and now Lyram falling under Leinahre’s spell. A deep unease stirred in her gut. “You merely made one part of her task easier by giving her a simple way to get the potion into him, that’s all.”
Everard grunted. “She didn’t really need me. He drank anything anyone put in his hand in first six months after Zaheva died, provided it was hard liquor. She could have handed it to him herself.”
“He was too grief-stricken then,” she said. “Leinahre had to wait until it started to pass, but then he became more alert, so she used you. But now it has him in its grip, and the effects are so powerful he’ll fight to defend her—to the death if need be. He attacked me just now when I threatened her.”
She flushed at the memory of her ill-conceived and hot-headed attack on the woman, but Everard only stared at her, as if belatedly taking in her dish
evelled appearance, the torn robes, and her face, likely purpling now from the blow to her cheekbone. Her belly ached where he’d kicked her, and the wound in her back burned.
“The commander did this? I thought...” He waved towards the front of the castle, the gesture encompassing the siege, the attacks, and the conflict on the walls.
“No.” The word fell flat into the space between them. “No, it was... the commander.” Her voice cracked. She shivered in the pervasive cold of the drawing room.
Everard gazed at her, aghast. His hand trembled. If only she could give him solace, but what could she offer him when she had none herself? Leinahre’s claws were sunk deep in Lyram, and she had no hope to proffer, no platitudes that did not ring hollow.
To distract herself, she picked up a small bottle and opened it. The scent of mint came to her. “Wintergreen oil. The cause of my poisoning, I suspect. Leinahre has been long in the service of the commander. Do you have any insight into why she would do any of this?”
“None. She served faithfully these ten years or more, and her family have been loyal vassals for a century now. The death of the lady hit her hard, as it did us all, but like us—most of us—she recovered from the shock. I thought so, anyway. I cannot even begin to guess why she would do this thing to a man who has been nothing but generous to her.”
Perhaps therein lies the problem. Grieving, did she fixate on a man who showed her kindness in his own extremity? Lyram had likely thought nothing of it, showering all with some degree of largesse in his pursuit of impartial fairness. “Or she seeks to advance herself by an advantageous marriage.”
The idea needed to be raised, but Everard recoiled as if from a venomous snake, his face falling into a forbidding frown. “Ladies have been known to do as much, and even young gentlemen with few prospects, but Leinahre... I did not think...”
In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1) Page 26