Frost grew across the floor under his body. Spurred on by the proximity of the ghost, he crawled forward on his elbows after his sword. Stretched his full-length upon the stone floor, his fingers closed around the hilt. At that instant, he rolled and brought the sword down at the ring.
He missed, the steel blade ringing against the stone.
The second blow smashed home hard with a flash of light so bright it consumed the entire grotto in crimson. A banshee wail tore through the small space, accompanied by a sudden intense vortex of force whirling around the cavern, flinging sand and pebbles in a stinging rain. Lyram put his face to the floor, his arms over his head to shield his eyes. Debris whipped over his body, dragging at his clothes, and adding the rattle of small stones against rock to the howling wind and the tortured sounds of the dying ghost.
Ahura, will this never end? His eyes watered as sand found its way in through every tiny crevice left by his protective arms.
The wind dropped.
Coughing, Lyram rolled over and tentatively opened his eyes.
The cavern was completely still now. No sign of his wife remained. Old, spent grief surged through him, but no tears flowed. The deep exhaustion gripping him made the emotions distant.
Ellaeva stood in the mouth of the tunnel, looking even more battered and bruised than he felt. In some places her clothes were wet with blood. She didn’t have her sword.
“Dragon balls.” He scrambled to his feet and hurried to her. “You’re hurt.”
She shook him off impatiently. “Time enough to worry about that later. I’ve already tended what needs tending, and there’ll be no resting yet.”
Each and every one of her aches and pains echoed in his head. She hurt more than she would say. “What happened?”
Ellaeva rubbed at her eyes and sighed. “Leinahre used the ring to bind your wife’s spirit.”
“I don’t understand how her spirit could even be here—she died a year ago, hundreds of leagues from here.” Lyram ran tired fingers through his hair, pushing the loose strands away from his face.
“It’s a technique used to raise a spectre even when you’re nowhere near its body, provided you bind it into an item that is significant to the deceased around the time of death. It allows the holder of the item to summon or dissipate the spectre at will.”
“Rahmyr’s been involved in this from the start,” Lyram said bleakly, staring vacantly in the direction of the pool. “Leinahre said they tried to use me to get to you.”
“She told me the same. But they failed.”
And he knew why: her emotions—her love for him—still blazed down the link between them. “You don’t think it has anything to do with—?”
“I do not!” Vehemence filled her every word. Then her face softened, relaxing into harried lines of exhaustion. “Leinahre is dead.”
The news didn’t bring him the relief he expected.
“I found this on her body.” Ellaeva passed over a small scrap of paper, creased as though it had been folded around something hard.
Lyram opened it to find more words in Bradlin’s hand.
Aharris is dead. Here is the ring in part payment. Bring down the castle in the next twenty-four hours, and the rest is yours.
“This explains a lot.” He closed his fist on the note, too numb yet to feel relief or much of anything else.
“Much,” Ellaeva agreed. “Leinahre was clearly working with Bradlin from the start. I’d guess they had regular scheduled message exchanges. This message explains why the spectres suddenly came out of the catacombs en masse.”
“She only wanted the ring.” Lyram thrust the crumpled note into his pocket. Maybe it was evidence of some kind. “And it looks like Bradlin gave it to her, thinking she just wanted the gold. Ironic that she got it only after it was useless to her, after she’d already used the glamour on me. So why did she cooperate with Bradlin and raise the spectres?”
Ellaeva shrugged. “Maybe she wanted to confirm you were dead herself before reporting back to her superiors.”
Above came the crash of another boulder hitting the walls. His wife was dead because of his unwitting involvement in a divine plot, his prince was trying to kill him, and Traeburhn believed him dead—and wouldn’t rest until he took the castle to hide his foul murder.
“In any case,” she said, “with Leinahre dead, we have one less thing to worry about.”
“At least you got your man—well, woman.” Traeburhn was still out there, though.
Ellaeva nodded, but her face was as bleak as his and new shadows filled her eyes. A dark despair batted at the inside of his skull—not his. What had Leinahre said to her?
Shaking his head, he crossed to pick up Zaheva’s ring. Despite the strength of his blow, the gem-studded band remained undented and intact. He closed his fingers around it, tears pricking his eyes.
Another crash echoed around the chamber as he turned to face her. “Now we secure the castle and end this once and for all. But Traeburhn is mine.”
She hurried to catch him up as he swept past her and up the tunnel. “Don’t do anything foolish.”
He looked at her with a flat stare.
“Do or die.”
Lyram hesitated in the cramped hall outside the door to Ellaeva’s tiny apartment. The castle was secure for the time being, but he’d come here without bothering to wash or rest since the latest battle ended. Foolishness, when the next assault might only be hours away. He’d told his soldiers to sleep, so why didn’t he go to his own bed?
Sheer exhaustion made it impossible to care about the tasks left undone. After everything in the catacombs, they’d rushed straight into a second battle, the visions of Zaheva’s death still tolling in his head. He hadn’t even mentioned them to Ellaeva.
I killed my wife.
Had he killed her? Or released her? He certainly tried to kill her—if the magic Ellaeva had put on his sword had worked, Zaheva’s spirit would have been destroyed.
It felt like he’d killed her—killed her a second time, and right after witnessing Traeburhn brutally cut her throat. And so he’d come here to talk.
The door opened before he knocked. Dark circles ringed Ellaeva’s hollow eyes in a face sallow with exhaustion. Her cheeks were splotchy and the whites of her eyes red as though she’d been crying, but her demeanour as she surveyed him was impassive. She’d stripped out of the filth of the bog and battle and into clean robes, but dried mud still crusted the edges of her face and her hair hung in tangles.
She evinced no surprise at the sight of him. Even a sliver of her attention would have alerted her to his approach, precisely as he’d known where to find her in the chaotic aftermath of the battle without asking anyone.
“You should rest,” she said, her hand still on the door and her arm blocking access to her room. “Traeburhn will attack again.”
“I can’t. There’s too much I need to know. Besides, your thoughts are…” he hesitated, “you seem too upset to be sleeping anytime soon, either.”
Her expression hardened. Neither had alluded to the other’s private feelings before.
“Come in, then.” She sounded like she had a burr under her robes, and she stepped away from the door in an ungracious manner. “Shut the door behind you.”
The room held only one chair. Ellaeva left it for him and sat on the bed. He took the seat awkwardly, remembering the one and only time he’d come to her chambers before. It didn’t end well.
He cleared his throat needlessly. “Did I... Did I kill my wife?”
“Leinahre engineered your wife’s death. The blame is on her.” She looked at him with poorly concealed asperity, as if exhaustion and the ordeal in the catacombs had stripped away what little tact she possessed, leaving her as hard and abrasive as a windswept sandstone cliff. “You know all this.”
He didn’t care what she thought or how she spoke. Her weariness doubled his own, leaving him feeling like he carried the burden for both of them. “I know Traeburhn killed her
after... after Drault— I saw it happen. When I touched Leinahre, I saw it. She was muttering something, chanting, and when I touched her, it was all in my... in my head.”
He blinked away tears. The ugly images still flashed through his head, cycling through in order and then returning to the beginning.
Ellaeva stared at him. “You saw visions? Was this when she... raised the spectre?”
He nodded. “I saw a vision every time I touched her.”
Ellaeva sighed and knuckled her back. “It’s a side effect of the magic Leinahre used. A soul-trap is very powerful, and Leinahre’s memories were caught in the ring. Touching the ring—or the person holding the ring—as the magic was invoked shared those memories with you.”
“So what I saw was real?”
She cast a sorrowful look upon him. “I’m sorry, Lyram, but yes.”
Her answer didn’t provide the comfort he hoped for, but it was nothing if not the unvarnished truth.
“I’m sorry to ask, but... what did you see? It might be important.”
He dropped his eyes as the unwanted memories paraded through his head again. He didn’t want to speak of what he saw, as if giving it voice might make it more real than it already was, but he closed his eyes against the hard knot of despair lodged in his chest, took a deep breath, and began.
She listened quietly, and though he did not look at her as he spoke, could not bear to see the sympathy on her face, he felt her emotions unfurl inside his own head as he recounted the visions. The expected compassion was there, and then anger flowered into a black, righteous rage.
When he was done, he risked a glance at her, and found her staring into the distance.
“From the beginning,” she murmured. “They’ve been pulling the strings before I even took my final vows.”
“Leinahre was with me ten years, so it would seem so.”
She reached out and took his hand in hers, squeezing it in comfort. Her skin was warm and real, and the touch of her ignited conflicting emotions. Zaheva’s loss was raw again, and Ellaeva’s nearness evoked a deep sense of disloyalty. But she was all he had to cling to, and so he didn’t let go.
“There’s no knowing if she was already sworn to Rahmyr when she came to you,” Ellaeva said. “They might have corrupted her afterwards. But it’s safe to say this is a long game. What I don’t understand is why she felt the need to trap her soul, and why she didn’t use the glamour sooner.”
“It wasn’t her plan, and I don’t think she liked what it entailed: needing to be... close to me.”
“That makes sense.” Ellaeva stared at his hand and, with one finger, traced out the veins and tendons beneath the skin. “The initiation rituals for Rahmyr tend to teach men to take a cruel pleasure in sex and women to despise it.”
His skin tingled where her finger touched him, igniting heat in other parts of his body, and he jerked his hand away. The last thing he needed, on top of the relentless ache of grief, was the twisting knife of knowing he could never have Ellaeva.
“I should go. I’m sorry I intruded. As you say, we all need sleep.”
He rose, stiff where his wounds hampered his movements, and her hand darted out and seized him by the wrist.
“Wait. You’re injured?”
“Most are.” He, like her, had rushed into the battle without his armour. A number of superficial wounds were inevitable, and he was lucky that’s all he received
“Show me. I don’t want you leaving something to fester.”
Her expression said she’d brook no protest, so he sat back down and pulled his shirt off over his head. The linen pulled free of dried, crusted blood, and in some places tiny rivulets of red began to run down his chest.
She inspected the cuts dotting his chest amongst the light furring of dark red hair. His skin burned where she touched. Through great strength of will, he kept his expression neutral, though he felt suddenly self-conscious—much more than he usually did around her.
“These need cleaning,” she said, rising to fetch a pitcher of water from the bedside table. Returning, she began dabbing at a cut. “And dressing. But none require stitches.”
“I didn’t think so. A good thing, since Leinahre left us with no one to care for the more seriously wounded. Ouch!” He flinched away as she pressed too hard against one of the shallow cuts.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ellaeva resumed dabbing at the cut. She stared hard at his shoulder, blinking too fast. Moisture glistened on her eyelashes before she blinked it away.
Lyram caught her hand. “What’s wrong?”
The sense of her in his head roiled with turmoil. Why didn’t I notice earlier? Funny how fast he adapted, filtering out her emotions until he needed to pay attention to them.
She pulled her hand free from his, then turned away, her back rigid with strain.
“Nothing, except you are right. Leinahre has caused a great deal of turmoil. I’m sorry, I…I have to go.” She tossed a length of bandage into his lap and whirled for the door.
He started, reflexively catching the bandages, and lurched to his feet. Threads of bitterness, anger and blackest despair twined through the hard knot of her emotions lodged inside his head. Fool. He’d be so focussed on what happened to him that he never even asked about her.
He rushed after her, one hand outstretched. “Ellaeva, wait! What happened in the tunnels? What did she do to you?”
Ellaeva made it out the door and two strides to the stairwell before Lyram caught up and seized her by the elbow. Should have moved faster. Should have held it together better. She blinked away tears as she turned to face him.
“What happened?” The clumsily wrapped bandage trailed from his arm.
For a long moment, she said nothing, frozen in the intensity of his gaze. What would I say? It was bad enough he was already in her head, that she could only hide so much from him, and then only with difficulty.
She sighed, then pushed him back into the room. He watched her as she sat back on the bed, but she avoided his gaze. How did one put words to the fact that one’s life was a lie? An emptiness hollowed her out where once before her unshakeable faith in her goddess had been. Who could she blame for stealing her away from her parents? Had the goddess commanded it, or did the priestess decide? Did it even matter? And what comfort did she expect from him, haunted by visions of his wife’s murder? He had nothing left to give her.
All her life, her anger towards the Rahmyrrim for slaughtering her parents had fuelled her every action—that, and an implacable and resolute determination for justice. The idea that one day she’d find the man responsible for their deaths and avenge them kept her warm at night, when she had no lover to warm her instead. She’d had no parents, and no other family or friends because everyone feared her. Her desire for revenge had taken their place. A cold comfort, but the one allowed to her in a world that feared her coming and bade her depart in haste.
Her name was on many lips but in no hearts, and her only consolation had been the hope that she might burn her name into the hearts of the Rahmyrrim in letters of fear.
Now the fire that kept her strong, that burned hot when her world was cold, had fallen into ashes, and the world had turned to shades of grey. Everything she thought had meaning had none.
Her goddess had abandoned her in every way that mattered.
Death would be easier.
“Leinahre told me...” She stopped and drew a breath against the sick knots in her belly. “She said I’d been lied to. That my... my parents are still alive. It was... the truth. I saw it.”
“What? But that’s great news!”
She shook her head. Why couldn’t he see? “The priestesses told me my parents were dead, murdered by a Rahmyrrim. I made revenge the whole of my life. Now it is gone.”
Lyram inhaled so sharply his breath whistled between his teeth. When he spoke, his words were slow and considered. “It’s better to let such thing go. Revenge can consume you.”
His sensible statement fanned her ho
t fury. Revenge wasn’t a healthy outlet, but for years it was the only one permitted her. Now it was gone, leaving a greater betrayal for which there was no solution.
“I am twenty-three. Women my age have husbands, children, friends, hobbies, and, if they wanted it, a life they chose for themselves. I have nothing but my work. I have no family, I have no friends, and I am permitted no lover.” She lurched to her feet, shouting, her voice echoing off the stone walls of the tiny room. Her hands were balled at her sides. “Even the other priestesses would prefer to see the back of me. I have walked through this life alone since I was a four year old girl, and I’ve had nothing of my own except my faith in my goddess and my need for revenge.
“And now—now I don’t even have those.”
Lyram stared up at her from the seat, and then stood. He approached slowly, as if she were a skittish horse, and she sagged back to the bed, the anger draining out of her.
Still moving like he feared startling her, he sat beside her and slid an arm around her shoulders. Almost without volition, she leaned against him, resting her head in the crook of his neck. Tears streamed down her face and blurred her vision, as her body shook silently in his arms. She shuddered like a leaf in the storm, and he took her and cradled her against him while the grief howled its way out.
Pressed against him, with only the cloth of her robes between them, the heat of his body slowly soaked through and warmed the chill of her despair. Then the heat racing through her body wasn’t his but her own, woken by the awareness of him so close to her, of his bare skin pressed against her, closer than any man had ever been. No man had ever cradled her against him like this, no man had ever sought to ease her pain. Never before did a man not fear her touch. The blue eyes staring down at her were filled with a depth of compassion she’d never encountered in anyone else, and his heart with a desperate pain of his own—it seeped through the link between them. Was he hurting... for her? Well, why not, when she hurt for him, too.
Then simply, she tipped her head back and kissed him. It was clumsy, and awkward. She’d never kissed anyone, never even studied how others kissed, nor read the romances some women enjoyed. The soft touch of his lips against hers, the scuff of his beard against the skin of her face, fanned the heat burning through her.
In the Company of the Dead (The Sundered Oath Book 1) Page 37