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

by Ballintyne, Ciara

  The very idea of Oriella’s death was incomprehensible. She was the only person to have shown her any care in recent years, the only one except... except Lyram.

  She still sensed him, nestled in the back of her head, though he was too far distant for her to know anything of him except his direction. It was better this way, and she’d been grateful when her parents’ trail had pulled her halfway across the continent, away from Ahlleyn and Lyram Aharris.

  When Oriella had offered to accompany her from Caisteal Aingeal, offered to serve as her companion priestess, it was a gift from Ahura—a blessing to have company, and a friend to help her shoulder the burden, especially since the fire of her hate for the Rahmyrrim had dimmed after she discovered her parents were alive. And now, Oriella was dying.

  Though an empty ache filled her heart, the tears would not come—only bitter anger. It filled her until she sagged to the cold stones, quivering.

  The scroll was wet with Oriella’s blood and water from the stream. She unrolled it with great care, grimacing. Great swathes of words had been obliterated, washed out by water or lost beneath red stains. So few words of the original page of text remained, tantalising with meaning beyond comprehension, but she could make out the first part:

  ... her parents ... found them in Ellair but they are ... kept well-guarded ... Sense of great unease and unrest ... new gods.

  Her heart leapt into mouth. Oriella had found them. Against all hope and expectation, despite fear she would find only another cold trail, Oriella had found her parents.

  Oriella clutched at her hand. Ellaeva surged erect, grasping her in return, but her friend was still unconscious, her body responding to reflex in its moment of extremity. Her body went rigid, and then fell limp.

  Ellaeva pressed her fingers against her wrist. A pulse, faint and erratic, fluttered one last time, like a frantic butterfly caught in the hand. Then it stopped, and did not beat again.

  She stared at Oriella’s slack features, her friend’s fingers still limp in her palm. Her head spun, and she teetered on the brink of vomiting, but then the dizziness faded away. Very carefully, she laid the hand on the dead priestess’s breast. With two fingers, she touched her brow, lips and breast, representing each function of life ceasing in death.

  And still the tears would not come, but a pounding began in her ears.

  As she climbed to her feet, the calm peace of the stream beneath the trees struck her with an almost visceral pain. Birds sang somewhere nearby, and she ground her teeth.

  She had to breach Jerrek’s borders, had to find her parents, and had to discover who was responsible for the death of Oriella and the other priestesses. The few legible words on the scroll were so far apart that she could not decipher their meaning, but the reference to new gods, especially in conjunction with the murder of Ahura’s devoted, made her skin prickle with gooseflesh. And her parents were somewhere in there?

  And what if I find them? What then? We all play happy families?

  She shied away from the thought. What did you do when you reunited with parents you hadn’t seen for nearly twenty years? Even for ordinary people, it would be a challenge. What then, when the daughter was Ciotach an Bhais?

  The more important question was how she would get into Jerrek. The border guards had recognised her sword before her face, but if they hadn’t known what she looked like before then, they certainly did now. She might have tried crossing elsewhere or between checkpoints, but it seemed foolhardy in the extreme to assume her description would not be circulated.

  She could return with a company of valkyrs and try to force her way across the border and into Ellair, the capital, but how many would die? And whoever was behind the attack on Ahura would have ample warning to flee. In the chaos, her parents might disappear again. And whatever was happening in Jerrek could be covered up. She’d never know who killed Oriella.

  Her chest squeezed painfully tight, and her eyes dropped to the dead woman again, then jerked away like a hand brushing a hot stove.

  She would have justice for Oriella, and she would find her parents. And she would find out what was happening in Jerrek.

  Though the borders were closed to Ahura’s chosen, a king’s diplomatic delegation might still gain admittance.... Almost involuntarily, she turned to the west, following the invisible line connecting her to Ahlleyn.

  Her fingers curled closed around the hilt of her sword, clenching so tight her knuckles ached. Ahlleyn was nowhere she wanted to go, but some things were more important than personal pain.

  CHAPTER 2 – EMBRACING THE GODDESS

  Lyram leaned on the window casement, scouring the bustling courtyard of the royal palace of Ahlleyn below. Servants in the black and purple livery of the clan Gaylbrath strode confidently about their tasks, and his gaze skipped over them, looking for someone obviously out of place—looking for the crow amongst the sparrows. From this high, picking individual faces out of the crowd was impossible, but that didn’t stop him searching. He didn’t need a face to find the person he sought.

  Despite his failure to note anyone out of place, he knew there was at least one person in the palace who shouldn’t be there. He could feel it in his bones.

  “Lyram, you’re not listening to me.”

  Sighing, he turned, leaning back against the wall with his arms folded over his plaid. He regarded the duchess. “No, Narrawen, I’m not. I do apologise. What were you saying?”

  The Duchess of Kinrothen narrowed pale-blue eyes at him. She stood in the centre of his sitting room, an inner sanctum furnished by his late wife, and a place of solitude and reflection where he’d usually not permit the duchess. But, short of his bedchamber, this was the only room in his suite with a window. He needed to see the courtyard, and she’d insisted on speaking with him.

  “Never mind. You clearly have something else on your mind.” Then her voice grew teasing. “Perhaps something I could help with?“

  Lyram swallowed a long-suffering sigh. Narrawen, standing with her head cocked and one hand on a hip, was a fine figure of a woman, but she was also a schemer. Her kirtle, though made of expensive linen, was woven in the red, yellow and green tartan of her clan; she took every opportunity to wear it, as though reminding everyone she was their clan leader. Though women were accepted as equals in Ahlleyn, a woman heading a large warrior clan could experience certain... troublesome elements, and she carried a bow slung over her shoulder. A woman who would lead warriors must be a warrior, and she had the temperament to match the flaming red hair tumbling down her shoulders in unruly curls. Everything she did was calculated and planned, and there was no way he’d be sharing what was on his mind.

  “It’s nothing to trouble yourself over,” he said.

  “Oh, it would be no trouble to take a burden from your shoulders.” She stepped forward, closing the distance between them to place a hand on his arm.

  The heady aroma of eastern tuberose assaulted his nostrils, rich and sensual. She was tall, the top of her head on a level with his nose, and her breath tickled his clean-shaven chin. Her gaze held the resolute intensity of a woman accustomed to getting her way, sooner or later. She was beautiful, and in a way that went beyond her face and figure: she was fierce, determined, and intelligent.

  But when he looked at her, he saw only Ellaeva.

  Her brow pinched, as if reading something in his face, and he smoothed his expression.

  “You’ve been too long a widower,” she said.

  He started. “Eighteen months! That’s hardly too long.”

  She met his gaze with an intense expression, ignoring his protest. “And I’ve never married. We both need heirs.”

  He shook his head and tried to draw away, but she had him pinned between her wide skirts and the window. “You would merge two of the kingdom’s most powerful and influential duchies into one? The aristocracy will never stand for it. You already know my answer, Narrawen. I’m not interested in marrying—you or anyone else. It’s not personal, you understand?”<
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  She snorted in a most unladylike fashion and tossed her hair, like a wild horse tossing its mane. “You pay too little attention, Lyram. You’d be surprised what the aristocracy will allow now, after the fall of Traeburhn. Everyone’s been made nervous by his treason, especially when the king posthumously stripped him of his lands and titles. Besides, we need not merge the duchies. We could agree on a division of heirs.”

  “The risk of civil war—”

  She leaned closer, until only inches separated their faces. The heady smell of her perfume was almost intoxicating.

  “There are any number of men in this kingdom, and without, who would marry me,” she said. “Most for the wrong reasons. Few of them have my respect and admiration, but you do. What I need is a husband. What I want is you.”

  The door burst open, thumping against the wall.

  Narrawen jumped back, her bow clattering against the side table. A faint blush stained her cheeks.

  Lyram’s pulse quickened. This was it, the moment he’d been waiting for.

  Everard stood framed by the sitting room’s doorway, his posture perfectly erect as he folded his hands neatly in front of his sporran. As always, he was clad in scrupulous court attire, his rank pinned to the shoulder of his white shirt and his kilt falling in perfect pleats. His thinning grey hair had been meticulously combed, and his wire-framed glasses perched precariously on his nose. He kept his face blank, but a small twitch beside his eye betrayed his displeasure at the duchess’s presence. “Sir.”

  Though Everard’s tone was even, Lyram read the tension and urgency in him. “I know, Everard. I’ll come.”

  “A prior engagement, Lyram?” Narrawen said. “Whatever it is, reschedule it. We’re not done.”

  Lyram opened his mouth to countermand the order—though she outranked him, how dare she presume to order his aide-de-camp?

  But Everard’s gaze flickered to her with that same inscrutability, and in his perfectly deadpan aide’s voice he said, “Is Your Grace still chasing a husband? Perchance I can suggest a better hunting ground.”

  Narrawen grew rigid, and Lyram suppressed a grin.

  “The duchess and I can finish our conversation later,” Lyram said. “I’ll come, Everard.”

  “No, sir—” Everard blinked, jerking aside as though pinched, and Ellaeva stepped into the room.

  The shock of seeing her thrilled through him, like the mixed pleasure of an unexpectedly warm spring day, tainted by fording a stream running with snowmelt. Though he’d felt her jump suddenly from the far east to well within Ahlleyn borders several days ago, though he’d felt her drawing nearer by the day, he hadn’t realised she was here, outside the room. And no amount of time could have prepared him for this moment.

  Their gazes locked. Her black eyes were flat and cold. In his head, the sense of her abruptly clenched into the hard glass ball that said she was trying to control or hide her feelings. That connection was the unintended legacy of his resurrection at her hand, but she’d grown better at controlling it. Then her gaze flickered to Narrawen, standing so close alongside him, and the glass ball shattered into a thousand shards with an impact so visceral he gasped and sat down. The chill in the air deepened.

  She switched her stare back to Lyram. Finally she spoke, in a voice cold as iron. “I have come to see Alagondar.”

  Lyram sat in one of the formal chairs in the king’s private reception chamber and stared vacantly at the small fire that crackled on the hearth against the deepening cold of an Ahlleyn autumn. The chair was timber, and uncomfortable, despite the velvet purple upholstery on the padded seat. The smoky scent of burning peat filled the room.

  Ellaeva stood on the opposite side of the room, fingering her sword hilt and staring at the portrait of some ancestor or other of the king as though studying it in minute detail.

  The room seemed vast and empty, with two lines of unoccupied chairs against either wall bracketing the rug that ran down the centre of the stone floor. The silence between them stretched uncomfortably. Of all the things he’d thought she might say at the sight of him after six months of separation, ‘I have come to see Alagondar’ had most definitely not been on his list.

  She stood at parade rest, having declined a seat with her usual stiff-necked pride, and he couldn’t help but drink in the sight of her, grim visage and all. Ahura’s holy blade still hung on her hip, and in every other way she looked exactly as he recalled: black hair swept back tight from her brow into a warrior’s tail, and her black eyes flat and expressionless in a face pale and lovely as marble. Her lips had that grim, hard line he recalled from their first meeting in Caisteal Aingeal, without any of the wry humour he’d wrung from her later in the siege, and her eyes were red-rimmed. From sleeplessness, perhaps?

  She’d volunteered nothing in the way of small talk, nor enquired after his well-being. He toyed with the fringe on the seat cushion. He had no idea what to say to her.

  Still, he should try. “Have you... uh—”

  The inner door swung open on silent hinges, and she pivoted smoothly on the balls of her feet.

  The king stepped into the room, pulling the panel shut without admitting any attendants or advisers.

  Lyram, surprised that the king was alone, lifted an eyebrow, then belatedly scrambled to his feet to offer a bow.

  A small smile quirked the king’s lips; Alagondar was a deft hand at reading Lyram’s moods. “If the Battle Priestess of Ahura wishes to speak to me, Aharris, I expect it’s a rather dire matter of urgency and perhaps not something immediately shared with my wider advisers. I expect you, as my military adviser, will do for now.” Alagondar waved him back down, and took a seat several chairs down from Lyram, across from the fireplace where Ellaeva stood.

  “Your Majesty.” Ellaeva inclined her head and made no move to sit. “You are most wise.”

  Alagondar inclined his head in return and offered no comment on her minimal courtesies. Ahura’s priestesses were the arbiters of justice in all the kingdoms, but it was her Battle Priestess who acted as the supreme court and dispensed justice in a most final way. It was the Battle Priestess who had authority in matters of law and judgement, even over the governments of each land. When a king or queen needed to be held to account, it was Ellaeva who would have the reckoning. And that was why she still wore the sword, even in the presence of an unguarded king.

  “We did not talk much when last we met, Your Holiness,” Alagondar said. “But Lyram has spoken well of you since you left us at Caisteal Aingeal six months past. Perhaps too well.”

  When the king cast a sharp eye at Lyram, he caught and held his gaze unflinching. If he had sung Ellaeva’s praises... well, she deserved it. She made even Narrawen look like a shrinking violet.

  Narrawen would buckle under the weight on Ellaeva’s shoulders; Ciotach an Bhais goes to her doom unflinching. No sooner did he think it than he wished he hadn’t. The future of a Battle Priestess was dark to start with; how much worse had their forbidden night together made her burden? And yet, the almost physical ache to hold her again was almost impossible to resist, even knowing that to do so would be to cross a god.

  “Then I hope that praise will sway Your Majesty to listen to my plea.” Ellaeva swept her robes forward and finally sat, perching on the edge of a seat with a stiff posture, probably to accommodate the cuir bouilli plate she wore underneath. “Something dire is underway in Jerrek. They are killing the priestesses.”

  Lyram jerked as though slapped, and even Alagondar sucked in a sharp breath.

  “Killing priestesses?” Lyram couldn’t keep the horror from his voice. Not only was it murder, but to kill the representatives of justice was to embrace injustice.

  “I only have second-hand reports.” Ellaeva leaned forward. “I was refused entry at the border, but my sisters are fleeing, many injured, and carrying tales of priestesses killed and driven out.”

  “They refused you?” Lyram closed his hands on the arms of his chair.

  “I have ha
d my own reports.” The king’s voice was quieter and more thoughtful than Lyram’s. “The kingdom appears to be regressing into an earlier form of Jerreki barbarity. Many women traders have fled the country, following a ban on women being involved in commercial matters. Apparently all the highest-ranked women have withdrawn into seclusion—permanently. These are the customs of last century. Are they burning the courts?”

  Lyram looked sharply at Alagondar. Ahlleyn shared only a short border with Jerrek, and those borderlands were far from the control of the Jerreki capital, Ellair, but when a kingdom starts burning its courts of justice, its neighbours had best arm their men.

  “I’ve heard conflicting reports. The main temple had not been attacked when I left the border, but some of the smaller altars of worship had been closed or destroyed.”

  Alagondar nodded. “One of the old customs was that women could not testify in court, so presumably they cannot serve as magistrates either. The courts are an obvious target.”

  “They specifically barred me from entry, but allowed my friend, a priestess of Ahura, though. She barely made it out again.... Ahura’s followers are being attacked, and there is talk of new gods, though which ones it is not clear. She died for this information.”

  Her voice was flat and cold, but Lyram grunted at the sudden stab of pain rolling down the link between them. The link that bound him to her, and to her requests. He’d not thought to ask her what that binding really meant. He’d been too caught up in the euphoria of their breaking the siege and then in the heartache of her departure.

  Alagondar sat back in his chair, his hands gripping the armrests and his face regal but blank, betraying nothing of his thoughts or intentions. “I can see this is a matter of concern for the Temple. Perhaps all of them, if this heresy spreads to the other sects. I wonder at their intentions if they shut down the arbiters of justice... Is it that they want no lawful witnesses to some atrocity against their own people, or even mine? But it is too early for me to do more than watch and bolster the border defences, so what I don’t know is why you are here. Presumably not to warn me—I have my own sources. Is it information you seek?”