NEW
RELEASE Ciara Ballintyne’s Epic Fantasy ‘In the Company of the Dead’
Only a fool crosses a god, but Ellaeva and Lyram will do anything to get what they want.
Title: In the Company of the
Dead
Author: Ciara
Ballintyne
Series: The Sundered Oath
#1
Genre: Epic Fantasy/Fantasy
Romance
Chosen as a five-year-old orphan to be the
Left Hand of Death, Ellaeva has nothing to call her own—nothing except a desire
to avenge her murdered parents. Her duties leave her no time to pursue the man
responsible, until both her work and revenge lead to the same place—the lonely
castle where Lyram Aharris is serving out his exile for striking his
prince.
Lyram is third in line for the throne, and
when the castle is unexpectedly besieged, he fears his prince means to remove
him from contention for the crown permanently. Ellaeva’s arrival brings hope,
until she reveals she has not come for the siege, but instead she hunts the
castle for a hidden necromancer dedicated to the dark god of decay.
Within their stone prison, Ellaeva and Lyram
must fight to save themselves from political machinations and clashing gods.
But as the siege lengthens, the greatest threat comes from an unexpected
quarter.
Chapter
1
Premonition
Only a fool would split hairs with a god, least of all the
goddess of death, but Ellaeva would count herself such a fool and consider it
worth it—if she could get away with it.
She leaned across the knife-scarred timber of the tavern
table.
“Are you sure?” she asked, her tone even and barely loud
enough to be audible over the noise of the flute and the zither. Her work on
behalf of the goddess Ahura, adjudicating the small war here in Dayhl, could
only be abandoned in favour of a greater threat. If she was going to chase off
after the man who killed her parents, she needed to be sure her arguments
stacked up. The pursuit of personal justice wouldn’t be enough.
Is it justice or revenge?
No time to worry about that now. She tugged her black hood
farther down over her infamous face, even though deep shadows blanketed the
common room corner. She’d chosen a table far from the tallow candles mounted in
their stag-horn chandeliers. There was no point taking chances; the black hair
and porcelain skin of a Tembran would be remarked here among the
platinum-haired Dayhlish. Besides, someone might recognise her.
“In Ahlleyn, sure as the spring comes after winter, Holiness.”
The narrow-faced man across from her grinned, baring teeth more brown than
yellow. The acrid smoke from the candles didn’t cover his pungent
breath.
She half-stood, making an urgent, negating gesture as she
glanced around, but the hubbub of chatter from the patrons and the music
covered his slip. No one even glanced their way. On the far side of the room,
away from the two blazing hearths, tables were pushed aside for dancing. She
dropped back into her seat, her black robes fluttering around her booted
feet.
Ahlleyn lay on the other side of the continent, months of
travel by horse. If her informant was right and a Rahmyrrim priest had been
dispatched there, he would likely be gone long before she arrived—unless she
begged a favour, but she’d not do that for a lark of her own. However, if it
meant catching the man who killed her parents, well then maybe she could come
up with an argument that would hold water for a god. Old grief and anger, stale
from a decade or more, stirred in her gut, and her fingers curled around the
edge of the table.
Releasing her grip, she reached to the inner pocket in her
robes where rested the smudged charcoal drawing of a man. Hard work and luck
had helped her obtain that picture of the man she believed killed her parents—a
man she knew to be a priest of Rahmyr. If she decided to act against her
standing orders, then she needed to be sure it was the man she was after, and
that he was involved in some act heinous enough to attract her goddess’s
attention.
“Did you get the name of this priest? Or his description?” An
unknown number of priests served Rahmyr, but she knew six by sight—six still
alive anyway.
The thin man shook his head. “Nobody mentioned. I got the
impression he’s already there, or on his way leastways.”
She scowled. No
way to be sure then that this was the man she wanted. Begging favours of Ahura
for her personal satisfaction was a risky business, especially if she neglected
her duties, and perhaps it would all be for nothing.
With one hand, she flattened the map that curled on the table
between them. The patrons behind them exploded with laughter at something
unheard. Ignoring the noise, she stabbed her finger at an unmarked portion of
the map in the foothills of the Ahlleyn mountains. If he didn’t know who, maybe
he knew the what. “There, you say? What possible interest could Rahmyr have
there? There’s nothing of interest at all.”
She lowered her voice even further as she uttered the name of
the goddess of decay, and glanced around again. That name spoken too loudly
would bring unwanted attention. But nearly all the tavern patrons were busy
whirling on the impromptu dance floor or lined up to watch the dancers, their
backs to her.
The nameless man leaned forward, treating her to another
stomach-clenching blast of foul breath, and touched a spot perhaps half an inch
away from her finger. A tiny, unlabelled picture marked something
there.
“Here, Holiness.”
She squinted at the picture, letting his lapse slide. The
image represented a holy place. There was an old shrine to Ahura somewhere in
the Ahlleyn Borders, wasn’t there? And a castle built over it. “Caisteal
Aingeal an Bhais.”
“That sounds like the name,” he agreed. “Never could get my
mouth around them Ahlleyn words. Pink castle, I heard.”
She grunted. That was the one. “There’s still nothing
there.”
Nothing of interest to Rahmyr anyway. The shrine wasn’t
particularly important, and the castle held no political
significance.
“What’s there,” the man said, “is Lyram Aharris.”
The premonition went through her like a blast of icy wind,
stiffening her in her chair as the hand of the goddess brushed against her
mind. A light caress, but from a giant, and so it sent her mind reeling. She
clutched the table for support. Lyram Aharris’s reputation preceded him the
length of the continent: eight years ago, at the age of twenty-seven, he’d brought
an end to the centuries-long conflict between Ahlleyn and Velena through a
series of brilliant military manoeuvres. He’d survived the Siege of Invergahr
against near-impossible odds, brought the crown prince safely clear of the
conflict, and fought the Velenese to a standstill using their own guerrilla
warfare tactics against them. As a novice, she’d covered the tactics thoroughly
as part of her studies. The man was a military genius. That he was third in
line for the throne of Ahlleyn was the least there was to know about him—at
least it was, until his king dismissed him from court. The rumours on
everyone’s lips said he murdered his wife, even if no one could prove
it.
What did Rahmyr want with him?
Ciara
Ballintyne grew up on a steady diet of adult epic fantasy from the age of nine,
leaving her with a rather confused outlook on life – she believes the good guys
should always win, but knows they often don’t. She is an oxymoron; an
idealistic cynic.
She began her first attempts at the craft of writing
in 1992, culminating in the publication of her debut work, Confronting
the Demon, in 2013. Her first book to be published with Evolved Publishing
is In the Company of the Dead. She holds degrees in law and
accounting, and is a practising financial services lawyer. In her spare time,
she speculates about taking over the world – how hard can it really
be?
If she could be anything, she’d choose a dragon, but
if she is honest she shares more in common with Dr. Gregory House of House M.D.
– both the good and the bad. She is a browncoat, a saltgunner, a Whedonite, a
Sherlockian, a Ringer and a Whovian... OK, most major geek fandoms. Her
alignment is chaotic good. She is an INTJ.
Ciara lives in Sydney, Australia, with her husband,
her two daughters, and a growing menagerie of animals that unfortunately
includes no dragons.
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