ELYON’S HUNTERS

  THE DAUGHTERS OF ELYON

  BOOK FIVE

  ALISON NAOMI HOLT

  DENABI PUBLISHING

  Elyon’s Hunters

  Written by Alison Naomi Holt

  Published by Alison Naomi Holt and Denabi Publishing

  Copyright © 2024 Alison Naomi Holt

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  The psychological methodologies used in this book are purely fictional and are not intended to be used in any way in the mental health field. The symptoms of mental illness, psychological stress, and/or PTSD exhibited by the characters in this book are fictional and are not intended in any way by the author to represent actual symptoms of mental illness.

  For more information about the author and her other books, visit http://www.Alisonholtbooks.com

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Also by Alison Naomi Holt

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  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  The grey dove, dappled with a faint misty red hue, walked in circles around Caitir’s boot, keeping other doves from coming near. There was no fear in that silly little head. No understanding that the lifeblood was eking out of Caitir’s body as she leaned against the dirty alley wall. Caitir knew, though. Knew in a blurry kind of way. She saw the blood, even felt it trickling down her ribs, but couldn’t figure out what to do about it.

  Drumbeats pounded against the inside of her head. But…they pounded on the outside, too. How could they pound both ways? She tried to think. Had to think, but every time a thought came, the relentless banging inside and out drove it away. Even her tongue hurt. Could a tongue hurt? She tasted tangy blood in her mouth and scraped the aching tongue against her top teeth wondering how it could be coated with flaky grit.

  Blood coated her eye, too. She thought so, anyway. Her one eye was swollen shut, and when she opened the other, the dove, the alley, and the cobbles digging into her legs were all covered in a faint patina of red. She liked red. At least she had liked it until today. Today, something red had happened. Stupid, stupid, stupid. But why stupid? She couldn’t remember why something was stupid but knew it was. And alone? A sword lay next to her, but not a Blade. That something red thought included a Blade, but in her addled dizziness, through the sick roiling in her stomach, she couldn’t figure out why.

  The dove touched her shoulder, and Caitir absently smiled. She’d seen doves jab one another with their wings and found it amusing that this one was jabbing her now. When it poked her again, she opened one eye and tried to bat it away. A lightning bolt of pain raced up her arm, through her shoulder, and down into her chest. Her red vision went black and then winked back to red again.

  The dove backed up and patted its chest with its wing. “Ghost.”

  Caitir scrunched her eye shut and then opened it wide. Her head ached, but she knew doves couldn’t talk. Shaking her head lightly only served to rattle her brain even more, so she squinted, watching as the dove flitted between red/grey feathers and a red/brown mop of curly hair.

  The dove/skelli spoke again. “Ghost.” It squatted in front of her, staring intently into her eye, willing her to remember.

  The Ghost grabbed Caitir’s tunic and pulled her forward but immediately dropped her and spun. The dove held a knife in its wing now, slashing at the other birds squawking around them. Again, the dove/skelli circled Caitir’s boots, keeping the other birds at bay.

  From somewhere up above, a voice called out, “Oi. Get on with ya.” The squawking birds all flew up and disappeared into the sky. A big, fat, muscled bird flew down off a wall into the red alley, but the Ghost wouldn’t let her come near. The fat one limped forward, rubbing its thick, round leg.

  Caitir tried to remember what kind of bird had thick legs. She blinked her one working eye several times, knowing she needed to clear her head. The new bird’s squawk was loud, and the words rattled around in her brain. “What’s this? Fowk. It’s th’ Blade. The fowkin’ skelli’s protectin’ th’ Blade!”

  Caitir’s brain stumbled, cleared, and then blurred red again. The big bird had wobbled into a big woman the same way heat wobbled off the cobbles in summer. Was it summer, then? Was that even important? As she watched, the woman wobbled back to a red bird again. The new movement made Caitir’s insides dance a sickly jig, so she closed her one good eye, trying to think.

  When the big bird yelled, she forced her eye open again. Its beak snapped and it waved a wing at the top of the wall, where another dove’s head and shoulders were sticking through a hole. “Go tell th’ Arch Priestess she’s here.”

  The mop of brown/red hair growled and slashed the knife through the air. Her legs straddled Caitir’s as she swung back and forth, watching the limping bird one moment and swinging around to guard their backs the next. Good Lass, Caitir vaguely thought. She didn’t know why it was good, but somewhere in the depths of her rattled brain, she knew it was.

  The big bird held up her wings. “Easy, Lass. Ya know me. I be Barta. Help’s coomin’. Ya did good keepin’ them skellis and nints away. Real good. Easy now. We’ll just bide, th’ both of us, aye?”

  The Ghost bird squatted over Caitir’s legs and settled in to wait.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sábria, the Arch Priestess of the Daughters of Elyon, had been out searching for her missing Blade all night. The sun had risen a candlemark earlier, making the search much easier, if not more successful. She had all two hundred and eighty-two of her Blades out searching as well.

  The previous evening, right after the tower bell had struck nine times, word had come to the Temple that a Blade had been killed, and her body, along with a second injured Blade, had been dragged away by a group of men. Sábria and her Second, Commander Shirin, had issued orders to Subcommander Arenda to rouse the Temple and organize a search. The Arch Priestess, her Commander, and ten Blades acting as bodyguards had raced into the city in the hopes of finding their two warriors.

  It had taken several candlemarks of searching up and down Sarlogne before Mita’s body was discovered behind the Broken Tooth, a tavern on the edge of the Codpiece. Typically, the tavern was a safe place for Blades. In fact, many Blades took their on-duty meals there despite its reputation as a dirty, lower-city watering hole that nobles wouldn’t go to even if their lives depended on it. It was for precisely that reason many Blades preferred it.

  It was several candlemarks past deadnight before a drunk, needing to piss when the privy was occupied, had stumbled across Mita’s body. No one had discovered it prior to the drunk’s urgent need because Mita had been stuffed behind the detached privy to the rear of the Tooth. Muck and grime saturated the ground, and rarely, if ever, did people wander into that area.

  Once the body had been discovered and the Arch Priestess summoned, Sábria herself had slipped between the back wall of the privy and the fence separating the Lower Quarter from the Codpiece. After confirming that Mita was, in fact, dead, the Arch Priestess had hefted her Blade into her arms and carried her out to the cobbled street. She’d gently laid her on a canvas the Blades used to carry their dead and wounded back to the Temple and covered her with a red, blue, and yellow blanket, signifying woman’s blood, revenge, and justice, respectively. Sábria had let the tears flow freely down her cheeks, not caring that anyone of the Lower Quarter residents who’d gathered around to watch the spectacle might see her as weak.

  She’d watched Terro and Sela carry Mita’s body up the road before continuing the search for Mita’s partner, Caitir. Throughout the night and into the morning, Blades had been reporting to the Temple Outstation, the building in the middle of Sarlogne where the Blade’s briefings were held before and after their shifts.

  Subcommander Rahel Arenda, a tall woman with flaming red hair cut into the short, shaggy style common among her clan, was stationed there with a map, marking off the grids that the Blades had methodically searched.

  Remarkably, the Emperor had sent three squads of his Imperial Guards to assist the Blades. Granted, he’d done so at the urging of his Seneschal, Lord Dunham, but it was still remarkable that he’d acquiesced. Three moons prior, before Elyon had frightened him witless after the Festival Riot, Emperor Aloric would never have considered helping search for one of Elyon’s Blades. Now, Dunham was assisting Arenda with organizing the search parties, and runners were being sent out continuously with new orders for the searchers.

  S�
�bria strode through the door, dirty, tired, and clearly frustrated. “Rahel, Turgin. Where have we looked so far?” She had a pretty good idea since Prita, one of the youngest Blades, had been assigned to run messages to and from Sábria all night.

  Commander Shirin strode in shortly after Sábria, went straight to the refreshment table they had set up for the searchers, and poured two large cups of water. She brought them to the map table, handed one to Sábria, and kept the second for herself.

  Since Lord Dunham outranked the Subcommander, he gave his report. “Every grid in the city has been searched. We restarted at the first grid about a half-candlemark ago and are⁠—”

  A filthy nob ran into the briefing room, followed by the two surprised door guards he’d barreled past. He didn’t bother slowing down and hit the door so hard it flew back and slammed into the wall, sending pieces of plaster flying.

  Commander Shirin pulled her sword and spun in one quick movement while Subcommander Arenda leapt over the table and came to stand beside her, also fully armed. They blocked the newcomer from Sábria and Dunham, who watched the man with wary eyes.

  The nob’s eyes grew round. He quickly fell to his knees and pulled his cap off his head. “B…beggin’ yer pardon, Guardians.” He leaned around their legs until he saw Sábria and pulled on his forelock. “Milady Sábria. We found her! Barta stayed wit’ her, but I kin take ya to ‘em!”

  Sábria shoved through Shirin and Arenda, grabbed the man by the shirt, and hauled him to his feet. “Where?”

  His eyes tracked left and then right as Shirin moved in on Sábria’s right with her sword still drawn, and Arenda moved to the left. Still gasping for breath after running to find the Arch Priestess, he held his hands out to his sides to show he held no weapon and wasn’t a danger to anyone. Only then did he turn his attention back to Sábria. “Ya ken th’ old alley off Wythen what used t’ go t’ th’ old shambles?”

  Arenda glared at the man. “That slaughterhouse has been bricked up for ages.”

  “Nai. Well, maybe to those what don’t know, but she’s there a’right, yer Blade be there, lyin’ in th’ alley behind what’s bricked up, an’ Ghost be there fightin’ off the par’sites what want at what yer Blade totes. Real vicious that skelli an’ t’other skellis know it, too.”

  Sábria swung the man around so he faced the door and pushed him outside. “Take me to them.” He hurried out the door, and when he wasn’t moving fast enough, Sábria grabbed his collar in her fist and started running in the general direction of the abandoned slaughterhouse.

  Shirin, Arenda, and Dunham ran behind, with the Commander calling in every Blade they passed along the way. Sábria had insisted on sending most of her bodyguards out to search, but if they were headed into the filthiest, most dangerous part of the Codpiece, Shirin intended to be ready for whatever awaited them.

  By the time they turned down a dark alley, they had twenty-five full Blades and three shivs, or trainee Blades, guarding them. Arenda grabbed the nob and pulled him up short. “This is a dead end. If you’re leading us into a trap, I’ll kill you with my sword as it’s leaving its scabbard.”

  “Nai, look!” He pointed to a high place in the shadows that was darker than the rest. It was near the roof that covered the alley—an architectural anomaly, the reason for which had been lost down through the ages. The darkened spot could only be seen as an actual hole in the wall if one stood in the exact right spot. He cupped his hand around his mouth and yelled, “Oi, Barta. Sing out so’s they knows yer there an’ it ain’t no quag, aye?”

  “Did ya find th’ Arch Priestess?”

  “Aye, I brung her.”

  Barta’s voice came from behind the wall. “It’s me, Milady. Yer peasant, Barta. Yer safe t’ come in, I swear it on me life.”

  Shirin put her hand on the wall as if to climb to the dark spot, but Sábria pulled her down and growled, “I’m going in for my Blade. You come after.” The Arch Priestess quickly tied her scabbard to her thigh, securing it flat against her leg.

  “No, My Lady! It’s not sa—” Shirin’s words ended in a strangled growl as Sábria put her boot on a brick and started to climb. Like so many walls in Sarlogne, the bricks had been set in an uneven pattern, one deep, one slightly protruding, and the next one set further in. This pattern held true the entire length, breadth and height of the wall. Ancient builders had believed the uneven pattern strengthened the wall’s structural integrity, and that idea hadn’t wavered throughout the ensuing centuries.

  When she reached the dark spot, which turned out to be a cleverly placed hole in the wall hidden by the shadows, she pulled her belt knife, gauged the distance to the ground, and used a technique practiced by all Blades for just this type of situation. She clasped the knife’s hilt between her teeth, reached above the hole, and grabbed onto two protruding bricks. She swung her legs through the hole and retrieved the knife as she dropped down into the darkness.

  Only it wasn’t dark. She’d expected that end of the alley to be completely sealed off, but someone had dismantled part of the roof, and sunlight streamed down onto the strange tableau that awaited her. She landed in a crouch and quickly moved out of the way, knowing Shirin would be right on her tail.

  Ghost stood over Caitir, baring her teeth and swinging her small blade back and forth to keep Barta and Sábria back.

  Barta, a big woman with muscular arms earned through turns of slinging a hammer at the stone mason’s workshop, held up her hands. “Th’ skelli won’t ‘llow me near, Milady, but yer Blade keeps babblin’ ‘bout Ghost bein’ a good stubby dove. An’ she keeps mumblin’ ‘bout me bein’ a big bird. Her bell’s rung, that’s fer sure.”

  Sábria put away her knife as several more Blades dropped from the hole. “It’s me, Ghost. Sábria. Can I help Caitir?” She eased forward, but Ghost bared her teeth and growled a warning as she slashed her knife through the air.

  Sábria had been crouched, inching forward step by step. Seeing those bared teeth and the determination in those wild, skelli eyes, Sábria stopped to consider her options. Trying to disarm the skelli, who’d learned to wield the small blade she carried with lethal precision as she fought daily for survival in the Codpiece’s brutal streets, was a last resort. Realizing a scuffle above her injured Blade could possibly make those injuries worse, she tried a more tenable alternative first. “Shirin, “Did I see Ailith running with us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get her in here.”

  Shirin called up to Soirin, who was waiting with her head sticking out of the hole. “Get Ailith in here.”

  Before long, Ailith, a nineteen-turn shiv, landed lightly on the rough cobblestones and hurried over. Her short brown hair and brown eyes were nondescript, but although she hadn’t yet grown into her adult body, her muscular arms and thick thighs were a sign that she was a holdover of a Dreyuthan breeding program that, several hundred turns prior, had produced a lineage of warriors unparalleled in modern times. “Aye, Commander?”

  Shirin pointed to Ghost, who was still straddling Caitir’s legs.

  Having lived several turns as a skelli in Dreyutha’s equivalent of the Codpiece, Ailith realized the problem immediately. She spoke directly to Sábria. “Milady. Yer crouched and mincin’ yer steps. To a skelli, yer sayin’ there’s still aught to be wary about. She won’t trust no one ‘till she knows what’s up and thinks all’s clear. Stand straight like ya always do, like ya got things under control, ya ken, an’ she’ll trust ya.”

  Sábria immediately straightened and walked towards Ghost.

  When Shirin shouted, “Sábria!” Ghost, who’d begun to relax, immediately crouched again.

  Ailith put her hand on the Commander’s arm. She spoke with a calmness she didn’t feel. “Commander, ye’ll scare her, an’ that’s not a good idea right about now. Stand tall, put away yer knife, and fer all that’s holy, relax yer body.”