An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
www.ellorascave.com
Her Reaper’s Arms
ISBN 9781419911149
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Her Reaper’s Arms Copyright © 2007 Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Edited by Mary Moran.
Photography and cover art by Les Byerley.
Electronic book Publication August 2007
This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written
permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 443103502.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales
is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.
HER REAPER’S ARMS
Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Prologue
At Críonna in the Aneas Quadrant
All living things must die, he thought as he looked up at the bright blue sky. It was a
shame his existence was ending on such a beautiful day when life was burgeoning all
around him. Birds were singing sweetly in the trees and a soft, gentle wind was
caressing his face. The scent of the ocean wafted beneath his nostrils and he inhaled
deeply, knowing it would be his last unsullied breath this side of heaven—wherever
and whatever that was.
Remanded to the Execution Mound, his hands had been chained above his head to
the concrete pillar at his back. They had piled the dried branches thickly at his feet and
had sprinkled oil upon the wood. Before him, the people of the keep were gathered to
watch him die and there was not a tearful eye among those who glared hatefully at him.
He had—after all—unwittingly caused them grief for when their mistress was angry,
her people suffered.
Only one face in the crowd bore a smile and it was a brutal, vindictive smile
awaiting revenge. It did not help that the face was the loveliest thing he’d ever been
allowed to see in his lifetime or that her face had once gazed upon him with heated
passion—albeit one that held no resemblance whatsoever to normal desire. Now her
eyes bore into him as fiercely as the flare of the torch waiting to set the rushes afire,
burning into his flesh a pathway of hatred.
Taking one last look at the brilliant, calming sky, he lowered his head and found
those savage eyes, locking gazes with the Countess Kennocha Tramont. Her red lips
glistened in the sunlight as she swept the tip of her pink tongue across them in
anticipation. In the regal ianthine robes of her ancestry, her milk-white complexion was
framed perfectly, her lush cleavage above the low neckline of the bodice drawing the
eye of every male among those assembled. Sweeping almost to the ground, the
crowning glory of her midnight black hair shimmered with blue highlights in the sun
and was held in place by a golden circlet upon her forehead.
For over a month he had endured the worst kind of hell in the dungeon of Rathlin,
the imperial seat of the Tramont clan. During that time, he had been subjected to the
most evil and perverse torments ever devised. The inquisitors had beaten and burned
his body, torn his flesh, broken fingers and toes, stretched his limbs until the joints had
been dislocated, driven wood slivers under his fingernails, repeatedly held his head
under water until he was forced to drag the liquid into his lungs—all under the guise of
eliciting a concession he was unwilling to make.
“Will you give yourself to me now?” he had been asked over and over again, but
refused to answer.
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Her Reaper’s Arms
“Submit!” they had screamed at him.
“To what?” he had pleaded. “An evil I care not to embrace?”
The one responsible for his imprisonment had been there in the dungeon, seated in
her soft, comfortable chair, eating food he could not have, drinking water he was not
allowed, watching as his body had been broken and his spirit crushed, that enigmatic
smile hovering on her full lips.
“Give in,” she had whispered to him.
“How will I live with myself if I do, milady?” he had pleaded, barely able to speak.
When at last she grew bored with the torture, she had calmly ordered his death. By
then he longed for the surcease of the agonies being inflicted upon him and did not care
that his life would soon be forfeit. He embraced the sentence, knowing the final anguish
of the bonfire would put an end to his suffering. Learning that he would not be allowed
the humane reprieve of being strangled before the fire was lit had only marginally
dampened his eagerness for death. When it was done, it would be done.
He smiled sadly at his tormentress as she stood on the balcony of Rathlin Keep, her
slender white hands resting on the stony balustrade, elegant jewels flashing in the
sunlight. Despite what he was—or rather what he had been—he knew he should
forgive her for what she was doing to him but he could not dredge up the energy or the
will to do so. Perhaps he was not the man he had believed himself to be after all for
there was anger in his broken heart, vengeance of his own seething in his tired mind.
He would die cursed for the sins weighing heavily upon his battered soul—the sin of
desiring revenge, the sin of anger.
Tearing his gaze from her, he looked out across those assembled.
“Heretic! Degenerate! Sinner!”
What lies had she told them? he wondered. What evil accusations had she flung?
How badly had she sullied his name? His honor?
The inquisitor had called him many things with the passing of blades and barbed
scourges across his bound body, but he knew himself to be guilty of none of those
things. Now he would pay for sins he had not committed, be made to atone for
unspecified evils he had never entertained.
His eyes were drawn to the executioner as the squat man dressed in black, his face
hidden beneath a hood, came toward the branches with the torch. Through the twin
slits in the ebon mask he could see spite gleaming back at him. As the man’s arm
lowered the fire to the oil-soaked sticks and twigs, he thought he heard a sinister laugh
from beneath the thick hood.
“Die, you worthless bastard,” she called out from the balcony. “Die and spend
eternity in the Abyss!”
Smoke rose up in spiraling columns to burn his eyes. It clogged his nostrils, was
sucked down his throat to gag and choke him. Long before the first lick of the flames
touched his body, his lungs were seared and he was gasping for breath. The pain leapt
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Charlotte Boyett-Compo
up his legs—the fabric of his robe going up with a whump of sound. He tried not to
scream as the agony ate at him but he was not that strong a man.
He writhed in the flames as the burning torment moved up his chest and flicked at
the underside of his chin. The reverberation of his howls echoed over the courtyard as
he struggled wildly and in v
ain to break free of the chains binding him to the upright.
But as the flames fanned across his face, the sunlit day grew dark, forbidding as
gunmetal gray clouds came out of nowhere to block the sun. The air grew chill. The
wind whipped the flames, helping them to consume him. A mighty rhythmic whomping
began and vaguely he heard the people screaming. He could no longer see for the fire
had taken his vision but in the periphery of his anguish, he thought he heard the
thunder of running feet. Lightning zinged across the heavens and rain began cascading
down in thick sheets, putting out the flames, turning the ground beneath his ruined
body to a smoldering pile of steaming ashes.
He felt his arms falling away from the chains, felt his body being lifted. Cold wind
flowed over and around him.
In the arms of the Gatherer, he thought as he soared through the air to the
accompaniment of mighty flapping wings.
Pain engulfed him from head to toe. It was an agony that not even the chill streams
of air could assuage. He felt the agony all the way to his bones and when he took his
last breath, he drew that fierce torment down into his very soul.
If he had thought the pain of his death had been bad, the pain of his rebirth was a
thousand times worse. That pain would last him through eternity.
In his nightmares he would remember the feel of rough ground beneath him as he
was lain down, his ravaged body screaming in protest though he no longer had vocal
cords with which to make sound. He would remember the taste of something thick and
cloying trickling down his gullet, remember swallowing convulsively as a scaly hand
massaged the charred flesh of his throat. He would remember being turned to his belly
and the godawful agony that had come after his back had been slit open.
Overwhelming anguish, staggering agony had invaded his body and what had come
from that invasion of his being would forever be his rebirthright.
Though he would not remember what had happened to him after the Transference
of the Revenant Worm—the parasite that would give him the strength and longevity of
ten men and heretical abilities beyond his ability to imagine—he would remember the
face of the white-haired hag who had gazed down at him with a snaggle-toothed grin
when he could see once more.
“You have given me your seed, now reap the benefits I will bestow upon you!”
He could not move as She pressed Her odorous mouth to his. The feel of Her slimy
tongue thrusting past his lips had sickened him as Her hands had roamed over his
body, touching him in places he found repellent.
“You are Mine, boy and you always will be! I will have you as I desire you to be!”
She had stated and then he was once more flying through the air. Looking up, he had
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seen a huge creature with bright copper scales that glistened under the glow of the
moon, its wings rising and lowering with a soft, pounding sound.
He would never know where She had taken him or how long She had held him
there. When next he was fully aware, he was lying in a strange room on a strange world
with three unknown men hovering over him. His burned flesh was whole again except
for the myriad scars that were testament to his torture.
“Welcome to the Citadel, milord,” the tallest man said. “We are pleased you have
joined us.”
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Charlotte Boyett-Compo
Chapter One
Armistenky Territory, 3473
Reaper 2-I-C Bevyn Coure hated remembering how he’d been introduced into
death. For days afterward he would be moody and bleak, his eyes filled with
alternating strata of rage and despair. When he could sleep, his dreams would be filled
with swirling smoke, the odor of burning flesh, the residual pain still carried deep
within his consciousness. He would wake sweating profusely—as though still trapped
in the heat of the conflagration—and his throat would be parched, his lungs feeling
seared. When he was forced to relive that horrendous day, his flesh crawled, his body
shuddered, his belly ached, and today was such a day.
The Cherchocreechi medicine man raised his buckskin-clad arms skyward, the
fringe on his sleeves waving in the wind, and called out to the Great Spirit to look with
favor upon the warrior who had passed from this world into the Land of the Ghosts.
Chanting the merits of the deceased warrior, the didanawisgi bid He Who Listens and
She Who Waits to take into account the good things the dead man had accomplished
and to overlook that which did not please Those Who Judge.
Beneath the scaffolding upon which the warrior had been laid, his family and
friends piled oak branches and bundles of sweet grass as the didanawisgi continued his
recitation of the warrior’s glories. As the People worked, they softly sang the burial
song that would hasten their loved one on his way. Wrapped securely in a gaily
decorated blanket tied with rope, the feet of the warrior faced south where his journey
would begin. Around him were his most prized possessions, which would accompany
him into the afterlife.
Standing apart from the mourners, Bevyn marveled at the mix of religious beliefs
that had been incorporated into the Cherchocreechi tribe’s rituals. He knew at one time
there had been four distinct tribes but the Burning War, disease and myriad other
calamities had struck to devastate the People until only a hundred or less were left from
among the Four Nations. Some of their customs had been abandoned, forgotten,
morphed from one belief into a new one that better served its worshippers. He knew
that had happened for many of the natives of Terra.
“You look very sad, danitaga,” Chief Amaketai said as he came to stand beside the
Reaper. “You should rejoice for Onisca. He will soon be with Those Who Have Gone
Before.”
“Although I am saddened by your son’s passing, that is not what haunts me this
day, oginalii,” Bevyn replied. “It is the sight of the pyre that disturbs me.”
“Ah,” Amaketai said. The old man had sat many hours with the Reaper before the
campfire, hearing tales of lands far beyond the green hills of Armistenky. He knew how
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Her Reaper’s Arms
the young man had met his end in that alien world so unlike his own. “It is the burning
you dislike.”
“Only because it brings back memories,” Bevyn admitted.
“I understand,” Amaketai said. He gave the man beside him—the man his people
called danitaga, blood brother—a gentle look. “Life has not been kind to you, has it, my
son?”
“Life has kicked my ass, old friend,” Bevyn said with a faint smile. “Many times
over.”
Onisca’s widow was given the honor of lighting his funeral pyre and she placed the
burning sweet grass sheaf to the bundles intertwined with the oak branches. A loud,
trilling ululation rose up from the throats of the mourners as the fire took hold and the
flames rose. The bitterly sweet odor of burning flesh rose in the air.
Bevyn turned away, unable to watch the body catch fire. The stench was more than
he could bear as well and his hands were trembling, his shoulders hunched as though
he
expected the fire to reach out to ensnare him. Bidding a hasty farewell to Amaketai,
he strode purposefully to his horse, grateful the chief did not try to stop him. Grabbing
a handful of Préachán’s thick mane, he swung up into the saddle and dug his heels into
the horse’s black flanks. He needed to put distance between him and the burning man
who had been like a brother to him.
He needed a drink, he thought as he raced his mount across the plains. He needed
something strong, something that would numb the memories, something to erase the
feeling of impending doom that had reached out to entrap him. Sometimes the only
way he could make it through a week of loneliness, the isolation of his job, was to
drown himself in whiskey and attempt to sleep it off.
The trouble with his kind was they had trouble sleeping. Even with a full bottle of
rotgut sloshing in their bellies, the nightmares always hovered close by to claim them
and to torment their rest, to drag them hissing from the land of Nod. Past deeds rose up
to jeer at them and the cries of the dead they had dispatched haunted their restless
slumber.
It was a hell of a way to live.
As Préachán—his big black stallion—raced over the ground, Bevyn thought of the
balgair, the rogue, he had executed for murdering Onisca. He had hunted the bastard
down, driven him to ground and had used his laser whip to slice off pieces of the
rogue’s body a little at a time until there was nothing left but mush on the blood-soaked
ground. He had reveled in the man’s screams, had inhaled his fear and agony as though
they were perfume. He had taken out his wrath in painful increments that had lasted
for hours until his whip arm grew numb and heavy and his energy flagged. Still he had
slashed at the body—long after he had sliced the head from the corpse with an expert
flick of his wrist—until the killing rage had finally passed, and he had been stunned to
see what he had wrought.
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“I have avenged you, diganeli,” he had offered up to Onisca’s ghost, calling him his
blood friend.
But it had been more than vengeance he had meted out upon the rogue. It had been
frustration and disappointment and an attempt to alleviate the bitter loneliness that was