The Sword and the Song (15 page)

Conor knelt at the opening. It was a tunnel, all right, even if he could only see into blackness, the rock wall a mere eight
inches thick. “All right, men. I want you to enter, wait until we have a count, and then fade into shadow.” He hoisted the harp case through the opening first. The bulky instrument would hamper his movements, but it was too integral to the security of the fortress to leave on the outside. Cautiously, he climbed through the hole.

Spider webs clung to his face, and he swiped them away. Larkin passed him the torch, which he swept in front of him to illuminate the space. If the layers of dust and cobwebs were any indication, these tunnels must have been closed up centuries ago. Gravel crunched beneath his feet. At least he hoped it was gravel. He didn’t look too closely.

Beside him, quiet footfalls indicated that his men followed. Conor drew his sword, even the hiss of the oiled blade against the sheepskin lining loud in the dense, deep silence. They were far below the mountain here, and if the scale of the map had been accurate, the tunnels wound for miles before they met the catacombs beneath the fortress.

He paused a few dozen steps in and, no louder than a whisper, said, “Count off.”

Eleven voices answered, but when he glanced behind him, he saw nothing. Unlike the others, he didn’t fade. The men needed someone to follow, and the torch prevented the illusion from working anyway. He was all too aware that made him the obvious target for the fortress guards’ blades and arrows.

Conor counted off his paces as he walked, estimating the distance in his head. At map scale, the tunnel hadn’t seemed particularly long. But in person, they might as well have been journeying downward into the center of the earth. As it was, he could feel the weight of the mountain like a physical force, his pulse speeding the closer they got to their destination, his instincts heightened for potential battle.

They passed the single mile mark without a sign of opposition, then two. He made himself draw in deep breaths and shake off his apprehension. Adrenaline was the enemy in battle. It made one slow, sluggish, uncoordinated. And they needed every sense at its best.

Too late, those senses prickled at the danger behind him. He whirled just as something slammed into his hand. The torch skittered across the gravel floor, but it didn’t go out. It left just enough light to see the face of the man who threw himself at him and bore him to the ground. Conor’s head banged the earth hard enough to make him see white sparks.

“Larkin,” Conor wheezed. He raised his forearm to block a strike before it could connect with his face. “What are you doing? Stop. It’s me.”

But the other man’s fingers closed around his throat, pressing down with a force he hadn’t even known the other man possessed. As he gasped for air, he aimed strikes to Larkin’s throat
 
—what should have been disabling blows
 
—but the man didn’t even flinch, as if he were dreaming . . . or possessed.

The sidhe. “Help me,” he cried, appealing to the other men, but his voice came from his constricted windpipe weaker than a whisper. Nothing he did even made an impact; Larkin merely absorbed the strikes to the ribs, groin, and head and kept pressing. Conor’s movements grew weaker as his oxygen-depleted body lost strength, and the white sparks in his vision became a snowstorm, blanking out everything but the knowledge of impending death.

Comdiu, help me.
It was his last thought before he disappeared into oblivion.

Water dripped somewhere in the distance.
Drip. Drip. Drip, drip, drip. Conor focused on the sound as consciousness came back in layers, his head pounding with every splash as if it were a gong. From the way his entire body ached, he knew something had happened, but recalling it was as impossible as opening his eyes.

Or moving his body.

His heart jumped into his throat before it picked up a furious hammering that only intensified the ache. Why couldn’t he move? Had he been injured? Drugged? Restrained?

No, it couldn’t be. Not again. His imprisonment with the Sofarende had been enough. He couldn’t bear another round.

Then he was hit with a more horrifying thought: what if he had never escaped in the first place? What if he were still locked in the goat pen, paralyzed by the herbs he’d been given, while his mind concocted his return to Seare and all that had come after?

No, that was ridiculous. He forced himself to stay calm, drawing in deep, pained breaths until his heartbeat returned to a slightly more normal rate. He couldn’t move or see, but that didn’t mean
he was completely without resources. The damp, cold silence meant he was still beneath Ard Bealach, perhaps somewhere in the catacombs; keeps, no matter how secure, were drafty when above ground. He forced himself to move through his pain and take stock of every sensation. His fingers brushed something rough. Wood, a table perhaps. At least that meant he wasn’t paralyzed. He was merely bound tightly, ropes lashing down his entire body.

His pulse raced once more. Any way he thought of it, bound to a table in a chamber beneath Ard Bealach could mean only one thing.

Before panic could make his thinking cloudy again, he forced himself to recall every detail of what had happened before he passed out. He remembered leading the way down the tunnel . . . and after that, nothing. Had they been ambushed or, worse yet, betrayed? Right now, his men could be dead, dying, captured. He couldn’t afford to hope for a rescue.

Conor flexed his muscles against the ropes, attempting to work some slack into them. It was a futile effort, but when he thought of what Oenghus implied happened in the fortress, it was the only way to keep himself from succumbing to terror.

Metal scraped somewhere to his right
 
—a key in a lock. The door swung open on creaking hinges, spilling light into the room. He could make out the backlit figure of a man, but no features.

“Conor Mac Nir. I’ve been looking forward to our reunion.”

A chill slid over Conor’s skin, a clammy sense of recognition. He knew that voice.

“Ah, you see your predicament now.” The speaker retrieved a torch from the corridor, which illuminated Conor’s surroundings. Even knowing what was coming, Conor recoiled inwardly.

Niall. Or rather, Niall wearing Keondric’s body like an ill-fitting disguise. Conor blinked to clear that impression. His thoughts felt sloppy, muddled, maybe by whatever had knocked
him out and stolen his memory. His skull didn’t feel cracked, despite the pounding headache, but he also didn’t feel right. Poison? If they were going to give him a draught, the least they could do was give him something to take away the pain.

He reeled in his speculations before they could run away from him. Focus. He needed to focus.

The torch illuminated enough of the room to show it was not a dungeon, nor were there the usual implements of torture laid out beside him. In fact, it seemed he was tied to a trestle table amid stacks of crates and boxes.

“What do you want from me?” Conor’s throat ached for a reason he couldn’t fathom. Had he been screaming while he was unconscious?

“I’m not going to torture you for information, if that’s what worries you.” Niall stopped and looked down at him impassively, as if he were having a conversation with a slightly dense stranger. “I can learn that anytime I want.”

Just keep him talking.
“What do you mean?”

“I mean I have my sources of information inside Ard Dhaimhin already.”

Morrigan? Was he talking about his sister? The mention of Ard Dhaimhin made him remember what should have occurred to him earlier.
Aine! Can you hear me? I need help!

“She can’t hear you.” Niall took his knife from his belt and nudged the opening of Conor’s shirt aside. “Can you see that?”

He managed to lift his head enough to see a blistered red rune branded into his skin. “The shield. I don’t understand. That makes me immune to your magic. Why would you give that to me?”

Niall dragged a stool over to Conor’s side, his movements matter-of-fact. “You and I are going to perform some experiments together. I’ve already determined that the rune blocks my
powers from working on you and interferes with your ability to communicate with the lovely Lady Aine. But frankly, I’m not sure what else it does or does not allow.”

Conor’s gorge rose at the implication. Somewhere he had the presence of mind to force it back down. Tied as he was, it would be an undignified way to die, drowning in his own vomit. Somehow the thought managed to be both horrifying and hilarious at the same time.

“Interesting. Hysteria already? I didn’t take you for the type. Or is it some new effect of the rune?”

Conor wrestled his emotions back under control. There was nothing funny about his situation. If Niall meant to torture him for information, he’d eventually break, and then the sorcerer would either stop or put him out of his misery. If he was merely testing the rune’s properties, there was no reason to quit until Conor was mutilated beyond all recognition.

So this was how it all ended for him. Taken apart piece by piece in some Sliebhanaigh fortress, never to see his wife again, never to lay eyes on his child. At least Aine was safe in Ard Dhaimhin. Eoghan would see that she and the child were cared for. That was the only advantage to the fact that his best friend loved his wife.

How long would it take for her to grow to love him back? Conor had already said Aine would make a fine queen. It would only make sense for her eventually to marry the High King.

The thought of Aine in Eoghan’s arms, his hands on her, made Conor’s stomach twist. Of course Eoghan would bed her. Of course she would bear him children. It wouldn’t even be a hardship, considering what Eoghan could offer. And Conor’s sacrifice would be forgotten.

His failure, on the other hand, would be immortalized by his absence.

A tear trickled from the corner of his eye. Niall caught it on the tip of his knife and gave the blade a twist, nicking the skin of his cheekbone. “I’m disappointed. Tears already, and we haven’t even begun.” Niall waved a hand, and a blue flame danced on his palm.

Conor swallowed and kept his eyes fixed firmly on the curved stone ceiling. He knew now that he wouldn’t be leaving this room. Nothing he said would change that. The only thing he could control was how he conducted himself in the minutes or hours or days before his death.

But when the first flicker of unnatural fire licked his skin, he screamed.

Drip. Drip. Drip, drip, drip.

He woke to a stinging slap across the face and the sound of more water dripping onto the floor. Pain seared every nerve ending, surprising him with its intensity, surprising him that it didn’t dull the other sensations: the cold breeze against his face, the sticky wetness on his skin.

Only then did he realize that the drip coincided with the hammering of his pulse. Not water. Blood. His blood.

Footsteps scuffed along the stone floor. “This has been quite enlightening, don’t you think? It seems that the shield rune, as you call it, is effective against direct incursions of the mind and at blocking innate magic. But it is shockingly useless against physical attacks brought by magic. As, of course, you know.”

Conor struggled to focus on the voice, struggled to hang on to consciousness, though he didn’t know why. It would be so much easier to embrace the cool comfort of darkness.

“No, not yet. We’re not finished. And you need to be awake for this to work. Do you want to see what’s been done so far?”

Conor shook his head with all the strength he could muster. Niall laughed. “Fair enough. That might sever the last tether on your mind, and I still need that engaged. What I wonder now is if the rune works both ways. You can’t contact your beloved Aine, but if she were told you were in trouble, could she contact you?”

“No.” Conor moistened his cracked lips and tried to make his voice strong. “Better that she doesn’t know. I don’t want her to know.”

“Then why don’t we save that for last? I think you’ll want to say good-bye in the end. In the meantime . . .”

Conor didn’t hear the rest over the whoosh of blood in his ears. But when the pain again became too much, he stopped fighting and succumbed to the embrace of the dark.

Flashes of light. The raspy sound of breathing. His own, he thought. Pain, but more distant now. Hard to grasp, slipping away.

“Not yet.” Who was the other voice? He couldn’t remember. “You’ve been very helpful. We’re almost finished. And then you’ll have your reward. You can say good-bye.”

The sound of sobbing came to his ears. His voice. He didn’t care. He was broken. There was nothing left of him to salvage. No pride. No purpose. He had failed in every way that mattered.

He eagerly raced to meet the blackness.

Conor. Conor, it’s me. Can you hear me?

He tried to pry his eyelids open, but they wouldn’t move, sticky and encrusted with blood. At least the pain was less now. Or maybe there was so much of it he couldn’t distinguish one
sensation from the other. The dripping had slowed too, slowed with the barely perceptible beating of his heart. He trembled with cold and struggled to focus on the voice.

Tears seeped from beneath his eyelids. “I’m sorry, Aine. I failed. We failed. We were betrayed. I did my best, but
 
—”

Conor, listen to me. It’s not over. You have to be strong.

“I’m dying, Aine. I love you.”

No. You are not dying.

“What’s been done
 
—”

Nothing’s been done to you, Conor. Open your eyes!

“I can’t!” He meant the words to come out as a shout, but they came out as a croak instead. “He took them. Don’t you understand? I’m blind!”