The Sword and the Song (17 page)

He backed out of the room so fast he nearly knocked Larkin over. “Keep looking. Go.”

Larkin gave him a concerned look, but he led the party onward. Conor hung back to mop the sweat from his face and wrestle his breathing back under control.

It never happened. It was all in your mind. Pull yourself together.

Conor flexed his fingers around the soaked leather wrapping of his sword and forced himself forward, just as Larkin pushed open a second door. The warrior stumbled back with a cry, holding his sleeve over his nose and mouth.

“Dear Comdiu, what happened here?”

Conor pushed his way
to the front of the group out of obligation, not curiosity. The stench hit him first, the horror of the sight soon afterward. He closed his nose and squeezed his eyes shut as he pulled the door closed again. Too late. He barely made it to the side of the corridor before he emptied his stomach on the stones. From the sounds around him, he wasn’t the only one.

“That explains where the inhabitants of the fortress went,” he said, wiping his mouth.

“Why did we not smell them before now?” Ailill asked.

“The druid must have sealed the room with some sort of magic,” Conor said. That many bodies, rotting without proper preparation or burial, should have filled the fortress with a stench that would have been noticed for miles. With the seal broken, they’d have to deal with the bodies quickly. No doubt Niall had meant them to serve a double threat, considering they had most likely been ensorcelled. The wards had at least mitigated that danger. As they’d learned from the siege on the city, the magic didn’t die with its victims.

Faint sounds drifted from elsewhere in the tunnels. He held up his hand for silence and listened. Probably just the scurrying of a rat. But a rat didn’t explain the light they had seen earlier or the fact that some of the prisoners had been alive just hours ago. That suggested a caretaker, one they had not found. Yet there were no other doors in this corridor, and they reached the dead end without seeing any sign of life.

The second corridor yielded nothing more than more storerooms, thankfully only containing a scattering of crates, some old weaponry, and battered furniture. Thorough examinations of the spaces revealed no one. The third and final corridor, however, yielded much more interesting results: a series of tiny rooms packed with six narrow cots.

“Soldiers’ quarters,” Conor said. “Cheery place to bunk.”

“Better than next to dungeons,” Tomey said.

None of these rooms looked as if they had been occupied for some time. Conor ran a hand across a table and held up dust-covered fingers. “Either they’re far stealthier than we think or there’s no one here.” He realized he should have posted a guard at the near end of the corridors to ensure that no one could slip into one of the areas they’d already checked. A stupid, novice mistake. Maybe his experience really had rattled him more than he’d thought.

“Ailill, Tomey, stay here in the central chamber. Raise the alert should you see or hear anything suspicious.”

Neither of them looked pleased with the assignment, but they were too well disciplined to say anything other than “Aye, sir.”

Conor leaned against the wall of the main chamber and pressed his fingertips to his temples. So far none of this had gone how he’d planned. There were no guards at the fortress, though the bodies appeared to match the numbers Morrigan had
revealed. There were less than a dozen men in the dungeons. So where was Meallachán?

“I want to check the cells again,” Conor said, indicating he wanted Larkin to accompany him.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? If they’re ensorcelled . . .”

“The wards will have driven any sorcery out.” He strode back down the corridor, his sword in hand, though at this point he didn’t truly expect to encounter any resistance. He breathed through his mouth to avoid vomiting again while he looked through the bars of the cells. The expressions on the faces of these men would give him nightmares for weeks. Still, he checked each cell as thoroughly as he could, peering into their dark recesses.

Then he reached the last one, and his fears were confirmed. Meallachán.

The old man was dressed in only a shift over his dirty body, sprawled against the wall in a space not even large enough to stretch out in. His eyes were closed, his face peaceful as if sleeping, though dried blood and the uneven jut of his fingers suggested torture as well. At least it didn’t appear he’d been ensorcelled. But that just raised the question of how he had died. A closer look gave Conor his answer: the freshly bloodstained shift said he’d been put to the sword. Recently.

A chill shuddered through Conor’s body. He’d been killed when they breached the catacombs. That meant there was at least one man at large here.

“See if you can find the keys,” he said when Larkin walked up behind him. Some prickle of danger, a sense of self-preservation, made him spin just in time to raise his weapon against an incoming thrust. Not Larkin. His attacker was bulky, blond, and well fed. His clear, determined expression didn’t suggest the influence of sorcery.

Before Conor could even think of mounting a defense, the man crumpled to the ground. Conor blinked until he comprehended Larkin’s holding his sheathed sword like a club. He looked down at the motionless attacker. “I figured he’d be more useful to us alive. I didn’t kill him, did I?”

Conor knelt to check the attacker’s pulse and found it strong. “He’s alive. For now.” He frowned and pulled aside the man’s shirt. A pink scar lay there. The shield rune. And somehow, he knew. “I presume this is Somhairle. Help me move him.”

“To where?”

“To the storeroom. Somehow I have a feeling he’ll be familiar with it.”

Larkin looked confused, but he didn’t question Conor, merely helped him hoist the man and drag him down to the room from his illusion. Conor jerked his head toward the table. “Help me lift him.”

For the first time, there was a spark of disquiet in Larkin’s eyes. He stayed rooted in place.

Conor shot him a stern look. “On the table. That’s an order.”

Doubt written all over his face, Larkin complied and then backed to the door. “What are you planning on doing?”

Conor lashed the man to the table with several lengths of bloodstained rope. “Right now? Nothing. When he wakes up? I have some questions to ask.”

Larkin recoiled and Conor didn’t bother to explain his thinking. He expected he would have to do little other than invoke the memories of everything Somhairle had witnessed, perhaps assisted in. At least he hoped so. But what did it say about him that Larkin thought he was capable of torture?

And what
will
you do if Somhairle doesn’t tell you what you want to know?

He squared his shoulders and stuffed a rag into the prisoner’s
mouth. He wouldn’t need to answer that question. Somhairle was a mercenary. He would do whatever it took to save his own skin.

Conor just prayed that the man’s sense of self-preservation was better than his ambush skills.

Conor posted a guard on the storeroom while he and Larkin went upstairs to explain the situation to the other men. “I’m questioning one man downstairs. Keep your eyes and ears open in case there are more. In old fortresses like this, it’s nearly impossible to check every secret passageway and room. We’ll post guards on each opening of the tunnel as well while we wait for reinforcements from Ard Dhaimhin.”

“And Meallachán?” asked Cairell, one of Daigh’s men.

“Dead.”

“So this whole mission was a failure,” Ferus said, his disappointment reflecting that of the men around them.

“Not a failure. Once we secure this fortress for Ard Dhaimhin, it will be an excellent strategic outpost for us. For now, everyone is on guard. We’ll set up watches as soon as the sun comes up. But for now, stay where you are. Anyone who isn’t one of us is to be captured. If you must, kill before you let anyone escape.”

“Aye, sir.”

Satisfied that they knew their job, Conor returned to the catacombs. Larkin rushed to catch up with him. “I’m coming with you.”

“Are you my conscience now?”

“Someone needs to be.”

Conor rounded on him. “Let me make one thing clear to you, Larkin.
I
am in command here. What I choose to do for
the safety of our party and the success of this mission is my business. If you interfere, you’ll be watching a hole at the end of the tunnel for the next two weeks. Do you understand me?”

Larkin shrank back a little, as Conor expected. “With all due respect, sir, I’ll do what my conscience demands.”

“As will I. Now come and keep your mouth shut.” He made his voice hard, but inwardly Conor was proud of the young man for standing his ground. Principled, if more than a little naive. He had saved Conor’s life, though.

Conor moved brusquely into the room where Somhairle was still tied to the table. The tension in the ropes that bound his wrists said he was awake and trying not to show it. “Remember what I said,” he told Larkin. “Keep out of my way. If you’re going to stay, you’re going to help. Wake him up.”

Larkin just lifted an eyebrow.

Conor sighed. Nuance apparently wasn’t Larkin’s strong suit either.

“Fine,” he said. “If you won’t help, you can clean up when I’m done. Blood draws rats, and we can’t afford vermin in our supplies.”

Larkin looked sufficiently horrified, but Conor was gratified to see movement beneath the prisoner’s closed lids and a slight increase in his breathing. Good. He was afraid.

Conor didn’t give him long to contemplate his situation before he struck him soundly across the face. Somhairle jerked and his eyes opened, but he didn’t cry out. Conor leaned over and smiled. “Hello.”

The man’s eyes wavered between Conor and Larkin, then settled on Conor again.

“You should know I don’t particularly enjoy torture. I tend to believe that men who inflict pain on others for their own pleasure are the smallest kind of human beings. That said, I’ve
been on the receiving end one too many times to not see its usefulness.”

Confusion showed on the man’s face. That worked in Conor’s favor. He continued in a neutral tone, “I already know you are Somhairle, the commander of this fortress
 
—that is, when there was still something to command.”

A slight widening of the eyes. Confirmation. Conor had guessed right. “Now I’m going to ask you a question. For every truth you tell, you get to answer another question. For every lie . . . well, you’ll see.” Conor removed his knives from his belt and set them on the table beside him, placing each one with a deliberate click. “You should probably know that you’re not the only one to benefit from Lord Keondric’s tutelage. By the time he’s done, he could make a man say day is night and believe it too. Isn’t that right?”

The fear emanating from the captive was so powerful that Conor could practically taste it. Another right guess. Somhairle knew exactly how the blood had stained the table and floor in this room, exactly how the bodies piled in the other storeroom had gotten there. The recollection should have sapped Conor’s will to continue, but instead he felt only a cold void around him. He needed answers, and Somhairle was the only one capable of giving them.

“Ready to begin? Good.” Conor pulled the rag from Somhairle’s mouth. “First question: how long ago was Lord Keondric here?”

Somhairle stared at Conor. So he was going to attempt to resist? Brave for a mercenary. He moved to Somhairle’s feet and sliced the laces from one of his boots, then pulled it off. He rested the cold flat of the blade against his leg, a hint. The man’s muscle twitched involuntarily. Conor waited.

“One month. A little more, perhaps.”

“Was that before or after Lady Morrigan escaped?”

“After.”

“Good. Next question: what was he doing here?”

The prisoner didn’t answer again, but it took only the scrape of the edge against the sole of Somhairle’s foot to compel words, even if Conor did let the blade slip enough to bring up a tiny bright line of red. “Experiments.”

“What kind of experiments?”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand how his magic works.”

Conor didn’t completely believe him, but the details didn’t matter. The sidhe had already let the secret slip when they used Niall’s experiments for the basis of the glamour. Still, he couldn’t let him get away with an evasion without penalty. He pressed the top of the knife into the joint of the prisoner’s toe, hard enough to draw a trickle of blood, and left it there.

“All right! He was trying to see what the marks would do to someone under the influence of sorcery.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you can guess.”

“So can you,” Somhairle choked out. “I’d think he was trying to enter Ard Dhaimhin.”