The Sword and the Song (22 page)

“How could this happen?
” Eoghan roared.

Aine cringed, even though she knew his fury was not directed toward her. She focused instead on the sting in her palm where she had sliced it open on the thorns of the monk’s collar plant. Even beneath the numbing salve and the wrapping, it hurt.

Not as bad as a knife wound would have
 
—or had. She had been cut before by an assassin’s blade, and that had been someone she had trusted as well.

She had a terrible record of trusting people who secretly wanted to kill her.

“Eoghan,” Riordan said gently, nodding in her direction.

Eoghan focused on her, and his demeanor softened. He came to kneel beside the chair in the Ceannaire’s office where she sat and took her unwounded hand. “Aine, look at me. Are you all right? Are you hurt in any way?”

She shook her head numbly. “I suspect I’m in shock, though.”

“We should get you to your chamber. But first, did he say anything? Did he give any indication why he tried to kill you?”

“No, none. I thought it was odd that he wanted to
accompany me to the garden, because the garden is not his responsibility. It never entered my mind he would do something like this.”

“I don’t understand why if he wanted to kill her he didn’t do it inside the cottage,” Iomhar wondered. “He was alone with her for hours. Instead he takes her outside where he can be seen and stopped? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Eoghan’s eyes narrowed. “You left her alone? After your express orders were to not leave her side?”

Aine squeezed Eoghan’s hand to stem the flow of his tirade. “Iomhar was doing as I asked. Would you have honestly believed that Murchadh was a threat? The fact is, he saved me, and I don’t even know how he managed that. He was several feet away.”

Eoghan’s eyes returned to the guard. “How did you manage that?”

“I don’t know, sir. Something felt wrong. I was already walking toward them when he turned the blade on her. I was there just in time.”

“Or he didn’t really want to kill me,” Aine said softly.

The three men in the room stared disbelievingly at her.

“Think about it. He waited until we were outside, where Iomhar could stop him. He knocked me over and hesitated before he tried to stab me. That doesn’t sound like a well-thought-out plan for assassination.” It was certainly easier to believe that the healer with whom she’d worked for months hadn’t truly wanted to kill her, even if his real motivations hadn’t yet been explained.

“Then why do it at all?” Eoghan asked.

“Maybe he was compelled.” The words spilled out before she could consider them, but they felt right. They felt possible. Hadn’t she seen what a spell could do to a person’s will? “What better way to get to me than through someone I trusted? After
all, as soon as you thought there might be a threat against me, you assigned a guard. I can’t move more than a handful of steps without someone watching over me. A stranger would never get within a dozen feet of me.”

“Why do it at all? And how could he have been spelled? Murchadh isn’t new here. I would have expected such a thing from a patient or one of the refugees. But not a sworn brother who has lived more of his life here than he has elsewhere.”

“In the nemetons.”

Again, all the men’s attention fell on her.

“Murchadh was a druid. He spent the first thirty years of his life there. He himself said that he still considers himself a druid. Now Niall is trying to collect the runes his order scattered, and we are trying to stop him. Somehow I don’t believe that’s any coincidence.”

“So you think he’s loyal to the druidic order and they somehow want you dead?” Riordan said doubtfully.

“I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that there are too many coincidences here. It seems that I’m always being attacked by people I trust. First, Keondric ambushed and kidnapped me under Niall’s direction. Then I was attacked by a man who had helped me reach Forrais safely. They’d both had the opportunity to harm me before then, but they hadn’t taken it. And now Murchadh.”

“But you yourself said you didn’t think Niall had anything to do with the attack on you at your aunt’s keep. You thought that was orchestrated by her or your cousin.”

“Aye. But the sidhe . . . the druid . . . they all may be acting for their own purposes, but who pulls the strings?” The words flowed out of her as if she’d always known the answer, even if this was the first time she had ever truly articulated the idea. “Lord Balus told me that the storm of darkness must be stopped
before it spread across the world. I don’t think He meant mere physical oppression or even the control of the sidhe.”

“You’re saying this is all part of a larger plan by the Adversary,” Riordan said.

“What else? Is that not how the story goes? That the Adversary hated the creation that Comdiu loved? That Comdiu gave him dominion over the earth, even as He gave us tools to fight him? And now we threaten that reign on earth, Conor and I especially. We have been targeted every step of the way, by evil men, by spirit, by magic.”

“We need to question Murchadh,” Eoghan said.

“Let me.”

“My lady?”

“He didn’t want to kill me. I’m almost sure of it. Let me question him. I’m more likely to get the answers we seek from him than you are.”

“You were almost just killed!” Eoghan said. “No. I won’t allow it.”

Aine arched an eyebrow at him. “You won’t allow it? Last time I checked, you were neither my husband nor my king.”

Eoghan flinched, but he didn’t budge. “I am the leader here and responsible for your safety.”

“What do you think is going to happen with him restrained? Iomhar overpowered him without a struggle. He’s not going to harm me. At least let me try. You question him too strenuously and he will tell us nothing. I’m sure of that.”

Another round of doubtful looks. Aine sighed. “I promise, no harm is going to come to me.”

After a long moment of deliberation, Eoghan nodded. “Fine. But only if we all are with you.”

“Good. Thank you. All right, before we go down, we need some things. Where can I find ink and a brush?”

Eoghan called for one of the brothers on watch in the corridor to retrieve the implements. “Come, my lady. He’s being held in the dungeons.” He ushered her out the door with a light touch on her elbow.

“Carraigmór has a dungeon?”

“Aye. Not often used, but equipped for the task.”

“Somehow I didn’t take the Fíréin as proponents of torture.” A shudder of horror skittered down her back, the mere word taking her back to what she had experienced through Conor’s mind.

“It’s nothing for you to be concerned about, my lady. Murchadh is one of us. He will be given the opportunity to confess. I don’t anticipate any unpleasantness being necessary to get to the bottom of this.”

Eoghan’s careful dodge of the topic did nothing to ease the sick feeling in her stomach. Somehow she had thought of the brotherhood as being more civilized, more enlightened, than the kingdoms, but perhaps that was just a false conceit. Up until recently, they’d had no outsiders and relatively little crime. Interlopers who had no good reason to be in their forests were killed, and brothers who committed crimes were already held to a codified standard of discipline. Where did that leave Murchadh, she wondered, who had taken an oath as a brother and then attempted to kill someone under the Ceannaire’s protection?

Eoghan led Aine down the stairs to a part of the keep she hadn’t even known existed, beside the isolated Hall of Prophecies. Rather than the dark, dingy, foul-smelling lower level she’d expected, it was rather a warren of small chambers that looked like storerooms, each closed with a heavy iron-bound door. The brother on duty stepped aside from one in the middle of the hall.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Eoghan asked, his hand on the latch. “He did just try to kill you.”

“Which is why I must speak with him.”

Eoghan exchanged a glance with Riordan, who nodded. Iomhar followed at her heels, his hand on the knife at his waist. Aine found it laughable. What danger did he think she would face?

Certainly not Murchadh. He had always struck her as hale and full of life when working in the cottage, but now, tied to a chair with heavy ropes, he looked like a withered husk.

Aine stopped several paces in front of him. He raised miserable eyes to hers and then dropped his gaze to the stones again. No, this was not a man who was proud of his actions. She reached out for his thoughts, but they were slippery, like trying to catch smoke with her hands. Still, she caught guilt, regret, anger. And among it, the distinctive, oily taint of sorcery.

“He’s spelled,” Aine murmured. “I’m sure of it.”

She crouched down in front of him. “Brother Murchadh, why did you do it? I don’t truly believe you want me dead.”

He refused to meet her eyes, and he said nothing.

“Lady Aine, this is pointless,” Riordan said. “Even if he does answer, I don’t think you’re going to like what he has to say.”

The door creaked open behind them and a brother entered with a jar of ink and a brush in hand. Aine thanked him, and Eoghan dismissed him with a nod.

“Take off his shirt,” she directed.

Iomhar came forward, slit the neckline of Murchadh’s shirt with a knife, and pulled it open.

Something about the sight of the old man tied to a chair with the wrinkled, sagging flesh of his torso exposed struck her with a deep pang of pity. She knelt before him.

“Don’t move, brother.” Iomhar put the edge of his knife against Murchadh’s throat to ensure he didn’t try anything reckless while Aine was close to him. Her pity grew. She uncorked the inkwell and dipped in the brush.

At the first stroke of ink, Murchadh’s breath hissed from between his teeth, but he didn’t move. She worked quickly to draw the rest of the rune as precisely as she could. When the last stroke was complete, all the tension drained from his body.

“The rune blocks all magic,” she said quietly. “You can speak freely now.”

“Bless you, my lady.” Tears trickled down his face. “Forgive me.”

“You didn’t really want to kill me, did you?”

He shook his head.

“Then why?”

“Some time ago, after I was a brother of Ard Dhaimhin, I swore an oath to another. I was stupid and shortsighted, and I didn’t see the harm. But it bound me in ways I didn’t expect.”

“Through magic.”

“Aye. He used my continued respect for my mentor in the nemetons to elicit a promise I never should have made. And when it came time for him to call in the favor, I found I couldn’t refuse.”

“You’re speaking of Niall.”

Murchadh bowed his head and nodded once.

“Which is why you came outside with me.”

“Aye. Because I knew someone would likely stop me before I could be successful.”

“And if they didn’t?”

“Then I would have murdered you and your child, and I would have had to stand before Comdiu with the blood of innocents on my hands.”

Aine jumped to her feet and moved away from him. What could she say to that? He’d known what he did was wrong, even if he was compelled by a foolish, ill-advised oath. He had done all within his power to make sure he would be stopped. Yet had Iomhar not acted on his instincts, Aine and her baby would be dead.

The realization of how close she had come began the trembling. She hugged her arms to herself.

“Iomhar, take Lady Aine to her chamber and stay there.”

“No, wait. I have another question. Brother Murchadh, you spoke to us only once we applied the rune. Does that mean Niall has been watching you all this time?”

He nodded.

“So he’s heard all our conversations. He already knew of the baby. He knew of the preparations we’ve been making.”

“I would assume so.”

Eoghan stepped forward, danger in his expression and his tone. “If you made the oath years ago, who or what told you to act now?”

Murchadh’s throat worked, but he remained silent.

But Aine had the terrible, sinking suspicion that she knew.

“You think Morrigan has something to do with this.”

Aine huddled beneath the blanket in her chair, willing the shivers to subside. She looked between Eoghan and Riordan, who stood before her while Iomhar guarded the door. “I don’t know what to think. It’s all a bit too much of a coincidence.”