The Sword and the Song (30 page)

“There,” he whispered to Ailill beside him.

“You mean right in front of where everyone is sleeping?” Ailill hissed back. Once more, he seemed more amused than annoyed. Conor just shook his head.

It
was
a problematic location, though, in full view of the watch at the front gate and right outside the sleeping area of a good portion of the fort’s inhabitants. This wasn’t going to be an operation that could be completed with a chisel and a mallet but rather a lump of charcoal and his bare fingertips.
Comdiu, protect me from view and turn their guards’ eyes away from our position.

“Stay here,” he whispered. “And if they sound the alarm, escape the way we came.”

“No,” Ailill said, reaching for the charcoal in Conor’s hand. “You’re too valuable to lose. Let me.”

It might have been for the best, though, because even watching for the man’s presence, Conor lost him in the dark courtyard. Only the eventual soft scratch of the rune being drawn
onto granite drew his eye back to the shadow crouched before the clochán. Conor could just make out the glint of a knife before Ailill started to shave away the chunks of softened rock.

“What’s this
 
—”came a startled voice from behind them.

Before Conor could even turn all the way around, Blair loomed up behind the man and landed a heavy blow against the back of his head with the haft of the ax. The Fíréin knelt beside him and felt for a pulse, then gave Conor a nod. He was still alive.

Conor gave the soft night-singer whistle, alerting Ailill that they were running out of time. Another minute, and the man appeared beside Conor in a crouch.

“Did you get them all?”

“I think so. All I could see at least. If you hadn’t noticed, it’s dark.”

“It will have to do. Our time’s run out.” He inclined his head toward the man who was still laid out cold beside the goat pen. It was impossible to know how long he’d stay unconscious, but given the time it had taken to climb the hill, he figured someone would raise the alarm before they made it all the way to the meadow below.

Although it would have been easier to kill him, Conor wasn’t sure he could handle the thought of more blood on his hands.

But Comdiu was on their side, it seemed. No alarm came from the fortress above, despite the fact that it took them almost as long to climb down the side of the great hill as it had to climb up it. They crossed the half mile to the camp at a jog, arriving out of breath but also out of range.

“We were discovered,” Conor said. “We need to go now.”

Instantly, the other men jumped into action, unhobbling the horses and packing their bedrolls. Within twenty minutes, they were riding south as quickly as they dared, leaving as little evidence in their wake as possible.

Did you do it?
Aine’s voice intruded into his mind, startling him from his focus on the uneven terrain in front of his horse.

Aye, we did it. It remains to be seen what Niall does in return. And now you know what I have to do.

Conor, I wish you wouldn’t. I wish you would just trust me.

He signaled the men to pull up the horses while he dug the ink from his bag. He used the little bit of moonlight peeking through the clouds to redraw the rune on himself. Even without words, he could feel Aine’s disappointment in his head, until the last line was drawn and the link between them winked out.

That night, he dreamed of blood and torture and battle for the first time in days, as if his resting mind were trying to tell him he was doing the right thing by shutting her out.

The next night, they got their answer from Niall, in the form of another black plume of smoke.

Conor hung his head and sloughed off the immediate feeling of failure. He’d done his best, and it hadn’t been enough. That meant that not all Niall’s men were ensorcelled or the druid’s destructive magic possessed a much greater range than they thought. Either way, for them to succeed, many more would die.

Aine sat motionless on the balcony
beneath a covering of furs, her forgotten sewing draped across her lap. She’d taken to sitting on this balcony down the corridor from the Ceannaire’s office, not because she particularly wanted to think but because the stone walls of her chamber had begun closing in on her. Her confinement to the fortress might be voluntary, but that didn’t make it feel any less like a prison.

She sensed Eoghan before he even stepped through the doorway, but she didn’t turn her head. “Any news?”

“A dove came today. It’s done.”

Aine blinked up at Eoghan as he took his seat. “Done. Already? It’s been scarcely a month.”

“Conor didn’t waste any time in Faolán, and the other groups didn’t face opposition. We were lucky, I suppose.”

Aine tossed around that word in her head. Lucky. She supposed they could look at it that way. They hadn’t lost any of their men. “How many dead? The villagers, I mean.”

Eoghan sighed heavily. He took a few moments before he could manage to answer. “Nine hundred, perhaps.”

“So only the fortresses that Conor visited.” She looked up at Eoghan, her eyes filling with tears. “Niall’s tormenting him, isn’t he? This wasn’t meant as a deterrent. Conor proved he was going to go through with his mission regardless. Niall just wants to make sure he feels all the lives that have been lost because of it.”

“I don’t know. Niall has taken a special interest in Conor since he’s thwarted his plans more than once. Maybe he’s just toying with him.”

“Why?”

“Because he delights in the pain of other people.”

“While we sit by and do nothing.”

Eoghan seemed to measure his words before he spoke. “Aine, I know that what I’m doing feels cruel, even unconscionable. But I can’t discount the possibility that this is all a distraction. What happens if I divert men from Ard Dhaimhin and he chooses that moment to attack? Then we don’t just have hundreds of people dead, we have thousands, and we’ve lost Seare in the process. I have a responsibility to more than just individual lives.”

Eoghan was right. Aine knew he was right, but it didn’t feel any better knowing that people were dying because of the Fíréin’s actions. “Conor would say that’s why you were chosen to be king.”

“He would, wouldn’t he?” Eoghan shot her a smile. “At least this means he’ll be back in time to see the birth of his son.”

“Not you, too. It could still be a daughter.” She rubbed her stomach, now unmistakably round beneath the pleats of her skirt.

“How long?”

“About eight weeks.”

“Good.” Eoghan rose and gave her a little bow. “Don’t stay out here too long. The nights are getting colder now.”

“Aye, I’ll go in soon.”

With a sad smile, she watched him go, until Iomhar stepped forward. “My lady, he’s right. We should go in.”

“Just a few more minutes.”

Eoghan had said it was done, that Conor would be coming home. She wanted to hear that for herself. But other than a short period of time when he had played the wards around the last fortress, she hadn’t been able to catch his thoughts. He was avoiding her when he should be celebrating a mission completed. That could mean only one thing.

He was hiding something.

Sixteen.

The number had been bothering him for the last two fortresses. Sixteen old strongholds. Sixteen rune stones. A nice even number, divisible by four, the number of kingdoms in Seare. It all fit nicely, neatly, like the four major prophets, the four divisions of each book of the Holy Canon.

Except that was a Balian conceit. The druids did not think in even numbers. Three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen . . .

Seventeen. The holy number of the druidic order, even now. Had the druids truly wanted to divide up important information, they would have done it on seventeen stones in seventeen places.

Which meant there had to be one more stone out there still. How could they have missed one? He pictured the map in his mind’s eye, counting off each fortress. Maybe there had been one destroyed that was no longer on the maps? The ancient Seareanns were too deliberate about their numbers for them to have stopped short of the holy number when planning their strongholds.

And then it came to him so abruptly he nearly fell off his horse. Dún Eavan.

He’d not even thought of it because it had been used as a Faolanaigh palace before Lisdara was built, but it dated back much further than that. Hadn’t Aine always said she sensed an old, deep magic there? Of course she’d also encountered the sidhe, which might argue against the existence of a rune stone. Except he knew very well the runes merely dissuaded rather than prevented the presence of the sidhe.

“Halt,” he called, and the group reined in around him. “Ailill, send a dove. We have one stop left.”

The next two weeks were the longest of Aine’s life.
Eoghan had said that Conor was coming home, but a mere day later, Conor had sent a message saying he thought there was one more stone located at Dún Eavan
 
—less than a day’s ride from Lisdara, where Niall had taken up residence, where he could very well be now.

“Conor knows what he’s doing, Aine,” Eoghan told her. “If he’s sure there are seventeen stones, there are seventeen stones.”

“I don’t doubt his knowledge,” she had said. “I just don’t understand why he has to be the one who does it.”

“Because he’s the closest. And he’s not a man to ask another to do his duty for him.”

She couldn’t disagree, but the waiting wore on her with each passing day. She had never been walled up in a fortress for this long. She’d been on the battlefield, actually participating in their efforts against the evil that threatened Seare. But they’d lost that battle, and now Aine felt she was waiting on the final battleground. Even Eoghan with his encouraging words seemed as on edge as she was, though he wouldn’t admit it aloud. She
wondered if he sensed it as she did: a storm on the horizon, simply waiting for the first thunderclap.

She left herself open when she slept, hoping Conor would try to contact her, hoping for some reassurance that he was all right. All she got were slivers and shreds of other people’s thoughts and dreams
 
—until one night, she found herself out in the cold, her breath puffing around her in clouds of steam.

She crept slowly into the darkened clochán, the buzz of snoring men hiding the scuff of her footsteps on the hardpacked floor. Despite the late hour, a fire still roared in the center pit, raising beads of sweat on her forehead. She signaled to the men behind her and slowly drew the sword from the sheath on her back.

Wait. Why did she have a sword? Why was she in the brothers’ barracks? She tried to release the weapon, but her hands wouldn’t obey her. She watched, a terrified prisoner in her own body as the men fanned out behind her with bared blades.

On her command, the men fell on the sleeping brothers, swords cutting silently into bodies, daggers slicing across windpipes to still screams before they could escape. Blood sprayed warm against her skin. Aine struggled against the urge to vomit.

She scrambled out of bed and hunched over the chamber pot before she realized she was back in her own body, back in her chamber at Carraigmór. For a moment, she imagined she heard Conor stirring in the bed behind her before she realized she was once again alone.

“A nightmare,” she whispered shakily. But it wasn’t a nightmare. Nor was it the way she usually experienced visions.

Horror surged through her as she made the connection. Up to this point, she’d only picked up on others’ thoughts and memories. Now she was linked with someone else’s mind, experiencing what he experienced, through his eyes.

That meant that what she saw had been no dream. Her fingernails dug into her clenched palm. They had to know. They had to stop this, if it weren’t already too late.

She threw her shawl around her shoulders and unbolted the chamber door, not bothering to put on her slippers before she flew into the passage. Peadar, her night guard, straightened from his lean against the wall. “My lady?”

“I need to speak with Eoghan now.” She didn’t wait for Peadar before rushing down the corridor to Eoghan’s room. She pounded furiously on the door until it swung inward. Her words tumbled over each other. “They’re going to die if we don’t do something. You have to hurry.”

“Slow down.” Eoghan put his hands on her shoulders to still the frantic flow of words. “Stay right there while I get dressed.”

Aine paced little circles in the hallway while she waited, aware of Peadar’s furrowed brow, but the brother didn’t question her.

When Eoghan emerged several minutes later, once again fully dressed and armed, he gave a nod for the guard to follow them and then guided Aine down to the staircase. It wasn’t until he nudged her into a cushioned chair that she fully registered he had brought them to the Ceannaire’s office.

“Now, start at the beginning and tell me what you saw.”

Aine related the entire dream to him. He listened carefully, but as soon as she finished, he went to the window and peered down below. “I don’t see any torches. Peadar, bar the front entrance, then go rouse the Conclave. Meet back here.” He escorted the brother to the door and dropped the bar, then went directly toward the bookshelf, where he located a rolled-up sheet of parchment. He pushed the stacks of books and tablets aside and spread out a map of the city on the table.

“This is very important, Aine. The barracks you saw him enter, was it a cottage or a clochán?”

“Clochán. Very clearly.”

“Good. Now, how many steps went down into the structure?”

Aine closed her eyes and recalled the sensation of entering, even though it made her shudder. “Three.”

“Okay. That means it’s one of the older ones on the east side of the compound. Here’s the trickiest question. When you entered the door, where was the moon? Was it over your left shoulder or your right?”

She hadn’t been paying any attention to the moon, as the man whose mind she was in hadn’t been paying attention. But she distinctly remembered the slant of shadow to the right. “Left. It had to be the left.”

“We’re in luck. It’s one of these two here.” He looked up and gave her an encouraging smile. “That’s good, Aine. You’ve done well.”

“Good? Someone just killed dozens of men, if not more! How could that be good?”

“It’s good because we know where to start looking. Had you not paid so much attention, it could have taken us all night. There are thousands of men here and dozens of clocháns.”

Aine nodded numbly, but the shaking was beginning again. Eoghan looked around the room, and she couldn’t figure out what he was trying to find. Instead, he ended up crouching down in front of her, one of her hands held between his like he was trying to rub some warmth into it. “It will be okay, Aine. You’re safe here. You understand that, don’t you?”

She nodded again, but before she could answer, a knock sounded at the door. Eoghan waited for the newcomers to identify themselves before opening the door. The Conclave members flooded in with Iomhar trailing behind, looking as if he’d been roused from a deep sleep.

“Peadar, Iomhar, take Aine to her chamber. Iomhar, stay
inside with her and bar the door. No one enters before daylight, not even me. Understood?”

“Aye, sir.” Iomhar guided Aine from the chair and threaded their way back through the men in the room. As soon as they got into the corridor, he bent his head toward hers. “Are you feeling all right, my lady? You look as if you’re going to faint.”

She felt like she was going to vomit. The scene she’d witnessed played over and over in her head, sticking on the feel of warm blood on her skin. This wasn’t a vision of the future; this was a vision of something that was happening right now. She knew it, just as she’d known it when she’d seen Niall and his men sack a village disguised as Sofarende, even though she was hundreds of miles away. She’d experienced death then, too.

“Whoa, Lady Aine.” Iomhar caught her around the waist as she started to sway.

She pressed a hand against her clammy cheek. Why was there ringing in her ears? “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m not the type to faint.”

It was the last thing she could remember.

Eoghan didn’t question Aine’s instincts. One look at her face was enough to tell him that she believed what she was saying, that it was happening now. One look out the window was enough to tell him that all was not as it should be. In the middle of the night, there should be torches burning at intervals around the village. The patches of darkness suggested people who didn’t want to be noticed.

He quickly detailed the situation to the men gathered in the Ceannaire’s office, his voice calm but certain. “It’s one of the two south-facing clocháns, right here.” He pointed to two round circles on the map. “But that doesn’t mean that was the only céad attacked. Rouse the village; account for the guards. I’ll want
the prefects to report anyone missing from their quarters who shouldn’t be.”

“Are you sure this information is reliable?” Dal crossed his arms.

“Would you rather wait until morning and see who doesn’t arrive at their posts? Better we find out now. And if it’s something that hasn’t happened yet, it might discourage the perpetrators from attempting it later.”

“Aye, sir.” A chorus of agreement went up from the men before they filed out.

Eoghan caught Riordan aside before he left. “Post two more men outside Aine’s chamber. I won’t take any chances.”

Riordan gave a crisp nod. “It’s beginning, you think?”

Eoghan hadn’t wanted to give voice to the thought, but he wouldn’t lie. “Aye. It’s beginning.”

By dawn, it was clear that Aine’s experience hadn’t been a dream and that it wasn’t an isolated incident. Two hundred thirty men, slaughtered in their sleep. When they were sure it wasn’t the beginning of a larger siege, Eoghan came down and viewed the scene himself. Part of him wished he hadn’t. The view of blood-soaked bodies, mattresses, earth . . . they would all stay with him even longer than the cleanup from the first battle at Ard Dhaimhin. That had been war. This was butchery.

Even worse, they had absolutely no idea who had done it. The prefects accounted for all the men. None was missing from his bed, none bloodstained, none wounded, though the latter was unlikely anyway considering the victims had been killed in their sleep. The one suspicious detail was the lack of guards on the clocháns that had been attacked. All men on guard duty could account for their whereabouts; it seemed that those posts had simply been forgotten.

Eoghan wearily climbed the stairs back to Carraigmór and went straight to Aine’s room. The two men stationed outside her chamber bowed to him as he rapped on the door. “Aine, Iomhar. It’s me. Open the door.”

The bar and the latch scraped open to reveal Iomhar, his sword drawn. At least Eoghan had made a good selection for Aine’s guard, who didn’t stand down until verifying that the three men in the hall had reason to be there.

“How is she?” Eoghan murmured.

“Shockingly strong,” Iomhar said.

“I heard that.” Aine pushed herself up in bed, fully dressed even though her hair had come loose from her braid. She cradled her belly protectively. “What he means is stubborn. I must have asked him for an update a dozen times through the night.”

“And well he didn’t obey you, else I’d be finding you a new guardsman. Are you feeling well, my lady? The baby?”

“Well enough. What did you learn?”

He pulled up a chair beside the bed. “You were right. And unfortunately, it wasn’t just that one clochán.”

She paled to a sickly gray. “How many?”

“Two hundred thirty men.”

“It could have been worse.”

“Aye, it could have been much worse. Sounding the alarm may have interrupted their plans. You likely saved lives by reacting as you did.”

“I’ve been hoping it was all just a vivid nightmare. What do we do now?”

He glanced at Iomhar, who wore the same dread that Eoghan felt. “I don’t think this was an isolated incident. We’re preparing for siege. While I know that Niall likes theatrics, I would also have expected him to strike fast and hard. I think we were
fortunate we got a warning. He probably didn’t intend to stop with two clocháns.”