The Sword and the Song (35 page)

It was a full minute more before the man opened his eyes, which were flooded with terror and confusion. When he finally recognized Conor, he relaxed a little. “Where am I? What happened?”

“The sidhe,” Conor said simply. “You have the rune now. But I need your help to put it on the others.”

Ailill pushed himself shakily to a sitting position and then lumbered to his feet, swaying. “I had no idea.”

“They are desperate to keep us from sending word back to Ard Dhaimhin. They will do whatever’s possible to keep us here.”

Ailill just nodded, wide-eyed, and followed Conor to the next man. Together they managed to draw the runes on the
other four members of their party, even though it took both of them and all their strength to accomplish it. When the men were finally roused from their sleep, shaky and confused, Conor called them close.

“The sidhe are not going to stop attacking us until I can play the wards around this place strongly enough to dissuade them. To do that, we need to find the boat and bring the harp from shore. Expect opposition. Work in pairs. We’ll need to put the runes on the lookouts as well.”

“What about you?” Blair asked. “You don’t have the rune.”

“So you’ll need to keep an eye on me. I can’t take the shield because it will keep me from playing the wards. Blair and Tomey, stay here and keep watch over the hostages. Make sure the caretakers don’t harm them. We don’t know the extent of their orders or how they’ve been ensorcelled to respond.”

“Aye, sir.” The two men took up positions on opposite sides of the door, their swords in hand. Conor nodded to the other three men and gestured toward the door.

Outside the hall, the crannog was as still as ever. Too still. A niggling sense of disquiet began in the back of Conor’s mind, but nothing was out of place: no guards, no noise, not even any illusion from the sidhe.

His first indication that something was truly wrong was the impact of the arrow as it slammed into him.

Aine jerked as the connection between her and Conor fractured. Tears sprang to her eyes. Surely it couldn’t be true. Surely she couldn’t have understood that correctly. It had to be another part of the sidhe’s illusion, another way to entrap him so he couldn’t finish his mission.

“What is it?” Niall’s scowling face broke into her vision.

Then a labor pain hit her, so strong that she could no longer deny the truth. But it also provided her the opening she needed.

“My baby,” she gasped. “It’s coming.”

That drew Niall to her side. He knelt and hovered his hand over her belly, a chilling smile coming onto his face. “We’re in luck, Lady Aine. I might not need your services after all.” He switched his focus to Morrigan. “Help her.”

“I don’t know what help I’m going to be,” Morrigan said. “I’ve never delivered a baby. She needs a midwife.”

“No midwife,” he said. “You’ll have to do.”

Aine ignored the conversation and breathed through another pain. They were coming more rhythmically now, a sure sign that this wasn’t false labor but the real thing. She forced away her rising panic over the fact that she was still weeks from when she should be delivering. She might have one chance, and she couldn’t waste it.

“Help me upstairs,” she said, gripping Morrigan’s arm. The other woman hauled her to her feet.

“No,” Niall said. “She stays here.”

Horror pierced her pain. He expected her to birth her child here? On the floor of the hall, in front of a dozen men?

“At least get her something to lie on,” Morrigan snapped. “Do you expect me to put the baby on cold stone?”

Niall nodded to one of the men, who disappeared down the corridor. Morrigan helped Aine to the corner, where she lowered herself to the ground again. The pains were not so bad that she couldn’t think through them still, but the men didn’t need to know that. She cried out and dragged Morrigan down to her knees beside her.

“Conor found your sisters,” she whispered. “They’re at Dún Eavan. The Fíréin will liberate them.”

Morrigan’s eyes went wide with shock. “That’s impossible.”

“No, not impossible. I know you’re just helping him because he has hostages, but your sisters are safe now. You have to help me.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re lying.”

Tears flooded Aine’s eyes. “I’m not. Conor is hurt. I need time to find out how badly. You have to give me time.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Just tell him I’m in hard labor. He won’t expect me to do anything else.” Aine winced again at the tightening in her abdomen.

“You really are going to have your child, aren’t you?”

“Aye, but it’s my first. It might be a while. Now go.”

Morrigan pulled away, but she didn’t give any indication whether she would help or not. All Aine could do was hope she’d been convincing enough.

She at last found Eoghan’s mind in the crowd, but she didn’t dare call for him while he was engaged in battle. Instead, she opened her mind as wide as she could manage, taking in the blast of thoughts, fears, and desires of thousands of people at once. She gasped at the rush of information, but somehow she still managed to filter it
 
—only the Fíréin she’d contacted through the sword, only the ones she recognized as vaguely north of them.

All oath-bound brothers who are near the fortress of Dún Eavan, your aid is needed there now! Make haste!

This time when the next labor pain hit her, she didn’t need to pretend to cry out.

Aine’s call echoed in Eoghan’s head, laced with a compulsion he couldn’t resist. Focused so strongly on reaching Carraigmór, it took him several minutes to realize he was no longer fighting
against the flow of men but rather getting swept up in waves going the same direction.

“Sir!” A young man, barely old enough to have taken his oath, fell into stride alongside him. “Lady Aine is being held against her will at Carraigmór. What are your orders?”

His orders? He needed to know what they faced first.
Aine? Are you there?

Eoghan, the baby is coming.

The pronouncement jolted him, but not as much as the rambling briefing that followed.
Conor is hurt at Dún Eavan. I sent men from the area to go help him. Keondric thinks I’m incapacitated. Morrigan is only helping him because he’s holding her sisters. I don’t know if she’s on our side or his now.

What do you want me to do?

He’s completely mortal, Eoghan. Ordinary. As long as he has the rune, he doesn’t have any powers. But I don’t think he knows we know that.

Instantly Eoghan’s mind clicked through the possibilities.
How many guards on the hall?

Aine was gone long enough to make his heart rise into his throat.
Aine?

I don’t think it will be as long as I thought.

Aine, tell me. How many men?

Twelve, perhaps? Others scattered throughout the fortress, I’m sure.

A dozen men. Not so many, especially if Aine really had managed to turn Morrigan to their side. If he was wrong, though, or she had miscounted, he could easily be serving himself up to someone who wanted him dead.

He didn’t even hesitate as he broke into a run toward the fortress.

Conor hit the ground hard,
knocked to his back by the impact of the arrow. For a moment, he was unable to comprehend the reason for the shaft sticking out from his middle. And then the pain came, a searing, burning feeling that made him think he’d been stuck in the gut with a hot poker.

Ailill was saying something to him, but he couldn’t make out the words. The other man lifted him by the arms and dragged him back through the open door of the fortress as arrows continued to fly around them. Then they laid him down on his side against the wall. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Conor thought it was strange that none of the other men had been hit even though they had preceded him out of the hall.

“Sir, you need to hold this here.” Ailill wadded up the hem of Conor’s tunic and stuffed it against the spot where the arrow shaft protruded. “You’re bleeding.”

“I was shot by an arrow. Of course I’m bleeding.” His attempted laugh came out more like a moan. Blast, getting shot by an arrow hurt. Almost as much as what he’d experienced in the sidhe’s illusion. Except this was real blood darkening the
fabric of his tunic, a real arrow sticking out of his body, a real expression of concern on Ailill’s face. When he’d talked about opposition, this hadn’t even registered as a possibility.

“Who shot me?” he remembered to ask. “Are there guards after all? Warriors?”

“Shh, stop trying to talk, Conor.”

“Tell me.”

Ailill’s expression darkened. “It was Keallach. I’d never have taken him for a traitor.”

“It’s . . . the . . . sidhe.” Conor groaned and stifled a curse at the burning pain that was spreading through his whole midsection. The sidhe had taken their guards before they could get to them, convinced them to shoot Conor. The men probably didn’t even comprehend what they had done. They were just being used for the spirits’ purposes.

The spirits. The bodies. He’d never told Aine what he needed to tell her.

Comdiu, protect us. Comdiu, watch over us.
He didn’t know if he whispered it aloud or not, but Ailill took up the refrain. “Keep doing that,” he said. “Just . . . a while . . . longer.”

Aine
 
—

I’m here. Oh, dear Comdiu, Conor, what happened?

The panic in Aine’s voice was the first indication that he might have reason to worry.
Listen to me, Aine. Morrigan is a traitor. She is being used by the druid. The sidhe are holding Etaoin and Liadan hostage. But tell her we have them. We are going to get them out.

I know, Conor. I know Morrigan is working for him.

Not of her own will. There are others.

Do you know who?

He realized she was not asking the identities of the hostages but rather whom they might belong to at Ard Dhaimhin. But he had no way of knowing when they were unconscious.
No.
No one else I recognized. Tell Morrigan. I promise, Aine, we will get them out. We will get them all out.

Blair darted inside the hall and barred the door behind him. “We have a problem.”

“Is it an arrow sort of problem?” The pain and now the resulting numbness was making Conor feel giddy. He looked down and realized the blood had soaked into more of his tunic than just the bit he had pressed around the arrow shaft. That probably wasn’t a good sign.

“It’s a warrior sort of problem. Men in boats, crossing the crannog.”

Aine, we are under attack.

They’re here to help, Conor. They’re Fíréin. Stand down.

How do you
 
—

I sent them. Ask them. They’ll tell you.

Conor conveyed the message to Blair, who looked doubtful. “She sent more men? What’s to keep the sidhe from taking them as well?”

Aine, do they have the rune?

A long pause, and then Aine’s distressed voice.
No. They don’t.

“I need my harp,” Conor said weakly. “Get me my harp!”

“It’s on the shore. We can’t get it.”

Blair was right. They couldn’t risk the men’s coming to shore under the sidhe’s glamour, but they didn’t have time to return for the harp without the boat
 
—assuming the men didn’t turn on them before they reached it.

For the first time, Conor realized he might have promised far more to Aine than he could deliver. And as Ailill knelt before him, his expression grim, Conor wondered if he would make it from Dún Eavan alive.

Conor, don’t say that. Don’t give up. You can’t give up. We’re depending on you.

Aine, I love you.

Conor, listen to me! You have to pull yourself together. You cannot die. All those people are depending on you. Etaoin and Liadan, they are depending on you. Now what are you going to do?

Outside the fortress, the first sounds of battle began, the clash of swords, the shouts of men, all unaware that they were fighting
 
—killing
 
—their allies.

He needed the harp. He needed to set up the shield, connect it to Ard Dhaimhin, share the magic that seemed to grow stronger with each ward he established. But he was feeling so tired, even the pain didn’t serve to keep him awake.

It took six men to escort Eoghan into the great hall from the balcony. He supposed he should be flattered. They had taken his weapons
 
—his sword, his staff, and his knives
 
—yet they still treated him as if he were a great danger.

If he thought it would get him anywhere, he might be.

But that would give away his play, and it would tell Niall they knew he was powerless beneath the rune and the wards of Ard Dhaimhin. It was a mark of desperation that the sorcerer would come here without his magic, or maybe a mark of arrogance. All of the havoc that he had wreaked across their land, yet now he stood here as an ordinary man.

Eoghan stumbled forward, scowling at the men holding his arms, while he took in the scene. Half a dozen warriors stood by a man who could only be Niall, surprisingly young and handsome in his host body. Beyond, in the corner of the hall behind the Rune Throne, stood Morrigan and, he realized a moment later, Aine. She didn’t seem to notice him, her face twisted in pain and concentration, gripping Morrigan’s hand. Niall was forcing her to deliver her baby here?

“The uncrowned king,” Niall said quietly, a smile on his face. He paced forward, his hands linked behind his back. Add theatrics to his list of vices. “Yet you come as a prisoner, a penitent. Tell me why.”

Eoghan nodded in the women’s direction. “Release Lady Aine. I want her escorted to someplace safe.”

“You are hardly in a position to make demands. What will you give me in return?”

Eoghan infused all the sincerity he could manage into his voice. “Me.”

“You? You, proclaimed king of Seare, would give up your throne and your life for another man’s woman? Come now, I don’t believe you are that selfless.” Niall’s eyes narrowed as he studied him. “Unless,
King
Eoghan, that child she carries is really yours.”

“How dare you suggest
 
—”

The druid waved him off. “Enough, enough. I don’t truly suggest. But you just told me what I needed to know. You’re certainly not worried about your own reputation. Tell me, how does it feel to love a woman and know you can never have her?”

Eoghan knew he was just being mocked, knew Niall was trying to cloud his thinking with anger, but the question hit its mark anyway. He prayed Aine’s focus was too divided to have heard. “Unlike you, I accept there are some things in life that are not meant for me. But I’m not willing to lie and kill for them.”

“Aren’t you? Didn’t you send Conor off on his mission, knowing that he might not return? And somewhere deep in your heart, didn’t you wonder if
 
—after he was out of the way
 
—you might have your chance with his wife?”

“No.”

“And now you are lying, which you said you would not do.” Niall smiled an ugly smile, twice as disturbing on Keondric’s face. “And right now, Conor is lying in a pool of his own blood,
hundreds of miles from here, sent by your command. Within hours, if not minutes, you will be the murderer you accuse me of being.”

Eoghan stared, stunned. That couldn’t be true. Aine would have told him. Wouldn’t she have? Unless she didn’t know.

Or she didn’t want to distract him from his purpose.

Or maybe she isn’t as loyal as she claims to be. After all, you and she have become . . . close. Do you think, knowing how Conor feels about it, she would have accepted your friendship had she not felt something more?

They sounded like his own thoughts, but they weren’t. He knew they couldn’t be. Even though he hadn’t been able to get his unruly emotions in check, he’d never truly contemplated the things running through his mind now.

Can you live with yourself? How will it be to look her in the face and tell her you are responsible for the fact she’s a widow? How can you tell her you are the reason her child has no father? Do you really think you could step in and fill that role?

The voices in his head grew to a volume he could no longer shut out. “Stop. I don’t believe them. I never intended that. I’m not responsible. I didn’t even send him on this mission.”

He realized he was on his knees. That was significant somehow, but beneath the barrage of ugliness and doubt, he couldn’t think why.

“Do you think I would really come here unprepared?” Niall asked, satisfaction thick in his voice. “Your weakness is enough to break you. If you’d just owned up to your desires, accepted them, you wouldn’t be susceptible to the whispers.”

“No.” Eoghan pushed away the voices with effort and struggled to his feet. “That’s the one thing you could never understand, and the one thing that will be your downfall.”

“What’s that?” Niall smirked.

“Loyalty can be neither earned nor broken by threats.”

Niall stared at Eoghan in confusion. Then he looked down in shock at his own body.

A blade protruded from Niall’s chest.

And then it slid back out with barely a whisper, bright with blood and held in shaking hands.

Morrigan.

Aine felt rather than heard the activity going on around her, the competing voices in her head growing to a nauseating clamor. The fighting below. Conor and his men. Eoghan’s distress. And above it all, the insistent demands of her own body. She barely noticed when Morrigan left her side and glided around the back edge of the hall, her intentions just another thread of consciousness in the back of her mind.

Yet she felt the instant the blade pierced Niall’s body, as if some invisible thread had been cut. The spirits of the two men rushed out
 
—one angry, shrieking beneath the runic magic that tore it apart, the other like a breath of wind. For that single moment, she felt Keondric’s soul surround her.

You’re free.

And then they were gone like a puff of smoke, only a whisper and the oily taint of sorcery remaining as it burned away beneath the city’s wards.

Aine gathered her strength, mustering her will even through her growing exhaustion. Conor needed her. She couldn’t let him down now.