The Sword and the Song (36 page)

Conor, are you there? Stay with me.

Aine’s voice cut through the fog, bringing Conor temporarily
back to the present.
I’m here.
His eyelids drifted halfway shut. The magic. There was something about magic that he had been thinking about.

It was all interconnected.

Of course it was interconnected;
he’d
interconnected it. If he concentrated, he could feel it, those golden pools, woven together in places with fine threads, in others with corridors, great floods of magic. They felt so close he could almost touch them. But he was completely useless if he didn’t have the harp.

Are you sure about that?

He wasn’t sure if that thought came from Aine or himself, but it spooled his mind down impossible paths. Hadn’t he once said that he had the ability to manipulate magic? Isn’t that what he had done within the sidhe’s construct in Gwydden? Wasn’t that essentially what he did each time he played the harp?

“Conor, stay awake.” A stinging on his face made his eyes pop open. Ailill had slapped him. Why had he slapped him?

Right, he needed to stay awake. He refocused his thoughts. “Join the fight, Ailill. Those are our allies. Don’t let them kill each other.”

“But you
 
—”

“I’ll be fine. Go.”

He barely noticed Ailill stand and leave the room with Blair, already reaching for the magic that lingered in the distant reaches of his consciousness. There was a fortress with a shield fifty miles away. That wasn’t so far. He reached out, mentally grasping at the edges, imagining stretching it his way. But he might as well be trying to catch moonbeams. He could feel them, see them, but he couldn’t take hold of them.

The magic. Focus on the magic. In his mind’s eye, he had been trying to capture it physically. But that was ridiculous,
considering that it existed on another plane completely. If he could really manipulate it, couldn’t he just command it?

This time he thrust away the pain and thought of himself as a lodestone that drew metal to itself, except he wasn’t attracting metal; he was drawing magic. Slowly, the golden light began to shudder and stretch toward him.

Why do you think you can do this? You’re useless. You’ve always been useless, a disappointment since the day you were born. Your own father left you to be raised by a man who hated you. That’s why he sent you away.

Aine’s voice penetrated the whispers.
Conor, listen to me. You must block out those thoughts.

How many men have died on missions you were supposed to be leading? How many have been lost today while you cower inside the keep’s safety? Some leader you are. It’s a good thing another is meant to be king.

The light slowly receded, solidifying to its original form.

See, it was a useless conceit. You are nothing without the harp. Nothing without your woman.

It was the mention of Aine that broke through the fog. The statement might have been meant as an insult, but it turned his attention back to the quiet, calm voice in his head.

Conor, you may not believe in yourself, but I do. And more important, Comdiu does. He has provided you with all you need to accomplish His purpose. Nothing anyone or anything else does can change that. Now build the shield!

He sucked in a breath, which turned into a hissing sob. Why did it hurt so much? Wasn’t he supposed to go numb from shock already?

Conor, focus. You must do this! You must do it now!

Maybe Aine did have the power of command over him, because he called the magic to him before he fully comprehended
what he was doing. It shot toward him like a great tidal wave, spreading out the distance between the fortress and Dún Eavan, a flood of magic consuming all in its wake. He bent it up and over the lake, the crannog, twisting it in his mind into a great shining dome that spilled down around them. But it didn’t stop there. He pushed it out until it picked up the thread of another ward, bare filaments left over from the original wards like cobwebs hanging from the abandoned covering of an old fortress. That arced the magic in a jagged line like a lightning strike where it collided with the edge of Ard Dhaimhin’s wards in a flash of light.

Conor just stared blankly, transfixed by the images in his mind, no longer able to tell whether he merely felt the magic or controlled it. It burst out from Ard Dhaimhin into a starburst pattern, connecting all the other warded fortresses and then spreading in the gaps like warm honey, reaching out . . . out . . . out until the shield of gold extended from one edge of the island to the other.

And then the screaming started.

Not just from the ensorcelled caretakers at Dún Eavan but across the land. He felt their agony, somehow, heard their cries as the magic in them clawed away from the pure golden light. He was connected to the shield now, aware of every place it touched, every swirl and eddy of magic, living, quixotic like the ocean.

A laugh bubbled up inside him. He had done it. Comdiu only knew how, away from the harp, commanding magic he barely understood. And it had been easy. All it took was his wife yelling at him in his mind.

The laugh turned to a cough and then just as quickly to a moan. He still had an arrow in him, and the wound was still bleeding. He needed to get help. He needed to reach the door.

Conor tried to roll onto his hands and knees, but he
collapsed before he got his limbs beneath him. It was futile. He was too immobilized by the arrow. But surely now that the shield had been erected, the fighting would stop and someone would come to him.

And then he heard it: a low, keening wail so horrifying he was sure he’d hear it in his sleep. Even without Aine’s description he would recognize that sound
 
—the bean-sidhe, the herald of death.

He might have erected the shields, but he’d forgotten one important thing: the wards didn’t bar the sidhe; they simply dissuaded them. And from the sounds of the fighting still raging outside, they had plenty here at Dún Eavan on which to feed.

Pain.
Why was there so much pain? It wound around Aine, through her link with Conor and back, shooting through her body. But that wasn’t right. She wasn’t feeling his pain, was she? It was her own pain.

The baby.

Panic ripped through her. She was alone. She’d delivered other women’s children but never her own. What if something went wrong? What if she couldn’t take the pain?

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.

And then she felt it, the wash of golden light over her, the bright vibration of the wards around them. Conor. It had to be. She felt the influence of the sidhe recede momentarily, the confused awakening of countless men below.

You’re doing it, Conor. Don’t give up!

In the distance began the screaming. But as the next pain hit, she couldn’t be sure if it were coming from outside the fortress or within.

Aine’s scream echoed through Carraigmór’s great hall as they stared at the lifeless body of the man who had held them all in thrall through fear and sorcery. In that moment, the air seemed to freeze, crystallizing in the moment of decision as the men around them contemplated what to do.

As if of one mind, they sheathed their weapons.

Eoghan let out a breath of relief, his eyes drifting to Morrigan, who still stood over the body with the bloody sword. The fight visibly drained from her as the weapon clattered to the ground. She nodded in Aine’s direction. “Help her.”

She couldn’t handle the pain. Surely this was the sign of something wrong. Or maybe it was Conor’s pain. She couldn’t tell the difference, hanging suspended in the minutes between one clench of agony and the next.

“Aine, I’m here.” A strong hand clamped over hers, and she forced her eyes open.

Eoghan.

“I think Conor’s dying,” she whispered. “I think we both are.”

“You are not dying.” Eoghan scooped her up in his arms like a child and infused his voice with every bit of authority he could muster. “You have to hold on. Both of you have to hold on.”

As the fight raged on, the whispers began again.

You thought you could defeat us so easily?

Your weak God gave us this earth. Why would you believe you could contain us?

You’re going to die. Alone. A failure. Unremembered.

Conor tried to block them out, but their words, false as they were, wormed into his heart and mind.
Aine, it didn’t work. The wards are completed, but it didn’t work. The sidhe . . .

I know. They’re here, too.

That got his attention. Ard Dhaimhin? They had stayed away from the fortress all this time, he thought due to the wards and the presence of so many believers.
Are you all right? What’s happening?

The baby’s coming. And you’re hurt. You need to get to some help.

I’m fine.
This time he gritted his teeth and forced himself to his knees. He would not lie here on the ground and bleed to death. He still had work to do. They hadn’t found anything resembling a standing stone here. The others had been easy to find, prominent but overlooked because the observers weren’t expecting to see anything but a slab of stone. But there was nothing like that here. The entire fortress was built from earth and small chunks of quarried rocks. The yard was hardpacked dirt, the outbuildings timber. If there were once a stone here, it was here no longer, had been buried, or had been sunk in the loch. Much good any of that did them now.

Aine, how many runes are there on the throne?

I don’t know.

Find out.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, propped up against a wall, waiting for Aine’s answer. But it was not her voice that came into his mind.

Forty-nine? I can’t be certain.

Eoghan? What are you doing there?

Conor, I’m here with Aine. The baby is coming. Please, let me help. What are you thinking?

Forty-nine. The calculation made his head hurt. Sixteen fortresses so far, and all of them seemed to have had three runes per
stone. Praise Comdiu for the druids’ methodical natures. That meant they were missing one. It could be only here.
Did the other men tell you which runes were destroyed?

No. We didn’t think about it. We were so sure there were only sixteen fortresses.

It was too late now. He didn’t have time to think about what they should have done. Without anywhere else to congregate, the sidhe would go for the largest concentration of souls, the most amount of unrest they could find, feeding off the fear and pain of those involved to compensate for the discomfort the magic inflicted. That was Ard Dhaimhin.
I need to know that rune.

Eoghan’s voice answered again.
We have no way of knowing. How can you be sure there is even one there? Maybe you were wrong. Or maybe Ard Dhaimhin is the seventeenth fortress. After all, Dún Eavan was the last to be built of all the places you’ve visited.

What?

Aye, it may be old-style construction, but it barely predates King Faolán. I know it wasn’t there on the old maps at Ard Dhaimhin. It was just a building.

What kind of building?

Eoghan paused, giving him the impression that he was looking something up or asking a question.
It was a nemeton. A temple.

Conor’s mind spun out of control, his fast-forming thoughts seemingly impossible. The seventeenth location, but no rune stone. Originally a nemeton.

He eased his knife from his sheath and drew a circle on the packed-earth ground with the tip. The island itself. He closed his eyes, orienting himself, and then drew a smaller circle in the center for the fortress. Dots for the location of each outbuilding, even the ones that were crumbling and out of use, the ones that should have been demolished long ago. When he opened his
eyes, he had two concentric circles and a constellation of dots between them.

Dear Comdiu, give me Your vision for this. Show me how this goes together. Tell me if I’ve lost my mind.

As he stared at the drawing from beneath lowered lids, he saw it. These were not marks but rather points of intersection. The runes were formed with circles and crossed lines. Slowly, painstakingly, he drew the lines through the points, four of them crossing at oblique angles to the circle and to each other. And when the last one was completed, the word came to him, like a breath, like the whisper of the password that protected the Hall of Prophecies.

Seal.

He let out a moaning laugh and leaned his head back against the wall.
I have it, Aine. The last rune. The seal. It was too important to commit to a stone, so they made the entire crannog a rune. I know what I have to d
 
—

The shriek of the bean-sidhe shattered his ears before he finished the thought. He opened his eyes to a swirl of shadows. Hundreds of them: inky black, vaguely human forms, coalescing like the formation of thunderheads, churning in the space overhead. His heart started pumping in earnest again, bringing another gush of warm blood from his midsection. His dread over the significance got lost in a sudden surge of panic, stark, visceral fear. The malevolence poured off the sidhe, the thoughts being sent his way too numerous and vicious to process, but he felt every one of them impact his soul like invisible arrows.

Worthless. Weak. Unloved. Abandoned. Stupid. Helpless. All the things he had attributed to himself, all the reasons why he knew he wasn’t worthy. Each one of them beat him a little further down until all he wanted to do was to curl within himself and weep. He couldn’t do this. He was foolish to think he could ever leave a mark on the world, that he could ever live up to the
expectations of those around him. He was worthless. Worthless and alone.

And then a quiet voice in his head. Not Aine’s, but it filled him with the same sort of warmth, just amplified.

You are not alone. I am with you.

He grabbed on to the voice as he had with Aine’s, let it pull him up through the mire of his own criticism.
What must I do? I don’t understand.

By blood you were redeemed. By blood you will be remembered.

The runes weren’t enough. The sidhe had been liberated through blood magic, and through blood magic they had to be returned. Except the Red Druid had brought them forth with the blood of others, the pain and fear and loss that surrounded a human life taken unjustly
 
—the things that the sidhe fed on, the things that allowed them to thrive.

To seal them back again, it would take the blood of sacrifice, freely given in love and compassion.

Do not be afraid.

Tears filled his eyes when he realized what he was being asked to do. He closed his fingers around the shaft of the arrow and brought them away wet and red. The decision had already been laid out before him, the first step taken. All he had to do was finish it.

Aine, are you there?

Aine’s voice, weak and fearful, came into his head.
I’m here. Conor, what’s going on? Why . . . what . . . ?

Clearly she understood his thoughts. The only thing he wanted to do now was console her.

It’s okay, Aine. I finally know what has to be done. Please don’t be afraid. I’m not.

Conor, I don’t know what you’re doing, but stop and think for a minute. The sidhe
 
—

They can’t hurt me anymore. I see through their lies. Comdiu has shown me the truth.

Conor, no
 
—

Please, listen to me. There are two things you must know. The first is that the runes need to be destroyed. All of them. The harp, the throne, the sword. Let them fall into the oblivion of history, where they can’t be resurrected. It’s the only way.

Aye, Conor, I understand. What is the second?

I love you. Tell my son that I loved him as well.

A tearful-sounding laugh rang in his head.
Still insisting it’s a son, are you?

It is a son. And his name must be Siochain. Promise me.

No! I won’t! You need to be here to name him yourself!

It’s all right, Aine. Let me go. I always knew I wasn’t the hero of this story anyway.