The Sword and the Song (37 page)

He didn’t know whether her long pause was her weeping or if she were fighting through another birth pang, but when she spoke again, her voice managed to be strong.
I’m here, Conor. I’m here with you until the end.

It was time. He took both hands and pulled the arrow free from his body with a wrenching scream that started the flow of blood draining into the earth that was the rune, mingling life and magic around him. Then he reached for the bright, golden light that surrounded him. He didn’t think; he just wove them together, through, over, beneath into a shining prison. The sidhe screamed in an inhuman mixture of pain and outrage, yet they couldn’t resist the magic that twined around them and pulled them toward Dun Eavan. In his mind’s eye, their dark forms blotted out the moonlight, writhing beneath the fingers of light as they were sucked back into their eternal prison.

And then the screaming stopped as abruptly as it had begun, leaving stillness in its wake.

No fighting outside.

No whispers.

He let himself slide down the wall, shivering now from exertion and cold, enwrapped in the costly silence of victory.

It’s done, Aine.

Conor, please, don’t go.

He smiled suddenly as the silence was broken by a familiar sound.
They were right all along, Aine. I hear music.

Everything else slid away. The fortress, the magic, Aine’s voice in his head whispering that she loved him
 
—all enveloped in a melody that resonated down to his very soul. Nothing left but light. Love. Music.

Eoghan stumbled away from Aine’s bedside,
blinded by the tears streaming unrestrained down his face. He couldn’t think about what he’d just witnessed, couldn’t think about the sacrifice that had just been made.

“Hold on,” he whispered to Aine. “I’ll be right back.”

She sobbed silently in the bed, arms wrapped around herself while her body shook with grief. But he couldn’t think about that, either. There was one more task to be finished, one more duty to ensure that Conor’s sacrifice had not been in vain.

He raced down the corridor blindly, squelching the sobs that wanted to well up from his own chest. When he reached the hall, he barely registered the men still standing there, staring at the dead body of the druid as if they were sure it would rise again.

“Sword! I need my sword.”

One of his former captors handed him his sheathed weapon. Eoghan drew the sword from it and threw the scabbard on the ground. The runes of the oath-binding sword glistened in the torchlight.

Morrigan caught his eye. Somehow she seemed to understand what he meant to do. “Do it.”

He strode toward the throne, the blade upraised over his head, and brought it down with all his force.

The impossibly hard edge of the sword met the equally hard marble slab with a flash of light and the sound of shattering glass. The sword broke in his hands, disintegrating into the pile of dust. And somewhere in his mind, the magic around them
 
—the wards, the dome
 
—all fell like the shards of a great window, sparkling like newly fallen snow.

In their place, he felt it: a weight and yet a freedom.

His wonder didn’t last long. Freedom, aye, but one bought with a heavy price, bought with blood and sorrow. He sank to his knees and wept.

Two hours later,
in the dark of night, Conor’s son entered the world
 
—tiny, pink, and mewling more like a newborn kitten than a human child. Aine cradled him to her body, staring down into alert blue eyes that already held so much wonder.

She’d never thought she could be capable of such joy and such sorrow at the same time. Her son. She pressed her lips to his forehead as tears slid down her face and dampened his skin. His father would never see him take his first steps, ride his first horse, grow to manhood. But thanks to Conor’s sacrifice, there would be a future for him, for them all. Conor’s magic encased them now, woven indelibly into the fabric of Seare. The sidhe had been bound, the key to their prison destroyed.

And no matter how shattered her heart might be, she would go on. She owed Conor that much. She owed Siochain.

The door opened softly, and she looked up from her bed to the newcomers. Eoghan and Riordan stepped inside, tear-stained and somber.

“Your grandson,” Aine said hoarsely. “I think he looks like Conor.”

She offered him up to Riordan and he took him with a tenderness that made her wonder if he’d done the same with Conor, even while pretending to be his uncle and not his father. And then the man’s expression shifted, plummeting her heart into her stomach.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Riordan forced a smile. “Nothing’s wrong. I just didn’t expect . . .” He swallowed hard. “I don’t know if it’s a matter of your gifts and Conor’s together, or something else entirely, but he has power. I can feel it.”

“Of course he does,” Eoghan said, peering into the baby’s face. “They’re both gifted.”

“You don’t understand.” Riordan met Aine’s gaze, a serious look overtaking him. “I’ve never felt so much in one person, let alone a child. Those gifts are usually just a glimmer.”

Aine took the baby back from his grandfather, clutching him to her chest as if she could protect the boy from the significance of the words. “Niall said something about my baby’s powers, that he could amplify the gifts of those around him?”

“Perhaps. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it were more. We have absolutely no idea what he’s capable of, Aine. It’s no wonder Niall wanted him. He won’t be the last.”

She began trembling again. It was too much. After all that had happened
 
—the losses, the victory
 
—she could barely comprehend what Riordan was saying. And then Eoghan was kneeling beside the bed, his expression kind. “What’s his name, Aine?”

“Siochain,” she whispered, her voice wavering. “He
 
—Conor
 
—chose it.”

Eoghan’s eyes widened. Then he began to laugh. First a chuckle, then a bellow that reverberated off the stone chamber, until tears ran down his face. He bent his head toward the
mattress, his shoulders shaking, though she couldn’t tell if it was from laughter or sobs.

Siochain let out a wail at the noise. Aine murmured soothingly to him, then asked Eoghan, “What on earth are you laughing about?”

Eoghan wiped his red eyes. “Conor figured it out in the end.”

“Explain yourself,” Riordan said tightly.

“The prophecy that we’ve twisted ourselves into knots over. We know it refers to the High King, and we know the many ways we’ve interpreted it already. ‘In that hour alone, the son of Daimhin shall come; wielding the sword and the song, he shall stand against the Kinslayer, binding the power of the sidhe, and, for a time, bringing peace.’

“Siochain means ‘peaceful descendant.’ Peace, Aine. Literally.”

She looked down at her child: innocent, serene, ordinary. “It can’t be.”

“Oh, it can. Comdiu confirms it. All our wrangling over the meaning, talking about which one of us it referred to, and we were all wrong.”

Aine just stared wide-eyed at Eoghan, the man she’d already accepted in her mind as her monarch. But if what Eoghan said was correct and Comdiu had confirmed it, then the prophecy belonged to her son.

The wind whipped Aine’s heavy wool cloak
around her body, bringing a distinct chill despite the fact that the sun still shone brightly overhead. Fall was coming slowly this year, which was good. She still had plenty of lessons to teach before her students would be given leave to return to their villages in the spring.

“Look carefully,” Aine said, pitching her voice above the whisper of the wind and the crunch of her boots in the field’s drying foliage. “This late in the season, the yellow dock leaves have mostly died back. If you didn’t take detailed notes when we came through in the summer, you’re likely to go back empty-handed.”

Her dozen students, mostly young women, with the exception of three older boys, hurriedly consulted the small, hand-sewn books that contained their sketches, maps, and notes on the herbs that grew wild in the meadows south of Carraigmór. Out here, in the places that had once been charred by unnatural sorcerous fire, the medicinal plants had been the first to come back. Over time, the fields had once again been planted with crops, but Aine had asked that the small one nearest the city be reserved for wildcrafting and cultivating herbs that wouldn’t
grow within the small walled gardens of the healers’ quarter. Eoghan hadn’t objected. He wasn’t inclined to deny Aine much, even if she tried hard not to take advantage of that fact.

“I’m not even sure
I
remember where it was,” Liadan murmured from where she tramped through the long grasses beside Aine. “And this was my idea.”

Aine chuckled and Liadan returned the smile. It was hard to believe that this poised young woman was the same frightened and traumatized girl who had come to Ard Dhaimhin after being rescued from Dún Eavan. Etaoin, the elder sister, had taken the situation in stride and married a young Fíréin apprentice within the year, but Liadan hadn’t spoken for months, following Aine around like a shadow. Only when she’d found interest in healing had she finally begun to come out of her shell.

In the end, Morrigan’s actions, abhorrent as they had been, had saved both her sisters. Aine could only hope she was finding some measure of peace in the Aronan convent to which she’d exiled herself.

“Here!” A young woman named Dealla raised her book in the air triumphantly as she spotted a cluster of the brown stalks, almost stripped bare of their red-brown leaves by the wind. Aine pulled herself out of her musings and waved for the others’ attention.

“Very good. That is indeed yellow dock.” Aine raised her voice so the others could hear and removed a small hand trowel from her belt. “Yellow dock, like its cousins burdock and dandelion, has a single taproot. If you try to pull them directly out of the ground, they will break. Rather, they must be dug up whole from beneath.” She shoved the spade into the ground and pulled up a clump of mature brown roots, then hacked a bit off the end to show the yellow inside.

“Now spread out,” she said. “I know for a fact an entire
section of this field was covered with yellow dock earlier this summer. We’ll see how keen your eyes and your memories are.”

She stood back and watched her students comb the grassy meadow in search of today’s lesson, a smile coming to her face. The truth was, she didn’t need to teach anymore. In the nearly thirteen years since they had retaken Seare from Niall, Ard Dhaimhin had flourished, and with it had come the dozens of healers required to take care of the blossoming city population. Each one of those men and women
 
—Liadan included
 
—had both their own permanent apprentices and a constant stream of new students. But she enjoyed watching the gleam of discovery on their young faces, took satisfaction in the knowledge that she had a hand in equipping the rest of united Seare to take care of their own clans and villages. And it eased a bit of the natural ache that came with knowing that each passing year took Siochain a little further away from her and a little closer to assuming the throne.

The sound of galloping hooves made her pull her attention away from the plants, her heart rising briefly into her throat. Even after years of peace, she hadn’t quite thrown off the dread that fast-approaching riders always brought. But even before the man reined in at the edge of the field, leading a second horse behind him, she knew what this was about. Siochain had talked of almost nothing else for two weeks.

“Liadan will supervise while I go back to the city,” Aine called. “I’ll expect you all to have your roots cleaned and laid out on your workbenches when I get back.”

“Aye, my lady,” a dozen voices said in near unison. Aine smiled warmly at them and made her way over to the man atop the gray gelding.

“The Lord Regent summons you, my lady,” Iomhar said, but there was a hint of a smile in his voice.

“He does, does he?” Aine fit her foot into the Gwynn-style stirrup and threw her leg over the back of the horse. She straightened her dress and nodded to the man. “Lead on, then.”

Iomhar cued his horse into an easy canter, and Aine followed automatically. It wasn’t that she hadn’t known this day would come. Siochain was almost thirteen, and up to this time, he’d been trained and educated in private, most often by the regent himself. But the idea of another skilled man coming at her only son with a dangerous weapon . . . How did women ever send their children off to war when she couldn’t even imagine letting her son fight in a public practice match?

Their arrival back in the city caused barely a ripple in the bustling activity that went on around them, but those who recognized Aine dropped bows and curtsies in deference as they passed. She held no official title, but the fact that her son was the future king of Seare gave her unofficial status as queen mother. The oath-bound brothers who remained in the city showed a particular devotion. They may have sworn fealty to the throne of Seare, but their ties to her through the sword remained.

She smiled and nodded back, feeling her heart expand at the warmth she felt pouring from them. Could she ever have imagined this place? After years of strife and pain, could she have envisioned that Ard Dhaimhin would become this cheerful, busy center of trade, herself as an unofficial symbol of what had brought it about?

Iomhar led her to the new training compound nearest the fortress, where the king’s guard drilled. There was already a crowd gathered around the central yard, low conversation buzzing in speculation over whether the king-elect was ready, whether even the Lord Regent could have trained him well enough in the past seven years to warrant a public spectacle. The fluttering in her stomach took up a similar refrain.

As soon as they reined in, the crowd parted for the dark-haired man striding toward her. He was dressed simply but richly, fully armed as he always remained in public. Eoghan held out his hands to help her from her horse. As soon as her feet touched the ground, he said formally, “My lady, I’m so pleased you were able to leave your work to join us.”

She inclined her head and took his arm to be escorted to the practice yard
 
—some traditions had carried over from the kingdoms after all
 
—but beneath her breath, she murmured, “If he’s not ready or he gets hurt, you are in mortal danger.”

Eoghan chuckled. “Duly noted, my lady. You’ll be pleased, I promise. Haven’t I been telling you as much for the past year?”

Aye, he had, but despite being Siochain’s foster father and mentor, Eoghan could never understand how difficult it was for a mother to see her son trained for war, especially when the child’s father had been lost in that manner. She gripped a handful of skirt in her free hand and forced herself to take a deep breath.

As if understanding her thoughts, he squeezed her hand where it gripped his arm. She let out the breath. No, she trusted him. She was just being overprotective.

She rethought that decision when she saw her son with the weighted practice sword in his hand, standing a full foot shorter than his opponent. “He’s fighting Breann?”

“Aye. Breann’s larger, but he’d rather die than hurt Siochain. You know that.” Eoghan had trained the young man personally since his first battle at Ard Dhaimhin thirteen years ago, and he had chosen him only three years ago to be Siochain’s companion. Naturally, that meant both sparring partner and personal guard.

“I wouldn’t worry about Siochain,” Iomhar said. “I’ve seen him fight. Sometimes it’s as if he knows what his opponent is going to do before he does it.”

Aine and Eoghan exchanged a look, barely repressing their smiles.

“Let me get this match started.” Eoghan nodded at Iomhar in a way that felt like an order, and the man slipped in next to Aine.

Aine watched as Eoghan stepped up to speak with both Breann and Siochain, her heart again thumping too hard in her chest. She was being far too protective. But in his simple, kingdom-styled clothing, his long blond-brown hair tied back in a queue, Siochain looked heartbreakingly like Conor. Tall for his age, he had that lanky, rawboned look that meant he hadn’t quite yet grown into himself. When Eoghan finished with the instructions, though, Siochain threw a grin over his shoulder at her. Despite herself, she smiled back.

Eoghan came back to her side as both young men assumed their guard positions, and the conversation died down, anticipation heavy. The Lord Regent bent his head toward hers and murmured, “You know, Conor was nineteen when I tried him against his first opponent.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel any better?” she whispered back.

“Aye. Just watch.”

So she watched, breath held until she felt dizzy, as Breann took Siochain through his paces. By now, Aine was a good-enough judge of skill to recognize that both men’s technique was near flawless, a result of Eoghan’s exacting standards. Siochain knew exactly what his opponent was going to do, and he knew exactly how to avoid it. The other man’s practice sword didn’t come within inches of his body. Eventually, the reason why would emerge. For now, she was satisfied to let everyone believe that it was merely skill and not his ever-evolving gifts.

Then Siochain looked toward them. Eoghan gave a barely
perceptible nod. Three more swift moves, and Breann’s sword was sailing across the practice yard, Siochain’s wooden weapon pressed to his heart.

“I yield.” Breann’s words drifted across the yard, and then a broad smile illuminated his face as he yanked Siochain toward him in a victory embrace, one arm slung around his neck. Siochain pretended not to be pleased, but Aine could practically feel the satisfaction radiate from her son like heat from the hot springs.

“I told you,” Eoghan said smugly.

“Aye, you did.” She hesitated and then asked, “Gifts aside, he’s really quite good, isn’t he?”

“He’s exceptional. And that’s coming from someone who has seen some of the best swordsmen to ever come from here.” He cut off his words as if he knew this wasn’t the direction she wanted to take with the conversation. “Do you have a few minutes? I want to talk to you about preparations for Siochain’s name-day celebration.”

“Aye.” She cast a last look at her son, but Eoghan said quickly, “Breann and Iomhar will look after him.”

She let Eoghan escort her to the steps to Carraigmór, dropping his arm to precede him up. She followed him silently through the hall to the room that had once been the Ceannaire’s office and now served as the Lord Regent’s personal meeting room and study.

“I thought we’d agreed not to make too big of a fuss over this,” Aine said as soon as they were alone.

“It’s an important occasion. The thirteenth name day of our future king? It would be unseemly not to celebrate. The people would think we were hiding something.”

He was right, and the country was thriving, so there was no reason to spare expense. It might have taken more than a decade
to get to this point, but it seemed that the last marks of the revolution
 
—the economic ones
 
—were finally disappearing from the face of Seare. And yet . . .

“I know this is hard for you,” Eoghan said, his eyes softening. He took a seat across from her at the large table. “Will this be a very difficult thing to celebrate?”

She chewed her lip, debating diplomatic answers. But after all Eoghan had done for her and Siochain, he deserved the truth.

“Some days I wake up and I miss Conor as if he died yesterday,” she said. “And other days I barely even think about him. It’s been nearly thirteen years and I still feel
 
—”

“Like it’s wrong to be happy without him?”

She gave him a twist of a smile. Once more, he proved he knew her better than anyone else in her life. “Something like that.”

He just nodded. “I know that Conor would be proud of the life you’ve made here and the son you’ve raised. I think he would be pleased by this celebration. He sacrificed for you and for Siochain and for the future of Seare. None of this would be possible without that. It seems only right to honor both him and our future king in a joyous way.”

She turned over his words in her head, and gradually the fingers of anxiety relaxed. He was right: Conor had died, aye, but his death had ensured that the kingdom their son would inherit could never be terrorized by the sidhe or seized by the runes again. It was time to throw off this indefinite sense of mourning and embrace the life she and Siochain had made here.

She studied Eoghan from across the table, taking in the shadow tracing his jaw, the barely visible lines at the corners of his eyes. She’d expected him to marry and have his own children by now, but he’d shown no interest in that. Instead, he’d waited more patiently than any woman had a right to expect, never
wavering in his devotion to her and Siochain, never pressuring even though she knew his feelings toward her had not changed. For the first time since Conor’s death, the barriers on Aine’s heart cracked open.

Perhaps it really was time to move on.

Too late, she realized she was staring, and heat rose to her cheeks. Eoghan cleared his throat. “Something arrived for Siochain last week, in honor of his name day.”

“Oh? From whom?”

Eoghan didn’t immediately answer, just rose and retrieved a carved wooden box from the shelf. When he handed it to her, she immediately noted the royal crest of Gwydden inlaid in gold on the surface.