The Sword and the Song

by C. E. Laureano

  She spoke only in her mind, but the words echoed through her as strongly as if she’d shouted them aloud.

  Brothers, I call on you today on behalf of Seare. I am Aine, healer of Ard Dhaimhin and wife to Conor, Ceannaire of the Fíréin brotherhood.

  Since the fall of the Great Kingdom, the Fíréin have stood fast, ever faithful in their oath to protect the High City. The city has now been breached and the brotherhood disbanded. Seare has fallen, and the evil spirits from the first days have been loosed on the island.

  It is now time for you to fulfill your oaths. It is time to relinquish the old ways and embrace the new. Those who have defended the city from the kingdoms must now defend the kingdoms themselves from a greater evil. The age of the brotherhood is over, but a new one shall begin.

  Seare has seen the flames of disaster and trial. But like Ard Dhaimhin, she will rise again, not burned away but refined by her trials into a purity of purpose.

  All of you who call yourselves faithful, I beg of you, fulfill your oaths. Return to Ard Dhaimhin. Join with us, and we will throw off the tyranny of sorcery in favor of peace—not beneath a regime of fear but in unity beneath the One God who unites all.

  Then slowly the hum of power ebbed from the sword. Coherent thought crept back. She realized she was breathing heavily, her whole body trembling, but she still gripped the sword. She waited for the whispers to fade, but they only continued to grow stronger, tumbling over each other, jumbling together into a nonsensical, deafening rush. And beneath it all, she felt it. Their conviction to return. Their obedience to their oath.

  Their devotion to her.

  “They’re coming,” she whispered, just before she swayed sideways in the chair.

  A pair of strong arms caught her, but she didn’t know whom they belonged to. Someone called for a healer. She tried to tell them that she was all right, just tired, but the words wouldn’t come from her suddenly thick tongue. And then the room slipped away.

  She awoke to silence.

  Had she been struck deaf? No. Even through the fogginess in her mind, she knew that wasn’t right. This was a different kind of silence, a deep and penetrating quiet that felt suspiciously like loneliness.

  She tried to push herself up, but her limbs wouldn’t obey. Even her head felt too heavy to lift from where it lay on something soft. A pallet? No, her bed in her chamber at Carraigmór. She opened her eyes enough to let in a thin stream of light and then squeezed them tightly shut again as the pounding started between her ears.

  Murmurs at the edge of her consciousness. Then the squeak of hinges, the soft thud of a door closing, heavy footsteps.

  “Aine.”

  That voice was familiar. Conor? No, not Conor. He wasn’t here. She pried her eyes open again, this time enough to resolve the speaker’s face. Eoghan. Their friend. The king. His expression was enough to shoot a jolt of wakefulness through her: tense, concerned, even fearful. When she tried to speak, her mouth felt dry and her voice raspy. “What happened?”

  “You collapsed after you recalled the brothers.” He seated himself in the chair beside the bed, his hands clasped tightly together. “We brought you back to your chamber.”

  “How long have I been unconscious?”

  “A day and a night. Do you want to try to sit up?” He slid a hand behind her shoulders, but the slightest upward motion sent the room spinning around her. She managed a weak shake of her head, and he laid her back down again.

  “Aine, there’s something else you should know.”

  Another voice, seemingly loud in the stark quiet. She focused with difficulty on the man across the room. His identity came back more quickly to her. Riordan, her father-in-law.

  “We called one of the healers to help when you collapsed,” Eoghan said. “He thought you might be overcome by the connection to so many minds at once.”

  Aye, that sounded right. So many of them. But they were gone now. Why were they gone?

  “We had to draw the shield rune on you, my lady.”

  Aine yanked her shift forward, shocked by the black ink drawn over her heart. That explained why she couldn’t hear anything, not even the thoughts of Eoghan and Riordan. “You have to take it off. I can’t communicate with Conor or his men if this is here.”

  “Aine, you must rest for a bit.” Eoghan again. She focused on him, blinking so that this time his face fully resolved in her vision. “We don’t know how the connection to so many will affect you. It’s possible that if you remove the rune, you might be overwhelmed and slip away from us. Next time you might not wake up.”

  It was too much to think about. Instead, she focused on her most pressing need. “I’m thirsty.”

  Riordan poured water from a pitcher into an earthenware cup and handed to it to Eoghan. He helped her sit up enough to press the cup to her lips. She was suddenly glad she couldn’t hear his thoughts. Given their history, this felt far too intimate, but she was too weak to protest. She sipped cautiously and managed to push the cup away when she was finished. A sudden tightening in her middle reminded her of what she had forgotten: the baby.

  She had been asleep for almost two days with no food and very little water, though she suspected the healer would have forced as much down her throat as he could manage. Had the deprivation harmed the child? She hadn’t felt any movement since she had awoken.

  She rolled to her side and stayed as still as possible, barely even breathing, while she prayed for a sign her child was still alive. And then it came, a roll and a heavy kick, as if the baby were irritated to have been awoken. She nearly wept with relief.

  The door opened then, and Caemgen, one of the elder healers, entered. “Ah, you’re awake. We were concerned.”

  Eoghan rose wordlessly and moved out of the healer’s way.

  “Have you felt the child yet?”

  “Just now.”

  “Good.” Caemgen made a show of examining her, studying her eyes, checking her pulse, but she had a feeling it was simply a way to make himself useful.

  “What went wrong?”

  The healer paused. “Perhaps nothing. The human mind is not made to channel so many thoughts and voices, my lady. Not even yours.”

  He had called her “my lady.” The healers never called her anything but Lady Aine or occasionally “girl” when they forgot themselves. What had changed?

  And then she remembered what she had felt after she’d summoned the men. Devotion, obedience to her. Her face flushed. How had she not thought of that? How had it not occurred to her that if she were speaking directly to the minds of thousands of men, she might inadvertently use her powers to compel them to return? Was that why she had been given this gift? So that she could get their attention and ensure their return? And if that were true, why did she feel so guilty about it?

  “My best advice now, my lady, is to rest. Drink as much as you can. Begin eating slowly again. We’ll have food brought to you. You need to think of both the child and yourself.”

  She surveyed the concerned faces of the three men in the room and realized there was one question they hadn’t yet answered.

  “Did it work?”

  They exchanged glances that held far more than she could unravel in her weakened—and blocked—state.

  “Aye,” Eoghan said. “It worked. The men of Ard Dhaimhin heard you, and the ones outside the city have been amassing beyond the druid’s forces for the past two days.”

  She heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank Comdiu. Their oaths still hold.”

  “Aye, their oaths still hold.” Eoghan hesitated. “But not just to Ard Dhaimhin. To you as well.”

  Eoghan left Aine’s chamber, troubled. It wasn’t the fact that the men she’d recalled were loyal to her. That actually might work in their favor if she were able to command them. The real problem was that, according to the healer, the attempt might kill her.

  “Sir?” Iomhar stood watch with another man opposite Aine’s door. He looked to Eoghan, waiting for orders.

  “Mak
e sure she doesn’t leave. No one but me, Riordan, or Caemgen.”

  “Aye, sir.” Iomhar nodded as Riordan and the healer exited the room. Riordan and Eoghan moved down the corridor and descended the steps to the first floor.

  “What now?” Riordan asked. “It feels like the calm before the storm.”

  Eoghan felt that sense of expectancy as well, but Comdiu was being silent on the matter. He took that to mean they had done all they could do. The returning Fíréin had not yet attempted to fight through Niall’s ranks, lacking the numbers for victory, but it was only a matter of time. He found himself going to Liam’s balcony, the one Aine had used, hoping the fresh air would clear his head.

  Below, everything looked as it should in the late evening. Calm, orderly. Torches burning.

  Yet Eoghan felt the vague sense that something was amiss. As a cool wind stirred up, he shivered.

  You didn’t really think you could command the city, did you? Look at you. You don’t even know what to do next.

  Fear slammed into him, making him gasp aloud.

  “I feel it too,” Riordan murmured. “I just don’t understand how it’s possible.”

  “The sidhe?”

  “I expect so. But they’ve never encroached on Ard Dhaimhin before.”

  “They never had a reason to.” A growing dread took Eoghan, and this time he recognized it as his own feelings, not the sidhe’s influence. There were men on the borders to keep them in . . . why was that, exactly?

  A distant scream broke the silence just as a man burst onto the balcony—one of the sentries, Casidhe. “There’s fighting on the south side of the city, sir.”

  He snapped to attention. “Who’s on the attack? The kingdom men?”

  Casidhe shook his head. “No, sir. It’s Keondric’s army. They’ve somehow breached the wards.”

  Aine lay in her chamber, her stomach knotting, anxiety rising in her chest. Surely she had no reason to feel this way. She couldn’t even be picking up on someone else’s emotions, considering the shield rune that marked her skin.

  Or maybe that was the reason for those feelings. Without the voices of countless others in her head, she felt as though she were the last person on earth, her world shrinking to the expanse of one room. Even when she’d blocked out the other voices, she’d still had the impression of the others around her, vague echoes of thoughts and movement. That was all gone.

  Yet she had the distinct feeling that something was wrong.

  Despite the strict orders that she stay in bed, Aine pushed herself to a sitting position and swung her feet over the side. She tested her sense of balance, pleased to find she was no longer dizzy. The porridge sent up to her had done much to restore her energy, even though she still felt desperately thirsty.

  “Stay with me, little one,” she murmured, rubbing her stomach.

  Her heart beat a little too fast as she made her way unsteadily to the water-filled basin and took up the rag lying beside it. Comdiu, protect me, she murmured, a fervent prayer just before she swiped the cloth across the inked rune.

  Voices rushed in, nearly knocking her to her knees before she slammed down the protections on her mind. Even so, it felt like holding a door closed against twenty men trying to batter it down. Her thoughts grew fuzzy around the edges.

  Breathe. You can do this. You’re just out of practice because you’ve had the rune for two days.

  Gradually, she built her resistance against the voices, imagining herself strengthening her barrier against them like building a wall brick by brick, until she heard the others as a pleasant, distant hum.

  And with that distance, she could make out whispers and echoes of what was happening beyond.

  They were terrified.

  Aine rushed to the window and peered out. It still looked peaceful in the twilight, nothing to indicate trouble. Until she felt them herself.

  The sidhe.

  Cold rippled across her skin, and her knees turned to water. She managed to make it onto the bed before she collapsed and dropped her head between her knees. Despite all the wards, they were here. And from what she sensed, there were a lot of them.

  This wasn’t just a coincidence. This was an attack.

  Her heart rose into her throat. Conor. He needed to know what was happening at Ard Dhaimhin. He might be walking into a trap. She reached for his mind out of reflex before realizing he must still be shielded.

  She scanned for the other men in his party. Keallach’s mind burned brightest. He was a young, quiet brother who’d helped her with settling some of the refugees during her early days at Ard Dhaimhin. She touched his mind as gently as possible.

  Keallach.

  There was no mistaking the fright in his thoughts. Even though they’d planned for this contingency, it still must be a shock to one unused to her communications.

  It’s Lady Aine. I need to speak with my husband. He needs to mar his rune.

  After a long pause, Keallach came back. Aye, my lady. I will tell him.

  Aine let out a deep breath of relief. Thank Comdiu Conor was still alive and the only distress she sensed was from her popping into the young brother’s thoughts unannounced. She focused her attention on the place where she had found Keallach until she recognized the bright flare of Conor’s thoughts.

  Joy flooded her at the first sound of his voice. I’m here, Aine.

  They left their horses a full two miles away from Loch Eirich and continued toward the old crannog fortress on foot. The clumpy stands of trees that surrounded the lake were beginning to change to colors of brown and orange and red beneath a now-constant covering of hoarfrost. That posed a challenge for two reasons: one, the sparse foliage left them less cover than they might have had earlier in the year; and two, the fallen leaves underfoot made it nearly impossible to travel silently.

  Still, Conor counted on his party’s stealth, even if their care did mean that their progress slowed to a crawl. Their breath puffed out around them, telltale signs of their passage even when they blended in with the sparse foliage around them. It seemed that fall had passed immediately into winter in the northern reaches of Seare, if this misty evening with its rapidly falling temperature were any indication.

  And then the forest began to thin, not on the edge of the lake as all the maps showed but a full quarter mile from the water. The churned brown earth and piles of logs suggested that it had been cleared recently.

  “That’s not something one does to protect an old rune stone,” Ailill observed near Conor’s ear as they surveyed the land before them.

  “No, I don’t think so either.” He remained crouched in the evergreen underbrush, watching for the motions of guards on the crannog or sentries on the perimeter of the shore. After several minutes, everything remained as still and quiet as death. Clearly, the druid’s men had been here, and they’d increased the defensibility of the island, never mind the fact that it never had lent itself to an easy siege. So why go to the trouble if they weren’t going to station men there?

  “We’ll check the perimeter and wait until dark before making our move,” Conor whispered. “Just because it looks deserted doesn’t mean it is.”

  They backed away from the forest’s edge and split to circle the lake in opposite directions. Conor kept his eyes peeled for any indication of human presence: tracks in the forest, animal sounds, metal glinting in the light that seeped through the overcast sky. It wasn’t until he noticed that he and his group were shivering that he realized he should have been watching out for signs of inhuman presence as well.

  “Steady, men,” he whispered. “This cold isn’t entirely natural.”

  Sure enough, as dark fell, the mist thickened. Was that evidence of the sidhe gathering? Why now?

  When they met up with the other half of the party, Ailill confirmed his thinking. “The dread is strong here. Even I feel it, and I like nothing better than besieging an unbreachable fortress in the freezing cold.”

  Conor grinned at the man’s wry tone. The sidh
e were indeed here, but it didn’t appear that any soldiers were. As he gathered the men in a circle to discuss their options, Keallach leapt backward away from the group.

  Hands immediately went to weapons, eyes scanning their surroundings.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Keallach muttered. “You might tell your wife not to scare the daylights from me if she wants to talk to you.”

  Conor looked quizzically at the young man, who just tapped his forehead with two fingers. “Lady Aine just took five years off my life.”

  The group grinned at him, but Conor’s stomach lurched. He’d shut her out for weeks. If it hadn’t been for his men’s nearly abandoning him two days ago, he wouldn’t even have known she’d figured out how to use the sword. Every one of them had heard her call, but this was the first time she’d ever used them to contact him. That meant something dire. He smeared the ink from the rune and opened his mind. I’m here, Aine. What’s wrong?

  Thank Comdiu, Conor. Where are you?

  We just arrived at Dún Eavan. Why?

  Ard Dhaimhin is under siege. Or it’s about to be. We were attacked from within, and Niall has moved ensorcelled men around the perimeter of the forests. The sidhe are here.

  He followed her thinking immediately. You think it’s somehow related to our attack on Dún Eavan?

  I don’t know, Conor, but it seems terribly coincidental that it’s happening now. Why attack us at the very moment you’ve arrived there?

  She was right, it was coincidental, and the druid rarely did things out of anything but deliberate planning. Aine, when you were here at Dún Eavan, do you remember any large stone? Something that could be a rune stone?

  I don’t remember seeing anything like that. But I wasn’t looking for it either.

  That’s what I was afraid of. The sidhe are here as well.

  A long pause. The sidhe have always been present at Dún Eavan.

  But they generally avoid the runes.

  Aye. Unless there’s a greater source of power there.

  It was exactly what he had been thinking, except they had seen no sign of humans. So why would the sidhe congregate in a place that had a rune stone but no humans on which to feed?