Beneath the Forsaken City

by C. E. Laureano

  The light winked out.

  They just kept coming. Riordan pulled his sword free in time to turn and meet another. A single crossways slash and his opponent was on the ground. He pushed down his revulsion and sorrow as he moved past the body, just another piled at the tree line, and met the next onslaught.

  The next opponent wielded his spear with rudimentary skill. Riordan raised his eyes long enough to see his enemy’s face. It was not a man but a boy, not even mature enough to shave the few scraggly whiskers on his jaw. Riordan parried the spear thrust easily.

  “Don’t do this,” he said. “This is not your fight. Turn and go home to your mother, to your farm.”

  He might as well have been talking to stone. Nothing in the boy’s face indicated understanding, the glassy-eyed expression telling Riordan he was in the grip of sorcery. He made another awkward thrust with the spear.

  Riordan delivered a sharp strike with the flat of his blade to the boy’s hand and used his other to yank the weapon away from him. “Go home. I don’t want to kill you.”

  He began to turn away, when the boy uttered a cry and rushed forward, throwing himself at him with the fury of a wounded animal. Riordan sidestepped, drew back his fist, and landed a solid punch to the boy’s jaw. The opponent, if he could call him that, went down, unconscious before he hit the ground.

  Riordan stared at his hand, for a second mesmerized by the smear of blood across his knuckles. His own?

  The chill of sorcery rippled across his skin, searching, seeking. No. He couldn’t become infected. He dropped the spear and sprinted toward the lake, only a few dozen strides away, cutting down opponents in his way. His arm was numb to the elbow, his lungs frozen with panic. He fell to his knees and plunged his hands into the frigid water.

  Except it wasn’t cold. Riordan jerked his arms free with a howl. Had the sorcery taken him already? Was it toying with his senses, making him think cold was hot? He scrambled back from the edge and rose to his feet, staring at the flushed red skin on his arms, already beginning to blister as if he’d thrust them into a cauldron of boiling water.

  The pain came a moment later, delayed: fire licking his skin, glazing his vision, making him want to crumple into a heap at the water’s edge. He’d been beaten, stabbed, had bones broken, but nothing compared to this searing agony. Only then did he see the bubbles that roiled the water, the fish bobbing lifelessly on the surface.

  No wonder it felt as if he’d washed in a cauldron. The lake was a cauldron.

  In his pain-fogged state, Riordan only then realized the seeking presence of the sorcery was gone. He heaved a sigh of relief that turned into a groan. He couldn’t fight like this. He could barely curl his blistering hand into a fist, let alone grip a sword with any semblance of strength. Still, he forced himself to pick it up and return it to the sheath on his back. What did he do now? Stay and die with his men because he couldn’t defend himself, or return to Carraigmór like a coward?

  He cast his eyes to the fortress steps as if the answer were written there. Then he froze. He could barely see the man through the smoke that billowed from fires in the village, but he could feel the dark magic emanating from him. The druid.

  “Archers! The stairs!”

  Two of the archers still concealed in the rocks rose to their feet and turned in the direction he pointed, confusion written plain on their faces. “Where?”

  “There!” It was no use. They couldn’t see him. Riordan’s gift must have rendered him immune to whatever magic the druid was using for concealment.

  He rushed to the archers’ side and took the bow from one, barely biting back a scream at the pressure of the wood against his blistered hand. He swayed as he nocked an arrow and drew back the string. Hold it together a moment more. You must not miss. He took aim, not daring to even breathe, and loosed the arrow. It flew straight and true, seeming to hang in the air when it struck its target. The druid grabbed at the shaft that protruded from his shoulder and stumbled back against the wall.

  The archers looked between Riordan and the druid, wide-eyed, apparently now able to see what they earlier had not.

  “Brother Riordan?” one asked in concern, taking the bow from his hand.

  The wood ripped a layer of burned skin from his palm. Riordan screamed in agony, and the world shattered around him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  At some point during his confinement, Eoghan slept, slumped against the wall between a stool and a wooden rack that held scrolls in languages he couldn’t even identify. He awoke what could have been minutes or hours later to the faint sound of voices in the corridor above his hiding place.

  His hiding place. Even the words in his mind made him burn with shame. Men were fighting, dying outside, and he was cowering in the corner of a hidden room like a child.

  “. . . him to his study!” A muffled voice rose above the rest. It must have been a shout to penetrate through the countless spans of rock. Eoghan rose. Was it Master Liam? Was he wounded?

  Eoghan paced the room while he debated. He had been given strict orders to stay here until the battle was over or Liam retrieved him. But there was no way of knowing in this nearly soundproof fortress of rock if the fighting had stopped, and if Liam was unconscious, he couldn’t very well come and get him.

  Decision made, Eoghan donned his weapons and took the staircase upward, where he pushed lightly on the door. It eased open, allowing him a moment to listen for sounds in the hallway. Nothing. He slipped out and pushed the door closed behind him. It sealed back into the wall with a soft whoosh.

  Then he saw the smear of blood in the hallway, leading toward the Ceannaire’s study.

  His heart in his throat, he broke into a run, taking the steps two at a time before bursting into the room. Brothers’ hands went to weapons before they recognized him, their startled expressions quickly turning to sorrow.

  He shoved past them to where Liam lay on the hard floor with his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest. His clothes were soaked in blood, but it wasn’t pooling beneath him. That was good, wasn’t it? If he were mortally wounded, it would be gushing out. “What are you doing? Find a pallet! Someone help him! Quick!”

  “Eoghan, I’m sorry. He’s gone.” A brother—Eoghan didn’t even recognize him through his panic—put a hand on his shoulder.

  Eoghan shook it off. “That’s impossible. He can’t be dead. I would know. I’m his successor.” He fell to the ground beside Liam, felt for a pulse, watched for the rise and fall of his chest. Only then did he realize that his master’s skin was cool. Too cool. He jerked his hands away.

  “No. No. It can’t be.”

  Someone gripped his elbow and raised him to his feet. “I’m sorry, sir. I know you were close. I know he was like a father to you.”

  Eoghan focused his suddenly blurry eyes on the speaker. Daigh. “‘Sir’? Why are you calling me ‘sir’? He’s not dead. He can’t be.” I would have known. He said I would know when leadership passed to me.

  “He’s dead, sir, by his own hand,” Daigh said quietly. “He gave himself up rather than allow the druid access to Carraigmór and its secrets.”

  A wave of sickness crashed over Eoghan, more shock than grief. Liam had known this would happen. He had known what he would have to do all along. That’s why he had been so sure confining Eoghan would protect the Hall.

  The password.

  Eoghan pushed his way from the study, following the trail of blood down the hallway, and then turned into the corridor with the invisible door. He waited for the password to surface.

  Nothing came to mind.

  What were the words Liam had spoken this morning? No matter how hard he searched his memory, they still remained nothing more than the drift of smoke, not substantial enough to grasp. What did that mean? Perhaps Liam wasn’t really dead. Perhaps he could be healed.

  Or maybe Eoghan wasn’t meant to be the Ceannaire after all.

  But if he wasn’t, who was?

  He stumbl
ed back to the Ceannaire’s study, unable to form a coherent thought amidst his crush of emotion. Only now did he recognize the men there as members of the Conclave: Gradaigh, Dal, Manog, Daigh.

  “Sir, I know this is a shock, but we need orders.” Daigh positioned himself in Eoghan’s vision, drawing his attention away from Liam’s lifeless body in the corner.

  “I am not the Ceannaire. I cannot be.”

  “You are his chosen successor, sworn on the sword before the Conclave. We witnessed it. You are the Ceannaire, and we need our orders.”

  Eoghan pressed his fingers to his eyes and forced himself to think. There would be time enough to sort this out. Right now, the Conclave believed he was the Ceannaire, and they would accept orders from only him.

  “Tell me of the battle.”

  “Over,” Gradaigh said. “Brother Riordan alone could see through the druid’s magic, and he wounded him. Niall could no longer maintain his shield, so the army retreated.”

  “And you let them go? With the druid wounded?”

  “We’d already sustained enough casualties,” Dal said. “The city is glutted with bodies. We’ll have enough trouble safely disposing of them without adding to the count.”

  “How many?” Eoghan asked. “How many casualties?”

  “Most recent estimate, two hundred fell in battle. Thousands exposed, perhaps four hundred infected. Most of them did as commanded and ended their own lives if they could not resist. The others . . .” He swallowed and wouldn’t finish the sentence.

  The others had been killed by loyal Fíréin, men with whom they had sworn brotherhood. The toll on Ard Dhaimhin was far higher than the six hundred men they had lost today.

  Eoghan choked down his sorrow. “How many of theirs? How many to dispose of?”

  “Thousands, sir.”

  Eoghan jerked his head up and made his way over to the window. Piles of bodies clogged the walkways, the forest’s edge, the village. Mostly the enemy’s, but some of theirs, too.

  “Make bonfires,” he said. “Organize parties to retrieve the bodies and burn them as quickly as possible. Assign overseers to each group. If anyone is exposed to the blood, make them wash immediately and quarantine them under guard while we have time to see if they’re taken by the sorcery.”

  A sigh of relief filled the room as Eoghan gave the men direction. These were strong, smart men, but they were conditioned to obey. Without a leader . . .

  “And our fallen?” Dal asked.

  “We have no way of knowing for certain who is infected and who is not. Burn them immediately like the others. I’m sorry.”

  Eoghan continued to survey the wreckage of the city, mentally listing their less immediate, but equally crucial, tasks. Smoke still billowed from fires in the villages and croplands beyond, and wisps of steam drifted from the surface of the lake. “What happened at Loch Ceo?”

  Gradaigh answered. “The druid boiled it as a demonstration of his power.”

  Dread crept into Eoghan’s body, spreading cold through his limbs. Matters were even more critical than he’d thought. He turned away from the window, gathering strength. Password or no password, he was the closest thing to a leader the brotherhood had, and he knew what had to be done.

  “Organize bucket brigades to put out the fires that are still burning. Assign men to take inventory of our losses. Animals that were killed must be butchered and taken to the smokehouse immediately. Salvage what fish you can from the lake. Without our crops and our animals, it will be a long winter indeed. I will be down as soon as I can.”

  The men dispersed, all but Daigh, who lingered behind. “You have my sympathy for your loss, sir.”

  “Thank you.” Then Eoghan realized who had been missing from the room. “Brother Riordan? Did he . . . ?”

  “Badly burned, but he lives. I’ll send him to you. He’s in the infirmary.”

  “No, I’ll find him later.” He gave Daigh a bare smile and waited until the door closed before he turned back to Liam’s lifeless, peaceful body. He sank to the floor beside him.

  “You sacrificed all for the brotherhood. We will honor you. You will not be forgotten.”

  Eoghan reached out to touch Liam, but he jerked his hand back before he could feel his master’s cold skin. They would have to organize a proper remembrance for him before the brotherhood. As his designated successor, it was Eoghan’s responsibility to lead the men in their mourning.

  Except he wasn’t truly the Ceannaire. Something had gone wrong. The authority that was supposed to transfer with magic—the knowledge, the passwords—it had not happened.

  And now the secrets of Ard Dhaimhin were locked away from them.

  Eoghan oversaw the activities in Ard Dhaimhin with numb efficiency. The enemy bodies were burned with as much care as they could manage, overseen by senior brothers who made sure no one became infected. Mass funeral pyres were built for their men in one of the burned wheat fields, the fall harvest now reduced to charred ash. Patrols were set along the burnt forest edge as well as the rest of the borders.

  The men of the brotherhood were strong and disciplined, but Eoghan could see the strain that came from saying farewell to their brethren. Almost as bad was burning the enemy corpses, some of whom were boys not yet old enough to be out from behind their mothers’ skirts. This was not a victory they celebrated.

  Eoghan oversaw Liam’s pyre himself, stacking kindling beneath the frame of felled saplings, arranging the wood and straw so it would burn fast and hot. He had debated dressing him in new clothing, but in the end, Eoghan could not justify destroying supplies they would need to sustain them through the coming lean seasons. Instead, he ordered Liam covered in a length of worn linen to conceal his mortal wound and laid upon the pyre.

  As Ceannaire, it fell to Eoghan to say the blessing over the bodies of their fallen comrades, but he hadn’t the words. Instead, Riordan stepped to the forefront, his burned hands and arms wrapped in clean linen bandages, and recited some relevant passages from Scripture.

  Eoghan barely heard them, his eyes fixed on the body of the man who had practically raised him as his own son. He took the torch forward and lit the wood beneath Liam’s body. It exploded in a rush of flame. He passed the torch to the next brother, until all the pyres containing the dead were alight.

  He stared numbly into the flames, hypnotized by the twisting fingers of yellow and orange and blue that consumed the mortal housing of spirits now residing with Comdiu. He sent up an anguished prayer for their city, more a cry of the heart than coherent words.

  “It’s time now.” Riordan nudged Eoghan. He looked up and realized the pyres had burned to ash. The stiffness in his limbs said he had stood motionless for hours, though he didn’t remember it. Now other brothers would collect the ashes and scatter them in the forest, as was their custom. Cook fires burned elsewhere, mingling the smell of baking bread with Ard Dhaimhin’s charred remains.

  “Convene the Conclave,” Eoghan said in a low voice. “There are matters we must discuss.”

  Riordan gave him a nod that was just short of a bow and hurried away. Despite the excruciating pain he must be feeling, he never hesitated to do his duty. Eoghan was the Ceannaire now, and Riordan would do his bidding.

  Until he learned the truth.

  Up at Carraigmór, Eoghan waited at the hall’s massive table, staring blankly at the wood grain, while the other Conclave members finished their duties and traversed the steps to the fortress. This numbness he felt must be shock. Disbelief over the outcome of the battle, grief over burying men he had known his whole life, the knowledge that until he spoke the truth to the Conclave he was a pretender.

  The men entered the hall in groups and took their seats solemnly around the table. When the last man arrived, Eoghan stood and poured himself a drink from the jug at the center of the table.

  “Mead?” Gradaigh asked.

  “It seemed appropriate to raise a cup to our fallen.” He didn’t say that he also needed it for his nerves, to st
eel himself for what he was about to tell them. The men served themselves from the jug, and then Eoghan lifted his cup.

  “To Master Liam: a courageous leader, a loyal friend, a true servant of Comdiu.”

  “To Liam,” they echoed, and they all drank.

  Eoghan sank into his seat. “Brothers, there is a matter we all must discuss. You know I swore an oath to take the leadership of the Fíréin brotherhood after Master Liam’s passing. It was why he insisted that I sit out the battle, to preserve the line of succession and secure the secrets of the brotherhood that only the Ceannaire may access.”

  Heads nodded.

  “I am sorry to say his plan failed.”

  Silence fell around the table, and Eoghan shifted under the weight of eight pairs of eyes.

  Riordan drank deeply before he spoke, an edge to his voice that could have come either from pain or from Eoghan’s announcement. “Tell us how.”

  How was he supposed to explain when only the Ceannaire was to know of the existence of the Hall of Prophecies? “There are hidden places in Carraigmór that can be accessed only by one possessing a password, embedded by an old magic. That password is supposed to transfer to the Ceannaire’s successor at his death. It did not.”

  “Password or not, you are still the rightful leader of this brotherhood,” Daigh said. “We witnessed your oath. We understand Liam’s intentions. You will take your oath before the Conclave and assume your office. Perhaps once that’s completed, you will have the knowledge you need to access those secret places.”

  “I do not think so,” Eoghan said. “And in any case, that is impossible.”

  All eyes focused on him, sharper this time.

  “The oath-binding sword is locked inside that place of which I speak.”

  Dal slammed his fist on the table. “This is nonsense! How is this possible? It is not as if this is the first time power has had to pass to the Ceannaire’s apprentice!”

  No one wanted to answer that, least of all Eoghan. It may not have been his fault, but he felt responsible all the same.