Memory of that panic, intense and mindless, stopped him short. He could not explain how he knew it was Aine any more than he could explain the other dreams he’d had over the last three years. He only knew she was in danger.
Conor sank back to the ground. Thinking through the pain felt like wading through molasses. Gair may have spared his life, but he had left him with no way of completing his task. All his resources—the horses, his weapons, even his pack—were gone. Only the patch of blood-stained earth and his throbbing head told Conor he had not dreamed the whole thing.
At least the pouch of hand stones remained on his belt, though they did him little good when he could barely see. The plain dagger was still strapped to his calf. He drew it out with a surge of relief. He was not completely defenseless.
He fumbled with his belt and repeatedly tried to slide the sheath onto the leather, but his fingers seemed to belong to someone else. He flung the weapon to the ground and cradled his head in his hands. No, he was worse than defenseless. He was useless.
The nation’s last hope. Conor laughed bitterly. There he was, stranded alone in Siomar, without a horse, without a sword, and he couldn’t even buckle his own belt. Some savior he turned out to be.
Who said you were meant to be a savior?
The thought, clear and direct, cut through his self-pity. He could not deny its truth. Fresh from his near-victory against Liam and his timely intervention in the ambush, had he not begun to think of himself as invincible? After all, he was young, well-trained, and he possessed magic that dated back to the Great Kingdom.
All it took was a single, well-placed hand stone to prove how vain his thinking had really been.
“Well, what do I do now, Comdiu?” he said aloud. “I’m helpless here. I don’t know where to go or how to get there. Do I go to Cill Rhí? Do I look for Aine?”
Conor considered his choices with as much detachment as he could manage. At Cill Rhí, there lay a harp, which might or might not hold the key to rebuilding the wards. He could possibly shift the tide of the war. That was if he could manage what only one or two others had done since Daimhin’s time.
Or he could go after the woman he loved, who was likely a prisoner and moving farther away with each passing second.
He knew what decision he should make. One person, in the scope of this war, could not compare to the lives of thousands.
But he could only picture Aine waiting for a rescue that would never come. If she died, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself. If she survived, she would always carry the knowledge he didn’t love her enough to save her. Was that how Riordan felt, cast off by his wife, forced to give up his son to another man for the sake of duty? Conor knew the cost all too well.
For right or wrong, he couldn’t abandon Aine.
I cannot do this on my own. I need help.
His gaze drifted to the border of Seanrós, just visible in the rapidly spreading morning light. Food, shelter, weapons, information—all lay within the forest’s borders. He could not return to Carraigmór, but there were others who might assist him.
He touched the wooden coin he now wore on a leather thong around his wrist and ran through a mental catalog of trackers and sentries. Innis was not far, but he’d be no help in stitching the wound in Conor’s head. Corman had barely said a dozen words to him. Odran would be farther north this time of week. That left Beagan, the oddest tracker of the bunch and one who had always made him uncomfortable.
Aye, Beagan would help him, if he could find him. Conor rose slowly, and his legs held. A few experimental steps convinced him, shaky as he was, he wouldn’t collapse.
The knife slid onto his belt after only two tries. Conor took a heading from the forest border and the steadily lightening horizon and calculated the distance through his fog. He had at least a full day’s walk before he intersected with Beagan’s midweek route.
Merciful Balus, You know I’m not equal to this task. Watch over Aine, keep her alive and unharmed. Give me the strength to find her. Put me on the path I need to travel.
Conor’s first steps toward Seanrós were halting and unbalanced, but he forced himself onward. He felt as if he were walking underwater, but at least his muscles still worked even if his brain had been scrambled. He crossed into the cool, damp shade of the forest and was taken aback by the absence of the wards. He had never realized how much security he had drawn from the familiar tingle of magic.
He half-expected to encounter Fíréin, but the morning passed without any other sign of humans. Of course. The trackers had relied on the warning of the wards. The famed brotherhood was now blind in its own forest.
He oriented himself on a trap line, but the traps he encountered were empty. He settled for foraging berries and edible fungus for a midmorning meal, though they reminded him only of his empty stomach. When he stopped to drink from a stream, he realized he had wandered too far south on the grid and shifted his route northwest.
By nightfall, Conor could barely stumble forward in a straight line. His head throbbed, his body ached, and a lack of food combined with exertion made his vision dance with flecks of light. He chose a spot beneath a mossy hillock to spend the night and collapsed into an aching heap. He briefly considered gathering berries for his supper, but once his eyes closed, he couldn’t pry them open again.
Conor passed the long, uncomfortable night in fits of sleep, broken by terrifying dreams. More than once, he awoke bolt upright, gripping his dagger, only to succumb to the throbbing in his head and sink back to the earth. When the first rays of morning light penetrated the leafy canopy, he felt haggard and achy.
He traveled as quickly as he dared with both his balance and alertness compromised. Morning had passed into midday by the time he neared the first grid markers on Beagan’s route. He was making only slightly less noise than a wounded animal in the underbrush. Just as well. Perhaps the tracker would be drawn to him. He only hoped Beagan recognized him before he tried to kill him.
He braced himself against a tree and closed his eyes to summon his last shreds of strength. Beagan could be anywhere. For all he knew, they could have passed each other a quarter mile away and never known it. He heaved a sigh and prepared to move on when the cold point of a dagger jabbed beneath his chin.
“Beagan.” Conor opened his eyes, and the pressure of the blade relented slightly.
“Who are you?”
“Brother Conor. Or I was until about a week ago.”
Beagan circled to look at him. As well-groomed as any of the kingdoms’ lords, the lanky tracker wore his reddish-brown hair braided in Fíréin fashion, his short beard fastidiously trimmed. Yet violence lurked beneath his veneer of civility. Conor had always felt he was the most dangerous of all the trackers.
“It is you,” Beagan said in his distinct Timhaigh accent. “What happened? You were making enough noise to wake the dead.”
“I had my head split open the night before last.”
Beagan squinted at the wound in Conor’s blood-matted hair. “You’re lucky on that one. I take it you need a sword.”
“Aye. I was hoping you might help with that.”
“I might. I’m going the opposite way, though.”
“Can I convince you otherwise?”
“Tell me why you need a sword. Besides the obvious.”
“One of Calhoun’s lords betrayed him and tried to have me killed. They kidnapped the woman I love.”
Beagan’s expression shifted. “Come on then. I want to hear how the man who beat the Ceannaire almost managed to get himself killed.”
Thank you, Conor thought, directing the words simultaneously to Comdiu and Beagan. He followed the tracker, who set a deliberately slow pace, and began to tell him the story. He left out the details of his mission, but he told him of the vision that had convinced him Aine was in danger.
“I felt two people with gifts traveling west early this morning. Might it have been your woman?”
“You can sense magic? Even without the w
ards?”
“How do you think I found you? I’ve been tracking you for a day and a half.”
That was a new one. Most trackers had some sort of affinity for the wards, not for magic itself. “How do you know there were only two?”
“I don’t. There could have been more in the party, but two possessed Balus’s gifts in a great degree, like you.” Beagan began walking again, and Conor hurried to catch up. “Most of the clans have little shreds of it left. I don’t even notice them anymore. But ones like you—your magic is a beacon.”
Aine was alive. He sent up another silent prayer of thanks. But who had taken her? Mac Eirhinin? He did have royal blood. He could conceivably have a gift.
Beagan glanced back at him at regular intervals as they traveled. “We’ve got about three more hours. Do you think you can make it? You look pale.”
Conor shot him a scathing look. Beagan laughed. “Forget I asked. But if you collapse, you’re on your own.”
The longer they walked, the harder Conor’s head pounded, but he did not collapse. His stamina might have deserted him, but at least his stubborn will had not.
Long after night fell, Beagan stopped and said, “Here we are.”
Conor looked around. He saw only the dark silhouette of a rocky outcropping and some trees. “Where?”
“Here.” Beagan pushed aside foliage to reveal a large hole in the side of a hillock. “Come on.”
Conor crouched down and followed Beagan into the tunnel. Roots brushed his head, and his shoulders scraped the side walls. Ahead, he heard flint striking metal, and then a torch flared to life. He squinted in the sudden glare.
The tunnel opened into a cavern of granite and earth, tall enough in which to stand upright and perhaps ten paces across. It featured all the usual amenities: a straw-stuffed pallet, a small low table with grain-sack cushions, and a wooden chest.
“Sit,” Beagan said. “I’ve some food left over in the basket there. Help yourself.”
Conor sank onto a cushion as Beagan started a fire in a small cooking niche that vented upward through the earth, away from the cavern. Conor took a heel of bread from the basket on the table and nibbled at it while Beagan hung a small kettle on a hook to heat. When the tracker at last set a steaming cup of tea before him, Conor drank it gratefully.
“You should probably rest now,” Beagan said.
Conor’s heavy eyelids drooped down, and the room tilted wildly. Rest sounded like such a good idea when everything swayed so strangely.
His tongue felt thick and clumsy. “You poisoned me!”
“I’m sorry,” Beagan said, but Conor was already sliding into oblivion.
When Conor awoke, he lay on a straw pallet on the cave floor, half-dressed and feeling like a wrung-out piece of cloth. Light shone dimly from a candle, illuminating the figure of a man bent over a tablet at the low table. Beagan.
Conor remembered his last thought before he had lost consciousness and sat up abruptly. He expected the familiar wave of pain and dizziness, but instead he felt only a distant throb. He touched his head, where a clean line of stitching marked a newly shaved patch of scalp. The lump had diminished drastically.
“What did you do to me?”
Beagan turned. “How do you feel?”
“Better. I don’t understand. I thought—”
“I know. I’m sorry. I misjudged how quickly the tea would take effect in your condition. You needed to rest, and I needed you to sleep through your stitches. Are you hungry?”
Conor nodded, pleased to find his brain no longer seemed to rattle in his head with each movement. He joined Beagan at the table, where the tracker pushed a plate of porridge and roasted game toward him.
“How long have I been out?”
“Almost a day. It’s sundown.”
Conor spooned the porridge into his mouth, forcing himself to fill his empty stomach slowly.
“Did you know I was once a physician?” Beagan asked.
Conor shook his head. It certainly explained the man’s skill with a draught and a needle.
“You’ve already guessed from my accent that I’m your countryman. I was, in my earlier years, the personal physician to Lord Fergus.”
“What happened?”
“I was a young man. I had a lovely wife and two daughters. We were wealthy. We lived on Fergus’s estate, but we had our own holdings. We were also Balians.
“It was not quite a secret, but I didn’t flaunt the fact either. Then the druid came, and suddenly Fergus wanted me to renounce my faith. I refused. He let the matter drop, or so I thought. When I came home one night, my wife and children were missing. We searched all night, but we only found them in the loch the next morning. Lord Fergus wrote it off as an accidental drowning, but everyone knew the truth.
“There were no more Balians there after that day. It’s one thing to give your own life for your beliefs, but another to have your family murdered for them.”
Conor drew a sharp breath. It hit too close to the fears he’d had about Labhrás’s family, an answer to a question he’d stopped asking. “That’s why you’re helping me?”
“Fergus and his druid use your loved ones against you. Whatever your mission was, it was threatening enough that they took your young woman from you.”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t give in?” Conor asked slowly.
“Don’t you think I would have saved my family had I been given the chance?” The tracker rose, shedding his introspective demeanor in favor of the cool, calculated exterior Conor remembered. “Come. The last help I can give you.” He went to the wooden chest, unlatched the lid, and threw it open.
Weapons glutted the chest: swords, daggers, unstrung short bows with quivers of arrows. So many, in fact, that Conor looked at the tracker uneasily. Odran might be a little too comfortable with his duties, but Conor doubted even he had killed this many men.
“The Timhaigh seem to think the prohibitions don’t apply to them lately,” Beagan said almost gleefully. “There have been plenty of opportunities to put our training into practice.”
So that was what unsettled Conor so much about the tracker. This job was more than just a duty to him. It was revenge. He took out his hatred on the warriors of Tigh under the guise of protecting Ard Dhaimhin.
Conor approached the chest as Beagan rummaged through the weaponry. He drew out a sheathed sword and passed it to him. “See what you think of this one.”
Intricately stamped leather covered a steel scabbard, embossed with a complicated knotwork pattern. Conor grasped the plain hilt and drew the sword free, surprised to find the same knotwork design trailing down the blade. It was indeed masterful work. Conor made a few experimental strokes, wondering how it had been made so light.
“Some clan is missing this piece right now.”
“Some clan is missing more than that,” Beagan said, grinning. He continued to unearth items, one after another: daggers, spearheads, slings, hand stones, practically every weapon imaginable. Conor selected a heavy-bladed knife to replace the one at his belt, which went back at his ankle, as well as a leather sling. He allowed himself a moment’s regret over the loss of Riordan’s silver dagger, but he had more important concerns now.
“Thank you,” Conor said. “I’m indebted to you.
Beagan shrugged. “Knew I might need them with all the unrest. Do you know where you’re going next?”
“Glenmallaig.” If Fergus and Diarmuid had orchestrated the kidnapping, they would enjoy the irony in making him return home to rescue Aine. “They’ll be waiting for me there.”
“Are you prepared to do what’s necessary to rescue her?”
Dread washed over him again. He had managed to put away the memory of how easily he had taken Eoin’s and Darragh’s lives, but theirs would not be the only blood on his hands by the end. “I’ll do what I must.”
Beagan clapped a hand on his shoulder and returned to his reports at the table, leaving Conor to brood over the reality of his mission.
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Just know there is a cost.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
In the five days it took to reach Glenmallaig, Aine attempted to establish a rapport with her captor. Keondric already possessed a degree of genuine affection for her, but there was a coldness behind his manner she hadn’t been able to thaw.
“Why do we travel alone?” Aine asked when they stopped to rest. “I don’t doubt you can protect me, but with all the turmoil . . .”
“We’re perfectly safe,” Keondric said. He did not elaborate.
But Aine had begun to form her own theory. Your intended is not the only one with gifts, he had said. When they passed within shouting distance of several Faolanaigh warriors without even a head turning in their direction, she concluded he must be able to conceal them from sight.
That meant it was most likely a gift of Balus. No wonder he had so easily gained their confidence. They had relied on the wards and forgotten how easily men could be corrupted through conventional methods.
By any standard, hers was a pleasant captivity. Keondric remained solicitous, kind, and attentive. He stopped frequently to allow her to rest and made sure she had enough to eat and drink. He gave her his blanket to sleep beneath, and never did he touch her in a way she could deem inappropriate. Yet beneath it all, Aine sensed a hunger, a lust, the object of which she could not identify. It could have been power or safety or her, but it was overriding.
She had long since lost her sense of direction, so their descent toward Glenmallaig took her by surprise. Her first impression of the fortress chilled her. A murky black moat encircled it, lapping at the bottom of the earthen ramparts. Shreds of mist clung to their tops despite the clear, warm day. Aine shuddered at the evil that skittered across her consciousness: not only the sidhe’s magic, but the druid’s as well.
The drawbridge groaned down, and Keondric spurred the horse forward. The ivory charm burned white-hot when they broke the veil of sorcery. She swayed, sickened by its stench.
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