Oath of the Brotherhood

by Carla Laureano

  “Ruarc!” Aine screamed, struggling to her feet. Before she could run to him, a strong arm wrapped around her, pinning her in place.

  “Don’t call out, or I’ll kill you.”

  The cold bite of a blade against her throat stilled her struggle, as did the steel in her attacker’s voice. She fought to think through the wave of grief, her eyes still fixed on Ruarc’s lifeless body. Then she realized she knew the man’s voice.

  Comdiu, help me.

  Instantly, a steady presence calmed her nerves. She forced her muscles to relax.

  “It’s not too late, Keondric,” she said beneath the sounds of fighting. “You can still turn from this path.”

  “You knew me.” Keondric’s voice held surprising warmth. He swiveled her to face him. “I’m impressed. It’s a shame I couldn’t steal you away from the Mac Nir boy without having to actually steal you.”

  Aine dared a glance back toward the skirmish, hoping someone would notice the exchange.

  Keondric smiled. “They won’t see us. Your intended is not the only one with gifts, you know. I should have gone to Ard Dhaimhin myself, but my father wouldn’t hear of it.” He held up a length of rope. “Do I need to tie your hands, or will you come peaceably?”

  Her mind clicked through the possibilities, even as fear surged through her veins. Keondric seemed to have some real affection for her, however twisted. She could work with that. It was their only chance of survival. She barely stifled her sob. “I’ll go with you. Please, just call them off. If it’s me you want, my men don’t need to die.”

  Keondric glanced back at the turmoil, then shrugged. “Casualties of war, my dear. You of all people should understand that.”

  You monster! The words rose in a silent scream in her mind, tears again pricking her eyes, but she forced herself to nod. She followed him meekly to a waiting horse. He lifted her atop it and mounted behind her, clamping one arm around her waist. She resisted the urge to squirm away. Behind them, the fighting still raged, proof that what had seemed like forever had really been only a few seconds. He kicked the horse into a gallop, and Aine squeezed her eyes shut against tears.

  She needed time. Time to figure out the pieces of this puzzle, time to discover a way out. Which meant she had to keep him from killing her, no matter what that required.

  The sun had already crested the horizon when Keondric reined in the horse beside a small stream. He slid off first and helped her down, his manner solicitous, as if he were courting her and not kidnapping her. He walked the horse to the water’s edge to drink and filled his skin before handing it to her.

  Aine cast a sideways glance at the proffered water bag. “You first, my lord.” When he hesitated, she tried to smile, as if her concern were for his welfare. “I insist.”

  “It’s perfectly safe, I assure you.” Keondric took a long drink as proof. “It’ll be a faster and more pleasant trip if you’re conscious.”

  Aine cautiously sipped from the water skin and handed it back to him. His manner puzzled her. Sometimes, her spirit recoiled from him, as if recognizing something dangerous lurking inside. Other times, like now, he seemed normal. Was he being controlled by the druid or the sidhe? Or was he just mad?

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Keondric lowered himself to the ground and gestured for Aine to join him. “I thought you would have guessed.” He gave her a long look, and for a moment his gaze grew heavy with meaning. She suppressed a shiver, and he looked away, his tone businesslike. “You’re bait.”

  “For Conor? I don’t understand—”

  “Call it a contingency plan. I can’t be sure his escort will kill him. From what I’ve seen, I’d say it’s unlikely. When he realizes I have you, he’ll have to choose between you and the harp. Which will he choose, do you think?”

  “The harp,” Aine said, though it was only an attempt to stall while she worked out the situation. If Keondric was working for Fergus and the druid, it was of his own accord, not because of infection. He would not have been able to move across wards otherwise.

  Somehow that was even worse. She could excuse weakness. But this treachery was pure evil. Conor’s escort must work for them as well. But why attack so obliquely?

  They feared him, she decided, and not just his sword. They thought he was the one with the gift of sight. Keondric had no idea Conor was acting on Aine’s visions.

  “You’d better hope he chooses you. Otherwise, you’re of no more use to us. Strategically, that is.” Keondric smiled, and while it was a pleasant smile, it hinted at darker things beneath.

  Aine forced herself to maintain a calm exterior. As long as Keondric believed she did not fear him—as long as he believed he could win her—he would refrain from violence. “Why would you betray us? You’re the wealthiest man in Faolán besides Calhoun. Your clan has advised the king for generations.”

  “How long do you think that will last once Faolán falls?” At Aine’s shocked expression, Keondric’s tone softened. “I know it sounds cold, but given the choice between being an ensorcelled slave and maintaining peace and prosperity for my clan, what else could I do? I cannot condemn them to death.”

  Aine sighed. She could understand his position, however distasteful. But would Fergus and Diarmuid uphold their end of the bargain once they got what they wanted?

  “What’s to happen to me, then?”

  “That’s entirely up to you. I’m taking you to Glenmallaig. As long as you cooperate, you’ll be safe. I swear no one will harm you while you’re under my protection.”

  And if she chose to leave his protection by refusing to do what he wanted. . . . Aine heard the warning as clearly as if he’d spoken it aloud.

  After they ate a bit of cheese and bread, they mounted up again. This time he did not hold her so tightly. Grateful he had allowed her to keep her cloak, she surreptitiously closed her fingers around the wheel charm. She closed her eyes and tried to see Conor, but minutes passed without result. She tried again, hoping to glimpse Lorcan and the rest of her party, but she was no more successful the second time.

  She tucked the charm back into her dress and tried not to let despair overwhelm her. Ruarc—her faithful guard, her trusted friend—was already dead. What made her think the rest weren’t as well? Maybe that was why she couldn’t see them. She stifled tears before they could rise again.

  “Are you all right?”

  “No,” she snapped. “You’re trying to destroy everything I care about in the world. I am definitely not all right.”

  Keondric had the grace to stay quiet and leave her to her brooding.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Conor’s first conscious sensation was searing pain, followed by wild, animal panic. He scrambled in the dark for a weapon to defend himself, but the movement sent waves of agony through him. He doubled over and retched into the grass.

  Only when the pain and nausea subsided to a bearable level did he realize he was alone, and the panic did not belong to him.

  Mac Eirhinin had betrayed them. He tried to have Conor killed. He separated Aine from Abban’s men.

  Aine.

  Conor jerked upright, only to fall back again, his head spinning. When he regained control of his limbs, he touched his throbbing head. His fingers came away sticky with blood. He gritted his teeth and probed the wound, relieved to find that, though his scalp had been split, his skull was intact. A hand stone, probably. It must have just grazed him. At that range, he was lucky to be alive.

  No, not lucky. An experienced fighter would not miss at that distance. He was alive only because Gair hadn’t wanted to kill him.

  That meant Conor could still complete his mission. With him supposedly dead, the enemy would believe Meallachán and his harp were secure. Unless Mac Eirhinin had sent a warning to Cill Rhí, in which case the messenger would have had a full day’s lead on him. But surely his escort would have reported their success? If they were no longer expecting him, he could still slip in unnoticed and retrieve th
e harp.

  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 withou
t the wards?”

  “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.”