After Morrigan’s revelation, Aine redoubled her efforts searching Queen Shanna’s journals. There was no guarantee she would find what she was looking for there, yet something —whether it be intuition or Comdiu’s leading —kept her reading until her vision blurred and her head ached.

Instead of passages about the runes, however, Aine stumbled across something unexpected. She shoved a piece of ribbon into the book and marched down to the Ceannaire’s office, where Eoghan sat alone, bent over a similar-looking book.

“You have to read this.” She shoved the volume under his nose and flipped it open to the marked page.

He frowned but he didn’t argue. When he finished reading the passage indicated, he blinked. “I don’t understand. That can’t be right.”

“What reason would she have to lie?” Aine turned the book around toward herself. “‘The druid Struthair claims that the spirits can be bound so they cannot harm humans, but it requires a language that has long since been forbidden in the nemetons. Few are able to even read it. Fewer still know where to locate the keys so it can be deciphered.’ They have to be talking about the runes, don’t they?”

“I can’t imagine what else. We already knew that the druids were the ones who bound the sidhe in the first place. But we’d assumed it happened prior to Daimhin’s time, prior to the coming of the Way.”

“This means that at one point, the druids weren’t in opposition to the Balians.”

“Or the sidhe were a big enough threat for them to put their differences aside,” Eoghan said.

Aine circled around the table to where she could perch on the chair opposite him. “What do they mean by keys, as in the meanings for the runes? They knew they existed but they didn’t have access to them?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never heard anything of the sort. Either no one read this journal or no one thought this fact was significant. After all, the sidhe had been bound for some time, and despite the fact they were growing stronger, their influence was confined to places where faith was weak.”

Aine remained silent, thinking. It all had to fit together somehow: the sidhe, the runes, the druids. But the answer remained just beyond her reach.

“I’ll keep reading. If you come across anything —”

“I’ll let you know. This is good work, Aine.” He met her eyes fully for the first time in days and gave her a warm smile.

Her heart hiccupped at what she read there in that unguarded moment, clear indication that his feelings toward her really hadn’t changed. She managed a nod and scooped up her book, then fled the study as quickly as possible. Either telling him about her gift hadn’t broken its effect on him, or his feelings —like her husband’s —had nothing to do with magic after all.

Either way, until Conor came back, she needed to stay as far from Eoghan as possible.

But the isolation in her chamber with the journal didn’t last long. Refugees continued to stream in and stretch Ard Dhaimhin even further to its limits. As soon as word came of another siege on another small fortress and the resulting flood of escapees from the battle arrived, Murchadh called Aine back to the healers’ cottages.

“There’s not much I can do for malnutrition,” Aine whispered to the healer when she saw the line of skeletal-looking people in front of the cottage.

“It’s worse than that,” Murchadh said. “They’re fleeing an outbreak of disease because they had too many people crammed in behind the walls without proper sanitation, and they were kind enough to bring it with them.”

So that was the real danger, and not just to the new arrivals’ health but to Ard Dhaimhin itself. The city’s excellent sanitation, skilled healers, and strict discipline kept any influx of disease from sweeping unchecked through the population, but that continued to work only if the newcomers were healthy.

Ard Dhaimhin had no space for quarantine, so she couldn’t wait for the medicines to do their work. At the same time, she wasn’t about to spread the word that she could heal by touch. Instead, she gave her patients a dose of foul-tasting herbs mixed with oil —most people believed that for medicine to be effective, it had to taste awful —and healed them while she was making a show of her examination. Most were too distracted by the terrible aftertaste to immediately notice that their symptoms had gone, and by the time they did, they just assumed Ard Dhaimhin had knowledge of exceptionally effective medications.

She’d never thought she would find herself lying to so many so frequently.

“Are you sure you can keep this up, my lady?” Murchadh whispered to her when they were halfway through the day’s patients.

“I’m fine. A little tired and thirsty, but not nearly as exhausted as I’d expected to be.”

Murchadh looked as if he didn’t quite believe her, but he said nothing, just continued to dose the patients with the foul-tasting medicine before Aine set to her examinations.

She also took the opportunity to scan their thoughts for information of interest, but for the most part, she found nothing but mindless fear. They had been fleeing for their lives, often ahead of the actual siege. It seemed that word of the other attack —and the fate of the inhabitants —had now gone before the druid and his men, to the point that all the women and children were sent out before the fighting began. Aine had to give the villagers credit for their bravery. They were not professional warriors; they were merely farmers with mostly rudimentary implements, defending castles that were not their own simply because they felt they had to oppose the evil that Keondric represented.

“My lady,” Murchadh said, “you should take a break. Why don’t you get some fresh air while you check on the herbs? I think the burdock fruit in the hedgerow is overripe, but we might be able to salvage some of it.”

The stern look on his face said he wasn’t going to be dissuaded, so she removed her apron and slipped out the door. She kept her head down as she trudged the well-worn path through the cottages to the walled garden, hoping the city’s inhabitants would take a clue from her posture and keep their distance.

She let herself into the small garden and raised her face to the thin rays of sunlight filtering down from the overcast sky. She had once spent hours in the garden, digging in the earth, drawing strength and peace from the landscape, cataloguing each healing herb, pulling the weeds that threatened to choke out the useful plants in her garden. Mistress Bearrach’s garden at Lisdara felt far away now. Who tended it now? Had it been razed by Keondric’s men? Did anyone see the value of her hard work in the midst of war?

She sank down on the wall, once more feeling the weight of what they faced. Can we even win this fight, Comdiu? It feels as though every time we make progress, the next wave is worse and harder to endure. What is Niall doing? How can we stop him?

Aine sighed, tracing an aimless pattern in the dirt with her toe. She resisted the urge to call out to Conor. They’d agreed on nighttime communications so she wouldn’t risk distracting him in a moment of attack, when his attention needed to be on his opponent.

“What is that?”

Murchadh’s trembling voice interrupted her thoughts. She straightened at the note of alarm. “What is what?”

“That.” He pointed at the design at her feet, and with a shock, she realized she had been tracing the shield rune over and over with her foot. How had she managed to do that without noticing? She’d been praying for wisdom and direction —was this her answer?

Murchadh’s leather-shod foot shot out and smeared the rune into oblivion. “You mustn’t, my lady. I don’t know where you learned that, but it is not for you to know.”

“I don’t understand. The runes are part of the foundation for Ard Dhaimhin. They exist on the objects of power we still possess, not to mention the Rune Throne itself. There isn’t anything evil about them.”

“No, my lady, not evil. But powerful beyond measure. There is so little we know about their origins that those who use them without understanding could bring us to ruin.”

She studied the healer, taking in the sudden authority of his speech. “This is no idle belief. You’ve seen them before. You know something about them.”

Murchadh looked around and then gripped her arm. “Come, this is not something of which we should speak in public.”

“Then come to Carraigmór and tell us what you know.”

“No, my lady. What I know is not for anyone else to learn. You will not convince me otherwise.”

She softened her voice, even though frustration was welling up inside. “You understand that once I tell Eoghan about this, he will summon you.”

“Aye. And if he summons, I will come. But I will not do it voluntarily.” Murchadh gave her a funny little bow, turned on his heel, and marched back to his cottage.

Uneasiness swelled inside her as she studied the obliterated design in the dirt. The healer was not given to hyperbole. What did he know that frightened him so much that it required a direct order to divulge?

The passage from this morning came back to her instantly. Knowledge of the runes had been forbidden once before. It couldn’t be a mere coincidence that this had happened on the same day, right after she had asked Comdiu for direction. An idea began to form in her mind. Could it be true? She had to look at the rolls of the brotherhood.

When she burst into the Ceannaire’s office, it was not Eoghan sitting at the desk but Riordan. “Aine? What’s wrong?”

“I need to see the brotherhood’s roster. The most recent volume.”

He didn’t question her, just pulled the heavy tome from a shelf and laid it on the desk. She had to guess where to look based on Murchadh’s age, but after several minutes of scanning the membership, she came to the healer’s entry: Murchadh (age 30). She frowned. She’d always assumed he had come to Ard Dhaimhin as a youth, raised in his healing vocation. Then she saw the notation at the end of the line, the spot reserved for the city or kingdom of origin: Sliebhan, Banndara N. She flipped the book closed. She didn’t need a translation to know that Banndara N. referred to the White Oak nemetons.

Murchadh had been a druid.