Pain. Why was there so much pain? It wound around Aine, through her link with Conor and back, shooting through her body. But that wasn’t right. She wasn’t feeling his pain, was she? It was her own pain.
The baby.
Panic ripped through her. She was alone. She’d delivered other women’s children but never her own. What if something went wrong? What if she couldn’t take the pain?
This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be.
And then she felt it, the wash of golden light over her, the bright vibration of the wards around them. Conor. It had to be. She felt the influence of the sidhe recede momentarily, the confused awakening of countless men below.
You’re doing it, Conor. Don’t give up!
In the distance began the screaming. But as the next pain hit, she couldn’t be sure if it were coming from outside the fortress or within.
Aine’s scream echoed through Carraigmór’s great hall as they stared at the lifeless body of the man who had held them all in thrall through fear and sorcery. In that moment, the air seemed to freeze, crystallizing in the moment of decision as the men around them contemplated what to do.
As if of one mind, they sheathed their weapons.
Eoghan let out a breath of relief, his eyes drifting to Morrigan, who still stood over the body with the bloody sword. The fight visibly drained from her as the weapon clattered to the ground. She nodded in Aine’s direction. “Help her.”
She couldn’t handle the pain. Surely this was the sign of something wrong. Or maybe it was Conor’s pain. She couldn’t tell the difference, hanging suspended in the minutes between one clench of agony and the next.
“Aine, I’m here.” A strong hand clamped over hers, and she forced her eyes open.
Eoghan.
“I think Conor’s dying,” she whispered. “I think we both are.”
“You are not dying.” Eoghan scooped her up in his arms like a child and infused his voice with every bit of authority he could muster. “You have to hold on. Both of you have to hold on.”
As the fight raged on, the whispers began again.
You thought you could defeat us so easily?
Your weak God gave us this earth. Why would you believe you could contain us?
You’re going to die. Alone. A failure. Unremembered.
Conor tried to block them out, but their words, false as they were, wormed into his heart and mind. Aine, it didn’t work. The wards are completed, but it didn’t work. The sidhe . . .
I know. They’re here, too.
That got his attention. Ard Dhaimhin? They had stayed away from the fortress all this time, he thought due to the wards and the presence of so many believers. Are you all right? What’s happening?
The baby’s coming. And you’re hurt. You need to get to some help.
I’m fine. This time he gritted his teeth and forced himself to his knees. He would not lie here on the ground and bleed to death. He still had work to do. They hadn’t found anything resembling a standing stone here. The others had been easy to find, prominent but overlooked because the observers weren’t expecting to see anything but a slab of stone. But there was nothing like that here. The entire fortress was built from earth and small chunks of quarried rocks. The yard was hardpacked dirt, the outbuildings timber. If there were once a stone here, it was here no longer, had been buried, or had been sunk in the loch. Much good any of that did them now.
Aine, how many runes are there on the throne?
I don’t know.
Find out.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, propped up against a wall, waiting for Aine’s answer. But it was not her voice that came into his mind.
Forty-nine? I can’t be certain.
Eoghan? What are you doing there?
Conor, I’m here with Aine. The baby is coming. Please, let me help. What are you thinking?
Forty-nine. The calculation made his head hurt. Sixteen fortresses so far, and all of them seemed to have had three runes per stone. Praise Comdiu for the druids’ methodical natures. That meant they were missing one. It could be only here. Did the other men tell you which runes were destroyed?
No. We didn’t think about it. We were so sure there were only sixteen fortresses.
It was too late now. He didn’t have time to think about what they should have done. Without anywhere else to congregate, the sidhe would go for the largest concentration of souls, the most amount of unrest they could find, feeding off the fear and pain of those involved to compensate for the discomfort the magic inflicted. That was Ard Dhaimhin. I need to know that rune.
Eoghan’s voice answered again. We have no way of knowing. How can you be sure there is even one there? Maybe you were wrong. Or maybe Ard Dhaimhin is the seventeenth fortress. After all, Dún Eavan was the last to be built of all the places you’ve visited.
What?
Aye, it may be old-style construction, but it barely predates King Faolán. I know it wasn’t there on the old maps at Ard Dhaimhin. It was just a building.
What kind of building?
Eoghan paused, giving him the impression that he was looking something up or asking a question. It was a nemeton. A temple.
Conor’s mind spun out of control, his fast-forming thoughts seemingly impossible. The seventeenth location, but no rune stone. Originally a nemeton.
He eased his knife from his sheath and drew a circle on the packed-earth ground with the tip. The island itself. He closed his eyes, orienting himself, and then drew a smaller circle in the center for the fortress. Dots for the location of each outbuilding, even the ones that were crumbling and out of use, the ones that should have been demolished long ago. When he opened his eyes, he had two concentric circles and a constellation of dots between them.
Dear Comdiu, give me Your vision for this. Show me how this goes together. Tell me if I’ve lost my mind.
As he stared at the drawing from beneath lowered lids, he saw it. These were not marks but rather points of intersection. The runes were formed with circles and crossed lines. Slowly, painstakingly, he drew the lines through the points, four of them crossing at oblique angles to the circle and to each other. And when the last one was completed, the word came to him, like a breath, like the whisper of the password that protected the Hall of Prophecies.
Seal.
He let out a moaning laugh and leaned his head back against the wall. I have it, Aine. The last rune. The seal. It was too important to commit to a stone, so they made the entire crannog a rune. I know what I have to d —
The shriek of the bean-sidhe shattered his ears before he finished the thought. He opened his eyes to a swirl of shadows. Hundreds of them: inky black, vaguely human forms, coalescing like the formation of thunderheads, churning in the space overhead. His heart started pumping in earnest again, bringing another gush of warm blood from his midsection. His dread over the significance got lost in a sudden surge of panic, stark, visceral fear. The malevolence poured off the sidhe, the thoughts being sent his way too numerous and vicious to process, but he felt every one of them impact his soul like invisible arrows.
Worthless. Weak. Unloved. Abandoned. Stupid. Helpless. All the things he had attributed to himself, all the reasons why he knew he wasn’t worthy. Each one of them beat him a little further down until all he wanted to do was to curl within himself and weep. He couldn’t do this. He was foolish to think he could ever leave a mark on the world, that he could ever live up to the expectations of those around him. He was worthless. Worthless and alone.
And then a quiet voice in his head. Not Aine’s, but it filled him with the same sort of warmth, just amplified.
You are not alone. I am with you.
He grabbed on to the voice as he had with Aine’s, let it pull him up through the mire of his own criticism. What must I do? I don’t understand.
By blood you were redeemed. By blood you will be remembered.
The runes weren’t enough. The sidhe had been liberated through blood magic, and through blood magic they had to be returned. Except the Red Druid had brought them forth with the blood of others, the pain and fear and loss that surrounded a human life taken unjustly —the things that the sidhe fed on, the things that allowed them to thrive.
To seal them back again, it would take the blood of sacrifice, freely given in love and compassion.
Do not be afraid.
Tears filled his eyes when he realized what he was being asked to do. He closed his fingers around the shaft of the arrow and brought them away wet and red. The decision had already been laid out before him, the first step taken. All he had to do was finish it.
Aine, are you there?
Aine’s voice, weak and fearful, came into his head. I’m here. Conor, what’s going on? Why . . . what . . . ?
Clearly she understood his thoughts. The only thing he wanted to do now was console her.
It’s okay, Aine. I finally know what has to be done. Please don’t be afraid. I’m not.
Conor, I don’t know what you’re doing, but stop and think for a minute. The sidhe —
They can’t hurt me anymore. I see through their lies. Comdiu has shown me the truth.
Conor, no —
Please, listen to me. There are two things you must know. The first is that the runes need to be destroyed. All of them. The harp, the throne, the sword. Let them fall into the oblivion of history, where they can’t be resurrected. It’s the only way.
Aye, Conor, I understand. What is the second?
I love you. Tell my son that I loved him as well.
A tearful-sounding laugh rang in his head. Still insisting it’s a son, are you?
It is a son. And his name must be Siochain. Promise me.
No! I won’t! You need to be here to name him yourself!
It’s all right, Aine. Let me go. I always knew I wasn’t the hero of this story anyway.
He didn’t know whether her long pause was her weeping or if she were fighting through another birth pang, but when she spoke again, her voice managed to be strong. I’m here, Conor. I’m here with you until the end.
It was time. He took both hands and pulled the arrow free from his body with a wrenching scream that started the flow of blood draining into the earth that was the rune, mingling life and magic around him. Then he reached for the bright, golden light that surrounded him. He didn’t think; he just wove them together, through, over, beneath into a shining prison. The sidhe screamed in an inhuman mixture of pain and outrage, yet they couldn’t resist the magic that twined around them and pulled them toward Dun Eavan. In his mind’s eye, their dark forms blotted out the moonlight, writhing beneath the fingers of light as they were sucked back into their eternal prison.
And then the screaming stopped as abruptly as it had begun, leaving stillness in its wake.
No whispers.
He let himself slide down the wall, shivering now from exertion and cold, enwrapped in the costly silence of victory.
It’s done, Aine.
Conor, please, don’t go.
He smiled suddenly as the silence was broken by a familiar sound. They were right all along, Aine. I hear music.
Everything else slid away. The fortress, the magic, Aine’s voice in his head whispering that she loved him —all enveloped in a melody that resonated down to his very soul. Nothing left but light. Love. Music.