CHAPTER ELEVEN

Eoghan’s back was on fire, and two days had done nothing to lessen the pain. After the flogging, he’d been taken to the healers’ cottage, where they slathered on foul-smelling salve to stave off infection and promote healing, and he’d been granted the rest of the day to recover. The next day, however, he was back to his regular duties and banned from weapons training until further notice.

Now he knelt in Carraigmór’s great hall with a horsehair brush and a bucket of soapy water, scrubbing the accumulated grime from the stone floor. He hadn’t bothered with a shirt this morning. There was no point hiding his shame, not that he felt particularly shamed by it, and the rough linen only dragged against his lacerated skin. As it was, his movements stretched and pulled his healing flesh, and he could barely resist scratching the wounds open again.

“Daigh showed great restraint.”

Eoghan sat back on his heels and twisted toward Brother Riordan. “If this is restraint, I’d hate to see him lose control.”

Riordan grinned. “He barely drew blood. There are few men with greater control of a whip. Have you ever stopped to wonder why Brother Daigh draws the short straw so often?”

Eoghan hadn’t, but it was true. Daigh did carry out most discipline of this type. Liam, with his sight, could conceivably have stacked the odds in Daigh’s favor.

Riordan’s smile faded, and he crouched beside Eoghan, his voice low. “The other day, you told me, ‘It’s my privilege to serve Comdiu.’ What did you mean by that?”

Eoghan felt the blood drain from his face. He hadn’t realized he’d said it aloud. “I was delirious with pain.”

“No, you weren’t. You were completely lucid.”

Eoghan shrugged and went back to scrubbing. The scratch of bristles against stone filled the space left by his silence.

“Liam seems to believe you have the gift of sight like him, but I sense no magic in you at all. Yet you knew Conor needed your help before the first reports came from the forest. How do you explain that?”

“That depends. Are you asking? Or is Master Liam?”

“You saved my son’s life. I want to understand how.”

Eoghan sighed. Riordan had always been perceptive, even more so than Liam. He’d believe nothing but the full truth. “Comdiu told me.”

“You mean, you felt —”

“No, I mean a voice in my mind clearly said, ‘Go to Conor and aid in his escape from Glenmallaig. Go now.’”

Even though he must have expected an answer of this sort, Riordan looked stunned. “Comdiu speaks to you directly. How long has this happened?”

“All my life. Don’t you wonder why my parents abandoned me in the forest? They must have thought I was insane. In any case, I tarried too long, debating whether to ask Master Liam’s permission. Conor already had things well in hand by the time I arrived. I just helped secure their passage out of Seare.” Eoghan didn’t tell how he had found Conor nearly unconscious in the forest, a sword in his hand and covered in blood, not all of it his own. Nor did he mention the haunted look in the young man’s eyes when he spoke of how that blood had gotten there.

“I don’t understand why you wouldn’t have told anyone. Surely, if Master Liam knew —”

“It changes nothing. It was my choice to break the law, and now I pay the consequences. You will not tell the Ceannaire?”

He phrased it as a question, but it was not a request.

“I will not tell him,” Riordan said, straightening. “But there will come a time when you will wish you had not kept the secret. I promise you that.”