The Sword and the Song Read Online Free Page A

her mind powers on him.
    “If you’ll excuse me, my lady.” He gave a stiff bow and brushed past her before he could embarrass himself further.
    He barely made it a few steps down the corridor before he caught a glimmer from the corner of his eye. He stopped and scanned his surroundings. What had he seen? Maybe it had been a trick of the light, a torch reflecting off a patch of minerals in the stone. Or perhaps his sword forms had brought him closer to exhaustion than he’d thought. He shook his head and continued down the corridor.
    But once more, that tiny spark caught his eye, clearly coming from the wall this time. He squinted at the stone and spread his hands over the span of granite. “Aine?” He retrieved a torch from its stand and held it close to the rock while Aine stretched up on tiptoes beside him.
    “A rune,” she breathed.
    His breath seized in his chest. It was unmistakably a rune, barely visible in the speckled gray stone, a finely etched circle with several intersecting lines.
    “What does it mean?” she asked.
    The answer came with a swiftness that could only be attributed to Comdiu. “Soft.”
    Their gazes met again, an unspoken question in her eyes. He looked away, uncomfortable. She and Conor had spent months poring over texts from the Hall of Prophecies, and he had just deciphered a rune at first sight.
    So why this? Why now? The only other time Comdiu hadrevealed the runes’ meanings to him was when they’d reassembled the pins in Conor’s harp. And those had been objects of power, needed to reinstate the wards around Ard Dhaimhin. This was just a random scrawling of ancient symbols on the inside of a corridor. And soft? Why soft?
    Eoghan traced the pattern with his fingertip again. His nail caught the edge of a curve. A sliver of rock fell to the ground.
    No, that’s impossible. He squinted at the gouge in the granite. He scratched his nail over another part of it and came away with his fingers covered in powder.
    “The rune made the rock soft,” he murmured.
    Again, Aine pressed in beside him, stretching to see the gouge in the rock. “So that’s how they carved out the hill. I’ve always suspected it was magic.”
    The wonder in her voice echoed his own. They’d known Daimhin had relied on old, forgotten magic to secure his kingdom, and they’d suspected it had something to do with runes. But to find evidence of the practical uses   —this went far beyond anything they’d ever imagined.
    “Why this? Why now?” Aine said, echoing his musings of moments before.
    But Eoghan knew this small revelation would be the key to something important. And it seemed he was the first to bear this knowledge since Daimhin, the first and only High King of Seare.
    Like it or not, Eoghan had his sign.

Aine climbed down the steps to the village, her mind tumbling around the recent revelation. All these weeks, looking for something   —anything   —related to the runes, and the evidence had been under their noses the whole time. Comdiu simply hadn’t seen fit to reveal it until this moment.
    Even worse, Eoghan had asked her to hold off telling Conor until he could consult Comdiu on the matter. He didn’t want to reveal the news to the Conclave without understanding what it might mean, but she couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable that he had asked her to keep something from Conor, considering the rift between the two men   —considering the feelings that Eoghan struggled against.
    Guilt wound through her. She could end his conflict with a handful of words, had been moments away from doing just that, and still she had held back. What she needed to tell him about her abilities, no one knew, including Conor.
    So many secrets, and she still didn’t know which ones were necessary and which were just plain foolish.
    Thoughts tickled the edge of her consciousness as sheapproached the village, and she forced her attention to the barriers that protected her from the press of so many thoughts.