Dream

by Carole Cummings

  “It was my doing,” Wil cut in boldly. “I told him I was going with or without him, but it would be easier if he came along. Your pack is huge, y’know.” He shot another glare at Calder. “And it would’ve been easier, if Grandda here hadn’t got all arsey and decided I was some kind of dimwitted bonehead who didn’t know how to put one foot in front of the other without his help.”

  “I think you’re confusing ‘arsey’ with cautious,” Calder snapped. “A distinction you might do well to learn.”

  It was getting clearer and clearer with every word. Dallin could just imagine what the walk back to the temple had been like.

  Wil turned on Dallin then. “D’you think I’m helpless too?” He waved a hand at Calder. “You sound just like him.”

  “Damn it, Wil, no.” With less effort than he’d expected, Dallin stood, then took the few steps over to stand in front of Wil. “You know I don’t think that.” It was as low and even as he could make it. “But Calder’s right—you’ve got to be more cautious than that. I understand that what you’ve got in that pack means a lot to you, but do you understand you just risked yourself for what amounts to a couple changes of clothes and a few rotting apples? When are you going to understand you’ve nothing to prove?”

  In truth, Dallin couldn’t help a bit of reluctant sympathy. Calder styled himself, after all, as some sort of servant to the Aisling, and there the Aisling had been, declaring he had every intention of doing something—well, Dallin might as well call it what it was—something incredibly stupid, and Calder’s only choice was to come along. Dallin supposed he should be grateful Calder hadn’t tried to tackle Wil and chain him to a wall, though Dallin would have been a lot more grateful if Calder had done the wiser thing and woken Dallin. Who knew if Dallin would’ve got Wil to leave it, but his chances were a lot higher than Calder’s. Obviously.

  “Perhaps I’ve nothing to prove to you.” Wil’s voice was too soft.

  Dallin slumped, suddenly feeling somehow small and… mean.

  “And we were cautious,” Wil went on, once again grabbing at confidence through what he insisted upon seeing as a job well done. “No one saw us but that lad, and he won’t remember any of it.”

  They were getting nowhere. In this sort of mood and with Calder looking on, Wil was never going to admit to Dallin—much less to himself—that anything about this evening had been ill-advised.

  “Anyway.” Wil shrugged. “If we hadn’t gone, we wouldn’t’ve known about the notices.”

  Dallin winced. He didn’t really have to ask—he rather guessed—but he did anyway.

  “Notices?”

  Wil gave him a hopeful look. “The drawings don’t look anything like you.”

  Calder rolled his eyes again. They must have been close enough, Dallin reflected morosely, that at least Wil and Calder had recognized him and identified the placards for what they were—neither one of them, after all, could read.

  It was only with a very determined effort that Dallin held back a groan. He decided a tactical retreat was the only intelligent strategy right now.

  “It doesn’t matter. We need to get ourselves gone. We’ve been here too long already, and wanted bills are only one more reason.” Dallin sat back down on the cot and shifted his glance between Wil and Calder. “We’ve other, more important, things to take care of right now, and we need to take care of them before we leave here.” He let his gaze rest on Calder, steady. “We need to decide where we’re going.”

  As expected, Calder frowned, alarmed. “Surely you mean to go to Lind. I’ve already sent ahead for—”

  “We don’t mean to go anywhere until we know what we’re walking into.” Wil cut his glance to the chair and nodded for Calder to sit. Once Calder did, Wil stepped over to the cot, heaved Dallin’s pack to the floor, and sat as well. He turned to Dallin. “You eat. I’ve a feeling you’re going to need your strength.”

  Dallin’s eyebrows went up. Apparently Wil was taking full advantage of this “servant” thing. Dallin couldn’t say he disagreed with the logic. Anyway, Wil was the one on the line here, so it seemed only fair. Dallin gave Wil a nod, pulled the tray closer, and poked at the cold fish.

  “He thinks I know more than I do.” Dallin kept it low, so only Wil would hear. “Let’s try to keep it that way, yeah?” He wasn’t sure exactly why, but it seemed right.

  Wil only gave Dallin’s arm a quick subtle pat before turning to Calder. He paused briefly, then set his shoulders, bracing.

  “Does it hurt you that I call myself Wil?”

  Not at all the question Dallin had been expecting. Nor Calder, it seemed. Calder’s brow twisted tight for the briefest of seconds before he schooled his mien calm.

  “Not in the way you expect. Nor, in truth, in the way I would’ve expected.” Calder eyed Wil with no apparent guile. “It… disturbs me that it is the only name you know. And I believe Wilfred would have willingly shared it, had he been able.” Calder laid a hand over his heart. “He would be pleased, and I would be pleased, if you chose to keep it.”

  Wil’s jaw twitched, and he swallowed, but that was the only outward reaction. “Thank you. It would please me too.” His fingers wound together, clamping tight. “Have I a true name?” It was almost unbearably soft.

  “The Old Ones have called you Aisling since we joined our cause to yours. The old songs sometimes name you Coimeádaí.”

  “Keeper,” Wil translated aside for Dallin.

  Dallin frowned but kept silent. Keeper? Of what?

  Wil turned back to Calder. “I want to know what your Old Ones are to the Aisling. Why would you think it your right to kill me?”

  Dallin blinked. That was certainly direct.

  Calder sat back in his chair. “I would never consider it a right. Nor a pleasure. Say rather… responsibility.”

  “I’ll say nothing of the kind. And that doesn’t answer my question.”

  Calder breathed a leaden sigh, then stood to walk a slow circuit around the tiny room before fetching up behind the chair. He gripped the back and leaned into it.

  “This”—he waved at Wil and Dallin—“has never happened before. Centuries of Watching, Guarding, and nothing so unspeakable has ever befallen our charge. Since I was ordained, my purpose, my very life, has been you. When the Old Ones heard the cries of young Devon—your first Guardian—you went silent. And so did the Mother and the Father.

  “For more than fifty years, every shaman in Lind has meditated for hours each day—searching, seeking, praying to the Mother and the Father that They might guide us, show us. Always They have remained silent. We wondered if perhaps we had displeased Them in some way—wondered if our task was taken from us—but still, new Guardians were born. So we trained them to their purpose, sent them out, hoping, and twice we heard the death song and the new call.” Calder looked at Dallin. “And then we lost one unordained. We waited and we watched, and we sent our Seekers, but no new Guardian was born to us, no call came, and still the Aisling was lost. We feared… so many things.” His gaze went back to Wil. “We never guessed….”

  There was a pause, strained silence, before Wil broke it with quiet absolution. “I’m not asking for apology. Only that you help me now.” He leaned forward, nearly beseeching. “Tell me what I need to know. Tell me what I am!”

  Calder’s hands tightened on the back of the chair. His head dipped down, beaded braids swaying lightly amidst gray-gold. “You place me in a dilemma.” He peered up beneath tangled brows. “It is not my place, and yet….” He frowned at Dallin.

  Dallin hadn’t noticed until now that his fingers had been busy making crumbs out of a thick slice of bread. The fish had already suffered a similar fate. He looked down at his hands, took a bite of crust he didn’t really want, and chewed it slowly.

  “If you’re saying it’s my place….” Dallin scowled down at the ruins of his supper and pushed the plate aside. He thought about this one carefully.

  Calder already saw Dallin as weak. The accusation
writhed in that pale blue gaze every time Dallin moved a bit too slowly or didn’t cover a tremor quick enough. If Calder thought Dallin wasn’t up to the job of Guardian, would he start speculating about the advantages of putting Dallin out of the way? Calder was capable, certainly. Men like him were capable of worse things—after all, one of their greatest assets was their ability to defend horrific actions with righteous purpose. And Dallin had been thinking only a little while ago that he was in over his head, that perhaps Wil might be better served by someone who knew what they were doing.

  But did Dallin want to give Calder, or someone else like him, even the slightest excuse to usurp him? This man who’d been arguing only hours ago that it might be best for the world if Wil was got out of the way before he realized what he could do?

  What could Wil do?—that was the real question. And why did Dallin seem to have a better idea than Wil himself did?

  Dallin’s eyes narrowed.

  He’d seen the power, touched the boundary of it. It had been worlds greater than the paltry thrum that had run through Dallin when he’d held Wil’s broken fingers in his palm. And when Dallin had said earlier that Wil had yet to burn the world, Calder had responded as if it were a real possibility—no surprise, only anxiety at the prospect.

  No. No, the real question was: what would happen to Wil if someone like Calder was there when he found out what he could do?

  …if Grandda here hadn’t got all arsey and decided I was some kind of dimwitted bonehead….

  It wasn’t an exaggeration, and it wasn’t mere disgruntled grumbling.

  Wil was clay to Calder—to all the Old Ones, for all Dallin knew. Calder already treated Wil like a child. A holy child, held in reverence, to be sure, but still a child. Someone to be molded and perhaps even punished if he didn’t conform to tradition and legend. And when had Wil ever conformed to anything?

  More worrying still, the argument with Calder earlier told Dallin just how severe a punishment these people were willing to carry out in the name of that tradition and legend.

  “I know what the Mother told me.” Dallin said it slowly, phrasing it carefully. “I wish for Wil to hear it in the words of the Old Ones.”

  He left it there. First lesson in interrogation: give a subject the first leading push, then sit back and wait to see if he hanged himself.

  Calder merely nodded. No flare of suspicion Dallin could detect. Calder’s faded blue gaze went directly to Wil and stayed there.

  “You ask what you are. It would be easier to ask what you are not. Not immortal. Not invulnerable. Our people chose the Mother for our patron for Her strength and wisdom, set the Father lower because His wisdom was imperfect in your making, and yet we came to understand that it was wiser than simple men would guess at first to create a being with so much power and make him vulnerable. We came to understand that the Mother’s wisdom in the making of the Guardian merely complemented the Father’s. So we have kept always the Aisling safe, as the Mother intended, treasured Her Gift from Her beloved, as She does. We have guided Her gift to the Father—”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Wil cut in impatiently. “We know the story. We don’t need your version of history. You train Guardians to keep the Aisling on his proper leash, which doesn’t answer any of my questions.” He stood, pointing to the floor at Calder’s feet. “You stood right there this morning and tried to talk my Guardian into killing me. I want to know why.”

  The look between them was almost charged, thick and nearly tactile. Dallin might as well have not even been in the room. Still, he kept his face impassive, hopefully unreadable, and only alternated his glance from one to the other.

  Calder shook his head. “You have broken the laws of the Father. That alone is cause for judgment.”

  Wil’s mouth pressed tight, and he slowly sank back down to the cot.

  “You mean because he did the things he did for Síofra,” Dallin tilted his head. “Except those ‘crimes’ were the result of your failure.”

  “And so judgment would be put aside.” Calder twisted a grimace. “Which leaves us with the question of the danger the Aisling now presents to us.” His eyes went to Wil again. “Do you even know what lives inside you? Do you know what’s been given to your safekeeping? When I asked you if you thought we’d simply let you walk into Lind unaccosted, it wasn’t merely rhetoric. Even if your intention is to prostrate yourself before the Old Ones, take up your task, and devote yourself to your purpose….” He sighed. “It may already be too late. We have never received the Gift so late. The damage may be too great.”

  Prostrate. Ha. Dallin thought that was likely it right there, the reason Calder’s thoughts and intentions had turned so abruptly to execution—you only had to know Wil for a few moments, see the refusal to bend or submit, to know he wouldn’t prostrate himself before anything or anyone. Was this the “damage” to which Calder referred? Calder spoke of being a servant, of being at their service, but what sort of service did the Old Ones think they owed the Aisling, really?

  Caught and caged—was that it, then? Was Lind little more than a prison for the one they purported to serve and protect? Dallin would like to know what sort of lives Wil’s predecessors had lived. Had they devoted themselves to their purpose willingly, or were the Old Ones no better than Síofra, snipping a child from his roots, molding him into what they deemed he should be?

  “What danger am I to you?” Wil asked softly.

  Dallin wished Wil hadn’t. Dallin was close to knowing. He wasn’t sure how, and logical explanations for the fantastic, or even the mundanely odd, had stopped being important some time ago—what is was what was important now.

  Perhaps it was the slow absorption of the messages from the dreams finally sinking in. Perhaps it was simply the accumulation of facts and the inevitability of them ultimately starting to fall together into a readable pattern. Dallin neither knew nor cared, but he could almost feel the knowledge knocking at his consciousness, and it was big. He wanted to get it clear in his own head first, so he could break it to Wil in ways that wouldn’t hurt, but he couldn’t ask Wil to wait anymore—not after Dallin had taken so long to get to him in the first place, and certainly not after failing to see what so many of these capricious messages were trying to tell him in all the time after.

  Do you know what’s been given to your safekeeping?

  Dúil. Elemental.

  Coimeádaí. Keeper.

  Damn it, that one had been more or less lobbed right at his face, and Dallin had nearly missed it. Mother’s mercy, Wil had made it rain.

  So, when Calder opened his mouth to answer, Dallin spoke instead.

  “You are a danger to all.” Dallin waited for a beat until Wil turned to him, frowning. “You are a danger to yourself. Coimeádaí. Dúil.” He tapped lightly at Wil’s breastbone. “You are the keeper of the strength of the old gods, and it’s been suppressed for too long now. It’s beating at your mind, your spirit. I know you feel it. I can see you feeling it sometimes.” Dallin met Wil’s gaze with candid respect. “You’ve been holding it back, only letting a little out at a time, and that only when you need it to survive. It needs to breathe, and you’re not letting it. That’s why you bleed. That’s why it’s so hard to stop pushing once you start. And sooner or later, it’s going to break through. Break you.” He jerked his chin at Calder but didn’t take his eyes from Wil. “He thinks you can’t control it. He thinks you’re weak. He’s afraid you’ll let it loose on the world, and the Old Ones’ failure will be complete.”

  Wil stared at him, eyes slightly narrowed, irises made of shifting verdigris. “And what do you think?”

  “I think you are many things. But weak has never been one of them.” Dallin shot his glance over to Calder, then quickly back to Wil again. “There’s more here.” He murmured it low and to Wil alone. “I need to think about this, and I need more. Just give me some time.”

  Dallin turned back to Calder. “Does Lind know what the Guild is about?”

  “We d
id not know what Síofra had done.” Calder lifted his chin. “We knew that they sought, but not that they had found, let alone….” His mouth tightened. “They were once our brethren, you see.”

  Wil stiffened, but for Dallin, more pieces fell into place.

  “The Brethren—you know of them.”

  Calder’s eyes went hard. “They are not so secret as they would like.”

  “Then speak,” Wil said through his teeth.

  Calder dipped a deferential nod. “It was time before time. An alliance. Before times of war for our countries, together the Old Ones and the Guild fostered the Gifts of the Mother and the Father until both were ready to take up their tasks. And once the Aisling and the Guardian left our collective borders, we would simply wait for the next call and begin the cycle anew.

  “We have lost count of the years. Long before the first Brayden walked Lind’s soil, the Aisling warned the Old Ones, spoke a prophecy, told us our brethren were not brothers in truth, that they would betray us, betray the Aisling. When next the call of the Aisling came not to the Guild, but to the Old Ones instead, the Guild claimed treachery. They cut ties with Lind, cast out their priests, executed some, and plunged our lands into perpetual war. The soldiers of our countries, even the generals and the elders, believe they fight for petty things—border disputes, trade routes, waterways—but always the clandestine demands are the same: Give us the Aisling.

  “After the purge of the Guild, those who were cast out disappeared for generations until they reemerged just before the first border war as the Brethren. Since then, we have Watched them as well. Watched as they fell from grace and degenerated into what they are today—no honor, no true calling.”

  “No intelligence,” Dallin muttered.

  Calder’s mouth drew down, and he peered at Wil soberly. “I suspect young Wilfred found you by following them. Unhappy providence for him, but….” He sighed. “A link in the chain of fate, for it has brought us all here.”