Dream

by Carole Cummings

  Wil frowned.

  Oh hell. Does that mean I’ve lost my head over him too?

  A flush warmed his cheeks, and he shook his head, but he stopped when the pain flared out and wrapped around his skull like an iron band tightening. He sucked in a thin breath and stood—a little slowly and awkwardly, as though he’d aged fifty years while he’d slept.

  He’d got up too soon, that was all this was. He should’ve stayed in the dark little cave and waited for Dallin to come and coddle him some more.

  Weak little Dominionite in the middle of all these great big Linders, needs to be rescued and defended, coddled and cosseted, then condescended to by someone who wasn’t even alive when I’d already done my worst….

  He had to get out of here.

  He wasn’t even hungry anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” he told Hunter. “This must be your own campfire, and I didn’t mean to impose. I was only—”

  “I’m pleased to share it. And I’d be pleased to fetch you some breakfast and guide you around the camp, if you like.”

  Wil blinked, eyes narrowing before he’d even registered the vague bit of suspicion creeping into his awareness. “You want to fetch me breakfast?”

  “Or tea.” Hunter gestured to the fire. “The kettle’s almost at the boil.”

  Oh, for the love of…. This boy didn’t think Wil was going to put in a good word for him with the Lost Shaman, did he?

  A prickly little jag of mineminemine! jabbed Wil in the gut, and he clenched his teeth, throttled it down, closing his eyes and rubbing at his temples. The headache was chewing right into his brain now, edged and pointy behind his eyes, and he couldn’t stop the threads from winding in front of them, spiking into them like shards of glass reflecting too-bright sunlight.

  Too much. Too big.

  Weak.

  “Are you well?” Hunter’s tone was filled with concern, his hand taking firm hold of Wil’s elbow.

  “Fine.” Wil’s voice was faint and shaky, not quite supporting the lie, but he pulled his arm away nonetheless. “I’m fine, I just—”

  Except he apparently wasn’t fine, because he was talking one second—blackblackblack everything too dark too big too black—and the next he was sitting on his arse in the damp grass, the heavy throb swarming up his backbone telling him the descent had not been a graceful or gentle one. His head was going to split—it was going to split right open and dump his brain out onto the ground.

  “Fuck.” Wil drew his knees up, planted his elbows atop them, and held up his thumping head with his hands. Pressure was building up behind his eyes as if he were pushing, except he wasn’t. He wasn’t doing anything, just bloody sitting here.

  …Sitting here in the middle of Lind, a place he’d been warned not to go. Not everything Síofra had said was a lie. In fact, almost everything he’d ever told Wil had at least a seed of truth in it.

  Maybe it wasn’t just a headache. Maybe it was whatever Calder had done to Dallin that first day in Chester. Hunter was a Calder. Maybe he knew how to do it too. Maybe he wanted Wil—weak little Dominionite companion—out of the way so he could get close to the Shaman. Maybe he knew about Wilfred Calder—a Seeker—maybe he was a brother, a cousin, and decided to take out his frustrated thirst for enemy blood on the weak, helpless Dominionite. Maybe all Linders knew how to seek, and here Wil was, trapped right in the middle of them, all those eyes on him, all those minds trying to pry into his, all those patterns trying to wend into his own, subsume it, obliterate it, push him out of it, send him out into the darkness—

  There were hands on him, wide and strong, but they weren’t the right hands, so Wil shrugged them off sharply. He growled. Voices fuzzed in his head, splotches of light spangled behind his eyes, and the ground kept wanting to roll out from beneath him.

  Too vast. Too deep. Too alone.

  Standing on the edge of a black abyss, patterns all around him—too bright, too painful, and none of them his.

  Weak. Letting Síofra take from him, hiding in the darkness, letting others fight his battles while he was busy swooning, and now unable to keep anything at all at bay, wide open, and everything crushing inward, pressure and weight, pressing him down and down.

  Great ripping pain, crowding in, crowding out. He gripped his head in his hands, dug his fingers into his scalp to try to keep it from exploding all over the grass. Everything was too loud, too bright, too altogether there, overwhelming, and hands kept coming at him, so he kept snarling and shaking them off, until—

  “Wil?”

  The right voice, the right hands. “Not….” Wil squeezed his eyes shut tighter, dug harder into his scalp. “Not weak.”

  “Weak?” Genuine confusion, then genuine conviction. “No, never.”

  “Don’t need rescue.”

  Idiot. Stupid. Denying the need when it was so obviously wishful thinking.

  “No, Wil.” Dallin’s voice was somewhere between wry amusement and raw anxiety. “You’re usually too busy rescuing me to take the time for your own.”

  Wil hadn’t really been looking for a “right” answer, but that was it. He reached blind. “Help.”

  8

  DALLIN TURNED on Calder, jaw set. “This is why you should’ve told me.”

  He shouldered away the young man crouching beside Wil, not pausing for pleasantries, and dragged Wil upright. The young man didn’t go away, merely moved to Wil’s other side and hovered, honest concern on his open face. Dallin measured, then dismissed him, shifting his glance to Shaw as he arrived behind Calder, huffing and blowing with the exertion of his sprint, then to the three who came behind him. Dallin shot a heated glare at every one of them.

  “You don’t fuck with people like this.”

  He tightened his grip and took a slow step forward. He dipped his head to Wil’s ear. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be up yet, and I got… distracted.”

  “What…?” Wil turned his face into Dallin’s coat, gripping at it with clutching fingers, breath thin and fast through clenched teeth as he stumbled and lurched, clinging but trying to keep his feet. “What is this?”

  Confused and in pain. Not quite frantic yet, but getting there. Dallin didn’t blame Wil. Dallin could feel the weight as though it was on his own shoulders, invasive and unrelenting. He reached for it, found it, and set himself to sorting the balance.

  “It is your destiny, lad,” Calder answered.

  Dallin’s teeth set tight. “You say one more—”

  “You must heed the Old Ones, Brayden.”

  “If you don’t get the hell away from me, I’m going to heed my more violent inclinations and shoot you in the face.”

  “Now, Brayden,” Shaw chastised mildly, “you’re allowing your temper to rule your reason.”

  “I do that sometimes.”

  “Destiny?” This from the young man, still lingering and looking as if he intended to follow where he clearly wasn’t wanted. His eyes had gone bright with interest. “Is that why you saved Wil, then?”

  Wil growled and pushed into Dallin harder. Dallin stopped short to turn a narrow stare on the boy. “Who the hell are you?”

  The lad gulped but lifted his chin. “Hunter Calder.”

  “Of course you are.” Another bloody Calder. Brilliant. Damned prolific family, the Calders. “You assume too much, like everyone else around here.” Dallin dismissed Hunter once more, adjusted his grip on Wil, and started walking again.

  “The heart of the world.” Wil’s voice was slurred and dazed, and he sagged against Dallin. “Too much, too big.”

  Dallin had to stop short and tighten his grip to keep Wil from slithering to the ground. Yelps went up all around as every fire in sight flared up, spat, then burst from their pits like fists unfurling, as though someone had just thrown oil on them, before settling back into their confines. Dallin shot a quick glance around the camp. No one had been hurt, but every eye, sprung wide in surprise, stared at the various fires, then shifted wary glances first to the
Old Ones and then to Wil. Reflexively, Dallin shot a sharp look at the sky—nothing brewing yet—then laid his hand to the crown of Wil’s head. He closed his eyes and tried to shut everything else out.

  There was too much—both crowding in and crowding out—and Wil was growing too frantic to let him help.

  “Settle now.” Dallin kept his voice low and soothing. “You have to let me in, all right? Like in Chester, remember?”

  “Heart of the world.” Garbled and breathless. Wil sagged in Dallin’s grip, clutching his head. “Fuckfuckfuck, it hurts, make it stop.”

  “I’m trying, Wil. Just try to calm down and let me.”

  It wasn’t pushing, not anything like what Wil did, or at least what Dallin understood about what Wil did. More like opening up, letting his intuition reach out, decoding what he found, deciding what the problem was, and then trusting it. Finding a lack and filling it. Finding excess and taking it away. Asking.

  It didn’t even feel like magic, really. It felt more like common sense. Earthbound and almost rational, once Dallin had allowed it out of its cage. No whispers in his mind, no mental pictures. Just a deep-down, indefinable knowing. A conscious, willful act of letting himself know, of not demanding a definition or explanation. Knowing, then doing. Stepping out of his quickmud. With both feet this time.

  The heart of the world, Wil had said—so had that boy back in the stable—and now Dallin knew all too well what it meant. It had stayed at bay while Wil slept, that deep, mindless, dreamless sleep Shaw had shown Dallin that first night, but now that Wil was awake, it seemed to gather at him as if he was some sort of lodestone. Which, now that Dallin thought about it, wasn’t too far off the mark.

  “It’s this place. I’m sorry. I couldn’t keep my promise, and now you’re paying for it.”

  “Promise?” Wil sighed, some of the coiled tension running out of the set of his shoulders. He wasn’t clawing at his head anymore as he’d been, just holding on to Dallin’s coat now. Equilibrium was coming slow, but it was coming. “You always keep your promises. I should’ve pushed, you were right, I should’ve pushed, I shouldn’t’ve pulled away, I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  “Wil, it’s all right. You don’t have to—”

  “—didn’t mean to burn you, too deep, too weak, I can’t make it go away, I can’t stop seeing—” He staggered and shifted a muzzy gaze up at Dallin. He blinked, then shut his eyes again tight. “I have to sit down.”

  “You have to go to Fæðme,” Calder put in, reaching out and setting a hand to Wil’s arm.

  Wil swung blind and smacked Calder’s hand away with a mumbled “G’the fuck off me.”

  He didn’t wait for Dallin to guide him down to the ground. He more or less started to fold his legs and slide down Dallin’s side, trying to plant his arse where his feet had been. Dallin just sort of teetered sideways and followed Wil down, helping as much as he could with the awkward maneuver and the resulting awkward position.

  “Too damned many threads,” Wil breathed, strained and thin. “It hurts, it fucking hurts, and I can’t stop seeing them.”

  “Here, let me help.” The boy—Hunter—had somehow got hold of Wil’s elbow and was trying to help hold him up. Wil didn’t growl, just kept babbling, so Dallin didn’t order Hunter off, else they might all three end up in a heap.

  “Wil,” Calder persisted, “you must talk sense with your—” He glanced at the small crowd they’d drawn, mouth pinched. “—with Brayden. There is no reason for you to be in this pain.”

  Calder turned back to Dallin, eyes hard, worried. One thing for which Dallin had to give grudging credit—Calder really did care about Wil. If only Calder wasn’t so bloody sure he knew better.

  “You must take him to Fæðme. Only there—”

  “I will take him to Fæðme when he has been told what it means for him, and if he then agrees to go—not before.” All of it shoved out from between Dallin’s teeth. “If you’d bloody told me about all this before we reached the Bounds, I would never have—”

  “But Fæðme is forbidden,” Hunter put in, one hand still resting on Wil’s arm, the other hovering behind him as though he was afraid Wil was going to topple backward. “It’s sacred ground. Outlanders are not permitted.” He frowned up at Calder then the three Old Ones still silently looking on behind him, then back again at Dallin. “Is he not from Ríocht?”

  Dallin bristled. “And if he was and needed healing to save his life, would you deny him?”

  Hunter pulled back, surprised by the vehemence with which Dallin had asked the question. He blinked. “It would not be my place.” He shot a bewildered glance up at the silent elders. “I expect I would do as the Old Ones instructed. And….” He flushed, suddenly distressed. “And the Shaman.” His head dipped low. “Forgive me, I forgot to whom I was speaking. I should not have presumed.”

  “Right.” Dallin scowled. “My point.”

  Hunter only shook his head, looking at Dallin attentively as though he was waiting for Dallin to pull wisdom from out his arse and hand it over. Dallin couldn’t help the jag of anger. Hunter was only a boy, only knew what he’d been taught. It wasn’t his fault. Still, that blank belief made Dallin’s jaw go tight and his fists curl.

  “I didn’t mean to offend. I only mean to help.” Hunter jerked his chin down at Wil. “He is in much pain. You can heal him, surely.”

  Wil had stopped the steady stream of apologetic jabber, but he still hadn’t opened his eyes. Now he drew up his knees and covered his face with his hand. He was still holding on to Dallin’s trouser leg. Despite the tight grip, Dallin managed to plant one knee in the grass to kneel over Wil.

  “Too many eyes.” Wil was muttering in a steady stream, but it wasn’t exactly babble, so Dallin didn’t panic. “It’s too much. I can’t stop seeing it all. Make them go away.”

  “Easier said than done.” Dallin had been trying to make them go away for bloody days. He shot his glance upward, ratcheting it into a glare at the crowd of gawkers. “All right, everyone move along.”

  He was satisfied but still discomfited that they backed off immediately. Since they’d run headlong into this little war party—mere miles from Chester and still fleeing breakneck when they’d more or less collided—and word had spread of Dallin’s identity, the unaccountable near-reverence had almost done the job of unnerving him where all the violence of the escape had failed. And it continued to make him edgy every time he found himself on the receiving end of it.

  He turned back to Wil as everyone but the five he most wanted to go away did so. All right, four—Dallin supposed Shaw could stay. Wil liked him, and Shaw had been damned helpful the past couple of days.

  “It’s this place, Wil. It’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s a lot, but there’s nothing inside it. Do you understand what I mean?”

  That had been Dallin’s biggest worry—terror, really—at least while Wil had been so lost, so unreachable. That what Dallin had felt inside the chaos when Wil stood in front of Síofra—that presence, that overwhelming greed and intent—had somehow followed Wil down into the dark. It wasn’t until Wil finally found his way back that Dallin could breathe easier, could sleep and pay attention to things other than constant meditating and searching.

  Wil nodded, very carefully, but kept his head bowed and his body curled in.

  “Good.” Dallin rubbed at Wil’s back. “We’re going to figure out how to keep it back. I’m taking some of it, but you’re stronger than I am. You’re going to have to push it at me so I can take more.”

  That got Wil to open his eyes. Worry. Instant knee-jerk refusal. “No, I’ll—”

  “You won’t. It won’t hurt me. It’s what I’m here for.” Dallin glared up at Calder, at the others. “So I’m told.”

  Thorne—the eldest, and up until this point, seemingly the most reasonable, in Dallin’s opinion—finally spoke. “That is not what you’ve been told.” He stepped forward, crouching down on creaky knees beside Dallin to peer at Wil with a gent
le smile. He reached toward Wil, but stopped short when Wil reflexively pulled back. “May I?”

  Wil squinted at Dallin with a frown, questioning. All Dallin could do was shrug tiredly. The pain in Wil’s eyes, in the tight set of his white face, the confusion—if Thorne could take that away, Dallin wasn’t going to begrudge it.

  “He won’t hurt you.” Dallin said it with a warning flash of his glance to Thorne. “But it’s up to you.”

  “I am Denton Thorne.” Thorne dipped his head low. “I am pleased to welcome you to Lind, and I am overjoyed to make your acquaintance.” His smile pinched. “Wil, yes?”

  Wil nodded slowly, still wary, still pale, and obviously still very much in pain. Dallin wasn’t sure how much sense was getting through it, but Wil seemed to be following the conversation, at least.

  The little Dallin had been able to help so far hadn’t been much. He didn’t want to do what needed done out here, but he would if he had to. If Thorne didn’t hurry it up, Dallin was going to knock him out of the way, fragile old bones or no, and do it right here under the eye of every man, woman, and beast in the camp.

  Permission granted, Thorne laid his fingertips to Wil’s brow, pulled in a long breath, and closed his eyes. “You have been lost for a very long time, my boy.” Thorne frowned and adjusted his fingers. “You do not know the joy that moved through Lind when Calder sent us word from Chester that you had been found.” He smiled. “Doubly glad, for ’twas your Guardian who found you.”

  No smartarse comment from Wil as to the exact circumstances under which Dallin had found him and what had resulted immediately after. Wil must really be hurting.

  “So you really were looking for me?”

  The soft yearning in Wil’s voice nearly pierced Dallin’s heart.

  Thorne kept the fingers of one hand on Wil’s brow and ran those of the other through Wil’s hair, tucking a hank of satiny blue-black gently behind Wil’s ear. Dallin was both surprised and relieved to see Wil’s posture slouch just a fraction more, a further release of pain and the tension it wound around him like a coiled spring.