The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  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 in, apparently shifting right along with Dallin—perhaps even a little gratefully.

  Certainly more smoothly. He cut his glance to the chair and nodded for Calder to sit; once he did, Wil stepped over to the cot, heaved Dallin’s pack to the floor and sat as well. “You eat,” he told Dallin. “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 cold fish.

  “He thinks I know more than I do,” he told Wil under his breath. “Let’s try to keep it that way, yeah?” He wasn’t sure exactly why, but it seemed right. Wil only quirked his eyebrows a little, dipped a slight nod, and turned to Calder. He paused only briefly as he took a long, deep breath.

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

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

  “Not in the way you expect,” he said quietly. “Nor, in truth, in the way I would’ve expected.” He looked at Wil straight. “It… disturbs me that it is the only one you know. And I believe Wilfred would have willingly shared it, had he been able.” His hand came up to lay over his heart. “He would be pleased, and I would be pleased, if you chose to keep it.”

  Wil’s jaw twitched a little, and he swallowed, but that was the only outward reaction Dallin saw. Wil dipped his head, said, “Thank you. It would please me, too.” His fingers wound together, clamped tight about themselves.

  “Have I a true name?” It was too soft.

  “The Old Ones have called you Aisling since we joined our cause to yours,” Calder told him. “The old songs of the North Tongue sometimes name you Coimeádaí.”

  “Keeper,” Wil translated aside for Dallin.

  Dallin frowned, but kept silent. Keeper? Of what?

  Wil’s eyebrows twitched, and he peered at Dallin, questioning. Dallin merely shrugged and shook his head the slightest bit. Wil let it go for now. He cleared his throat. “I want to know what your Old Ones are to the Aisling,” he went on. “Why would you think it your right to kill me?”

  Dallin blinked. That was certainly direct.

  Calder looked down, examining his fingernails. “I would never consider it a right,” he said slowly, “nor a pleasure. Say rather… responsibility.”

  “I’ll say nothing of the kind.” Wil’s face was set in stone, his tone just as hard. “And that doesn’t answer my question.”

  Calder breathed a leaden sigh, stood, walked a slow circuit about the tiny room before stopping behind the chair. He gripped the back and leaned into it. “This,” he waved at the both of them, “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, and 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.” He 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 don’t ask for apology,” he said somberly. “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 about 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 from beneath tangled brows. “It is not my place, and yet…” He frowned at Dallin.

  Dallin’s 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…” He scowled down at the ruins of his supper and pushed the plate aside. He thought about this one carefully.

  Calder already saw him as weak; he could see it in those pale blue eyes every time he moved a little 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 he’d said earlier that Wil had yet to burn the world, Calder had responded like it was a real possibility. There had been 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 Gran’da here hadn’t got all arsy 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 of 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 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 hung himself.

  Calder merely nodded; no flare of suspicion Dallin could detect. His faded blue gaze went directly to Wil, stayed there. “You ask what you are,” he said. “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. In our ignorance, we sat 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, pointed 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 tangible. Dallin kept his face impassive, hopefully unreadable, and only flicked his glance from one to the other.

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

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

  “You mean, because he did the things he did for Siofra,” Dallin put in. “Except those ‘crimes’ were the result of your failure.”

  “And so judgment would be put aside,” Calder agreed. “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, shook his head. “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?

  He 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 the lives of Wil’s predecessors had been like—had they ‘devoted themselves to their Purpose’ willingly, or were the Old Ones no better than Siofra: 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 he hadn’t. He 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. Dallin 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 him 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 all 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 he’d nearly missed it. Mother’s mercy, the man had made it rain.

  So, when Calder opened his mouth to answer, Dallin spoke instead: “You are a danger to all,” he said quietly, waited for a beat until Wil turned to him, frowning. “You are a danger to yourself. Coimeádaí. Dúil. ” He leaned in, 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.”

  He 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. That’s why you bleed; that’s why it’s so hard to stop pushing once you start.” 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?” he asked, so low Dallin thought he was probably the only one who heard it.

  He answered in kind: “I think you are many things,”

  he told Wil frankly, “but weak has never been one of them.” He cut 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.” He turned back to Calder. “Does Lind know what the Guild is about?”

  “We did not know what Siofra had done,” Calder replied, chin lifting the slightest bit. “We knew that they sought, but not that they had found, let alone…” A pause and 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’s head dipped in 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 left disappeared for generations, until they re-emerged 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.”

  Providence. Fate. Dallin didn’t believe in any of it, never had. Circumstance and coincidence, and a young man who’d followed a lead that guided him toward what he sought. Poor duped Wilfred Calder had done more than it seemed anyone in this whole sorry scenario had possessed the brains to do.

  “So, since this break,” Dallin said slowly, thinking,

  “the Brethren have been a sort of… crazier version of the Guild, and you’ve managed to keep the Aisling from both of them.” He narrowed his eyes as Calder nodded. “And it never occurred to any of you to put spies on the Guild when Wil went missing?”

  “Our spies infest Ríocht,” Calder told him curtly, “and we do not cringe at acquiring information through blood.

  The Chosen had been a fraud for centuries—we did not guess that the Guild would be bold enough to present the true Aisling as the impostor. We did not guess that if they had the true Aisling, they would not have shown their hand and wiped us from the world with his glance.”

  Again, he turned to Wil, hand over his heart. “They hid you before our eyes. There is no apology that would be abject enough.”

  Wil was just sitting there, staring. Dallin couldn’t guess what he was thinking. His face was a blank mask. Dallin leaned in, nudged Wil a bit with his elbow, and lowered his voice to a near-whisp
er. “All right?”

  A grim little snort puffed out of Wil, and he closed his eyes, rubbed at his brow. “Can we be done?”

  Dallin would rather not—he’d rather get it done all to the once—but apparently it was hitting Wil pretty hard, hard enough to begin the slide into withdrawal, and that would be damned inconvenient right now. Still, Wil was a lot tougher than he looked.

  “Can you stand one more?”

  Wil shrugged. “I expect that will depend upon the answer,” he muttered.

  “Right.” Dallin sighed. “Sorry.” He turned to Calder.

  “Why Lind? What’s there for him?”

  Calder’s eyebrows shot up. Dallin thought it had likely never even crossed his mind that, now they were being more-or-less welcomed, they might decide not to accept.

  “Protection,” Calder told Dallin, then shifted his glance to Wil, softened it just the smallest bit. “Rebirth.

  An awakening to your Self. Your Design.” He tempered his rough voice to a tone that was kind and likely as near to gentle as it got. “One cannot be reborn without returning to the Womb.”

  Wil jolted and wheezed out a throttled gasp. Dallin turned to him quickly, eyes narrowed. Wil was pale, wide-eyed, but his gaze was pointed toward the floor, unseeing.

  What Calder had said meant very little to Dallin, but it apparently meant an awful lot to Wil.

  “All right,” Dallin told him, reached up and laid his hand to Wil’s shoulder. “Sorry. We’re done now.” He shot a pointed glance to Calder. “Thank you. Give us the night, would you? We’ll pick it up again in the morning.”

  Calder peered at Wil with something close to worry, then at Dallin with a slight touch of suspicion in his faded gaze. He didn’t argue, merely nodded at Dallin, then dipped a bow to Wil. “Tomorrow then,” was all he said, turned and quit the room.

  Dallin turned immediately to Wil. “What is it?” he wanted to know. “You’ve gone nearly white.”

  “Have I?” Wil leaned over, propped an elbow to his knee and dropped his head into his hand. “Just… Father says these things to me and they make no sense—and I think about them, all the time, I can’t stop thinking about them, trying to understand, but I never can. And then he just…” His free hand came up, waved toward the door.