The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  Where are You? Either of You? And why have You left me to figure this by myself? I couldn’t get away from You before if I’d tried, and now…

  Not true. Easier to believe, perhaps, but not true. She was here, at least, whispering to him through the land itself—he could hear it, he could feel it—telling him things he didn’t want to know, showing him things he didn’t want to see, and Dallin wondered how much of it Wil had let himself hear or know. Not much, judging by the easy way Wil had spoken to Dallin, touched him, looked at him. Real caring. Real affection. Real worry.

  Fuck me, what have I done?

  And the dreams… surely that was His handiwork. If Dallin ever saw Him again, he’d have to fill Him in on the fact that lack of sleep was not conducive to a sharp mind and the ability to cull strategy from chaos.

  Fuck, he was tired.

  He’d almost hoped Wil would hear it all in the songs of the falls. Almost hoped Wil would reach out, test his strength against the rush of the water, but he’d been content to merely look and enjoy. Listen to Dallin as he’d spun a tale about two little boys he hadn’t even remembered before it had come out his mouth, and hardly remembered now.

  Do you put everything away like that? Do you bury everything that hurts?

  Dallin rubbed at his eyes, took a long, slow breath.

  No. I live it until I can’t anymore, let it gnaw at me until it hasn’t got any teeth left, and by then it doesn’t matter because I’ve bled everything I had, anyway. But this…

  This he would bury. This… he had no choice. Wheeler and his regiment weren’t all that was coming. The Brethren skulked all around them; he could feel every last one of them, out there and biding their time, waiting for it, too. Something bigger was on its way, something that held the key to Wil’s cage and would close him inside it, so that all either of them would be able to do would be to wait for it to come, helplessly watch it send Wil outside himself, take everything he was and make it… not his anymore.

  Caught and caged.

  Wil seemed to think there could be nothing worse; Dallin now knew otherwise. He shook his head, clenched his teeth.

  Not on my watch. Not even if you hate me, curse my name forever after because of what I think I’m going to have to do to prevent it.

  Have you ever loved? She’d asked him, knowing the answer before he did. Knowing even then what She was going to ask of him, demand of him. Had he even faced the truth of it before Marden had opened his big mouth and spilt Dallin’s heart all over the cave’s floor, to be picked over and examined by three old men who probably didn’t even remember what the word meant?

  It was a sorry thing that the mere remembrance of it could color Dallin’s cheeks. Fucking sentiment. It really was going to be the end of him one day. Damn them all.

  It was the defeat—that was it.

  None of it matters now.

  … I’m beginning to think all of this has been a waste of time.

  Dallin shut his eyes.

  I don’t even think I care anymore, but you… I’ll ask you not to make it… hurt.

  The words had been heartfelt and sincere, and worse—recurring. The idea of facing down a monster frightened Wil, surely, but he’d accepted it without any real question, like he’d been expecting it, and expecting not to live through it. Surrendering himself to it all, when Dallin had never seen Wil surrender to anything—not shackles, not fate, not even reality. Wil fought everything, so why wasn’t he fighting this?

  You have heard the Call; now you must heed it. I would have you see to it that he continues to choose himself as well.

  So would Dallin. Even if it meant—

  “…said we’d camp by it tonight, right?”

  Dallin blinked, turned to Wil, who’d pulled Miri even. “Um?”

  “Did you hear a word I said?” Wil’s tone was impatient, but his eyes were touched by uncertainty, suspicion buried but not very deeply. “You haven’t been listening at all, have you?” He tilted his head. “Is there something I should know?”

  And if that wasn’t a loaded question.

  What are you keeping from me?

  Doubt. A precursor to more anger, perhaps. Not that Dallin could consider the argument of this morning closed, he supposed. There’d been a silent truce a few moments ago, but not a declaration of the end of hostilities by any means.

  Did Wil know? Could he see into Dallin as easily as he could apparently see into those clever little gifts the Old Ones had given him? He’d hit the core, and extraordinarily hard, when they’d stood at the falls—Do you put everything away like that? Do you bury everything that hurts?— and Dallin didn’t even think Wil had really been trying. Was there even any point in trying to keep anything hidden? Except then Wil had let it go, let Dallin push it all away with assurances neither one of them really believed, so… it was still possible he didn’t really want to know.

  Right. Possible. Possible in some other world, where purple dragons vomited rainbows and trolls pissed perfume. This was Wil, after all. And the acceptance hadn’t lasted very long, had it, not when it came to withholding something Wil thought important. Still, there had been that night in Chester—exposing deductions and theorizing their implications, and Wil hadn’t wanted to hear it, not even a little; Dallin had forced the knowledge on him, and this time… this time Dallin couldn’t convince himself it was the right thing to do. For pity’s sake, the man didn’t even want to know his own name.

  Dallin looked away, rubbed at his brow; the headache was growing steadily again, and he didn’t know if it was the stress of constantly keeping this place from pounding Wil, or that his brain was trying to bash itself against the inside of his skull to make him stop bloody thinking.

  Is there something I should know? Ha!

  Well, let’s see—I know how the power here works, I can see it all as clearly as you see your Threads, and I know what they all want you for. I know the Brethren are here, waiting, and I know the Cleric is coming, because I can feel him, too. I know it’s all coming together, converging down to one moment in time when it’ll all hang on what you’ll choose, and if I have to betray you to make you choose right, I’m pretty sure I will. I don’t know who or why or when, but I know how this has to go, and you would, too, but you’re so busy pushing everything about this place away that you’ve not let yourself know it yet. I know that if you let yourself know before the time comes, it’s over, you won’t choose yourself, and once you go to FAeðme, you won’t be able to help yourself knowing. And then what?

  You forced me into a promise I didn’t want to make, and They forced me into a Calling I don’t want, and one contradicts the other—I can’t do both. And now I see I may have to force something on you I know you wouldn’t want, but there’s no alternative that I can see, and I can’t trust any one of these people enough to help me see another way.

  Fucking hell, I’ve been trying so hard not to take your choices away, but this one’s mine, and I don’t know how to make it without betraying everything.

  Dallin sighed, pulled rein, and waited for Wil and the others to do the same. He couldn’t explain it all, not even half of it, but they all deserved to know at least some. He was going to need every single person who was capable of fighting, after all, and he did truly believe that people fought harder when they knew what it was they were fighting for.

  “The Brethren are here, in Lind,” he told them bluntly, watched all of their reactions closely. Shaw looked surprised and wary, but not disbelieving. Both Calders seemed more enraged and offended than anything else. Wil looked… angry. Trepidation, but an implicit accusation of perfidy beneath the bristling, and pointed directly at Dallin.

  “How long?” Wil wanted to know, tone even but peculiarly soft.

  It was new, this cold, quiet anger; Wil usually got loud and heated when he was pissed off, and this calm fury was novel and unnerving.

  The question would have seemed ambiguous, perhaps even nonsensical, if Dallin hadn’t spent the last thir
ty minutes steeped in conjecture and self-rebuke. He knew exactly what Wil meant, but looked at him straight and answered the question only obliquely: “I didn’t know when I chose this path. I can’t do anything until we get down to the Bounds, and we can’t go any faster than we’re going over this terrain. The Weardas can sound the horns and send runners when we get there.”

  “Hunter should ride ahead,” Shaw volunteered. “They could be—”

  “No, I need him here—I need all of you right here—and they won’t dare move until they know where Wil is.”

  Wil’s jaw tightened. “How long?”

  Dallin set his own jaw, made his expression as blank as he could. “About an hour ago.” So at least I haven’t been lying to you for very long.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. I felt the land… I suppose you might say it protested when they crossed in, but I don’t know where.”

  “It is impossible!” Hunter said sharply. “Every entrance into Lind is guarded. Every Weardas, even the eldest and those who have not yet earned their Marks, have been recalled to stand their watches. The Border is too thick with Linders. No one could have got through.”

  “And you are welcome to go on believing that until one of them skulks up behind you,” Dallin retorted.

  Calder was shaking his head. “The lad is right. Lind is nearly barren but for the infirm and the too young. Every able body is patrolling; they can’t have got through.”

  “Then we’d best get some of them back from their patrols to protect the rest, because it’s too late to worry about the borders now—the Brethren are here.”

  Calder turned first to his nephew, then to Shaw, finding no help on either front. He looked strangely helpless. “But how?”

  Wil was staring over Dallin’s left shoulder, gaze gone slightly hazy. “There are passageways honeycombed beneath the Temple,” he said quietly. “Two of them join a network of tunnels that lead directly into Ríocht. Another three are dead-ended with cave-ins. One crosses beneath the Flównysse and ends where Éaspring won the Border from Áthlone.” He pinked, shifted a slight shrug when they all stared at him, open-mouthed. He shot an uneasy glance at Dallin, then shifted it to the ground. “People aren’t the only ones who dream,” he muttered softly.

  Dallin sighed, scrubbed a hand through his hair. You didn’t even know you knew that. Wait ’til you figure out what else you know. “Right,” was all he said. He looked at the others. “They’re waiting, but they won’t for long. If they think they can secure Wil and get him out of Lind before their Cleric gets here, they’ll give it a go. There’s a lot of them this time. One of them once told me there were hundreds, and I don’t think he was lying, and they’re all here, I can feel them.”

  He paused, took a deep breath, and turned to Wil. “This is it. This is where it all happens, whatever it turns out to be. We’ll be down at the Bounds within the hour, and if I play all of this right, we’ll have the protection of the soldiers, at least until Wheeler gets here and court-martials the captain. But the Brethren are coming, and they are going to try an attack.” He leaned in his saddle, pierced Wil with a hard stare. “I won’t argue with you about this—if I tell you to run, you’ll run. If I tell you to shoot, you’ll shoot. If I tell you to dig a hole and climb into it until all the shooting stops, that’s what you’ll do. Are we clear?”

  He’d expected Wil to argue, at least bridle; Wil did neither, merely stared for a moment, jaw tight, then tore his gaze away, pointed it at the ground. Nodded.

  Dallin watched him distractedly slipping his fingers through Miri’s rough mane, watched his mouth twitch, holding back the things he wanted to say. He remained tense and silent. The badger was nosing about, but not yet ready to bite.

  About this one thing, at least, Dallin wasn’t sure how to feel. Either he’d been worrying about Wil’s survival instinct dulling for nothing, or Wil was working up to an explosion that would throw a spanner into everything anyway. Dallin shook it away, turned a hard stare on Hunter.

  “You want to be his bodyguard—now’s your chance.” The boy blinked, peered closely at Wil for a moment, then turned back to Dallin with a shift of his shoulders and a firm set to his jaw of which Dallin wholeheartedly approved.

  “Don’t I get a say in this?” Wil wanted to know.

  “No,” Dallin said brusquely, kept a solid gaze on Hunter. “He will not leave your sight except for when he’s with me,” he went on, tone as unbending as his stare. “You will remain armed at all times, and you will shoot anyone who tries to take him from your side.” He jerked his chin at Calder. “Even him.” He waited, watching closely as Hunter turned a startled gaze on his uncle.

  “Dallin,” Wil said, quietly and through his teeth, “I don’t think—”

  “I wasn’t asking you to.”

  Testing the boundaries, seeing how far Wil would let him push them. As far as he liked, it seemed, or at least giving him enough rope to hang himself; Wil went silent again, and again refrained from arguing. Seething. Dallin could see it beneath the ice. When Wil blew, it was likely going to be an almighty big one.

  Dallin waited again, keeping his stare fixed to Hunter, watching as the boy weighed family against faith, and chose the latter. He sucked in a long breath, turned back to Dallin.

  “As you will, Guardian,” was all he said.

  Wil let out a small growl and slumped a bit in the saddle. “Hunter, I’m sorry, this isn’t what—”

  “It would be an insult to my uncle and all he has ever believed to do else,” Hunter said evenly, his eyes going defiant as they held Dallin’s, more steel in the gaze than Dallin had seen before. Hunter dipped his head. “At your command,” he said.

  “I’ll remember that,” Dallin replied, curt. He shifted his glance to Shaw. One last chance to do this yourself, shaman. “When was the last time you held a gun?”

  Shaw frowned a bit, narrowed his eyes… didn’t take the opportunity. “A shaman doesn’t generally—”

  “Unless he’s former military,” Dallin cut in, all patience gone. “Please don’t fuck with me, we haven’t the time, and I haven’t the tolerance.”

  Wil glanced sharply at Shaw, who in turn shot a narrow look at Calder. Calder merely shook his head with a sigh. Shaw echoed it, dipped his head on a small half-bow, acknowledging a point scored. “I had not realized,” he answered with a slight twist of his mouth, “that your skills had grown so quickly. Shaman.”

  Dallin snorted without humor. “It’s nothing to do with anything but the fact that you ride like Cavalry and bear yourself like someone who keeps forgetting to try not to look like a general.” His mouth quirked at the corner. “I admit the connection took me a little while, but I fought in the Shaw Campaign, you understand—pure chance my regiment didn’t fall under your command at the northern Border.”

  “Chance, was it?” Shaw slanted him a rather chilly little half-smile. “If memory serves, it was the Fifth Regiment that cleared our way into Ríocht, led by a young lieutenant who earned his captain’s rank by blowing past my men and almost to the Guild’s doors.” He tilted his head a bit. “I might not have remembered the young lieutenant at all, seeing as how I never actually met the lad, but for the rumors going about the troops at the time.” He turned a dry glance toward Wil. “Something about a legend come to life, a giant sent by the Mother Herself to lead Cynewísan to victory over the Dominion, and who coerced his men to follow him down into the Beast’s very throat by using only the magic of his voice.” Shaw turned back to Dallin, gaze measuring. “Do you know what they call you in Ríocht?”Whatever reaction Shaw was looking for, Dallin refused to give it to him. “I’m aware of one or two epithets.”

  “Diabhal Mháthair. Aithnidiúil Bás.” Wil obviously didn’t need a translation, staring at Shaw now with a strange, intense curiosity. Shaw translated for the others as much as for effect: “Mother’s Devil. Death’s Familiar.” He waved a hand. “My own troops would have marched under that banner, if they ha
dn’t half-believed you were a myth altogether.”

  Dallin shrugged, ignored Wil’s narrow gaze, and forced a smirk. “Military men are ever a puzzling mix of superstition and practicality—both of which I found useful and so useable.”

  “I’ve no doubt,” Shaw murmured, thoughtful and not entirely approving. “I believe I now see your strategy for Lind more clearly.”

  “Then we understand each other,” Dallin replied evenly.

  “Perhaps you do,” Wil put in, tone challenging and not a little annoyed, “but I would prefer it if you didn’t keep it a secret from the rest of us.”

  He stared Dallin down—How long have you known? And why didn’t you tell me?—until Dallin colored a little, shrugged. Just one more secret he didn’t necessarily want to keep, and he was beginning to resent having been put into the position in the first place.

  It’s for the best, I swear it’s for the best…

  So why did Siofra’s voice keep encroaching?—I kept you safe. It was too big for you, too much… I took it all away for you. For you, Chosen, always for you…

  The guilt, born from the accusation in Wil’s eyes, sideswiped him—which was stupid because he’d known it was coming, and he knew what he was doing. He hoped he knew what he was doing. With massive effort, Dallin kept himself from answering to the silent indictment, turned his gaze to Shaw, kept it even, and waited. Shaw’s return stare was a mix of hard reprimand and grudging approval, until he turned it toward Wil and softened it.

  “Rank speaks to rank,” he said, his voice and gaze both kinder than they’d been since Dallin had spilled his little secret. “Your Guardian does not wish my presence as a healer, but as a general in the Commonwealth’s service.” He shot a sharp glance back to Dallin. “A former general. I am a shaman now, and have been since my Calling rang louder than the war horns.”

  “Which is why you left your Temple with all its initiates and apprentices when you understood that the Commonwealth was being misled. Old loyalties never die. This one perhaps betrayed you, but it was a happy betrayal, for me at least—I need you.” Dallin waved his hand. “I appreciate that you were weary of war—so was I—but one is on its way, if we don’t use every tool we can lay our hands on to stop it. A person can have more than one Calling.”