The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  Strange. Something so big—huge—that had overpowered his entire life, and just speaking it straight-out like that seemed to take away at least a little bit of its power. Maybe if he went through the whole camp and told every one of them, one at a time, the last of the sting would fade by the time he got to the end of the line.

  Corliss was staring at him, near-shock and instant outrage. It was somehow gratifying. “Not your whole life, surely?”

  Wil made her wait until he’d had another bite of the fabulous, tender, juicy, amazing-bloody-delicious beef, then shrugged and took a slurp of beer. “As I understand it, I was taken by him from my mother’s womb and directly to the Guild. So, yes, my whole life.”

  “That’s… he…” Corliss was next to speechless. It should have embarrassed Wil a little, but it was so genuine that he couldn’t find it in him. “I knew he was a piece of work, but… the bloody bastard, the… the ruthless, spineless fuck!”

  Motherly indignation—had to be. Wil was absurdly warmed.

  “If you didn’t know,” he ventured, genuinely curious, “why have you done what you’ve done?” Corliss peered at him with a frown, and he gestured about them. “You disobeyed orders from your Constabulary, and from what I understand, you’ve been doing everything but actual backflips to get these people to listen to you, despite obvious resistance from the Old Ones.”

  “Bah.” Corliss waved a green bean in front of her nose, dismissive. “The Old Ones are just that— old—and too set in their ways. The good thing about them is that they expect obedience, even from ‘outlanders,’” she said the word with a roll of her eyes, “so when they ‘requested’ I keep my mouth shut, they obviously thought I would listen.” A low chuckle that Wil couldn’t help sharing. “Anyway, I have Woodrow with me, and all you have to do is set that one loose and not rein in his tongue—a bigger bloody gossip you’ve never seen, but in this case, it’s been more than useful.”

  “But why did you do it?” Wil pressed. “I mean, if you didn’t know.”

  Corliss shrugged. “Because Brayden knew.”

  Blind belief. Wil muffled a snort. Dallin would be so pleased.

  Corliss caught Wil’s smirk, returned it. “And he told me I didn’t owe him anything.” A tight little smile, somewhat rueful and discomfited. “So, naturally, I had to repay him.”

  Wil grinned. He might like this woman after all.

  All of the difficult bits out of the way, he dug into his supper with abandon, still grinning, and let her do most of the talking as he filled his belly and then refilled his trencher. Twice.

  He was enjoying himself. After dragooning a small group of boys into taking supper to the men conferring in the guardhouse, Corliss chivvied Wil into making a circuit of the camp, stopping to greet those she’d met and introduce Wil in a less overwhelming way than had been done earlier. This time, he met eyes and marked faces, though he doubted he’d remember names. There were so many of them, after all. All of them were friendly but quiet, at first, until they—like Ryne before—were assured by Corliss in various humorous ways that the light show was finished and there was no danger of it starting up again.

  The Old Ones watched it all, and Wil watched them back, wondering, until eventually—between one glance over his shoulder and the next—they had gone. No one seemed to notice their absence but him.

  Wil and Corliss were invited by families to share their fires, their food, their drinks, and were graciously welcomed to Lind by almost every person they met. By some unspoken consensus, musicians drifted from various parts of the camp and toward a clearing backed by the river, spread out, and started to play. The fire nearest them was built up to blazing, and everyone who wasn’t standing a watch, or doing something else necessary, gathered ’round it. Songs first, in the First Tongue, which Wil only understood in dreams, but the accentuated, chanting rhythms still pierced him, almost wrapped about him like a warm blanket. Dancing next, graceful gamboling and fluid shifts of bodies and limbs, like watching music itself come to life in the primal-but-elegant steps and dips reflected beneath the flickering light of torch and fire. It was nearly hypnotic.

  Wil wasn’t actually sorry when Hunter came to collect him, but there was a touch of regret as he hauled himself up from the grass and left the warmth of the fire, the beauty of the music, and the dancing. Several called out to him as he walked the green, and though he couldn’t make out faces, he lifted his hand each time, and smiled more genuinely than he had earlier. To Wil’s amusement, Hunter took up a post outside the door of the guardhouse to which he led Wil, looking serious and as intense as his young face could manage. Wil thought about telling the boy he might be taking all of this a little too seriously, but… well, that he’d leave up to Dallin. Hunter was bound to get on Dallin’s nerves eventually, and the boy would learn to keep a more discreet distance then.

  He found Dallin alone in the guardhouse, stood hunched over the single table, scrutinizing a large leather map beneath the light of several smoking oil lamps, and tracing routes intently with a stick of charcoal, the ruins of several suppers stacked over to the side. Rough maps on stained, crumpled paper were scattered everywhere, and Dallin irritably shoved several out of the way as he worked on the larger one. A small pot of a woodstove squatted in the middle of the room, grate open, with several more half-charred maps leaking from its belly. Quite a sparse little barracks, this. A bed, a table, a few chairs, two shelves each on two of the walls, and the stove. Likely meant for the… Weardger-whatever-the-fuck—the commander of the Weardas—when they were on drills by the Bounds. Strange, how natural Dallin looked here. He glanced up when Wil entered, smiled tiredly, and dropped into the chair behind him, leaning back and stretching.

  “Well, we’ve reached an accord and agreed on tactics.” He yawned, blinked, absently rubbing the smudges from his fingertips. “Wisena agreed to leave his men under my command. He’ll take Shaw and strike out in the morning to try and intercept Wheeler. I don’t put much faith in talking reason to the man, but it might buy us a little time, at least.”

  Wil dropped his pack on the floor and propped the rifle in the corner by the door. “That’s good. Congratulations.” He ambled over to the table, slipped around in front of Dallin, and leaned back. “Time for what?”

  Dallin shook his head and rubbed at his eyes. “Time for FAeðme and then…” He waved a hand, shrugged.

  “Hm.” Wil reached out and picked up the stick of charcoal, absently running the tip of it along the edge of a crumpled map in the only shapes that he knew. “I expect we should probably talk about ‘and then,’ shouldn’t we.”

  Not a question, and Dallin knew it. “Unless there’s been a miracle and you’ve changed your mind.” He sighed, smiled a little to soften it, though it was sour and somewhat bitter, and they both knew he really meant it.

  Wil didn’t answer, just twisted a thin smile back at him, and turned his glance back down to the shapes the charcoal was making beneath his hand.

  “Are you…?” Dallin sat up, leaned in with a frown. Brow twisted with interest, he scanned the table, lifting up a dish and sliding a stained, discarded map from beneath it, marks and runes that made no sense to Wil covering all of one side and half of the other. He shoved it at Wil. “Do that again.”

  He watched, eyes losing a bit of their gravity, as Wil gave him a brief frown, then shrugged and did it again. Dallin stared at what Wil had done, bemused but pleased. “D’you know you’ve just written your name?”

  “Well, in a sense, I suppose.” Wil smiled. “I can write all of Wilfred Calder. It’s like the Marks, in a way. I know the shapes, and I know what they mean, but I can’t actually read them. I don’t know why these shapes mean what they do—I just know that they do.”

  “Huh,” was all Dallin said, sitting back again, mind already obviously wandering, no doubt speculating on the discussion he didn’t want to have. He stared at Wil’s fingers as Wil traced the name again, apparently willing to wait in silence until Wil got
’round to forcing the conversation.

  Wil decided not to prolong the obvious unease. “Tell me what Calder says in the dream.”

  Dallin didn’t move, didn’t even sigh. “He says you’ve been weaned on betrayal,” he answered flatly, still staring at Wil’s hand, “says you know me and trust me, and asks me if I plan to betray you now.”

  Wil looked up from his fingers, raised his eyebrows. “And do you?”

  Dallin went silent, brooding, for several long moments. “I should probably take insult with that.” A bleak puff of a laugh, and he closed his eyes, scrubbed a hand over his face. “Then again,” he went on tiredly, turned a quick look up at Wil, then back down to his fingers, “I expect it depends on your definition. And whose orders you’re following, come to that.”

  “Hm,” Wil said again, balled up the paper, dropped both it and the charcoal into his coat pocket, and looked at Dallin straight. “I wouldn’t have thought there was more than one.” Dallin didn’t answer that one, just rolled his eyes and waved a hand, like that by itself was supposed to mean something. Since Wil had no idea what, he decided to get to the point. “I’d prefer it if we stopped dancing about the subject.”

  “And I’d prefer it if—” Dallin cut himself off, fists clenching all at once into concentrated knots of anger and then uncurling just as quickly. He pulled in a long, deep breath, sighed it out quietly, and looked at Wil. “One of Wisena’s men—Merrod, I think, a lieutenant—he hails from Caerdydd, a few leagues from the eastern Border. Fairly war-torn, being one of those points of strategy Ríocht generally aims for when things get hot.” A brief pause, ruminating. Wil wondered if Dallin had spent time there, defending the Border, but he held back his questions. Dallin would get to the point in his own way.

  After a moment, Dallin shook himself a little, went on, “Anyway, his parents saw enough over the years to want something other than the military for their bonny lad, so they tried to make a teacher out of him. Sent him to study in Penley.” He peered up from beneath his eyebrows. “Spent time at the Temple there. Religious studies.”

  A longer pause this time, Dallin just looking at Wil, expectant, like he was waiting for some kind of reaction, except Wil didn’t have one yet. Dallin’s tone and demeanor were giving everything an ominous edge, but—considering his reluctance to just spit it out—that could very well be deliberate, designed to put Wil off. Wil waited him out.

  Eventually, Dallin’s expression went tight, very obviously stifling a growl, and he shook his head, looked away. “There’s more to the old gods than just the songs. There’s more to—” Again, he stopped, hands fisting, but this time they didn’t uncurl. “Possession, Wil. That Aeled—” It was like he was choking on it, his face screwing up, teeth clenching tight. “Fuck, I don’t even want to say his name.” His breath whooped into his chest like he’d just run a league and he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Aeledfýres. Soul-eater. You get the pushing from Siofra because Siofra got it from him. So do the Brethren. Only he didn’t just push people, he pushed them out. Everything a person is, he could take away and make a part of himself. He took magicians, priests, shamans. All that power, one atop the other, and he just kept eating it up, making himself more powerful, until they finally locked him away so he couldn’t do it anymore.” He looked at Wil gravely, softened his voice. “Do you see where this goes?”

  Wil frowned. “Of course. But what’s it to do—?”

  “He took their souls and kept them, used a person until he’d worn them out, and then moved on to another. But he kept the souls. They—”

  “I know all this,” Wil cut in, short and sharper than he’d meant. “Or at least most of it, the important parts. And it still doesn’t—”

  “Just—” Dallin shut his eyes tight, raised his fists as though he meant to pound them to the table, but willfully lowered them again. He was sweating, the hair at his temples curling with it. Agitation didn’t quite seem to cover it, forcibly subdued though it was. “Just… let me finish. Please.” He took several long, deep breaths, opened his eyes, and looked at Wil. “He’s doing the same to the Father. And you’re the key to finishing it. He told Siofra where to find you because Siofra promised to give him your name in return and bring you to him. That’s why Siofra needed you to find him the next Aisling—because he couldn’t do it himself; Aeledfýres had done it for him in exchange for you. Except Siofra didn’t know your name, he lied, so he couldn’t keep his promise, could he? I doubt he ever meant to. I’m betting he never had any intention of handing you over. Men like him always think they’re smarter and stronger than they are, and I’d lay down just about anything that he thought he could take your power from you and become even stronger than Aeledfýres. Betrayal, right from the beginning—rather seems his style, dunnit? I can’t imagine what the penalty would be for betraying someone like that, but I can imagine that it wouldn’t’ve been pretty.

  “So, Siofra kept you and hid you, and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but it’s a good job he did, because if he’d handed you over like he was supposed to, I doubt any of us would be here to argue about it now. Aeledfýres wanted you to kill Siofra, he was done with him, and Siofra had been living on borrowed time since the day you were born. But the Brethren are loyal to Aeledfýres and they know your name, they know about the leaf, they hold all the keys, and they’re here. They’ve been two steps behind you all these years because he’s been telling them how to find you. Just like it was with Siofra, every time you use your magic, Aeledfýres feels it. Blood to Blood. He’s how Siofra felt it, and he’s how the Brethren feel it now. The only reason they didn’t catch up with you sooner is because you weren’t using your magic—you didn’t even know you had it. The thing is… Wil…”

  He ran a hand through his hair, breathed, “Fuck!” and stood, and began pacing the small quarters in tight little circles. Wil backed himself away until he was leaning against the wall, unsure if he was giving Dallin space or merely getting out of his way. “He’s too strong,” Dallin said, anxious in a way that was making Wil’s pulse beat heavily against his temples. “He’s been leaching power from the Father for years, and he’s stronger than you. You said you didn’t think you can beat him—I don’t think you can, either.”

  Wil’s heart took a dive down into his stomach. Of all the things he might’ve expected Dallin to say… He shook his head, rasped, “But you said… you’re the one—”

  “I said we could beat him, and we can, and I said you would come out the other side, and you will, but not… shit, Wil, not unless we do it my way, and I’m bloody terrified that you won’t.” Dallin stopped, stepped over to Wil, took hold of his arms in a grip that nearly made him gasp. Wil didn’t think Dallin even realized that he was practically shoving Wil into the wall. His eyes were almost on fire, almost frenzied, with dark panic lurking behind them. “You need to go to FAeðme, you need the power of Lind to beat him, but if you do go to FAeðme and he wins anyway, he’ll take it all, d’you know what that means? This isn’t just you and me we’re talking about anymore—this is everything. D’you know what the Father told me?”

  Wil started a little with the sudden turn, his own fear rising in answer to Dallin’s, turning to a toofamiliar, self-defensive anger. “How would I?” he snapped. “You never told me, did you?”

  “Just one more thing you never asked,” Dallin bit back.

  Wil scowled, looked down. “It wasn’t my business, it was between the two of you, and I didn’t think—”

  “Everything about this is your business—even those things you don’t want to know.” That one made heat bloom up Wil’s spine.

  “Don’t you mean those things you don’t want to tell me?”

  “Call it whatever makes you feel better,” Dallin said through his teeth. “It hardly matters now. It’s just one more piece of the puzzle, and now they’re all fitting together a little too neatly. He told me that it wasn’t your fate to save Him. He told me—”

  “You don’t
even believe in fate!”

  “No,” Dallin grated, “but you do, and apparently it bloody matters. He told me I have more than one Calling, and that part of my job was to make sure you keep choosing yourself. What d’you think that means, Aisling?”

  Wil stared, shook his head. “I don’t know what—”

  “You do,” Dallin snarled, tightening his grip on Wil’s arms until Wil actually had to hold back a yip. “You know exactly what it means. Guardian, Watcher, Guide, and whatever other names are mine—what’s the other, Wil? What’s the one name that fits here? You know it—it’s the first name you ever called me by.”

  “What…?” Wil’s heart was throbbing at the bottom of his throat now. Somewhere, he knew exactly the answer Dallin was looking for, but it wouldn’t travel from wherever it was hiding and out his mouth. His own anger sparking, and unsure exactly why, Wil tried to twist out of Dallin’s grip—couldn’t. His jaw set, and he glared up into dark, furious eyes, burning nearly black, and hoped his own were flaring at least as much. “Do you know,” he said slowly, “you have an alarming habit of putting my back to the wall.”

  “Yeah?” Dallin retorted, face twitching, mouth quivering. “Well, maybe I should do it a little more often. It seems that’s the only time you’ll bloody-well stand up for yourself. Except for when you don’t want to know things and then blame me for not telling them to you.”

  “I never—”

  “Gníomhaire, Wil. Intermediary. Middleman. Except d’you want to know what the translation into the First Tongue is? WAeterþéotan. Sorta pretty, innit? D’you want to know what else it means? Floodgate. Conduit. Doorway.”

  “What the hell does any of this—?”

  “Through me and out to you, Wil. From you to me, then away. It has to come through me.”

  Wil narrowed his eyes. “And then what?”

  Dallin paused, looked down, his grip on Wil’s arms loosening slowly until he finally let go altogether, pushed back, and turned away. Slowly, like he’d been weighted down with lead, he paced back over to the table, lowered himself into the chair. He looked up at Wil, steady but strangely removed. “The Brethren fancy themselves the new Guardians. The Cleric—”