The Cleric must commune with the Aisling. Unite his mind and soul to the Dreamer, then annex him….
Fæðme—just sitting there, waiting.
Something was there. Some kind of fulcrum Dallin couldn’t see yet was turning but still driving everything inexorably, and all of it gaining speed, building toward that final pivot of convergence.
“…everything theoretically right,” Shaw was saying, “but there was something not right about it all, and I could never lay my finger on it. His strategies were mechanically flawless, their successes predictable, the reasons for their failures beyond suspicion, but….” He shook his head, frustrated. “His victories were many, but never strategically important. His failures were few but massive, the loss of life staggering.”
If someone wanted to get close to the opposition, have the most influence possible, without having to go through the bother of spying or the constrictions of state formalities, what profession do you think would be most convenient?
And if someone wanted to lose a war, to what level of incompetence would he have to rise? All the compromises Cynewísan had made toward the end of the war, all the concessions, placing the Commonwealth in a position that was both finely balanced and potentially strategically weak should more hostilities boil up. Stacking the hierarchy of the military with men inexperienced and unprincipled. Drawing back troops at the borders and sending them into retirement while Ríocht’s presence thickened like smoky shadows at every guard post and picket. And all of it a slow-rolling chain of policy negotiated by Wheeler himself. And written into the formal treaties by—
I’ve become quite… familiar with the High Seat, Channing, Síofra had said, all smug confidence.
A cold fist locked around Dallin’s chest, constricting air. Dim connection, perhaps, but now that it had been made….
Reason? Logical deduction? Or screaming paranoia? Was Wil’s proclivity for dreaming up conspiracies around every corner rubbing off on Dallin, or had Wil been right all along?
Dallin had been assuming the Brethren was a Dominion brotherhood, but there were plenty of Dallin’s own countrymen who would be susceptible to the sort of mission those men followed. Payton back in Putnam had the right sort of smarminess about him. In fact, that might explain how Wheeler had known to drag Manning and Ramsford in for questioning, how he knew which of the staff to imprison and which to keep. And Payton certainly wasn’t the only one Dallin knew who might fit that particular bill. No stolen marks, but Wheeler couldn’t possibly have them either, so that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
How did that joke go?—Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean everyone’s not out to get me.
“If compared to any other general’s record,” Shaw was saying, “the losses would have been glaring, but the elders saw only the victories stacking up. I suppose they considered all those young lives necessary sacrifices.” His jaw tightened. “Not a military man among them, so I don’t know why I was continually surprised by it.”
Dallin had heard much the same, but it hadn’t had a lot to do with him at the time. Wheeler had come in during the last year of the official declaration, assigned to the eastern border, and Dallin’s regiment had never fallen under Wheeler’s command. By the time the discontent had started to reach up north, truce had been declared and Dallin had seen enough. He retired when his commission was up and went home, vaguely angry and empty and having no idea why.
“But.” Hunter had been silent for quite a while, so much so that Dallin had nearly forgotten his presence. Now Hunter noted all the gazes turned toward him, and he flushed a bit but plowed on. “But war demands sacrifice.” Dallin suspected the puffing of Hunter’s chest was entirely unconscious. “Surely there are some who enlist for reasons other than the honor of their country”—his lip curled, again unconsciously, if Dallin didn’t miss his guess—“but to die for one’s country is to die for the glory of the Mother, surely. It is dishonor to imply that sacrifice is anything other than necessary, or that any who make it have gone as sheep to a charnel house.”
Dallin sighed. He’d seen so many like Hunter over the years—bright-eyed and eager to die for their cause. Until they realized that sacrificing oneself to one’s country or beliefs often meant slogging through hip-deep mud and blood toward a grisly, lonely end that meant no more than another finger-length on a map to the men who had sent them there. Ask ten soldiers what they were fighting for, and you’d be liable to get ten different answers, all of them likely more noble than the goals of those men with their maps in their clean, marble-floored spaces, with their cozy fires and their hot baths and their hot meals waiting for them in the next room.
“And what about dying for the honor of the Father?” Wil asked softly, his face unreadable as he peered at Hunter. “Is that any less honorable? You believe the Mother grants Her favor to those who die fighting against men who believe just as strongly that they fight in the Father’s name. He is Her beloved; They fought side by side, or so the story goes. Do you really think She looks upon war between our countries and approves?”
Oh, well done. If it wasn’t so obviously damned inappropriate, Dallin might have applauded.
“The Dominion has abandoned the Father,” Hunter argued. “Every day they stumble further from His grace and gird themselves with the lies of the Guild. They reject the Mother and hate those who do not.”
“So they should be punished.” Wil tilted his head, his face blank. “They should be hated in return for being tricked and lied to.”
Dallin winced. This could go horribly, terribly wrong, and very quickly, if he didn’t stop it before it got started. He turned to Wil and laid a hand on his arm, the tension running beneath Dallin’s palm hard and trembling, sharply contradicting the cool calm of Wil’s expression.
Dallin tried to make his voice soft and commanding at the same time. “We haven’t the time for this, and I don’t think—”
“I’ll have an answer.” Wil roughly shrugged Dallin off, his gaze cold enough to snap-freeze a raging inferno. “I will have an answer!”
Hunter stared, wide-eyed and clearly beyond his depth, cheeks flushed bright red, mouth moving but nothing coming out of it. He wasn’t capable of answering, but that didn’t stop Wil from driving daggers into him with his eyes.
Calder dismounted and went to stand beside his nephew, placing a hand on Hunter’s knee. “You must forgive his ignorance, Aisling.” He dipped a small bow. “He does not know, he cannot understand—”
“Lack of knowledge should not preclude understanding. Or at least the attempt to understand.” Wil set his jaw, narrow-eyed and dangerous. “Is this what Lind teaches its youth?” His voice was softly poisonous. His gaze, if possible, intensified as it shifted to Calder. “Will Lind accept an Aisling who has been tricked and lied to? An Aisling who has rejected the Mother and cursed her name?”
Hunter gasped, short and sharp.
Wil ignored him and kept his eyes on Calder. “I expect it would’ve been easier for you after all to get Dallin to kill me, though I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t quite have the courage to do it yourself. But I wonder—what sort of excuse d’you think you’d give Her when you stood before Her at the end? That I was stupid and weak?” He watched, cold satisfaction, as Calder colored and just kept staring at him, speechless. Wil’s gaze slid over to Dallin, still hard but not quite as cold. “That I believed too blindly?”
It wasn’t meant to skewer, merely to cut a little. All the same, it drove into Dallin with the impact of a punch to the chest. Bloody hell, had Dallin really been thinking only moments ago that Wil had lost his edge? Apology leaped to Dallin’s tongue, desperate and mildly unnerving for its urgency.
“Wil—”
“No.” Wil shook his head, even smiled, though it was somewhat frosty. “I won’t hear defense while you have secrets behind your eyes.” His eyebrows went up when Dallin twitched. “Did you think I wouldn’t know? Or were you just hoping?” He lowered his voice. “You de
spise blind faith, and yet you expect it from me under the guise of trust. I told you before I wouldn’t trust you blindly.”
Except for when he did. Wil was hardly consistent, was he? How the hell was Dallin supposed to know when Wil would trust and when he wouldn’t?
Dallin’s heart was thumping, his temples throbbing with dull, heavy heat. “You also told me you’d choose yourself.”
Wil’s eyes changed, the cold anger slipping down into reluctant understanding, perhaps a bit of resentment. “All right.” He nodded, lips pursed. “All right, yeah. I expect that’s fair, if looked at from a certain point of view.”
Not really a concession, and certainly not forgiveness. Dallin’s throat was tight. He shouldn’t want either concession or forgiveness, and the fact that he wanted both only drove home further the words of the Old Ones :
Your Guardian owns the priorities of a lover….
…you must think about it as the Shaman now….
Dallin shook his head, teeth set tight to hold back whatever anxious denials might be lurking behind them. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t even care that the others might hear. “I can’t think about this as the Shaman, I can’t… can’t make myself not care, and it’s mucking up everything. I can’t—”
“You can do anything you truly want to do. I’ve seen you.”
That seemed like an awful lot of unnerving faith, considering the current conversation, though Dallin didn’t miss the implication of the remark.
“Somehow I don’t think that’s quite the vote of confidence it sounded like.” Wil opened his mouth, but Dallin shook his head. “We don’t have time for this. Later, you have my word. Right now, our first priority is to get to the Bounds and put Lind on alert. We’ll pick this up when we’ve more privacy.”
“And what good will that do me,” Wil asked slowly, “if you’ve already made up your mind what’s best?”
It stung. And the cool, calm delivery of it made it burn.
Dallin all but scoffed. “How the hell would I know what’s best?” The acidic sincerity of the question was a bit… surprising. Dallin glanced about at the others. “We’re wasting time we don’t have. Let’s go.”
IT WAS growing dark enough by the time they neared the Bounds that Dallin had begun to wish he’d thought to commandeer a lantern from somewhere. He’d chosen the path along the river because he’d thought it would please Wil, and because there had been little reason at the time for speed. That had changed a little more than halfway through the trip, and the sometimes-treacherous sloping terrain—alternately mud-slick with the recent rains and moss-slick as a general rule—quickly became a serious impediment beneath the horses’ hoofs. Had the mild urgency never arisen, it would have been nothing more than a slight annoyance and reason for caution. Now, with the drive to give warning gnawing at him, it was maddening.
The sun was low behind the trees, its orange-gold haze thick above them, but here, inside the cover of overhanging pines that lined the river’s edge, it might as well have been nightfall already. Still, by the time Dallin’s ears had started to pick up the telltale voices and sporadic animal sounds, alerting him that they were nearing a campsite, it was still light enough that Dallin couldn’t mistake the nine tall figures—alternately straight and somewhat hunched, thin and wide—standing on the path ahead of them.
Relief took Dallin, and he turned to Wil, riding just behind.
“The Old Ones have come to welcome you.” Dallin nodded up the path. “I can hear nothing alarming coming from the Weardas at the Bounds, and they wouldn’t be here if anything had happened. Or at least they wouldn’t be standing there calmly waiting for you. We’re all right, for now.”
He couldn’t see Wil’s expression in the gloom, but he made out a nod.
“Thank you.” Wil’s voice was soft. “That’s good to know.”
They’d hardly spoken since the bit of palaver upriver, except for a brief exchange when Wil had led his mare too close to the river’s edge and onto a stretch of slippery-smooth granite—he’d seen fish leaping, he’d said, and wanted to have a closer look—and Dallin had warned him off. As politely and kindly as he could, and in direct contrast to the surge of alarm that had washed through him as he’d watched Miri’s hoofs slip-slide briefly before she reasserted her balance. Wil had accepted the caution with nothing more than a short nod and a conciliatory “Sorry. You’re right, of course” as he’d patted the mare’s neck and led her back onto surer ground.
Now he jogged the horse a few steps until he caught even with Dallin, snatched at his sleeve, and halted, waiting for Dallin to do the same. Dallin reined in and waited for the others to pass them by before turning his horse. He brought her up close so he could see Wil’s face in the gathering dusk. He waited.
Wil watched the others until they were out of hearing, then turned to Dallin and looked at him straight. “I don’t want to be angry. I don’t want you to be angry.”
Dallin shook his head. “I’m not—”
“There is a very fine line between doing something for another and doing something to another.” Wil paused, then went on more cautiously, “Síofra managed to genuinely convince himself at the end that what he did, he did for me.”
It was so close to Dallin’s own thoughts earlier. He was glad for the thick shadows, so Wil couldn’t see the flush that heated Dallin’s cheeks. Dallin had to be imagining the luminescence of Wil’s green eyes in the dark.
“I trust you.” There was no diffidence in Wil’s steady voice. “I have trusted you with my life, more than once, and I can’t imagine anything that might change that in future.” Again the relief, and Dallin tried not to sag beneath it. “You are a good man, Dallin, I’ve never doubted that, and I have put you into a position I know you hate and resent, and I know you hate and resent it because you’re a good man.”
Dallin’s teeth clenched—he couldn’t help it. “Wil, it isn’t to do with—”
“Let me finish. Please.” Wil waited while Dallin sighed, shifted his position in the saddle, and steadied his gaze. “I know you know things you’re keeping from me, I know you’re seeing things I can’t see. Every time I trust you with something, I am trusting you as blindly as any one of these people you so despise for their faith in you. I am walking behind you with my eyes closed, holding on to your arm and trusting you not to let me fall into the rapids, but… but you have to warn me of what’s beneath my feet! I can’t—” He ran a hand through his hair and stared up at the sky for a moment before dropping his gaze back down to Dallin. “I can’t keep going if you’re going to hide the path from me, if you’re not even going to warn me of a sudden drop because you’re afraid I’ll—I don’t even know—whatever you’re afraid I’ll do. Can you understand?”
Of course Dallin understood. He even managed not to rage at the searing shame that swamped him. But it didn’t allay a single fear nor damp a single warning, however oblique and dream-symbolic.
And still Dallin was going to have to say it. He was going to have to tell Wil everything. And all because Dallin couldn’t bear that look of suspicion and reproach in Wil’s eyes.
He couldn’t stop fucking this up.
He shot his glance down the path. The Old Ones were waiting patiently. Hunter and Calder and Shaw had dismounted and now stood among the shamans, also waiting.
Dallin loosed a shaky breath and gripped the reins hard in his fist. He turned back to Wil.
“And am I allowed to prevent you from jumping off a cliff?” It came out too soft, and with too much pleading warbling beneath it.
Wil was silent for a long moment before he shook his head. “I expect that would depend upon whether or not it was something I truly needed to do.” He leaned in, the leather of his saddle creaking. “But I can’t really answer that unless I know why, can I?” His tone was gentle and far too knowing. “You’ll have to answer my question before I can answer yours, I think.”
Dallin shut his eyes. His head was bloody killing him.
> “As with everything, Wil, you give me no choice.” Dallin opened his eyes and peered at Wil as calmly as he could. “But I would ask one thing of you.” He waited, watching Wil’s eyebrows draw slightly in and down, watching a new flare of suspicion catch and hold in his gaze. Dallin put every bit of sincerity he had in him into his voice. “Think about it. Think about it hard.”
“Think about what?”
“Think about whether or not you really want to know. Think about it very carefully, because it would be a lot easier on both of us if you didn’t.”
To Wil’s credit, he peered closely at Dallin, probably looking for prevarication. Dallin had to assume he didn’t find any, because for one thing, there wasn’t any—Dallin was dead serious about this one—and for another, Wil sat back in his saddle, looking thoughtful and somber, all the previous suspicion sliding into honest concern and, to Dallin’s inadequate relief, a new bit of dread. Wil stared for a long time, considering, before sinking Dallin’s heart right down to the ground by nodding slowly. Dallin already knew what Wil was going to say, but that didn’t stop the words from grinding into Dallin’s chest.
“I want to know.”
All Dallin could do was nod, dip his head, and close his eyes. “If it’s what you really want.” He sucked in a long breath. “I already gave you my word. Tonight.”
Wil was silent for a long time, just looking at Dallin, measuring. Finally he nodded, even smiled, the bastard—a quick flash of teeth in the dark—then leaned in and kissed him, soft and sweet.
“Tonight, then.” Wil reached out and squeezed Dallin’s hand around the reins. “C’mon.” A quick nod toward the waiting crowd down the path. “Let’s get this part over with.”
3
MEETING THE rest of the Old Ones was not quite as daunting as it had been back up at the caves. For one, Wil supposed, he was tired and sore and rather anxious, thinking the Brethren might be behind any bush or rock, and his attention was spread too thinly to concentrate on worrying about whether or not the Old Ones were judging him. For another, the altered circumstances lent them a normalcy Thorne, Siddell, and Marden seemed to have lacked. It probably helped that Dallin paused more or less impatiently to let them make their introductions while he had words with the commander of the Weardas who’d apparently escorted them and then whisked Wil off before the Old Ones could do much more than present more gifts.
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