Aisling 2: Dream

by Carole Cummings

  “This isn’t exactly my area of expertise, and I’m still stumbling a little blind here. But what you’ve got, Wil…

  it’s huge. Don’t you know that? Can’t you feel it?”

  Wil swallowed, looked away. This was the hardest part to accept, the part that… hurt. Offended. Scraped at what little sense of right and fair he had and clawed it raw.

  “Hey.” The warm hand on Wil’s shoulder tightened again, shaking him lightly. “Hey.”

  It was the first time in quite a while that the touch felt heavy. Wil couldn’t help it—he shifted a jerky shrug, flinched out of the grip. “No,” he muttered, near-truculent, “I can’t feel it.”

  He wanted to feel it. He wanted to touch it, tame it to his hand, direct it wherever he pleased and… and do what?

  Burn the world, like Calder feared? Cure it? A little bit of both? Perhaps aim it at a select few and never have to run again?

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  “Well,” Dallin said slowly, a little more cautiously than before, “we’re going to need to change that. Soon.”

  A pause and a heavy dip in the mattress to Wil’s side as Dallin’s bulk shifted. “We’re going to test it. And then we’re going to keep testing it, and you’re going to learn to use it, so that, if we end up coming up against Siofra, or anyone else that wants to hurt you or take from you…

  well. It won’t be so easy this time.”

  Wil paled—he actually felt it. Stared at his hands as they clenched tight in his lap.

  Easy.

  “What was the word Millard used?” Dallin went on.

  “Design, right? He said you were blind to yours, that you wouldn’t be able to see it until you were ready. So, we need to get you ready. Because I’d lay down just about anything that the dreams, the Threads—that isn’t what you’re meant to do.”

  Abruptly queasy, Wil sprang from the cot, lurched the few steps across the little room, propped an elbow to the wall and leaned into it. Through a whining buzz in his head, he heard the cot creak.

  “Wil? Are you all—?”

  “Don’t.” Wil flung his hand back, warning, acidly satisfied when the creaking stopped abruptly. Touch me right now and see how fast you lose the hand, rattled at the back of his throat. He choked it off, shook his head and laid it to his forearm. There were too many things shrieking in his mind, too many questions, too many answers he didn’t want, too much anger and fear, and fear of the anger, and all of it clogged in his chest. “There was nothing bloody easy about it.” Nearly a wheeze, forced past the scalding blockage in his throat.

  “I know that, I wasn’t—”

  “There’s nothing bloody easy about knowing it now.

  How d’you know?” Through his teeth. “How d’you 228

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  know any of this? How can you… I don’t… how—?”

  “Because, Wil, it isn’t normal to bleed, it isn’t normal to be in pain all the time. You work your fingers bloody because it’s too big for you; it’s not your job, it’s His.

  It hurt you when Siofra made you change the patterns because they’re not yours to change, you said it yourself.”

  A quick pause then Dallin’s voice edged sharper: “Who told you it was your task? Was it the Father? Or was it Siofra?”

  Wil ground his teeth. “I don’t know.” Damn it, he was getting awfully bloody sick and tired of repeating that phrase. “No one. Neither. It just…” He pushed himself away from the wall, turned, slumped back. “It’s how it’s always been. It’s… it was… it was the whole point of—”

  Again, he bit it off, pushed his back into the wall like he was trying to physically recoil from the words themselves.

  If they were never spoken, perhaps they’d never be true.

  “Except it isn’t,” Dallin said, like the words weren’t twisting right into Wil’s chest, driving the breath from him. “It never was. Earth, air, fire, water—not dreams, not this… pushing thing you do. You shocked the shit out of Calder with that one, y’know; he didn’t know you could do it, which means it isn’t something any Aisling before you has done. Whatever you started out to be, you’ve gone beyond it, and I’ve a feeling you’ve only just brushed the surface of what you’ve really got. I think you’re—”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” It was making Wil’s head pound and his gut clench. It was making him want to stalk over and clock Dallin, just for knowing these things and making Wil know them, too.

  “We

  have to talk about it,” Dallin insisted. “I told you, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of time. Something’s coming, it might even be Siofra, and the way it’s crawling up my spine all the time makes me wonder if he was 229

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  closing in on us when we left Dudley. It feels the same for me, except it’s worse. And if he catches up and you’re not ready—”

  “Ready for what?” Wil snarled. “What d’you think it’s going to be? What d’you think is going to happen? Have you forgotten what I told you? Do you not understand that it doesn’t matter what I’ve got, that whatever it is, he can turn it against me? Use it to make me… damn it, I don’t even know, I thought… the point, my point…” His hands were cramping up, they were fisted so tight. “It’s so damned easy for you—made of mountains, for pity’s sake, you don’t even have to wonder… the reason I even exist—tending the Threads, that’s what I… and getting away from him fixed my… my crimes, or at least started to atone for them, but now I—”

  “Crimes? Are you out of your bleeding mind?” Dallin stood, stepped quickly over to Wil, made to reach out, but caught himself. He clenched his hand into a fist and dropped it to his side. “How can you even think you’re responsible for that?”

  “Because I’ve only brushed the damned surface, right?

  It’s huge, I’ve been holding it back, that’s what you said, and if I hadn’t been holding it back—”

  “He took it from you, he hurt you while doing it, how can you—?”

  “And yet you want me to test it, use it, so that it won’t be so ‘easy’ next time. You can’t have it both ways, Dallin, I’m either stronger than him or I’m not. If I’m not then I’m fucked, and probably you too, if you happen to be standing next to me, and if I am, I should’ve been able to—”

  “Should’ve been able to what? Understand it in all your six-year-old wisdom? Figure out on your own what it apparently takes a dozen Clan Elders years to teach and explain? And that’s not even considering whatever impact the leaf had.”

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  “He should’ve told me!” Wil cried. “He should’ve told me I’d got it all wrong, He should’ve told me the power was there, and He should’ve told me how to use it!” His eyes were burning, and he locked his jaw against it. “He should’ve told me… told me…”

  Dallin sighed, slumped down, budding anger gone now and replaced instead with a soft sympathy that nonetheless sat heavy on Wil’s shoulders. “Told you He was sick?”

  “Don’t do that,” Wil growled. “Don’t get all nice and compassionate, don’t dream up excuses, don’t patronize me. If it’s there, if it’s inside me, if you could feel it…”

  He shook his head, looked away, blinked at the blur of threatening tears. “Do me the small courtesy of not excusing everything I do, everything I get wrong, like I’m still that six-year-old without a real thought toward right and wrong. I should’ve known, and now that I do know, I should be… I don’t know what I should be, and there’s no excuse for that either. Though I’m sure that given enough time, you’ll manage to think of one. Or fifty.”

  “Is that what you think I do?” Dallin looked…

  wounded. Trying not to be angry. “You think anything I’ve ever said to you was not exactly what I believed at the time?”

  Wil stared down at the great smear of gray that was the cold stone floor. “That’s the problem
,” he answered, hushed and slightly wobbly. “You… believe.”

  “And your problem,” Dallin returned quietly, “is that you won’t see what’s right in front of you sometimes.”

  His hand twitched again, wanting to reach out, but he restrained himself once more; Wil almost wished he hadn’t. “You couldn’t see what was inside you while you were at the Guild because Siofra kept it from you.

  When you finally got away from him, you wouldn’t see it because that would mean it was there all along. And 231

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  because you’re convinced you deserve to be punished, you won’t see now that some things were just simply beyond your control. Wil, look at me.” He waited, but Wil couldn’t, simply could not drag his gaze up to meet whatever soft look was turned his way. “Wil…”

  Dallin’s hand came up, fingers gently sliding beneath Wil’s chin, tipping his head up. Wil thought about snapping his teeth, but couldn’t make himself do that, either. His eyes caromed into the dark depths of Dallin’s, clung there.

  “We’re talking about the strength of gods here,” Dallin said. “If whatever’s going on is big enough to weaken the Father the way it’s doing, do you really think it is or ever has been your ‘point’ to beat it? When you were six years old?” He shook his head, quirked his mouth in something that wanted to quiver into a sad smile, but he didn’t let it.

  “Rather an ego you’ve got there, innit?”

  Wil glared, jerked his chin until the rough, callused fingers let go. “Ego,” he muttered, annoyed.

  “Well, you must think awfully highly of yourself to assume all of this was in your control, or should’ve been.”

  “And yet you’re so bloody sure it could be now.”

  A long pause, then: “All right, fair enough.” Dallin returned to the cot and sank himself down. “Here’s what I think: I think someone—whether it was Siofra or the Brethren or both—tried to get hold of the Father and ended up with that Æledfýres instead. He’s sucking the life out of the Father somehow—that’s why He’s sick, that’s why He can’t help you, because He needs you to help Him, except He doesn’t want you to because He’s afraid for you.

  “I think you’re tending the Threads because no one else was doing it, and because you’re you, you assumed it must be your responsibility. And once Siofra figured out you could do it, that he could follow you when you did 232

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  do it—that you had the powers of a minor god, Wil, think about it—he pushed the rest back—” He paused, jerked his head back as though struck, eyes gone distant as they peered unseeing at a fissure in the stone to Wil’s left.

  “No, he didn’t push them back.” Low and soft, like he was talking to himself, thinking aloud. “I’ll bet good money he was siphoning them somehow, just like what that other is doing to the Father, so he could take it, have it all at his disposal, and leave you powerless to fight him.

  Except you did fight him, every way you could.”

  It hadn’t felt much like fighting to Wil. More like giving in and enduring, and hating himself for it almost as much as he hated Siofra. “But I didn’t—”

  “Yeah, you did.” Dallin looked oddly fierce. “You must’ve been tapping those powers somehow all these years, using them to survive when you really shouldn’t’ve done. The leaf should’ve killed you before ten years was out; forced withdrawal from it shouldn’t’ve been possible more than… say twice, maybe, and certainly not however-many times they actually did it. And you definitely don’t look your age, let alone like someone addicted to the stuff for fifty years. It must’ve been like some otherworld tug-of-war—him trying to drag them out of you and you holding on, not even knowing you were holding on… No wonder it hurt.”

  He puffed out something dazed and… Wil couldn’t tell; angry, maybe. Turned those dark eyes on Wil, intense.

  “Now tell me I’m wrong.”

  Wil… couldn’t. Stunned and hamstrung by the sudden onslaught of erudition, enlightenment, his entire life laid out before him in terms that illuminated and disoriented at the same time.

  “I…” He gagged into silence, shook his head, mute.

  “You can’t,” Dallin told him, that low level of throttled rage simmering just below the words. “Good. So, now 233

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  that you know it, now that you see…” He stood, stepped over and planted himself in front of Wil. Dallin didn’t stop himself this time but reached out, took hold of Wil’s arms. “Tell me you can’t do it.”

  Wil couldn’t do that, either. He didn’t even try.

  You keep looking at me like I really am astounding.

  You keep looking at me like you think I really can do anything. Prisoner, prey, addict, renegade, killer, user—

  that’s all I’ve ever been, and yet you look at me and tell me I can step into a task meant for a god, and you bloody make me believe you.

  Don’t you know we’re going to be the end of each other? Why aren’t you as terrified as I am?

  He didn’t say any of it. Instead, he stared into those simmering coals Dallin had for eyes, saw the tender intensity beneath the fury caged there, waiting for someone else: vengeance stifled and left to simmer, and biding its time ’til it found the ones who’d hurt the one he cared for. Me, Wil thought stupidly, the one he cares for—that’s me. Angry and indignant—for him—like it had been at the city’s gate.

  Righteous Protector; Remorseless Avenger.

  Warp and Weft.

  Wil let himself believe in it, let it enfold him, just for a moment, and finally— finally—understood why all of this so unnerved him.

  Something he’d never had, that’s what this was, and not something he could tuck away in his pack and clutch to his chest. It could go away or be taken, he could destroy it with his own hands or even a word. He never got to keep anything, it all went away or was stolen, all of it. And he’d never had anything he so badly didn’t want to lose.

  So, what was he supposed to do? Refuse it so it wouldn’t hurt when he lost it? Start lamenting now for 234

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  something he might never have to do?

  Or take hold and thieve whatever small pleasures came his way?

  I’ve got magic in me. All I have to do is find it and use it. He thinks I can do it, and he’s never been wrong about anyone, he said so. The power of a minor god—surely that’s enough to change fate?

  Something rose up in Wil, something he recognized, a rebellion that had more than once kept him from giving in when giving in was the only choice. Defiance. A bone-weary fatigue of looking at the world through eyes wild and wary. A fiery desire to take and hold and expose what was him, lay it out plain and say This is what I am; acknowledge it, respect it or leave me be. A driving need to own control over his own destiny—once and for all.

  Vicious little shit, he told himself resolutely, who never bloody quits. It’s a good thing—he said so.

  He lifted his chin, locked his gaze onto Dallin’s, took a long, deep breath.

  “All right,” he said slowly. “I want you to shave. And then I want to have sex again. And then I want to sleep.

  And then…” He set his shoulders and nodded. “And then we’ll do what you want. We’ll test.”

  Dallin stared. Then he blinked. “Uh,” he returned, just as slowly, and raised his eyebrows. He lifted a hand to rub at the bristly growth on his chin. It took a moment, but his mien eventually moved from slightly staggered to mildly smug. He smiled—small and a little bit dazed. “As you will, then,” was all he said.

  He’d dreamt alone. Judging by the fact that he wasn’t hanging off the side of the small cot, and the lack of warmth swathed to his skin, he guessed he’d slept alone, 235

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  too. At least he woke that way.

  Dallin’s shape had been there, just like always, Watching, but less substantial than that to which Wil had just late
ly become accustomed. Not sleeping, then.

  He’d looked for Father, had called out, but only got silence in return. Just as well. Despite all of the answers he hadn’t wanted that had preceded it, he’d managed to grasp a bit of substance out of what was an otherwise somewhat empty existence, and he wasn’t altogether ready to let go of it yet. Seeing the lethargy of the Father for what it apparently truly was would only displace it with new grief.

  Wil stretched, loosed a little groan, groped blind for the pillow and dragged it over his head. Burrowed deeper into the sheets. He felt… good. Rested. Content.

  It had been slower the second time, more time spent on exploration and the insistence on feeling every sensation, but no less intense. More of a sharing than a taking. A little more fear inside the pleasure; it hadn’t really been empty the first time, but this time he’d known it going in, and he couldn’t help the little jags in his chest every time the knowledge tripped through the void of bliss that was his mind. A tiny smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. A little bit scary was all right. A little bit scary was… rather nice, actually. Reminded him to keep feeling.

  “Bloody hell,” he mumbled into the pillow, “Go to bed a man and wake a complete sap. What the fuck?”

  The low murmur of voices dug its way through blankets and pillow, teased at the edge of his hearing.

  Dallin’s voice, and… had to be Calder. Not an argument, which was good—Wil was a little tired of those. They might need to be careful of Calder, but they needed him nonetheless. If for nothing else than to get them into Lind without a big, messy incident. Wouldn’t that be just his 236

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  luck?—arriving at the border of a place he’d never wanted to go, only to be shot down for fear of a power he didn’t even know how to use.

  Irony, thy name is… whatever my name is.

  He snorted, a heavy, satisfied sigh curling from his chest, then dragged himself up to his elbows, blinked and squinted until the room came into focus. Someone had lit all the lamps in the passageway and the two that framed his doorway; it must be morning. You couldn’t really tell down here. The only way he’d kept track that first day was by gauging the time by content of the meals Shaw had brought him.