When they finally did, Dallin arranged his own bedroll in front of the threshold, lining his weapons to either side so he could reach them quickly. He’d known this moment would come; he’d been pawing at it all day, and had known there was no real alternative. And he’d known that broaching the subject would be uncomfortable, at best—downright traumatic, at worst. But he hadn’t guessed there would already be so much tension between them when it came to the point. A penitent sigh ground out his throat, and Dallin closed his eyes, rubbed at his brow.
“Tomorrow, all right?” Wil said softly, as though he’d read Dallin’s mind. “I’ll tell you all about Old Bridge tomorrow.”
Dallin nodded, surprised to realize he was actually relieved, then laid himself down on his bedroll, closed his eyes. “Blow out the lamp, will you?” When he heard Wil comply, Dallin allowed himself to drift into a light, erratic doze.
***
He smells the smoke first, and then he hears the cries, the screams, the clash of steel-on-steel and then the thunk and squelch of steel-on-bone, the heavy, gritty grind of cart wheels on hardpack. He can’t see, and he knows it’s only because his eyes are closed, but he doesn’t want to open them, so he doesn’t.
He’s left her behind, allowed her to force him into the cart, he hadn’t fought hard enough, and now he’s running away, and she’s staying behind. “I love you—remember that always. I’ll find you.” Her last words to him, and he’d wept and shouted at her—“You can’t make me, I can shoot, don’t send me away!”—and he hates her just a little bit, because he is supposed to be the man now, she had no right, and yet she’d all but carried him onto the cart, locked him in the little compartment beneath the boards, the tinker growling anxiously—“Nownownow, hurry, they’re coming!”—and him weeping like a child, closed up in his little coffin, out of the danger he’s leaving her behind to face alone.
A cool hand touches his brow, and a soft voice calls to him, “Come now, brave lad, open your eyes.”
He doesn’t feel brave, but he hasn’t heard her voice in so very long, wouldn’t hear it, refused to hear it, and he’s missed her so. He opens his eyes, blinks slowly.
She is not his mother, though she looks something like her, enough so that his heart gives a great wrench in his chest and an embarrassing little sob leaks out from his throat. Her hair is the gold of the setting sun, eyes blue and clear as mountain lakes, and she smiles at him, strokes his cheek. His eyes water, and he blinks, watches the curve of small, circular tattoos—no, scars—etch themselves along her cheekbone, lifting and stretching minutely with her soft smile.
Dallin frowns a little, reaches out, but doesn’t dare touch. “I’ve seen those marks,” he tells her. “But I can’t remember where.”
“And you will not, until you acknowledge your Calling.”
It has the tone of light chastisement, but she still smiles, and he doesn’t really understand, but he can’t care about anything else but that smile. She is young and old, ageless, and it’s odd because her features are rather plain, but somehow perfect, and she’s the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.
She is not his mother—she is All Mothers, she is
the Mother; Dallin thinks at first he should be kneeling, but decides it wouldn’t please Her, so he doesn’t.
“Is this a dream?” he whispers.
Her smile turns melancholy. “How could it be so,” She asks him kindly, “when you refuse such comforts?”
He means to answer, tell Her his dreams have never been a comfort and he doesn’t miss them, but he tries to wake up and can’t, and She smiles knowingly at him, so he doesn’t say anything. He peers about, realizes it’s utter darkness, and yet he can see everything, like it has its own inner-light. He can see himself, so much younger, leaning his back to the rough boards of the barn behind what will be the
Kymberly in only another several years, but he doesn’t know it in this when, this moment when he’d worn a fake smile and lied understanding.
“I love her,” Ramsford tells him, eyes to the ground, like he’s ashamed, and that by itself is enough to break Dallin’s heart, but he keeps anything that’s real behind his teeth.
“It’s time and past time,” he tells his friend. “Don’t look so glum, I understand.”
Ramsford shakes his head, leans up, lays a single chaste kiss to Dallin’s mouth. “You’ve half of my heart,” he tells him, almost angry and trying not to be. “But I need half of one who’ll give it.”
Dallin swallows hard, keeps his false smile. “She’s perfect,” he tells the man who is kissing him goodbye because he’s found someone who can give him what Dallin can’t. “She’s a brilliant girl. You’d be a fool not to snatch her before she twigs to your more unattractive habits.”
Ramsford snorts, peers up at Dallin, soft asking in his eyes. “Will you stand Second?” he asks quietly.
“Of course.” Dallin answers immediately, consciously controlling the wince, keeping the tiny little flare of anger from leaking into his eyes. “You’re my best friend,” he manages, proud that it sounds even and sincere. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“Did you love him?” She asks Dallin.
He stares, watches two young men whisper brave goodbyes, each speaking sweet, comforting lies, keeping truths where the other won’t see, so they can find their friendship again when their hearts stop breaking. He shakes his head, frowns.
“Not enough,” he tells Her.
He hadn’t, he’d always known it. He’d spent three years waiting for Ramsford to understand that what Dallin could give would never be enough, that he deserved so much more, and in all that time and all the time since, Dallin had never been able to understand why he couldn’t love someone so near-perfect the way he wanted to—the way he should’ve done.
“He was not the Weft to your Warp,” She murmurs.
Dallin nods, not really listening, instead watching himself kiss his lover a smiling goodbye in another when. “Yes,” is all he says.
“Have you ever loved?” She asks him gently.
Dallin only shakes his head, turns away.
“Show me those hands, now, little man,” his father says, gruff voice not as loud as it used to be before he’d gone off to the war, not as… present.
Dallin ignores the little bit of discomfort he doesn’t understand, puts out his grubby hands, and wriggles a bit as his father takes them up in both his great palms, turns them over. “Some lovely calluses you’ve here, lad,” his father tells him seriously. “You’ve been taking care of your mum good and proper while I’ve been away, then.” He nods with satisfaction.
Dallin’s proud smile near cracks his face. “Will you tell me about the war?” he begs. “Tell me how you got that scar,
pleeeeeease?”
He points to a long, jagged twist of flesh that ropes from the corner of his father’s eye and down to the crook of his mouth, cutting right through and hopelessly distorting the proud indigo Mark on his cheek. He’s writhing to hear the story of how his dad had scragged the scum who’d done it, for surely the bastard hadn’t got out from under Ailen Brayden’s sword after he’d left a mark like that.
But his father shakes his head, says, “Another time, lad.” And then he hugs his son, whispers into his hair, “The Old Ones have spoken. Great things wait for you, and dark times. Carry your name and your land in your heart always, lad. Never forget your name.”
Dallin snorts, pulls back. “How could I forget my own name?” he snickers.
His father smiles a little, but it’s sad and doesn’t touch his eyes. “What does Brayden mean?” he asks, brushes Dallin’s hair from out his eyes.
“Brave,” Dallin answers promptly.
“And what does Dallin mean?”
“Um…” Dallin smirks a little, puts a finger to his chin and squints up at the sky, pretending to think about it. His father flicks a narrow look at him, but Dallin can tell there’s a smile beneath it. He laughs again. “Pride’s people,”
he finally answers.
“And…?” his father prompts.
Dallin tries not to sigh. He’s played this game so many times, it’s a baby game, and he’s bored with it, but it’s almost like it used to be before his dad had gone away for so long, and it makes his father happy. “From the valley.”
“And what valley?” his father wants to know.
“Cildtrog.”
“Which is…?”
“Lind’s Cradle.”
His father grins—a real grin that touches his eyes this time—and he runs a rough hand through Dallin’s tangled mop of hair. “You’re a good boy, Dallin,” he tells him. “And as long as you never forget your name, you’ll always know your way home.”
Dallin grins back, bounces impatiently. “
Now will you tell me about your scar?”
“I will,” his father replies seriously. “But not today.” He cuffs Dallin lightly on the chin when a sulk begins to bloom. “None of that, now. Another time, lad.”
There will be no other time to hear the tale, no other time to learn the songs of his name, no other time to play the stupid baby game and make his father smile. Ailen Brayden came home to die and Dallin Brayden has very little else to remember him by.
Dallin swallows, tries again to wake himself up, but it seems he has no control over anything here.
“You have forgotten your name,” She tells him sadly.
Dallin frowns, offended, and turns a scowl on Her. “Never,” he defends.
“No?” She slips Her shoulder up in an elegant shrug, runs a finger over the marks on Her high cheekbone, then does the same to his. “Where is home?” She asks.
His scowl deepens, truly insulted now, and despite the sincere indignation, he almost says Putnam, and She’s laughing now, so he doesn’t say anything.
“Where did you get that scar?”
Dallin sits across the table from a dark-haired stranger who pretends to be a man named Wilfred Calder from Lind. The man doesn’t answer him, doesn’t answer anything, until:
“What did you do to merit shackling?”
And the man chuckles—a bleak, tired little thing—tells him, “I had the audacity to exist.”
Dallin reaches across the small cot, runs his fingertips over the lumpy thing, tremors vibrating beneath the man’s skin and right up Dallin’s arm. “Was it the Guild?” Dallin asks.
Wil shakes his head, turns his hand in Dallin’s grip, takes hold. “I’ll tell you all about Old Bridge tomorrow.”
Pain shoots up Dallin’s arm and he gasps, tries to jerk himself away, but he can’t move. He closes his eyes, clenches his teeth; there’s a pull inside him, and he doesn’t have time to fight it, to even think about fighting it, before he’s jostled, thrown.
“You wanted to know it all,” She whispers in his ear, takes hold of his hands and guides him gently. “Take your feet from out the quick-mud and look.” Her tone is more stern than it had been. “Guardian. You have been Called.”
He’s not himself, he doesn’t feel like himself, and he can see a shape that looks like him over his shoulder, blank-faced and Watching, and it’s like he can see out of two sets of eyes. The vertigo is nauseating, so he tries to swallow around it, but he can’t. Her hands still hold him, direct him, gentle but implacable; She guides him and he lets Her, lets go of one Self, slips into another.
It isn’t him, this other Self, but he sinks into it smoothly, with Her to guide him. Another language enwraps his thoughts, his mind, his everything, and it’s strange because he can understand, he can understand all languages, and it shouldn’t make sense, but it does. He’s learned a lot in dreams—too much and not enough—he’s learned what people want from him, and that he’s helpless to stop them from taking it.
He’s confused, dazed, but there are other walls here besides the towering stone of the Guild, and he almost weeps in relief. He thinks maybe he’s dreaming—it’s been so long since he wasn’t—but it has the feel of life to it, solid and real.
“You’re safe,” someone whispers to him.
He doesn’t know the man’s name—there are four of them, all with the Old Ones’ Marks on their cheeks, but they’re off somehow, they’re wrong; it’s all horribly confusing and no one’s told him a name—so he hazily notes the way this one’s hair and beard curl crazily, and he names this one Curly.
“The Guild will never find us here,” Curly tells him, pats his arm awkwardly. “Siofra can’t hurt you anymore.”
He wants to kiss Curly’s hand, wants to weep on his shoulder and tell him how grateful he is, but he can’t seem to make his mouth work or keep his eyes open, and everything’s spinning. A light shiver runs from the top of his head, right down his spine, and he shudders weakly.
“What’s wrong with him?” one of them wants to know. He’s tall and skinny, with a nose like a hooked beak, so this one becomes Hawk. “You don’t suppose they’ve addled him, do you?”
Curly frowns, shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he answers slowly. “It shouldn’t matter.”
He wants to take serious exception to that, but he can’t find the energy to be offended. “Not addled,” he whispers, or at least he thinks he does, but they don’t listen to him.
“C’mon, then,” Curly says, lifts him up by the shoulders and half-drags/half-leads him over to a plain, wooden chair in the middle of the room. He lets the man push him down to sit in the chair, blinks woozily at him as Curly leans down to peer suspiciously into his eyes. “I can’t tell if he’s in there,” he mutters. “Let’s see if it makes a difference.”
And then fingertips are digging into his scalp, pressing hard, but he doesn’t flinch away, doesn’t complain. These men have rescued him—he’s free, beyond all hope, beyond anything—and he’ll do whatever they ask, whatever they want, so he tries to sit obediently still as the fingers press in harder. Curly’s eyes are closed, and he’s sweating now, thin trickles running slowly down his temples.
He can almost feel it on his own skin, like an itch on the inside of his head. He tries to sit still, tries to be good—they’ve rescued him, he’s safe, and he’s
oh, so grateful—but now that he’s noticed it, it won’t go away, and it’s driving him insane. Itchitchitch, and now he’s starting to sweat, too, his stomach is flopping slowly about in his gut. So, he reaches up—just a small movement, a quick scratch and then he’ll sit still again—but when he touches his head, all his hair is gone.
He can’t help the little gasp.
Did he have lice? Did he misbehave and they’d punished him?
“Why have you cut off my hair?” he rasps, but his voice sounds funny—scratchy and weak, like he’s not used it in a long time—and Curly either doesn’t hear him or ignores him, fingers bearing a steady pressure, making his eyes throb.
He slides his fingers up and over, feels something warm and sticky sliding from beneath Curly’s fingers and tickling behind his ear. He draws his hand back, lifts it close, blinks until it comes into focus. He’s bleeding. They’ve cut off his hair, and he’s bleeding.
He can’t make sense of it. He stares at his fingertips, turns his hand in front of his bleary eyes.
The itch is driving him mad, spiking splinters into his head, into his mind, pushing at him, digging and prying, and he stares at the blood and realizes the itch is
inside, Curly’s trying to get in, pushing, just like Siofra. He can’t get his mind around it, at first, he just keeps staring at his hand like it’s going to speak an answer.
They haven’t come to save him at all. They’ve only brought him to a new nightmare.
The betrayal is… bottomless. Shattering.
“C’mon, then, Aisling,” Curly whispers. “Give it to me, lad.”
“I can’t,” he tries to answer, but his voice cracks and breaks apart in his throat. He really can’t. It’s what he is, a part of him, inextricable, and he can’t let it go without letting go of everything.
“We are the new Guardians,”
the man tells him, angry now, like he’s got the right. “We come to arrest the corruption; the Vessel is weak and unworthy. Let it go and it can all stop.”
Guardians. Ah. That explains it, then. He should have known. The Marks, after all. He wonders vaguely where the other went, and if he’ll be angry that others have stolen his Task from him. He thinks he snorts a little.
The pain comes then, hard and wrenching, all-encompassing and all at once, and he leans over and retches on Curly’s boots.
Curly jumps back, cursing. The pushing stops, the prying stops, and he slumps in relief, weeping and shaking. There’s blood all over Curly’s fingers, and he thinks for a moment that the man has dug right into his skull. He reaches up, feels bare skin where his hair used to be, and shapes carved into his head, right into his skin, eight of them, right where Curly’s fingers had been, and he’s all over blood, dripping everywhere, and how has he not noticed this before?
The Aisling Trilogy Page 31
