He wants to make it a demand, Wil can see it bubbling behind his eyes, but he’s refraining, relying on a trust that wasn’t there as little as several days ago, but strong enough now that Brayden apparently feels confident in testing it. It doesn’t irk Wil like he would have thought it would; instead, it makes him want to rise to it.
“I’ve nowhere else to be.” He stretches out his hand, lays it lightly in Brayden’s. “Lead on,” is all he says.
The regret is almost instantaneous; he doesn’t know what he was expecting—he didn’t think he’d been expecting anything—but the sensation of finding himself behind the eyes of another is intrusive and unnerving and absolutely bloody terrifying. It’s only the fact that he can still feel Brayden’s great hand about his, holding on, tethering— “It’s important,” he whispers to Wil, “I swear I wouldn’t show you, else.” —that Wil doesn’t scream and jerk himself back. He purposefully controls his breathing, answers, “Just don’t leave me alone in here,” and lets himself be guided.
Wandering, searching, years and years, and still his Charge stays hidden—hides from him. It’s deliberate, he can feel it, and he can’t fathom it, but there’s trouble, deep fear and pain within the knowing. So, he keeps searching, moves from one blank road to another. The Old Ones are no help, lost his Thread the moment they heard the final cry from the last Guardian, filled with betrayal and rage, and the deep regret of failure. And now the Aisling has been waiting for nearly two decades, waiting for a new Guardian to grow and learn and train, and finally come find him, but failure has marked the search from the first step.
Others have gone before him, while he grew and earned his Marks, twice-brave men, for they’d taken on the Calling without the Blessings that would shield them, stepping into the shoes of the Guardian without the Guardian’s protections, without even the barest knowledge of the Guardian or his Charge. Seekers, scouring the countryside in random directions, waiting for the tug of an invisible hook so they might follow, find that which was too precious to lose but is lost nonetheless.
None have returned, all of them blank roads, and their blood cries out to him, but it’s only so much noise beneath the cries and screams of the Aisling. He writhes with it, it’s under his skin, he can hear but he can’t see, and he tries to call out, but there is too much rage. It’s like a wall of anger and agony, and he can’t break through it.
His Charge will not hear him, refuses him, refuses the Mother, so the Watcher is blind but not deaf, and he keeps searching.
One name stands out amongst the cacophony of bewildered pain, blurred and garbled, indecipherable, like it’s being deliberately skewed, but snarled over and over again through deep-dark betrayed hopelessness. He answers, or tries to answer, calling out his own name, begging the Aisling—Just let me through, I’ve come to help you, the Mother hears your call—trying to break through the desperate denial, but it butts up against a wall so thick and strong it only lances back into him.
He is hunted here, in the land of his enemies, for he has the look of the Coimirceoir, too obviously a child born of the Mother, of Lind, Her own Cradle. He can change his hair, can speak the language, but he can’t change his size, and so he ventures among them only when he has to and only fleetingly. Still, his trail is followed, he can feel it, and he doesn’t know by whom, but if they know of him, they know of the Aisling, so he allows a slip now and then, leaves a marker.
He’s close, he’s been close for days now, circling about the city cautiously, hearing the cries waking and dreaming, but he couldn’t determine the where until The Turning revealed him; they know now he Watches, for he couldn’t keep back his shout of dismay when the slender figure tottered on the parapet, moving with too-obvious intent. Foolish and reckless, he’d made a run for the Gates and revealed himself. They shouldn’t know, they shouldn’t understand, and yet he saw them understanding as he’d stood there at the Gates, trying to figure the best way through them. Saw them recognize him, even through the henna in his hair and beard, and the cloak about his hunched shoulders.
So, he lets them follow, lets them believe he is unaware that the Watcher is watched. He allows them to come upon him in the deeps of night, allows them to accost him.
He’ll give them a token fight until he sees their numbers, then he’ll take out all but one and force from him the final key. But surprise works against him, for they wear his Mark, they have power they shouldn’t, and it’s harder than it should be to thwart it and regain his advantage.
The Mother’s Blessing shields him, but not enough, there are too many. He takes seven down to three and then to one, his own wounds many and mostly superficial, but one leaks blood that seeps near-black from just below his ribs, and he thinks perhaps it’s mortal.
He can’t die, he can’t —it’s already been too long, and the Aisling suffers. He can’t leave his Charge—here to endure through another two decades, waiting and not knowing. He staunches the bleeding as best he can, but he’s weak now, tired. The one man left knows it, and he chuckles, blood seeping from between his lips, down his chin, his own wound gory and open, a deep gouge down his chest to his belly.
“The Aisling belongs to us, brave Watcher,” he says.
“We Watch and shall have what is ours, where you have failed in your blindness. We are the Guardians now.”
“He belongs to no one.” It’s a snarl, somewhere between pain and fury, and he clenches his teeth against both, lifeblood leaking from between his fingers. “He is his own, and he suffers—I can hear his cries, and you dare to call yourself Guardian! What do they do to him in those towers?”
He doesn’t really want to put pictures with the sounds that wind through his head. He wants to kill this man, squeeze the last breath from his throat and smile as he does it, so that the pretender will know with his dying thought that the true Guardian will heed his Call, will shatter whatever cogs of their sick scheme are grinding even now.
“We are Called by the Father,” the man whispers, spits weakly, blood and saliva making wide tracks over pale skin. “Born in the blood of your predecessor, fed to the Father so that He may break the bonds your Mother cast upon Him. The Aisling suffers now for his weakness, his very life a blasphemy, for he serves the Guild as he should the Father. Dúil. Elemental. He deserves no name. He rejects the Mother, and Her Soldiers will not have him, but the day of the new Guardians approaches.”
The man is insane, his blue eyes on fire above his stolen Mark. He speaks of the Father as though he were some ghoulish revenant, wakened by the blood of fallen Guardians, and the Mother his jailer.
“You do not speak of the Father. You blaspheme of dearg-dur, of Daeva—the Mother and the Father do not suffer either to live. It is law ! You twist your own religion, and make of the Mother’s Gift a tool for—”
He sees the flash of the knife too late, tries to cry out as it buries itself in his throat, but his own blood chokes him. He falls back, eyes wide, staring at the stars that wink and sing his Thread into the weave of a shroud.
It is complete. He has failed.
‘Forgive me.’
He speaks it to no one, but pushes it through the cracks in the wall that the Aisling builds against him. The stars belong to the Father, but he reaches out to them, sings his Story into their hearts, so at least they may know what happened here.
“Your Mother is dead, Watcher.” The man leans over him, blots out the stars, and the knife flashes again, slashes the Marks from off his cheek. “We die together now.”
The man’s voice is weaker. He doesn’t know if it’s because he is fading or the man is. He doesn’t think it matters; he is dying, he has failed, and the Aisling is left once again bereft of his Gift, tricked and entangled, while his Guardian leaks his life on alien ground, this false guardian’s lies in his ears.
‘Mother!’ his heart calls. ‘Hear me. I have failed in my Task, and so I Call the next.’ He takes one last look at the stars, listens to them twine his dirge with the new Song of anot
her, closes his eyes.
“Brayden,” he gurgles through the blood pooled in his mouth, in his throat, drowning him. “Wæpenbora.”
And behind his eyes, enwombed in stillness as his lungs give up their struggle, enwrapped in silence as his heart beats its last, the Mother pulls his head to her breast, and weeps quietly into his hair.
Brayden stands next to him as he opens his eyes, roosts back into himself like tired feet into comfortable old boots. Wil notices the hand first, still wrapped about his; he thinks he should be jerking back, but his reflexes abandoned him days ago where Brayden is concerned, and the whole business seems rather silly to him now, so he doesn’t.
“What’s dearg-dur?” he asks, a little breathless.
“Incubus,” Brayden replies. “Soul-eater.”
Wil nods a little, unsurprised. “You’re not the first.”
His voice is strangely flat. Brayden doesn’t answer, only gives Wil’s hand a bit of a squeeze, doesn’t let go. Wil sucks in a shaky breath. “I’ve been…”
He’d been living that not-life for bloody decades , tricked into believing betrayal, into committing his own.
“You’re the third?” Wil asks, dull and too quiet.
Brayden nods slowly. “You weren’t forgotten.”
Wil can’t help but put Brayden’s face on those others, can’t help the weight of responsibility, the guilt, the sorrow. “How do I ever atone for this?” he whispers.
“You don’t,” Brayden says forcefully. “Fifty or more years of treachery, Wil. Fifty or more years of being lied to.”
It sounds so… easy. Wil would really like to believe it, except… “Oh,” he breathes, closes his eyes. “No wonder She hates me.”
“Hey.” Brayden’s hand tightens about Wil’s and squeezes hard. “If that were the case, would I be here?”
It would almost be easier if he weren’t. It would almost be easier if Wil had just died back there in Ríocht, never knowing any of this.
“Wil,” Brayden insists, “this isn’t yours.”
“How can it be anyone else’s?” he asks hoarsely. “He died because I wouldn’t hear him.”
“You wouldn’t hear him because you couldn’t; he died because he was just a second or two too slow.”
A wet, humorless snort wends from Wil. “And what of you, then?” he wants to know. “Do I get to watch it happen through my own eyes next time?”
“Maybe,” Brayden answers steadily. “But this is what I’ve chosen.”
Wil shakes his head. “You were dragged into it, you said it yourself, you had no more choice than—”
He stops short when Brayden lifts an eyebrow, a smile curling clever and knowing. “There it is,” he says softly.
“Don’t take on the choices of others. You’ll never get yourself from out that cage.”
Wil jolts a little, frowns and looks down. Thinks about cages and prisons and keys…
“C’mon, then,” Brayden says, softly cajoling. “I’ve brought you a present.”
The sound of running water sluices over Wil’s senses, soft and comforting. He peers up, a tired smile curling at his mouth, though there are tears on his cheeks—someone else’s grief, his own a paltry offering intertwined—so he leaves them there, unashamed.
“How did you do this?” he wants to know.
Brayden smiles, shrugs. “It’s a dream, innit?” he answers, as though that explains everything, follows Wil’s gaze. “The Flównysse. I’m not sure how precise it is. It’s been years, but this is how I remember it.”
“It’s beautiful.”
It is. The current flows clear and blue-green, rippling over stones smoothed by Time streaming over and past, ages of gentle destruction. Starlight sinks into its liquid furrows, placid breakers winking and swelling, then moving on, carrying a bit of night downstream.
He can hear the voices of the stars inside the flux and flow, humming along with the rush in almost perfect synchronicity to the tender breeze that lifts his fringe from his brow. The horror and sorrow of a moment ago is still thrumming beneath it all, coursing along as surely as the river runs, but its edges have stopped slicing into his heart. It allows him to look at it all with a mind as clear as the rippling water. He wonders if that’s why Brayden chose this place, and thinks yes, quite likely.
He turns his face up to the stars. “They kept the tale safe,” he murmurs, looking back at their faces reflected bright and soft on the water. “Their memories are long, but they never dream,” he tells Brayden. “There is so much more I would know from them.”
Brayden is silent for a moment, then: “You see why I had to show you.”
It isn’t a question, but it wants to be; the anxious curl of it is almost a plea for understanding and forgiveness.
“I see,” Wil answers slowly, turns to Brayden, finally pulls his hand free, but not for the sake of discomfort.
“I’m sorry.”
A long sigh winds from Brayden’s broad chest. “So ’m I,” he murmurs.
“I’m right to trust you.” Wil almost feels like a little boy looking for approval, but somehow, with Brayden, he can’t.
“I hope so,” Brayden returns, casts his glance out over the river. He looks sad. “Be careful of Calder. I don’t know why, but something…” He pauses, shakes his head, perplexed, maybe, but resolute. “Shaw seems all right.
If anything happens, you stay with him, you hear? If I can’t—”
“Shaw is not the Guardian,” Wil answers, pushing stern command into his tone. “You said you chose this—well, I choose you. You’ve dragged me through weeks of trials and persuasions, and you can’t cut out on me just when you’ve managed to convince me you know what you’re doing.”
Brayden rubs at his brow, frustrated. “But I don’t
know what I’m doing, that’s the point. I’ve been guessing, stumbling blind, and now look where it’s got us—got you —I almost got you killed, and I don’t know if I’m going to—”
He pauses, chokes out a shaky sigh. He doesn’t have to finish. Wil knows what he was going to say, and he has to keep himself from growling derision at Brayden and rolling his eyes at the stubborn insistence on standing on ground he can see.
Wil sets his shoulders, determined. Brayden’s talking about dying, like he’s already accepting it, and it pisses Wil off. “Men died because I wouldn’t see,” he tells Brayden. “If you won’t, it may be me next time.”
Brayden shakes his head. “I don’t know what that means.”
Wil considers for a moment. Brayden will keep refusing if this isn’t handled just right. And Wil really needs Brayden to stop refusing. He needs the Guardian, he knows that now. He needs this Guardian—Wæpenbora, shaman, healer—who’s preparing to die because he won’t see what he is.
“Heal my hand.” Wil holds up his right hand—there were no bandages around it only a moment ago, but there are now because he willed it so. He deliberately draws the knife from his boot to slice away dirty linen, pulls it back to reveal fingers that are no longer fat and tight, but still somewhat bruised, and from the looks of them, permanently crooked. His wrist is ringed black and green with smudges of blue and yellow blooming up his forearm.
Brayden takes it all in with a frown. “What are you talking about?” he wants to know.
Wil takes hold of Brayden’s hand, turns it palm-up and lays his own atop it. “It’s a dream, innit?”
“Wil…” Brayden sighs, a little impatiently. “I don’t have magic. I can’t heal. I’m sorry.”
“You can conjure a river, but you can’t do me this kindness?”
“It isn’t the same thing. This…” Brayden waves his hand about, growls a little. “It’s just a dream.”
Wil thinks for a moment, alters his approach: “If you could do anything, would you heal my hand?”
Brayden rolls his eyes, snaps, “Of course.”
“Then do it,” Wil insists. “It’s just a dream, right? You can have magic in a dream. Anyone can
have magic in a dream. Pretend you can do anything. We’ll try flying next.” Brayden’s scowling, his mouth twisting tight. Wil steps in close, looks up, encouraging. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he says quietly. “It’s just a dream. Just try.”
Brayden is still reluctant, his face pale even here, so Wil knows the pain is leaking through. Wil would like to spare Brayden the reluctant knowing that has to come, but Brayden may well be his own only chance. “Take the pain away,” Wil demands, insistent now. “Heal me.”
Another roll of the eyes, but Brayden doesn’t look like he doesn’t believe—he looks like he doesn’t want to believe, so he hesitates. Wil thinks that if he’d instructed Brayden to heal himself, Wil would still be cajoling; the fact that it’s someone else in pain is what moves the man to peer sideways at the Guardian he doesn’t want to know he is. Wil can actually see it happening, see the wheels turning, and he hides a small smirk in his collar.
He’s surprised that it happens so fast; he’s downright shocked at the level of intimacy—not only that Brayden initiates it, but that Wil allows it. Wil hadn’t even been completely sure that he’d convinced Brayden, hadn’t been sure Brayden would actually try on his first go. And yet, one moment Brayden’s hand holds Wil’s loosely in his palm, and the next, long fingers are clamping about, sending stinging bolts of pure energy throbbing through muscle and bone. A jarring welter of primal power jolts up from Wil’s fingers and all through his hand and arm, then striates throughout his whole body.And then it just… settles over him, tender and bracing, all at once, like a comforting hold—asking.
Wil can feel Brayden touching his soul, actually feel it.
And doesn’t want it to ever stop. Warm and bursting with reverberant serenity. It does more than heal Wil’s hand; it rocks his body and spirit in contented quietude.
It’s almost orgasmic in its amity and intimacy.
It’s better than leaf. Better than anything. Ever.
Wil takes a long, deep breath, unashamed that he leans into Brayden’s chest until he finds his balance. He lingers perhaps a few seconds longer than he needs to before he pulls back again.
The Aisling Trilogy Page 46
