The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  He loved Father, though. Or, at least, he assumed that the hurt and grief at hearing the things Dallin had told him were some form of love. Perhaps it was merely selfish fear. What was Wil supposed to do, after all, if He suddenly wasn’t there anymore? Would Wil wink out, too? The world? Was all of this running and agonizing and fear for nothing? Was any of it going to matter in the end?

  “Stupid question. You know it doesn’t matter, at least not to you, and your end is coming a lot quicker than you’d like to believe, and only gets closer, the faster you run.” A growl and a quick jerk of his head. “Why am I even bothering?”

  And what of Her? Shouldn’t She be doing…

  some thing? The Father’s warrior-goddess, patron to shamans and healers—shouldn’t She be using Her own magic? Was that why Father couldn’t help Wil?—because She wouldn’t help Him?

  …Couldn’t?

  “She’s a bloody goddess.” Scraped upwards from the anger simmering in his chest, ground out through his teeth. “Couldn’t. Right.”

  He scrubbed at his face, blew out a heavy breath.

  Maybe He hadn’t told Wil because there was nothing Wil could do. Maybe He’d told Dallin because there was something Dallin could. Maybe… maybe…

  “There’s always got to be a sacrifice, hasn’t there?” he whispered, not as bleak as he would’ve thought—more cold and detached, resigned. “Is that what I am? Is that why he’s here? Some sort of reciprocity for the blood of that first Watcher? Balance out the scale?”

  “Devon,” came from the door, quiet and steady.

  Wil wasn’t even startled. He peered up, marked the broad silhouette leaning in the doorway, the failing torch just barely limning features set frank and measuring.

  “His name was Devon—your first Guardian,” Dallin went on, flipped his hand out, waved it, then crossed his arms over his chest. “It means defender. In case you wanted to know.”

  Wil hadn’t. He shook his head and let it drop to his arms, folded across the tops of his knees. “I want to be alone,” he replied softly, wincing a little at the coldness of the dismissal. “I want… You need your sleep.”

  “When you’re alone,” Dallin told him, the barest hint of a smile in his voice, “there’s no one about to poke holes in your conspiracy theories. You talk yourself into all manner of dire scenarios, every one of them some evil plan to bring about your end.” He paused; Wil could almost feel the piercing gaze cutting through the darkness, flaring into his chest. “So, what was that before?” Dallin asked mildly. “Hedging your bets?”

  It made Wil’s head snap up and his eyes narrow, strangely indignant, despite… everything. “I didn’t hear you complaining,” he snapped. “Or protesting.”

  Dallin shrugged. “What man would?”

  You would, Wil thought but didn’t say. And you’re not nearly so unaffected as you’re pretending. Trying to make it easy for me? Trying to make me believe that everything I do doesn’t hurt you in some way, that when I choose myself for the last time, it won’t live behind your eyes for the rest of your life?

  His hands fisted.

  Why couldn’t you have been a selfish bastard like everyone else? Why couldn’t you have been a monster? Why do you have to make me give a fuck?

  “What do you want?” he whispered, shaken.

  Dallin paused for a moment, looked down. “I wanted to know why you were apologizing.”

  Wil gave a little start. “You were awake.” He didn’t know why he was so surprised. The only time he’d ever seen Dallin sleep deeply enough not to jerk awake at the slightest noise was when he’d been drugged enough to make his teeth swim and trying not to die. “How long have you been standing there?” And why was this great lummox of a man the only one in the world who seemed able to sneak up on him? And how much had Wil said aloud?

  “Too long,” Dallin replied, distant. “Not long enough.

  Something in the middle.” His head came up, gaze once again slicing the darkness. “All of this…” He waved a hand between them then raised it to encompass… well, the universe, for all Wil knew. “It would be so much easier if you’d just be straight with me.”

  Wil sighed, ran a hand through his hair. Straight.

  Was there such a thing? Everything had its little hidden passageways and trapdoors. Even straight lines had their crooked little flaws, if one looked closely enough.

  “Is there something you want?” he asked, impatient now, overfaced and starting to quiver.

  Dallin didn’t answer right away. “What do I want?”

  he mused after a while. “You do ask big questions.” He shifted against the doorframe, scratching at that stupid beard. “I want you to know that I understand.”

  Wil puffed a jaded chuckle. You understand. Right.

  How about explaining it to me, then?

  “Terrific,” he said tiredly. “Thanks. Good night, Constable.”

  “It’s got to be a difficult thing,” Dallin went on quietly,

  “to ask of someone what you’ve asked of me, and then come to understand that…” For the first time, he faltered and looked away. “You don’t think so, but it’s better that I… care.” His voice was hushed, a little uneven.

  Wil closed his eyes and dipped his head back down to his knees. All right. So, you do understand. Which makes this… really fucking hard. Why do you have to keep making it so hard?

  “I’ll choose me.” Wil lifted his gaze, found the low glimmer of Dallin’s and held it. “Right up ’til the end.

  And I won’t care if it’s a betrayal. Someone with a gun to your head, or you with a gun to mine—it’s all the same.

  Someone’s going to end up with a bullet through the brain, even if I have to pull the trigger myself.”

  “You say that like you think I didn’t already know it,” Dallin told him calmly. He didn’t give Wil time to respond. “I need to know—was… before… was it merely to… seal the deal?”

  Seal the deal. Wil would’ve laughed if he didn’t think it would come out a watery sob. A pact made not in blood, but in something Wil hadn’t even known he’d been giving, hadn’t even known he’d had. And oh, save him, he hadn’t wanted to know.

  Dallin had been wrong—a lie would be so much easier than being straight. Somehow, Wil couldn’t make himself speak it.

  “No,” he whispered, nearly choked on it. “I…” He wanted to bow his head, look away, but he couldn’t. “I wanted it. And I knew you’d let me have it, because… because that’s what you keep doing, you keep… caring, and I don’t understand it, but I took it anyway, because that’s what I keep doing. I didn’t mean for it to be… wrong.”

  A longer pause this time, heavy, before Dallin finally spoke, voice soft and slightly strained: “And was it?”

  Lies wouldn’t come again. “No,” Wil answered, far too quiet and shaky. “Not for me.”

  He left the, Probably for you, unspoken. Dallin was sharp, surely he’d pick up on it.

  “Then might I suggest,” Dallin said, just as softly, “that we don’t waste whatever time we have?”

  Wil shook his head. Damn it, did he really have to spell it out for him?

  “I’m using you. I’ll keep on using you, as long as you’ll let me. And then I’ll use you some more. It’s what I do.”

  Inexplicably, Dallin snorted. “I know you believe that,” he answered. “But you also believed once that I’d find great pleasure in killing you.” He paused for a moment—not nearly long enough for Wil to process the implications. “You forget,” Dallin furthered softly, “that I see you.”

  Wil finally allowed himself to look away, dipped his head again, and slid his fingers into his hair. “And yet, you keep looking,” he muttered, stung and he didn’t know why.

  “Wil.” Louder, with a touch of command. “Look at me.”

  Reluctantly, Wil peered up from beneath his fringe.

  “You’re borrowing trouble,” Dallin told him soberly. “It won’t come to it. I won’t let
it.”

  If there was anyone who could make that statement truth, Wil reflected bleakly, it would be this man. And yet, no one and nothing could. He could argue the point, use some of that reason and logic of which Dallin was so fond, but the interesting thing about Dallin was that, for all of his quick-mud, once he believed in something, the belief became a fundamental part of his being, unshakable.

  No… that wasn’t right. The belief was there, but buried, held hostage by the sentinels of Reason and Logic; one merely needed to stymie the sentries to let the belief loose.

  And right now, for whatever reason, it seemed he’d chosen to believe in Wil.

  “I’m going to get you killed,” Wil whispered, small and strangled. “I may even end up doing it myself.”

  And I want to hate you for making me give a damn.

  Except I can’t.

  There’s your betrayal, Constable. And it appears I’m not strong enough to gentle the coming blow.

  “I don’t believe in fate,” Dallin answered. “I don’t believe in prophecies. You don’t need to believe in anything but yourself. And me. I know what I’m doing now, Wil. I know what this is about.”

  It made Wil’s eyes grow hot. He meant to demand explanations, answers to questions he’d never dared ask, but when he opened his mouth, “All right,” was all he said. Resigned. Defeated. Simply and profoundly unable to take another second of misery and all of the other tangled emotions twisting in his chest.

  Like he’d been waiting for permission, Dallin finally pulled himself away from the door, took two cautious steps into the room. He held out his hand. Waited.

  Wil only stared for a long moment, wound tight and vibrating. Some part of him knew exactly what was being offered, wanted it. Another part was dubious as to how to take it, backing away, afraid to take it, sure that it wouldn’t be there when he reached for it. Sure that he wouldn’t even recognize it, know what to do with it if he did manage to take hold. Sure that it would only make everything hurt more.

  But oh… you’ve already sipped the sweetness of that pain. A crueler addiction than the leaf, and it only took the one taste.

  Wil stood, very slowly, almost hoping that Dallin would grow impatient, withdraw his outstretched hand with a thwarted scowl, stalk away. He didn’t—the man had no end of patience, it seemed—still waiting there when Wil finally gained his feet, stared at that wide hand that had only a little while ago dragged strained cries and hungry whimpers from him… gentled him and held him while he flew apart from the inside-out.

  Wil took the hand. And then he stepped in close, took the embrace. Took the comfort inside it.

  This is my cage, right here, and I’ve gone and walked willingly into it after all.

  “The hearts of mountains, remember?” Dallin whispered into Wil’s hair. “I’m not done impressing you yet.”

  Wil juddered out something that was trying very hard to be a sob, but he forced it into a weak laugh instead.

  “Stop giving me hope,” he mumbled into Dallin’s chest, trying to find fury and missing completely. “It just isn’t funny anymore.”

  “Hm,” Dallin hummed; somehow, Wil could hear the small smile inside it. “Someone once accused me of having no sense of humor.” He gave Wil’s shoulders a squeeze and pushed him back a little. “Oh, right, that was you.”

  The chuckle that rippled out of Wil this time was real, though still a bit watery and rather subdued.

  “We’re getting out of here,” Dallin went on, a little more directive in his tone than before. “I wish I’d thought of all this a few hours ago, we’d already be gone. Now we’ll have to wait out the rest of the night and then the day, and leave once it’s dark again.”

  Wil’s brow furrowed. “Thought of all what?”

  “Ah.” Dallin sighed and let go altogether then stepped away with a quick scrub at his hair. “About that.” He turned back to Wil. “I should apologize. It should have dawned on me before, but…” His hand waved about.

  “Distractions and blind alleys, and every other diversion meant to throw a hunter off-track. I’ve taken so damned long to come around to it that now I’m… Well, I’ve decided to blame it on the tree-to-the-head. Or the lack of sleep, come to it. Getting stabbed didn’t help.” He peered at Wil with sincere contrition. “Something’s coming. I can feel it, and it’s close. I mean to be gone before it gets here, but in the meantime, there are some things we should talk about, and I want to do it without Calder hovering.” He paused. “Now, or after you’ve had some sleep?”

  Wil rubbed at the back of his neck. “That,” he told Dallin mildly, “is rather a stupid question.”

  Dallin nodded, as though he’d expected exactly that answer and was entirely satisfied that he’d got it. “Right.”

  He made to turn for the door and stopped. “I’m going to put on a shirt. Light some lamps, will you?”

  “The thing is,” Dallin murmured thoughtfully, fingers absently tracing a crease in the sheet, “the shape of this thing is a lot simpler than I’ve been thinking. I kept coming at it as though I needed to… well, to use an apt metaphor, needed to find dozens of threads and figure out where they wove into the greater pattern of the mess, untangle them. Except it’s not really a mess.”

  They’d pushed the little cot against the wall, both of them now using the cold stone for a backrest, the blanket and the more-or-less useless pillow stuffed behind them as buffers. Wil wondered if the relaxed posture of Dallin’s extended form—long legs spilling over the side of the small bed and stretching halfway across the floor—was something new, or if he’d looked like this before and Wil just hadn’t allowed himself to see it. Rumpled trousers, beltless and so slung a bit low, and shirt loose and mostly open; Wil could just see the top of the length of linen still wrapped about Dallin’s muscled torso above the stretched

  ‘V’ of the opening, a light thatch of curly gold fanning above it. Wil remembered slipping his fingers through that little bit of a ruff, remembered how that wide hand had rested warm on his hip, setting a rhythm that sent his mind—

  That line of thought would do nothing but distract him, so he pushed it away. With a bit of a flush, Wil realized Dallin was staring at him, silent and measuring, eyes slightly narrowed.

  Wil cleared his throat. “Sorry, I’m listening.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to—?”

  “No,” Wil cut in quickly. “Now.”

  “Good.” Dallin nodded, bent one leg up at the knee and rested his arm loosely atop it. “It didn’t dawn on me until after you’d slipped out earlier. It was sort of strange—I was lying there, and I wasn’t sure if I was asleep or not, I thought maybe it had all been a dream, and then I heard you curse me and then I heard you apologize, all murky-like, and then I wondered if you were a dream. Everything just…” He flipped a hand out. “It just tumbled. Clicked. All at once. One moment I didn’t know, and the next it just started to fall into place—everything. Well, all right, nearly everything. I think.” He paused, pensive. “I realized… Do you remember saying once that you thought it was strange that Aisling means Dream and not Dreamer?”

  Wil nodded slowly, wary now. Something had just curled cold in his gut. “You said I was borrowing trouble.”

  His words were measured, a faint note of accusation he didn’t think he really meant beneath them, and it was as though he almost knew why, wanted to know why, but wanted to get up and back away just as badly. “You said translations are always getting bollixed.”

  “I did.” Dallin’s mouth went a bit tight. “Except in this case, it’s not bollixed translations that are the problem—it’s the near-complete lack of translations in general. You—the Aisling—it’s all been kept so deeply secret that it’s like…” He shook his head impatiently. “It doesn’t matter, and I don’t want to get too far from the point. The point is… Wil…”

  He stopped again, hands going fisted before he realized what he was doing and visibly forced them open.

  Wh
atever it was he was trying to get ’round to saying, it must be pretty bad. The anxiety simmering in Wil’s chest was starting to bubble and pop in reaction before he even knew what he was supposed to be reacting to.

  Wil dipped his head, drew his knees up and wrapped his arms about them. Drawing himself inward and not even trying not to. “Please.” So much smaller than he would’ve liked. “Just say it.”

  Dallin sucked in a long breath, and laid his big hand on Wil’s shoulder. “Earth, air, fire, water—that takes care of the four, but what about their kin?—the Father and the Mother? What do they hold sway over?”

  What was this, a test? Wil’s brow twisted, guarded. All of his defenses were abruptly quivering, chewing into his nerves with sharp, panicky little nipping teeth. “The Mother… healing. Cultivating and reaping. Comfort and nurturing. Protection.” He flicked a look at Dallin. “War.”

  Dallin nodded, somberly encouraging. “The Father?”

  No, no, no, don’t answer, no good will come of the answer, you know what’s waiting inside it, and maybe the not knowing will make it never be true.

  “Music,” Wil answered, voice going wobbly, fainter with every word. It was coming, he knew it was coming, and if he let himself, he’d know what was coming… he didn’t let himself, but the answers wouldn’t stop forcing themselves from out his mouth. “Harmony of the seasons. Beauty. The stars…” His mouth kept working but his voice all at once abandoned him.

  Dallin leaned in close, wrapped an arm about Wil’s shoulders, dipped his head down and spoke low into his ear: “Dreams, Wil,” he said, softening the words so they wouldn’t cut so deeply. Too late—they’d already started to draw blood. “He dreamt you into life. Aisling means Dream because that’s what you are.”