The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  Dallin kept his face completely blank as Siofra turned slowly, walked to the door and let himself out. A moment ago, Dallin had been almost exhilarated, the heady kick of knowing he’d got the best of Siofra, that he was truly, in fact, as small as Dallin had said he was.

  And then he’d parted with that last shot, left Dallin’s ears ringing with it.

  Have I a true name?

  The question had been so quietly earnest, hope edged with trepidation. There had been real pain behind the anger when Wil had first told Dallin he had no name. And now it seemed there was one. Not only a name, but a key.

  Dallin shook his head, growled. Fucking hell, he’d just got done bulling his way through a thousand mysteries and secrets, and now here was another. And this one…

  I’ll tell him you were the one who gave me the key to his soul.

  What the fuck did that mean?

  He didn’t get a chance to ponder it. A gentle little brush swiffed at the back of his mind—not the harsh, insectile buzz of Siofra trying and failing to force himself through the cracks of consciousness, but a light, grazing warmth. A request. No voice, no words, just knowledge, instant and clear: Get ready. I’m coming.

  Dallin jolted, sat up straight, eyes wide and teeth clenched: Oh no, you’re bloody not!

  The badger, snapping its teeth without looking first to see if he was latching onto a garden snake or the tail of a dragon; the crow, flying too fast to see the glass ahead.

  The fear on Wil’s face when just the sound of Siofra’s voice had stopped him so cold it was like he’d died on his feet and forgot to fall down. Siofra was small without Wil’s power to suck dry, but he knew how to get it. Considering him a negligible threat when Wil was safely away was one thing, but Wil ramming half-arsed into some stupidly brave mission to rescue his Guardian would surely get him caught again. If things went the way they looked to be going, Dallin’s time might well be limited; who would be there to help Wil this time? Who would care? Siofra had done enough damage already—what if he got hold of Wil, found out how to take and use the rest of all that vast power? Siofra up there, perhaps waiting, and Dallin down here, shackled and useless. And Wil was going to walk right back into it.

  Dallin didn’t even have any money to give bribing a go.

  Bloody typical.

  Don’t you dare, don’t you fucking dare, Wil, I swear, if you show up here, I’ll shoot you down…

  No answer, no propinquity, not even so much as a characteristic snarl or the snapping of ghost-teeth. Only silence and into it, the too-loud turn of the latch on the door. Corliss stood framed by Woodrow and the bored bailiff from earlier. Corliss gave Dallin an avid glance, while Woodrow looked close to terrified.

  Oh, thank the Mother.

  “We’ll take him from here, Tripp,” Corliss told the bailiff. “He’s our disgrace, no need for you to dirty your hands on him.”

  Dallin forgave her immediately. He stood as the bailiff looked him over with a disgusted grunt then waved his hand. Dallin made his way around the table, walked to the door with head bowed, allowing Corliss to take one arm and Woodrow to take the other.

  “I don’t know how we’re going to get you out of here without starting a war,” Corliss muttered under her breath as they climbed the stairs, the bailiff lumbering his slow way up before them.

  “I still say we just kill the bugger,” Woodrow put in.

  “And you want to take out a company of the Commonwealth’s finest while you’re at it?” Corliss hissed. “The orders were clear. We’re to serve and protect our ‘guest’ and those boys are duty-bound. We take one shot at the man, and they’ll open all twenty guns on us.”

  “Well, I wasn’t suggesting we do it right in front of them,” Woodrow grumbled.

  Dallin paused to wait for the bailiff to reach the top of the steps and turn himself into the heart of the building. He turned to Woodrow with a frown. “Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment, and certainly not that I’m complaining, Woodrow, but… why are you here?”

  Woodrow grinned—actually grinned. “Chief told me I had to get myself into the party,” he replied stoutly. “On account of how I told him I didn’t believe what they were saying about you, and it all looked pretty dodgy to me.”

  Dallin raised his eyebrows. “You were gossiping,” he said slowly. “With Chief Jagger.”

  Predictably, Woodrow blushed.

  Dallin shook his head. “Forget what I told you before,” he said with a sincere, wondering smile. “You keep right on.”

  The grin came back, broadened. “Chief said I should’ve been an Aldrich man.” Woodrow’s broad shoulders squared beneath the remembered praise. “Said if we found you and you had orders for me, I should follow them like always.”

  “How is Jagger?” Dallin wanted to know.

  Woodrow’s smile fell, and he shook his head. “He looks bad,” he told Dallin. “At least, he did when we left. I think that Siofra…” He leaned in, shot a quick glance up the stairs and lowered his voice. “He’s got magic, I know he does, and they kept letting him talk to the Chief, all alone, and I think—”

  “Who kept letting him?”

  Woodrow’s eyes widened. “Didn’t Corliss tell you?”

  He frowned, shooting a puzzled look between Dallin and Corliss. “They called Wheeler in from Penley to take command of the Constabulary. He’s the law of the Commonwealth now, and far too close with that Siofra fellow, if you ask me. First thing he did when he got to Putnam was cut loose anyone who wouldn’t speak against you or Jagger, then he up and had Ramsford arrested, too. He had Manning in several times for questioning, but last I heard he hadn’t been arrested yet.”

  Dallin almost staggered. “What?”

  “They figured I was new and not loyal to anyone yet,”

  Woodrow went on, “so I was the one mainly who was to see to Jagger.” He nodded gravely. “He told me to tell Corliss and Litton and Edda and—”

  “Creighton,” Corliss put in.

  “Right, Creighton, he came along with us, too—”

  “I saw him,” Dallin said, a little winded. “And don’t give me any more names—it might be best if I don’t know.” Though he could certainly guess, if put to it: anyone who’d been brought in by either Jagger or Dallin himself and who had the sense of honor Jagger sought in his officers.

  Woodrow nodded, shifting uncomfortably. “He gave me a list of names and told me to have them say whatever those men wanted to hear, whatever would get them to let them stay on at the Constabulary. Said if we were lucky, there would be a…?” He glanced at Corliss.

  “Counter-coup,” she supplied dismally.

  Dallin’s mind was still trying to stumble through all of the startling information. Wheeler? Wheeler? What the hell was a career general doing taking over the law of the entire country?

  “Is it true?” Woodrow asked Dallin earnestly, eyes wide and somewhat frightened. “That lad—Creighton says he’s a sorcerer, and the people in the stables…” His mouth tightened. “Creighton says maybe he magicked you and that’s why you—”

  “Creighton wouldn’t know a sorcerer if one walked right up to him and turned his nose into a potato,” Corliss put in with a growl.

  Dallin frowned at Woodrow. “Weren’t you listening?”

  “Corliss listened, I kept watch.”

  “I’ve not told him what I heard yet,” Corliss told Dallin. “You didn’t say to, and…” She paused, gaze flicking up the steps when someone walked past the stairwell above. “Well, I thought it best.”

  Dallin shook his head wonderingly then looked back at Woodrow. “And yet here you are.”

  Woodrow shrugged, color rising again. “Chief told me to,” he said simply.

  Dallin didn’t have a whole lot to say to that. “Thank you,” was all he could offer.

  “If you two are through…?” Corliss gave them each a sharp look and jerked her chin up the stairs. “We need to figure out what we’re going to do, how we’re going
to get you out of here.”

  As though on cue, a roll of thunder rumbled its way through the building, vibrated the stone of the stairs and shimmied right up Dallin’s boots. Oh, fucking hell.

  He didn’t even try and talk himself into thinking it a coincidence. His teeth clenched and every muscle in his body tensed. Wil? I’m going to kill you.

  “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about it,” he said.

  He turned a bit to the side. “Unlock the shackles but don’t take them off, then get me outside. I think I’ll be needing my hands.” He waited semi-patiently while Woodrow fumbled out a key and did as he was bidden, then started up the stairs again. “Find Calder, if you can, but I doubt I’ll be able to wait for him. Where are my guns?”

  “Creighton’s got them,” Corliss answered. “How am I supposed to find Calder? You sent him off.”

  Dallin had to think about that one before the sense of it clicked. “No, that wasn’t Calder. He was only using the name when… it’s too complicated, but his name is Wil.”

  “Then who the hell is Calder?”

  “The man who was keeping watch at the stables.”

  “Ah.” Corliss frowned as they reached the top of the stairs, turning in the same direction the bailiff had gone. “I’ll try but I don’t know where—”

  Another blast of thunder shook the earth, like a bomb had just exploded over the roof of the place.

  “Shit!” Corliss hissed, hunching in instinctively, narrowed gaze going to the ceiling.

  “I’ve a feeling it’s only going to get worse,” Dallin muttered.

  The Chester Constabulary, when they reached the main corridor, had turned to bemused, muted chaos.

  Officers had left desks and tasks to wander to the big windows, peering out at a sky that had turned dark and threatening in the space of only a few minutes. Citizens who’d been perhaps brought in for questioning or maybe to file a complaint, even two men in shackles—all of them were gravitating toward the windows to stare at the brewing storm. Dallin catalogued them without even thinking about it: that young man had likely been reported for prostitution and they’d brought him in to give him a good scare; that woman had probably been caught trying to cast spells that hadn’t worked anyway, and would be fined for magicking without a license; that other woman was trying to press charges against her neighbor who’d dug himself a little tributary from the stream their properties shared and was siphoning most of the shared water-rights…

  Unthinking habit, and for the first time ever—standing here pretending to be under arrest in this foreign Constabulary, in the process of widening the chasm between himself and the life he’d thought he’d loved—

  Dallin wondered how he knew these things. He’d never questioned it before. He’d never even considered he might be different in that respect from anyone else. Only now did Dallin consider exactly why Jagger had always called him in when a witness had seemingly run out of answers.

  You’ve the gifts of a shaman—the Gift of the Shaman…

  All right, then. Perhaps it was time to accept it, learn to use it and keep moving.

  The air had gone heavy, thick and charged. Dallin could feel a light tingle that was all too familiar, a quick shift in pressure that weighed against his skin, made it prickle. He leaned in to Corliss. “Get me outside. Quick.”

  And then to Woodrow: “Get them all away from those windows. Stay in the center of the room and be ready to—”

  That was as far as he got before the pressure flashed, popped his ears. He only just had time to pull his hands from the loosened shackles, grab Corliss and Woodrow and drag them both down. Corliss bleated a surprised little yawp as her knees hit the floor, instantly drowned out when every window in the place exploded outwards in high-speed showers of lethal shards. Two women in bailiff’s uniforms were sucked out onto the street with the force, so fast they hadn’t had time to so much as yelp.

  Lightning flashed outside, thick ropes of yellow-white that dazzled the eyes and crackled far too close, sizzling the air and leaving it thick with the bitter-burnt stench of ozone. The entire room erupted into shouts and debris. People dove for cover. Papers flew about in small whirlwinds. Pens and desk ornaments suddenly turned into airborne projectiles. It was all a dim distraction beneath the howl and roar of the wind.

  Dallin didn’t wait for Corliss or Woodrow, didn’t even glance at all the Constabulary officers about with guns on their hips. He half-stood, keeping as low as he could, and took a straight line to the doors. They were swinging on their hinges, slamming into the wall then careening back when the air pulsated past him. Pressure sucked them to a booming close, counter-pressure hammering a staccato at the jamb, a contradictory tug-of-war between identical forces. Dallin waited for the air to shift again, expand around him, like being inside a living lung. When it did, he slid his fingers through the gap, yanked the door back and threw himself through it.

  The street was even more chaotic than the Constabulary had been. Clumps of sod and sheets of tin from various roofs flew about clouds of dust swirling up from the ground in tiny cyclones. Hail stones pelted man and beast, tore at timber and stone. Bolts of lightning shivered spasmodically about the tops of buildings, grazing dazzling fingers just close enough to tease an arc then scudding over.

  And in the center of it all, Wil stood in a pocket of calm, face set hard. Brilliant eyes narrowed in concentration, but still flickered in every direction, seeking. Silky hair, black as a raven’s wing, whiffled gently in the mild breeze.

  Wil brushed it absently from his eyes, tossed it from his brow. Unconsciously confident, he gripped the rifle that now looked to Dallin like it was a permanent extension of those long-fingered hands. He stood alone, straight and tall, and more self-possessed than Dallin had ever seen him. Everyone in the city’s square stared at him in awed fear from beneath whatever cover they’d managed, and no wonder. Every element was at Wil’s beck and call, and he held them each, danced their patterns and wove their threads.

  He was intensity. He was strength. He was driving will and stubborn determination. He was reckless passion and guarded distrust.

  He was fucking beautiful.

  “Mother help me,” Dallin wheezed, breath sucking harsh in his chest, air-pressure and stunned desire both. “I am completely lost, cut from every anchor I’ve ever known. And he’s the only beacon I want to see. How did I let this happen?”

  As if Wil had heard him, he turned, nearly blowing Dallin’s mind when his shoulders sagged in relief and he grinned— grinned—as though pandemonium wasn’t swirling about them in wide, destructive waves. He waved his hand at the sky, laughed. “Air!” he shouted, broadened the grin, slanted it sly and dipped a dramatic, flourishing bow.

  Dallin couldn’t help it—he grinned back, blundering down the Constabulary’s stone steps and into the street. He saw Wil’s look of delight shift at the same time he heard Corliss call to him from behind. Saw Wil’s jaw clamp tight and anger flood the gleaming gaze as his hand twitched at his side, fingers moving.

  “No!” Dallin shouted and made a run for Wil, barked “Corliss, stay back!” over his shoulder and closed the distance between him and Wil in four extended strides.

  “Wil, don’t!”

  Wil shot him a wary glance, flicked it back over Dallin’s shoulder. “She’s with him,” he snarled. “They’re all with him.”

  “Not in the way you think,” Dallin told him. “Trust me, all right, don’t—”

  “Chosen!”

  Dallin didn’t know how Siofra managed to boom that thin voice the way he did, but it rang between them, drove a flinch from Wil. They both turned, Dallin reaching instinctively for Wil’s arm—support, comfort, reassurance… whatever he wanted to take from it. Wil didn’t shudder the way he had before, didn’t shrink in on himself, but he tensed measurably, the same fear spiking his gaze. Just how much had it taken for him to walk back into all of this, knowing Siofra was here and likely waiting?

  The air s
hifted, so abruptly Dallin’s chest tightened with the pressure. The hail turned to rain, a driving downpour, and the small pocket of silence in which they stood collapsed. Rain soaked Dallin to the bone in mere seconds, even beneath the cover of the waxed cloak. Small spheres of crackling current buzzed and bobbed about them, dipping to the ground then rising and wavering.

  Waiting.

  Wil swallowed, half-turned to Dallin, terrified. “He can… he can…”

  “Not without the leaf,” Dallin reminded him. “You’re stronger than him. He can’t make you do a damned thing.” He jerked his chin. “Look at him, Wil. He’s nothing without that leaf, and he can’t take anything from you that you don’t give him.”

  Siofra walked toward them slowly, smiling, the rain drenching him, but he paid it no mind. He walked between balls of lightning like he knew they couldn’t touch him.

  Proved it when he turned his hand and they pushed apart to let him through, giving the lie to every assurance Dallin had just offered. Already drawing away power, twisting it and molding what Wil had done to his own purpose. His greedy eyes were solely on Wil, disregarding everything else, revealing that same bottomless, cannibalistic hunger Dallin had seen in that boy in the stable…

  The stable. Where Wil had used his magic only a few nights ago to push that lad. It was just a little push. Teeny-tiny, it was nothing. And then somehow—regardless of diversions and backtracking and deliberate false leads—Siofra had managed to find Wil like he’d known exactly where to look.

  It hit Dallin all at once, made his gut clench and his mouth go dry.

  Dallin looked at Wil, saw the fear, saw the years of control and trickery, the betrayal and the pain. Saw the strength and steadily growing confidence beneath it, saw the potential, and saw the terror that thwarted it all. Saw what Wil needed to do, how this had to end, and the ripples it would send out through the rest of Cynewísan if it did.