The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  “I’d heard you had some goodly trouble from the Brethren,” Wil said, pensive.

  Dallin’s eyebrows rose. “Did you, then?”

  “Hunter told me you’d run into them.” A small smile.

  “That you took command from their…” He peered at Hunter, expectant.

  “Weardgeréfan,” Hunter supplied absently, still lost in his own thoughts.

  “I didn’t take it,” Dallin argued. “I just sort of—”

  “Just sort of started giving orders and didn’t remind the commander he was in charge when everyone followed them.”

  Dallin scowled. It was rather on the mark, so he couldn’t really argue.

  Anyway, Wil didn’t give him much of a chance. “So, the rest of the Old Ones are at the Bounds, playing diplomat, then. Where does that leave us?”

  “Quite thoroughly pinned,” Dallin answered frankly.

  “The only thing we can do is get Lind ready for a standoff and possible battle to give us time to do what we came here to do. I think the best way to go about that is to fill our defenders in on exactly what they’re defending, so they at least know what they’re fighting for.” He shrugged. “I’ve found that men who know their cause tend to put a bit more heart behind their aim. We might be asking these people to fight their own countrymen—I think they deserve to at least know why.”

  Wil reached out and flicked Dallin’s more-and-more unruly fringe from his eyes. A throwaway gesture, but the intimacy behind it pleased Dallin absurdly. “Yes, you would,” was all Wil said.

  Dallin only jerked his chin at the cup. “Drink your tea.”

  Hunter had been rather quiet; now he peered up at Wil, measuring and still awestruck, then turned his gaze sharply to Dallin. “You are the Guardian, then,” he said quietly. “Has the Shaman always been the Guardian?”

  “That’s sort of the point, yes,” Dallin answered.

  “But…” Hunter’s face screwed up in bewilderment, budding ire. “Why should…? I don’t understand. Always, when the young ones are taught religion, we are taught of the past Shamans. We are taught that only the Shaman may welcome Outlanders, only the Shaman may leave the Bounds and still be the Shaman. My uncle had to cut his Marks from his face!” He was getting agitated now. “Never were we told the Aisling and the Guardian were real; never were we taught that those Outlanders the Shamans before had welcomed were the Aisling come to live among us.” He shook his head, hands stretched out toward Dallin. “I just… I don’t understand.”

  That was betrayal lurking behind Hunter’s eyes. Dallin filed that reaction away, too. A whole lot of resentment toward the Old Ones was healthy, in his opinion, and more than deserved, but if it wasn’t doused very quickly, he’d end up with a rebellion he didn’t want and chaos they could all do without.

  “Don’t think too harshly of them,” he told Hunter.

  “Lind’s laws have kept you all barricaded against the rest of the world, and they had their reasons when those laws were made. But it didn’t stop the world from changing outside the Bounds. The Old Ones are wise and kind, but they are also men—very old men.” He shrugged.

  “Men are fallible, and you can’t blame them for being so.” Though it would certainly make Dallin feel better if he could. He sighed. “Who knows? Had I grown up here, had I not been taken away and lived in the world for all those years, I may have thought the same way as they do.”

  He actually doubted that one, in his heart, but he wasn’t sure if that was merely wishful thinking, so he didn’t say it aloud.

  “The Mother’s Will,” Shaw put in quietly, lifted an eyebrow when Dallin shot him a sardonic glance. He shrugged. “You would argue the course of your Path, Dallin Brayden? You, who has seen both the Mother and the Father?”

  Dallin narrowed his eyes. “How did you know that?”

  “Um…” Wil raised a hand, gave Dallin an apologetic grimace. “Sorry.” He dipped his head at Dallin’s scowl, cheeks coloring. “I didn’t say it was you, I didn’t say it was anyone, really, I just sort of asked if it was normal, and I didn’t say what you’d been told—”

  “No, no,” Shaw put in with a wry smile, “he was almost as close with information as you are.”

  “And…” Wil squirmed a little. “Well… He made me skillet cakes,” was all he offered by way of excuse, perhaps even slightly accusatory. Which, considering what Dallin knew of Wil’s appetite, was actually a pretty believable explanation. He wondered what else the two had discussed in Shaw’s rooms in the Temple while Dallin had been preoccupied with recovering. Wil wasn’t about to tell him; he was too busy pretending to drink the tea.

  “You have seen Them?” This from Hunter, whose voice had gone down to a hoarse whisper as he turned a look of such awe and adoration on Dallin that Dallin almost wanted to smack it off his face.

  Dallin sighed and waved a hand. “Yes, I’ve seen Them,” he replied uncomfortably.

  “Does it bother you so?” Shaw asked with interest.

  “For a man who has seen and spoken to his gods, you seem rather uneasy with the Divine. The words and messages from the Mother and the Father should not be kept so close to one’s own chest.” It had the tone of light rebuke. “Part of a shaman’s Calling is to impart the wisdom he is gifted by Them to all.”

  “A cleric I am not,” Dallin replied tersely, slightly stung. “And I intend to impart whatever I must to effect the changes I think necessary, so save your reprimands, if you please.”

  For the first time, Shaw pulled himself away from the rock wall, frowned a little and stepped slowly over to stand behind Hunter. “Why do you hate them so?” he asked.

  Dallin’s brows snapped down over his eyes. “I don’t ‘hate’ any one. What are you talking about?”

  Shaw shrugged. “All right, then—you dislike Calder intensely. You tolerate me because of Wil. I suspect only a proper upbringing and your life in service has kept you from being out-and-out rude to the Old Ones, though you’ve bordered on disrespect more times than not.” He laid a hand to Hunter’s shoulder. “And only your kind heart kept you from trying to shatter a boy’s faith to suit your own ends.” He paused, pierced Dallin with a finely honed gaze. “You disdain belief, and you scorn believers. And yet you’ve seen the Mother and the Father both.”

  Dallin’s teeth had gone tight. His cheek twitched and ticced without his consent, but he kept his temper.

  “I neither disdain nor scorn,” he said evenly. “I merely cannot respect blind belief. People are weak, and the weaker they are, the more they rely on what they’ve been told is stronger than themselves, even beyond all sense and reason. I’ve seen too many—” He cut himself off, clamped his jaw. Choking back a growl, he snatched up the cup from out Wil’s hand and downed the rest of the bolstered tea, wishing it was something a hell of a lot stronger.

  “Hm,” Shaw hummed into the resulting silence, “I imagine you have.”

  Dallin couldn’t help narrowing his eyes a little. And you would know, wouldn’t you—shaman?

  Shaw patted Hunter’s shoulder. “Come, lad. Wil’s not had his breakfast yet, and the Old Ones are waiting.” He peered over at Wil while Hunter got to his feet. “We’ll likely be a little while.”

  Giving Wil time to talk Dallin into who-knew-what, he suspected by the way Shaw’s eyebrows lifted meaningfully. Shamans and their damned fondness for conspiracy. Dallin rolled his eyes a bit, but didn’t say anything, merely watched Shaw chivvy Hunter ahead of him and make their way across the green to the communal fire. Aggravated, Dallin got up, went to the kettle and poured another cup of the tea.

  “Why do you hate them?” Wil asked quietly.

  Dallin gusted an irritated sigh. “I don’t hate them, I just…” He shook his head, pointed to where Shaw and Hunter had just been. “It’s people like those, people like Calder, who made it possible for Siofra to do what he did to you. D’you think that no one at the Guild ever had a question as to what was going on? D’you think that not a single one o
f them ever thought what was happening to you was wrong? But they believed, they put faith in something they’d never even bothered to question, and watched horrors happen because they believed that Siofra was doing the will of the Father. Without ever once having heard the Father’s will from His own mouth. It—” He growled, ran a hand through his hair. “How can you not hate them?”

  Wil was staring at him, thoughtful. “Faith didn’t put me in my position—one man’s choice did.”

  “And the blind faith of dozens of others kept you there because they chose not to see the wrongness of it. And shall we talk about the Brethren and their ‘faith’ while we’re at it?” Dallin puffed a derisive snort. “I’ve seen the look in their eyes, I’ve seen it in the eyes of too many others before them, and I’ve seen the same damned look in Calder’s eyes, too. That isn’t faith—that’s mania.”

  “Where have you seen it before?” Wil asked, peering at Dallin with a very keen interest, and a soft depth to his eyes that reflected an odd sort of accepting compassion that Dallin had never seen there before. He tilted his head, voice low and gentle. “Is this why you won’t talk about your time in the military?”

  Dallin twitched before he could help himself. He took a gulp from the cup, wishing again for something stronger. “It isn’t that I won’t talk about it.” He shrugged, inexplicable discomfort, walked over to the cave’s opening and leaned himself into its curve. “There’s nothing to say. I served, I lived, I went home. A great many others have bigger stories to tell.”

  A long moment of silence, then Wil was suddenly there behind him, slipping a light hand to the small of Dallin’s back, propping his chin to Dallin’s shoulder. Dallin took inordinate comfort from it, despite the unfathomable disquiet roiling in his gut.

  “It was children,” Wil said quietly into Dallin’s coat, tightening his hand just a fraction when a small shudder flittered up Dallin’s backbone. “Wasn’t it?”

  No denial would come to Dallin, though he wanted one desperately. Instead, “Why would you think that?” he asked hoarsely.

  Wil sighed. “It’s why the children in Kenley haunt you so. You went and turned them into your own private ghosts. I’d thought it was what happened here all those years ago, but… I expect that would only make what you saw in the army worse.” Dallin firmed his jaw, but Wil didn’t back off. “It’s always worse when it’s children,” he murmured.

  And just like that, it was all there, behind Dallin’s eyes, all of it, inescapable. Things smothered mercilessly and buried just as deeply as that day more than twenty years ago when he’d left these Bounds locked beneath the bench of a tinker’s cart. No tears came, no wrenching sorrow—just that fiery rage, burning in his chest, in his head, acid boiling in his stomach and searing up his backbone.

  Dallin lifted the cup slowly, drained it, and then just as slowly, lowered it. He gripped it in both hands. The sun was high above the treeline over the hills, sharding into his eyes, but it took the shadows away, so he kept looking.

  “Dozens of them,” he heard himself say, almost low enough to be soundless. He stared unseeing out onto the green, not watching the morning activity, not hearing the good-natured shouting or the blow and chatter of the horses. “Cut down by the hands of their own mothers.” He shook his head, leaned it to the rock, and closed his eyes. “We’d plowed through Carrick and on into Maghera.” A hard clench of his teeth and he looked at Wil over his shoulder. “A league and a half from the Guild.”

  Wil didn’t say anything, just met the stare with calm expectancy. Dallin turned away again, shifted his gaze up to the tree-covered hills, the Temple resting atop them and hidden behind constant evergreen.

  “They knew we were coming. I can’t even imagine the stories they’d heard.” He turned his back on the world outside their little cave, looked again to Wil. “You have to know this: the Commonwealth never wiped out non-combatant villages; we never turned our guns where guns weren’t turned on us. Even when… I mean the women of Ríocht, they’re not allowed to touch weapons, so they’d use anything they could get their hands on—shards of glass, broken farm tools—but even then we only deflected if we could, disabled if we had to. And never, ever a child.”

  Wil nodded somberly. “I believe you.”

  The hushed conviction seemed to quiet a tiny bit of the acid in Dallin’s gut. He looked down, shook his head.

  “I don’t know what they’d been told, but they obviously thought it better their children died at their own hands, instead of ours. Mothers, who…” His teeth clenched again, eyes burning, and he pushed it away in one long, heavy breath. “They’d piled the bodies outside the gates and burnt them. Dozens and dozens of…” A helpless growl, and he pounded his fist to the rock beside him, flashed a wrathful glare at Wil. “And it wasn’t only the once.

  “They had that same look, every damned one of them—that righteous piety, that burning madness behind their eyes, worse than any bloodlust I’ve ever seen in even the most vicious soldier. They were told we were monsters by people they trusted, and they believed it blindly, believed it enough to murder their own children.

  They thought they were sending them to the Father.

  What kind of… who could believe in and worship any god who would demand such a thing?” He dropped the cup, heedless, and held out his hands, palms-up, vaguely ashamed at the near-pleading, the remembered grief and revulsion that must surely be showing in his face. “Now, you tell me why I shouldn’t hate them. You tell me why I shouldn’t hate any one who shows me that same sick, mindless conviction behind their eyes.”

  Wil only kept looking at him—not judgment, not pity—just looking, that same soft compassion he’d started out with, unchanged. His hand was resting on Dallin’s chest now, a warm, consoling patch of damp where his palm met Dallin’s skin through his shirt, fanned out in thin stripes beneath his fingers.

  “I can’t,” he answered slowly. “I would tell you instead to do what you intended to do, and don’t let anyone sway you.” He stretched up and kissed Dallin’s cheek. “I would tell you to teach.”

  “I’m not a teacher,” Dallin muttered. “I won’t presume to—”

  “No? I can shoot now.”

  “Extraordinarily well.”

  “I can ride.”

  “You can stay upright on a horse. There’s a distinction.”

  Wil ignored the contrary obduracy. “I know how to start a fire in the rain.” This time Dallin stayed silent, just raised an eyebrow. Wil grimaced. “Yes, all right, but you get the point.” He paused with a frown, eyed Dallin with soft interest. “You’re being deliberately difficult.”

  “Yes,” was all Dallin said.

  “This makes you uncomfortable.”

  “Yes.”

  Wil sighed, nodded. “All right, we’ll stop talking about it. Except that… well, they’ve been waiting for you.” He said it like it should make such obvious sense, when it just didn’t. “And anyway,” Wil went on, “in case you hadn’t noticed, you’ve been talking about telling your people all about their religion, shaking out the secrets and handing out truths. What is that, if not teaching?”

  ‘Your people’. His people. It was… strange. And Dallin didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He reached out and brushed his fingers through Wil’s hair. “You’re feeling better, then?”

  Wil’s mouth twisted sadly, but he allowed the distraction. He dredged up a clouded smile, nodded and patted at Dallin’s arm, then ambled back into the cave and sat down. “Much. A bit of a headache, but it hardly compares.” He tried to hide a shudder. “What did you do?” And then he frowned. “You’re still doing it. Or… am I doing it?”

  Dallin shrugged. “Little bit of both, I expect. I don’t know if I could explain it properly. I just sort of… balanced things.”

  “Warp and Weft,” Wil murmured with some bit of wonder. “And you said you didn’t have magic.”

  “Mm,” Dallin rumbled, turned and set his gaze back out onto the green, kicking
lightly at the cup with the toe of his boot. “Apparently,” he said quietly, “I’ve more than one Calling.” He clenched his jaw, jerked his chin toward the camp. “They’re back with your breakfast. Let’s get you washed up and fed, yeah? We’ve a long morning ahead.”

  He hadn’t been sleeping very well the past few nights, dreams repeating and driving him awake so often he might as well not even try anymore. So, when he watched the three shamans file in, each of them dipping low bows to both him and Wil, each of them smiling serenely, Dallin felt weariness creep in, muted but insistent.

  This little conference was to be the result of two days of almost-continual arguing, defending and assuring, and he quite resented the fact that they hadn’t allowed time for him to talk to Wil about it privately first. Dallin could insist on it—they put up a good fight on some things, but they always acquiesced when their ‘Shaman’ put his foot down, as it were, and though it was convenient, it still made him want to hit someone. Who was he, after all?

  And who were they to let him stroll in and take control, simply by virtue of legend and ancient law? And all right, so it wasn’t truly legend—he’d accepted the reality of what he was, what Wil was, as he’d sat stunned in that inn their first night out of Dudley—but how could these men just… just hand him Lind? Expect him to guide its fate and everyone’s in it?

  Dallin turned to Wil, noted the shuttered gaze, the wary attention, and silently approved. As much as the simple acceptance annoyed him, he still wasn’t entirely sure there wasn’t some kind of trap lurking beneath it all. Calder, after all, had been one of these men before he’d cut away his Marks; how many of them thought as he did? How much of all this was simply information-gathering until all twelve could convene and vote on Wil’s fate?—with or without their Shaman’s consent. How much of that control they seemed so eager to hand Dallin was, in truth, control and how much of it was stalling?