The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  Anyway, there were a few things Wil wanted to talk to Calder about—starting with the fact that Dallin had to have met him before, and why didn’t Dallin remember it, and perhaps wending about to how the horns hadn’t blown in time to stop the raid all those years ago—and Wil would never get a better chance.

  Wil took the cup. “Perhaps I should take some back for Dallin,” he murmured, slightly rueful, and took a healthy swallow of the brew. Different than the stuff Hunter had made for him. More flowery, and the lavender this time was almost overpowering. A touch bitter as well, even beneath the heavy taste of spice and liquor. “He’s had the most awful headache, and he’s not been sleeping well.” Prudently, Wil didn’t mention the dreams.

  “He has been using up too much of himself.” Calder sighed. “What with healing you and then trying to find you. He would not leave your side for days.”

  Calder looked at Wil as if Wil hadn’t already known it. As though Wil should be somehow ashamed of it. Wil wasn’t, so he just stared back, gaze steady. Guilty, yes, but ashamed?—not even a little bit.

  “So well-intentioned, Dallin Brayden, but too…” Calder shook his head sadly.

  Wil didn’t ask him to finish. He was already feeling culpable enough. He’d spent too much time today being pissed off over nothing, and not nearly enough paying attention. He tossed back the rest of the tea, nodded.

  “Too everything,” he told Calder. “There’s so very much of him, sometimes it seems impossible there might be boundaries at all.”

  “He loves too well and too deeply,” Calder put in gently. “It is not meant, what you have between you. It can do no good—to you, to him, or to Lind.”

  That made Wil bristle. “That’s hardly for you to say, is it? And anyway, I don’t think there’s such a thing as… as loving too well, and… and if… if…” Damn, he hated it when he lost track of what he was saying in the middle of a good bluster. “You’re too bloody nosy, Calder. You’re always… I don’t like it when…” His mind stumbled this time, a slight haze covering his thoughts, making them thick and sticky.

  He paused, gathered himself, shook his head to clear it. Tired, that was what it was. It had been such a long day, and he’d been asleep for the four before, and his brain had nearly exploded out his ears before that. “If the…” He blinked, gave his head another shake, the chain of his thoughts suddenly breaking apart, the links flying out in every direction. What had he been saying? What had he been doing? Something silly, something… no. No, it was something important, but Calder would probably think it was silly, and anyway, it was private, and Calder would only roll his eyes if he knew, shake his head and blabber it to the Old Ones so they could say that what the Aisling and the Guardian were getting up to wasn’t meant, and…

  A tiny snort leaked from Wil’s mouth. And so the fuck what.

  “Bowl. I was… the Burning Bowl, and it… no, Blessing. The bowl, I mean…” The words were slurred and syrupy, like his tongue had just outgrown his mouth, and he staggered, his left leg turning to water. He went down on one knee, goggled at the ground, at Calder’s boots, at the divot in the grass Wil had clawed up before when Dallin had sunk his teeth into Wil’s shoulder and made him beg, and then at the dirt still crusting lightly under his fingernails… at the cup losing focus in his hand…

  He knew this feeling. If his mind had been working, it would have been screaming. “I am sorry, Aisling,” Calder said gravely. “But even in this, I serve you.”

  “Serve…?” As though his hand belonged to someone else, Wil held the cup out, lifted it up toward Calder. “What… what have you…?”

  Calder knelt in front of him, gently took the cup from him, reached out and stroked his cheek with a broad, callused hand. “Someone has to be the Guardian, lad. I do the Mother’s will, as I always have done.”

  Oh, fuck. He’s gone ’round the bend. Somebody… help.

  Clumsy and slow, his limbs too far away from his body, Wil groped blindly for the rifle, only to watch it slide across the grass at the end of Calder’s hand, then sail into the darkness as it was pitched aside. Out of reach. Gone. Wil raised his hand to his mouth, meaning to purge the tea, but Calder’s wide hands closed over his wrists, held them.

  Shackled.

  Caught.

  A slippery little cackle warbled out from Wil’s throat and he shut his mouth tight, snorted anyway, except nothing was funny.

  “Sonuvabitch,” he giggled, sloppy and garbled, latched onto one thought and one thought only, concentrated with everything in him until he shoved it out his mouth: “Fuckin’ hatechoo.” It came out a hooting snort. His mind was full of cotton, and he couldn’t stop laughing about it. Euphoria closed him in a gentle hand, lifted him up, and he was floating, flying, and it was really fucking funny, except his brain wouldn’t stop shrieking at him—Run! Get up and bloody run! Scream, do something!—except he couldn’t, and that was pretty fucking funny, too.

  No one would hear if you called for help. Right. Too bloody right.

  “FAeðme,” Calder was telling him. “The Vessel is too weak, and your Guardian cannot know the risks he takes.”

  The Vessel is too weak… he’d heard that somewhere before.

  A sigh, and Calder’s voice dipped down into something like wistfulness. “And I would hear Her Voice again.”

  You’re mad, Wil wanted to say, except whatever came out was mangled and forced out between sobbing little chuckles, and even he couldn’t really understand it.

  Oh, I am so fucked. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Sense was slipping away, all but the keening knowledge that this was wrong, very very wrong, which couldn’t be right, because whooping giggles were leaking from him like steam from a kettle. The peace was gentling him, so familiar, and sliding its sinuous tethers about his mind, calling to him, and he knew it, and he wanted it, needed it, the need almost ate him up and he didn’t care, and oh, he’d missed it.

  Boneless, Wil fell forward, careening into Calder’s chest, and it was nice, wide and hard, except not as hard as Dallin’s—Dallin’s, where Wil had rested his head forever ago and listened to a steady heart beat ka-thump ka-thump ka-thump, and he’d slid his hand over a light sheen of sweat in the moonlight and kept it there so he could feel the muscles flex and slide beneath his palm.

  Calder’s arms about him, lifting him up, and it shouldn’t be Calder, it should be Siofra, crooning to him and carrying him to the Chamber to slide dream into nightmare and nightmare into pain and—No. No. Gone, dead, a soul crushed in his fist, Siofra was gone, and it should be Dallin here with him, because it should always be Dallin, because it always was. Dallin’s arms about him, Dallin’s voice in his ear, Dallin’s heartbeat against his cheek—DallinDallinDallinDallin…

  Wil latched on to the name, sang it in a loop in his head, and with his last shard of sanity, gathered it into a fist in his mind—screamed it.

  Forgot it. Forgot himself. Forgot his Self.

  Blessed night closed around him, full of nothing and more nothing and the hallowed blank-dark of forgetfulness. With a soft, blissful smile, Wil closed his eyes, sank his head to Calder’s shoulder, and gave himself up to the darkling serenity.

  Chapter Four

  Dallin was already in his trousers, shoving an arm into his shirt, when he snapped awake, a heavy sense of urgent dread clogging in his chest and the echo of a phantom scream drumming in his head. He didn’t take the time to strap on his guns, merely snatched them up by their holsters and slung them over his shoulder as he slammed across the little room and out the door.

  “Hunter! Go and get—Fuck!” No Hunter, which wasn’t surprising, actually—no Wil, no Hunter. It almost would have made him feel better, knowing Hunter was likely wherever Wil was, if Dallin’s gut weren’t twisting and his mind weren’t racing through all the possible tragedies that might be taking place right this second. Because that scream…

  It wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t anything but Wil very definitely in trouble, and wha
t the fuck was he doing out in the first place, and how the fuck did Dallin not hear him leave, and what the fuck had Wil been thinking, and why the fuck was Dallin wasting time wondering, when he could just as easily be dreaming up all the creative ways he was going to kill Wil when he found him, and then Hunter for not stopping him?

  Seething, Dallin boiled around the north side of the guardhouse, meaning to rouse… somebody—Corliss, Woodrow, the whole bloody camp if necessary. The quickfire thumping of his heart just made it lurch more painfully, land in a sick lump in his throat, when he spotted the limp figure limned in moonlight, half-sitting and half-sprawling against the outer-wall of the guardhouse. It was the boots: buckskin, fringed at the tops, and trousers tucked loosely inside them.

  “Hunter,” Dallin breathed, “you’d better be dead.” Because if he wasn’t, and someone had managed to take Wil right out from under him…

  Not dead, Dallin saw as he crouched down, but not all right, just the same. No marks on him, no lumps to the skull, no blood, but too limp and unresponsive to be asleep. Not drunk—he didn’t smell of liquor or even beer, and so far as Dallin had seen tonight, Hunter hadn’t touched anything but a cup of very mild mead, eschewing the heavy beer Wisena and his men had indulged in while they all talked strategy. He didn’t even flutter his eyelids when Dallin slapped his cheeks, hard enough to bruise, and if he’d had enough for that kind of non-reaction, he would be dead, or at least on his way.

  So. Not drunk. Drugged, perhaps, but how? Hunter might be naïve, but he wasn’t stupid. If someone from the Brethren had managed to prowl through the perimeter—and with Wil’s stunt with the lightning more-or-less blaring his location to any who happened to look up, that wasn’t entirely out of the question—he couldn’t imagine Hunter giving anyone the opportunity to slip him something. It would’ve had to have been someone here, someone from camp, someone he knew, someone who—

  “Son of a bitch.” Snarled through teeth clenched tight. Dallin stood, rubbed roughly at his mouth, and stared down at the crumpled figure. His mind was running around in circles, shrieking incoherently; his body was already on its way toward the chill composure of combat—heart slowing its rhythm, low tremors calming and stilling, stomach unclenching—and he waited while his mind caught up. Composed thought was necessary here. Dallin wouldn’t do Wil any good if he allowed panic. Or rage. Or murderous bloody fury.

  He took a long, slow breath, pushed it back out of his chest.

  All right.

  Calder was probably better than the Brethren. Probably. He was almost as fanatical, in his way, but…

  Dallin shook his head, growled.

  But nothing. Calder wasn’t ‘almost’ anything. He was just as fanatical in his beliefs as any one of those wild-eyed madmen, maybe more, and though he didn’t have a little copper capsule tucked away in his cheek, his willingness to die for his cause—whatever it might be—was no less fervent. He had to know Dallin would happily kill him for even laying a finger on Wil. Quickly, if Wil wasn’t harmed; slowly and painfully, with the proper amount of screaming, if he was. So whatever Calder was up to, he believed he was following his Calling, whatever that might mean to him now, since he’d foresworn it and followed after his dead son. He couldn’t be expecting to live through it, whatever it was. He might actually be looking forward to being martyred. He had the right kind of suicidal insanity behind his eyes.

  Reluctant understanding rolled over Dallin like a slow-sliding avalanche: Calder might really mean to kill Wil. And only the knowledge that Wil wasn’t dead already—the land hadn’t cried out, hadn’t screamed along with him—prevented Dallin from howling off in whatever direction he happened to be facing, hunting Calder down and tearing out his heart. If Dallin could find him.

  Dallin let his hands curl into tight, solid fists. “Oh, I’ll find him.” He jerked a sharp little nod, stepped away from Hunter’s limp form, and stalked toward the center of the camp, strapping his guns on along the way. One of the sentries spotted him, a star-silvered man-shape in the darkness; Dallin merely waved a hand, ordered, “Get a torch and come on,” and kept walking.

  Wisena and his men were camped just at the fringes of the Linders, those from Putnam only slightly more toward the river, close enough to share a campfire. Dallin lumbered through them all, kicking at limbs and snapping, “Up, I need you,” as he went, not waiting for them to blink and ask him why, just stalking on ahead, long strides eating the ground, so that the man with the torch had to actually sprint to catch up by the time Dallin had reached a clear spot toward the camp’s center.

  He stood, back straight, feet planted apart, and surveyed the camp with a critical eye. They wanted the Shaman? The Shaman they would get. Out the corner of his eye, Dallin spotted Corliss and Woodrow hurrying toward him, sliding on surcoats and holsters as they jogged; he ignored them, took a long breath, then shrilled a sharp whistle through his teeth.

  Called, “Weardas—to me!” and watched, satisfied, as the camp leapt to life.

  It was the rifle that did it, seeing it there, lying in the grass. That was when the reality of it all truly sank in. Wil wouldn’t’ve left it like that if he could help it, which meant he couldn’t help it, which meant… an endless array of very dark possibilities.

  Andette had been the one to find it and Wil’s pack, down by the river, at the spot where they’d… Dallin pushed that away, focused on right now.

  He’d roused the camp, told them their Aisling had been stolen, told them they’d be hunting one of their own, and had watched with cold satisfaction as their eyes turned hard and their faces set. Next, he’d sent runners to every known picket and post, with the same message, given Healdes the charge of coordinating the search, then stood back and watched the wheels begin to turn. Kept watching as the war horns blew, kept listening as they were answered in a slow-rolling chain from every part of Lind, farther and farther and deeper and deeper, until he could no longer hear the resonance. Ordered every able body to saddle up and be ready to move, and then ordered a sweep of the area, just in case. He’d known it was useless—Wil and Calder were long gone, and Dallin knew where Calder would head—but no possibility, however slim, would get by him.

  And even though he’d known, his heart had still taken a hopeful leap when Andette had arrowed through the bustle of the breaking camp, right toward Dallin, and told him she’d found something.

  Luckily, she’d only been scouting with one other, and they’d been careful, so there wasn’t much trampling. Not that the tracks and signs told Dallin little he didn’t know. He crouched down, examined the grass, waved at whoever-that-was with the torch to come closer… closed his eyes and rubbed at them. Choking back a growl, he picked up the cup, sniffed it, then held it up over his shoulder, staring straight ahead, because if he looked at Shaw, he might take out some of his wrath toward Calder on him, and Dallin didn’t have the time to indulge himself.

  “Does that smell like anything to you?” he asked, voice flat.

  There was a pause as Shaw took the cup from his hand, another as he gave it a sniff. “I can’t tell,” he finally said. “Too much spice.”

  Dallin nodded, stood, picked up the pack and the rifle both, then stared unseeing at the flow of the river, thinking. Something to put Wil out, surely. Likely the same stuff Hunter was currently sleeping off. Which was good, in a way: if Hunter was still out, so was Wil, and if Calder was heading where Dallin was almost certain he was heading, Dallin might catch him up before Wil woke. Because Wil, frightened and angry and confused, trying to throw off the dregs of a drug, and in the heart of Lind…

  Dallin pushed that away, too. He’d just have to get to Wil first, was all.

  Where was the bloody badger, Wil? What did he do that made you put away your doubt the one time you really needed it?

  There was no reason to assume it had been mAeting. There were plenty of opiates and soporifics and the like that could put a person out quickly and thoroughly, and lots of them grew in these hills. Cal
der was a shaman, a healer, and he’d know more of them than Dallin did. There was no reason in the world to be so bone-deep sure that Calder had slipped Wil the one drug that would mean disaster—not just under the circumstances, but for Wil himself. No reason in the world, except for the fact that it was Calder, and Calder knew, and it would be just the sort of thing in which someone like him would find some sort of twisted, serendipitous meaning. He’d take it as a sign or portent, and think himself following the Mother’s will, even as he watched Wil drink it down, watched the dull confusion seep into that sharp, clever gaze, then get some sort of sick satisfaction when the realization came, the horror that must have moved through Wil when he understood—

  “Son of a fucking bitch!”

  One outburst, one moment of surrender to his rage, and that was all he allowed himself. Dallin turned to the small crowd behind him, jaw set. “You’ve all got your orders,” he said levelly. “Let’s move.”

  Without waiting for any of them, Dallin turned toward the path up to camp, fingers literally aching for want of wrapping them around Calder’s throat. If what Calder had already done to Wil—his bloody Aisling, to whom he’d sworn service—wasn’t bad enough, the Brethren were still out there, and Dallin didn’t want to even think about what would happen if Calder ran into them, with Wil unconscious, unarmed, utterly defenseless. Dallin’s grip tightened about the rifle.

  He believed you. He trusted you, even if it was only for the thirty seconds it took for him to take that cup from your hand and drink. And this is what you do to him.

  “Brayden.”

  Shaw was behind him, hurrying to make up for Dallin’s longer stride. Dallin ignored him, turning to one of the Weardas coming up alongside him. “I want the fastest horse you can lay your hands on,” he told the man. “I don’t care who it belongs to. I’ve a mare to offer on a not-quite-even trade until this business is through.”