The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  “Dallin,” Wil cut in, kept his eyes closed and his voice soft, “what do you want to do? I mean what do you really want to do? What’s the best strategy, Shaman?” Dallin didn’t answer, but then, he didn’t really have to. “You don’t want to run and hide,” Wil told him, as gently as he could. “You don’t want to leave Lind to itself. You can’t. It isn’t in you.”

  Dallin was silent for quite a while, the power seeping from his hand to Wil’s keeping pulsing time to the rhythm of his slow breathing, like it was an extension of his body. “I want you to live, Wil,” he finally said, low and even. “I want us both to live.”

  Wil nodded a little. “So do I. I know you don’t really believe that, but I—”

  “It isn’t—”

  “—but I promise you that I would like nothing better than to live a very long life, learning as slowly as I possibly can all the ways there are that will make you smile at me like you did by the Stair.” Wil’s own mouth turned up gently at the corners. “You’ve a beautiful smile, has anyone ever told you that?”

  “No,” Dallin said quietly. “I don’t think so.”

  What a horrible pity. “I’m not afraid of Wheeler,” Wil said simply. “You’re stronger than him, you said it yourself. He’s trying to take from you, he’s trying to take from your people. And you can’t stand that someone like him has control of the Commonwealth’s military. You want him, and you want to see his eyes when he realizes you have him. You only want to collapse the tunnel because if I let you, that means I’m afraid enough that I’ll let you talk me out of everything else.”

  “Wil—”

  “I want to live.” A little bit fierce now, because Wil really meant this, every bit of it. “I want to know everything about you, even those things you don’t want to remember. I want to learn your every thought, your every feeling. I want to get to know the ten-thousand nuances of your every kiss. I want to watch Lind learn and grow beneath your hand, and I want to find out all of the things I can do, find my place and stretch myself into it.” He paused, opened his eyes, dismayed and warmed both at the slight glimmer in Dallin’s dark gaze. “If I have anything to say about it, Dallin, I promise you this one thing—I want us both to come out the other side of this.”

  Dallin nodded, sincere agreement, but his sigh was sad and resigned. “And how do we do that, d’you suppose?”

  Wil shrugged a little, closed his eyes again, Singréne’s song and Dallin’s warmth pouring into his every crevice now, soothing everything that hurt, even his heart. “She told me to give you my keys. Said we’ve more than two choices, but She wouldn’t tell me what the others were. She also said I’ve all the pieces of my puzzle, which pissed me off a little, because you’re the one obsessed with puzzles. Told me to use my Gifts—all of them, She said, like I wouldn’t use everything anyway, or something, and then She said I don’t even know all of my Gifts, so…” Another shrug, and a frown this time, and he squinted up at Dallin through drooping eyelids. Amazingly, Wil thought he could fall asleep here, on the cold stone floor of FAeðme, waiting for the Cleric. “I don’t know what that means, really, but if I find any keys, I’ll be sure and hand them over.”

  “More riddles,” Dallin muttered, almost growled but too obviously held it back. “I suppose that’s where the Old Ones get it from, but it would surely—” He stopped, narrowed his eyes, stared down at Wil with a deep, thoughtful frown. “You mean She implied you’ve more Gifts than the ones we know about?”

  “She did.” Wil sighed, shut his eyes again, and let himself drift on the gently flowing brume of consoling healing. “Implied lots of things, actually, but you know how that goes. Or…” He frowned. “Well, no. She said I already knew, although I beg to differ, but that doesn’t seem to make a difference.” He sighed again, sank deeper into the thick coat. “All in all, it was more than I’d expected it to be, but… maybe it’s ungrateful, but I still wish They’d just say it.” “Huh,” Dallin breathed. “I think maybe…” He went silent for a moment before Wil felt him shift a little. “Not all your Gifts come from the Mother and the Father,” he whispered, almost to himself, “but if not Them, then…?” Singréne’s song stuttered somewhat, grew slightly louder, and the power pulsing from Dallin’s hand intensified. “You get the pushing from Siofra because Siofra got it from him,” he said slowly, his words deliberate, his tone filled with revelation and remorse and perhaps a little bit of anger. “That man,” Dallin said, almost reluctantly, “in Dudley.”

  That man in Dudley. Fírinne. The man they’d questioned. The man Wil had pushed until he couldn’t stop, and then… and then he’d pulled it back. The man he’d refused to look at after, because he didn’t want to see his eyes, afraid to know, afraid he might understand the emptiness, the void where a man used to be…

  Soulless.

  You do not yet know of what you are capable. You do not yet know all of your Gifts. Dearg-dur.

  Soul-eater.

  Wil’s eyes snapped open, stared sightless up into shadow. “Oh,” he wheezed, shocked and sickened, and altogether too certain. “Oh… fuck.”

  Chapter Six

  Dallin watched Wil’s expression slide from blankly stunned to revolted to pissed, then settle back slowly into blank. All but his eyes—burning, out-shining the polished stone in the river’s bed, boring tight and tense into Dallin’s. And Dallin knew exactly what it all meant.

  “No, Wil,” he said, before he could even think about it, the sick sinking in his gut making it thick as a sob. “Not this. They can’t ask it of you, you don’t have to—”

  “I think They already have,” Wil said, staring blankly at the ceiling. “And yeah, I think I do.” He wasn’t going to be talked out of it, Dallin could see it all over him. And what was his own role in it all to be? To watch? To help?

  “Right,” Dallin wheezed, gave a short, sharp nod, asked, “Can you get up?” and barely even waited for Wil to nod back before he hauled them both to their feet. He paused only for a second or two to make sure Wil had his balance before calling for Corliss and Thorne. Because if he faffed about, if he let himself stop and consider it all, he might end up balking altogether.

  “I’ll want everyone armed and watching that entrance,” he told Corliss as she helped Wil into Léaf’s overlarge tunic. “He knows Wil and I are here, but he doesn’t know you are. You’ll have surprise on your side, plus a half-dozen Linders who can move like cats. Have them flank Wheeler and his men from the shadows, disarm them, and we’ll deal with what comes after. The arrogant pillock only brought ten men with him, so you should be able to do it without firing a shot.”

  “And what will you be doing?” Corliss wanted to know, shooting a look of blatant concern between him and Wil. Wil merely gave her a small smile, almost apologetic, then shrugged and opened a hand toward Dallin.

  “Other things,” was all Dallin said.

  “But what about…?” She frowned, her fingers unconsciously brushing the grip of her sidearm in its holster. “He’s got magic, hasn’t he?”

  “He’s no match for FAeðme,” Dallin assured her. “Or for me,” he added, deliberately cocky, and with a sly wink that made Corliss grimace and roll her eyes, but it seemed to soothe any nerves that might’ve been building.

  Dallin waited for her to turn to her business, obviously glad to have something to do, someone to direct, before he turned to Thorne. “Protection spells,” he began. “You’re right, I’m not practiced and I don’t want to take chances. Can you—?”

  “Runes,” Wil put in, his voice quiet but curiously resonant. His eyes were locked to Thorne’s, somber. “Made of the stone of FAeðme and the water of the Flównysse.” He paused, shot a sharp, steady look up at Dallin. “And the blood of the Shaman.”

  Dallin’s eyebrows went up. And just how d’you propose to get that? he almost protested, but only groused, “Not all of it, I hope,” and flattened his mouth into a scowl he didn’t really mean. If Wil said it must be so, then it must be so.


  A wry little smile twitched at the corner of Wil’s mouth, and he turned his gaze back to Thorne. “All should be Marked.”

  “I agree most heartily,” Thorne answered, gravely approving, and tilted his head. “Any particular charms you would urge?

  Wil shook his head, opened a hand. “I expect you’d know that better than I.”

  Thorne merely raised his eyebrows in a look that said I wouldn’t be so sure, but he nodded, and accepted the charge. He clapped his hands as he bustled away, called, “Incense!” to the other elders, and confiscated two of the Linders to start the business of gathering chips and dust of the stone that laced the floors of the cavern, then pounding it into powder. Dallin supposed they’d come and find him when it was time to make his own ghoulish contribution.

  “Blood?” he murmured to Wil under his breath. “Really?”

  “Baby,” Wil murmured back.

  Dallin tried to keep the scowl but couldn’t. “Just thinking it’s a bit on the dramatic side, is all,” he retorted. “Then again, it is you.”

  Wil returned just enough of a smile to make it clear that the jab was accepted in its spirit, then abruptly sobered. “I wouldn’t ask anything of you that wasn’t necessary.”

  It was heartfelt and filled with things that at any other time would have warmed Dallin to his toes; now, it chilled him. “Ask it all, Wil,” was his soft reply, just as heartfelt. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  A weary sigh and a quick, gentle squeeze of his hand was all Dallin got for an answer. “How much longer?” Wil wanted to know.

  “Listen…” Dallin trailed off, gathered as much calm composure as he could. “You know my way is safer. Wheeler… he’s an unknown, unpredictable. If you try, just for one minute, to come at this from an objective angle, you have to see that—”

  “How much longer?” Implacable and just on the edge of hard.

  Dallin kept his jaw from clenching, pulled his hand away, and scrubbed at his stubbly chin with a bitter sigh. “Not much.” His arm throbbed, hot and dull, and he stretched it straight, flexed his fingers. “And here I am, going into battle with my good arm gone stupid.”

  “Don’t think you’ll be needing your guns,” Wil muttered, his own right arm held stiffly awkward against his side and crooked across his torso. “It’s fine for now,” he said when he caught Dallin’s glance. “I’m fine for now. Well…” He shrugged, looked down. “Relatively speaking, anyway.”

  “Wil—”

  “No.”

  Dallin’s mouth tightened. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Wil told his boots. “It all amounts to the same thing. He’s dying, and She doesn’t want him to. I don’t know why She can’t help Him, but I do know She would if She could. We’re all there is, and it’s down to us. Maybe this was the only way from the beginning and we were just fooling ourselves with choices that weren’t real.”

  “Torturing ourselves, more like,” Dallin growled. “And it isn’t as though this is a perfect solution to all our problems.” His hands fisted, a pulsing spark of aching heat sliding up his right arm; it felt good, it felt real, so he did it again. “If we had more time, maybe… maybe we could learn how to direct it better. No commander would lead his troops into a battle with these kinds of odds, Wil. No commander would march on the enemy without first collecting all the intelligence there was to gather, and drilling his troops until they were sharp and ready. We’re not ready for this, not for this… thing you’re planning.” Dallin couldn’t help the touch of disgust in his voice.

  Wil heard it, Dallin could tell, but he only shrugged again. “If we tried to get out of it now, something else would happen to force us to it. Time’s running out—don’t you feel it?”

  Dallin pinched at the bridge of his nose, didn’t answer the question. “You think She’s set all this up? You think She’s pushing us about on some otherworldly chess board?”

  Because he didn’t believe that for a second. If She had that kind of power, She could have taken care of all this Herself. Dallin had seen Her urgency, had felt its unmistakable tension, and he didn’t think any of this was some kind of test of Her Aisling or Her Guardian, set up by Her own hand to prove their strength or faith. She needed them, and so did He.

  “No,” Wil answered, brow twisting a bit as he pulled his gaze up, turned it to the quiet bustle about them. “I think gods have no more control over our choices than we do over each other’s. If They did…” A bleak little smile twitched at his mouth, and he didn’t finish the thought. “A gift and a curse to Their beloved children, and I don’t necessarily damn or thank Them for it. This is my choice, and I’ve made it. They can’t touch him, and I don’t know why, but I can. I know my name now, and I won’t dishonor it.”

  Dallin’s eyebrows twitched up. “Oh?”

  “It’s funny,” Wil said, turning his eyes slowly to Dallin, that small smile going soft and warm. “The Brethren forced it on me, wrote it into my very skin. If I’d known what it was, I likely would’ve cut it away then.” A slight shrug. “You handed it to me, kept it for me until I could understand it and be glad that it’s mine. You’ve been handing me keys since the moment I met you.” His head dipped down, a shallow, deferential bow. “Thank you, Guardian.”

  Sentiment again, crowding Dallin’s eyes, clogging his throat, only this time, he didn’t curse it. He swallowed, cleared his throat. “You can’t read,” was all he could think to say.

  Wil smiled this time, a real smile, and dipped down, pulled the knife from his boot, the flicker of the lamps and torches sharding green-gold fire over the etching on its blade. “No,” he agreed quietly, “and it’s a shame that the first time I hear it in the language She spoke it, it’ll be from the mouth of the Cleric. But I know what it means, and I believe it. That’s all that matters.” He nodded, squared his shoulders, ran the tip of his finger gently over the last words of the verse engraved on the blade. “I am the Mother’s Beloved Son.” His voice was calm, even, and deeper than Dallin had ever heard it. “And you are my Guardian. This is my end, Dallin, and it is you who’s brought me to it—I’m not Wil, I’m not Aisling, I’m what you’ve shown me I always was. I can’t ever repay you such a debt.” He held out his hand. “If Fate is at all kind, this will be the last blood you’ll spill on my account.”

  Warm, as he’d never been before, and calm, though he shouldn’t be, Dallin placed his hand in Wil’s, turned it palm-up. “Take all that you need,” he said hoarsely, and by the way Wil’s smile turned a little sad, Dallin knew every meaning packed into the statement was understood.

  Wil neither nodded agreement nor blanched; he merely rested the blade across Dallin’s palm, tilted it then slicked a long, diagonal slice, the edge so keen Dallin didn’t even feel it until the skin split slightly and blood welled in the wound. Wil didn’t let go of his hand, but dipped two fingers to Dallin’s palm, swept a new Mark over the one that had gone brown and flaky, mostly washed away beneath rain, sweat and tears.

  “Let’s get this part done,” was all he said.

  Taking Wheeler and his men was almost disappointingly easy. The man’s arrogance contributed to the ambush, which was no more strategic than Dallin’s party skulking in the shadows, weapons drawn, and flanking them. The ‘great General’ had obviously been expecting to just stroll in and take the Aisling, probably execute Dallin in the bargain, and the look of anger and embarrassment on his broad face when he found himself surrounded was actually fairly amusing. The familiar chittering buzz that slipped up Dallin’s backbone, Wheeler’s attempt to push him and take control of the situation, was not.

  “Can’t we just kill him?” he muttered to Wil, only half-joking, because this man was lower than those he led, more contemptible—at least the Brethren truly believed they served the Father, even if they’d lost sight completely of what that might once have meant. This man had no delusions about whom he served.

  Wil snorted a little, the negati
ng shake of his head tellingly reluctant. “Only if you’d like to volunteer to call Aeledfýres yourself,” he replied under his breath.

  “I think I’ve already done as much,” Dallin growled, his tone acidic and more aggressive than he’d meant.

  Wil gave him a look that, another time, might have made Dallin step back. “I won’t discuss it again,” he said through his teeth.

  “We’ve barely discussed it the once!” Dallin snapped.

  “Which was once more than I can stand,” Wil shot back, paused then softened his bearing with a sigh. “I know what I’m doing, Guardian. Can you give it or not?”

  Using the Mother’s challenge against him. Dallin could have choked him. Instead, he merely set his jaw, hardened his gaze, then turned himself back to Wheeler and his men. “Mm,” was all he grunted as he stepped through the circle of armed victors and into the cluster of disarmed captives, Wheeler at their center.

  Shaw had been right: Wheeler didn’t look anything like Siofra—wide where Siofra had been thin; fair-haired and tanned where Siofra had been dark and pale—but he had the same look to him, like he was certain what was coming and knew exactly how to twist it all to the outcome he wanted. The confidence of a senior officer, a man who gave an order with never a question that it would be followed. A man who commanded the respect of the Army, because he had the rank that made it a given. Power he could wield in service to all, and yet he’d chosen to back a monster. Ten years ago, Dallin would have followed this man; it would have been his duty. The thought made him want to vomit.

  Wil had been right, too: Dallin wanted Wheeler. Wanted to see his arrogant gaze go wide and frightened. Wanted to watch as he realized he couldn’t win, and wanted to keep watching when the superior light behind those dark eyes was snuffed, hopefully by Dallin’s own hand. Vengeance burned in Dallin’s chest, seared up his spine. This man had threatened Dallin’s friends, taken control of the Law of his country, arrested Jagger, likely put him in shackles, because this sort of man just would. Dallin knew what that felt like, and the empathy was just too vivid. Wheeler had been responsible for Kenley, for uncounted deaths of Commonwealth soldiers, for battles raging even now above their heads, for dragging Dallin’s own country to the brink of war and the world ever-nearer to intended slavery. Oh, Dallin wanted him.