The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  For commanding that the Aisling be chained and broken, then leaving him alone to die with his laughing ghosts. For hunting the son of gods nearly to ground, trying to use him and take from him, and make him no more than another sacrificial tool to claim whatever reward he thought his due. For having the bleeding audacity to think he had the right.

  For Wil. Dallin wanted him for Wil.

  “Dallin,” Wil said softly, laid a hand on his arm.

  Dallin blinked, realizing only then that he’d drawn his revolver and had the barrel pressed to Wheeler’s temple, finger twitching at the trigger. Well. At least he’d got his first wish; Wheeler looked satisfyingly worried. Dallin took a long breath, forcibly unclenched his teeth, but didn’t draw the weapon away until he’d savored the look of fear in eyes as dark as his own.

  “Sorry,” he breathed to Wil, took a step back and peered about at his own small company. He gauged their eyes and found no blame in any of them, not even the Old Ones. Alert and intent, certainly, beneath the runes of protection drawn on each of their brows, but there was neither accusation nor approval, merely interest in what the Guardian would do and faith that whatever it was, it would be the right thing. Dallin wished he could be as confident. He pointed his glance over to Andette. “Find something to bind these men with,” he told her. “A soldier’s first duty when captured is escape, and I don’t want any of them getting loose and mucking things up.”

  He took hold of Wheeler’s sleeve, where the gold leaves of his rank were embroidered, then his collar, where the star insignia shone mocking-bright in the flickering light. “Make sure they’re paying attention,” he murmured quietly to the girl, flipped a tight little nod to the captive soldiers. “I want them to hear this, if they’ll listen.” A shove he couldn’t quite resist, and a growl he didn’t bother deciphering; Dallin pushed Wheeler ahead of him, out of the circle and over toward the flow of the river. He didn’t stop until they’d reached the edge, where he turned Wheeler so his back was to his men. Wil followed silently, his rifle slung over his shoulder, a look of dry amusement tracing his otherwise somber expression.

  “This changes nothing,” Wheeler said as Dallin reluctantly released his hold, gave one last bit of a shove before he stepped back and away, because he really was aching to throttle or shoot. Wheeler turned his avid glance to Wil. “Aisling,” he said, dipping his proud head, by all appearances earnestly beseeching, but there was an oiliness beneath it he couldn’t quite hide. “You must know by now that your transgressions against the Father cannot continue. He will forgive you, but only if you let me help you now.”

  “Don’t,” Wil said, deadly quiet, “call him that.”

  That buzzing was all around them now, ramping itself into a steady hum. Wheeler was trying to pull power from FAeðme, the cheeky fuck, like it belonged to him and he had the right. There was power in him, certainly, and stronger than what Dallin had felt from Siofra, but it couldn’t compete; Dallin reached out, slammed a protection down, added it to the magic of the Old Ones and FAeðme itself, and watched, satisfied, as Wheeler’s lips tightened in dismay and anger.

  Wheeler sighed, shook his head sadly. “You have been taken in by the false Guardian, but there’s no blame to you—the whole of renegade Lind shall pay for the lies it perpetrates, fools for the Mother, who seeks only to put down the Father and take all power to Herself.” He shot a wrathful glance over his shoulder, flipped a hand out to indicate the Old Ones, who’d moved as one into a loose semicircle behind them, hands at their sides, palms-up, and singing soft in one voice. Wheeler sneered. “Priests of the daemon-goddess, the whore who seeks to usurp the Father, and this one—” He pointed at Dallin, his face flushing choleric in his pretence at righteous anger. “—is their soldier, Her mack, peddler of lies and trader in your flesh and magic.” He took a breath, held his hands out to Wil. “It’s not too late. He will forgive you if you’ll only…” Trailed off, went silent, as Wil’s knife slowly rose, the tip of the blade coming up to rest just below Wheeler’s flapping jaw, its edge still scarlet and shining red-gold in the torchlight.

  “I think it’s time we all stopped pretending now,” Wil told Wheeler softly. “You’ll get what you want, though I doubt you’ll truly want it when you do get it, and I won’t hear any more of your rot in the meantime. Save your wheedling for when you finally meet your hungry god—he feeds quite well on the small, stupid minds of men like you.” He tilted his head, genuinely curious. “Tell me—did you know Siofra?”

  Wheeler smiled a little, trying to make his glance down at the blade casual and not nervous. “A man who grew arrogant and too settled in his own lies through his long, stolen years.”

  Dallin couldn’t help but roll his eyes, mutter, “Said General Pot to Mister Kettle,” under his breath, inanely pleased when the corner of Wil’s mouth quirked up involuntarily. He shot Dallin a sharp, but nonetheless amused glare.

  Wheeler ignored it, morphed his expression into something that tried very hard for sympathy, but only achieved poorly hidden anger. “He used you very badly,” he told Wil in a soft voice that almost made Dallin shiver with its similarity to the man about whom he was now speaking. “And you allowed it, a sin for which you must realize you cannot escape all punishment.” Wheeler shrugged, sighed. “But I must admit, he did have his uses, such as they were.”

  “Mm,” Dallin agreed. “I imagine between him and Channing, you didn’t have much trouble manipulating both countries into rattling swords.” He smiled a little at the reluctant surprise on Wheeler’s face when Dallin had named his accomplice. “Siofra’s desperation toward the end must have seemed like a gift from…” Dallin paused, grimaced, unwilling to complete the adage. “All the flapping about he did at the end—all you had to do was let him go and follow after. Probably should’ve put more men on the Bounds, though. It was pretty easy crossing over.” The smile came back when Wheeler bristled at the critique. “In fact, what you should have done was train the Brethren a little better. They’re far too easy to kill, especially since they’re so willing to kill themselves.”

  Wheeler’s hand lifted, conceding the point. “One does what one can with what one is handed,” he demurred. “I do prefer the discipline of soldiers.”

  “And if Dominion soldiers had been caught across the Border,” Dallin mused, “you wouldn’t have been able to stop a declaration of war before you were ready, before Aeledfýres was ready—I see.”

  He did. All laid out before him in plain contours that had finally taken on the shapes of facts, the last of the puzzle-pieces. Use men from Ríocht, so that if they were caught across the Border, the Embassy could claim they were merely a fanatical sect and nothing whatever to do with their government, no threat to the treaty. Let them do all the searching and all the dying, and when they found the Aisling, Wheeler would be the authority called in to handle the negotiations with the Dominion. Siofra himself might have even demanded that Wheeler handle it. Siofra had been arrogant enough to insist upon Cynewísan’s highest-ranking officer for any negotiations—after all, he’d demanded that Wheeler take charge of the hunt, hadn’t he? And once the Aisling was in the Brethren’s hands… speak his name, bring Aeledfýres into the world through Wheeler, and through Wheeler, push the Aisling out of his soul, possess the power of the Kin, and finish the job Aeledfýres had started before time was Time. War, slavery, mothers murdering their children because their false god told them to—

  Dallin shuddered a little, his finger once again twitching at the trigger of his gun.

  “Wil,” he said, because it was all he could say—a warning, a plea, a demand, a bone-deep scream hidden within the speaking of it, he didn’t know.

  It didn’t matter, because Wil understood it, whatever it was. He nodded slowly, took a long, deep breath. “It’s time.” He looked again at Wheeler, withdrew the knife, hand curled comfortably around the grip—like it belonged there and always had. “Speak your spells, fraud. My Guardian is impatient to watch your daemon-god rewa
rd you for your service.”

  Wheeler frowned, real curiosity, and tilted his head. “You really do intend to defy the Father.” “He is not,” Wil seethed, razor-soft, “the Father.”

  “No?” The general merely raised his eyebrows, shrugged. “You shall see.” His hand rose, a little too quickly, and Dallin’s gun automatically came up, thumb chambering a round. Wheeler paused, smiled a little, mock-indulgent, and opened his surcoat slowly, withdrawing a flask from an inside breast pocket. He held it out to Wil. Dallin only watched as Wil’s gaze narrowed on it, hung there, unreadable. “I expect you’ll be wanting this,” Wheeler said, the soft tone of his voice belied by the hard little smirk crooking his mouth.

  Dallin didn’t think he’d ever hated anyone so much as he did Wheeler right that minute. He tensed, and it had nothing whatever to do with trust or confidence or faith. He’d seen addicts, he’d seen the want, however reluctant, the need, unbearable and entirely necessary, and Wil had been dependent on the stuff for longer than Dallin had been alive. The sensation of it must still linger, even if it hadn’t been for Calder. As far as Dallin knew, addiction never truly went away, and it didn’t matter how necessary the drug might be to what Wil—they—had to do, because Dallin still hated Wheeler for handing it over so smugly, for the self-satisfied assurance in his gaze as he watched Wil’s face, waited eagerly for that first sip, as Dallin waited with his gut curling in on itself.

  Still inscrutable, silent, Wil reached out slowly, settled his fingers about the slick silver of the flask, careful not to touch Wheeler’s. “You expect a lot of things,” he said absently, hesitating for only a moment before taking the thing in his own hand. He brought it up to his mouth, removed the cork with his teeth and spat it aside, took a whiff from the slim neck of the flask, eyebrows flicking up just a little before he shook his head.

  Dallin didn’t think Wheeler saw the slight tremor of Wil’s hand, didn’t think he twigged to the tightening of Wil’s jaw and how his eyes closed briefly with want when he dipped his head a little, hair hanging down to hide his face. Dallin saw it all. Swallowed his own fear and laid everything he had on trust.

  “But I expect not,” Wil finally murmured, breathed a shaky sigh and shut his eyes. Wheeler wasn’t the only one who was surprised when Wil extended his arm and tipped the flask’s contents into the running veins of the Flównysse.

  Dallin said nothing, confused though thoroughly impressed, but Wheeler’s face twisted—anger, thwarted expectation, and a flicker of genuine fear he couldn’t quite cover. He slid a quick glance over his shoulder, his men captive and guarded, bound now, slouching in a dejected row against the cavern’s far wall and no help at all. His dark eyes turned on Dallin, enraged and frustrated, before shifting back over to Wil.

  “Delay will do you no good,” he said, his tone taking on firm command and reproach. “I am your doorway. If you would challenge the—” He stopped when Wil snapped the knife back up beneath his chin. Wheeler smiled a little, opened a hand. “If you would challenge him, you must allow me to follow. I am your key.”

  Wil only snorted, drew back, flipped the knife in his palm, slipped it back into his boot. “I shrink to imagine the locks,” he said, took hold of Wheeler’s coat, and leaned in. “You won’t be following,” he said indifferently, “you’ll be leading.”

  Wil shot a sharp look at Dallin, a tiny nod. “Don’t take too long,” he said before he turned back to Wheeler, captured his gaze, smiled, just a little. “Don’t worry,” he told Wheeler softly. “This is what you want.”

  Eyes gone bright and dark all at once, shifting and churning, almost their own source of darkling vert ghost-light. Dallin didn’t have time to so much as blink, let alone react, before he felt the surge and shiver rattle inside him, the shift of power, as Wil gathered strength from all around him and pushed.

  They went still, Wil and Wheeler both, locked in a gaze of mutual loathing, the empty flask still dangling from Wil’s lax fingers. Dallin only stared for a moment, wondering uncomfortably if this was what it had looked like before, his and Wil’s soulless bodies entangled on the floor of the cave while their spirits had been standing before the Mother—empty, defenseless husks. He peered over at Corliss and Andette and Woodrow, looking back at him like they knew, and he supposed they did; they, after all, had seen it before.

  “We watch the Watcher,” Andette told Dallin evenly, dipping her head on a confident nod, hands gripping her rifle, back straight, chin out.

  Dallin nodded back and eyed the Old Ones, chanting their soft songs, all eyes slightly hazed, as though watching something inside themselves, concentrating. Dallin blew out a long breath, let their song wind through him, let the magic of FAeðme slide into his blood, beat a pulsing tattoo through his heart and mind…

  Shut his eyes and followed.

  Not the star-pocked nothing, not the river, not anywhere he’s seen before. Clean and stark, softprismed planes that nevertheless gyrate and spasm now and then, landscapes curling into vistas. From great swaths of emerald grasses, bowing and shuddering in a breeze he can’t feel, to a panorama of pristine snowscape, the clear ice-blue of a frosted lake spider-webbed with faerielace, then sand, then the blasted nothing of solitary nightmare, tinged indigo and burnt at the edges in the twisting colors of flame. The dreamscapes of one who has seen them only inside the minds of others, found beauty inside each one that he could keep and make his own. Like picking up a stone or leaf that appeals to a singular sense of beauty and stowing it in a battered pack. The facets lash out in every direction, as far as his eye can see, and he thinks there are probably more that he can’t see, scope beyond scope, and it seems so extraordinarily fitting that he has to smile—this, after all, is the creation of a mind that’s vast and flung wide, open and seeking, and if Dallin loved Wil for nothing else, he would love him for this.

  Solid ground beneath his feet, and it’s like he’s only half here. If he tries, he can see both at once: his body standing stock-still and rigid inside a pitiless embrace of malachite, breathing the thick spice of the incense Thorne splashed into the lamps, his own hand resting heavy on Wil’s shoulder; the rest of him right here in this place of bewitching impracticalities, actually watching Wil’s mind work all around him. It’s slightly vertiginous, but not alarmingly so.

  It’s impossibly full of horizons, horizons with dazzling, jagged edges, skies boiling obsidian, heavy and hung with silver, the blinding patina of it carving its way into his retinas, imprinting itself behind his eyes, strobing through his head and stretching the boundaries of his mind. Borders washed black with shadows that move like ghosts, hunched and crooked and creeping with goblin-stealth, forming and re-forming themselves like the ebb and flow of an empty sea.

  With anyone else, it would be frightening; with Wil, it’s merely strange and beautiful, somewhat telling.

  ‘Dreaming awake,’ Wil had told Dallin once, as he’d stood in Chester’s stables and nearly wept because it didn’t hurt. Dallin thinks perhaps this was where Wil had been wandering then, thinks this is the place his spirit reaches for when it’s not being battered and abused, when he can finally dream dreams that are his, and Dallin can’t help but smile a little that he’s found it.

  Wil has changed himself again. Not the sprung boots and threadbare tunic he’d worn for Her, but a plain white shirt that drapes soft from straight shoulders, tails tracing loosely over dark trousers that flare to a slight crease over his bare feet. Unadorned but for the knife in his hand and the little crystal on its chain against his breastbone. His arm isn’t held stiff and awkward against his torso, there is no edge of a makeshift bandage peeking out from the ‘V’ of the half-laced tunic, and once again, his face is unbruised and unmarred but for the bright stripe of his Mark. He is strong here, tall and powerful, eyes aglow, and his wounds are elsewhere, in another world, on a body that stands on mortal ground and feels the pain for which there is no use here.

  Dallin looks down at himself, strangely disappointed that h
e again wears his filthy shirt and damp coat, boots now coated in drying mud and the fine green dust of FAeðme, his arm still throbbing dully. He rubs at his chin, expecting to find at least a day’s growth of scraggy, itchy beard, but he doesn’t.

  “You don’t have it over there, y’know,” Wil had whispered to him, that first kiss still humming at Dallin’s lips, and he thinks about that for a long moment before tucking it away. Perhaps useful but not yet useable.

  Wheeler is the same, only he looks somehow more craven here, smaller and slyer, like the skin of the respected general had fit ill before, and his true character has no choice but to show itself as the vile little thing it is. Dark eyes gone coal-like and shifty, smile gone blatantly hungry. Dallin would almost not be surprised if Wheeler appeared as a misshapen little imp, gnashing razorteeth and cackling greedily because it couldn’t help itself. And he’s got the bloody gall to wear Marks here. Dallin could kill him just for that alone.

  “Impressive,” Wheeler tells Wil, gaze calculating and perhaps a touch uneasy.

  Dallin doesn’t even try to hide the smirk. Wheeler had been expecting to have the broken, frightened Chosen, leaf-stupid and at his command, and here he is, faced with the son of gods.

  “Not really,” Wil answers, shrugs, though Dallin’s rather impressed himself. “There’s more that you can’t see. You haven’t enough magic in you. There’s more that even I can’t see. There are other worlds than ours, and we’re all bound by truths we don’t even know about.” He smiles at Wheeler, somewhat pitying. “I know you think you’re quite powerful, chosen by your dog-god, but it’s only that you’re weak and vain. Shamans could do what you do, y’know. You’re not terribly special, you’re only just wicked and greedy enough to consent.” He takes a step in, fixes Wheeler with a serious stare. “You don’t have to do this. You haven’t crossed your last line yet. You’ve a chance, still.”