The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  Three very different grins twitched up, and Heofon puffed a delicate snort. “To answer your question: I think I may speak for all of us when I say that we like our bones whole and just where they are.”

  “And,” Siddell put in, still smiling, but with a meaningful glance at Wil, “we are advisors to the Shaman, stewards in his absence. Whether or not he chooses to accept our advice…” He trailed off, shrugged, and took a pot of salve from Singréne’s tray. The scent was soft and fresh, like a pine forest after a rain. Singréne’s smile crimped a bit, turned somewhat sad. “I think I can speak for all of us when I say we would regret it sincerely if his future choices were to cause him as much pain as those he’s already made and those he continues to make.”

  Despite the cool soothing of the water, Wil’s gut curled a little. Had they chosen this moment apurpose? He was exhausted and sleep-muzzy and wanted nothing more than to drink a barrel of water and slide back into sleep; surely these three astute old men knew what they were doing. Their pleasant, sympathetic smiles never quite concealed the shrewdness behind them.

  Wil tried to brush away the cobwebs draping his mind, tried not to resent the calculation in their chosen moment. “You’ve heard Her Voice,” he said as Siddell dabbed at Wil’s temple and cheekbone with the salve.

  They looked euphoric, like the weight of the world had suddenly been lifted from off their shoulders.

  “Indeed we have.” Siddell bowed, still smiling, then replaced the small pot on the tray, wiped his fingers on a wad of linen Wil suspected was replacement bandages. “And that of the Father.” Siddell slipped his bony fingers about Wil’s right hand, squeezed it—sincerity in the grip, but with medical purpose beneath it as well. He instructed Wil to squeeze back, and when Wil did— weakly—Siddell frowned a little and jerked his chin a bit at Singréne. “They are so terribly proud of Their Beloved Son,” Siddell went on as his fingers moved to Wil’s wrist, timing the pulse beneath them and frowning again. “And there is no scale by which to measure our gratitude. What you did, my boy…” He took his hand away, swept his fingers over Wil’s brow. “Courageous and selfless, if a bit…” His mouth turned up a little at the corner. “…foolish.”

  He seemed to be expecting Wil’s mouth to drop open, because the half-smile flowered into an almost-grin as he watched Singréne finally lay the tray down on a wide table to the right of the bed, then move about and seat himself on the furs to Wil’s left. “You have been told that what is between you and the Guardian is not meant,” Singréne said, his tone matter-of-fact and his movements coolly efficient as he retrieved a straight-razor from Siddell and began to gently and carefully slice away the bandaging about Wil’s chest and shoulder.

  The statement brought back echoes of Calder, and the strange euphoria-drenched rage that had swept through Wil when he’d realized—

  He shook his head, set his jaw. “So I have.” His tone was flat and tight, and he took another sip from the cup.

  “And so it is not,” Singréne replied, “or was not, and yet…” He paused, his eyes on his hands as they worked carefully. “Had you been trained, had your Guardian been trained, had you honed your skills and used them as we would have instructed…” Another pause, and he cut his glance to the others: Siddell was nodding, solemn and thoughtful; Heofon still had his sly little smile, his eyes bright and intelligent inside their gaunt frame. Singréne shook his head, sighed. “Sacrifice is too often the way of victory. Even your Guardian, his lack of instruction notwithstanding, knows that, and was fully prepared to give himself to save us all.” He paused again, pointed a narrow stare at Wil. “To save you.”

  Wil could only stare back, lick dry lips. “I know,” he answered, rather small and weak, not nearly as prickly and defiant as he’d hoped.

  Heofon shifted, his smile finally slipping away. “The purpose of the Guardian always has been to protect and guide the Aisling, but to serve the Mother in all things.” His gaze turned sharper, though there was nothing unfriendly about it. “’Twas happy coincidence for us that one purpose happened to serve the other.”

  Wil scowled, prickly anger rising in defense. “He was instructed by the Father as well, and the contradiction of his choices nearly split him in two. You can’t blame him for not tendering a blood-sacrifice, nor for not being one himself.”

  “Indeed we do not,” Singréne assured him quickly. “Had he been any other Guardian, had you been any other Aisling,” he smiled a little, swept a glance to the others, then back at Wil, “had we been consulted and our advice taken…” He sighed, shook his head, set the razor across his knee, and looked at Wil straight. “Then the horns upon our ascent from FAeðme would have sung the songs of mourning, and not those of joy, one way or another, and we would now be tending at least one corpse, rather than two wounded. You found another way, changed Fate, and yet… that other way…”

  Wil swallowed, looked down. He’d known this was coming, but he’d still hoped… “Your laws demand my death,” he said baldly, refusing to shrink or shy. “I used the tools of the enemy, became like him, and your laws do not suffer Dearg-dur to live.”

  Funny, how there was fear skittering in his chest, but no fear of these men in particular. Whatever their verdict, it wasn’t theirs to pass sentence and they knew it—he knew it. He wondered vaguely, eyes drifting over the razor, what he’d do if they tried, then pushed the thought away. They wouldn’t, he knew they wouldn’t, and not because he could crisp them all to ash if he felt like it, or… worse. One way or another—either by their own deductions or instruction from the Mother—they were well aware of what he could do, though this was no judgment from them of what he’d actually done. Dallin, however…

  “You did not merely become like him,” Heofon put in, quietly somber, as he took the cup from Wil’s hand and set it on the tray. “You ate his soul. Blood to Blood. What he was is now a part of you; what was his is now yours.”

  “I know that!” Wil snapped. “Did you think I didn’t?”

  Knew it with a dead-certainty that had yet to truly reach his heart. Memories that weren’t his, and knowledge that he shouldn’t have, and yet it still held a surreal quality he couldn’t associate with reality. Perhaps it was the way Dallin still looked at him and didn’t pull away, his relief so very obvious and sincere.

  “Does…?” Wil cleared his throat, stared at his fingers as they plucked at the silky furs. “Does Dallin…?” He couldn’t finish, couldn’t ask this simplest of questions, and he wasn’t at all surprised, because he’d barely been able to bring himself to form its outlines in his head before, when he’d lain willing in his Guardian’s embrace.

  “Of course,” said Singréne, smiled a little and laid a wide hand to Wil’s arm. “He knew it the moment before you did it, and extended his hand in aid. A law has been not merely broken but obliterated, and not by your hand, lad. He is our lawmaker—you have nothing to fear from Lind. But your Guardian…” He trailed off, shook his head, glanced at the others in appeal.

  “Your Guardian is quite talented at not knowing the things he knows,” Siddell put in. “You have a choice you must present to him, so the Mother and the Father have told us, and our loyalties are left at cross-purposes. In this, we cannot seek the Shaman’s guidance, and so we must seek yours.”

  Wil blinked, narrowed his eyes. “Are you asking me if I want you to lie to him for me?”

  Heofon shook his head. “The Mother recognizes the dangers in a Guardian whose heart lies so close to the Aisling.” He raised a hand when Wil opened his mouth. “For all of Calder’s zealousness and his unfortunate…” He paused, pursed his thin lips. “…fall from grace—”

  “You mean madness, Aeweweard,” Singréne cut in, tone sharp and gaze hard. “Call it what it was.”

  A moment of tense silence strung between them, heavy with things Wil could probably touch if he wanted to, but it seemed private, so he didn’t. He’d never really thought about whatever internal politics must exist among the twelve of th
em. He’d more-or-less assumed that since they shared thoughts, they likely shared opinions, like bees in a hive, but it appeared he’d been mistaken.

  Heofon stared at Singréne, his gaze moving quickly from anger to sadness to guilt and then, finally, to resignation. “As you will.” He sighed. “For all of Calder’s madness, there was sense and wisdom at the core of his objections.” His eyes moved once again to Singréne, blazing this time. “The sense was the seed from which the madness sprang.” He seemed to take no satisfaction from Singréne’s acquiescent nod, only more sorrow. He turned his gaze back to Wil, softened it. “And for all that sense,” he went on gently, “he was wrong, we were wrong, and we would have guided you wrongly, had the Shaman allowed it.”

  “We would have counseled remove,” Singréne said. “We would have counseled retreat until his instruction and training were complete. We would have counseled that he keep his promise to you and put a gun to your head.” He lifted his chin, looked at Wil straight. “We would have counseled execution.”

  He said it like Wil didn’t already know it, like he was confessing, but there was no request for or expectation of absolution in Singréne’s steady gaze.

  “Why are you telling me this?” Wil asked quietly. And did you really have to do it now? Fuck, he was tired and growing more sore and achy by the second, a dull headache sliding behind his eyes and blooming steadily.

  “Because our counsel would have been wrong,” Siddell answered, blunt and even. “Our advice, if asked for and followed, would have led to quite a different outcome, and none of us would now be here to rue it.”

  “Provided we were fortunate enough to have been slated for mere execution,” Singréne put in.

  “Mm,” Siddell agreed with a grimace that spoke volumes more than words could have done. He shook himself, went on, “You are like no other Aisling before you, this you know, but the Shaman is like no other before him, either. The combination, the binding of one to the other…” He sighed, shook his head. “We have been over the course of events, examined them and analyzed other likely outcomes, prayed over it, and the Mother has guided our reasoning. Yours was the only way, and his the only hand that could have guided you to it. The only hand that would have guided you to it and kept holding on after. ‘Not meant’ and ‘not wise’ do not necessarily mean ‘not the way things should be.’”

  Wil sat back, frowned. “Thank you,” was all he could think to say. It meant something to him, though he wasn’t quite sure what yet, but he breathed a little easier and his stomach stopped curling and uncurling.

  “Gratitude is ours, surely,” Heofon replied. “But that is not the reason for our concern.”

  Wil tilted his head. Exhaustion and creeping pain made him brusque. “You want to make sure I know how thoroughly we’ve allowed ourselves to be bound. You want to make sure I know his judgment is skewed by his heart, and that you still think it’s dangerous.” He didn’t believe that one, though it seemed to be everyone else’s point. Contrarily, all of them seemed to understand that if that bond didn’t exist, Wil and Dallin would both be dead and Aeledfýres would have won. It was like they were arguing with their own arguments. Wil sat back, eyeing them all resentfully. “You want to make sure I make plain to him the things you say he knows before I present his choices to him.” He looked between the three of them. “And you think I wouldn’t?”

  “We think your courage is unequalled when it comes to matters of the world,” Singréne said gently. “When it comes to matters of your own heart…” He opened a hand.

  “He is my heart,” Wil retorted. Despite the very real surprise at the truth of the statement and the fact that he’d just blurted it like that, he managed to keep the insult and offense from his tone, but not the anger. “I would never—”

  “You feared to tell him all of Siofra’s hold on you, a hold that made you doubt and falter, even as you stood before your enemy.”

  Wil stared, too weary to pretend he’d seen the bald statement coming. “How did you know that?”

  Singréne smiled, soft and genuine. “The Mother’s guidance has been a balm to sore hearts after so long. But the Father’s wisdom is unmatched, where it concerns His Son.”

  A snarl twisted Wil’s lip; he couldn’t help it. Damn it, gods or no, telling these people Wil’s secrets just wasn’t fair. Wil could understand why, since he’d already tried and failed to broach the subject of choice with Dallin when he’d had a chance… though he supposed he hadn’t tried very hard, so failure wasn’t exactly surprising. Still, it felt intrusive and he resented the hell out of it.

  “You have…” Siddell sighed, shut his eyes briefly. His gaze, when he turned it back to Wil, was sad. “We need not tell you the power that now resides in you. We need not tell you that the danger you presented to all when you first arrived here has now grown so vast there is no scope by which it can be measured.”

  The anger rose, sharp and heated. “I will not sit here and defend myself against things I wouldn’t do if my very soul were at risk, when I have already proven—or should have proven—that I would forfeit every bit of myself, including my soul.”

  “A soul which is now strange to you,” Heofon said gently. He rubbed at his brow, peered at the others. “We do this badly. Too many years of speaking in circles, as the Shaman would tell us.” He snorted and shook his head at Wil. “Your Guardian would have many opinions about our ineptitude in this, none of them good, and he would not be wrong.” He placed both bony hands to the footboard of the bed and leaned into it. “To say it plainly: You are not as you were when you entered FAeðme. You are not as you were when you stepped from the Mother’s presence. Wil That Was is no longer, and will never be again. You are Drút Hyse, but you are more as well. You have much ahead of you, and much now inside of you that you do not know. We can teach you how to learn it, learn from it, direct it, and use it. But we cannot teach you your own value—to the heart of another or, more importantly, to your own. We cannot teach you to accept an extended hand because you are worthy of it.” He paused, smiled. “Such a thing requires the patience and persistence of love.

  “We know of the choice you mean to present to the Guardian, and it is his right—more, it is your duty by him. But you do not only need a Guardian, lad—you need this Guardian. Do not, we beg of you, allow doubt and insecurity to still your tongue when it comes to truths you’d prefer not to speak. Honesty is the only way with Dallin Brayden, and giving it the only way to ensure this Guardian remains the Guardian.”

  Wil studied them, one at a time, with sincere confusion and a healthy dose of suspicion. “The Mother didn’t say as much,” he said slowly. Not that Wil disagreed with them, but She truly hadn’t. In fact, She’d as much as said outright that Dallin might well be better off… No. No, actually, She hadn’t. She’d deferred to the Father, and He’d told Wil that love might drive a person to extremes he wouldn’t normally credit, and that sometimes, it alone wasn’t enough to save another. It had seemed like an answer at the time, but now…

  “To the Mother and the Father,” Heofon said, “our choices are Their most precious gifts to us. Ever is Their guidance for us presented in such a way as to keep those choices sacred.” He shrugged, rueful. “We try to carry on Their example, but sometimes we falter into obscurity.”

  Wil accidentally snorted, thinking of Dallin’s perpetually clenched teeth and his constant grousing about that very thing, then ducked his head, tried to cover it with a cough, but he could tell by their rueful smirks that the old men weren’t buying it. “Sorry,” he offered, though in the face of their own smiles, he still couldn’t quite control his own. Perhaps he was growing giddy with weariness.

  Singréne patted Wil’s arm, went back to ridding him of the last of the bandage, and gestured to Siddell for the pot of salve. “No need to apologize,” he told Wil frankly. “But you understand our point, which our Shaman himself has made plain to us countless times.” That got rid of Wil’s smile. “He has a right to this choice
, and though we may have leave to hope that he makes the one we would prefer, neither we nor you have the right to prevent him from making it fully. Honesty, Aisling, in all things with your Guardian.”

  Wil looked down, nodded, noting rather absently that the bullet wound he hadn’t even seen before was now nothing more than a small, red-swollen pucker on his skin, somewhat impressive blue-brown bruising striating out from its center. “And what do you…?” He paused, sucked in a long breath, forced his gaze up to each of the old men hovering about him. “What do you think he’ll choose?”

  He wasn’t entirely sure why he’d asked the question, wasn’t even entirely sure he wanted an answer. Perhaps he wouldn’t get one, because they all looked away, shook their heads, and sighed as one.

  “I fear,” Singréne rumbled at him as he slathered salve over the healing wound and the bruises, “in this, we must remain annoyingly obscure.” He smiled a little, though his hazel eyes were soft and kind. “I am sorry, lad, but this question is not ours to answer.”

  Wil only sighed again, let his head drop back, and stared at the ceiling, trying to let the gentle touch and the combined soft scents of the salve and incense soothe as they were meant to do. The hell of it was that, though they might be annoying, they weren’t strictly wrong, not about any of it. Beyond all sense, Dallin loved Wil enough to die for him, to kill him if he had to, and to kill for him. More troubling, he loved Wil enough to defy gods. He put Wil first, above any danger to himself, though Wil didn’t quite believe Dallin would put him above a danger to the world. If it came to it, in the thick of things, Wil knew bone-deep that Dallin would have pulled that trigger. His honor would have demanded it, even if Wil hadn’t been able to. He couldn’t blame these old men for not knowing that. How could they, when they hadn’t seen inside Dallin’s heart the way Wil had done?

  Ironically, that honor was now the thing that worried Wil the most. Because how could a man with so much of it countenance the things Wil was going to have to show him? And would that honor, by some twist, be the thing that in fact bound their courses together, but not in any way Wil would truly want?