The Aisling Trilogy

by Cummings, Carole

  … accept an extended hand because you are worthy of it.

  Right. Sure. Worthy. Except how would he know if that hand was extended in love or mere duty? Because duty, when all was said and done, utterly defined Dallin.

  There is so much more ahead, and I chose it freely. But I can’t do it without him, and if it’s not for the right reasons, I can’t do it with him, either. Not out of duty; not out of obligation. Even I have more self-respect than that.

  Fuck. We’ve lived five lifetimes in the space of weeks, and loved enough to fill a world—what if we find out we don’t even really like each other? Exactly how far can love dragged from darkness, passion stolen from blind chance—how far can it carry a person?

  To the very end, he supposed. One way or another.

  “Shall we sing?” Heofon asked gently.

  Wil shut his eyes, bit his lip to keep the burning behind them. “Yes,” he whispered, dismayed that it came out thick and hoarse. He cleared his throat, said, “Yes, please,” and shut everything else away. Just for now.

  He lost himself in Time again as their song wound through him. He was groggy and fuzzy when Dallin eventually stumbled back, shirtless and bandaged and blinking, owl-eyed, at Wil and the three shamans. Obviously having already taken whatever sleep potion Thorne had given him, because when Singréne asked him if he wanted help with his trousers and boots, Dallin merely bobbled a nod, slogged over to the bed and stared down at Wil, frowned, and fell like a tree. Out cold. Singréne and the others weren’t quite able to cover their smiles, but they did manage to hold back any chuckles, and they rather came in handy for completing the disrobing and shoving Dallin into a position that wasn’t sideways across Wil’s torso. As soon as he’d been undressed and covered with the furs, Dallin reached out in his sleep, glommed on to Wil, and didn’t let go again. The shamans discreetly excused themselves without comment.

  They slept.

  And dreamed dreams all their own.

  Three days, during which Wil slept and drank and slept and ate and slept and bathed and slept and slept and slept.

  No more Threads and Fates for Wil, that was for the Father, and he knew he was welcome if he chose, but he didn’t choose for now. For now, he chose the strange normalcy of following his own wandering mind into whatever murk it led, and the only specters that spoke were those conjured from inside his own head. He dreamed his own dreams, venturing a touch to Dallin’s now and then. Dream-kisses that were his, meant for him alone, and no monsters chasing him through the cobwebbed corridors of someone else’s insanity. The tender, sluggish pulse of healing running from Dallin’s hands, still reaching, even in his sleep. Mundane, ordinary paradise.

  He hadn’t yet returned the favor, kept his own dreams to himself. There were still some things Wil didn’t want Dallin to see, things Dallin shouldn’t see, not yet. Or, rather, things he should see, but not until Wil knew for sure.

  Dallin had been up and about from the first morning, kept away for most of the day every day, doing things he was too tired to tell Wil about when he plodded to bed far too late every night, which was all right—Wil was too tired to hear about them. Dallin was trying to bring some order to the mess that had been made of Lind, which Wil only knew because various of the Old Ones had been keeping him informed, when he thought to ask. The plain truth wasn’t going to do it this time; there were politics involved, great, stonking, complicated politics, and a Council High Seat in Penley who would be all the more dangerous when he realized he was cornered. Which, apparently, Dallin was doing everything he could to prevent him from realizing. Wil could’ve helped with that—could’ve helped with all of it, really—but either Dallin hadn’t thought of it, or he had and didn’t want to.

  Wil couldn’t tell—he hardly ever saw Dallin. For once Wil could honestly say he wasn’t avoiding a conversation he knew had to come; he just couldn’t seem to get a chance to have it, what with Dallin trying so hard to save the world some more. Trips to the Bounds that took all day, or interviewing senior officers of the Commonwealth troops to see what their reports to Penley would reveal and trying to tweak them to his own strategy. Rounding up those of the Brethren who hadn’t died or killed themselves, or interrogating Wheeler’s squadron who’d been present at FAeðme. It seemed there was always something to pull Dallin away.

  They slept together, Dallin usually trudging in well into the night when Wil was already asleep— he couldn’t seem to bloody stop sleeping—and then up and out again before Wil woke. Solicitous and tender, when he happened to be about when Wil’s eyes were open for a little while, but… distracted. Closed up. If he didn’t have so many legitimate worries to keep him engaged, Wil would’ve wondered if Dallin was avoiding him on purpose.

  Wounded streamed in and out of the Temple, and the Old Ones were kept bustling, though Wil hadn’t even realized it at first. It wasn’t until the second day that he noticed the steady hum of voices and horse-sounds outside, and it wasn’t until Marden woke him for his supper that night that he remembered to ask about it. Twenty-six Linders dead, though Marden hadn’t really wanted to tell Wil that part, and just under a hundred wounded so far, though they were still straggling in. Of the Commonwealth troops, only six had been killed, including Wheeler, since they hadn’t engaged in the battles until they were already well underway or mostly won. Marden said that count might rise and then wouldn’t say any more. They hadn’t yet managed to get a good count of the Brethren’s dead. “Hundreds,” Marden said heavily, shook his head in sincere mourning, and quietly quit the room.

  Hunter found his way up to the Temple on the third day of Wil’s stay there, his hair cut short like his sister’s. His young face looked tired and not-so-young anymore, a little bit haunted, perhaps, though Wil would wager Andette had more bitter ghosts.

  “Yes, I’ve seen her,” Hunter answered when Wil asked, but he wouldn’t look Wil in the eye. Hunter’s voice was more subdued than it had been, his whole body set rigid with exhaustion. “She begs an audience with you as well, though I thought I might…” He paused, swallowed, his throat bobbing, then ducked his head even further. “My sister has redeemed… or has acted to… tried to redeem…”

  They sat in a small antechamber that Wil hadn’t even known was set just off the room they’d given him until one of the Old Ones—Déopþancol this time—ushered him to it and sat him in one of the three chairs to wait for Hunter. He’d been given a thick, heavy robe but no clothes yet; seeing as how he couldn’t seem to stay awake for more than an hour at a time, and that he still got dizzy every time he sat up or stood, he didn’t complain. They made him flex his arm every time one of them got hold of him, and wiggle his fingers for them, grasp their own to test his grip, but he still kept his arm crooked protectively across his middle when no one was looking.

  He’d been pleased when Déopþancol had told him he had a visitor, and even more pleased when he heard it was Hunter. He was a little annoyed with himself that Hunter hadn’t even crossed his mind since he’d woken days ago. These people had put so much on the line because of Wil, and it had become terribly personal to Hunter and Andette. Wil should have made it his business to seek out Andette, at least. Now, he sat and watched Hunter standing before him as one would stand before a tribunal, stumbling through what was sounding more and more like an apology with every lurching word, and wishing he’d put this off until his eyelids stopped weighing five stone each.

  After the fifth, “I cry your pardon, Aisling,” Wil couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Hunter,” he cut in, as gently as he could, because he should have more patience—for this, of all things—and he simply didn’t. “Do you know what happened down in FAeðme?” Hunter hesitated, his mouth opening and closing soundlessly for a moment, before, “The Aisling and the Guardian stood against the enemy and prevailed.”

  “We stood against Aeledfýres,” Wil specified. “Do you know who—?” He stopped and shook his head. “No, I’m not going to play games with words. You need to u
nderstand this, and you need to understand it the first time, because I don’t think I’ve the energy for it more than the once.” He leaned in, said, “Hunter, look at me,” and when Hunter did, blue gaze sad and unnervingly flat, Wil went on, “Do you blame me for what happened here? For what happened in FAeðme? Do you think that I am responsible for what Aeledfýres did and what he tried to do?”

  Hunter looked shocked before his jaw set tight and the fixed gaze flared to life. “Who has said such things?” he demanded, a hot spark of the spirited youth Wil had met back up at the caves finally blazing out to set color to his freckled cheeks. “It is blasphemy!” he went on, nearly ranting. “That anyone would dare to—”

  “You have said such things,” Wil told him, bending his voice stern this time, because it was suddenly extremely important to him that Hunter understand this, that the guilt and self-censure that, now that Wil was paying attention, he could see in the stiff angles of Hunter’s stance died right here.

  Hunter had gone silent, stunned. “I would never,” he breathed.

  “Not intentionally,” Wil agreed, before all the color could leak from Hunter’s face again. “But Aeledfýres was, in a way, just as much kin to me as Barret Calder was to you. If you insist upon taking responsibility for your uncle’s actions, where d’you think that leaves me?”

  A frown creased the clear brow, and the blue eyes went distant. “But…”

  “But what?” Wil wanted to know. “But your uncle’s crimes were worse?” He softened his voice again. “They weren’t even crimes, Hunter. Barret Calder was not an evil man; he wasn’t even a bad man. He was a man who lost his way and was trying to do what he thought was right. Even as he handed me that cup, he truly believed he was saving me, saving the Mother.” Bloody damn, Wil had hated the man—how was it that defense was coming to him so easily? He frowned, shook it off. “I don’t condone what he did—in fact, I despise it—and I think that sort of faith is very dangerous, as he proved. But perhaps, instead of punishing ourselves for things and the actions of people over whom we have no control, we should remember what led them to it and not let ourselves get tangled in their same webs.”

  For fuck’s sake, he was starting to sound like one of the Old Ones. At least Hunter was looking thoughtful now, really listening, which was actually more than Wil had been expecting. The boy reminded him so much of Dallin, or what he imagined Dallin might have been had the raid never happened. Wil often suspected that was the reason Hunter so annoyed Dallin. It wasn’t hard to look into that blue gaze and see the righteous stubborn streak so very evident in Dallin’s dark one. Wil shut his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “I’m very tired, Hunter,” he said slowly. “I’ve been very tired, and now I won’t sleep unless I know you understand this.” He lifted his head, peered steadily up at Hunter. “I don’t know about Lind’s traditions and laws, but whatever they are, I don’t blame you, I don’t blame any Calder except—” He cut himself off. “I don’t blame you, I don’t blame Andette, and I don’t want you to blame yourself. Please. I don’t want to be tripping over you for the rest of my life, with you trying to make it up to me somehow, and I don’t want you flinching every time I look at you. If you truly honor your Aisling, then please—do as I say in this.”

  The flush was back, burning across Hunter’s cheeks. “I spoke to the Shaman this morning.” Wil’s eyebrow lifted; it was more than he’d done. “Did you?”

  “When he sent for me, I thought…” Hunter’s mouth tightened and he blinked. “And then, when he commanded me to come to you…”

  Wil sighed, slumped back into the cushions of the chair. “You thought you were coming here for some kind of sentence? Retribution?” He shook his head. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but you won’t be getting any such thing. Sit down, will you, I’m tired of looking up.” He waited until Hunter complied, stiffly, then eyed him with a resigned frown. “Wilfred’s not coming back, Hunter,” he said bluntly, the words clogging a little when Hunter’s gaze flashed and narrowed. “He died trying to find me, and apparently did, and got a blade to the throat for his trouble. I took his name when I took his papers from his corpse.” He slouched deeper into the chair, weary of… this, of everything. “Your uncle knew, said he felt it when it happened, and it broke his heart. The fact that it also cracked his mind a little shouldn’t be all that surprising. And not entirely unforgivable. And I don’t want to talk about Barret Calder anymore.”

  There. Another secret out, more poison drained—from Wil’s spirit and into another’s. Quite the reverse of soul-eating, and the irony almost made him puff a bleak snort, but he managed to keep it in his throat. Hunter was even more subdued than he’d been when he’d come, staring down at the rushes on the floor beneath his feet, the silence stretching, growing heavy.

  Wil broke it with deliberate triviality: “What time of day is it, anyway? I’ve rather lost track.” He thought he remembered lunch, but that could’ve been yesterday.

  Hunter’s eyebrows rose, though his gaze only glanced as far as Wil’s left shoulder. “It is late afternoon, on the Eve of the Turning.”

  “Huh.” Wil blinked a little blankly. He’d lost track of that, too. “Turning Night is tomorrow?”

  The Turning, when the Father took the world in His hands, watched over it and the Mother while She slept, until He would wake Her with a kiss at Planting. At least according to the Commonwealth’s beliefs; in the Dominion, it had been something altogether different, with a sinister underpinning of struggle and oppression between the two gods. And even though they were both rather simplified, skewed versions of the same legend, Wil thought Cynewísan’s version somewhat warmly romantic. Four years ago, if he’d found himself thinking something like that, he would’ve bashed his skull into a wall until he’d stopped thinking at all; now, he couldn’t help the faint smile.

  “What’s it like outside?” he pushed into the silence.

  Hunter shrugged. “Cold,” he answered. “The sleet turned to snow three nights ago, and made things worse. It’s been snowing now and again ever since. There hasn’t been snow for the Turning for… well, at least as long as I’ve been alive. The Shaman calls it a gift, and says there would have been more bloodshed, had the weather not stopped…” He paused, frowned. All boyishness leaked from his face as his expression turned thoughtful… perhaps even just a touch suspicious. “There was a moment,” he said slowly, “a strange stretch of time uncountable, when it seemed as though… as though I was there, with you, when…” He opened his hand, looked down into his palm. “You held my hand, and there was blood and pain, but I didn’t feel it, I just knew it was there. Someone asked me for my strength, and I thought… it seemed like the land itself was calling out and asking, but it was the Shaman’s voice, I know it was. Andette says…” He stopped again, bit his lip. “All who have spoken on it have said the same.” And then he stopped altogether, just sat there, looking at the floor.

  “Whatever it was Andette told you, it was true,” Wil said quietly. “She was there.”

  Hunter merely nodded. There was no longer any doubt or question in his eyes. “I was still down near the Bounds, with Cáfne’s squadron. We’d found a nest of the enemy, snipers who’d crammed themselves into a rock overhang above the river and were picking off runners. They’d got two already when we engaged.” His gaze went distant, confused and clouded. “They stopped, too. If they hadn’t, we all would have been dead, because I couldn’t move, didn’t want to move. But they did, and after…” He shook his head, ran a hand through his newly short hair, then looked at his fingers as though they’d just touched a ghost. “Two of them simply fell dead, as though their brains had exploded inside their heads. One of them went to his knees, weeping, and surrendered; him we took prisoner, but one ran, and we hunted him down. The one we took, we couldn’t understand him, he was speaking the North Tongue, weeping as though his beloved had just died at his feet. I could not bring myself to hate him. He kept saying Athair ma
ith do. Over and over again.” For the first time since Wil’s revelation of his stolen name, Hunter lifted his gaze, peered at Wil intently. “What does that mean?”

  Wil shut his eyes, rubbed at his face, only distantly noting that the left side of it was merely slightly sore now, and not actually painful. He’d been tired only a moment ago; now, he was exhausted again. He would’ve liked to ask if Hunter still thought war was noble and romantic, but he didn’t quite have the heart right now.

  “It means ‘Father, forgive,’” Wil said hollowly, not really sure why tears burnt at the backs of his eyes, but he didn’t put forth the energy to figure it out. Something that had literally consumed his life since before it had even started, and now it was over, really over. Siofra was gone, Wheeler was gone, Aeledfýres was gone and could never come back. So, why didn’t Wil feel… something?—something besides profoundly weary and vaguely sad.

  He chanced a quick look at Hunter, saw the worry and concern, and quickly drew his glance away. “Help me up, would you? I want to go back to bed.”

  On the fourth day, he was woken by a steady tapping at his nose and an annoyingly awake voice describing the breakfast that was apparently waiting for him.

  “C’mon, then, I know you like porridge, and there’s fish if you want it. Bacon, some beans and griddlecakes, too, and cold cider. It’s getting cold, get up.”

  Wil supposed he should be pleased that Dallin was actually here for a change, but irritation crowded it out. “Get off,” he growled, swatted blind, then turned over and shoved a pillow over his head. “I’m sleeping.”

  “You’ve been sleeping.”

  “’s because ’m tired.”

  “It’s because you’re stubborn and sulking.”

  Wil didn’t even dignify that one with an answer. He merely wormed his hand from beneath the fur, rumbled a growl, and flipped Dallin off.