Beloved Son

by Carole Cummings

  He shut his eyes and followed.

  NOT THE star-pocked nothing, not the river, not anywhere Dallin has seen before. Clean and stark, soft prismed 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 spiderwebbed with fairy lace, then sand, then the blasted nothing of solitary nightmare, tinged indigo and burned 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 in 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 the eye can see, and Dallin thinks there are probably more 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 Dallin is only halfway 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, Dallin’s 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 reforming 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 Wil had 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 Wil’s 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 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 shirt, 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 pain for which there is no use here.

  Dallin looks down at himself, strangely disappointed that he again wears his filthy shirt and damp coat, boots now coated in drying mud and the fine green dust of Fæðme, 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 Dallin thinks about that for a long moment before tucking it away—perhaps useful but not yet usable.

  Wheeler is the same, only he looks somehow more craven here, smaller and slyer, as if 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 black and flat as coal, smile gone blatantly hungry. Dallin would almost not be surprised if Wheeler appeared as a misshapen little imp, gnashing razor teeth and cackling greedily because it couldn’t help itself. And he’s got the bloody gall to wear marks here. Dallin could kill him 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 shrugs as though this world of marvels and curiosities he’s built is nothing special. “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 and fixes Wheeler with a somber stare. “You don’t have to do this. You haven’t crossed your last line yet. You’ve a chance, still.”

  Dallin’s heart slows down, genuinely unsure what he hopes Wheeler will answer. Dallin wants Wheeler dead, punished, something. “Go forth and do no more evil” no longer seems possible, and Dallin doesn’t think Wheeler’s vanity or fear of his god would permit it anyway. But to witness it happening holds an odd allure for Dallin, even with the need for vengeance knocking heavily in his chest. Wheeler is being handed one last chance by the one he would see owned, possessed, and displaced, and there’s a strange sort of beauty in the offer that tugs at Dallin’s soul—a plain and very definitive beauty in the one who extends it in an open hand. Certainly more generous than Dallin could be. Then again, Dallin has suspected, before he even realized he was suspecting, that Wil is a better man than he is, so he’s not terribly surprised.

  Wheeler doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t even think it over. He merely smiles, smug now, as if he’s taken the very real offer of reprieve as a sign of weakness and fear. It’s interesting to watch his mind work like this, and Dallin can see now how Wheeler had managed to manipulate his way to the mortal power he holds and the immortal power he craves. Always calculating, measuring, and he does get close to his mark, but he doesn’t quite hit it. Dallin thinks it’s because Wheeler sees things only through the shadow of his own lust and greed. It hardly matters now, but it’s interesting.

  “I do genuinely regret your fate, Aisling,” Wheeler says, “but all rewards require sacrifice. My god does not fear you, and neither do I.”

  The anger that was almost receding in Dallin rises again. He thinks of all the young men who marched to their deaths beneath this man’s command, believing right up ’til the last that their commander would not ask for unnecessary blood, never even suspecting that his strategies were driving toward a goal that would have surely meant mutiny had they known. Dallin can hear their ghosts crying out to him as clearly as he’d heard the previous Guardian call his name. The betrayal is profound, and there is not enough rage, Dallin thinks, to equal its enormity.

  “Your god doesn’t know him very well,” Dallin says, deadly soft. He smiles; it feels like a blade across his mouth, sharp and lethal. “And neither do you.” He turns his gaze to Wil. “You gave him his chance.”

  Wil nods sadly, but his back is straight and his face impassive as he snaps his wrist, the dagger landing with a soft hiss, hilt-up, between Wheeler’s boots. Wheeler directs a quick look down but doesn’t move.

  “Call your spells,” Wil tells him, “before my Guardian abandons his control and throttles you for your betrayal of his countrymen.”

  There are so many things in the command that make Dallin’s heart heat and swell, “my Guardian” among them, which has a possessive pride inside it that Dallin thinks would make him strong even in his weakest moment. But more—Wil knows, Wil understands. He has spoken the betrayal and laid it as an accusation at the usurper�
�s feet. And Dallin never had to explain it to him. Dallin feels ashamed that he wouldn’t have done, even had Wil asked. He’s kept too much of himself back, kept things locked away from a man who’s offered him everything, and the dishonor is a hot red iron in his gut.

  “Wil.” Dallin pauses and shakes his head when Wil looks back at him, eyebrows raised, expectant. “I only… if we get out of this….” Dallin opens his hands. “I took too long, and I didn’t give enough. I let the quickmud keep too tight a hold, and I’m sorry. I mean to do better.”

  Wil’s smile is soft and private, just for Dallin, but Wheeler chuckles, derisive.

  “A pretty sentiment, for what it’s worth, but I fear you will not live long enough to do anything about it.” He shrugs at Dallin, unconcerned. “There is no more use for you, boy. You are a ghost, and the true Guardian now claims his place.”

  It should drive the rage up, but Dallin only rolls his eyes.

  “Come, lad,” Wheeler tells Wil, and reaches for him. “Let us be along with our business.”

  The intent is clear, and Wil steps back, trepidation showing on his troubled face for the first time. His own hand rises, fingers no doubt grazing over the scars beneath his hair.

  “Just say it.” It’s a growl. A literal growl. “I don’t want you touching me.”

  Wheeler sighs, impatient. “You killed the man who found it, don’t you remember?” His mouth pinches, mild disgust. “A man of great magic and a martyr to my Deartháireacha. But he made sure the knowledge would remain for the Cleric, the true Guardian.” He lifts his hands again. “Come, then, no use delaying.”

  Wil peers at Dallin, mouth tight and gaze poignant. All Dallin can do is reach out, lay his hand on Wil’s shoulder, and stand at his back as he is meant to do. Wil shifts ever so slightly into the touch, then sighs out a loose, shaky breath and submits. Wheeler grins, hungry, as he slides his fingers into Wil’s hair, leaning in closer than he needs to. Dallin has to use all his will to restrain himself from knocking Wheeler away, breaking every bone in those grasping hands, saving the fingers for last to shatter slowly and one at a time.

  “Drút Hyse,” Wheeler breathes.

  Beloved Son.

  Dallin’s heart nearly breaks wide open as he watches Wil’s eyes close, his brow twist, and his mouth trace the words in a silent echo. His name, spoken aloud, heard for the first time, and Wil had said it would likely hurt hearing it from this man’s mouth, but Dallin hadn’t expected it to pierce him as well, just watching the mingling of relief and new pain etch itself in acid furrows across Wil’s face.

  There is no time to ponder it or let the pain take hold, because the change is instant and undeniable. The air shifts, building pressure, and the rank smell of death and decay all at once encloses Dallin in a tight fist, cloying and heavy. He gags on it.

  The horizons stretch and shatter, and in the moment before they rebuild themselves, there are clots of stars hemorrhaging through, screaming, and the shrieking blare of them makes Dallin wonder if his ears are bleeding. Everything shifts again, and then again—they’re standing on the nothing of Wil’s threads and Dallin’s stars, then there is grass beneath their feet, the solid ground of Lind sliding out from beneath them and shifting to brittle malachite, then the stone floor of the constabulary, the oily flicker of the lamps skidding behind Dallin’s eyes and into his nose, then places he’s never been, things he’s never seen. The vertigo is nauseating.

  “What the fuck?” Dallin wheezes, weak with the sensation of being thrown from one nonreality to another and another before he can blink his stinging eyes even once. He reaches out, unthinking, and slams Wheeler’s hands away from Wil, drags Wil back and away with a frantic grip and a few stumbling steps on ground, then floor, then nothing.

  “He’s trying to take it away,” Wil hisses, eyes shut tight, and he reaches for Dallin’s hand, clutches it, panic-stricken. Says, “Give it to me,” and that’s all.

  Dallin doesn’t have to ask what Wil wants. He lets whatever Wil needs flow from feet that are planted firmly in Fæðme, attached to some other body, up through Dallin, and out to Wil. Intermediary, Dallin thinks wildly, Doorway, and opens the floodgates.

  The ground stops slipping and morphing, and Dallin stops feeling like he might spew any second, but it isn’t done yet, and he wishes the ground were the worst of it.

  Wheeler isn’t Wheeler anymore—he isn’t anyone, or even anything—a loose blot of man-shaped matter, face and form mutating in a constant flow of skin tone and hair color, contour and countenance. He screams, something wrenching and filled with pain, and Dallin can’t help the wince, the way his hand tightens on Wil’s, the horror and agony sliding through the shrieks so vivid Dallin thinks he can taste it—bitter and rotting and coppery on his tongue. The urge to vomit climbs again, but Dallin wills it back. He wished for this scant seconds ago, this vengeance that’s so obviously torturous, and now that he has it, he wishes it would just stop.

  Wil’s hands come up over his ears, and he stoops as if he’s in pain. “He’s doing it already.”

  Dallin keeps the power flowing, reaches out and builds what stanchions he can. It’s enough, but it won’t be forever. This is more than Síofra’s small attempts to influence his mind, more than Wheeler’s blunt pushing. This is big, this can beat him if he’s not very careful, or if he loses his hold for even a second. He pulls himself open, sends what Wil can take, and holds the rest, setting himself beneath it like a yoke across his shoulders.

  Wil straightens, breathing easier, glancing about, and his gaze stops dead at what was Wheeler only a short while ago—still writhing and contorting but gathering shape to itself now, solidifying. Dallin doesn’t expect it to resolve itself into Síofra, and apparently neither does Wil, because Wil gasps and jerks back into Dallin, stumbling in his bare feet and shaking. Síofra just stands there for a moment, smiling that arrogant smile, blue eyes over white teeth, before he tilts his head, extends his limbs, and sighs. It’s as though he’s stretching himself inside his body.

  “That isn’t Síofra,” Dallin whispers to Wil.

  Wil only shakes his head, trembling, rasps “No,” and keeps staring.

  Æledfýres broadens himself in Síofra’s body as if it’s a mask that doesn’t altogether fit, though the smile remains, clever and charming but with something rotten and vile beneath it. “Ah, my lad.” He speaks with Síofra’s voice or something very near, holding out his arms as though he expects Wil to run right into them. “At last, here we are, you and I. Where we belong.”

  Wil’s eyes are too wide and wild. “No” is all he says, and Dallin doesn’t know if it’s an answer to the statement or complete denial.

  “Come to me, lad,” not-Síofra says. “You loved me once. You love me still. You can’t help yourself. Come to me. I can love you now as you’ve always wanted, and you don’t have to be ashamed anymore for wanting it.”

  Wil shoots a quick, anxious look at Dallin, his face paling to wax, and he wrenches his gaze away, shuts his eyes. “Don’t.” It’s raspy and small, and he jerks away from Dallin, snatches his hand back—not tall and strong now, but drawing himself in, reflexively making himself smaller. “I don’t love you. I never did, I never could, and I don’t—”

  “Locks and chains, cages and shackles.” The voice is smoother now, as though he’s getting the feel for it.

  Not-Síofra flicks his fingers, and a sound like screeching metal whines into Dallin’s ears. Dallin doesn’t know what it is until Wil gasps again, lifts his hand, and a rusted chain hangs from a shackle at his mangled wrist, the skin raw and scraped in a bloody flap that sloughs down over the back of his hand. Dallin makes a grab for him—to calm, to comfort, to tear it off—but Wil flinches away.

  “Come now, Aisling, did you think I never knew your most secret wish? The shame that chokes you because you can’t help wishing for it?” Not-Síofra tsks, blue eyes sad and somber. “I was as a father to you. I can be that father now.”

  “St
op it.” Wil’s eyes are locked on the iron at his wrist, and Dallin can tell it’s taking everything in Wil not to try to pull his hand free as he’d done when the shackle was real.

  Dallin steps closer. “Wil.” He says it quietly as he reaches out, takes Wil’s arm, and lifts it up between them, the blood running down Wil’s forearm, over Dallin’s fingers, and staining Wil’s white shirt. “It isn’t real.”

  “I didn’t love him,” Wil snarls.

  “And d’you think it would be so terrible if you did?” Dallin takes another small step closer, dips his head, but Wil won’t look at him, gaze nailed helplessly to the bloody metal.

  The same tangled web of love mixed with hate Dallin has seen in any number of children whose fathers have a bit too much liking for a switch or a belt or even his fists—whose mothers have eyes that can go from soft and maternal to wrathful and hard between one breath and the next. Tears wept bitterly not for the physical pain, but for the small, trusting heart beneath it that breaks every time the pain comes—the cheated confusion, the inner cry at the perfidy of the one who is supposed to love and protect and instead turns on them, hurting them, and the constant litany of whywhywhy? burning at the spirit. Loving them still, because there is love inside and it has nowhere else to go; wanting them to love back, because being alone and unloved is any child’s constant nightmare.

  Does Wil think Dallin has never seen it before? He hasn’t lived it, surely, but he’s certainly seen it enough. Children with blackened eyes and swollen mouths eagerly grinning through split lips, eyes shining as the hand that had hurt them just the night before now lays itself tenderly on a shoulder. The unabashed basking in the tiniest show of love, the most miniscule validation. Does Wil really think Dallin so naïve? Or does he simply not understand that it was all part of the steady erosion of a child’s spirit, and that Wil had stopped the slide himself with no help from anyone at all—no stern constable arriving when he heard the screaming, hauling those fists away, clamping them in shackles so they couldn’t hurt anymore—that Wil chose his aloneness and his pain over the self-betrayal of handing over his soul and never gave the man who called himself Father the one thing with which he could have broken Wil for good?