Beloved Son

by Carole Cummings

  Battles have gone silent, fingers have stilled on triggers as all hearts and minds look now to Fæðme, sending their strength in the form of faith to the Heart of the World, bolstering what runs through Dallin until Dallin thinks he’ll split down the middle and burst himself wide. Wil just keeps taking it all, drawing it out of Dallin and throwing it at Æledfýres in unrelenting surges of brute force, teeth bared and hand clamped tight to the thing that would claim the Father’s place. Dallin can feel the push, can feel it like a vise around his own chest, so strong and ruthless that fear for which he doesn’t have the wit or time rolls through him.

  “This is what you want.” Wil’s eyes are blazing again and wild.

  Æledfýres tries to drag his hand away, surprise and rage plain on his beautiful face, but it’s as though their hands are fused together.

  Æledfýres is pushing back—Dallin can feel that too, like a solid wall butting up against Wil’s offense—but Wil is at least as strong, and he’s got the advantage, however small, and they all know it. It can’t last, it’ll rip the world apart, or take too much from the people of Lind, leave them just as dead behind the eyes as any Æledfýres has taken for himself. It occurs to Dallin only a split second before Wil snaps his head around and shouts, “Dallin!”

  Blind to my design, Wil had said to him. Dallin sees him. Dallin has always seen him, has always recognized him, even when design was no more to him than another word.

  Dallin reaches through the hole in the sky, doesn’t even think about what he’s doing and how impossible it is, just closes his eyes and wades through the sea of fates—voices, so many voices, and thoughts and minds and moments and eternities—captures stars right in his hand, testing each for the familiarity of Wil’s spirit, seeking the darkling web that’s wound around it. And the thread is there at the tips of Dallin’s fingers—because it’s a dream, innit, you can do anything in a dream, all you have to do is believe hard enough. Dallin does now, enough to take thin air and stardust and turn it into something he can’t even really see, and he watches as Wil—

  —cocked the rifle one-handed, eyes ablaze and jaw set hard as he set the barrel just beneath Wheeler’s chin—

  —sets a kiss to Æledfýres’s mouth—

  —and pulled the trigger—

  —and plunges the dagger, still red with Dallin’s blood, deep into Æledfýres’s chest.

  The reverberation was deafening as the shot echoed in the cavern, rolling over the walls of malachite and amplifying until only a slight ringing was left. The chanting continued, hands still linked as every eye turned with removed interest and watched Wheeler’s head explode in a shower of blood and bone. Warm wet streaks of it striped Dallin’s cheek and forehead and spattered Andette’s face and tunic. Wheeler’s hand spasmed once, twice, then—

  —clenches in Wil’s hair, pulling him in, and Dallin can feel the fight raging inside this perversion of a kiss. They’ve taken away one vessel—only one remains. It’s down to this, as Wil has known all along, and nothing Dallin has done or said has changed it. “Don’t leave me alive inside a cage,” and Dallin promised, and the thread throbs in his hand like the living heart of a star. Fate, he thinks and slants his gaze upward where the anger and arrogance of Æledfýres rent the sky. Threads and fate and stars and faith and belief and It’s a dream, innit? and he doesn’t need anything but the shrieking songs of the stars, the portents in their cadence, and the knowledge that Wil is just barely holding on—if Dallin is going to finish this, he’ll need to be quick. He calls—

  —to Thorne, told Andette, “Don’t let go!” then—

  —grips the Thread in his fist—heaves.

  He’d thought the pain before was mind-shattering. This is worse.

  An agonized cry wrenches from Dallin’s chest, and it takes everything he has to keep from losing his grip, keep pulling and tearing as he hears the screams curling up from the throat of Æledfýres, the sudden turn of his attention to Dallin and what he’s doing. The agony doubles; Dallin almost can’t believe someone can feel this much pain and still be alive, and then he almost wishes he wasn’t. He understands fully now, the torture Wil endured for decades, and yes, pulling the trigger to prevent this would be a mercy, and Dallin would do it without hesitation. He wishes he could gather the breath to tell Wil so, but it’s all Dallin can do to hold on, to keep his grip, and keep the power humming through him and into Wil.

  Æledfýres is divided now, half his attention on holding on to Wil and the other half on trying to knock Dallin loose. He can’t do both, he hasn’t the strength or the magic, it’s only a matter of time, and if Dallin can just hold out—

  He feels the shift like a landslide beneath his feet, and he jolts, shouts, “No, Wil, don’t!” even as he sends every bit of raw power to him, tries to reach for him—but it’s too late, and why hadn’t he realized, why hadn’t he guessed? “Damn you, Wil, it’s not yours, it’s mine!”

  Dallin is a helpless witness as Wil takes advantage of Æledfýres’s diversion, gives one last great shove, before he gathers himself with a wild little grin, says, “I am Drút Hyse. And you are not my Father.”

  He wrenches the dagger, then twists.

  Stops pushing and pulls it back. All of it.

  Dallin is rocked, the thread ripping violently from out his hands and careening at Wil in an explosion of searing color and crude, feral power. Wil is sent hurtling backward as Æledfýres screeches, all hate and rage and thwarted intent, then crumples with that same staring emptiness that Dallin had seen in a cell in Dudley.

  The songs of the stars alter, a rising screech that drives right down into Dallin’s spine, the shrieking din of an angry dirge, before spiraling down into a soft, mourning cry of triumph. It’s how Dallin knows Æledfýres is truly gone—the stars tell him so. It’s over; the pain is gone, except—

  Wil is sprawled gracelessly, too still, face and tunic washed in blood. It’s Chester all over again, except this time his eyes are open and aware. He watches as Dallin bounds over and crouches down beside him, trying to wipe some of the blood away with his sleeve, but there’s too much of it. Even the whites of Wil’s eyes are bloody, but the irises still shift and whirl with light and color.

  “What did you do?” Dallin’s throat is thick and choked with too much emotion. “Damn you, Wil—you pulled it back. I told you not to pull it back!” It’s accusing and angry but rife with a sorrow Dallin won’t allow himself to feel yet, not yet, it can’t be over yet.

  “You showed me how.” Wil’s voice is nothing but a thread-thin wheeze. “Back in Dudley, remember?”

  “No!” Except Dallin did. He’d told Wil to pull it back, but—“I didn’t know what I was doing then, Wil, I wouldn’t’ve—”

  “You always know what you’re doing.” Wil smiles, then coughs, a thick spray of scarlet erupting from his bloody lips. “Guide is an… another one of your names. It’s Brídín in the North Tongue. Sorta… sounds like Brayden, dunnit?” It’s liquid, a little bit slurred, and distant, as though Wil’s already speaking from far away. He frowns, bemused. “I’ve never seen you cry before.”

  Dallin hasn’t realized he’s weeping, but he isn’t at all surprised. “What did you do?” His voice is hoarse and rough and just on the edge of cracking right down the center. Dallin is doubly dismayed to see the wounds from before—the scrapes and gouges over Wil’s cheek and temple, the bloom of blood at his shoulder—like Wil’s been holding on to his inner image of strength and wholeness and is now letting it go. Dallin clenches his teeth, reaches, and finds ruptures and bleeding in too many places, damage so terrible he almost can’t see it all. “Wil… no.” He shakes his head helplessly. “What did you do?”

  Wil doesn’t answer, just opens his hand, the little charm—Sun and Moon—pulsing to the faltering rhythm of his heart, and curls the other around the crystal at his breastbone.

  “Changed my fate.” Wil reaches a shaking hand into nothing and pulls back the dagger he’d driven into Æledfýre
s. He cradles it against his breastbone. “No cage. No bullet.”

  It sounds like a confession, or an absolution. It sounds like good-bye.

  “Wil… don’t.” Dallin is still trying frantically to heal what he won’t admit can’t be healed. “Please. Please, Wil—”

  “Do you trust me?” Wil asks softly.

  Dallin doesn’t know what it means, but Wil does, so Dallin just says, “Yes,” without giving himself a chance to think about it.

  “Apples and potatoes, Dallin.” Wil smiles. “Are you impressed?”

  No, Dallin wants to answer, I’m crushed and heartsore and angry and grieved, and how could you do this to me? But before he can so much as force an answering smile, try to coerce some kind of response from his clogged throat, Wil closes his eyes, blood like tears sliding from the corners, stark on too-white skin. And doesn’t open them again.

  “No!” Dallin snarls, tears choking him, and when was the last time he’s wept? He takes hold of Wil’s arm, shakes him—“Where’s the bloody badger, Wil?”—reaches again, but it’s like Wil’s been torn apart inside, fissures and breaches, and Dallin can’t heal them all fast enough, there are too many, and it isn’t fair, he won’t stand for it. “Mother” is all he can push out through his teeth, a sharp demand, and only at the last second does he curl it into a call, pleading. Asking for Her help and trying to believe She’ll give it—grasping at faith and more than willing to bind Her to it.

  A moment of vertigo, the slick shift of ground beneath him, and he’s surrounded by stars, stars inside of clouds. She’s there, waiting, and it’s strange, because Dallin hasn’t even thought of it before—how Wil did it all for the Father, for Her, and Dallin himself did it all for Wil. There should be shame there, or… something, but there isn’t—only a growing sense of rage and betrayal and a deep-dark hole of loss opening wide in Dallin’s chest. He can hardly see, his eyes are blurred and burning, and at the look he gives Her is full of censure and reproach.

  “Have You got what You want now?” he asks Her, hand gripping Wil’s arm, healing what he can as he can and praying it’ll be enough when he knows it won’t. “Has he endured enough yet?”

  Maddeningly, She smiles, bends to Wil, Her hand wrapping around the fist in which the charm is curled. She looks up at Dallin and tilts Her head.

  “Your calling has been fulfilled.” She reaches out and brushes Her fingers over Dallin’s cheek where the Mark still stings. “Do you believe, Guardian?”

  Dallin chokes on a sob, nods before he even thinks about it. He doesn’t even really know what She’s asking, but he believes, he believes it all, he believes everything. He’s just watched Wil tear away the soul of a god and eat the emptiness, and he cares about nothing but the fact that he can’t help him.

  “Please. Please.”

  The Father is there, pulling Dallin to his feet. He’s not well, still weak, but not dying anymore. The stench of it has left Him—She’s healed Him—and Dallin wants to rage at the unfairness. Hope stills his tongue, and he merely waits, because he promised Wil, told him he trusted him, and Dallin will honor that promise at least, since Wil granted Dallin a terrible reprieve from the other.

  “Do you believe, Guardian?” He asks.

  Dallin grinds his teeth, snarls, “Yes!” and what do They bloody want from him, and what does it matter now what he believes?

  She holds up Her hand, turns it so the shackle with its one link catches the glimmer of the shifting stars that Dallin knows are threads and fates, but he can’t care about it anymore. “A belief to which I am willingly bound,” She says, reaches out—

  —and pushed him away.

  Dallin blinked against the smoky light of torch and lamp, nearly choking on the cloying scent of incense, hard rock beneath his knees and Wil’s hand clenched so tight in his fist the tips of his fingers were white. The Old Ones had altered their songs, gathered in a circle around them. Corliss was swiping at Wil’s face and ears, pinching at the bridge of his nose, trying to staunch the flow of blood, but her face gave away her hopelessness.

  Wil was a mess, worse than he’d been in that other where, his face white as chalk and going to wax, his lips losing color, and his shirt clotted and soaked crimson. His chest rose in irregular small hitches, sluggish and weak, and his hand lay in Dallin’s palm like a stone. He was cold. Wil hated the cold.

  It took Dallin a moment to understand, and then another before the shock of it allowed anything at all besides choking rage. Banished. Sent away.

  “No.” It came as a hiss through his teeth. Dallin shut his eyes tight and tried to follow, but—

  Rebuff. Not harsh or jolting, not gentle. Just rebuff. Too plain; too simple. Rebuff, and Dallin didn’t know if it was Wil keeping him away, trying to spare him those last precious moments, or if it was Them, for whatever reasons move gods. Nor did he care.

  “No.” It sounded too much like a sob, and Dallin didn’t care about that either.

  “Shaman,” someone murmured—Thorne, it sounded like Thorne—set a hand to Dallin’s shoulder and tugged. “He is in Their care now. You’ve already made your plea. Come away and let us add our voices.”

  In Their care. And Dallin had promised he trusted. He’d promised he believed.

  Had he pleaded enough? Had he pleaded at all? He did it now, with everything in him, curling Wil’s fist around the charm and sending his own appeal, telling himself They would hear. It was the first time Dallin could recall ever having begged.

  A sacrifice, Wil had called himself once, and why couldn’t Dallin remember when and under what circumstances? Surely They couldn’t be that cruel, not now, not after all this.

  Spent, near broken, Dallin peered around himself, only now noting the gruesome corpse of Wheeler, the sad, compassionate gazes of those gathered ’round, the confusion on the faces of Wheeler’s men, still bound and guarded.

  “He saved the Father,” Dallin said to no one in particular, and it sounded so hollow for such a weighty proclamation. There should have been horns blowing in celebration, shouts of triumph. There was nothing, only the sympathy of those who could meet his eyes.

  He turned to Thorne, raw entreaty. “What will They do?” Shaky and too desperately brittle.

  Thorne shook his head, reached down, and pushed black hair from Wil’s clammy brow. “What They will.”

  7

  IT WAS not, he decided, a test, nor was it a request or a demand. It was an offer—an offer with limitless caveats, it seemed, but he’d had a choice. They’d made sure of that.

  Hardly a choice at all, Wil had thought when it had been presented to him, or not one he’d had trouble making, at least. He knew what he wanted—the same thing he’d always wanted. A chance to live an actual life. No chains, no walls, no locked doors, and the only cage would be one he made and chose for himself, if he chose one at all.

  Furthermore, he knew what Dallin would want, and that… mattered. Likely more than it should, and that was a cage in itself, Wil supposed, but that was the pass to which he’d come, and he didn’t think he could regret it, so he hadn’t tried. He’d merely considered what They’d offered, considered what it might mean not to accept, then considered his heart. A little more selfish than he’d thought, that heart, and there was still the choice to be put to Dallin, but… the decision was, as had been made all too clear, his to make. So he’d made it.

  Several forevers, though he knew it had only been hours. It hadn’t seemed so at the time, but neither had it seemed hours or minutes or years or decades—it just was. And now it wasn’t anymore, but that….

  That seemed right. He was sure.

  Residual pain ached through him—hurts healed, or at least the ones that would have taken away all choice for good and all, but his mortal body still felt the echoes, still struggled for equilibrium, unsettled between divine curative and corporeal backlash. And that had been his choice as well. Better to accept the earthbound consequences than delay until there were none. Watching Dallin ca
ught between hope and mourning—and Wil had watched, They’d seen to that—feeling every tear, hearing every prayer and song, the anger, the hope, the self-rebuke, the incredible, incomprehensible love… it had hurt so much worse. Wil would deal with the rest of the physical pain himself, or better, let Dallin deal with it for him. It would please him.

  It was dark when he opened his eyes, the rolling orange-gold radiance of lamps and candles and fire scrimming across the high, flat ceiling. The heavy perfume of incense weighed in the air, and the distant chanting songs of the Old Ones that had been humming at the back of his consciousness for however long it had been now rose slightly in pitch, spiraling all around him.

  The marble ringing the fire pit and the thick pillars supporting the ceiling to either side of the vent gave away where he was, though he could have guessed if he’d thought the energy worth it. The Temple. Probably priests’ quarters, though done up in more luxury and comfort than Wil suspected any of the Old Ones ever indulged in, and certainly more than Wil had seen before. Shaw’s rooms in Chester had been nothing like this. A fire stoked high in the pit in the center of the room, more thick furs beneath and above him than he’d ever seen at once in his life, and a mattress so soft it felt like he might sink right through it if he turned the wrong way.

  Battles—he remembered there had been battles, and he remembered someone saying the enemy had concentrated their attack here, on the Temple. He listened more carefully. No shouts, no gunfire, no horns. If there were still battles going on, they were either very quiet or very far away. Safe. At least for now.

  Sort of ironic, really, that Dallin was probably the best soldier out of anyone within leagues, and his part in the conflict had been miles beneath on an altogether different battlefield. And that he’d certainly done more good there than he could have done in the sorties for which he’d trained all his life. Wil didn’t know how many would eventually know the full story, but he, for one, was grateful. Eternally.

  A thin, continual hiss, nearly soundless but not quite, scattered over the flames of the fire, and a steady, rolling chime tapped at the closed shutters. It took a moment for the combination to work itself into a shape that made sense, and then another for Wil to place it as sleet. That, he half remembered. Rain, he’d wanted rain, because he’d been sad and he didn’t think it fair that he should be the only one. Childish, puling self-indulgence, but it had made sense at the time. He should probably clean up that mess, at least, but he wasn’t strong enough yet.