Aisling 2: Dream

by Carole Cummings

  Wil’s stomach had taken another bit of a dip about halfway through.

  …he will dragoon you to the Cliabhán , make of you a sacrifice…

  He shook his head. A harsh little snort burbled in his throat, and he clenched his teeth. Why was he so surprised?

  “They call where we’re going a Cradle?”

  “Cildtrog,” Brayden replied. “It means Cradle in the First Tongue. Lind sits in the hills above it. Why? What’s wrong?”

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  That weary snort pushed again, and Wil let it come, rubbed at his face. “One of the prophecies,” he said, suddenly very tired. “Maybe it was another lie.” He peered up at Brayden, the light of the fire sparking in dark eyes, catching on the gold of his hair and bringing back that forest god effect. It made Wil shiver just a little. “I hope it was a lie,” he told Brayden seriously. “Because if it wasn’t, we’re both in the process of making the biggest mistake of our lives.” His mouth pinched, and he looked away. “I’m used to betrayal,” he furthered, caught between anger and resignation. “You’re not, and I don’t think you could stand it.”

  Not many things could take this man down, Wil thought, a little bit of pity mixed with the chagrin. The bigger a person’s heart, he’d come to believe, the deeper the blade of treachery plunged. Brayden, for all his gruff arrogance and bossy ‘I know better than you do’ ways, had a heart that would one day do him in. When it came right to it, Wil was pretty sure that if Brayden wasn’t a man ruled by a heart that was perhaps just a bit too sloppy for the affairs of a Guardian, Wil wouldn’t right now be sitting here, carrying on an actual conversation like he was a real person. In fact, he might not be sitting anywhere at all.

  Brayden stared at him—just stared at him—his gaze alive and heavy, crowding out everything but the wavering light that scudded over his face, dropping swirls of gold into the depths of those dark eyes like flickering points of pitiless hope in shadowed wells. He leaned in, closed his hand over Wil’s, and took the knife from him gently, turning it over. Firelight hit the long dagger, scatter-shot over Brayden’s fingers as he tilted it. He leaned in so close his shoulder was touching Wil’s. His wide finger slipped along the blade, tiny scores in the smooth metal sliding beneath his fingertip in rhythm to his words: 56

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  “The Mother’s Blessing upon this blade May you use it never in anger May it protect you, and cleanse your Path of foes May it remind you always that you are the Mother’s Beloved Son”

  Wil frowned and leaned back. A vague, bewildering feeling of having just been somehow duped was creeping into his gut, and he rubbed at the low ache that was starting to bloom behind his eyes.

  “I know you’re angry,” Brayden said quietly. “I know you feel betrayed, and I won’t argue that you shouldn’t. I can’t begin to guess at the mind of the Divine, and even if I could, I won’t pretend there is any reason good enough or important enough to justify what’s happened to you.”

  He held the knife out again to Wil, hilt-first. “But I saw Her face, I saw her Eyes. She loves you, and She made sure She dragged me from a lifetime of ignorance and borderline belief to do what She, for whatever reason, can’t, and I don’t intend to displease Her by getting you captured or killed. If you can’t believe in Her, believe in me. You wanted to know why She didn’t help you—I am that help. I’m sorry I took so long to get here.” He waggled the knife a little between his fingers, its blade catching shards of fleeting brilliance from the fire, spiking into Wil’s eyes and making them burn. “I gave this to you because right now, I think you need it more than I do.

  Maybe you can’t read it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t understand it.”

  Wil stared at the blade, at the words that had been senseless little scratches on metal five minutes ago, but which had already seared themselves into his heart with the tangled, ruthless burn of chaotic conflagration. For moments, he was helpless to do anything but watch the firelight glance and shiver over the knife’s honed edge.

  He blinked desperately, refusing to let traitorous tears 57

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  sabotage his last and best bulwark of safety; refusing to let the jagged lump in his throat choke him.

  He stood calmly then slipped the strap of the rifle over his shoulder. “I believe I’ve the watch tonight,” he told Brayden quietly and stepped away.

  “Wil.”

  Soft but urgent. Wil paused but didn’t look back.

  “Do I look like I don’t know what I’m doing?” Brayden asked him gently.

  Wil dipped his head, closed his eyes.

  And then he turned. Walked away.

  It wasn’t until he was already pacing his second slow sweep about the perimeter that he realized the damned knife was in his hand.

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  Chapter Two

  Dallin didn’t jolt this time, didn’t wake panting and shaking; he merely opened his eyes and sighed up at the stars. Groaned.

  “Fucking

  hell.”

  Of all the things around which this mess could have centered, it just had to be dreams, didn’t it? Just his luck.

  The groan turned into a light growl.

  The night air was thin and cold, the clammy weight of rain and its aftermath gone now. Dallin listened to the quiet night-sounds, listened to Wil’s light steps inside of them. His chest loosened a notch, relieved. If Wil didn’t attack him while he slept or take the opportunity to run, Dallin could at least console himself that the unreasonable trust he was putting forth wasn’t completely insane, but well-founded, even if he had no rational reason why.

  Bloody hell, here he was, basing critical decisions on dreams and intuition, skulking back to a ‘home’ that hadn’t been home for nearly thirty years because of tattoos and a feeling, because She’d told him he’d forgotten and it had pissed him off. As if he didn’t remember every damned thing about the raid that had so brutally cut his tether to Lind. As if he hadn’t been reminded every day he’d lived in Putnam that he hadn’t really belonged.

  Forgotten. Right.

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  Dallin rubbed at his face and growled again.

  The fire had died down to glowing cinders. Dallin levered himself up and stared at it for a while, sitting there in his bedroll, trying to decide if he’d slept enough yet.

  He’d had a hard enough time getting to sleep in the first place, and by the set of the moon, it appeared he’d only slept a few hours. He’d prefer a little more—vigilance demanded rest—but if it meant more dreams, he’d be just as happy to skip it.

  Last night had been foolish but necessary, for his own peace of mind, if for nothing else. Sleep was as crucial as food and water, and he’d been blathering just yesterday about tactics and strategy. But he couldn’t leave Wil to watch alone until he knew what he was doing and was capable of defending them both, and Dallin couldn’t take even little snatches for himself, for fear he’d end up inside another dream that didn’t belong to him. So he’d foregone sleep altogether—which was stupid—then taught a man he didn’t really trust to shoot and gave him a loaded gun while Dallin slept—which was even more stupid. And now, if sleep was going to be this exhausting and unnerving, he thought perhaps he’d never sleep again.

  He’d hoped the other night had been a one-time event, but it appeared that he wasn’t yet through with whatever he was supposed to be learning from these little pieces of chaos. And he didn’t know if he’d ever have the nerve to sleep at the same time as Wil again.

  Earlier, before this latest, he’d been walking through the burnt corpse of Kenley, tiny scorched skeletons singing the songs of the old gods with their chittering voices, laughing at him because he hadn’t known the words.

  It repulsed him more than frightened or informed him.

  Whatever lesson he was supposed to learn from it, if any, was lost in the revul
sion. Children should not be used for such things, let alone dead children. It was wrong in ways that bent decency.

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  And why Kenley? Dallin had certainly seen worse, so why could he not get the dead of that one tiny hamlet out of his head? Perhaps murder was relatively rare in Putnam, but he’d surely seen his share of violence within its limits. And he had, after all, served in the Army for eight long years. Kenley wasn’t by any means the first burnt village he’d seen, and its corpses not the worst.

  Still… it was the children. The lost potential. The budding promises severed so brutally and decisively.

  Unjustly.

  Unfairly.

  And those men thought they had the right.

  Dallin ran a hand roughly through his hair, rubbed at the back of his neck.

  Perhaps that was why Wil’s story hit him so hard, why he couldn’t stop being amazed at how Wil had made himself into someone who could at least pass for normal, despite what he must have seen in his years. And what was so brilliant about ‘normal’, anyway? The change in Wil, just in the few days they’d been traveling—the humor and eager embrace of anything new or different, the potential Dallin could see in each new facet Wil artlessly showed him—it kept reminding him of what Wil might have been.

  He had the enthusiasm of a puppy, balanced with a depth of thought Dallin never would have given him credit for a few days ago. The heart of a cold killer juxtaposed to an eye for beauty in the smallest things that would pass beneath the notice of any other. He was like several different unfinished people, all rolled into one man who took what he needed from each facet and used it as he saw fit, when he saw fit.

  He was… fascinating.

  Not ‘normal’ by the definitions Dallin had been using all his life, and by no means predictable. But Dallin had been relatively normal his whole life, had made himself 61

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  as normal as someone who looked like him could, and he was predictable even to himself, and where that that got him? If this newest dream was to be believed, it had got him roped into a task that had apparently been meant for at least two others before him, men who’d trained all their lives for it, and had still ended in violent, lonely failure. And now, here he was, taking up a Calling for which he was obviously not prepared, in order to protect someone who only wanted that protection on his own terms, and who was sought by men more dangerous than any Dallin had had the misfortune to come up against before.

  He shook his head, listening to Wil’s soft footfalls in the damp undergrowth, walking his watch. It was funny—

  two days ago, Dallin wouldn’t have even considered allowing Wil out of his sight, let alone stand guard over him while he slept; now, he wasn’t even surprised that Wil hadn’t taken the opportunity to skive off. Relieved, yes, but not really surprised. It wasn’t trust… at least not the sort of trust with which Dallin was familiar. It was…

  something else. Mutual need, perhaps. After all, Dallin had no illusions that Wil would stick around if Dallin proved to be other than an asset in keeping them alive.

  Wil wasn’t traveling with him because of his dazzling personality, Dallin was sure.

  The horses gave a few sleepy nickers, hoofs shifting quietly. Dallin smirked a little when he heard Wil stop to speak a few soft words to them then gruff a grumbling curse when one of them blew on him. His affection for them was grudging but real and growing. And Dallin hadn’t missed the fact that most of Wil’s precious apples were serving as treats for them every night. For someone who’d looked like he was willing to fight to the death to take the damned apples along with him in the first place, and who professed to disliking horses in general in the 62

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  second, the nightly surreptitious gift-giving was awfully damned funny. And he’d more-or-less forbidden Dallin from hobbling them, wanting to know how Dallin would like it if someone tied his feet together, and insisted on long pickets instead. Since they were out of thicker forest and there was no danger of one of them wrapping herself around a tree, Dallin hadn’t argued.

  He grunted a little and rubbed at his face, scratching the bristly growth on his chin.

  “Why don’t you shave that off?” came from behind him. Wil’s voice was soft and low in the dark, a mild note of amusement.

  “What,” Dallin wanted to know, “it doesn’t make me look rugged and fierce?”

  “It makes you look like you’ve got fleas, because you can’t stop scratching at it.”

  Probably true. He hadn’t grown a beard since he was in his teens and trying to prove he could, and he’d remembered days ago why he’d shaved it off immediately thereafter.

  Dallin smirked over his shoulder and shrugged. “I’d thought perhaps it might be useful, once we got out of those places where we wanted to be recognized.”

  “A disguise?” Wil snorted. “P’raps if you shaved off a foot each of breadth and height. Otherwise, you stand out more than I do, beard or no.”

  “Well…” Dallin scratched again—he couldn’t help it.

  “True, I suppose, but it at least makes me feel like I’m doing something to disguise myself, how’s that?” He turned back again, narrowing his eyes. “You don’t shave at all, do you?”

  He’d been wondering about that for days; every time he thought to ask about it, there was always something more pressing going on.

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  darkness and gave it a wide sweep. “What’re you doing up?” he wanted to know. “It’s hours yet ’til sunrise.”

  Dallin sighed and stretched his neck. Back to the non-answers again. Or maybe Wil just didn’t know.

  Considering that the few things he’d been told were weighted heavily with skewed truths and outright lies, Dallin thought that was the more likely speculation.

  “Dreams,” was all he said.

  “Hm.” Wil walked slowly over to stand in front of him, rifle held across his torso like he’d been born to the stance. Dallin could just make out the lift of a dark eyebrow in the glow of the dying embers, the hint of a smirk. “Looking for some sympathy, Constable?”

  “From you?” Dallin almost let a dour laugh escape but shook his head instead. “I wouldn’t presume.”

  He couldn’t imagine the sorts of dreams Wil had to live through every night and then forget every morning, just to maintain his unique sanity. Let alone what went on before. Expecting sympathy from him wouldn’t just be thoughtless; it would be obscene.

  Although, Dallin would have to tell him about the dreams soon, explain what he’d seen and put forth his theory. If he’d really been watching someone else’s last moments of life, and not merely hallucinating and letting his mind run wild, Wil should know that he hadn’t been abandoned all these years, as he obviously thought—in fact, he had a right to know. Except, how did one tell someone that his own enraged denial and belief that he’d been betrayed was in fact what had perpetuated that betrayal? How did Dallin explain that the lack of the trust and hope that had been beaten out of Wil seemed to have been exactly what had prevented help from finding him?

  You don’t. At least not in the middle of the night when the man’s standing over you with a loaded gun.

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  Or when he’s almost comfortable in your presence for a change, and making stupid jokes at your expense.

  Almost smiling.

  “All’s quiet, then?” was all Dallin said.

  Wil nodded. “Look what I found.” He crouched down, settled the rifle across his knees, and tilted his hand into the dim, wavering light.

  Dallin squinted, reached out and plucked a textured, triangular stone from Wil’s palm. “Arrowhead?”

  “Chert,” Wil replied. “From when the Clans were still wandering folk.” He wasn’t smiling yet, but his voice was, and his face in the soft gold of the failing fire was f
ull of interest and discovery. “See those marks there on either side? Pressure-flaking, which means it’s old old, ancient old—like the-first-people-who-used-stone-tools old.”

  Dallin’s eyebrows went up. All thoughts of allowing violent dreams and gloomy conjecture to spoil the pleasant moment were decisively throttled and pushed away. He held the little projectile back out between his fingers. “How do you know all that?”

  Wil shrugged. With a small frown, he took the relic back. “Dunno,” he said quietly. “Sometimes I just know things. Most of it’s pretty useless, generally, but…” The tip of his finger ran lightly over the edge. “People aren’t the only ones who dream,” he murmured thoughtfully.

  “The stones and soil have longer memories and sleep more deeply.”

  Dallin opened his mouth… closed it. Decided he had nothing intelligent to say and so kept his lips buttoned tight. There were only so many fantastic anecdotes he could take in at a time, and he’d reached his limit days ago. And he didn’t even want to think about what it might be like to not only have the charge of tending the dreams of all the people in the world, but the world itself — rock and stone, leaf and soil. Once again, watching Wil quietly 65

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  communing with something he himself would likely have passed over as just another stone amidst the debris of nature, Dallin readjusted his definition of ‘sanity’ and…

  wisdom, perhaps?

  “You’re like a crow, picking at shiny bits.” Wil flicked a doubtful look at him from beneath dark eyebrows. “In a very good way,” Dallin assured him. “I never would’ve seen it. How did you find it? In the dark, no less.”

  Wil thought about it for a moment then he leaned in, dropped his voice to a whisper. “The voices in my head told me where to look.”