Aisling 2: Dream Page 14

  “We’ve had visitors,” Shaw told them when he bustled back down to collect their dishes. “The Guard is going door-to-door, looking for an Exile and his fey companion.” He glanced at Wil with an apologetic shrug as he doused several of the lamps. “Remarkable little description on you, though. Apparently, no one got a look at your face.”

  Wil shot a look at Brayden’s lax face, smiled something tired and cheerless. Well, the beard did little good, but the hat seems to have fulfilled your purpose. He sighed, propped his elbow to the small cupboard beside the bed, and rested his head to his palm. You do have your uses, Constable Brayden. Sorry they weren’t terribly useful to you.

  “You’re safe enough here,” Shaw went on. “The Chester Constabulary has no jurisdiction on Temple grounds, and we’ve the right to grant sanctuary, if it comes to it, though it’ll be best if we keep your presence from them entirely.” His head tilted a little, and his shrewd eyes took Wil in, settled first on the lumps of bandages about his hand and then on his face. “Is there anything you’d like me to do for you, lad?”

  Wil had almost forgotten what he must look like. No wonder that sour little librarian wouldn’t stop staring 136

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  at him once he’d taken off his hat. He shook his head.

  “Thank you, I think everything that could be done has been.” Anyway, the hand didn’t hurt all that much anymore, and his face never did unless he forgot and touched it wrong.

  Inexplicably, Calder’s mouth pinched up, like he was angry about something, but Shaw merely looked dubious. “If you say so.” He waved at the doorway. “I’ve prepared a cot for you in the next room. Clean water for washing. I’m afraid the facilities are little more than an indoor privy, but it’ll do best if you stay down here and out of sight. The priests and initiates can be trusted to keep silent, but the fewer who know you’re here, the fewer chance of mistakes or missteps.”

  Wil agreed wholeheartedly with the logic. He dug up a tired smile for Shaw and thanked him sincerely as he retired, but didn’t move yet from his uncomfortable seat.

  Calder, however, stood slowly, staring down at Brayden for quite a while before he turned his faded blue eyes to Wil.

  “Pleasant dreams,” was all he said, kept his gaze even and unflinching as Wil narrowed his eyes. Calder merely nodded and quit the little room, leaving Wil alone with Brayden for the first time since they’d burst onto the road this morning.

  “Is it wrong that I keep wanting to tell him to fuck off?”

  he muttered quietly to Brayden’s sleeping face. Brayden, of course, didn’t answer, just twitched his eyebrows a hair and slept on. Good. Sleep was a better healer than any infusion, in Wil’s admittedly slim experience, and Brayden had got sparing little of it over the past days, instead watching over Wil in the deeps of night. “My turn on watch,” Wil whispered, slouched down a bit more against the stiff back of the chair, toed off his boots and gingerly propped his feet on the edge of the cot. Brayden, 137

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  of course, didn’t stir or object. The waiting cot to which Shaw had referred didn’t even occur to Wil; he merely got as comfortable as was possible under the circumstances and settled in for a long night.

  Surprisingly, he didn’t even try not to doze.

  “Tell me about the Gift,” he asks Father. “Tell me how to help him.”

  Father smiles dreamily, sighs a song. “At last the binding begins,” he murmurs, dulcet and slow. “Weave it well.”

  “I don’t know what that means.” He can’t help the anger. He’s tired of hints and allusions, and nonsense advice that means nothing. “Can’t you just say it, damn it, just for once ?!”

  But Father only closes His eyes, a lone tear leaking from one corner. “You accept a cage like you belong in one, beautiful Gift.” Another sigh, this one deep and wrenchingly sad. “And yet the keys to your prison are right within your grasp.”

  And then He’s gone, leaving Wil alone, but not alone; he turns, looks behind him.

  He’s not surprised to find Brayden here, Watching as always, but he is rather surprised at his hereness , his presence , which has always been more a part of the background, and not as finely etched and clear as it is now.

  Certainly no threat.

  His dark eyes near blaze at Wil, urgent beneath the unruly fringe of gold. Wil is both startled and discomfited that Brayden looks just as unhealthy here as he did lying on that too-small cot. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t intrude, though Wil can tell he wants to, he’s almost 138

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  vibrating with it, but he just keeps Watching, and Wil wonders for the first time ever if it’s because he can’t

  say anything, can’t intrude, not unless Wil allows it—

  demands or requests it.

  Wil thinks about it. For quite a long while. He’s been avoiding this for days and days—they both have—and if he does this now, opens the door, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to close it again. More to the point, he doesn’t know if he’ll want to, and that scares him quite a bit more. He’s grown to like Brayden, trust him more than he should. Why else would he have hesitated in that alley, instead of taking the opportunity to run? And he can’t really explain it, but Brayden’s opinion matters to him.

  Wil actually gives a shit what Brayden thinks.

  Perhaps because Brayden seems to think so well of him, and it makes him childishly pleased.

  Wil sighs, goes to Brayden slowly, no longer afraid of Brayden himself, nor what he might do, but a little bit afraid of what Brayden apparently needs to tell him. The urgency and asking in his eyes make Wil shiver a little and slow his steps. He stops just in front of Brayden, peers closely for a moment, somewhat surprised that he’s not nearly so much shorter than a giant from Lind as he’d thought. Brayden looms so large in the waking world, and Wil does his best not to—he’d never noticed before that Brayden is only perhaps a head taller than him.

  It matters very little, he thinks, but it’s interesting.

  “You’re here.”

  “Apparently,” Brayden returns, a little hoarse and strained, “I’m always here.”

  Wil shrugs too: belated apology for previous declarations made from within tangled bitterness.

  Brayden’s mouth turns down in a scowl, and he reaches out, takes up Wil’s hand, frowns at the bloodied fingertips. “Why d’you do this to yourself?” he wants to 139

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  know.

  Wil doesn’t answer, just watches with interest as Brayden smoothes his fingers over ragged flesh, sores closing up and healing beneath his touch, and he doesn’t even see it. Wil wonders if it had happened that first time, but can’t remember. He doesn’t think so, though.

  A slight shock goes through Wil, a twinge of power that runs from Brayden’s fingers into his own. Brayden’s wide frame shivers just slightly, but he otherwise appears to have no idea.

  Wil looks Brayden over thoroughly, registers the new lines spidering at the corners of his mouth “D’you feel it even here?” he asks in concern.

  Brayden sucks in a long breath. “It’s bad,” he tells Wil. “Worse than I’d thought. I may have mucked this up entirely. I’m sorry.”

  “You still don’t understand, do you?” Wil has to smile a little in exasperated wonder. “You’re as Chosen as I am,” he tells Brayden. “You’ve the gifts of a shaman—the Gift of the Shaman, I’m told. You’ve more power in you than Calder. You could be better and stronger than any of Lind’s Old Ones, if you’d only see it.”

  “It isn’t important right now,” Brayden says, his voice and gaze both very kind, but implacable. “I’ve something I have to show you. I’m sorry, it’ll be hard, but I think it’s why I’m here, I think it’s part of my job, and I can’t take the chance that I’ll be gone before you dare it.”

  Wil scowls, surprised at how fierce it is, surprised at how the words hit him like an undeniable punch in the gut
. “You’re not going any—”

  “Likely not,” Brayden placates, though Wil can tell he doesn’t really believe it. “But it’s something I should have told you already; you need to know it, and I can’t take the chance that you won’t understand when you really need to.” He holds out his hand, palm-up. “Come with me?”

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  He wants to make it a demand, Wil can see it bubbling behind his eyes, but he’s refraining, relying on a trust that wasn’t there as little as several days ago, but strong enough now that Brayden apparently feels confident in testing it. It doesn’t irk Wil like he would have thought it would; instead, it makes him want to rise to it.

  “I’ve nowhere else to be.” He stretches out his hand, lays it lightly in Brayden’s. “Lead on,” is all he says.

  The regret is almost instantaneous; he doesn’t know what he was expecting—he didn’t think he’d been expecting anything—but the sensation of finding himself behind the eyes of another is intrusive and unnerving and absolutely bloody terrifying. It’s only the fact that he can still feel Brayden’s great hand about his, holding on, tethering— “It’s important,” he whispers to Wil, “I swear I wouldn’t show you, else.” —that Wil doesn’t scream and jerk himself back. He purposefully controls his breathing, answers, “Just don’t leave me alone in here,” and lets himself be guided.

  Wandering, searching, years and years, and still his Charge stays hidden—hides from him. It’s deliberate, he can feel it, and he can’t fathom it, but there’s trouble, deep fear and pain within the knowing. So, he keeps searching, moves from one blank road to another. The Old Ones are no help, lost his Thread the moment they heard the final cry from the last Guardian, filled with betrayal and rage, and the deep regret of failure. And now the Aisling has been waiting for nearly two decades, waiting for a new Guardian to grow and learn and train, and finally come find him, but failure has marked the search from the first step.

  Others have gone before him, while he grew and earned his Marks, twice-brave men, for they’d taken on the Calling without the Blessings that would shield them, stepping into the shoes of the Guardian without 141

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  the Guardian’s protections, without even the barest knowledge of the Guardian or his Charge. Seekers, scouring the countryside in random directions, waiting for the tug of an invisible hook so they might follow, find that which was too precious to lose but is lost nonetheless.

  None have returned, all of them blank roads, and their blood cries out to him, but it’s only so much noise beneath the cries and screams of the Aisling. He writhes with it, it’s under his skin, he can hear but he can’t see, and he tries to call out, but there is too much rage. It’s like a wall of anger and agony, and he can’t break through it.

  His Charge will not hear him, refuses him, refuses the Mother, so the Watcher is blind but not deaf, and he keeps searching.

  One name stands out amongst the cacophony of bewildered pain, blurred and garbled, indecipherable, like it’s being deliberately skewed, but snarled over and over again through deep-dark betrayed hopelessness. He answers, or tries to answer, calling out his own name, begging the Aisling—Just let me through, I’ve come to help you, the Mother hears your call—trying to break through the desperate denial, but it butts up against a wall so thick and strong it only lances back into him.

  He is hunted here, in the land of his enemies, for he has the look of the Coimirceoir, too obviously a child born of the Mother, of Lind, Her own Cradle. He can change his hair, can speak the language, but he can’t change his size, and so he ventures among them only when he has to and only fleetingly. Still, his trail is followed, he can feel it, and he doesn’t know by whom, but if they know of him, they know of the Aisling, so he allows a slip now and then, leaves a marker.

  He’s close, he’s been close for days now, circling about the city cautiously, hearing the cries waking and dreaming, but he couldn’t determine the where until 142

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  tonight. Tonight he saw. Tonight he understood.

  The Turning revealed him; they know now he Watches, for he couldn’t keep back his shout of dismay when the slender figure tottered on the parapet, moving with too-obvious intent. Foolish and reckless, he’d made a run for the Gates and revealed himself. They shouldn’t know, they shouldn’t understand, and yet he saw them understanding as he’d stood there at the Gates, trying to figure the best way through them. Saw them recognize him, even through the henna in his hair and beard, and the cloak about his hunched shoulders.

  So, he lets them follow, lets them believe he is unaware that the Watcher is watched. He allows them to come upon him in the deeps of night, allows them to accost him.

  He’ll give them a token fight until he sees their numbers, then he’ll take out all but one and force from him the final key. But surprise works against him, for they wear his Mark, they have power they shouldn’t, and it’s harder than it should be to thwart it and regain his advantage.

  The Mother’s Blessing shields him, but not enough, there are too many. He takes seven down to three and then to one, his own wounds many and mostly superficial, but one leaks blood that seeps near-black from just below his ribs, and he thinks perhaps it’s mortal.

  He can’t die, he can’t —it’s already been too long, and the Aisling suffers. He can’t leave his Charge— his

  Charge—here to endure through another two decades, waiting and not knowing. He staunches the bleeding as best he can, but he’s weak now, tired. The one man left knows it, and he chuckles, blood seeping from between his lips, down his chin, his own wound gory and open, a deep gouge down his chest to his belly.

  “The Aisling belongs to us, brave Watcher,” he says.

  “We Watch and shall have what is ours, where you have failed in your blindness. We are the Guardians now.”

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  “He belongs to no one.” It’s a snarl, somewhere between pain and fury, and he clenches his teeth against both, lifeblood leaking from between his fingers. “He is his own, and he suffers—I can hear his cries, and you dare to call yourself Guardian! What do they do to him in those towers?”

  He doesn’t really want to put pictures with the sounds that wind through his head. He wants to kill this man, squeeze the last breath from his throat and smile as he does it, so that the pretender will know with his dying thought that the true Guardian will heed his Call, will shatter whatever cogs of their sick scheme are grinding even now.

  “We are Called by the Father,” the man whispers, spits weakly, blood and saliva making wide tracks over pale skin. “Born in the blood of your predecessor, fed to the Father so that He may break the bonds your Mother cast upon Him. The Aisling suffers now for his weakness, his very life a blasphemy, for he serves the Guild as he should the Father. Dúil. Elemental. He deserves no name. He rejects the Mother, and Her Soldiers will not have him, but the day of the new Guardians approaches.”

  The man is insane, his blue eyes on fire above his stolen Mark. He speaks of the Father as though he were some ghoulish revenant, wakened by the blood of fallen Guardians, and the Mother his jailer.

  “You do not speak of the Father. You blaspheme of dearg-dur, of Daeva—the Mother and the Father do not suffer either to live. It is law ! You twist your own religion, and make of the Mother’s Gift a tool for—”

  He sees the flash of the knife too late, tries to cry out as it buries itself in his throat, but his own blood chokes him. He falls back, eyes wide, staring at the stars that wink and sing his Thread into the weave of a shroud.

  It is complete. He has failed.

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  ‘Forgive me.’

  He speaks it to no one, but pushes it through the cracks in the wall that the Aisling builds against him. The stars belong to the Father, but he reaches out to them, sings his Story into their hearts, so at least they may kno
w what happened here.

  “Your Mother is dead, Watcher.” The man leans over him, blots out the stars, and the knife flashes again, slashes the Marks from off his cheek. “We die together now.”

  The man’s voice is weaker. He doesn’t know if it’s because he is fading or the man is. He doesn’t think it matters; he is dying, he has failed, and the Aisling is left once again bereft of his Gift, tricked and entangled, while his Guardian leaks his life on alien ground, this false guardian’s lies in his ears.

  ‘Mother!’ his heart calls. ‘Hear me. I have failed in my Task, and so I Call the next.’ He takes one last look at the stars, listens to them twine his dirge with the new Song of another, closes his eyes.

  “Brayden,” he gurgles through the blood pooled in his mouth, in his throat, drowning him. “Wæpenbora.”

  And behind his eyes, enwombed in stillness as his lungs give up their struggle, enwrapped in silence as his heart beats its last, the Mother pulls his head to her breast, and weeps quietly into his hair.

  Brayden stands next to him as he opens his eyes, roosts back into himself like tired feet into comfortable old boots. Wil notices the hand first, still wrapped about his; he thinks he should be jerking back, but his reflexes abandoned him days ago where Brayden is concerned, and the whole business seems rather silly to him now, so he doesn’t.

  “What’s dearg-dur?” he asks, a little breathless.

  “Incubus,” Brayden replies. “Soul-eater.”

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  Wil nods a little, unsurprised. “You’re not the first.”

  His voice is strangely flat. Brayden doesn’t answer, only gives Wil’s hand a bit of a squeeze, doesn’t let go. Wil sucks in a shaky breath. “I’ve been…”

  He’d been living that not-life for bloody decades , tricked into believing betrayal, into committing his own.

  “You’re the third?” Wil asks, dull and too quiet.

  Brayden nods slowly. “You weren’t forgotten.”

  Wil can’t help but put Brayden’s face on those others, can’t help the weight of responsibility, the guilt, the sorrow. “How do I ever atone for this?” he whispers.