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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

The Aisling Book Two Dream

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
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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
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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
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The Aisling Book Two Dream

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
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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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The Aisling Book Two Dream

“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?”