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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 know 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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The Aisling Book Two Dream

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.

“You don’t,” Brayden says forcefully. “Fifty or more
years of treachery, Wil. Fifty or more years of being lied
to.”

It sounds so… easy. Wil would really like to believe it,
except… “Oh,” he breathes, closes his eyes. “No wonder
She hates me.”

“Hey.” Brayden’s hand tightens about Wil’s and
squeezes hard. “If that were the case, would I be here?”

It would almost be easier if he weren’t. It would almost
be easier if Wil had just died back there in Ríocht, never
knowing any of this.

“Wil,” Brayden insists, “this isn’t yours.”

“How can it be anyone else’s?” he asks hoarsely. “He
died because I wouldn’t hear him.”

“You wouldn’t hear him because you couldn’t; he died
because he was just a second or two too slow.”

A wet, humorless snort wends from Wil. “And what
of you, then?” he wants to know. “Do I get to watch it
happen through my own eyes next time?”

“Maybe,” Brayden answers steadily. “But this is what
I’ve chosen.”

Wil shakes his head. “You were dragged into it, you
said it yourself, you had no more choice than—”

He stops short when Brayden lifts an eyebrow, a smile
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Carole Cummings

curling clever and knowing. “There it is,” he says softly.

“Don’t take on the choices of others. You’ll never get
yourself from out that cage.”

Wil jolts a little, frowns and looks down. Thinks about
cages and prisons and keys…

“C’mon, then,” Brayden says, softly cajoling. “I’ve
brought you a present.”

The sound of running water sluices over Wil’s senses,
soft and comforting. He peers up, a tired smile curling at
his mouth, though there are tears on his cheeks—someone
else’s grief, his own a paltry offering intertwined—so he
leaves them there, unashamed.

“How did you do this?” he wants to know.

Brayden smiles, shrugs. “It’s a dream, innit?” he
answers, as though that explains everything, follows Wil’s
gaze. “The Flównysse. I’m not sure how precise it is. It’s
been years, but this is how I remember it.”

“It’s beautiful.”

It is. The current flows clear and blue-green, rippling
over stones smoothed by Time streaming over and
past, ages of gentle destruction. Starlight sinks into its
liquid furrows, placid breakers winking and swelling,
then moving on, carrying a bit of night downstream.

He can hear the voices of the stars inside the flux and
flow, humming along with the rush in almost perfect
synchronicity to the tender breeze that lifts his fringe
from his brow. The horror and sorrow of a moment ago is
still thrumming beneath it all, coursing along as surely as
the river runs, but its edges have stopped slicing into his
heart. It allows him to look at it all with a mind as clear
as the rippling water. He wonders if that’s why Brayden
chose this place, and thinks yes, quite likely.

He turns his face up to the stars. “They kept the tale
safe,” he murmurs, looking back at their faces reflected
bright and soft on the water. “Their memories are long,
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The Aisling Book Two Dream

but they never dream,” he tells Brayden. “There is so
much more I would know from them.”

Brayden is silent for a moment, then: “You see why I
had to show you.”

It isn’t a question, but it wants to be; the anxious curl
of it is almost a plea for understanding and forgiveness.

“I see,” Wil answers slowly, turns to Brayden, finally
pulls his hand free, but not for the sake of discomfort.

“I’m sorry.”

A long sigh winds from Brayden’s broad chest. “So ’m
I,” he murmurs.

“I’m right to trust you.” Wil almost feels like a little
boy looking for approval, but somehow, with Brayden,
he can’t.

“I hope so,” Brayden returns, casts his glance out
over the river. He looks sad. “Be careful of Calder. I don’t
know why, but something…” He pauses, shakes his head,
perplexed, maybe, but resolute. “Shaw seems all right.

If anything happens, you stay with him, you hear? If I
can’t—”

“Shaw is not the Guardian,” Wil answers, pushing
stern command into his tone. “You said you chose this—

well, I choose you. You’ve dragged me through weeks of
trials and persuasions, and you can’t cut out on me just
when you’ve managed to convince me you know what
you’re doing.”

Brayden rubs at his brow, frustrated. “But I
don’t

know what I’m doing, that’s the point. I’ve been guessing,
stumbling blind, and now look where it’s got us—got
you
—I almost got you killed, and I don’t know if I’m
going to—”

He pauses, chokes out a shaky sigh. He doesn’t have
to finish. Wil knows what he was going to say, and he has
to keep himself from growling derision at Brayden and
rolling his eyes at the stubborn insistence on standing on
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Carole Cummings

ground he can see.

Wil sets his shoulders, determined. Brayden’s talking
about dying, like he’s already accepting it, and it pisses
Wil off. “Men died because I wouldn’t see,” he tells
Brayden. “If you won’t, it may be me next time.”

Brayden shakes his head. “I don’t know what that
means.”

Wil considers for a moment. Brayden will keep
refusing if this isn’t handled just right. And Wil really
needs Brayden to stop refusing. He needs the Guardian, he
knows that now. He needs
this
Guardian—Wæpenbora,
shaman, healer—who’s preparing to die because he won’t
see what he is.

“Heal my hand.” Wil holds up his right hand—there
were no bandages around it only a moment ago, but
there are now because he willed it so. He deliberately
draws the knife from his boot to slice away dirty linen,
pulls it back to reveal fingers that are no longer fat and
tight, but still somewhat bruised, and from the looks of
them, permanently crooked. His wrist is ringed black and
green with smudges of blue and yellow blooming up his
forearm.

Brayden takes it all in with a frown. “What are you
talking about?” he wants to know.

Wil takes hold of Brayden’s hand, turns it palm-up
and lays his own atop it. “It’s a dream, innit?”

“Wil…” Brayden sighs, a little impatiently. “I don’t
have magic. I can’t heal. I’m sorry.”

“You can conjure a river, but you can’t do me this
kindness?”

“It isn’t the same thing. This…” Brayden waves his
hand about, growls a little. “It’s just a dream.”

Wil thinks for a moment, alters his approach: “If you
could do anything, would you heal my hand?”

Brayden rolls his eyes, snaps, “Of course.”

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The Aisling Book Two Dream

“Then do it,” Wil insists. “It’s just a dream, right? You
can have magic in a dream. Anyone can have magic in
a dream. Pretend you can do anything. We’ll try flying
next.” Brayden’s scowling, his mouth twisting tight. Wil
steps in close, looks up, encouraging. “It doesn’t mean
anything,” he says quietly. “It’s just a dream. Just try.”

Brayden is still reluctant, his face pale even here, so Wil
knows the pain is leaking through. Wil would like to
spare Brayden the reluctant knowing that has to come,
but Brayden may well be his own only chance. “Take the
pain away,” Wil demands, insistent now. “Heal me.”

Another roll of the eyes, but Brayden doesn’t look
like he doesn’t believe—he looks like he doesn’t want to
believe, so he hesitates. Wil thinks that if he’d instructed
Brayden to heal himself, Wil would still be cajoling;
the fact that it’s someone else in pain is what moves the
man to peer sideways at the Guardian he doesn’t want
to know he is. Wil can actually see it happening, see the
wheels turning, and he hides a small smirk in his collar.

He’s surprised that it happens so fast; he’s downright
shocked at the level of intimacy—not only that Brayden
initiates it, but that Wil allows it. Wil hadn’t even been
completely sure that he’d convinced Brayden, hadn’t
been sure Brayden would actually
try
on his first go. And
yet, one moment Brayden’s hand holds Wil’s loosely in
his palm, and the next, long fingers are clamping about,
sending stinging bolts of pure energy throbbing through
muscle and bone. A jarring welter of primal power jolts
up from Wil’s fingers and all through his hand and arm,
then striates throughout his whole body.And then it
just… settles over him, tender and bracing, all at once,
like a comforting hold—asking.