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You see now what you’ve taken from me. Shall I give you back what I’ve taken from you?”

Siofra’s eyes had gone blank with dread, teetering on the edge of sanity. “Ungrateful wretch,” he gasped, dry-heaving until he coughed up a thin spray of blood.

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The Aisling Book Two Dream

Wil pushed again. If it were anyone else, the meager resistance would have been laughable.

Easy, easy, so bloody
easy
, why aren’t you stronger?

And then he
shoved
.

Wil opened himself wide, showed Siofra
everything
.

Pushed it into the emptiness, swallowed it and filled up the crevices. Threw pure power into the weave, and watched as it stretched the threads, strained them.

“Blood to blood,” he snarled. “Only your heart’s too small and cold to take it all.”

“Don’t,” Siofra wheezed, rain falling into his open, staring eyes. “Please. Don’t.”

Wil glared down at him, tried to laugh and… couldn’t.

Faltering, cold rain falling on the blaze of his fury and guttering it. He clenched his teeth, looked away. He’d been wild with it a moment ago, enthralled, reaching for revenge with every bit of rage inside him, flinging it out from himself, exhilarated.
I’m strong enough. I’m
stronger than you. You can’t hurt me anymore. You can’t
ever hurt me again.
Now, he nearly stumbled beneath the weight of it, a mind balanced in his palm, that narrow face twisted in near-madness.

“
Tell me my name!
” Wil let go of Siofra’s hands and took hold of his coat instead—
shook
. “Say it, damn it, you took everything else away from me, I’ll have my fucking
name
!”

Warm, broad hands on his shoulders—
no, don’t see
this, I shut you out, I don’t want you to see, how are
you here, and how can your hands be warm when it’s so
bloody cold? how are you even here, don’t you see how
weak he is, how easy it was for him to take from me?
—

immediate stillness.

“You’re in too deep, Wil, don’t hold it back.”

“I don’t think I can.”

No response to that one, just the weight of those 324

Carole Cummings

hands, firm on his shoulders. Not holding him up, not holding him back, not
pushing
… Just there.

Wil took the comfort they offered—
why do you keep
caring? why do you keep letting me take, don’t you see
what’s happening here?
—dropping down to his knees, face-to-face with the monster who’d turned out to be nothing more than a greedy little man with greedy little power, who’d taken a small boy and convinced him he was weak and helpless, used him because… because…

“So… so
weak
,” Wil groaned, hot tears squeezing from out the corners of his eyes. “Weak and small and I only wanted…” He shut his eyes tight.

“We all do,” Dallin told him. “It doesn’t make you weak, it makes you normal.” He hesitated, then: “What do you want here, Wil?”

Wil faltered. What did he
want
? “I want him to…”
I
want him to be stronger. I want him to be sorry. I want
him to
see
. I want him to…
He swallowed a sob. “I want him to
bleed
.”

Dallin tightened his grip and laid a firm kiss to the top of Wil’s head. “Then make him bleed,” he said simply.

“End this.”

Kept holding on.
Stayed
.

Wil almost wished those broad hands had pulled him away, almost wished that encouraging voice had dipped toward dismay and demanded he come away. Was cruelly glad they’d done neither. He sucked in a long breath, drove himself deep.

All the time in the world, it was forever inside, and he touched each thread, following it to its end, then casting it aside, before he took up another. Memories and inclinations, wants and needs. All of those things that built a person, and all twined together, pulsing in his fingers.

“He was a boy once,” Wil murmured, surprised that 325

The Aisling Book Two Dream

he was so surprised when the bright-misted memories of childhood throbbed in his hand, all innocence and tactile need. “He had
parents
.” A small, spare woman, with a kind laugh and warm eyes; a tall, balding man, long nose and a cheerful gaze the color of morning.

Not fair, not fair, not fair…

The desire-driven consciousness of adolescence—the first kiss, the first thrill of intimacy, the first broken heart—

branching and flowering into adulthood, seeding a life.

Lust drove it all sideways, it always did. Siofra’d believed once, he’d believed deeply, was devout in his beliefs, and he’d read, researched. Knew the legends by heart, dug through archives, outpaced the scholars and priests with his vast knowledge, and came to believe just as devoutly that he knew better. Proved it when he’d bribed his way into the Ambassador’s Office, crossed the Border for the first time. Invited into Temples like he belonged there, permitted to read and study archives that would have got him hung in his own country. Finally obtained something close to reverence in a secret Brotherhood, and watched possibility unfurl before his eyes.

Found the key.

A strand of memory, winding down into a morass of desperate resistance. “It’s here.” Wil could feel the edges of it. Down and down and down… “It’s down here.” A shudder and a shaky breath. “Don’t go away.”

“I’m right here.”

Wil latched onto the thread. Then he followed it.

Deep and dark and cold; like sinking into a pit of frozen tar. Scudding across Forever, sliding into Time and being spat back out again, a wide, bitter void beneath his feet, drawing him in.

He let it, tethered to himself only by the threads of pain acid-webbed about him, tightening his grip and ramping up the agony so he wouldn’t get lost. His own pain in one 326

Carole Cummings

hand, a safety-line back to his Self, and Siofra’s strand of memory in the other; he pulled them together and plaited them. Joined them.

We are one, you and I.

Wil almost laughed.
Yeah, and I bet you wish you’d
picked a different metaphor.

Rushing through consciousness that wasn’t his, striving through an alien vista with no markers to tell him which way to go. Only that thread, that fiber of remembrance inside a deep-dark pit of resistance. He clawed at its patterns, scrabbling-tearing-rending, ignoring the resonant throb of pain—his and Siofra’s both, doubled then trebled—until there was a give, the slightest break in resistance. Wil seized it,
push-push-pushed
at it with everything in him, shocked nearly stupid when the counter-pressure abruptly broke and the weave frayed in his hands. Stunned, almost euphoric, Wil firmed his grip and slammed himself through, sailing reckless into the black, then…

Freefall. Unraveling.

Too fast, too uncontrolled. Anchorless, Wil plunged headlong into the patternless murk, felt it closing over him, cold and black as well-water.

“
Shit
! Wil, you’re in too deep. You have to push it away. Do you hear me?
Wil
—”

Too deep
. Too right.

It was like being nowhere at all, pitching down into the unplumbed depths of a Self, skirting consciousness, and setting his teeth against the deadly cold emptiness resisting-denying-thwarting him. Drawing itself in against him, hiding from him what was
his
. He growled, stretched for the boundaries, reach spanning eternity.

“Almost there. I can
see
it…”

Could see the very end of the man who dared to call himself
Father
. Could see the shadow of his own Self, 327

The Aisling Book Two Dream

caught down there in the darkness, biding in its little cage. A mantle of deception of its own Design, weaving blindly, tangled inside a shroud of secrets and lies and betrayals.

Say my name, say my name, say my name…

A snarl and a gathering of strength. Pushing, tending, dreaming awake, all of them together. Twining it all in his hand, weaving it into raw energy. Elation nearly took him—
Dallin, you were right, I think can do this, I think
I can do anything!
—as he shoved himself into the tight-woven strands of nothingness, grip fumbling but almost there,
almost there
. He reached, stretched—

“Wil,

no
!”

Thumped with a jaw-jarring shock into… something.

A presence. Alien and yet familiar.

Swarmed by awareness, overwhelmed by intent not his own. And he’d thought it had hurt
before
. Cold-sharp agony swamped him, shoving itself down his throat, choking him, and snagging at his mind.

Far too big to be Siofra. Far too old to be sane. Far too cunning to be anything but vile.

Wil snapped his reach, started to pull back, but it was too big—

“Oh, shit, Wil?
Wil
, damn it, what are you doing?”

Sentience, crawling all over him, a more horrifying invasion than any tormentor he’d met before. Like something was peeling open his skull and peering into his head, cracking open his chest and measuring his heart, his soul. So strong, so aware—the master of greed, the god of lust, the demon of hunger—driving, chittering
hunger
.

This wanted more than souls. This was hungry enough to swallow worlds.

Blood to blood
, it chuckled.

“
Wil
, damn it,
answer
me!”

Oh, no… This is more than just a memory. I think I’ve
328

Carole Cummings

just stepped into some very serious shit…

“Dallin?” Too faraway, too small. “Help.”

“Don’t pull back, understand?
Don’t pull back
Push it
away
, Wil, as hard as you can.”

Too late. It reached again, and he panicked, jerked back, a whining little whimper knocking loose from his throat. It knew him. It knew him, knew what he had in him. And it
wanted
.

Dearg-dur. Daeva.

Æledfýres
.

“Oh, fuck… This isn’t Siofra. This is the
real
monster.”

Too slow, he was too slow—it smiled at him, laughed at him…
wrenched
.

Wil lurched, took what was in his hands and closed his fists, snapped himself away—

“Nonono, Wil, don’t—!”

—hurtled, screaming, into Forever.

Vast.

Dark.

Terrifying.

Alone inside Time.

Not a dream. Not life. A dreaming half-life, perhaps…

No. No, that wasn’t right. A not-life.

Nothing.

‘I think there’s so much more that if you’re not very
careful in how you use it, you could lose yourself.’

He was lost, that was it. In a place with no color, no patterns, no path—

‘She fears for you, for your path has only just begun
and you refuse Her Gift.’

Path… Gift… he saw neither, and he didn’t know who

‘She’ was, but the thought made him want to weep so he 329

The Aisling Book Two Dream

pushed it away. She should be here, damn it, should be…

should be…

‘She is not my mother, and I want nothing from her.’

It was so full of anger and betrayal, hurt and grief. It made his throat clog up, made his heart thud heavily, and he turned his face away. Sent his gaze out into eternal night.

Blank-black and oh, so dark. If he put out his eyes, he might see more. He hadn’t known this kind of darkness existed. Pitch-poison and deadly comfort. Sink inside the cold, freeze away the pain, because oh, it
hurt
…

“Wil? Wil, are you in there?”

Quietly frantic—this hurt, too, but not in his ears. He thought he knew the voice, but he couldn’t remember how or who.

“Wil, damn it, wake up, we don’t have time!”

Wil. It was… familiar.

‘Peaceful River. It’s nice, isn’t it? I want to live by one
someday.’

Water, river, peace, and a strong arm about him…

‘That’s a very good wish.’

…stars and confessions, songs and loss and contentment and grief… a kiss…

“Calder! Shaw! Someone get over here, I need help!”

Calder…

River of stones.

‘…there’s a river runs through Cildtrog…’

‘The Flównysse. I’m not sure how precise it is. It’s
been years, but this is how I remember it.’

The flow of the river, the songs of the stars, the cool kiss of a gentle breeze against his cheek…

‘How did you do this?’

‘It’s a dream, innit?’

A dream. A living dream, a dreaming life, a cold, dark, bottomless not-life where the stars had all gone silent and 330

Carole Cummings

he was blind to the patterns, deaf, mute, senseless and soulless.

“Mother save us, he’s all-over blood! Is he shot?”

Mother…

‘…there’s a river runs through Cildtrog…’

Flównysse… Mother’s Blood.

Blood to Blood.

“No, not shot, he’s just… he’s bleeding.”

Bleeding. Blood to Blood.

“Help me get him up. Get to the horses—quick, before they realize what’s happening. Corliss! You tell everyone what you saw and heard here today, understand?

Everyone
.”

“She can’t—”

“What are you going to do? Shoot her to keep your damned secret? Look around you, Calder—
this
is what secrets bring. Look at
him
, I can barely even see his face through all the…” A hoarse snarl. “
Fuck
you and your secrets, now
move
!”

“What about Siofra?”

“Dead.” Incensed. Satisfied. “Leave him.”

Dead.

Siofra.

It should have meant something, but it only brought pain and shame and rage.

‘I was a father to you, starless boy.’

Starless. Soulless. Lost inside Forever.

Holding a soul in his hand and closing his fingers.

Finding a Thread and ripping it out.

You’re not Father. You’re not anything, you never
were.