Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (114 page)

“Hey, Alabama wasn’t my fault and you know
it,” I snapped. “And I have no idea what was blocking you after
London. We were looking for you by then.”

“He doesn’t understand what happened there,”
Ethan said, staring at Kieran’s back. “Neither do I, for that
matter. What happened, Seth? What happened that you got jerked out
of my memories?”

Whatever the mojo the Twice-Dead God worked
on me, still worked. I forgot how to talk again. This was far more
frustrating than I originally thought it would be.

“I can’t say,” I answered absently after a
moment. “Hopefully, soon, I’ll remember everything and I’ll be able
to talk about it, but till then…” I shrugged. There wasn’t anything
else I could say about that.

“That is no different from shutting me out,”
Kieran said facing me and letting some of his anger out, but only
some. He wasn’t wound as tightly with the release he had with Dad,
but he was still controlling his emotions. He was still angry.

“If you’re referring to blocking you after an
argument, I disagree—that’s not the same thing at all,” I answered,
trying to hold my own irritability in check. “We both needed the
time apart to consider and calm down. You chasing after me
immediately was not going to help the situation. Anything else was
outside of my control.”

Too angry, he was too angry. “Poppycock!” he
exclaimed. Where’d he get that word? “You ran away! It’s the
closest thing to teenaged that you’ve done.”

His façade slipped. Just for a second, I saw
under the surface and saw what was driving the anger so high. He
was afraid. I didn’t see what he was afraid of—I wasn’t a psychic
after all, but I could put the pieces together.

“Oh, I get it,” I said, understanding finally
falling into place. I walked over to the bed and stood in front of
him. “It’s hard to imagine you as that kid.” I reached out with one
finger and pushed on the center of his forehead lightly. “Or that
the insecurities that you held that long ago would hold sway over
who I see sitting here now.” Kieran looked up at me, trying to get
angrier but failing when our eyes met. Those big green emerald eyes
were still so innocent in so many ways, even with all that he
experienced with Des’Ra’El.

“I’m not leaving you, Kieran,” I said,
sitting on the bed beside him. “I’m not going to toss you out like
yesterday’s trash just because I got what I wanted. Not because I’m
apprenticed to you, but because you are my brother and I love you.
And over the years, we will no doubt argue and fight and be jerks
to each other. But in the end, we will reconcile and get over it
because we love each other, because we’re brothers. We made that
connection. The four of us forged that connection together. We
fought hard to make it and by God I’m gonna fight hard to keep
it.”

Kieran turned exceptionally quickly and
hugged me tightly. I hugged back, up until the sparkles indicating
a loss of consciousness started. Kieran was a strong man and he was
squeezing the air out of me. I pulled away both grinning and
gasping for breath. He wiped away a tear or three on his
shirtsleeve.

“All right, then,” Peter said, pushing off
the dresser. “One more thing to cover before you crash from
exhaustion. Show us.”

“Huh?” I said, certainly worth a couple a
hundred thousand dollars in tutors for that kind of elocution. Dad
would be proud.

“Oh come now, Lord Daybreak,” said Ethan from
behind me, “Certainly you haven’t forgotten so soon.”

“Oh,” I said with equal elegance as my
previous question. “You’ve seen it before. It hasn’t changed
much.”

“You said it was growing,” Kieran reminded
me. “There’s no telling how much it may have changed in your
absence.”

“All right,” I said and shrugged. “I’ll have
to leave the door open, though, just in case someone here needs to
find us.”

I stood up with Kieran and we went to the
nearest blank wall. Thinking about the Pacthome, I had difficulty
making the connection to form the portal, but when I changed the
thought to “home” instead, it was just there in front of us. Kieran
showed me how to push and pull on the opening to make it stay in
place indefinitely. From there several other ideas about portals
and doorways to other dimensions became evident to me, almost
elementary.

Then we stepped through the looking
glass.

We stepped through the door in pairs, first
Kieran and me, then Ethan and Peter. It was very dark on this side,
still nighttime. Dad said it would be bitterly cold so I had
expected to make a mad dash for the house to start a fire, but it
was only moderately cool for shorts, maybe mid-60’s. We came out in
front of the Pacthome’s gate, but the road we stood on wasn’t here
before and it led around the home, not to it.

“That’s new,” Kieran said pointing up at the
bright starscape overhead. “So is the road. Where’s it go?”

“I don’t kn-…” I said, stopping in the middle
of a word, because just as I said it, I did know. And it was a
shock. I walked up the road a few feet, staring into the darkness,
speechless, then turned around and stared at them, again
speechless. I went back and forth at least three times pointing and
gaping wordlessly. Shaking my head in exasperation, I finally
managed to get a few words out, “You’re just gonna have to see it!
Wait for me, please,” I asked and ran back through doorway. Once
there, searching for Dad took a moment through the wards. He was a
brighter target than Mom, but they shared proximity. I was
conflicted about interrupting them, but they could have all the
privacy they wanted in a far more idyllic place than that room in
less than an hour. I didn’t feel too bad about it. I stepped into
the hall outside Mom’s room and knocked on the doorframe.

Dad heaved out a heavy breath. “What now?” he
said, low and grumbling, then louder, “Come in.”

I stepped in grinning ear to ear, couldn’t
help myself. They were both laying on the bed, Dad on his side,
their fingers’ intertwined. “Sorry to intrude,” I said,
lightly.

“Seth, you’re still up,” Mom said, instantly
worried in that mothers-always-worry way. “Is something wrong?”

“No! No, everything is great!” I said.
“There’s just something I have to show you. It’s the first time
this has ever happened and it promises to be glorious! And even if
you don’t understand it all right now, it won’t affect this in the
least.”

“What’s going on, Seth?” Dad asked as they
got out of bed.

“Call it a family outing, Dad,” I said, still
grinning. It may never come off. “My brothers are with me so I want
my parents there, too. We’re gonna have to move fast, though, so
I’ll take care of the transportation, okay?” They both nodded and
somewhere between the first down sweep and up-sweep, I was
reaching into my closet for a windbreaker to give to Mom. It was
more for modesty than warmth considering the size of it compared to
her.

“Isn’t that a bit light?” Dad asked,
suspecting where we were going.

“Uh-uh, not at all,” I answered. “We will
have to step through the door.”

“Are we going to Faery?” Mom asked walking
closer to the door and examining it, enchanted by the blurry and
slightly sparkling structure of the space that formed the warp.
“I’ve not crossed the veil before.”

“Um, well, that’s a complicated answer,” I
replied. “Technically, yes, it is a Faery realm, but I have a lot
of questions about what and why that is.” I walked through the
door, hoping to encourage the talk to continue en route.

“Would you come on!” urged Ethan from a few
dozen feet down the road. When Mom walked out with Dad fast behind
her, he calmed down. “Oh, hi!” he called and trotted back to
us.

“Welcome, Lord Daybreak!” a thousand
amazingly high voices cried at once all around us, startling Mom
terribly. Dad wrapped his arms around her, gently and slowly,
murmuring in her ear explanations of what she was seeing

“Hi, guys! What are y’all doing up at this
time of day?” I asked the four-inch figures in the grass, turning
in a slow circle to try and see them all.

“We wouldn’t miss the first, Lord Daybreak!”
they chimed, again in unison.

“Better hurry, then! Here, let me help,” I
said. With a flick of my wrist, I threw a doorway a dozen feet up
the road between here to a split in the road about three miles up.
“That’s where you’re going, right?”

“Yes, thank you, Lord Daybreak!” they cried
out and a great caterwaul began as waves of grass took off down the
stone road like a lawnmower was after it and they were the grass
that finally figured out how to run.

“Kieran! Peter! Where are you?” I yelled, not
that I really had to. I knew exactly where they were. “We need to
be there in a few minutes! We’re short on time, guys.”

“Coming!” I heard Peter call from behind the
gate. They’d gone to check the hole behind the house. I could have
told them it was perfectly solid. When they finally showed up, we
weren’t going to have the time to walk, so I dismissed the tunnel I
put on the road and wrapped us in portals, moving us all through
into almost total darkness—a loud total darkness.

Kieran brought out a small globe of pale blue
fire, illuminating the immediate area. Not much of an increase, the
new light only showed a large rock sitting on a promontory with a
vast black nothing on all but the way off of the promontory. The
rock was large enough to offer seating for my parents and a place
for us to stand behind them without obstructing any views. Simply a
perfect viewpoint. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect
either.

As I got Mom and Dad seated and stood behind
them, the first rosy bands of sunlight began to light the night’s
sky and obscure the starscape above, burning away what little cloud
cover still existed. And the six of us settled in to watch the
first Dawn this world had ever seen.

More and more stars disappeared as the sky
went from black to indigo to blue to pale blue and the first bright
rays of orange and rosy light burst over the horizon faster than
the eye could follow. That single shaft of light hit our giant
noise-maker—a huge waterfall—splitting millions of times in the
spray at the top as it cascaded down the mountain top. Huge
rainbows fell down into the valley, giving it a surreal presence as
the morning sun revealed more below. The waterfall beat against
three different levels of rock face, deflecting further sprays out,
before feeding into a large, deep lake of clear water.

With the sun just a sliver of bright light on
the horizon, the valley burst forth in vibrant living color as if
it was the only place in the universe worth living. And I couldn’t
deny it.

The grasses around the lake stood straighter
to meet their first day, blooms on flowers unfolded elegantly to
greet their first sight of the sun. Even the trees sunk roots
deeper into the ground and seemed to stretch a bit more and relax
in the warmth. As the sun continued on its rise, we began to see
evidence of insect life, small butterflies and grasshoppers of
various kinds in the grassland, mayflies along the shore. The more
I looked the more I saw. Amazing.

Elbowing Peter, I pointed up, past the
waterfall where no one had chosen to look just yet. His reaction
would draw everyone else to the other half of this event: the
palace. That was the only word for what that building was. It was
three times the size of the Arena and looked like it was carved
from the mountaintop itself. The stone face held an inset dome—a
dark indigo on the outer edges, spiraling in to a paler, more
dominant sky blue. At the center, it reflected the morning sun down
into the valley as if the palace itself were the dawning star, its
very own daybreak, echoing the sun to itself. The angle on it was
perfect, too, as that affect was as brief as the dawn.

Tall spires marked the outside corners of the
domed center with four smaller towers on the outside wings. Steps
leading up to the front explained why we could see it from this
angle when the promenade in front of it should have blocked the
view. We were at least a hundred feet lower than the base of the
platform that extended slightly out from the mountaintop. The
platform promised an amazing view of the valley, too.

I just couldn’t stop smiling.

“What the fu—,” Peter started to say as he
took a step back, shocked at the sight of the palace, but he was
too near the edge and lost his balance. He tripped off the small
platform of rock we stood on, landing hard a couple of feet below
on another ledge. A chorus of high giggles sounded as a troop of
brownies surrounded Peter to see if he was hurt and Dad and I
turned and moved to help him up off his butt. He had a hard time
deciding whether he wanted to stare at the mountaintop or stand up
first. Dad’s eyes got huge when he finally looked up himself.

I turned and started up the path, admiring
the flora in the morning light around me as I went. Everyone
followed, mouths still agape and eyes still wide.

Behind me, I heard Mom say, “This is not what
I expected from a Faery realm.”

Dad chuckled, “What were you expecting?”

“Something darker, I suppose,” she said.
“Daddy described the Fae as such awful creatures. I was brought up
on the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, not the Mother Goose kind.”

“And Brothers Grimm is closer to the truth,”
I called back, stopping for a second to watch a bee land—I had
bees! “But even their realms are a continuum. Winter has her warm
places and Summer, her cold. Those are just convenient labels, not
true descriptions of their power.”

We started moving uphill when I noticed the
brownies congregating in the field ahead of us. They were just
standing and waiting in the morning sun. Disturbing since many were
nocturnal sprites. I sped up, worried, though they didn’t appear to
be distressed in any way.