Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (26 page)

“Where are we exactly?” asked Peter.

“In Faery, in MacNamara’s realm,” answered
Kieran.

“Is that in Winter or in Summer,” Peter
asked.

“Neither. MacNamara holds no sovereigns,”
said Kieran, calmly. His green eyes sparkled as he let Peter absorb
the information. I had no idea where it led.

“But that’s not possible. You just said so,”
he said to Ethan.

“Yes, I did,” Ethan admitted, smiling coyly.
“And yet, no one dares the attempt against him. What does that tell
you?”

Peter thought for a second, then muttered,
“That he’s one bad mamma-jamma.”

We all laughed.

“I don’t know what that means,” said Kieran,
still smiling, “but I think the essence of it is correct.”

I glanced up at the sky for a rough estimate
of the time. It looked like we had about five hours to dark and I
had a sinking feeling that things were going too well for us so
far. Back in town, we’d seen over a hundred men. At the warehouse,
we only saw one man and one whatsit. And here, nothing. I didn’t
want to say anything about it, though, thinking that maybe I’d just
seen too many movies. But Peter seemed overly anxious, too. He met
my glance evenly and sighed.

“I’m waiting for the teen-aged girl in high
heels and a bikini to run by screaming,” he said. “That’d just
about complete this scenario.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kieran, raising his
eyebrows at the statement.

“This is too easy. We’re being setup for
something,” Peter said, waving his hands at the entrance.

“Oh, very definitely,” Kieran said.
“MacNamara was aware of our presence from the moment Seth tossed
his worker around in the restaurant and the warehouse was far more
populated than we saw. We would not be here if MacNamara didn’t
want it so.”

Shrank flew up from Ethan’s hands, still a
little shaken. He shook off a rainbow of sparkles behind him
briefly before righting himself. He flew in lazy circles around us,
like he was getting used to flying again. He stopped suddenly,
eyeing the pennants on the guy wires, then shot directly to Kieran,
stopping barely a foot in front of his face.

“Lord Kieran, we should hurry,” he squeaked,
red dust falling in an anxious column under him. “The opening games
begin at dusk, barely over four hours from now. If we’re caught out
when the Challenges start…”

“We will decline,” said Kieran,
matter-of-factly. “I hold that right.”

“Yes, Lord,” squealed Shrank, cowering in the
air slightly. “But Master Seth may not, nor Master Peter.”

“Can we continue this conversation while we
move?” I asked. “I’m feeling kinda open out here.”

“I don’t think the high heels would affect
him,” Ethan said to Peter in a stage whisper, pointing at Shrank
and grinning.

“Shrank, quit cowering. You aren’t arguing
with me,” Kieran said, testily. Shrank seemed to relax slightly.
“We’ll say they’re apprentices. I am teaching them, after all.”

“That is certainly true and may work,” said
Shrank, bobbing in the air, “but the bigger issue is what Master
Seth carries. If certain people learn that, it will not matter his
status. He could be forced to compete. The thinking would be he is
incapable of controlling and wielding such magnificence, any one of
them much less all of them. The Queens will support that and it is
unlikely that MacNamara will deny them both. They are of Fairy
manufacture, after all.”

“Pfft,” I snorted. “No, they’re not.” I was
certain of the Sword of Night; it had told me itself. And I was
fairly certain of the others as well. The base languages in the
deepest magicks aren’t Faery.

“What?” asked Kieran, Peter, and Shrank, at
the same time.

I glanced at Ethan, who looked back and
shrugged. “I could have told you that,” he said, moving to the gate
and looking back and forth down the concourse. He turned back to us
and waited.

“So we find a place to hole up,” said Kieran,
shaking his head. “Then you tell me what you know about these new
teeth you have that I seem to know so little about.”

We joined Ethan in the concourse, picking the
right for no particular reason and started walking. I sent my
senses floating out while we walked. There were people here, in the
tents, either hidden or just resting, guarding their belongings.
Certainly, there was abundant power in the air, floating in lines
and waves. Huge arcs of it soared overhead as if shielding the
area.

“Where is everybody?” Peter muttered
nervously after about a hundred yards. It was rather eerie.

“I don’t know,” said Kieran, “but I think
it’s high time we find out.” He went to the nearest tent and pulled
open the flap slightly, calling, “Hello!” And elderly male voice
called back, “Anon! Anon!”

“’Anon’? This guy comes out spouting from
Shakespeare and I’m gone,” I whispered to Peter.

He snickered and added, “Go where?” I just
pointed right vaguely.

When the man stumbled out of his tent, he was
wearing a long, stained nightshirt and dirty pants, pushing back
sleep-mussed hair with a hand but failing miserably to tame it.
Kieran spoke to the man briefly in several languages until they
found one in common. Then they went back and forth in questions and
answers. The rest of us just stood around looking stupid and Shrank
flitted around in the grass doing whatever pixies do in the grass.
The man disappeared back into his tent and Kieran walked away with
us in tow. It was hard to know when a conversation closed when you
didn’t know the language.

“It was a mistake, coming here,” Kieran said.
“We need too much to be here and we know too little, even though
most of our answers are here. And I fear our diminutive friend may
be right. We may not be able to avoid conflict here.”

“You mean combat. There is little chance of
us avoiding conflict,” I said, wryly. “Everyone who sees me wants a
part of me lately.”

“Let’s see what we can do about that,” said
Kieran, patting me on the shoulders as we walked. I felt Peter come
up on my right protectively and Ethan took up position behind us.
“The man said that everybody was at the Arena jockeying for
position for the opening ceremonies, basically. MacNamara will
announce the main competitions, which will include much posturing
and parading of talent. Then there will be the individual
challenges and duels. Then the main event, the open challenges,
will begin around midnight. These are the most dangerous to us. We
must remain together for the rest of our time here. Peter, Shrank,
am I clear on this? Stay together.”

“We’re gonna have to. I don’t speak anything
I’ve heard so far,” muttered Peter.

“Join the club,” I said.

Kieran laughed. “We’ll see what we can do
about that at the Arena. I’m sure there are translation spells
available there. Until then, Shrank?”

The pixie flew up from the grass a few feet
forward of us. “Yes, Lord?”

“Would you be so kind as to provide
translation for Seth and Peter when you are able?” he asked.

“Certainly, Lord,” said the pixie and he
dropped back down to the grass.

“So what are we doing now?” I asked.

“Our goal hasn’t changed. We’re going to find
your grandfather,” Kieran said. “Now, we’re looking for him in a
large mass of people, most of whom are belligerent and
dangerous.”

“So what we’ve done is remove a lot of
innocent bystanders,” I said. “This still seems like a win
situation.”

“No. Now we have nowhere to hide,” Ethan
muttered behind me.

“Also, Seth, you should keep your new tools
put away for awhile if at all possible. Shrank has a point in what
he says. The fewer that know the better, especially here. Yet
another reason to stick together.” Kieran squeezed me into him in a
kind of sideways hug. It was both comfortable and comforting. I was
surprised when I looked over and saw him in his full glory. I mean
I saw his aura then as we walked quickly down this weird
circus-like avenue. Looking directly at him like this still hurt a
bit—he was so bright. I understood Ethan’s awe of him. But I still
saw the flaws that made him a man and I could live with that. And I
saw the cracks in whatever it was that he was becoming.
Kir du’Ahn, I supposed.

“Ethan, does Kieran appear any different to
you right now?” I asked calmly, not wanting to break the moment but
knowing I had no choice.

“No, does he to you?” he responded in
kind.

“Yes, actually,” I said, turning to Peter.
“You?” He took a step past us as Kieran stopped in the middle of
the road.

“No, same as usual in flat space. What are
you seeing?” he asked.

“All of him, just like I see all of you,” I
said. “I don’t know how else to explain it. I always assumed it was
the same as seeing someone’s aura.”

“Wait. This happened a few moments ago?”
asked Kieran, a smile beginning to form on his face.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding.

“Little Brother,” he said, the smile grew to
full size and he pressed his hand into the center of my chest
firmly. The world shook at the word that, somehow, I translated. I
saw the cool release of pleasure bloom throughout his aura as he
saw me again. And the fires of curiosity swept across it. I was
gonna have to find some blinkers, like for a horse or something if
I kept seeing this. It was hypnotic.

“You’ve grown considerably since I saw you
last,” Kieran said with wide eyes.

“Grown how? Like a tumor?” I asked, only
half-joking.

“I mean from candle to bonfire. You were
bright before, and now…?” Kieran grimaced in disbelief, telling me
he didn’t know what to make of me.

“But why am I seeing you now?”

“You finally accepted me. You’re seeing the
familial bonds,” he said and started us walking again, his arm
again across my shoulders. Peter and Ethan were following the
conversation closely.

“But I did that days ago, before we went to
Atlanta,” I said, a touch stridently.

“Stop being defensive, Seth,” he said with a
chuckle. “You’ve done nothing wrong and I think you’ve helped move
us closer to the answer of why our auras are hidden here.”

There was noise coming from ahead, around the
bend of the row of tents. Men and women talked loudly. We tensed
but continued. A small blurry line in the grass shot towards us,
suddenly changing course a yard out, almost straight up. Shrank
whirled around and shrieked to a halt on Kieran’s shoulder between
us. He didn’t leave any kind of a trail now and he’d been almost
completely invisible. I was gaining a new respect for the little
guy today.

“Eight men, three women, all human, at the
crossroads ahead,” he huffed, out of breath. “Drinking, but not
drunk. I couldn’t tell why they’re there.”

“Thank you, Shrank,” said Kieran. I watched
the pixie jump off Kieran’s shoulder again like he was jumping off
the high dive into a swimming pool, holding his nose even. Shrank
was playing and having fun with this. He disappeared before he got
even waist high. As I watched him fall, I realized he wasn’t
veiling himself with magic. His magic was changing his actual
coloration, like a chameleon but far more thoroughly and more
quickly. He was an amazing creature to be taken so lightly in the
world.

We rounded the bend in the road and the group
came into view. Kieran dropped his arm from my shoulder and took a
slightly longer stride to take a leading position. We took up a
line behind him with Ethan on his left and Peter and I on his right
as we approached the crossroads. The men were spread out in the
middle of the road, ostensibly practicing bladed weapons fighting
with either sheathed knives or wooden short swords. They all wore
paramilitary style clothing, dirty and worn. It was a very rough
practice as two of them had freely flowing blood on their arms. Two
of the women were on the sidelines, laughing heartily at the more
luckless men on the ground. The third woman was playing with an
unsheathed eight-inch knife, bouncing it by the hilt between her
hand and her biceps repeatedly. It was an unhealthy scene. We
walked through it like we didn’t have a care in the world and they
ignored us completely.

The road bent again and the noise drifted
away to quiet again. The Arena came into view for the first time,
its stone walls peeking over the tops of the tents as the banners
wafted in the breeze. From this distance, the place looked huge. We
heard more noise ahead just as I saw the telltale signs of Shrank
zooming in on us. He didn’t land this time, hovering a few feet out
at shoulder level.

“Twenty-seven men with naked steel, Lord,” he
squeaked out quickly. He bobbed up over our heads and added, “And a
little over two hours to dusk. We must hurry, Lord.”

As we rounded the bend, the noise level grew
again, much louder than the last time. All men, this time and much
bigger and meaner looking, like the men from the restaurant. I even
recognized a few of them from there. The Stone and the Day sword
hummed threateningly in my mind, so I brushed them with calming
thoughts, imploring them to stay hidden for now. The men were
circled around two others fighting in the center of the crossroads,
blocking the way. Bare-chested and sweating profusely, they each
had blood running from fresh cuts where the other had scored. A
strong shield, glowing a bright yellow in the falling sun, fenced
them in. They’d obviously gotten around the peace-bond somehow,
possibly claiming this as practice, I guess. The other men around
them were shouting encouragements and disparagements at the
fighters while swilling from bottles of honest-to-God Southern corn
sour mash whiskey. I even knew the label, cheap as it was.

We slowed as we neared. Kieran surveyed the
crowd, looking for safe passage through like the previous
carousers, but it was clear we’d have to move some people to get
past them. I glanced at the tents to see if we could just jump the
lines around them and walk through, but they all had wards that ran
to the roadway. Not that we couldn’t break the wards, but then we
would have looked like thieves and I wasn’t sure that would be a
good idea at all. These guys might be the local constables, after
all. I felt the Stone shift again and I pressed my mind down to
console it and got a small surprise.