Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (27 page)

The Stone wasn’t insisting on being used; it
was insisting on being useful. Like a child’s blocks with letters
on them, the Stone had pushed tiny bricks forward on its surface on
the foundation below the Pact, spelling out, well, a spell. As I
looked at the letters, I spooled a tiny amount of faint blue energy
out of my battery and formed the line into the pattern of the
letters and the structure of the words. Then, simultaneously
looking at the ring of men in front of me in reality and in the
astral, I pushed the energy out and said the words. Immediately a
short staircase of blue energy leading to a ramp appeared in front
of Kieran. The ramp jumped over the circle of men to the road on
the other side. I’d just performed my first bit of real magic. It
was exhilarating, let me tell you.

Kieran took the steps at a run and kept going
over the ramp. We followed single file. Most of the men were
staring up at us, mouths agape. Even the fight stopped. Apparently,
we weren’t supposed to do that. Once we were all on solid ground,
the ramp dissolved back into the atmosphere, but we were long past
the next bend in the road. It completely disappeared behind us.
Kieran stopped suddenly, panting. He was angry with me.

“I told you to keep that hidden, Seth!” he
said, seething.

“I did that, not the Stone,” I said,
defensively. “It only showed me how.”

“Oh,” he said. Relief slowly flowed into him.
He had felt the push from me, after all. “Oh,” he said again.
“That’s… interesting. I didn’t feel you draw power.”

“Big batteries, remember?” I said, feeling my
heart rate slow a little from the short run. “Let’s go. Short on
time, right?”

Kieran turned and started walking again. His
aura was getting difficult to read now as he shifted into complex
patterns. I’d given him a lot to think about apparently and his
emotions were running a gamut. Anger flowed out slowly while
concern was taking a higher precedent and curiosity was vying for
control. Peter seemed okay, just confused and very curious and
still scared. Couldn’t blame him on the last. And Ethan was
Ethan.

The next crossroads came more quickly. The
tents were darker in color along the road, too. I didn’t know if it
really meant anything, but it gave the area a sense of foreboding,
a murkier feel. Lanterns were already burning in a few tents, where
hooded figures gathered power in short spurts. I didn’t look too
hard at what they were doing, thinking I probably wouldn’t
understand it anyway. I already didn’t understand wearing cowls in
the tents. Who’d they think they were hiding from? Anything that
could see into the tent could see under the cowl. Something to
ponder another day. The Arena looked much closer from here, but our
problem was at the crossroads again.

“I thought they were here to do that at the
Arena,” I mumbled when we stopped behind the group of about fifty
men and women. “Why are they fighting in the parking lot?”

“The ultimate in tailgate parties?” Peter
snorted out a laugh.

“There might be a broken down Chevy in one of
these tents,” offered Ethan.

Kieran looked back at us, puzzled. “Redneck
humor,” I said. “It’s cultural. It’ll take a long time to explain.”
I smiled then we all snickered. Kieran just shook his head and
looked back at the blocked corner.

“Ethan, could you burrow through the wards?”
Kieran asked quietly.

“Once. Then MacNamara would be on top of us,”
Ethan said, soberly. “I would prefer that we use that in
desperation. I would not be able to fend off MacNamara and create
another exit.”

Kieran nodded in agreement. We couldn’t see
the fight directly from here. There were too many people in the
way, too much movement. The fight was encircled by shields, like
the last, but this one involved destructive magics and the
shielding was shooting these magicks straight up into the air.
Going over it meant possibly getting hit by something,
intentionally or otherwise. Kieran pulled us all in close, tapping
his shoulder for Shrank to land, and tugged power from around him.
Rolling his eyes, he pushed a golden flow out over the three of us.
Peter snickered.

“An Apprentice Loop?” he asked, snickering
again.

“Well,” Kieran drew the word out plaintively.
“We’re gonna have to push through them and we need to stay close
and we are saying you three are apprentices.”

“Just remember I made it out of nursery
school,” Peter said, smiling at Kieran.

Once again, I was left in the dark as Kieran
started pushing through the crowd politely. I followed closely
behind him, with Peter right behind me, and then Ethan in the rear.
I could see the golden line Kieran had dropped to us, but I didn’t
know what it was for. Until I lagged a little too far back and it
jerked me forward like a rubber band. Peter chuckled behind me and
sped up so he wasn’t jerked forward, too. Okay, that’s annoying,
especially since I wasn’t that far behind. We made it through one
side without losing anybody. The other corner looked trickier;
there was already traffic coming from the other direction. We would
have to fight the flow.

We moved in close on the corner, studying the
flow on the other side. We might have a chance in a few moments. A
brief pause in the flow was coming and we could slip through, if we
were quick.

“’Ello, Pup,” I heard a deep rumble from
behind me. “Fancy meeting you here.” The Day Sword and the Stone
were beating out the 1812 Overture in my head. I turned while I was
trying to calm them and froze. It was the guy from the restaurant.
And his friends. He grabbed me by the shoulders with both hands and
tossed me over his head and back, clearing ten feet easily. I
landed on my back, knocking the air from my lungs and my head on
the ground. Tiny blue sparkles like the dust of a thousand pixies
swam through my vision. The Day Sword was still clamoring for
attention and I was still muttering, “Can’t be seen,” under my
breath.

I heard heavy footsteps approaching and while
the sparkles were fading, I still couldn’t catch my breath. The Day
Sword came to the same conclusion the Stone had earlier: can’t be
used, then be useful. I felt its weight shift down my arm and lock
in place just above my elbow. I rolled quickly to the right, just
as a boot slammed down where my head was. The Sword rolled me
again, backward and up to my feet. Finally, I could breathe and the
sparkles were gone.

I took in the scene as my awareness flooded
in fully. One of his friends had broken the Apprentice Loop and had
wrapped it repeatedly around Kieran and Peter. Neither of them was
showing much interest in the entanglement, though. They were both
building offensive magic of their own. Ethan was starting a portal
out, it looked.

“Ehran, no!” I shouted. “Please, don’t break
the peace-bond.”

I moved quickly into the first defensive form
Kieran and Ethan taught us. This satisfied the Day Sword as well.
It is a very simple form, basically you’re just aware of your
environment and ready to move in any direction. Your weight is
forward on the balls of your feet, arms loose but up to protect
your head and face, and your awareness is both physical and astral,
watching for magical attacks. A boxer’s stance, more or less.

He stalked around me so I moved to keep him
in front of me. Another circle formed around us as chants of
“Fight!” started from the crowd. I felt another shield come into
place around us as we circled each other.

“Aren’t you a bit old for a day care leash,
boy?” he snarled at me. “Or have you just been weaned from the
teat? Mamma just let you go?” His smile showed toothless gaps and
made his dark eyes darker.

“No. I was being punished for whooping up on
you so bad. Master felt it was unsportsman-like,” I taunted back.
Two could play at this and he wore his emotions on his shoulders
for all the world to see. The chorus of laughter from his friends
stirred the embers of his anger to a blaze and he rushed me. So I
pulled a similar trick to the one I’d done to him before, only
backward. I fell to the ground, reaching out with kinetic magic,
pulling down on his neck and up on his hips and letting his own
forward momentum carry him head over heels over me to slam hard
onto the ground. I hip-checked him, basically. I was back up in
less than a second, watching him on the ground.

I took the opportunity to check on my group.
They’d stopped collecting power and forcing the spells into place,
but they hadn’t released them. I guess that’s the best I could hope
for. I glanced back at the sun to see we had less than an hour
before dusk. I had to finish this very soon.

The man got back to his feet but stayed
crouching, close to the ground. I felt the draw of power from him.
He was about to get nasty. The Night Sword hit against the
foundation and hummed in my head. The vibrations carried through my
body creating odd disruption patterns in the ambient fields around
me, especially near my hands and feet. It was kind of like multiple
tuning forks in a body of water. It distracted me for a split
second so I missed it when the man started moving toward me.

Luckily the Day Sword didn’t. He lunged at
me, low to the ground. Day lunged me, too, straight at him. The
man’s arms from the elbows down to his fingertips glowed with a
ruby red light as he tried to grab me around the waist. But I was
already moving over him, using his shoulders as a springboard to
vault into a somersault, rolling through the air to land on my feet
behind him. He screamed. I turned quickly to resume my ready
stance, but was shocked to see the man was being slowly consumed by
the ruby energy from his arms into his chest. The entire circle
quieted to the man’s screams as the energy ate at him, leaving a
blackened and shriveled corpse. He stopped screaming when it got to
his lungs. Small favor, that. The energy burned itself out when it
got to his head, leaving the bottom half of his body untouched. I
emptied my stomach then. The fact that there wasn’t anything in it
didn’t matter. I retched over and over and over again. It was
horrifying. I’d just killed a man and I didn’t even know how I did
it. Killed another man.

After a moment, I felt Peter kneeling beside
me, his hand on my back, murmuring that it’d be okay. I could feel
Kieran and Ethan circling around us, both blazing and fierce with
power, protecting us. It was quite a light show. Peter helped me up
once I felt able and stayed with me. I was still wobbly. The shield
circle was still intact, though, and inside now was a tall elf
dressed in MacNamara’s colors calmly facing one of the dead man’s
friends, who was decidedly not calm.

The man was red-faced from yelling at the
elf, claiming that I had broken the peace bond and used deadly
magic on his compatriot. That was his word, compatriot. The elf
glanced over at me and gestured idly for me to come over. I wobbled
to him with Peter close behind, taking a wide berth around the
half-crispy corpse. I felt Kieran’s attention shift to us, but he
stayed in his circling pattern with Ethan.

“Do you know the man?” the elf asked me,
pointing lazily in the direction of the corpse.

“Not personally, sir,” I answered him as
politely as I could. “But we had a run-in in town near the human
gate where he was harassing a woman before MacNamara let us in. He
was unhappy with the resolution of that incident and wanted another
go at me apparently.”

“This is true,” the elf said to the man. It
wasn’t a question, but the man nodded anyway. “Then what exactly is
your grievance?”

“He broke the bond! My best man is dead, for
Christ’s sake!” the man shouted at the elf.

“That is your mistake,” said the elf, icily.
“Your man broke the peace-bond of MacNamara, not McClure, and a
mere hour before the competition. You and yours have been
disqualified and will be removed.” The elf made a small brushing
gesture with his hand, a very small gesture, and power of pale blue
flowed down the concourse overcoming anything else in the area and
nine men in close proximity seized in place like they were being
electrocuted. Within five seconds they slumped to the ground, then
disappeared like they were never there, including the corpse. The
tall elf turned to face me.

“Master McClure, I am obliged to offer you
safe passage to the Arena for you and your party, should you care
for it now,” he said, bowing his head slightly. I glanced back at
Kieran, who nodded once quickly.

“That would be most kind,” I said with relief
as Kieran and Ethan moved in closer to us and the tension in the
area ebbed out as we left. We let the elf lead us and paths just
opened up in front of him.

Chapter 15

The elf took a leisurely pace through the
crowds, but it was deceptive. He was doing something similar to
what Kieran and Ethan did in the car and moving the ground we were
walking on at the same time. Or something. I wasn’t paying close
attention but we made it to the Arena amazingly fast and were
winding our way through corridors packed with people of different
races. And I don’t mean black, white, or Hispanic races. I mean
human, elf, dwarf, and some I didn’t know or want to know.

Peter was still right beside me and hadn’t
gone farther than a foot away since he’d helped me up. He kept our
pace close to the elf and Kieran and Ethan kept close behind us,
slightly to my left, forming a tight diamond around me. I bumped
Peter’s hip and muttered a “Thank You” to him just as we hit the
first archway into the base and started climbing steps. Two very
long runs of steps, the second turning back on the first. It was an
arduous trip, but the elf didn’t have any tricks on this one. I was
eyeing the third set of stairs evilly when the white elf turned
left instead and pushed open a wooden door in the corner of the
landing. The noise on the other side was deafening compared to the
silence in the stairwell. That made me wonder where the light was
coming from in the stairwell along with the now-obviously excellent
soundproofing.