Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (46 page)

Turning to Peter, I asked, “How are you
feeling?”

“Fine,” he said with a shrug. “Slept great,
really deep. Ate again when Ethan came back, then slept some more.
Now I feel normal. Except for the fact that the three of you shine
as bright as the noon day sun, I’d say nothing has changed.”

“What do you remember about yesterday?” asked
Kieran, sitting down on the couch opposite us with a plate of what
looked like quiche, toast, and sliced Esteleum.

“I remember clearly up to getting crushed and
after waking up in the locker room,” Peter said. “In between,
nothing.”

Kieran nodded, chewing on a piece of purple
fruit. “Not unusual,” he commented.

“So,” Peter said, turning to me, “where’s my
battery.”

“Hmm? Oh,” I said, distracted. The
“Conspiracy of Good Will” he’d called it. That there was someone
operating against my father seemed obvious, but who else was it
operating against? How big was this going to turn out to be? I
shook the questions off for now and concentrated on Peter
again.

“So you haven’t been poking around, looking
for it yet?” I asked, grinning.

“Since I’ve been up, yes,” he admitted,
looking a bit frustrated. “But I can’t find it. I even looked
myself over astrally and I don’t see it anywhere.”

“Have you tried your center?” asked Kieran.
“Seth calls it his cavern, but you may have been taught to call it
your center.”

“My center isn’t a place,” said Peter,
looking confused. “It’s a state of mind, a sense of
well-being.”

“Well, you’re in for a shock, then,” he said,
chuckling. “Seth, ask first.”

“May I come in?” I asked, grinning like
Carroll’s Cheshire Cat.

“Yeah, sure,” answered Peter, obviously
confused.

I touched Peter’s arm and pushed through his
aura and into his cavern. It was easier this time to lock into the
right perspective since I’d been there twice. I stood beside the
milk-can battery, shining in its eerie light. There was still
damage to Peter’s soul, I could feel it, but it would heal. It was
beginning to already. I could feel his confusion, too. He could
feel me as a part of him, inside of him, but not where I was. I was
going to have to draw him in.

Outside, I said, “Peter, I need you to begin
to perform some magic, something small that’s going to take some
concentration and power, but not cause a problem if it gets
disrupted. Can you do that for me?”

Peter started levitating the coffee table in
front of us. I watched the astral plane from the outside world
while inside Peter. I watched where his mind and his power pushed
and pulled. Where his consciousness coalesced with his power to
form the spell was the spot I wanted. I needed to pull that spot
down into the cavern with me. I found it immediately and pulled
gently toward me.

Then Peter was standing next to me beside the
battery. The coffee table dropped lightly to the floor. The spell
wasn’t disrupted; Peter had just let it go. He stood staring into
the blackness around him, trying to decide what he was looking at,
I suppose. After a moment, he looked at me, then the battery. He
did a double-take on the battery, then bent down to examine it
carefully. He pulled a small amount of energy out of it and looked
at the string in amazement. Then he pushed it back in, then out and
back in. He played with it like this for a few moments, until I
said, grinning, “Should I leave the two of you alone?”

He looked up at me, shocked. “We can talk?
Too cool!”

I shrugged, saying, “I’m sure it’s just a
metaphor or something. We are hovering in your imagination, after
all. There’re all sorts of things you can do in here.”

“Show me,” he urged.

I hesitated, remembering the previous day.
Looking around the cavern slowly then back to Peter, I shook my
head. “No, Peter,” I said. “This is you. This is your mind, your
soul, your center. I shouldn’t be doing things in here. Right
outside is the boundary to the astral plane. It might link up to
other planes I don’t know about yet. There’s too much I don’t know
to be playing around in your head. I’ve already taken one big risk
here. I won’t do that again.”

“But I trust you not to hurt me,” he
said.

“I appreciate that, Peter,” I said, smiling.
“But what you mean is that you trust me not to hurt you
intentionally. You still see me as some miracle worker with a magic
touch, but the truth of the matter is much different. What I am is
a seventeen-year-old kid who’s been extremely lucky. Well, at least
I’ve been lucky for the last few weeks, anyway.”

“What risk?” he asked.

“Huh?” I stuttered. I hadn’t really expected
that question. Should’ve, but didn’t.

“You said you’d ‘already taken one big risk
here.’ What risk?” he asked again.

I blanched. Outside on the couch, I squirmed
uncomfortably. Peter turned on the couch to face me. “Well?” he
insisted on both planes.

I sighed audibly and astrally. I recounted
the story of the Loa healing and trickery to him as detailed as I
remembered it. It wasn’t a pleasant tale for me or, I suppose, for
Peter.

“Once I’d dealt with the Princesses and
Kieran and Ethan had the rest under control, I went back in,” I
continued with the story. “This time, though, when I walked the
path, there was a difference. It was hard to detect at first—I
almost missed it. But more and more, it became obvious that your
subconscious mind was trying to edit your memories. I had no idea
what that would do, good or bad. How that would change you. It
scared me, really, almost as bad as the Loa attacks. You are the
one port of ‘normalcy’ I’ve had in the past two weeks and I still
have no idea why you’ve bothered, but I didn’t want to lose
you.

“Our plan, mine and your subconscious’, was
to push my power through your memories back through the holes to
sorta rewrite them. It set everything up while I was gone to not
include certain aspects I didn’t understand. So before I loosed my
power, I put everything back to the way it was.”

Peter tilted his head slightly to the side as
I told the story, his big brown eyes watching me intently. They
moved in unison, both pair.

“So your big risk was to put me back together
as closely to normal as you possibly could?” he asked calmly, in
both worlds. It was an odd stereo quality. I nodded stiffly,
waiting for the outburst, whatever it might be.

Snickering wasn’t it. Peter snickered, then
said through the laughs, “You’re right, Seth. Sometimes it is hard
to remember that you’re only seventeen and terribly naïve. I don’t
know what would have happened either, but I’m quite happy with
myself the way I am, so thank you for not allowing me to be a
monster.” In the cavern, he kissed me on my forehead and messed my
hair up. “You are so adorable, sometimes.”

He stood up from the couch, pulling his shirt
down, and said, “Now if you’ll excuse me for a few minutes, I have
to go to the bathroom.” I returned to myself.

Kieran stood with Ethan at the food table
getting a second helping. He glanced Peter’s way as he scurried to
the bedroom we shared and started snickering. Ethan and I exchanged
looks as I walked up, then turned back to Kieran who started
snickering harder. Kieran took off with his plate to the balcony
while Ethan got an “A-Ha” look on his face, leaving me in the
dark.

“What?” I asked.

“If he’s not going to say, you think I am?”
Ethan said, pointing after Kieran. “Not my place, man.” He finished
fixing his plate, grinning the whole time. Shrank flew back into
the room from the balcony.

“Lord Kieran is in a jolly mood,” he squeaked
as he flew over the table snatching berries, then headed back out.
“Master Seth, he said you may want to see the match that is about
to start. You know one of the combatants, a Clifford Harris.”

We both moved immediately toward the balcony,
plates in hand, but everything else abandoned. We sat down around
Kieran and started shoveling in food while taking in the field. It
was pared down to half its original size, then quartered by blue
force lines raised about a foot off the ground now. There were a
few people milling around the gates, but none of them appeared to
be combatants. I really couldn’t tell what they were there for.

MacNamara himself trod out from over our
heads, walking on air to the center of the Arena. He was ablaze in
the sunlight in a golden silk shirt with billowing sleeves and sky
blue silk pants. The wind whipped his white hair back and his smile
glinted in the midmorning sun. The elf knew his entrances.

“Honored guests, welcome to the finals of the
solo competitions,” he said, in his own voice. The Arena went wild.
Oh, yeah, he knew his crowds, too. I wondered how long he had his
repeaters that this was truly unusual. This was the second time
he’d addressed the audience personally. From the response, I’d say
not in anyone’s lifetime. At a guess, at least two hundred years,
maybe two twenty. MacNamara got quite an ego boost from it, I’m
sure, considering it took over ten minutes to calm down enough for
him to continue.

“There have been a few surprises in this
year’s competition. With the withdrawal of the Fae after young
McClure’s second embarrassment of the Princesses…” Once again, the
Arena went wild and MacNamara had to pause in his speech, smiling
broadly. He glanced in our direction with a gleam in his eye, his
amusement at this situation obvious.

“Damn, I wish I could have seen that,” said
Peter, sitting down beside Ethan.

“I’ll share my memory of it with you when we
get home,” Ethan offered, grinning. “It really was funny.”

“You can do that?” I asked. “Show him Kieran
telling off the Queens, too, then. That was downright scary.”

“You can do it, too,” said Ethan. “I’ll show
you how at the same time.”

It took a few minutes longer for the crowd to
calm. I wondered if that bothered him at all, but if it did, he
didn’t show it. I took the extra time to peruse the stadium. The
crowd had thinned considerably from the first day, mostly from the
lack of the Fae it seemed. Since this was only the third day of
competition and Peter said it normally lasted about a week, I
suppose that their absence had shortened matters considerably. It
also meant that we were notorious now. Well, Peter, Ethan, and
Kieran were notorious now. I was just more notorious.

“With the withdrawal of the Fae,” MacNamara
had regained control of the Arena. “The human penchant for devious
and unpredictable behavior shone beautifully and provided us with
one combatant that before would have not made it past the second
round and one previous winner. Indeed, this should be interesting.
Without further ado, let the games begin!”

He burst into a thousand rays of golden light
and once again, the crowd burst into thunderous cheers. Two
referees shot out from each entrance to the field and took
positions opposite each other on the blue force lines. Barely a
minute later, another referee came out of each entrance escorting a
single man to the field.

“May I join you?” asked MacNamara. He stood
at our gate, his shoulders hunched forward as he leaned in, totally
at ease.

“Most certainly, sir,” said Kieran. Peter
started to get up for the gate but he settled back in when
MacNamara flicked his wrist and the gate unlocked and opened on its
own. He stepped in just as Shrank flew out with a couple of
blackberries in his hands. He shrieked and turned straight up to
the sky, his wings beating as fast as they could carry him.

“Oh, stop, pixie,” said MacNamara, chuckling,
“I’ve known you were here from the beginning.” We shifted our
chairs to make room for the tall lounge chair that suddenly
appeared behind us in the center of the balcony. MacNamara sat
between Kieran and Ethan as the last two men took to the field. I
was surprised to see that one of them was our friend, Blondie the
Brit.

“I thought you might find that amusing,” said
the elf before Ethan or I could react to our surprise. “He is much
more at home in the concrete and steel warrens your people favor,
but he has achieved favorable progress this year.”

Harris stood in the center of one quarter of
the field, calmly looking around the Arena while he waited for the
procession to end. He wore a black tunic and pants, similar to a
gi, tied at the waist with a red belt. I didn’t recognize the
significance of it. Didn’t care either. He tried to look bored, but
his aura showed his tension and his fear. Still, he was
confident.

“Who’s against who?” I asked.

“That is not yet decided,” said the elf,
pointing to the referee with Blondie and the fourth man still on
the sidelines. “There is a coin toss occurring as we speak. The
first will be to decide which field each will take and the second
to decide which wall will come down. None of the four will know the
outcome of the second until the walls actually come down, though,
just to make it deliciously suspenseful.” The smile on his face was
disturbing.

Blondie took the quarter of the field
opposite Harris, giving the other quarter to the shorter,
Italian-looking man. So Harris would be up against either Blondie
or an older, grizzled man of Asian descent who was dressed like a
Buddhist monk. He was not a monk, that was clear to me, but he
dressed for it. It was probably calculated misdirection on his
part. He was plenty powerful, too. His aura glowed with the same
orange as his robes.

The first bell tolled and all four walls rose
quickly into place about twenty feet high, cutting all four
combatants off from one another. They all leaned in toward the
center, waiting for the first clue as to which wall would fall to
show their opponent. The second bell tolled and they all changed
their positions away from the centers while raising defensive
shields and pulling power from the background. All but Blondie, he
didn’t pull power just yet.