Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (52 page)

MacNamara smiled hugely then, terribly
pleased with himself that he chastised and got such contrition from
the man who’d nearly tossed the Queens out on their ears.

“Well, then. Good luck to you. The warden
will come in ten minutes,” MacNamara said cheerfully. Bowing
slightly, he swept out of the room in a flurry of colorful silk and
evening suits, leaving us with the sullen Kieran.

“Can I ask a question?” I asked. I’ve always
thought that redundant. “Isn’t all we have to do is incapacitate
the other team?”

“Yes,” answered Kieran monotone, still
depressed.

“So if we knew exactly where they were at the
very beginning, how long would it take to incapacitate them
somehow?” I asked, trying to drag some ideas out of this
situation.

“That would depend on their defenses,” Kieran
said simply. “Initially, they will probably be camouflaged or
hidden in some way or at least shielded. Some may be hidden behind
charmed veils. They assume we are, which is good because they think
we are expending energy and concentration on that, too.”

“I was just thinking that if we could knock
out as many at the beginning as possible without killing them…
Sorta like I did with the first battle but without the death,” I
let the thought drop.

“We won’t know where they are at the
beginning any better than in the middle,” Ethan said, lying back on
the bench.

“Oh,” I said. “When does it shut down?
Because I can still see the Arena just fine.”

Ethan shot up off the bench. “What?” he asked
eagerly. “How are you still in? That should have dropped away when
you left the coliseum!”

Kieran perked up considerably. “If we know
their initial positions…”

“All right, give!” Ethan ordered. “How are
you doing it! Show me your spell, energy matrix, whatever you’re
using.”

“You’re gonna have to show me how,” I said,
grinning evilly at him. “But I’m not sure we have the time right
now to teach, do we?”

Ethan pushed into my cavern through the
anchor and presented an astral duplicate of himself. After showing
him the hook in the ward I held, he replicated the hook three times
and wrapped each in a small bundle of energy, shipping it out
through the astral to Kieran, Peter, and himself. Each of the
bundles held the trace of its recipient, which I didn’t quite get
immediately, but once Ethan receded through the anchor again, it
made sense: he’d Named them, that was the “sense” they held, the
Name.

It made me wonder what Peter’s Name was now.
Mine, too, for that matter. How did we change them? How did I not
know my own name? Did I actually need to know the words to use
them? Too many questions and too little time. I kept the memory of
the sensations, just in case.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be able to
see this now,” said Kieran, his voice full of amusement as he moved
the perspective of his hook around the Arena. “Why did you connect
in this manner in the first place, Seth?”

“Curiosity, mainly,” I said. “I wanted to see
what we looked like to others in the Arena, see if our auras where
visible or not. I thought that maybe MacNamara wasn’t telling us
the whole truth. The only way I could see to do it was to hook into
the ward the way the wardens do.”

Ethan laughed and shook his head. “Don’t tell
him anything is impossible. He’ll prove you wrong.”

“What?” I asked confused. “It wasn’t hard.
The whole image-perspective spell is mostly one big public ward.
Everybody in the Arena is plugged into it automatically.”

“You skipped right past the locks, though,”
Kieran responded. “Did you even see them?”

“What locks?” I asked, obviously answering
the question but I didn’t recall anything blocking the connections.
Kieran laughed some more and we were running short on time. “Can we
use this? Especially at the beginning?”

“Well, generally in competitions of this
type, the strategy would be to go in loaded and shield minimally
until the first strike so as to hide your position for that very
reason,” answered Peter. “Both shields and draws could possibly be
detected if the opposition has a sensitive enough mage on their
side. That’s pretty much what we saw with Harris and Ferrin.” That
made sense. “Kieran’s right, though. That doesn’t preclude the use
of charms or fetishes or what not.”

“Oh,” I said, dejected. “I was hoping maybe
we could blast them unconscious somehow if we knew where they
were.”

Kieran and Ethan looked at each other,
holding the stare for a moment. “That’s… promising,” Kieran
said.

“At the very least, we could eliminate some
of them,” Ethan said. “And we wouldn’t have to kill them that
way.”

A knock on the door preceded the warden by
seconds. “Gentlemen, it is time,” he said, stepping into the room a
few feet. We stood and followed the elf out of the room.

In the hall, Kieran and Ethan murmured back
and forth in broken sentences, thoughts on how to proceed with my
idea. By the time we entered the field, I think they had a solid
idea of what they wanted to do.

The roar of the crowd tripled when we entered
the field with shouts, applause, and stamping feet. It was both
thrilling and horrifying at the same time, so many people watching
us and both hating and loving us. The dichotomy of that was
strange, too. Twice, the warden attempted to move us into a jog,
but Kieran refused to take the hint, smiling and waving at the
audience the entire trip out.

I studied the field of combat while we went
out. It appeared to be a simple city park, complete with children’s
playground. A small stream ran down the middle with several
footpaths running aimlessly throughout. The only buildings were a
small ten-by-ten tool shed and a set of restrooms near the center
on the north side. Numerous trees and shrubs for coverage, though
and several rises and dips in the terrain, but nothing looked
terribly difficult or insurmountable.

We entered on the playground end. Ethan
charged forward with the energy of a seven year-old, heading
for the swing set and immediately started swinging, dragging his
feet in the sandy bottom and kicking off hard to gain height.
Kieran sat in the grass and watched, stretching out in the sun,
smiling. I was torn between joining Ethan on the swings or sitting
with Kieran. We didn’t visit many playgrounds like this when I was
a kid, and playing on swings alone really isn’t much fun.

“Go on. Ya know you want to,” Peter
cajoled.

Grinning, I took off running at Ethan. Timing
it so that I hit him just as he swung back down forward, I hit his
back and pushed, nearly tripling his forward speed. The groaning
chains took his weight nearly even with the top of the swing set,
high enough for me to run under him. I whirled around on one foot,
hopping to gain balance, in time to see Ethan sail back on his
return, smiling hugely with his big blue eyes glistening in the
sun.

A thick blue wall of force bisecting the
field rose fairly quickly as Ethan swung back toward me, still
grinning. He let go of the chains of the swing and at the top of
the upward path, let inertia have its way, and came free of the
hard rubber seat and into the air with a whoop of joy.

The second team entered the field as Ethan
landed and the crowd once again roared to life. I ran for the
merry-go-round, ignoring them completely, sort of. I watched
through the ward, like everyone else in the Arena, but I wanted to
play on this thing while I had the chance. I’d only done it once
before.

By far, this was the stupidest thing ever
placed on a child’s playground. Simple idea, a circular plane on a
spindle, spinning lazily around for a simple pleasure. Put a little
boy beside it and he’ll want it to go faster. And faster. And
faster. Until you go crashing into whatever or whomever is around
to give them a laugh. Bloody lip as a result? Broken arm? Badges of
Honor. Great fun and horribly stupid. I ran for a full revolution
then jumped on it as Ethan met me and he started pushing.

The other team watched as they jogged by,
dispassionate, no doubt thinking we were acting for their benefit.
MacNamara’s description, as simple as it was, was apt: eager and
paramilitary. Nine men and three women dressed in military
paraphernalia, either green or tan camo, boots, utility belts,
pockets crammed with various gear relating to their particular
magic. All had two to three knives, but only three carried blades
longer than a foot and one woman carried a small compound bow of
some kind strapped to her back. They weren’t intending this to be
about weapons, not that we expected that anyway.

Like Peter said, they were charged to their
limits but none of them were currently shielded in any way, which
was encouraging. Coupled with the thought that we were further
distracted by hiding our auras, they must’ve thought we were into
serious mind games and putting a lot of energy into them. If the
first gambit didn’t work, well, they’d spend so much time watching
for cracks in those shells that they’d miss other and more
important occurrences. Worked for me.

I lost track of that thought as Ethan sped
the merry-go-round up and the first gong sounded, sending the outer
protective walls ascending. There’s a limit to how fast these
things can turn and Ethan had it at that limit now. Holding on to
the metal rail and laughing gleefully, I kept track of our twelve
opponents through the Arena, watching them disperse into smaller
groups and run through their side of the field into some sort of
prearranged pattern. They weren’t pleased with MacNamara’s choice
of venues.

The second gong sounded. Kieran and Peter
stood, dusting imaged dirt and grass from their pants as I lost my
grip on the metal and went sailing into the sand and grass, rolling
and laughing like a seven-year-old. The three of them laughed with
me as I got up and dusted actual dirt and grass off my silks. It
was only five minutes but it was still a lot of fun.

The third gong sounded and the inner wall
descended. Kieran looked toward the far side then, holding his
right hand up dramatically, snapped his fingers. Eleven of the
twelve men seized and spasmed as if electrocuted, then collapsed.
Several of them had indeed been behind some sort of charmed
shields, and two were using a weird looking turtle-like energy
shell that I couldn’t quite figure out the purpose for. It probably
just hadn’t finished forming before Kieran struck.

We only had one problem. The twelfth, the
woman with the compound bow, was climbing a tree, unaware for the
moment that her teammates were already incapacitated. The crowd
hadn’t quite figured that out either.

I called for the Crossbow and waited, the
four of us standing in a lazy line in the sun. The tree trunk was
currently in the flight path of a bolt, blocking me. She’d need to
cross over in a second or two. The crowd roared, finally catching
the fact that eleven of twelve were out of the picture, just as she
swung around the trunk to sit on a large branch. I fired three
times, rapidly, then sent the Crossbow back. The Bolts hit true,
directly where I aimed, pinning her to the tree snugly. Kieran
snapped his fingers again and she seized and spasmed as her
teammates had. Then collapsed, hanging limply in the tree and held
in place by the Bolts. Unfortunately, with one of the three shots I
had aimed poorly and hit her, nicking her just above her left hip
but below her ribcage. The wound wasn’t that bad but it bled a
lot.

The final bell announcing the end of the
competition sounded and the crowd got to the loudest it had yet
reached. The round lasted maybe twenty seconds, liberally. I wasn’t
sure if that was good or bad—Ferrin’s finished faster in the
semi-finals. Thoughts of the World Cup riots of rabid soccer fans
crossed my mind as I glanced over the audience, but I stayed happy
that my idea worked out so well. Kieran was close to ecstatic and
Peter and Ethan thought it was funny. There wasn’t even the
slightest chance of asking over the noise though. It would be
easier to talk in the middle of a tornado.

The four of us sauntered across the park to
the tree where the woman hung, bleeding. She may have been an
opponent, but she could have fallen and broken her neck when I
called for the Bolts. Not very gentlemanly of me, or sporting
either. When we got to the tree, the whole area was crawling with
referees and wardens. They were desperately trying to figure out
what we’d done—what Kieran had done—without actually asking us, but
weren’t coming up with answers.

Peter started up the tree like he was born in
them and Ethan was close behind him. When he reached the woman, he
tried to pry loose the first Bolt with no luck. The Bolts were
embedded in the tree three inches or more. The Crossbow does not
play around. He yelled down to me but I couldn’t hear over the
rambunctious onlookers. I took his meaning though. Watching Peter
carefully, I called for the Bolts when it looked like he was
positioned to hold her weight. Moving slowly, he handed her down to
Ethan and between the two of them, they got her safely on the
ground.

A man in white with a large red plus sign
emblazoned on the back came running up with a large orange tackle
box. Dropping the box, he dropped to his knees beside her, flipped
open the box, grabbed a pair of rounded scissors, and hurriedly cut
away her bloody shirt. He washed the wound with water from a squirt
bottle, scrunching his face at the lack of damage to explain her
condition. The wound was a long but minor cut. He bandaged it
quickly then pulled out a stethoscope and stopped. There was no way
in MacNamara’s green realm that he could hear her heart or lungs
through that thing right then. We still couldn’t hold even a yelled
conversation over the crowd. He’d have to trust his magic or other
methods. We left him to it.

A warden stood before Kieran and beckoned so
we followed. He led us off the field and back to the locker room we
occupied the few minutes before the, well, before the battle. My
ears were ringing all the way back.