Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (105 page)

That was a seriously cool duo, but I didn’t
think they were coming back.

“Peter, what would happen if we opened a
portal to, say, nowhere?” I asked, watching MacNamara prance across
the ledge shouting orders and waving dramatically. We still hadn’t
been noticed. What kind of all-powerful liege lord was this?

“Don’t really know,” he said. “If you believe
television and stories and things, you cut a hole in space and our
reality bleeds out like it’s under pressure. That never made sense
to me. That implies an imbalance that can’t possibly exist.”

“Okay, let’s table that idea for later
discussion,” I said. “We need something that will keep the Rat
Bastard busy for a few minutes so we can get to Kieran and Ethan.
Something as safe for us as possible.”

MacNamara shouted at his elves again and
another battalion moved to leave the stadium. Half of his forces
had left the Arena and the other half was in disarray, spread
throughout the field and a small section of the stadium. I
estimated we’d removed close to a hundred of them so maybe an
eighth of the total. He’d be more careful now.

“Fake him out,” Peter suggested. “He can’t
see our auras, so let’s project a hundred images at him of you in
the Arena and one of you and me running out of the Arena in plain
view. See if he chases.”

“Let’s try it, then,” I said. “Gordon, can
you do that prism spell you did on the road in Dublin and reflect
images of me into the Arena?” I could feel him already cycling the
power he needed.

I raised the Crossbow, loading another silver
arrow. Aiming for the seat of the Rat Bastard’s bony throne, I
said, “Tell me when you’re ready.”

“Go,” Gordon said after a very brief moment.
I fired the two destructive Bolts in rapid succession, curious to
see how they would fare against the throne. Just as Gordon’s spell
filled the top ledge with images of me firing the Crossbow at the
throne, the silver Bolt hit, covering the seat in silver and about
ten feet down. Not as large a radius as the stadium seats, but more
than I had expected. But the red Bolt, hm, was a different story.
The explosion was fantastic! The crimson fire erupted and kept
erupting. The Arena shook violently as it burned. The back of the
throne flew into the seating behind it, embedding itself into the
stone. Slag and ash were blown up into the air as the bone burned
in the crimson fire.

Elves ran through the shaking Arena, jumping
and leaping for the ledges where Gordon’s prismatic imagery showed
me to be. MacNamara was running for the throne, so we changed plans
on the fly and I jumped us down to the field, behind the silvery,
glowing, spherical trap holding Kieran and Ethan and away from the
throne. Lucky for us, too, because the percussive force of the
throne completely blowing apart shook the Arena so hard that
Richter couldn’t have measured it.

Strands of power, nearly solid, shot skyward
through the tiny shards of bony remains on the ground. The throne
had capped the fountain of ley lines that MacNamara bound to him.
He stood before the fountain for a moment, panting and staring in
disbelief at the wreckage. He threw back his head and roared in
frustration, further shaking the Arena. His elves turned in unison
at him, awed. His aura burned fiercely around him, so hot with
anger even a man without the second sight would see it. Gordon’s
spell popped under the onslaught, destroying the illusion.

I drove my senses into the magic holding my
brothers. Peter and Ferrin readied to fight while Gordon cycled
power for another deception. I needed to trust that they could
handle this situation. Kieran and Ethan needed out.

Two things were evident in the magic of the
sphere as I pierced the first level of the spell. The first was
that this was not MacNamara’s magic. The second was that we were
extremely lucky once again, because I was out here and not in
there. If I had been caught with them, it would have been much
harder to break out. As it was, the anchor in my head provided the
key. Whatever caught them had locked them into an exotic universe,
closed it off, and then wrapped it in on itself. It was a very
large universe, not infinite but very large. I didn’t want to
consider the physics involved. They could possibly force their way
out in time. How much time and what their conditions would be
afterward were the big questions.

I hopped down into my cavern, pushing through
the anchor and into Ethan’s world. Again, I was flattened and
squeezed as I moved past his rolling form, seeking a tether to the
parts I could relate to. It was getting easier to understand the
weird twisting of space here, but it still gave me a headache. I
found the point where it entered reality—the reality that Ethan was
currently in, not the one I currently stood in—and hooked my hand
on the ethereal line at that point. Ready with the first step, I
let my awareness fall back to Faery.

“Y’all ready?” I asked, looking up from my
crouch.

“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Gordon said,
switching gears in his cycling. He hefted something resembling an
ax handle from a leather holster tied to his thigh. Shorter than an
ax, the head was a six-inch edged iron blade that looked like
something you’d split wood with or maybe shave bark off of lumber.
It looked perfect for him.

“Let’s do this, then,” I said, standing up. I
ran my fingers along the sphere as I walked slowly around it to
face MacNamara’s backside. “Hey, Rat Bastard!” Yeah, I was stuck on
that one.

He whirled around to face me, his chest still
heaving with his arms outstretched and tense. “You!” he
screeched.

“Yeah, me. Who else?” I asked cordially. I
melted the helmet so he could see my face. The guys lined up beside
me, Ferrin, Gordon, then Peter on the end. Tapping the sphere for
emphasis, but not taking my eyes off of him, I asked, “Do you even
know what this is?”

“Ha! A most delicious torture!” he laughed,
taking a step forward. “Would you like to join them, little boy?”
The malevolence and hatred in the words was flagrant. The elves
surrounding us ate it up like candy.

I grinned at MacNamara cheerfully, saying,
“May I?” I don’t think he understood the sarcasm and threat
inherent in the question. Reforming the armor, I shoved my arm into
the surface of the sphere. At the same time, I returned to the
point in Ethan’s world where his body entered that exotic universe
and I started searching. If I had been looking for Kieran or Ethan,
I might have looked forever and not found them. But I wasn’t
looking for them. I was looking for myself. And I knew where I was.
Still, it took a few seconds.

The elves surged forward and the guys jumped
into action. Gordon tossed his handle forty feet out and into the
ground, striking hard. The earth split wide in a gaping hole ten
feet wide and twenty feet long from the wooden haft, swallowing a
line of advancing elves. Ferrin was running for Gordon’s chasm as
Peter sent a wave of violently spiraling purple tornadoes about an
inch tall at the horde of elves behind MacNamara. Gordon twitched
his hand like he was throttling a motorcycle and his handle flew
through air, back to his hand and closed the hole mere seconds
before Ferrin crossed it. Ferrin flung a variant of the chaotic
spell he used yesterday after Peter’s tornadoes, which flowed
around the elven shields and dodged weapon thrusts on the air
currents their own weapons made while sucking up what little magic
the surroundings held. Distracted by the tornadoes, Ferrin’s spell
tore through the elven shields like tissue paper, frying a swathe
five feet wide until it, too, got sucked in. At least twenty were
distracted enough to fall into the closing chasm.

“Oh, dear,” I called out, seeming distraught.
MacNamara’s attention was falling away from me to the guys. I
needed to keep him on me for a few more minutes. They moved to the
other side of him and stepped up their attacks, so I turned my
attention solely on MacNamara.

“Something seems to have grabbed my hand,
Sealbreaker,” I said, using an English word for one of his names.
“And it’s pulling me in.” I slipped in deeper, up to the elbow,
now. Damn, this elf was arrogant. There wasn’t any other reason he
could miss that I wasn’t upset by the fact that I was pulled into a
trap. He took another step forward.

“Yes, little boy, join your brother,” he
snarled at me. I watched behind him as my team devastated his.
Seriously, two minutes in and his forces were down by more than a
third. Damn, my guys were good!

“You really don’t know what this is, do you?”
I asked him again, sinking in to my shoulder.

“It’s your doom, McClure,” he snarled,
stepping closer. “That’s all I need to know. You’ll rot in there
like your putrid kind does. Insects will forage in your intestines.
Bacteria will eat at your brains, your eyes, your tongue. After a
few centuries I’ll send someone after the weapons you stole from us
and return them to their rightful owners.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’,” I said
cheerfully. “Well, let me explain a few things. First, I know it’s
not yours. Second, it’s a paradox, a twisted universe, much like
this one, that’s been contained in such a way that all the outside
edges meet. For my limited human mind, that’s a bit hard to
imagine, but here it sits. Basically, you have my brothers caught
in a four dimensional loop, which they may or may not ever be able
to get out of.” The liege was paying attention to me now, listening
carefully. I suddenly knew too much and that made him suspicious. I
pulled my arm slowly back out to the elbow.

“It’s a very powerful trap, I admit. And
totally beyond your power to commit. Yes, Night Haunt, I know a
little of the one who did this, but just a little. Far too little.
But I have been able to figure out a few things about this trap.
For instance, did you know that a paradox doesn’t handle another
paradox very well? And I seemed to have created one of those when I
stuck my hand inside of it.” I pushed energy along the connection
from the anchor to my armored hand, creating a solid energy line
between my cavern through another dimension and back to myself—a
circle that should not exist.

A paradox of space.

Ethan’s hand closed around my forearm and I
grasped his forearm and hauled with all my strength. Ethan and
Kieran shot past me as the sphere flared in violent white, arcing
chaotic bolts of energy inside and across its surface. It shrank
away quickly as our reality squeezed it away, the magic holding it
here failing fast. Ethan and Kieran landed many yards away,
exhausted and panting. I didn’t wait to see how they were. I just
wrapped portals around them both and sent them to the Cahills’
while MacNamara watched, horrified that I broke his big and
borrowed toy.

“Now, ya Rat Bastard,” I said, raising the
Day high in the sun. “Let’s dance!”

I skirted inside his guard while he gawked
and swung before he registered that I moved. The Day took a thin
slice across his chest as he bent away, rolling languidly into a
backflip and kicking at me in the process. I was already moving
past him, pulling the Crossbow and firing rapidly into the line
pushing in between Peter and Gordon. Switching the weapons became a
complicated dance that was oddly comfortable. Fifteen Bolts left
the Quiver in rapid succession, mowing down and stopping
momentarily the elves pressing in on Gordon.

Ferrin stood on the stone bleachers, whirling
the leather strap over his head like a slingshot, then let loose
one side with a yell. Pellets of iron shot out into an oncoming
rush of elves like buckshot and Ferrin leapt over the railing,
barely missing a flurry of arrows from a trio of archers further up
in the stands. I fired the Crossbow three more times then returned
it as the Day jerked me hard to the right.

MacNamara had armed himself with a sword and
the Day rose to meet it, blocking his initial blow with a flash of
light of blinding intensity. The smile on his face was hideously
evil, but he dropped it when I twisted his shirt with the tip of
the Night inches away from his heart. He had a better reach, but I
had better weapons. He jumped back and began circling me, feinting
in and out, cat-like. His eyes literally pulsed with power as he
filled himself, the bright orange of the second iris becoming the
more dominant.

That gave me an idea. He had used his throne
to cap the fountain. The fountain dominated his architecture in the
Arena apartments. It was the basis for his power here—he was bound
to it. Unbind him.

To me, they were tonal absurdities, just
random sounds spliced together with occasional words from Fae
languages thrown in, like Sealbreaker, Night Haunt, and Race
Traitor. I didn’t care how I knew the translations; I just said the
words with power behind them. And I went after him with a
vengeance, letting the Swords move freely. Fluid movements, just
like Ethan said, made the difference in this fight. The elf was
preternaturally quick, so I had to match him, blow for blow as well
as attack on my own. I was severely limited by the number of attack
postures I knew, and the Swords didn’t seem eager to teach today,
working hard to keep me alive. Still, I kept up with him. Till
Ferrin screamed. Rat Bastard was on a down swing, aiming for my
pelvis just passing out of his range. Bringing the Day’s hilt down
hard on his hand, I whirled into the blade, thrusting the Night
through the elf’s hilt, piercing his hand on the way out.

The Night ate the sword’s connection to the
elf instantly. It used the elf’s blood to power the feeding frenzy
it had on the sword itself. He ripped himself free before I could
raise the Day to strike. I wrapped myself in a portal and jumped to
Ferrin, slicing into four different elves with one swing. The
middle two fell dead to the ground while the other two lay choking
and gasping for air, their necks cut. It was doubtful they would
survive long. Sheathing the Night, I pulled the Crossbow and
cleared a wider radius, then knelt down beside Ferrin. He had an
arrow shaft through his thigh and another through the leather strap
and into his shoulder. I lifted the Crossbow up and without
looking, fired out a rapid fifty shots. The Quiver still gave me
excellent perspective, even without the major perspective spell of
the Arena.