Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (30 page)

He sighed softly and turned back to Kieran
cheerfully. “And this is still not the most intriguing business
relating to you to happen today. Before speaking with you, I was
approached by both of the Bitches, separately, asking me to allow
them to perform a Seeking during the Games.”

“No!” said Kieran, pulling the word down
softly and with a scandalized look on his face, but his eyes
twinkled brightly, playfully. I might have wondered who was playing
with whom, but I think Kieran knew he didn’t stand a chance.

“Oh, yes,” MacNamara confirmed. “In my realm.
The gall. Of course, I denied them immediately, just as they would
me. Then they committed the most exquisitely unusual of acts, one
I’ve seen only once in the past. They came to me together and asked
for the same thing. And with the most amazing coincidence at the
very moment they were offering payment, I was called upon to
adjudicate a breaking of my peace. Neither Bitch wants to tell me
what they’re searching for, exactly, just that ‘it’ belongs to her
and she wants ‘it’ back, their lips being much tighter than their
knees. Curiosity was burning through me about who could take
something from the two of them that they treasured so dearly that
they came to me begging favors. If they were looking for the
Swords, surely all they have to do is sit back and watch. Then they
would have the two culprits and take them outside of my realm at
their leisure. So they must be concerned about something I do not
see yet. Do you know of any concerns they may have, Ehran
McClure?”

Kieran’s face showed thoughtfulness but his
aura was turbulent emotionally. MacNamara’s speech was potent with
innuendo, I knew, but I didn’t understand all of it.

“Only what I’ve already said,” Kieran said.
“They underused the Black Hand and got slapped in the face for it.
It was not an attack on them, but a defense against the Black
Hand.”

Another smile curled up the elf’s face and he
turned to me, the fiery orange in his eye shined bright. “Just like
earlier today. Was it you, boy? Did you take the Black Hand’s
weapons from their burning corpses?”

“No, sir, I did not,” I said, fearfully but
truthfully. I could feel him probing into space, ever so lightly.
He was trying to look into me, into my soul, but he couldn’t find
me. I kept an innocent look on my face, fairly easily since I was
innocent of killing them. That’d been Kieran.

“How did you disrupt your attacker’s spell
this afternoon?” he asked.

“I don’t know that I did, sir,” I answered.
“I was just trying to stay out of his way.”

“Marvelous,” he whispered, then asked Kieran,
“Do you have any objections to my allowing the Bitches their little
games, then, Ehran?”

“I can think of none, your Grace,” Kieran
said, nodding politely.

“Then this day may end with a few more
firsts,” he said, standing. He walked to the gate where his shadows
moved instantly to attention, opening the gate and stepping out,
waiting for him. The sound screen once more bowed out for them. He
turned to us once more as the gate closed.

“One more thing before I leave,” he said,
still with the huge smile and dancing two colored eyes. “Once
the challenges are announced, I will be holding a late supper
involving many of the people I pointed out this evening. If you and
your apprentices aren’t too tired, I would adore it if you’d make
an appearance, though I do realize your current goals may preclude
being so public at the moment. I will not take offense should you
decide to decline.” Once more, he seemed to evaporate into space.
It was quite an interesting method of departure.

“Your Grace,” Kieran said to the empty space.
He stared at that space for a long minute.

“What do we do now?” I asked quietly.

“Run?” offered Ethan.

“Panic,” said Peter.

Kieran sighed. “We wait,” he said.

The Arena went dark except for the fountain.
Every light source in the coliseum blacked out, leaving the
seething power lines shining brightly in the center of the Arena
overwhelming the starscape above it. The dais vanished as the power
lines began to strobe slowly as if someone was pinching off the
flow in a water hose then releasing it. A slow basso hum began soon
after. The strobing got faster and with it, the pitch of the sound
got higher. Slowly from the ground in front of the fountain, an
elven woman of pure ivory rose from the ground with no visible
support, singing breathlessly, following the tune of the fountain
wordlessly. Her beauty was breathtaking. I watched her rise and
writhe through the power of the fountain until her song started
forming words. Slowly, I realized she was naming MacNamara in his
own tongue. Telling a story. Calling to him.

It took a few minutes and when the Pact
started translating for me, I came to realize that MacNamara wasn’t
the Wylde Fae everyone thought him to be. He was one bad
mamma jamma.

The fountain exploded with color for a brief
instant, blinding everyone. Then MacNamara stood where the fountain
once flowed, as tall as the Arena itself, with a hand out to the
songstress, beckoning. He was smiling down at the elven woman and
his silken clothes were strobing rapidly as she sang. He shrunk
down to his normal height as he moved in close, hanging in space
with the ivory elf’s hand in his. He turned her hand delicately in
his and kissed her lightly on the wrist. As he pulled away, she
disappeared, popping like a soap bubble in a bathtub. You could
hear a pin drop in the Arena at that moment, it was so quiet.

The tiered structure reappeared abruptly
beneath his feet. On each corner stood identical elves in pale blue
tuxedo with fiery orange pinstripes. Each elf moved and spoke in
unison.

“Welcome to the Games,” the elves said.

The roar and applause were overwhelming.
MacNamara let the ovation go for over ten minutes before quieting
it.

“There have been two occurrences of interest
that have led to changes in this week’s events. The first is the
most grievous: someone broke my peace-bond. As a result, the
crossroads contests are disallowed for the rest of the games. While
the matter was dealt with most adroitly by the offended party, the
message must be sent to all that my word must not be broken. Any
further breach will be dealt with by my Wardens immediately and
severely.”

The Arena’s perspective magic made it feel
like he was talking directly to me. I glanced over at Peter and it
looked like MacNamara was having the same affect. Peter was rapidly
becoming my yardstick to measure any responses on.

“And secondly, the Queens of Faery have
requested a boon that I have decided to grant,” MacNamara sat back
languidly, a throne of pure white power rising up to meet him then
slide casually back in the circular Arena. “Ladies, if you
please?”

Two spots of light shined suddenly,
equidistant from each other and MacNamara. One, bright orange,
burst upward in a fiery column of sunlight. When it reached
MacNamara’s height, it changed, forming a tall, elegant woman,
burning and passionate. The other spot was black, but shot upward
in solid ice like a tooth piercing the earth. Atop the stalagmite,
an icy blackness shifted in space hardening into a woman of equal
beauty. Staggering beauty, both of them.

Their magic pulsed through the Arena. Both of
them at once. It was highly erotic. Feeling them search and move
through the world around them, watching their bodies shift as they
pushed deeper and deeper, both enticed and scared me. The hip
movements alone were intoxicating. Kieran tapped my hand to pull my
attention away and I wiped at my mouth in case the drool I felt
wasn’t imaginary. He reached over the table and tapped Peter on the
shoulder. Peter turned around and smiled at us wryly. His eyes had
a red sheen to them that made him look… well, demonic. I jumped and
he laughed.

“Sorry,” he said. “It helps to block the
fascination of the Fae.” He was still grinning at me, evilly.
Teasing me. All right. Your time will come.

Right now, I once again had to do something I
didn’t particularly want to do. Fascination or not, I had to look
at the Faery Queens like I looked at MacNamara. I didn’t want to do
this. They both looked so striking up there as they cast the first
loop of their seeking. This was the timid one, the “we know you’re
out there” push, but I didn’t feel singled out. Maybe it was some
other Faery treasure.

I picked the Winter Queen first. She stood,
slowly turning to survey the gathered crowd, her power seeking
beyond the Arena walls into the tent village beyond. Her features
were slightly round, giving her face a serene look her canny eyes
belied. Her skin was porcelain white, her lips moonlight gray, and
her eyes, like MacNamara, were two colors: violet rimmed in silver.
Below the surface was a frozen lake of power, immense power held in
check by pure determination and will. Horrifying. Very much like
MacNamara, the expansive vista of her aura was enough to make any
man freeze in sublime terror at the heights and depths. This was
the feeling of being a mote in God’s eye, but this being wasn’t
God—her equal wasn’t that far away, physically speaking.

I pulled away from her to consider the Summer
Queen. As she stood on her column of sunlight and pushed her will
out over the audience, the Summer Queen of the Sidhe appeared
bathed in glorious light, exuding femininity and sexuality by
swaying her bosom and hips suggestively. Kieran had gotten me past
the fascination level, but I still had a few thoughts about that
before I dove into her farther. I didn’t get far before hitting
flame. But I was expecting it and kept going deeper. I started to
understand her energy flows. They were very complicated people,
even for elves.

I wanted to see how her power worked and how
she did what she did. My timing couldn’t have been better as they
both began gathering power and laying the groundwork for the second
level of their seeking. This one should be much more powerful and
demanding. I watched as they pulled great handfuls of power from
the air and formed it into the stuff their minds could use. Their
wills used this stuff, this magic to write onto the world, changing
it to what they wanted.

The way they used their magic was
interesting, too. It doesn’t hit you, bang. It insinuates into the
fiber of your being and then hits you, bang! Their spell was based
on themselves. They were searching for a thing. They were looking
for someone who wanted to have a go at them. Hmm. I was beginning
to think of them as damn good-looking hookers and not Queens of
huge and powerful realms.

“Kieran, did that feel rather like a sexual
call rather than a call to an item?” I asked.

“Yes, it did. Maybe they’re planning to bed
the miscreant before they kill him,” he jibed, reminding me of the
danger here.

“But I haven’t felt any real compulsion to
stand up and shout about anything or summon a warden. Nothing,” I
said. “I watched her build the spell that hit me. I know what it
should have felt like. It didn’t affect me at all. My reactions
were effectively a normal human male’s reactions to two very erotic
women. So would it be safe to say it’s not me they’re after?”

“No,” he shook his head gently. “That is
still a danger, Seth. But if you can continue to let the energy
flow over you, that would be good.”

I turned back just as they released the
second wave. The whole Arena shuddered, or seemed to, as the power
of Sidhe Queens pushed its way through every male in the area. It
held the promise of exhilaration beyond the measure of the body, of
bliss just beyond any achieved, the perfect orgasm, if only you had
what they needed. Oh, devious. This seeking would leave a mark on
many here, I knew. I’d be hiding for the rest of my life, now.

As the full force of the Queens spell hit us,
I saw Peter waver some in its wake. “Ugh, vicious,” he muttered. I
nodded in agreement and continued watching MacNamara’s Bitches.
They changed their attitudes, becoming more stiff and regal, more
“Queenly.” As they did, they both formed an image on the astral
plane and pressed their need for this image into their seeking
spell. Unlike the last two spells, this was different in that the
needs were different. They needed different things: the Unseelie
Queen needed the Night Sword and the Seelie Queen needed the Day
Sword. Only the images weren’t of the Swords themselves, but of the
Elven bindings on the Swords. They were surprisingly similar on the
surface to me.

There were a few places around the Arena
where some beings had built enough power to block the seeking
spell. I knew if I could feel that, then so could they. Kieran’s
nervousness at the situation was obvious in his aura and he was
pulling on the ambient energy enough to alert me that he was
planning to throw a shield strong enough to hold them back until we
could escape. What I needed was confirmation on what I was seeing.
I looked to Ethan. He was watching the Queens carefully, just as I
was, his head cocked slightly to the side.

“It won’t work, will it?” I asked him.

He turned back to me from the railing,
half-grinning. “Don’t think so,” he said casually. “What they’re
searching for doesn’t exist anymore.”

“What do you mean?” asked Kieran,
puzzled.

The Queens released the third wave of the
seeking spell into the Arena at that moment. It roared through like
a tidal wave, beating the images into the minds of everyone present
then ripping it away as the wave left again, leaving nothing but an
afterimage of the phallic representation of the Elven bindings.

I would be plugging my ears when I went to
bed tonight. I didn’t care to hear all the grunting, groaning, and
moaning that would occur tonight.

But the Seeking didn’t work. Ethan had
removed the elven bindings from the Swords days ago. And the Swords
themselves had rewritten several other bindings of their own
accord. I should probably check the Stone, Crossbow, and Quiver,
too. I’m sure they’ve rewritten something of themselves. Not here,
though. I’d check when we got back home.