Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (47 page)

Blondie started running for the center of the
field at top speed. A half of a second before he would hit the
corner the third bell tolled and he leapt. The wall dropped
instantly, showing he would be fighting the Italian. He erected an
oddly shaped, low-power shield and bounced against it like
trampoline, shooting high into the air over his opponent. The
Italian searched the opposite field, firing bolts of magefire and
other weird magic, believing Blondie was hiding behind a veil.
Blondie shot his own incapacitating fire down on the Italian almost
lazily in a ballistically-controlled flight path rather than
magically-controlled. The Italian hadn’t even seen where he was
yet, but he wouldn’t get the chance now. Blondie landed hard on the
ground, rolling to disperse the kinetic energy of the fall.

He rolled an extra few feet and slithered a
bit like a snake to watch his opponent, making sure he wasn’t
playing possum. The crowd roared again, the third time in thirty
minutes. Blondie had won his battle in less than five seconds and
used very little magic to do it. I didn’t know whether to boo or
cheer for him. I admired the technique involved and wondered how
much he had to practice before executing it.

MacNamara laughed, loudly. He tried to speak
several times but couldn’t. He just kept laughing.

Harris had a harder row to hoe. The Asian man
was grizzled all right, for a reason. His defense took whatever
Harris threw at him. Then he turned around and gave as good as he
got. I hadn’t seen the first volley, but on the second, Harris
started pushing slowly toward the old man, firing powerful spells
of twisted intent and deflecting or absorbing those thrown at him.
It was an amazing display of energy flow on both sides. But they
were toying with each other, searching for limits. At least, that’s
what the Asian wanted it to look like to Harris. He shouldn’t have
been so lazy about it; Harris wasn’t.

On the third volley, Harris sent two spheres
of black energy about six inches wide to attack the shields of the
Asian man, sapping energy off at short distances. They were easily
batted aside and behind by his opponent. He ignored them as Harris
stepped closer, eager to close whatever trap he’d planned. Harris
gave him a simple direct blast of magefire then sent two more
globes of black power against his shields, but this time he made a
gesture with his left hand, recapturing control of the first two
forgotten spheres, and sent all four against him. Harris patterned
the four in a pyramid around the Asian, forcing him to pattern his
shields in a very odd way because of the way he generated them.

I understood the energy flows, the ways the
different magical types were blended together to bend reality. I
was getting that. What I didn’t know was how you put the stuff
together. My opinions of how anybody doing what they’re doing on
the field were pretty much what any armchair quarterback’s opinions
are: crap. Still, I’d say Harris was pretty damn good.

Harris fired a few more destructive spells at
the man while the black spheres beat down methodically at his
defenses. He couldn’t return with anything before Harris fired an
ebony shot of eldritch energy at the top of his pyramid. The
spheres grew in size in tandem to over a foot wide. Ebony lightning
fired out between each sphere, lighting the outside edges of the
shield walls it touched, pushing on them and suspending the man in
the center of the pyramid. The Asian screamed in silent agony, the
sound not penetrating his shield. It finally cracked when Harris
tossed a dark green globe similar to the one Peter uses. It missed
him completely, but his shield cracked wide open and he slumped
over, falling to the ground.

Harris kept the pyramid floating above the
man until the referee got close enough then he reabsorbed them. I
didn’t really get why he would do that unless they were charms or
something. With that thought, I looked at him a little more
closely. There, I see it now. He was wearing charms, carefully
placed on his uniform. Almost artfully placed. Four of them, fairly
small, pinned on his gi, two just below the breast and two below
the shoulder blades. One more in the small of his back in his pants
and one taped to his back left thigh. They blended in nicely with
his aura, so passive as to be invisible.

MacNamara stopped laughing by then and
collected himself. “Harris always has been a bully,” he said
mildly.

“So I noticed,” I muttered. “Are they going
to start the next fight right off?”

“No, they have a break,” said MacNamara. “A
long one. You have disrupted the timetables significantly. But what
do you think, young McClure? Who would win between Harris and
Ferrin?”

So Blondie’s name was Ferrin. “Honestly, I
think Harris will mop the floor with him,” I said. “But then, I
would have thought that he’d have mopped the floor with me,
too.”

“So I heard,” said MacNamara. “But look at
the weapons at your disposal versus those at Ferrin’s.”

“Seth wasn’t using them, then,” said Peter,
looking at the elf. “That was all him. I was there. He had put
everything away.”

MacNamara gawked at Peter for a second. “You
do turn more interesting day by day,” he said, turning to me with a
smile on his face. There was something unreadable lying underneath
that smile that made me a bit nervous.

“So what are your plans after the
competition?” the elf asked Kieran.

Kieran shrugged, idly watching as some elves
tended to the field below us. “We have no specific timetable, but
our goals haven’t changed. We will see to Olivia’s well-being,
search for my father, teach the boys.”

“Should you ever decide to open a school, I
imagine you would come to considerable wealth and importance,” said
MacNamara, the mirth in his tone obvious, “considering your first
three apprentices.”

Kieran barked out a laugh, his green eyes
bright in the sun. “It’s unlikely I would take on another. My
family does not seek notoriety and wealth is…” He shrugged again.
“Our family has sufficient wealth.”

“And what of you, personally, Ehran McClure?
What are your goals?” the elf continued to press.

“Much depends on finding my father,” Kieran
said, “though I will continue teaching the boys for as long as they
wish.”

“What is it you are teaching them?” MacNamara
asked, turning in his chair and glancing at Peter. “Outside of how
to hide from even the keenest eyes, I should say. The defense seems
similar to many forms, but identical to none that I know. Even the
castings that you and your apprentice used to burn the Loa were too
chaotic and primordial to identify.”

“But you were watching, your Grace,” said
Kieran, turning to face MacNamara, eyebrows raised slightly. “You
saw both of us initiate and deliver the energy required for the
disruptions. Surely you could duplicate the action with that much
information.”

“You’re mocking me,” the elf said with a sly
smile. “I held the Day Sword just yesterday and cannot duplicate
it.”

“Not mocking, merely reminding you that we
all have our secrets,” said Kieran. “While I do not exactly hold
secrets, there is much that I simply don’t tell.”

“Like where you have been for the last forty
years?” asked MacNamara, coyly. Kieran nodded slightly. “What if I
were to say I knew where you were?” asked MacNamara. If his smile
could have been more snake-like, a split tongue would have slipped
out and tasted the air right then.

“Then I would say you know what I’m teaching
them,” Kieran said smiling broadly now, with his green eyes dancing
as he searched MacNamara’s aura for signs of deceit. “And that you
would know how to call the fires we called yesterday.”

“Touché, McClure,” MacNamara said, inclining
his head slightly in a bow and tapping the brim of an imaginary
hat.

“What do you know of my father’s
whereabouts?” asked Kieran.

Finally, I thought.

“I last saw Robert in New Orleans several
months back,” answered the elf. “He was seeking Olivia and believed
that St. Croix had her. Apparently, his beliefs had merit. I left
shortly after Robert arrived, though I did have a representative
present that reported quite a violent argument between the two. But
Robert was at a significant disadvantage. He had few friends there
who would stand with him against St. Croix, but as you saw, the
reverse was not true. After that all I have is hearsay, gossip,
really.”

“Gossip? From the elves? Never!” said Kieran,
a facetious look of strained disbelief on his face.

“Rumor has it he went to visit the Queens at
the Crossroads, just as you will,” he said, as he stretched out his
long legs in front of him and arching one eyebrow in question at
Kieran. “Dangerous place, apparently. Both Queens say they never
met him there, of course. Never been there personally.”

“I will ask them when we see them there,”
Kieran said.

“So you are planning on keeping that
appointment?” MacNamara asked.

“It would be inadvisable not to,” answered
Kieran, shrugging off the implications. “And they may have
information we need. Seth and I are well-protected and that
protection can be stretched to include others, and as you’ve seen,
we aren’t without abilities.”

That was far more diplomatic than I would
have come up with. The more I thought about what Kieran just said,
the more empty I realized his words were. But then, so were
MacNamara’s. There was no new information there and the elf knew
it.

“Besides,” Kieran continued, “we’ve learned
little of consequence about father’s disappearance here. Finding
Olivia is a success and as long as she continues to recover, we
will be happy. But I find it difficult to believe that the two
events are unrelated being so close together. And the Queens were…
exceptionally well-behaved.”

“I did notice that, of course,” MacNamara
said, nodding politely to Kieran. “I have so enjoyed the day’s
freedom.”

Ah, their absence explained his ability to
talk so freely, I suppose. Maybe some sort of binding on him.

“We’ll have to shake a few more bushes in our
world first,” said Kieran. “This still doesn’t explain why Harris
is after Seth or why he covered up in the police investigation in
New Orleans. It doesn’t explain the deaths of all of father’s
associates. There’s a lot to look into.”

“Harris covered up in a police
investigation?” asked MacNamara. “And one of you four caught it?
Oh, sloppy, sloppy. What gave it away?” His voice raised half a
register, to the “little-girl-giggle” range.

Ethan answered first, “The first thing was
that he interviewed personally two different people who couldn’t
have seen what they claimed from where they claimed to be standing
physically.”

Then Peter said, “While at the same time he
was having dinner with a prominent judge in New York, where his
picture was taken and put into a magazine.”

He must’ve gone outside of our range of
hearing for a second. My ears hurt suddenly and I swear I saw two
brownies cringing in terror near the doorway behind the elf. He
came down to somewhere near his regular high pitch fairly
quickly.

“Delicious!” he exclaimed. “Yes. Yes, I see
it now. Oh, this will be fun. Would you care to come with me when I
congratulate the winners, Ehran? I think taking your complete
retinue would be threatening, but one other would be
acceptable.”

“Yes, I believe I would,” said Kieran with an
almost vicious smile. “I’ve only met both most briefly, after all,
and I’m sure Seth would like to renew both associations.”

I could see the anxiety pushing up through
Ethan’s aura at the thought of separating from Kieran and me again,
but he didn’t say anything. He knew he could be at our sides in
less than a second if anything went wrong on our end and he could
contact us if anything happened on his.

“Let us depart then,” said the elf, standing
tall in his silken sunshine and sky suit. Turning to Ethan, he
said, “Worry not, little man, I will return your charges within an
hour and unharmed.”

Kieran and Ethan exchanged quick glances at
the odd comment, then followed MacNamara out through the gate,
disappearing instantly into the tunnel on the far side of the
Arena. Gotta love the way elves travel.

The elf was taking faster shortcuts this
time. From our gate on the balcony, directly into the tunnel on the
far side of the field, Kieran and I walked side by side behind
MacNamara. The tunnel was empty except for one runner who deferred
to us by flattening himself against the wall. We stopped at the
fourth doorway, where an elf dressed as one of MacNamara’s wardens
stood waiting. He knocked on the door as we walked up.

The door opened to what I would have called
the start of a bar brawl. The room was much like the locker room
we’d been in with twelve large men in different states of dress,
and frankly, different states of inebriation. And while the
language sounded vaguely English, I was having the damnedest time
following any of it.

“May we come in?” asked MacNamara
melodiously.

“Surely, Mr. MacNamara,” said the large man
in black leather who answered the door. He wasn’t as tall as Kieran
but he outmassed him and his arm was thicker than my head. I’d hate
to have to feed this man. His grocery bill had to be enormous. His
odor was.

“Oy, mates, it’s ‘s Lordship! Quiet’n down!”
he yelled over his shoulder as he backed away from the door and let
us in. The room did quiet some and a path was cleared somewhat to
the back of the room where a few men were huddled together near the
showers. MacNamara followed the path back and we followed
MacNamara.

“Then ‘e yank’m up ‘ard, like,” one of the
huddled men said, yanking his arm back by way of example. Suddenly
the huddle glowed from the center, illuminating the faces. From
where I stood, I could make out Ferrin intently watching the
display in the huddle facing us, but no one else.