Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (8 page)

“Was it making noise or was that in my head?”
I asked, moving the Sword to my right hand. Remembering the feeling
of the Sword moving up my arm, I pictured the scabbard next to the
marble slab and imagined its weight moving down my arm into my
hand. “This is so cool,” I said as I sheathed the Sword when the
scabbard appeared in my hand. I grinned at Ethan who was still
watching, head cocked to the right. I sent the Night Sword back to
its place beside the marble and sat down on the couch.

“I didn’t hear anything, so I guess it was in
your head,” he said, then asked, “What happened?”

“Apparently, I got hit by one of the spelled
Bolts in the Quiver,” I said, leaning back on the couch,
stretching, proud of myself that I figured it out on my own. And
how to move them in and out of the cave in my head. Ha! “The Night
Sword took affront at that.”

The washer chimed dully from the laundry room
and I slowly pulled myself up off the couch. “Come on, the both of
you. You’re gonna learn how to do this for yourselves.”

I picked up a pile off the floor and we made
our way to the laundry room. As I explained how to set the washer,
I noticed Shrank was perched on Ethan’s shoulder. Odd only because
until then he’d stayed at least five feet away from Ethan, I
wondered what had changed but got distracted when Kieran asked
about the instructions on the laundry detergent box being different
from what I’d told them. It led to a complicated discussion of
septic tanks versus sewer systems and phosphorus. In the end I just
looked at him and said, “Now you know how I felt when you took me
for the stroll through the woods a few nights ago,” and started the
washer.

Back in the den, Kieran and I started
gathering the trash while Ethan sat cross-legged in the floor
eating the last piece of pizza. Shrank stood directly in front of
Ethan, fidgeting but not saying anything. Through the ward, my
perception of Ethan had dulled considerably, though Kieran and
Shrank remained the same. I took this to mean Ethan had released
his connection to magic, but I wasn’t sure and I didn’t want to
ask. Both Kieran and I kept glancing over at the two as we cleaned
up. When I came back from taking the trash to the garage, the scene
hadn’t changed.

Ethan looked up at me as I came through the
doorway, shrugged and leaned forward toward the pixie. He twiddled
his fingers a little at Shrank. I felt the pulse of his power
through the ward and saw golden bands around Shrank flex and
shudder in answer to him. Ethan twisted his fingers and the bands
grew larger and slipped over Shrank’s head into the air. There were
three of them in all. He closed his hand, letting his power ebb,
and took the last bite of pizza, sitting back on his elbows. The
three bands collapsed in on themselves as if they hadn’t
existed.

Shrank, though, doubled in size. He was
walking in circles, drunkenly, giggling. Then he took to the air,
toward me. He hit the back cushion of the couch and gave another
raucous chorus of high giggles as he slid down and tried to stand
again. Kieran peered over the back of the couch at him,
grinning.

“What would the Queen say about such
behavior?” he asked mildly.

“Let her talk! The Bitch!” Shrank shouted and
jumped into the air. All three of us smiled at him as he wove
through the air in drunken aerobatics. After five minutes, he was
much better in flight and landed on the floor in front of
Ethan.

“Thank you, sir. I have never been free of
geas,” he said, bowing deeply, though it was still hard to see the
now four-inch pixie, “And might I add you scare the crap out of me
by being able to do that so easily.”

I knew that feeling well.

“That being said,” I said, “Y’all will excuse
me, but I have some work to do. Entertain yourselves. I’ll be in my
office if you need me.” My office. The first time I’d said it that
way, I realized. Before it was the office or Dad’s office. Now it
was my office. As I walked in, I wondered if that meant I’d somehow
accepted that I wouldn’t see them again. I clamped down hard on my
emotions at that thought. Even if it was true, it wasn’t going to
help right now. I needed intelligence, not emotion.

The desk was mostly empty so I sorted through
the papers in the safe. All of it revolved around me, nothing about
my parents. Turns out I’m fairly wealthy, I guess. Not that I
verified any of the stocks and bond values. I could live
comfortably for awhile on the stacks of cash alone. There were land
deeds, too, including this property. There wasn’t anything there,
though, that interested me. Curious that you can find yourself rich
and not give a damn. I’m sure it’s something only the rich can
feel, but money is not what I wanted or needed right now.

Shrank flew in the room after an hour and a
half, asking if I needed anything. Depressed as I surveyed the
papers laid out on the desk, I glanced up at Shrank in the doorway
and noticed the bookcase nearest the door glowed with a faint
yellow tint. I got up and walked to the case, squinting at it
closely. The top three shelves had a yellow shimmer to them that
none of the others had.

“Shrank,” I asked the pixie as he hovered in
the doorway, “do you see anything in the bookcase?”

“No, sir,” he said, swinging around me to
inspect the shelves, “but the top is a façade so there might be
something underneath.”

That threw me for a loop. A façade?

“So there might be a catch somewhere that’ll
open it, right?” I asked him.

“Yep, but it’s probably a lot more
complicated than that,” he squeaked, flying up to the second shelf
and jumping on it repeatedly. “See? It feels real. Façade, not
glamour.”

“Would you get Kieran for me please?” I hoped
he would know more about these things. How Dad would hide them
maybe. I pushed lightly all around on the shelf below hoping
something obvious would show, gently moving books back and forth.
Kieran stepped quietly into the room behind me and examined the
shelves as I poked and prodded everything. I moved to the next
shelf down, methodically trying every item there, pushing the sides
and back, too. I turned back to Kieran to see him staring at the
shelves with a glazed look.

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“I think Father does absolutely beautiful
work,” he said smiling. “This is an oubliette under a façade. Most
likely an even exchange of space but not necessarily. The question
is how do we unlock it?”

“Can we break in?” I asked him.

“Yes, I can easily break the lock,” he said,
crossing his arms resolutely, grinning broadly. “Then we would
never find the opening. That’s the genius of trap doors, these
oubliettes. And he hid it so well! I’ve been in here three times
and didn’t see this. Are there others in the room?”

“You’re asking me?” I said in disbelief,
looking around the room. “Remember? I’m Seth, the one who doesn’t
know anything.”

Something must have happened on the bookcase
behind me because Kieran straightened and came closer. I turned
back to it again to see whatever he was seeing. It looked the same
to me. “Say that again,” he said.

“Say what again?” I asked.

“Your name, say your name to the bookcase,”
he said. His eyes glazed over again.

“Seth McClure,” I said tentatively, feeling a
bit foolish talking to furnishings. When I did, the tint changed
colors to a more solid green. I don’t know why I did it, but I
reached over to the shelves and rather easily pushed them upward.
The top three shelves collapsed into nothing revealing two more
shelves as they rolled rather effortlessly up,. I sat down in the
floor to examine the contents.

“See? Beautiful work. Your name spoken by you
as the password,” Kieran said with pride as he sat down beside me.
Yeah, Dad was good at everything. And I was his biggest failure,
best shoved in a hole and forgotten.

“The top shelf looks like financial records,”
I said, pushing those thoughts back. “I don’t know what the second
shelf is at all.”

“Grimoires, mostly. Some histories, from the
spines,” said Kieran, sliding a book out. “Picture albums. Is this
your mother?”

“Yes,” I answered, looking at the page he
held open. It was the only picture on the page: a black-and-white
photograph of the two of them dancing at a formal ball somewhere in
Europe. Mother’s face was bright and lively in the picture and the
dress showed her figure well. Dad’s back was turned in the dance at
that moment so you couldn’t see his face at all, but it was
definitely him. “That was from the night they met. She talked about
that night often to me. She said it was quite magical. She felt
like Cinderella at the ball, very Disney-esque.”

A dark thought occurred to me. Could Dad have
spelled my mother?

“Don’t even consider it,” said Kieran,
turning the page in the album. “Father wouldn’t do that and your
mother was quite well protected already. See here and here?” He
pointed to two pictures on the next page, at a bracelet my mother
wore often, a simple silver chain on her left wrist. I nodded to
Kieran. “It’s the wrong style for her, a little too big, and she
wears it often. I’d bet it’s a ward, like the Stone you’re holding,
though considerably less powerful than that. I’d bet she could hold
her own against him in the subtler arts.” There was mischief in his
grin and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what that meant. They were
my parents, after all.

Kieran and I spent a long time looking
through the three photo albums Dad had stashed. The first one was
all Mom and their courtship up to the wedding. The second was Mom
after the wedding through me to about five years old. I suppose it
was pretty unremarkable as family albums go with the requisite
naked baby running through the sprinkler pictures and all. It was
very calming and centering for me, though, introducing Kieran to my
life through those pictures. Basically inviting him into my family,
bonding with him.

The third album was all about me. It started
with a birth announcement in calligraphy in gold ink. The next four
pages appeared to be the same in different languages, at least they
had the same form. Birth Certificate, newspaper announcements, then
some baby pictures. When the pictures changed to instant camera
pictures it got a bit more interesting.

“Precocious tot, weren’t you?” murmured
Kieran looking closely at one on the ninth page, amused. The
picture was of me in a diaper tipping a table, knocking a bottle
off, with Dad in the background reaching toward the bottle with a
panicked look on his face.

“What? I don’t see anything,” I said, looking
closely.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, grinning
at me and pointing at the picture.

“It’s me knocking a table to get a bottle
off,” I said. It looked fairly obvious.

“So you knocked the table?” he asked.
Accepting a nod from me, he asked, “Then why isn’t the lamp beside
it shifted at all? And wouldn’t this magazine be moved at all? And
doesn’t the bottle look more like it’s rising off the table a touch
and not falling?”

“I suppose…” I hedged on that.

“Don’t like nutcrackers, I see,” he said,
chuckling and tapping the next picture. It was of me in footed
pajamas sitting beside Mom in front of a Christmas tree. In the
background were four or five painted nutcrackers broken in several
pieces lying against the wall. There were other decorations that
looked untouched.

“Why are you blaming me for that?” I asked,
laughing, “We have no idea what happened there. I’m what? A year,
year and a half there?”

“This album is all about you,” he said
stretching out on the floor. “If that’s the picture Father chose to
take, then you were the cause. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left them
there.”

The next picture was Dad and me standing
beside a fishpond. I think it was at the Savannah house. I was just
a toddler looking up at Dad with a huge grin, pointing to a small
fish that looked caught on a line. Dad was in profile looking at
the fish, too. He held a pole but it was slung over his shoulder.
There were no visible means for support for the fish. I glanced
over at Kieran. He just looked back with raised eyebrows and a
smile.

There were five pages of pictures like that,
where there was something just a little bit off. Either Mom or Dad
were close by, so I assume the other was operating the camera.
Seventeen pictures in all. When we saw the picture with the cartoon
character and Mom looking very disturbed at me, Kieran sat up. I
looked about three, maybe; I didn’t have anything to judge by. It
was a cute picture and I wondered how they’d done it. The pictures
with the puppets from children’s shows weren’t hard to figure out
for me, but Kieran still examined each one closely.

We came to the last one in the album. A
single picture of me holding something that resembled a stuffed
teddy bear with Mom pointing to something off camera. The
background looked like some kind of waterfall of oils of different
colors. Kieran turned to page to find notes scrawled in Dad’s
handwriting, legibly but small, in a language I didn’t know, so it
wasn’t in Latin, English, or Spanish. I also knew enough of several
others to at least recognize them. The writing was small enough
that Kieran used a finger to keep his place on the page. When he’d
gotten through half a page, he asked me to get Ethan. When I got
back, he’d finished the first page of notes and was sitting
cross-legged with the album in his lap. We sat down in front of
him.

He flipped back in the album to the picture
of the table and bottle. “Ethan, can you go back in Seth’s memory
to this day?” he asked.

“I think so. Being that young, the memories
are distorted and difficult to sort and change the perspective on,”
he said.

“What was he doing?” Kieran asked, glancing
over at me quickly.