The Way of the Brother Gods (20 page)

"More than that, he'll have to slow down time."

"Are you crazy?"

"Cole wrote that there's a moment in between when you are neither in one world or the next. You're just floating between worlds. It happens so fast, you don't even know it. But if Tommy can slow us down in that moment between, he could give us enough time to set Barris just outside the field of protection."

Fawbry shook his head. "Why not just open a portal and stick Barris in from here?"

"Same reason I don't cut Barris apart with Viper. But in the portal, my do-kha will be doing all it can to protect me. And since Tommy will be in my arms, the do-kha will protect him, too. If I concentrate hard enough, it will even heal him from any damage that Barris attempts to inflict. I hope."

With nothing more than sheer exhaustion, Fawbry said, "Haven't you done enough to that boy? I know you love him, but why risk his life this way? There are so many ifs that this plan has no more chance for success than chopping Barris into bits and a lot more risk. And let's say you do succeed — what then? You'll be off on some other world. How are you going to get back without knowing how to control these portals?"

"We still have Tommy's copy of the map from Penmarvia. That should help us at first."

"At first?" Fawbry pointed at her as he started to understand. "You don't plan on coming back. You're going out there — for what? Harskill? And don't think I didn't notice that I'm not being included in this plan. You just want to take Tommy and go away from me?"

Malja set her jaw. "I didn't think you'd approve of any of this."

"Of course, I don't approve. When has that ever mattered before?"

"It's not some wild dream. This comes from Cole's journal. It's right over there. You can read it for yourself. This will work. It'll save Tommy." She sounded so confident, she almost believed it.

Crossing his arms, then unfolding them, Fawbry paced in front of Malja. "How can you be so stupid?" He sputtered as he tried to get out his thoughts. Malja braced herself for an onslaught of arguments against her plan and Cole's ideas. To her surprise, Fawbry said, "How can you not understand what I've been trying to teach you all along? We are a family. After all these years, you still pretend you're alone in all this, that you have to carry the burden of us by yourself. It's not like that. Listen to me because I'm sick of you acting this way — I am not leaving you and Tommy. Got it?"

"But family doesn't harm each other just to —"

"You don't get to decide what I do. If Cole said this'll work, if you can't be deterred, then I'm going with you. Will your fancy suit protect me, too?"

"I think so."

Fawbry paused but shook off his fear. "Good enough. Either we save Tommy, or he and I die trying." He winked and added, "You get to live on with the guilt." As she reached toward him, Fawbry flapped his arms to ward her off. "I hate when you do this to me. I've got to be alone. Go convince Tommy. None of this happens without him."

Muttering to himself, Fawbry trudged off. Malja watched him leave, feeling smaller with each step further he went. By the time she turned toward the Dish building door, she imagined herself being crushed by an ant. Convincing Fawbry had been easy compared to what she expected from Tommy. After all, how could she tell him to use his powerful magic after all her years standing in his way?

"Look at me. Fierce warrior once again fearful of a boy."

* * * *

The Dish building foyer smelled of smoldering destruction. Black smoke had stained the walls, marking where it had traveled up and pooled in the ceiling corners. Further in, the ceiling had collapsed, blocking the corridor leading to the rest of the building.

Tommy rested atop a cleared-off reception desk. From the doorway, Malja watched him sleep — one of her favorite things to do. She coveted these moments of untarnished peace. But like all peace, sleep never lasted long enough. Wincing, Tommy's eyes jolted open. He saw Malja right away and reached for her.

An emotion unlike anything she had ever felt surged up her body and launched her to Tommy. She wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tighter than ever, and showered the top of his head with kiss after kiss. "I'm so sorry," she said, unable to stop tears from drenching her face. "I'm so sorry. I fought you and fought you and never let you use the gifts you've always had. I doubted you so much but it wasn't you at all. It was all me." Her heart raced, and she couldn't stop the words from spilling out. "Ever since I met you, I doubted I could survive if I let anything happen to you. I just couldn't live with you going mad because of magic. I didn't know it was Barris Mont. I didn't understand. I'm sorry. I just wanted to protect you." She tried to say more but the words balled in her chest.

Tommy pulled back and smiled. He pointed to the Barris Mont appendage and then mimed reading a book. He tapped his head and smiled again.

"You read Cole's journal?"

He nodded.

"Then do you know what I plan to do?"

With two fingers, Tommy tapped his chest twice and raised his hand to his forehead in salute.

Malja caressed his cheek and nodded. "You really are a god."

He shook his head no and looked like her boy once again.

* * * *

They waited two days. Malja insisted that Tommy regain some strength before attempting her plan to remove Barris Mont, and nobody argued. She could see the reason in their eyes — they were all scared. Any viable excuse to hold off sounded like a good idea. And they all made use of the time to rest.

Horse showed up after the first day. Cole's people had taken good care of her, but when the Dish exploded, several of the stable walls were breached. Horse managed to escape. When she arrived, Malja and Fawbry acted like children, fawning over the mare, feeding it grass, and enjoying the good fortune of this animal. All the excitement, however, died down, and they were left with the hard choices they could not escape.

After two days, there was no way out. They had to either open a portal and take the risks, or they would have to start the long trek north back to the world they knew.

They gathered in an open field. Malja walked Horse in and leaned her head against the animal's neck. She stroked Horse for a little, and without ceremony let the creature go. A firm swat on the backside sent Horse running toward its freedom.

"I guess we're ready, then," she said.

Tommy stood with Barris Mont in a sling fashioned from a torn shirt. Other than that gray, sickly appendage, Tommy looked quite well. He watched Fawbry fumbling to get his robe just right. Fawbry reached for the robe's belt and made a circle like a dog chasing its tail. Tommy giggled.

"I might throw up," Fawbry said, "but otherwise, I'm ready to go."

Malja waved them closer. "Tommy, stand in front, and Fawbry, get behind me. Now you both press in close to me. I'm going to do my best, but this is all new to me."

"M-Maybe we should test this somehow."

"It'll be fine. The suit knows what to do."

Fawbry rolled his eyes. "Oh, well, if the suit knows what to do, then why are we waiting? Let's go jump into a portal and burn off my other hand."

Pulling Tommy closer to her, Malja said, "Just hold tight. Tommy, once we get in between worlds, I'll put all my thoughts and energy into having the suit get rid of Barris, but you have to help, too. You need to shove him out of you, not just what's left of his body, but his mind, too. I don't want any trace of him returning. Can you do that?"

With a teenager's scowl, Tommy raised his hand and checked his tattoos. He started a countdown on his hand — 5 ... 4 ...

Fawbry's hands wrapped around Malja. He dug his head into her shoulder.

3 ...

He said, "Whatever happens, I don't regret a single moment. You're the best thing that's ever happened to a fool like me."

2 ...

Malja reached back and patted Fawbry's head. "I love you, too," she said.

1 ...

Tommy opened a portal.

Chapter 24

Birds chirped. A simple high-low-high pattern floating on the air. And the fresh aroma of plants in bloom sweetened the music-filled breeze.

Malja opened her eyes to find herself on a bed of green grass. She was alive. White, puffy clouds drifted by a green-blue sky. She sat up, though her body wanted to remain on the comfortable ground, and took in her surroundings.

Orderly rows of trees stretched into the distance separated by wide swaths of dirt and grass. Hills to the north (if the sun could be counted on for direction) and a barn to the west. Some kind of farm.

"Tommy? Fawbry?" she said, not too loud though — no telling what kind of world they had entered. She heard rustling from two tree rows over.

As she approached the noise, images flashed in her head — twisted faces like animals that never existed, clawing, slobbering, growling. No up or down, a void of gray. And a screaming like metal forced to bend in ways it shouldn't. The in-between had been a horror to see even for a moment, and the little she recalled convinced her that she never wanted to see it again.

"Fawbry? Tommy?" She knew she would survive. The do-kha made sure of that. But the longer she waited to get a response from her men, the more she recognized that her entire plan had rested on the imagination of Cole.

Staying low as she scuttled from row to row, she searched for her family. Hopefully the farmers were far away or done with this section for the day. She didn't want to deal with those issues until she found Tommy or —

"Malja? Over here," Fawbry said.

She crossed another row of trees and found them both sitting calm and quiet. Fawbry looked much like she felt — reinvigorated but a bit shaken by the in-between. Tommy looked wonderful.

Though he rubbed his side, most signs of Barris Mont were gone. Only a reddish patch remained, and Malja guessed that would heal soon enough. But the fact that she could see the red skin amazed her — with the exception of the sleeve on his left arm, all the tattoos had vanished.

"I think," Fawbry said, "Barris Mont had forced Tommy's body to create more magic than it could do on its own."

Tommy checked over his sleeve of tattoos that were left. He pointed to a few and sighed relief. Malja couldn't be sure which spells remained, but from his reaction, she suspected he could still form a portal. She didn't really care, though. If having her Tommy back, sane and healthy, meant being stuck wherever they were, that was okay. After all, she had spent her entire life on a world that wasn't her own. What did it matter if she spent the rest on another world not her own?

Fawbry put his arm around Tommy. "You really had us scared for awhile. Seeing you with all that power pouring out of you was probably the closest I'll ever come to seeing a god. Must be weird to lose that."

Tommy shrugged and nestled his head against Fawbry.

"He hasn't lost a thing," Malja said. "He knows who he is now. That's a tremendous gain. I didn't understand who any of us were before, even myself. Because of that, I pushed back every time you wanted to be what you were meant to be. What any of us were meant to be."

"What are you talking about?"

"Tommy is the Power. You, Fawbry, are the Soul. And I am the Blade. We each have our part to perform, and if there's ever been a godly power among us, it is only when we work together that it takes a true form."

Fawbry smiled. "I like the sound of that."

Tommy clapped his hands in approval.

"Me, too," Malja said.

"We're like Kryssta and Korstra," Fawbry said. "In all the stories, they were always greater when working together than against each other or even as individuals. We're the brother gods, now."

"I'm a sister god."

Laughing, Fawbry and Tommy rolled on the ground. They giggled and coughed and laughed some more. Malja's chest swelled as she watched them in complete surrender to joy. At length, though, Fawbry stood and brushed leaves off his robe. "So," he said, "what do we do now?"

Malja reached up to a tree and shook a branch. Large, red apples rained down. They each picked one up and bit in. Sweet and juicy and crisp. Perfect.

"Well," Malja said after swallowing a delicious bite, "we've done our best to help Corlin — no more Jarik and Callib, no Queen Salia, no Barris Mont, no Dish, no portals. We've saved a entire world. But Harskill got away. He's out there and he's causing trouble. I want to find him."

"Harskill. Of course," Fawbry said, his shoulders dropping.

Malja took another bite of her apple and headed down the lane. Tommy and Fawbry followed on either side of her. She looked at them and felt a confidence rise different from anything she had ever experienced. The Blade, the Power, the Soul — a true team. A true family.

"This won't be easy," Fawbry said.

Malja kept her eyes forward. "Nope. Saving one world was hard enough. Now, we've got to save them all."

Afterword 

Thank you for reading
The Way of the Brother Gods
. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed concluding the journey of this first leg of Malja's new family.  If you did, I ask a little favor.  Please go back to wherever you purchased this book and leave an honest review.