The Way of the Brother Gods (14 page)

"What are you saying? That I should follow your plan because you've convinced yourself it'll work?"

"I'm suggesting that this Dish will never work right for me because I built it with one power source in mind, but I lied to myself and used another. Someone else, however — someone who has the knowledge of portals because he was there during the Devastation, someone who understands magic because he spent decades helping magicians unlock their powers, someone like that could take my work and see it to completion. Only Barris Mont fits that description."

"And that can only happen if I get him and Tommy free of whatever is going on inside them, so they can help me defeat Harskill."

Cole brought a hand to her mouth. "Oh my. I must be feeling worse than I realized. Forgive me for being so bluntly honest."

"It's refreshing," Malja said, but a part of her worried that Cole's frank admissions were just a step in a more elaborate plan. That would be more typical of Cole. Though she did look unwell.

"Aren't you cute," Cole said, playfully wagging a finger at Malja.

Her eyes widened for an instant, and she collapsed to the floor. "Cole!" Fawbry said, rushing to her side. By the time he had reached her, Cole's body shivered in a seizure. Malja tried to help, but her movements were slow and pained. Fawbry cradled his old love, holding her tight against his chest. With each violent shake, Cole let out a groan. The sound echoed around them. As fast as it began, it tapered off until she looked like a child sleeping in her father's arms.

Fawbry gazed up at Malja, his face screwed up with too many simultaneous emotions. "She's going to die. Soon. Please, try with Tommy and Barris Mont. Get them back, so Tommy can fix this."

"Isn't healing me what caused him to lose it in the first place?"

"Please," Fawbry said, unable to produce any more sound than a whisper.

Though her entire body protested, Malja nodded. Fawbry was family, and sometimes that was all that mattered. Besides, if she was going to lose Tommy forever, she wouldn't let him go quietly. She'd fight it every step.

She stood straight, sheer willpower keeping her from falling back. Without looking down, she said to Fawbry, "I know Cole's dying, and I'll do what I can. You've got to watch me closely if I manage this link. Tommy's very powerful but clearly he's not the only one in charge of that body. And I don't trust Barris Mont ever. If it looks like I'm in trouble, you take your knife and cut me free. If Barris Mont fights you off, then take Viper and cut off my arm. You understand?"

"Y-Yes," Fawbry said.

She stroked Fawbry's head once. "We've come a long way. There was a time you would've been screaming at me for even suggesting any of that."

Fawbry pulled her hand down, almost taking her to the ground, and he kissed her palm. "I trust you now more than I ever have. I'll do exactly as you say."

"Good," Malja said and unsheathed Viper. She placed her wonderful blade on the cot, ran a loving hand across its grip, and closed her eyes. As if Viper could hear or think, she mouthed the words, "Watch over me."

When she approached Tommy, a shiver of doubt chilled her gut. This close, she now saw how lost in his mind he had become. Covered in sweat, stinking and shaking, with his eyes locked forward, he not only looked insane, he looked terrified.

"Tommy. Barris Mont," she said, and all the eyes on his body focused in her direction. She pulled back her do-kha sleeve and placed her arm next to the undulating tendrils of Tommy's arm. "I want to speak with you. If this is like the time at Dead Lake, then I will not resist."

The tendrils continued to move like weeds underwater, but now they stretched and squirmed and reached for Malja's arm. They sounded like a thousand maggots crawling over a corpse. She refused to react. She braced herself as the first tendrils made contact and the world around her disappeared.

Chapter 17

Before she saw anything, Malja smelled the ocean. Next, her legs wobbled as the waves rose and fell. She tasted salt and felt the spray of a water against her cheek. Finally, the world appeared around her — a world from years ago.

She stood on the deck of Captain Wuchev's ship. The same Captain Wuchev who had tried to kill her for a few precious trinkets hidden in the hold. The same Captain Wuchev who had enslaved Tommy, chaining him in the front battery room and using him as a power source.

The ship was a large hunk of salvaged scrap with a half-shell rounded back, a wide main deck, and three makeshift masts cut into the rusting deck. The smell of rotting fish stuck to every surface. Nobody, not even Wuchev, could be seen.

The choppy water spoke of a storm brewing somewhere in the distance. Another storm brewed within Malja — part anger, part nausea. She hated the water.

"I can't say I ever thought we'd meet like this again," a smooth voice called from behind.

Malja didn't need to turn around to know Barris Mont stood there. He came up beside her, leaned on the railing, and looked out at the ocean. He was the same as when they had first shared mental space — gray suit with a brilliant green tie, clean beyond anything capable in the real world, handsome and smelling as if he had emerged from a spice-scented bath. It was a mental image — a memory of what he had looked like before the Devastation mutated him into a multi-eyed glob of a monster and before he abandoned that enormous body for Tommy.

Tapping a steady rhythm on the rail, he said, "I don't wish to sound pushy, but if you recall, being in another person's mind can have rather intoxicating effects, and you in particular, reacted quite strongly. I suspect you don't have much time until you're rolling on the deck, drunk senseless."

"You're right," Malja said as she stepped behind Barris Mont and locked her arm around his throat. She yanked back, lifting him off the ground, and held him as he struggled for air. "How dare you take advantage of this sweet boy. Jarik and Callib attacked you at your lake and instead of protecting Tommy, you used him as a surrogate body. And now you've been slowly turning him into you. Seems to me, if I kill you, all we be fine."

The ship lurched atop a large wave, but Malja held tight. Barris Mont pulled down on her arm, straining to speak. "Look ... around. This is ... Tommy's mind. You're ... hurting him."

Malja released her stranglehold and the waves settled. Barris Mont fell forward, catching himself on the railing, and gasped for air. Malja grabbed him by the coat and hauled him back against a pile of crates. "You better start talking because time is going fast. If you don't help, you aren't worth much, and that means —"

Barris Mont raised his hands. "No need to threaten. We both want the same thing here. For Tommy and I to be free. But understand that the boy and I are, for the moment, a shared entity. Hurting me while in his mind hurts him as well."

"Fine. But don't plan to wait me out until I start acting drunk because I'm angry right now. The last thing you want to see is me angry and drunk."

"Of course," he said with an oddly proper bow. "The first thing you need to understand is that I did not use your boy as a way of escaping Jarik and Callib. I entered him because he was going to try to fight those two powerful magicians himself. They would've killed him with barely a thought. By entering Tommy, I was able to control some of his power for a short time, enough time to make his usefulness evident to the magicians, so that they would take him along — as they did. I saved his life."

"You used him."

Barris Mont's eyes flared. "I've protected him all along. He has tremendous magical gifts and wants to use them. He holds back sometimes because he cares for you and knows you disapprove. But there is part of him, a strong part, that dabbles with his powers anyway. From here, inside the boy, I've been able to lock away many of these talents, to protect him from himself. Yet my power is limited in this form, and as you've seen, the boy has grown strong. But to say that I've used him when all you've ever done was use him, when it was his magic saving your life time and again that pushed him toward insanity. I've kept him sane at least a year longer than he should've managed, and I put him in his current state not to turn him into me, but to keep him alive. You should be ashamed at how you've treated Tommy. So, forgive me for ignoring you, but I give little credence to your view."

Malja's anger rose up her throat but she kept it in check. Through gritted teeth, she said, "At least we both agree we don't care about each other. But we both want to help Tommy. Right? We both want to stop Harskill. Right?" The boat rocked to the side, and Malja stumbled a bit before regaining her balance. "I think I'm already starting to get drunk. So stop posturing and tell me what I have to do."

Barris Mont made a show of mulling over the idea before finally nodding. He clapped his hands twice, and a young man dressed in a formal black suit with a white bow tie came around the central mast. He carried a covered silver tray. He bowed before Malja and removed the covering.

In the center of the tray, Malja saw an empty glass bottle. She had never seen one so clean and clear. For that matter, she had never seen one completely intact before. Even the best bottles had cracks along the sides or chips around the mouth.

Barris Mont lifted the bottle and dismissed the servant. He inspected it with care before setting it at Malja's feet. "Tommy is suffering from an imbalance," he said. "The magic side of him is overpowering the non-magic side. It's what happens to all magicians when they aren't properly trained. And ever since the Devastation, few people really train magicians anymore, so we have many more cases of this kind of insanity."

"Get to the point."

"Stop acting like a brat," Barris Mont said. "This isn't a case of you getting to kill something or bash someone. This is a delicate matter. If you don't fully comprehend the situation, we are certain to fail and the damage to Tommy could be permanent."

Malja swiped the bottle from the deck. "Fine. What do I do with this delicate object?"

"Not you. Us. We have to do this together. If done right, we can stabilize him which will allow me to let go of the limited control I've exerted to keep him going this long. Then he should be okay for the short term. He'll need more help later, but this will suffice. Now understand that this imbalance is represented all around us. That bottle is nothing more than just such a representation. Our task is to awaken Tommy's sense of self to the point that he recognizes the difference between this representational existence and the real world."

"I don't know what that means."

"It means you have to take this bottle to Tommy's representational soul. The heart of his magical being. When you arrive, I'll be there doing my part. Place the bottle correctly and the rest should handle itself." To stave off Malja's protest, Barris Mont walked to a hole in the deck that had not been there before. "Down here, okay? Go down there and keep going down until you find Tommy and myself. That's when you know you'll be at the right place."

"And I put the bottle where?"

"You'll know when you see."

Malja rolled her eyes. "Why didn't you just say so?" As she passed him by, she bumped her shoulder into his chest.

"Be careful in there," Barris said. "It's made up of Tommy's mind, and he's not all that stable at the moment."

Malja peered into the hole. It stretched down quite far. Orange firelight flickered at the bottom. Shadows and silhouettes filled the hole with legs and wings. Whatever creatures occupied that drop, there were a lot of them.

Malja looked up to Barris Mont — but he was gone.

The wind picked up and the ship churned from side to side. The ocean waves grew choppy. The clouds darkened. Little dark marks dappled the deck — raindrops.

Malja checked down the hole again. If anything, she swore the number of creatures had increased. This better work. As she put the bottle in the pocket of her coat, lightning cracked across the sky.

And she jumped in.

* * * *

Gravity, if such a thing existed in this place, pulled her down fast while the arms, legs, wings, and tentacles crowding the hall slowed her down. Too fast for them to get a hold on her but slow enough to avoid breaking a leg when she hit bottom. Whatever these creatures were, they cried and screamed as she dropped out of reach.

The bottom of the hole came up fast. Malja readied herself for a hard jolt to her legs. Instead, she passed right through the dirt floor like passing through a cloud. The sensation of falling lifted, and she felt a firm, metal floor beneath her feet. It came about so gently, so suddenly, that for a moment she had no idea that she had stopped falling, just that the internal sensations had changed.

"You little weasel," a voice called from behind.

Malja turned around. She was in the cargo hold. A few feet away, Captain Wuchev shouted at a young version of Tommy. Wuchev stood in his threadbare clothes, sweat flying from his dirt-caked cheeks, as he held a frayed leather strap in his hand and slapped it across Tommy's bleeding back.

"When I give you an order, you'll obey me and you'll obey quick," Wuchev said, punctuating his words with repeated blows.

Tommy cowered beneath the abuse, curled in a ball. Though he covered his shaggy head, the matted blood showed dark through his fingers.