The Wizard's War Read Free

care of Hell. I’ll deal with
your mother.” Dad shared Hail’s inclination to rename people. Everyone called
Samhail “Hail,” except for Dad, who called him “honey,” or “Hell.”
    “What happened, Dad?”
    He sighed. “Ask your brother.” He got up and left me
on the floor, not even coming close to kicking me. The floor was cold, and I
realized with a start that the only light in the room was from the sun rising
before the window; the light fixture had exploded.
    This was the only house on Shomodii that had
electricity, which we all ran using magic after Dad had insisted several years
ago that the house needed a “human” touch. I used magic to gather the glass
shards into the bin before going outside. I passed Mom and Dad’s room as
quietly as I could and fought the urge to eavesdrop.
    Outside, it was barely dawn, and Hail was pacing
furiously across the front of the house. Blood ran from his nose, his body was
shaking as if with shivers, and his fists clinched and unclenched. He didn’t
look at me, but I could feel his soul recognize my presence and calm just a
little. He walked faster.
    “I need to heal you,” I said, stepping off the porch.
    “Back off!” he yelled, not changing his course or
looking at me.
    “I don’t know what happened. Please don’t yell at me.
I don’t know what happened. I can’t make it better if I don’t know what I did
wrong.”
    “It was me that was wrong! I was wrong about
everything! I was wrong about you, wrong about me, wrong about everything!” He
stopped pacing and looked at me. “This isn’t going to work.”
    I couldn’t breathe over the pain in my chest, but
this was different than before. “I don’t understand,” I said, choking on my
words.
    “I thought I could control the balance in you. I was
wrong. I thought you could never hurt me because I am your brother, but I was
wrong about that too.”
    “You can’t leave me,” I said, because that was the
only thing that mattered. If Mom and Dad decided to leave us and go to Earth, I
would live as long as Hail was still with me. Nothing else was important
compared to my brother.
    Finally, there was a moment, just a sliver of a glint
of relent in his eyes that glared at me. “No. I won’t leave you. You’re my
brother.”
    “Please tell me what happened. Mom hates me and
you’ve never yelled at me before. I need to know what I did.”
    For much of our life on Earth, I was getting us into
trouble left and right. I needed the chaos, the excitement. Hail would warn me
every single time, but he would follow in order to protect me and usually tried
to take the blame when we were in trouble. No matter how bad the trouble we
found was, he would never get mad at me. This had to be exceptionally terrible.
    He sat on the steps, not looking at me. His body was
still shaking and I went to heal him, but he held up his hand to ward me away.
“You were looking at Dad when your eyes turned nearly white. It was a really
creepy milky-green color, like your soul just vanished behind the darkness. You
didn’t say anything or recognize our words when we tried to snap you out of it.
I did everything I could. We thought our balance would keep it calm, like it
always has before, but the darkness took over so fast.
    “You aimed your hand and some kind of white energy
formed. I thought it was the void, at first. Mom got in the way, but you didn’t
even hesitate. You tried to kill Mom and Dad and I couldn’t think of any way to
stop you.”
    “But you did.”
    “I pushed you down, got in the way, and took the
shot. You could have killed me.”
    “But I didn’t. You didn’t even lose consciousness. It
would have killed Mom or Dad, a god and a Noquodi, but you survived it. It has
to be because you’re my brother. Please let me heal you. Please don’t hate me
for this, I couldn’t control it.”
    He looked at me and I felt a little wonder in him.
“How do you not hate me? You never would have taken the balance