Lost Ones

CHAPTER 13

T hey fought their way out of Palenque. Black pillars of smoke rose above the city-fires burning somewhere near the palace.

Cheval Bayard had forsaken her human form and now the kelpy galloped along the cobblestones. Hours had passed since Oliver and Julianna had escaped from the dungeon, and the word had spread.

A full-scale rebellion had erupted in the heart of the city. It would spread, just as the smoke and fire would spread. But here at the edges of Palenque, the spirit of revolution had yet to arrive. A single building disgorged a band of Encerrados-horrid twisted little creatures whose mouths were crusted with gore-and the monsters rushed through their human neighbors to get at the escaping Borderkind. Cheval crushed one of them under her hoof with a sound like the bursting of rotten melon. Li stepped forward, fire roaring up from his eyes, and held out both hands. The very air around the little cannibals exploded into flame, charring their flesh instantly.

Cheval Bayard sideswiped a huge serpent. It coiled around her legs and brought her hard to the ground. Blue Jay would have gone to her aid, but Leicester Grindylow arrived before him, swinging a stolen battle axe with ruthless abandon. Grin had once been a sweet, amiable fellow, but in these past weeks a darkness had come into his eyes. The water boggart hacked the serpent’s head off and helped Cheval to her feet. She neighed and tossed her head, and he took that as a signal, grabbing hold of her mane and throwing one leg over to sit astride her back. They charged together along the widening cobblestone street.

Blue Jay saw it all.

He lagged back, letting others take the lead, so he could keep close to Oliver and Julianna, who were still on horseback. A pair of soldiers-some kind of city guard-came from an alley toward the exodus. Blue Jay spun, dancing in a swift circle that lifted him from his feet. He whirled around, summoning mystic wings that blurred the air beneath his outspread arms. When the soldiers tried to attack him, his wings sliced through bone and meat and muscle, severing reaching hands. With a final twist, he swept his wings out and cut off their heads.

Savage, but swift, and right now quickness was the only thing that mattered. Though he was a trickster, Blue Jay did not have a callous heart. He grieved for these men, who likely had no idea they were following the commands of Atlantis, but this had become a war. In war, death decided the outcome.

Blue Jay stepped up into the air, riding the wind and transforming into a bird. Wings spread, the little bird rose higher and circled above the running melee below. As they’d stampeded through the labyrinthine streets, they had attracted both rebels and crown loyalists. Lost Ones fought one another in the ripple current of their passing. Blood splashed the cobblestones.

Jaguar-men and the vampiric, serpentine Pihuechenyi shoved and slithered and leaped through the crowds to reach the legends who dared to try to stanch the flow of the rebellion that carried Oliver and Julianna toward the city’s edge. Other Yucatazcan Borderkind had joined them. Back toward the center of the city, the blue bird saw the pillars of fire rising into the air, still pluming black smoke. The turmoil continued, and would spread. Suspicion had run rampant long before he and his comrades had arrived to foment rebellion. All they had done was set a match to the fuse. Their work here was done.

He soared higher, dipped a wing and wheeled around to see that they were only one curve in the road away from the outer limit of Palenque. Beyond the city’s edge there was a long stretch of grassland and-past that-nothing but jungle and mountains.

“Bastards!” Oliver shouted from the saddle, down below.

Blue Jay began to descend and spotted Oliver immediately. He had a sword of his own-no replacement for Hunyadi’s blade, which still hung in the palace-but it would do. A couple of human thugs grabbed hold of Julianna and began to pull her from her saddle. Lost Ones had formed a protective wedge around Oliver’s mount, just trying to get him out of the city. But he spurred the horse past them, and then jumped down into the crowd, sword in hand. On foot, now, he went after the thugs who were dragging Julianna into the midst of the fray.

Panic shot through Blue Jay. They’d gone through too much for Oliver to be killed now. Much as he hated to admit it, the symbolic victory Ty’Lis would achieve if the Legend-Born were killed was too much too allow. It didn’t matter that Collette still lived, somewhere. Blue Jay counted Oliver as a friend, but more than that was at stake.

He darted toward the ground, wind whipping his feathers as he pinned his wings back. Fifteen feet above the heads of the crowd, he transformed again from bird to man. Dancing in the air, he dropped down into the chaos.

Even as he did, Blue Jay saw Julianna grab a fistful of the long hair of one of her attackers. She drove her forehead into his nose, yanking him toward her by his scalp. The unwashed warrior staggered back, hands going to his bleeding, broken nose, and Julianna drop-kicked him in the groin.

She spun, ready to face the other.

Oliver reached her then, stepping between her and the potbellied man. The fool laughed and raised a cudgel in one hand. Oliver slashed the man’s arm, severing tendons and breaking bone, then turned the tip of the sword and followed through with a lunge that drove the blade through the man’s right shoulder even before his cudgel could hit the ground.

Blue Jay whipped through a small group of Lost Ones and a pair of creatures who looked like knotted masses of black seaweed, their tentacles whipping at his face. Blood and green ichor flew into the air as his mystical wings cut them down. The trickster no longer hesitated.

“Well done,” he said as he stepped up to Oliver and Julianna.

“How much further?” Julianna asked, her voice sharp.

“One more turn.”

Oliver brandished his sword, keeping a black, wraithlike creature at bay. “Let’s go,” he said, and then they were off again, rushing along as though carried on the current of a swift river.

Blue Jay let out a battle cry. The other Borderkind who heard it might not have known the significance, but they recognized his voice and picked up their pace. They were breaking free now, the flow of the exodus too powerful to be contained in this one street.

“You know what I noticed?” Oliver said, glancing at Blue Jay as he ran. “No Perytons. No Atlantean giants.”

“Yeah. Good for us. But bad for Hunyadi, I think. Atlantis has sent its worst against Euphrasia.”

Oliver had no reply for that but his dark determination turned even more grim. They fought together to the next turn in the road. Another fire had started behind them, likely thanks to Li. The burning man had left a trail of charred and flaming corpses behind them. Blue Jay caught sight of him several times with Grin and Cheval. They had become almost like family to him by now, and he worried for them.

When they rounded the corner, the opposition began to break up. At the end of the road-at the edge of the city-a single person stood in their path. Even from a distance she was beautiful, her long red hair flowing around her shoulders and down her back. Her dress seemed like little more than a thin shift. Sunlight streamed around her, silhouetting her body.

“What the hell is she?” Julianna asked.

Blue Jay grinned. “She’s a friend. Keep running!”

When they passed between a pair of three-story whitewashed apartment buildings that marked the end of the street, the red-haired woman before them spread her arms wide. Blue Jay grabbed Oliver and Julianna and held them back.

“Give her room.”

Fighting, trudging, marching, running, the others came on behind them-friend and foe alike. But then a brilliant yellow light exploded from the eyes of the woman who blocked their path. Blue Jay threw up a hand to shield his eyes. When the brilliance had receded enough that he could lower his hand, he saw the bird of light on the road ahead of them.

“Alicanto!” a voice cried out in alarm.

“You said she was a friend!” Oliver told him.

Blue Jay nodded. “She is. We’re done here. Let’s go.”

Again he issued a battle cry and they rushed forward, moving past the treasure bird. Blue Jay had met Alicanto only once. She did not visit the human world often, but she was Borderkind.

Cheval galloped past him with Grin astride her back. Li rode his tiger. Jaguar-men and other Yucatazcan Borderkind followed. He saw Ahuizotl, the little monkey-dog who had proven both loyal and resourceful. They flooded out of the city along with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of Lost Ones, but their enemies halted and then returned to the city, terrified of facing the primal elemental force of Alicanto.

Julianna’s legs ached, her muscles burned, and her throat was parched, but she kept running. Her fingers were wrapped around a long wooden staff that she barely remembered picking up. It had a blade on either end, almost like a rifle bayonet. Her auburn hair blew in the wind, whipping wildly across her face, and she knew she had been bruised and battered by running the gauntlet of Palenque’s streets.

But they were out.

She whooped loudly, exultant, and turned to Oliver with a grin on her face. His free hand reached for hers and she took it. How had their lives come to this-lovers racing along a hard-packed dirt road with a city of legends behind them, he with a sword in one hand and she carrying that strange, double-bladed stick?

“You’re laughing,” Oliver said, his eyes shining bright.

Julianna hadn’t realized it, but now she laughed harder. Her long legs stretched and she felt like some wild gazelle as she ran.

“We’re out!”

Oliver only smiled. With his scruffy beard and sinewy body, he looked almost like an entirely different man. Julianna had loved him when he had only been ordinary Oliver Bascombe, but he looked like a warrior now, formidable in ways neither of them could ever have imagined. She felt some of this same change within herself, too-and though it frightened her, she also relished it.

This world would never be home. But with Oliver, she could endure. She had always prided herself on her intelligence and the strength of her heart, and if she had to live in the Two Kingdoms, none of that would change. They were in the midst of war, and for the first time she understood that it was her war just as much as it was anyone’s. Julianna Whitney was one of the Lost Ones.

“What’s going on?” Oliver called to Blue Jay, who ran along beside them, braided hair swaying, the feathers that had been missing before now magically returned, tied there where they belonged.

“What do you mean?” the trickster asked.

“The bird, Jay,” Oliver said. “If she’s on our side, why didn’t she help us before?”

“Alicanto won’t enter Palenque, but now that we’re out of the city, she won’t let any of them follow.”

Julianna glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was right. Surprised, she surveyed the sky, thinking an attack might come from there.

“Seriously?” she asked. “Nobody’s going to chase us?”

“Not right away,” Blue Jay replied.

She let go of Oliver’s hand, her weapon becoming heavy. She shouldered it as though it were a baseball bat. “Then why are we still running?”

Blue Jay laughed, leaped and twisted in the air, then came down, still running. “Why? Don’t you want to run?”

Julianna found that she did. All of the long days and weeks in the dungeon were being burned out of her. Soon she would have to rest. But now-with the Borderkind and Lost Ones who had helped them escape Palenque streaming out behind them-she just wanted to keep going.

Their pace slowed not long after, and by the time they reached the edge of the jungle, they were moving only a little faster than a walk. As they entered the jungle, she stood between Oliver and Blue Jay and looked back at the city. Smoke still rose from spots all around Palenque.

“Do you think they’re still fighting?” she asked.

“I hope so,” Oliver said. “And yeah, I think so. Those people want answers. What we started today isn’t going to end quickly, and it isn’t going to end neatly.”

Blue Jay crossed his arms. “We’ve made quite a mess for Ty’Lis. That’s good. But it’s only a start. With every day that passes without Tzajin returning, the suspicion and anger will grow. It may be that Atlantis will face a war on two fronts soon.”

Julianna glanced at him. “But Ty’Lis may not even be in Palenque anymore. Most of the army has already gone north to fight. They’re following orders.”

“For now,” Oliver said.

Then he took her hand. “Let’s go.”

For the first time, with the excitement and adrenaline wearing off and her bruised, exhausted body complaining, Julianna realized she had no idea where they were going.

“What’s the plan? We’re just going to walk all the way back to Euphrasia?”

Oliver shook his head. “No. There’s a shortcut.”

So they marched.

Twice during their long journey they stopped to camp. Sentries guarded their rear flank and ranged on ahead to make sure they would not be ambushed. Julianna soon became used to the rhythm of their traveling, to the voices of the men and women and the Borderkind that accompanied them. She shared several long conversations with Leicester Grindylow and found the boggart charming and kind. Cheval Bayard shot her chilly looks whenever she talked to Grin, as though she were jealous. Perhaps she was, though not, Julianna believed, in any romantic sense.

Li, the Guardian of Fire, stayed apart from the rest. There were perhaps fifty or sixty Lost Ones and half that number of Borderkind on the trek along with them, but Li kept to himself. Only Cheval and Blue Jay made a point to break away to speak with him now and then. Wherever he walked, his footprints were black, burnt marks in the jungle, but the fire did not seem to spread unless he willed it.

After a blur of time that seemed like an eternity, they came out of the thick woods-no longer as tangled as the jungle they’d first entered-and discovered themselves on the shore of a green, gently rolling sea. For two or three miles they walked north along the shore, and then arrived at their destination.

“The Sandman’s castle,” Julianna said, a pit of fear knotted in her stomach.

“He’s dead, Jules,” Oliver reminded her.

She shuddered. “I know.”

But the knowledge did not dispel her fear. This was not the sandcastle they had been through before. Its architecture-if a structure made entirely of sand could be thought to have architecture-was quite different. But Julianna knew that the monster had at least three or four such dwellings scattered across the Two Kingdoms, and maybe more in other lands on this side of the Veil. But they were only separate structures on the outside. On the inside, the sandcastles were one and the same. They could enter here and exit through any of the others. The Sandman had also created doors that led to various other locations on both sides of the Veil.

“What are we doing, Oliver? Is there a Door-” she started.

“No Door,” he said, staring at the peaks of the abominable place. “We’ll go through from here to the sandcastle in Euphrasia. There’ll be a lot of traveling ahead from the other side, but we’ll be closer to the war than we are now. And once we’re on the other side…”

He didn’t finish the thought. Nor did he need to. Julianna had an idea what he was thinking.

All through their journey, Blue Jay had been conversing with the leaders amongst the Lost Ones who accompanied them and with some of the Borderkind who had helped to build up the underground rebellion in Palenque before it ignited. When Oliver and Julianna stood in front of the door to the sandcastle, the trickster approached them.

“It’s just us,” he said.

Oliver blinked. “What?”

“Well, the three of us, plus Grin, Cheval, and Li.”

“Why?” Julianna asked. “We could use all the help we can get in the war. The Borderkind especially. Don’t you think Hunyadi would want those jaguar-men on his side?”

“They are on his side,” Blue Jay replied, gaze shifting between her and Oliver. “This is their land. They want to fight for it. They escorted us this far to make sure that Oliver got out of Yucatazca safely, but they’re going back, now. If this is going to be a second front in this war, these people and Borderkind are needed here.”

“You’re right,” Oliver said. “Of course.”

“You’re ready?” Blue Jay asked.

Li strode toward the doors of the sandcastle. Cheval Bayard had long since abandoned her kelpy form and approached them now, silver hair gleaming, as though she were some elegant lady out for a stroll. Grin followed, long arms practically dragging on the ground.

Oliver looked at Julianna. She nodded.

“We’re ready,” she told Blue Jay.

“Just tell them all to keep back from the castle after we’ve gone in,” Oliver added.

“Why?” the trickster asked.

Julianna smiled and took Oliver’s hand. “Just tell them,” she said, and they walked through the open doors together.

The quartet of northern Borderkind entered behind them and they found themselves in a great hall of sand. A shudder went through Oliver as he looked around. Despite the Sandman’s destruction, the place seemed to breathe with lingering malevolence. Since he had first crossed the Veil, he had been inside three manifestations of the sandcastle. Death had nearly claimed him the first time he had been inside this hall, and it had been here that he had finally found his sister again. Oliver was glad Collette was not with them. She would not have liked to return to the place that had been her prison.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Julianna said.

Oliver clasped her hand and nodded. “Agreed. I don’t want to be here a second longer than necessary.”

“None of us do,” Blue Jay said.

Oliver led them to the stairs that rose up on one side of the room, and they followed him into the upper chambers of the sandcastle into a twisting maze of passages until they found the steps that led to the castle’s peak. From there, as before, they descended on the other side. At the first window, Oliver saw the landscape of Euphrasia’s eastern mountains spread out around the castle, and knew they had to try again. They returned to the peak and began to descend what appeared to be the same stairs they had come up. But this time, at the first window, the view revealed forest and a well-defined way that he recognized as the Truce Road.

Their destination.

“This way,” Oliver said.

Twenty or thirty minutes after they had entered the sandcastle in Yucatazca, they stepped out through its massive doors onto the grass of Euphrasia, an entire kingdom away.

Oliver turned and looked up at the castle looming over him. He clenched and unclenched his hands. For what seemed an eternity he stared at it, and then he became aware of Blue Jay and the others gathering just over his right shoulder.

A soft hand touched his left arm and he turned to see Julianna there. She moved her hand to the back of his neck, leaned in, and kissed him.

“Do it.”

He smiled thinly and nodded. The sandcastle might be useful, but it was a monument to evil. Instead, he would make it a grave marker for the monster who had constructed it.

Oliver reached out and pressed both hands against the outer wall. At first it felt like concrete. But soon the grains of sand began to lose their cohesion. Entropy took hold and the wall began to break down. The sand cascaded down around him, sifting around his feet.

“Back away,” he told Julianna. Then he glanced at Blue Jay. “All of you.”

Even as they complied, the entire castle began to tremble. Oliver waited a handful of seconds, then staggered away, picking up his pace and running to join Julianna and the others.

He turned just in time to see the entire castle collapse with a rush of air and a hiss of sand against sand, its substance spilling and spreading on the ground. In the Orient, and in Yucatazca, and wherever else the sandman had built castles, those structures would be doing the same. In his mind’s eye he could see the remains of the sandcastle that had stood on the seashore in Yucatazca. It would be crumbled now. The waves would roll in. Over time, they would erase any trace of its presence.

In a hush, they all stood and stared.

What the Sandman had made, Oliver had unmade.

The sun rose on a new day, but Collette and the winter man were still on the water. For much of the previous day they had skipped across the ocean at high speed, burning through the gas in the tank and then tapping the reserve fuel tank and at last moving on to a pair of large plastic gas cans stored in the rear of the boat. Luck had been with them in a lot of ways since their escape from Palenque, but Collette thought stealing the boat of a drug lord topped the list.

They’d kept a north by northwest course all through that day and had spent hours out of sight of any land at all. During the night, she’d seen the lights onshore.

Now, an hour or so past dawn, she studied the coast through binoculars the boat’s owner had conveniently stowed on board and tried to figure out where the hell they were. One hand stayed on the wheel, the warm weather long since having melted the ice that had formed on it during the few hours she’d slept and let the winter man drive.

A chill went through her, gooseflesh prickling her skin. The coolness almost caressed her.

“Do you recognize anything?” Frost asked.

Collette lowered the binoculars and turned to him. His jagged features gleamed white and blue in the morning light, but his eyes seemed soft and a light mist rose from them.

“I’ve never been to Central America. What am I going to recognize?”

Frost cracked half a smile. “You’re well-educated, Collette. I thought you might be able to put that education to work.”

“Meaning you want me to guess?”

The boat skipped over the waves. She let her knees absorb the rise and fall.

“Essentially.”

Collette tried to hate him, but she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. “Based on our coordinates and not on any visual confirmation, I’d guess we’re looking at the coast of Nicaragua. In case you’re unfamiliar with it, let me just say it’s not a place I’d want to get stranded.”

Frost looked thoughtful. “But we have very little fuel remaining.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky. Could still be Costa Rica we’re looking at. That’d be better.”

The engine coughed.

“Either way, we’re going to have to start heading in.”

But Frost wasn’t looking at her, or at the shore. The winter man had turned around and now stared southward, back the way they’d come. His eyes were narrowed and his brows knitted together with a crackling of ice.

“That might be wise.”

Collette felt her spirit sag. “You’re shitting me. All day and all night, nothing. And now?”

She turned before he could answer and confirmed her worst fears. Three boats were moving fast toward them from the south, swiftly skirting the tops of the waves. These weren’t government boats. Not a single flag fluttered in the wind. They were private vessels, and she had a feeling they had guns on board.

“Crap.”

Frost reached out, took the wheel, and cut it toward shore. He grabbed the throttle and pinned it. The boat surged forward and Collette had to grab hold of him to keep from falling. Her palms and fingers seared with the frozen touch of the ice, then she managed to take the wheel from him.

“Hurry,” he called to her over the roar of the engine and the cry of the wind.

“And when we hit shore?” she shouted back.

“Then they’re my problem,” the winter man replied.

Collette gripped the wheel so hard her fingers went numb. The thrum of the engine and the skip of the boat across the surf traveled up her arms and made her bones ache. But she kept on, straight for shore, the wind whipping at her, and she resisted the urge to look back to see how close the other boats had gotten.

The shoreline grew closer. A small inlet lay ahead, not much more than a fishing village. Sails dotted the harbor, fishermen already at work. Collette started toward the inlet, thinking they could lose their pursuers for a few vital moments amongst the other boats there-long enough to find a place to hide or a car to steal. How strange that such things, once inconceivable to her, had become pure instinct. Survival was hardwired.

“Not that way,” Frost said.

The winter man loomed in her peripheral vision, a sculpted creature, pointing out across their bow.

“Take us to shore, as close and fast as you can.”

“You got it.”

A small promontory, little more than a spit of land, jutted out to help block the worst of the surf from the inlet, protecting the village harbor. Collette cut the wheel due east, the boat slewed a bit, and then they were jetting toward the spit at full throttle. Water sprayed up and blew in her face.

A gunshot cracked the air.

“Son of a bitch!” Collette shouted, turning to look.

The lead boat headed for them at an angle. Some asshole in a black T-shirt knelt on the bow, trying to get a bead on them.

The rocky promontory drew closer. They were only a couple hundred yards from shore, now, but the other boats were closing.

“Even if we beat them to land, they’re going to be right on our asses!” Collette shouted over the wind.

The engine sputtered. She’d practically forgotten how low they were on fuel. She looked up at the winter man. His icy blue eyes met hers and she saw the determination there, the utter sureness, and she wondered what that meant.

Another gunshot echoed across the water.

“Whatever you have planned-” Collette started.

She never finished the sentence.

Frost flowed toward her, half solid and half storm. He gripped her wrist in that icy touch and the world seemed to ripple in front of the boat, the air turning silvery and opaque. Collette felt herself break through the Veil and then the wind and the human world released her. The boat disappeared from beneath her feet. Side by side, she and Frost plunged into the warm ocean.

She kicked to the surface, sodden clothes clinging, trying to drag her down. Spitting salt water, she wiped her eyes and looked around. They were only fifty or sixty feet from shore.

No boats chasing them. No gunshots.

Several fishing boats drifted further out, but these were sailing ships with an antique flair. The spit of land had vanished. The harbor village as well. The landscape of the coast had changed entirely.

“Where are we?” Collette asked as she struck out for shore.

Frost seemed to float in the water without any effort. What he did could not rightly be called swimming. He appeared to glide just underwater, only his head above the surface. “Through the Veil.”

“I know that much. I mean where. Geography is all different in this world, I gather. But I know there’s a loose correlation, right? So we’re still in Yucatazca?”

Frost stood up. Collette put her feet down but could not touch the bottom; not much of a surprise, considering her height. She swam a few more feet and tried again, and in moments they were both slogging toward the rocky shore.

“This place is called the Isthmus of the Conquistadors,” the winter man said. His jagged body glistened as water ran off of him. “It connects the Two Kingdoms. Whatever troops are coming from the south, they have to take this route.”

Collette had been trying to squeeze water out of her shirt, twisting up the bottom to wring the cloth. She dropped it and stared at him.

“So what now? Do we go north a ways and then cross back over?”

Frost shook his head, mist leaking from his eyes again. “The distance on that side of the Veil is too great. We must stay here and make our way as best we can.”

She pushed her fingers through her hair, shedding water. As unwelcome as the news might be, she would not argue. What would be the point? They were behind enemy lines and she didn’t want to stay here a moment longer than was necessary.

“You’re saying there might be troops coming up behind us-”

“Infantry and cavalry,” Frost interrupted. “When the invasion force from Atlantis comes, it will be by sea. But it will be on the eastern side of the Isthmus, so we’d do well to stay here on the western shore.”

Collette took a deep breath, gnawing on her lower lip.

“It sounds impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible.”

“And if we run into the Yucatazcan army from behind? Hell, when we run into them-because eventually we’ll hit the battlefront-I’m guessing you have a plan?”

Nothing about Frost could be construed to look human. She had been trying to remind herself that she wasn’t supposed to like him-he had deceived Oliver, and left her to die, once upon a time. Yet in that moment, his eyes betrayed a vulnerable humanity and a dark humor.

“The word ‘plan’ might be overstating.”

Collette stared at him in horror, and then she laughed, shaking her head. “You’re not exactly reassuring me.”

All trace of humor left him. His expression became grim once more. “We’ll go north as swiftly as we can. If we encounter enemy troops, I will get you past them. And when we catch up with this hideous war, I will carry you over the battle lines and see you safely into the company of friends. You have my word.”

Not even a flicker of a smile remained on Collette’s face.

“I’ll hold you to it.”