Lost Ones

CHAPTER 16

T he fox trotted through the woods, hoping for a vole or mouse or insomniac squirrel, anything to capture her mind. It helped to have left her human form behind. The scents of the earth and growing things and the creatures of the wood filled her mind. The sounds of the nighttime erased the voices that haunted her from the day. Here she could find joy. Here, she was only a fox, and not expected to be anything but that.

The night offered the fox freedom from so many things.

A small something twitched in the underbrush and her stomach growled hungrily. The fox paused, inhaling the scent. A rabbit, up past its bedtime. Her lips stretched. Kitsune always forgot that as a fox she could not smile.

She lunged, paws clawing the dirt as she darted after the rabbit. It fled between two thick, tangled bushes, a hitch in its step that revealed some old injury. A swift flash of copper fur pursued the rabbit as it weaved around the base of a large tree and ducked underneath a fallen, rotting birch.

The fox leaped the dead tree and came down on the other side, paws digging into the ground, damp with rain from the previous morning.

Kitsune caught the rabbit easily and dragged it down, the two animals tumbling over one another. It tried to rise before she could, but its ruined leg failed it and the rabbit faltered. The fox pinned it under her forepaws, chest heaving with adrenaline and the thrill of the hunt.

Yet it had not been much of a chase, or a challenge. Though her stomach grumbled and she could practically taste fresh rabbit on her tongue, a twinge of regret touched her. What joy could be found in catching prey that could not possibly outrun her?

The fox stepped back.

Panting, the rabbit stared at her a moment, eyes gleaming pink in the moonlight. It rolled over slowly, twitchingly aware of her presence, keeping her in its peripheral vision. Quivering, it took a single hop, then waited to see if she would pursue. When she did not, the rabbit bolted, limping even as it ran deeper into the woods.

Sadness made its nest in Kitsune’s heart. Yet this was not the ache of guilt and lost love that had plagued her before. This new pain came from acceptance. This pain would be with her for a very long time, and all she could do was hold it close. She had been face-to-face with Oliver, and nothing had changed. He did not hate her, but he did not love her. Whatever closeness the future might have held for them-as lovers or friends-she had ruined it by assaulting Julianna and abandoning them in Palenque.

Julianna.

The fox growled quietly, lay back her head to look at the moon, and wished she were a wolf so that she might howl gloriously in sorrow and fury.

Oliver’s woman had been cold to her, but she had also been right. Much as she hated it, Kitsune had to admire Julianna’s self-control. Were their roles reversed, the fox-woman would have torn out her throat.

As a fox, and a trickster, there were many things about humanity that she had never understood or even experienced. A lesson had been learned, now, and she would never be able to unlearn it. Humanity meant pain. More than that, it meant living with pain every day, and still going on as if the world had not changed around you.

So Kitsune would go forward. She would march to war and she would fight for King Hunyadi-for her own kind and for the Lost Ones as well. But when the war ended, she thought she might retreat to the Oldwood where Frost and Oliver had first found her and simply be a fox for a while. Years, perhaps. Centuries. As long as it took to forget the lesson that living as a woman had taught her.

A quiet step came behind her.

She spun, forgetting the moon, and saw the coyote emerging from the trees. He had come to her downwind, so that she would not catch his scent.

His eyes had always laughed, even when he did not wish them to, dancing with the mad light of the jester, the trickster, of Coyote. But the Sandman had taken one, and the other had no laughter in it tonight, only tenderness. His coat gleamed sleekly, and he looked not at all the rangy mutt of a beast that he often seemed.

The fox cocked her head, studying him.

The coyote came nearer, but stopped several feet away. They began to move in a circle, but when the fox halted the coyote kept going around her once, twice, a third time. He lay back his head and howled. It had not the beauty of the wolf’s cry, but the coyote’s lament broke her heart anew. He had borne witness to her pain today, and suffered so much of his own. Now he had come seeking her, though she had made it plain she wished to be alone.

The fox did not try to send him away.

The coyote came nearer. He nudged her snout playfully with his nose, then darted away. Confused, she only looked at him. Again, he nudged her, then loped several yards and glanced back.

Only then did she understand. He wanted her to run with him. To play. To lighten her heart.

It amazed her to discover how wrong she had always been about Coyote. If not for him, she would still be wallowing in hatred and guilt in the cave at the back of his den.

The fox barked a little laugh and gave chase, wondering what she would do when at last the coyote allowed her to catch him.

The ferries didn’t run in Boston Harbor in March, and wouldn’t until the tourists started to show up in May. Sheriff Norris could have contacted the local authorities and gotten their cooperation-Sara had urged him to do just that-but he had balked, not wanting to have to come up with an explanation for their off-season visit.

Cops.

Sara had spent her entire life trying to figure out the mind of a policeman-her father-and still hadn’t gotten very far. They were proud and stubborn and courageous and sometimes damned fools.

The sheriff had tracked down a local tour boat operator who was willing to take them out to George’s Island for a fee. Now, on a startlingly brisk March morning, Sara turned up her collar and pulled her jacket tight across her throat. The similarity to her father’s last known journey-on a rented boat out to a deserted island off the western coast of Scotland-was not lost on her. In truth, thinking of it made her feel a bit nauseated.

She stood inside the tour boat-its engine chugging, filling their noses with a terrible oil smoke-and tried to imagine how cold it would be if she allowed that acrid odor to drive her out on the deck for fresh air. Finally, nearly choking, she stepped out on the prow of the boat and let the wind buffet her, whisking away the smell. Salt and sea filled her lungs now and she breathed it in gratefully. Her teeth chattered and she shivered, but she surrendered to the cold, letting it settle into her body. Somehow it made her feel more alive.

Jackson and Marc Friedle- his name’s Robiquet, she thought, reminding herself for the hundredth time-remained inside for another minute or two, just talking. Every time Sara looked at him, she had difficulty seeing the human mask the goblin wore instead of the monstrous features that he had let them glimpse only twice. His true face would always be seared into her memory.

The seas were rough, even here in the harbor, and she stood with her legs wide so as not to lose her balance. The captain and mate moved the old boat easily through the water, laboring on a path between islands. Sara had been out here several times on tours when she was younger. Once her father had taken her out to George’s Island for a picnic, and she remembered it well.

The island loomed ahead. The dock and visitor center were abandoned, left with the haunted quiet of the off season. Beyond them, the fort rose up in an imposing wall of stone, half overgrown. It had been built partially into the natural terrain, and the overall effect made it seem far older than it was. The thirty-acre island had been used as a training area for Union soldiers during the Civil War, and later the fort had become a prison for Confederate soldiers.

Must be a thousand ghosts here, she thought.

The idea had come to her mind unbidden, but she pushed it out of her thoughts. There were enough impossible things in the world without having to worry about ghosts.

As they approached the docks, the captain slowed the boat. The engine quieted to a dull roar and smoke billowed around them. The waves rocked them and the captain moved forward with caution. The first mate came onto the prow and threw bumpers over the side. The ferry dock was too high, so the captain chugged them slowly up beside the one built for private boats.

Sheriff Norris came out onto the deck with Robiquet behind him. The fussy-looking man made no move to assist, but Jackson took a rope from the mate’s hands. When the mate had hopped up onto the dock, the sheriff tossed him the rope. They worked together to tie the old boat to the dock.

Sara didn’t wait for a hand up. She leaped from the boat to the dock. Robiquet hesitated, but she didn’t have the patience to wait for him. As she strode away, she heard Jackson talking to the captain, assuring him they’d be back to the boat in no more than an hour. Then the sheriff and Robiquet were hurrying after her. Apparently the goblin had gotten over his anxiety about leaving the boat.

When they reached the entrance to the fort, they found the gates padlocked.

Sheriff Norris turned to Robiquet. “There another way in?”

Sara started following the outer wall, turning to call back to the sheriff over her shoulder. “We’ll walk around. At the back, you can walk up the hill-it’s not too steep-and get right to the lookouts at the top of the fort.”

She kept ahead of them. It wasn’t just impatience that drove her on. If all of the things Robiquet told them were true-and she believed they were-then this spot was the closest she had come to the truth of her father’s fate since he’d vanished in December. Sara felt breathless as she hiked the outer edge of the island, keeping the fort to her right. The terrain became difficult, but she did not slow down. That sense of nearness to her father propelled her forward, even as a terrible dread weighed upon her heart.

Robiquet didn’t seem to have any trouble with the hills and pathways on the outside of the fort. Of course, he wasn’t human. Sheriff Norris, on the other hand, labored to keep up. The man was in decent condition, but he wasn’t exactly young, anymore.

Sara didn’t slow down to wait for them until she had reached the rear of the island. There, she stood and stared up at the squat stone towers where the lookouts would have been posted. The frigid wind whipped up off of the water and it was icy on the back of her neck, but she barely felt the cold.

When Jackson and Robiquet caught up, the sheriff gave her a hard look, an admonishment for not having waited. Sara ignored it, and she paid no attention to the way he stood, catching his breath, obviously hoping for a rest.

She started up the hill.

At the lookout post, she moved around the tower and dropped down to the walkway behind it. She could not help wishing that she had brought her camera. Even at the worst of times, Sara saw the world through a photographer’s eyes.

Again, she waited impatiently for the others to catch up with her. Robiquet kept pace with the sheriff, perhaps thinking that he would rather deal with Sara’s impatience than Jackson’s annoyance. When they reached the lookout, the sheriff sat on the edge of the wall and slid down to the walkway. Robiquet hopped down with the ease of a child.

Sara took the peculiar man’s measure once again, still seeing in her mind the image of his true face.

“Lead the way,” she said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Robiquet turned to look at her, the human mask he wore furrowing its brow in displeasure. “You think I would have dragged you all the way out here if I wasn’t sure?”

Sara shrugged. “I don’t know what I think, especially when it comes to you.”

Slowly, Robiquet nodded. “Fair enough, I suppose. Come along, then.”

He led them to a set of darkened stairs that led down into the tomblike stone passages of the old fort and prison. From above they could see that even during the day the stairwell descended into impenetrable darkness. Sara went to follow Robiquet, but Sheriff Norris put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head.

“I’ll go next.”

She understood immediately. There was no way to know what the goblin might try, down there in the dark, or what else they might encounter. If there was going to be trouble, Jackson wanted to be the first to come up against it. Sara bristled at the idea that she needed protecting, but she couldn’t deny that a part of her was relieved.

The whole world-even familiar places-had become unknown territory to her and the sheriff since they’d met Robiquet. If there was some passage here on the island to the world of legends and monsters that he had told them about, then she was relieved not to be the first one to descend into the dark.

But she followed.

Her father had never asked her for anything except to come home and see him from time to time, but she had failed him in that. Ted Halliwell had his shortcomings, no question. But Sara had spent the last few months coming to terms with the truth, that he had not been the only one at fault.

She needed to tell him that.

Sara blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dark. The stairs led straight down and then turned right. Her fingers trailed along the granite walls as she took each step, just in case she stumbled. The presence of Sheriff Norris in the passage below her only made it darker, blocking out any light that might have come from below.

“It’s this way,” Robiquet said, his voice echoing back to her from somewhere ahead.

Then she reached the bottom step, turned left, and found that the three of them had entered a chamber that must once have been a part of the prison. The walls were featureless, windowless stone, save for one in which a doorway led out into the huge, grassy staging area inside the fort. Whatever door had once hung there had long since been removed, leaving only a crumbling frame.

“Why isn’t there a door?” Sara asked.

“Maybe to keep people from getting trapped? The way they remove the doors from refrigerators at the dump,” Sheriff Norris suggested.

Robiquet studied that doorless frame.

“Or maybe because they’ve got a bad history of closed doors around here,” Sara suggested. The idea chilled her. Maybe whoever was responsible for overseeing the island as a National Historic Site had grown a little afraid of the doors on George’s Island over the years.

The sheriff looked at Robiquet. In the gray light that streamed in from outside, Sara saw the concern on Jackson’s face.

“But this isn’t the door we’re looking for, right?”

Robiquet shook his head. “No. Your world isn’t on the other side of the door we want. And there would be guards, remember? It’s this way.”

The fastidious man wiped his hands together as though just being in the damp, dusty fort offended his sensibilities. He did not lead them out onto the grass of the fort’s interior but across the chamber to another passage.

They followed him through what appeared to be a sequence of cells or bunk rooms, ending up in a large chamber whose entire inner wall was open to the vast courtyard at the heart of the fort. Wan daylight flooded the room, and Sara welcomed it.

“It’s here,” Robiquet said.

Surprised, Sara narrowed her eyes. At the back of the chamber, recessed into the granite, was a heavy iron door. The first door they had seen inside the fort.

Her heart skipped. A moment of uncertainty made her pause.

Sheriff Norris had no such hesitation. He strode over to the door as though confronting a troublemaker in a bar, every inch the cop that he’d been all of his adult life. The sheriff reached out and grabbed the door handle and gave it a pull.

Rust flaked and sifted to the floor, but the door did not budge.

“It’s not going to open for you. What kind of secret would it be if any ordinary human could walk right through?”

Sara stared at the door, then stepped up beside Robiquet. In the half-light at the back of that chamber, she felt she could almost see the goblin face beneath his human guise.

“Open it,” she said.

A flicker of fear crossed his face. Then he nodded and stepped up to the door. Sheriff Norris moved out of his way.

Robiquet grasped the handle and pulled. With a scrape of metal upon stone, it swung toward them.

Sara stared, a sick knot twisting in her stomach.

“What the fuck is this?” Sheriff Norris demanded. “What does this mean?”

Robiquet shook his head slowly, dumbfounded. “I have no idea.”

On the other side, the door had been bricked up with stones and mortar. Wherever it had once led, it was a dead end now. A wall.

“Jackson?” Sara said.

The sheriff ran a hand over the stones. He dragged his fingers over the mortar. When he turned to look at her, his eyes were full of frustration and fear.

“This is recent. Someone built this thing just in the past few weeks. No more than that. Maybe less.”

The three of them stood together for long moments, speechless, just staring at the wall. Sara was surprised that it was Robiquet who spoke first.

“I don’t know what this means,” he said. “It’s been sealed from the other side. In all likelihood, it isn’t just a wall. There are probably magical wards placed upon it as well. Whoever did this meant it to be permanent.”

“So what now?” Sara asked.

Sheriff Norris ran his hand over the wall again. “Now we go home to Maine,” he said, turning toward Robiquet. “If this Falconer got through, it wasn’t here, right? I mean, there’s got to be a door closer to Kitteridge-closer to the Bascombes’ house. Where did you first come through?”

Robiquet nodded. “It’s on Chadbourne Bridge.”

Sara looked at him. “On the bridge?”

“You’ll see.”

“Then you’ll come with us?”

He swallowed nervously and glanced away. When he looked up again, his gaze had turned hard.

“I loved Melisande. I don’t mean I was in love with her, but I adored her. And her children were always good to me. He changed later in his life, after he lost her, but in the early days Max Bascombe had a wonderful vigor. Among ordinary men, he was extraordinary. Max had a keen intelligence that made him the smartest man in any room, but he could set anyone at ease. Melisande was seduced by his intellect and his charisma. She loved to dance and to laugh, and Max shared those passions. He made her believe there was magic in just being ordinary. Losing her destroyed him in many ways. He rarely laughed, and he never danced after she was gone. He became arrogant and grim. But I never forgot the man he had been, and how much he had loved her. I swore my loyalty to him because of that.

“But I ran away, Sara. I never should have done that. The only way to make it right is to go back, and hope that we can all find answers to our questions in the place where this all began.”

In the dark, the soldiers of Atlantis prepared for war. From time to time, one of them would shudder and glance up into the star-scattered night sky, perhaps thinking how strange it was to encounter such a chill breeze so far to the south.

The winter man eddied and danced, nothing but ice and cold wind, a small storm of consciousness. Frost swirled in the darkness above the invasion force that Ty’Lis and the Atlantean High Council had mustered on the Isthmus of the Conquistadors. At least eight battalions of soldiers had come ashore-thousands of men and women in the armor of Atlantis, green-white faces turned upward to watch for the coming of dawn, when they would march north to engage King Hunyadi’s troops. When their conquest would begin.

Frost studied the glass ships of Atlantis that sat just off the shore of the Isthmus. The soldiers spilled over the edge of the deck and walked underwater toward land, weapons at the ready. Air sharks knifed across the night sky. Octopuses floated close to the ground, tentacles drooping, dragging along the dirt. They kept near the water, touching the surf.

The first of the giants had come up out of the ocean not more than an hour before. Three more surfaced now, two females and a male, seawater spilling off of them in a salty froth. Their eyes were half-lidded and they walked sluggishly toward where the first arrival sat on the ground, a hundred yards from the nearest troop encampment. A tremor went through the ground as they all sat heavily. One closed her eyes and began to snore, though she remained sitting up, slumped over, practically in her own lap.

The little ice storm watched it all, deeply troubled. There were sorcerers down there, and Perytons as well. Many Perytons. For now they were at rest. They had sent scouts ahead, but for the moment the only creatures high in the sky were the air sharks, and they did not even notice the winter man’s presence. Frost had no flesh for them to rend.

Still, he felt afraid. Not for himself, but for the future-for the outcome of the battle that the dawn would bring.

There were sorcerers as well. He felt sure one of them must be Ty’Lis, but he dared not get close enough to them to find out. The rank-and-file soldiers would shiver with the chill of his presence when they felt that cold wind passing above and around them, but the High Council of Atlantis would not assign such an anomaly to odd weather. Ty’Lis, especially, would know the winter man was there, and Frost couldn’t take that risk. King Hunyadi and the Euphrasian Borderkind had to know what sort of force they were facing.

To the north of the Atlantean invasion force were four or five ragtag battalions of Yucatazcan warriors. Their armor had been decorated with paint and feathers and the symbols of their Mayan, Aztec, and Incan ancestors. These were proud, noble, brutal warriors, yet their invasion had been driven back by Hunyadi’s forces. Many had obviously been killed and now they were regrouping, promoting officers to replace those whose corpses had been left in Euphrasia.

Yet something had gone wrong. They seemed sluggish and grim. Frost thought he knew why, though, and Hunyadi would be very interested to hear it.

He took a final look at the glass ships anchored off of the isthmus. The temptation to destroy them, or see them destroyed, was great. But the army of Atlantis was so formidable he would advise Hunyadi to leave the glass ships alone. If fortune allowed Euphrasia to force the invaders to retreat, they had to have a way to flee. If the ships were destroyed they would have nowhere to run, and would be forced to stand and fight. Frost thought that might be a spectacularly bad turn of events.

You’re getting ahead of yourself, he thought. First, Hunyadi’s army had to stop the conquerors from invading Euphrasia.

In a gust of wind, Frost slipped across the sky, away from the troops and the glass ships. He traveled swiftly southwest. The indigo night glittered with a billion pinprick stars. It was warm, but not nearly so warm as it had been to the south. With the breeze blowing across the isthmus and the cool water, he felt good. Stronger.

He had left Collette in the shadow of a small, abandoned chapel on the outskirts of a small fishing village. The isthmus had little by way of farmland or fields for grazing. For those willing to settle on that unforgiving stretch of land, fishing seemed the only industry, and the only way to stay alive. Still, the chapel-dedicated to some local god or conscripted saint-stood crumbling and dark. Frost had seen such things many times before. Either the village had become prosperous enough to think they no longer needed to appease their god, or so withered that they no longer had faith that they could be saved.

The icy wind whipped across the roof tiles and through the gaps in stones. Just behind the chapel, where no one on the overgrown path could have seen him, Frost collected mist and ice and moisture from the air, pulling his substance together to sculpt his body anew. He glanced around, icicle hair chiming, and the ice of his face cracked as he frowned. He had expected to find Collette asleep, but did not see her.

Something shifted in the deeper darkness beneath a stand of trees perhaps fifty feet to the rear of the chapel. The petite figure resolved itself into Collette Bascombe. She had been in a stone grotto built by the architects of the chapel, with a shrine to whatever they had worshipped there. She emerged now, pale features illuminated in moonlight. With her reddish hair, mischievous eyes, and narrow face, she almost looked like a trickster.

“What is it?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Frost cocked his head, studying her. “You look different. It almost seems that with the truth of your heritage, the legendary part of your bloodline is coming to the fore.”

Collette shook her head. “I don’t feel any different.”

“That’s a lie, though whether to me or yourself, I don’t know. You have magic in you. Your mother was Borderkind. As Legend-Born, you’re called to something greater than the ordinary life into which you were born.”

“Bullshit.” She smiled. “You sound like Oliver. I’ve been trying to tell him since he was a little kid that ordinary people choose to be ordinary. We all have magic in us, no matter who gave birth to us. Maybe the legendary have longer lives, and maybe they can do things that people can’t, but it seems to me most of you are just as lost and wandering as the average guy or girl. It’s what you do, not what you are.”

Frost didn’t challenge the assertion, but he did ask her why she had that grin on her face.

“Because I think my brother’s finally come around to my way of thinking.”

The winter man made no reply. Last he had seen Oliver, whatever friendship had once existed between them had turned to sour resentment. He understood and regretted this, but there was little he could do about it. He could not travel back through time, and even if he had that ability, Frost wasn’t sure he would do things any differently. Collette and Oliver were still alive-thus far the schemes of Atlantis had been thwarted. How could he regret that?

“So, what’s our move?” Collette asked, ignoring his silence.

“The invasion force gathers to the north. We leave now. When we reach their encampments, I will have to carry you over them to make absolutely certain they do not see us.”

Collette frowned. “Over them? As in, through the air?”

The winter man smiled. “It would take us a very long time to dig a tunnel beneath them.”

She shook her head. “Wait. Can’t we just go around? Through the Veil? Head north and cross through again when we know we’ve gone far enough?”

Frost narrowed his eyes. “There are too many variables. Distance and time are different on the other side, as you well know. I am not certain where we would emerge in your world, now. We need to go directly to King Hunyadi, and as swiftly as we’re able. My observations about the invasion force may be of great value to-”

“All right. I get it.” Collette glanced around. “Which way?”

He pointed toward the path and they struck out from the chapel, headed due north.

“This should be loads of fun,” she muttered.

The winter man smiled to himself in the moonlit night. He wondered if Collette had begun to trust him. And he wondered if he deserved her trust. While he did not want her to die, what truly mattered to him was that one of the Legend-Born survive to see the end of this war.

“Don’t scream.”

Collette shivered. She didn’t like the sound of that. But there was precious little to like about anything tonight. They’d walked more than an hour before seeing the dark shape undulating across the night sky above, blotting out the stars as it passed. Frost had turned to her and with a gesture had lowered the temperature around them by fifty degrees. Ice crystals had formed on the air and her breath fogged.

The thing in the air had slid away from them. Her pulse steadied and she took a breath, then asked Frost what it had been. The answer had made her feel like throwing up. A shark? How could anyone be safe if there were sharks that swam through the air as easily as others swam through water? He believed that however the Atlantis-bred monster located its prey, it would have to do with heat or scent. His creating a little pocket of winter around her had hidden her from it.

In the midst of freaking out, she felt grateful for that much. Not that she wanted to be grateful to Frost, but she couldn’t help it. She and the winter man had spent a good deal of time, now, keeping each other alive.

But what he’d just said made her forget any favors he’d ever done her.

“What do you mean, ‘Don’t scream’?”

Frost narrowed his eyes. Ice-blue mist swirled up from them. “Precisely what I said. You will want to scream. You will be afraid. But I swear to you that I will not drop you.”

They had moved on from the air shark sighting perhaps another half mile. From the scrim of a stony ridge, they saw the troops mustered on the isthmus. Many were sleeping, but others were on patrol. Collette found herself strangely unafraid of encountering Atlantean soldiers, but if they were seen and a patrol raised the alarm, she feared what might answer that call.

She turned to Frost. “I won’t scream.”

The winter man nodded. If he doubted her, he did not put voice to those doubts.

He burst into a swirl of snow and ice. Frigid wind buffeted her. Collette shivered again and turned up her collar. Before her eyes the storm that was Frost grew, churning. The blizzard rose twenty feet in the air and spread a dozen in either direction.

She held her breath, staring in amazement at the power of the storm. The power of the winter man.

Then she gasped as the blizzard rushed at her. It whipped around her, circling a moment, and her teeth chattered. Her muscles clenched and she hugged herself against the icy grip of the storm. When the blizzard lifted her up off of the ground, blowing her up into the sky as though she had been catapulted, Collette nearly did scream.

Her mouth opened, but the freezing wind seared her throat and she clamped her lips. Her eyes went wide and she could not even curl in upon herself for warmth. The blizzard hurtled her through the air, buffeting her, carrying her on a slingshot wind, in a cocoon of driving snow. Her bones ached with the cold and she tried to breathe but found she could not. The wind lashed her face and she felt despair grip her heart. How could she survive this?

Barely aware of what she was seeing, she glimpsed enormous ships of glass in the distance, festooned with sails. She saw troops massing below as she spun across the sky in the grip of the blizzard.

Then the wind lessened. She found herself sliding downward, drifting. The blizzard buffeted her, blasted her, keeping her aloft. Her arms and legs pinwheeled as she descended.

The ground rushed up. At the last moment a final, powerful gust slowed her fall. Collette landed in a pile of fresh snow, tumbling through the white stuff and then onto rough, prickly grass and rocky earth.

The cold withdrew. The warmth of the southern night felt like a gift. Her flesh was seared. Her cheeks burned with the bite of the cold that had enveloped her. It was like nothing else she had ever felt and she wondered if she had frostbite.

The thought frightened her, but slowly, feeling and warmth returned to all but her hands and cheeks. Carefully, she sat up.

The snow was gone. Frost stood over her.

“We have to go. The hours before dawn are few, and we have no time to lose.”

Collette stared at him. “Don’t ever do that again.”

His eyes narrowed. “What else-”

“Leave me behind, next time.”

She wasn’t sure if she meant it, and it seemed clear Frost was not sure either. Collette didn’t care. She got up and marched north with him, bones still aching. It took a very long time for full feeling to return to her hands.

They’d gone only a few miles when they reached the end of the Isthmus. The Kingdom of Euphrasia spread out to the east and west. Already, Collette felt safer, and less inclined to be hostile toward Frost.

A Euphrasian cavalry patrol stopped them on the road. When they discovered that these strangers walking north were Frost of the Borderkind and Collette Bascombe, Legend-Born, a kind of euphoria seemed to come over them. One of the soldiers dismounted and gave Collette his horse. As she slid into the saddle, she felt a grim determination settle into her. They had arrived at last. Survived, at least this long. And now the war would truly begin.

Frost flowed through the air beside her as she rode, and one of Hunyadi’s horsemen paced her on the other side. The familiar feel of the horse beneath her, the leather reins in her hand, filled her with new vigor.

They rode through the battle lines set up by Euphrasian troops, who were dug in and waiting for the attack they knew would come with the dawn. The cavalryman signaled to the soldiers on the ground and soon voices could be heard. Collette heard them calling her name. At first she didn’t understand. How could any of these people know her name? Then she heard shouts of “Legend-Born,” and she understood.

The human soldiers were all Lost Ones. She represented the hope of their parents and grandparents and ancestors. For those who had been born in her world and crossed over themselves, she would seem even more like a savior come to their rescue. The legend said she could get them home again. And for the others, she would seem like Moses, ready to bring them to the Promised Land.

If only they knew that the world they so wanted to return to was only a more ordinary reflection of this one, she wondered if they would still long to go there. But perhaps they would. This world wasn’t home. Not really. They wanted to be reunited with their people. She could understand.

The thought made her wonder about Oliver. She had done her best not to think of him over the past few hours. But Collette felt sure he was all right. She had come to believe that if anything happened to him-if death came for her brother-she would know. Once, the idea would have seemed foolish to her. But now she knew it was not so far-fetched.

Hope went through the ranks as they passed. When she rode into the camp on the hill overlooking the battlefield, the word continued to spread. She could almost feel morale rising. Frost whipped along beside her, a blizzard sliding through the night air, but she could almost hear laughter coming from the storm he made.

The dour winter man was happy.

A small group of men and women in uniform-officers and advisors-were clustered outside a large tent at the apex of the hill. Twenty yards away, the cavalryman who’d accompanied them held up a hand to halt them. Collette pulled on the reins. She and the horseman both dismounted. The winter man coalesced out of the air and stood beside her. A young soldier-no more than a girl, really-ran over to take the reins of the two horses and led them away. Another, a boy of perhaps sixteen, came over and saluted the cavalryman.

“Run and tell the king that Frost has come with Collette Bascombe.”

The boy’s mouth opened in a kind of gasp, and then he grinned as he turned to bolt up the hill toward the tent of King Hunyadi. Collette’s heart soared at the reaction her arrival had brought out in the troops, but a shadow lingered there as well. These people had no idea of the kind of horrors Atlantis had mustered. Hunyadi might, but the soldiers likely did not. She feared for them.

Moments later, the boy came back down the hill. Behind him walked a bearded man with a wide-brimmed hat and a cane with a brass head that glinted in the moonlight. When he passed the conversing officers, they fell silent and shifted slightly away from him. Power seemed to radiate from him. Yet from the officers’ reaction she knew this could not be the king.

The man shooed the boy away and came down to meet them. He ignored Collette completely, turning to Frost.

“I’d not thought to see you alive again.”

The winter man cocked his head. His fingers were like ice knives and from the way he stood, Collette wondered if Frost would attack the man or embrace him. He did neither.

“Are you disappointed?” the winter man asked.

“Quite the opposite,” the tall, bearded man replied. He cast a quick glance at Collette and a smile touched his lips. “You’ve done well, Arcturus.”

Frost bristled. He tossed his head back, hair clinking. “That’s not my name.”

The man waved away the complaint. Collette saw that the brass head of his cane was the head of a fox, and she remembered Oliver telling her about him. The enigmatic Wayland Smith.

“Atlantis attacks at dawn,” Frost said. “I have details on their forces for the king.”

Smith nodded. “Most of which I’ve already provided.”

“I also observed the Yucatazcan warriors-those who retreated are now regrouping. But they don’t seem to have the heart for it. I wonder if they haven’t realized, by now, that they’re being manipulated.”

Wayland Smith frowned. “That may be, old friend, but they will still fight. They will fight and die because that is the command from Palenque. King Mahacuhta is dead, but Prince Tzajin lives. The only way the Yucatazcans will stop fighting is if the crown commands it, and that’s not going to happen as long as Tzajin is a prisoner in Atlantis.”

Frost swore under his breath. Cold mist plumed upward from the edges of his eyes again. “You’re sure of that?”

“I saw him with my own eyes. Hunyadi needed a spy.”

The winter man seemed surprised. “That’s unlike you, taking so overt a role. You so love working in the shadows.”

Smith gripped the head of his cane and glanced again at Collette, who’d watched the whole exchange.

“Time, I think, for you to speak to the king.”