Lost Ones

CHAPTER 21

“When I see the Wayfarer again, I shall kill him,” Cheval Bayard said, her accent thickening with rage.

Leicester Grindylow muttered a curse in agreement. They had raced down corridors and broken down doors and, by sheer luck, discovered a twisting spiral staircase encased in glittering glass with views of Atlantis out of the window panes. The steps were narrow and steep and the glass walls smooth, but Grin and Cheval and their companions descended with reckless abandon. Every second put them in greater peril.

Cheval’s silver hair flew behind her as she slid down the wild corkscrew of the staircase. They must have gone down several stories by now but had not come to a landing or a door, and Grin wondered if the spiral went all the way to the bottom.

How the hell had he come to this? His life had been so simple, once upon a time. A bit of mischief, a lot of beer, tending bar now and again…it had been a good life. But then the bloody Atlanteans had sent the Myth Hunters out after the Borderkind, and Grin had to make a decision-fight or hide. Sitting about drinking a pint, watching the world go by, was no longer an option.

He’d never been much for hiding.

Now here he was, watching out for Cheval, whose every glance broke his heart. Oh, he’d no romantic illusions. Lovely as she was, her fragility had been the thing that drew him to her. Damsels in distress. He’d always been a damned fool for them.

Grin kept his right hand on the wall and leaped down the stairs six or seven at a time, slipping and falling on his rear more than once, keeping his weight backward so he would not topple ass over teakettle. Several of the Nagas were ahead of them, and he had a feeling the others were lying dead back in that chamber where the boy who had once been Prince Tzajin had turned into a sorcerous trap. The Nagas slid down the stairs in pursuit of Frost, Oliver, and Kitsune. Blue Jay and Li followed Cheval and Grin.

A wave of heat swept down, prickling the skin at the back of Grin’s neck, scorching him. Cheval cursed in French. Grin reached out and took her hand, then released it quickly. Tethered by their hands, they’d only end up falling.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw Li moving slowly, coming down the steps backward. He had both hands up and fire streamed from his fingers, liquid flame that roiled in the spiral staircase and melted the glass windows. Something popped and bubbled in those flames, and whatever chased them began to scream as it burned.

“Faster,” Grin snapped.

“Any faster and I shall fall.”

From below, around the spiral, Grin heard Oliver shout. He reached out and grabbed Cheval by the arm, not worrying about being gentle. She stumbled, but he hoisted her up a moment and then set her down, even as he kept going.

“Wait!”

She called after him but he did not slow. Cheval would be hesitant to alter her form on those glass stairs. The kelpy’s body would be unwieldy in that spiral enclosure, and her hooves would slip too easily.

“Grin, what’s going on?” Blue Jay shouted.

“Not a sodding clue!”

He didn’t wait for Li or Blue Jay to catch up. Scrambling, sliding, leaping, he went round the spiral and discovered that the stairs did not go all the way to the ground floor of the library. Oliver, Frost, Kitsune, and the Nagas had spilled out into the largest chamber they’d encountered. High-ceilinged like a ballroom, its walls were covered with what might have been ancient Atlantean writing, sigils and words scrawled into every surface, including the floor and ceiling. Lights floated in the middle of the room like buoys bobbing in the sea.

The lights weren’t alone.

Eels filled the chamber, long things with prehistoric faces and snapping jaws full of needle teeth. They darted and swam through the air. As Grin leaped the last few stairs and landed in a crouch on the ground, long arms ready to fight, he saw Frost make a pass of his hand and freeze two of the eels dead. They fell to the stone floor and shattered.

Kitsune growled and reached up to grab at an eel as it lunged for her face. The Sword of Hunyadi whispered through the air and Oliver slashed the eel in two, then spun to hack at another.

Grin saw immediately there were too many of them to fight in an enclosed space. Several others were slithering through the arched door on the far side of the chamber and beyond them a pair of figures-sorcerers, no doubt-stood silhouetted. Frost flowed through the room on a draft of frigid air. Ice formed on the walls. The eels slowed. Snow whipped in a churning whirlwind of blizzard and then froze right in front of the door, sealing the sorcerers-and any other eels-out for the moment.

Two of the eels darted down from the ceiling toward Grin, blotting out the floating lights. He narrowed his eyes, waited for his moment, and reached out and snatched one of them by its middle. He had no time to stop the other. Instead, he fed it his left forearm, jamming flesh and bone into its jaws as hard as he could, trying to keep it from being able to bite down hard.

Dropping to the ground, he beat them both against the floor. Long sliver teeth tore into his left arm. But he swung the eel in his right hand down again and again and it split open, spilling wretched viscera. With his right hand free, he pried the teeth of the other eel off of his arm, then used both hands to rip its jaws open, tearing half its upper body in two.

He heard Cheval cry his name.

Spinning, he saw her jump to the bottom of the stairs. The light from outside the windows-the perfect sky above Atlantis-made her beauty even more ethereal. But the fear and fury on her face made her terrible as well. The others were still fighting the eels, but Cheval ran toward him.

“I told you to wait!” Grin snapped.

“I’m not going to let anyone else die to protect me. I cannot survive more grief,” she replied. Her eyes locked on his a moment, then glanced past him.

Grin saw the eels reflected in her gaze. He turned as they swept in. Ice flowed across the room and brought one of them down, but there were just too damned many. As he reached up to bat one away, another swept in from the side and sank its jaws into his abdomen. He shouted in pain and began to pry it off, tearing its teeth away, puncturing its eyes with his fingers.

Even as he did, sensing his weakness, others swarmed him. Grin ducked his head, knowing it was futile. They were too fast and too savage. He would not get out of this chamber alive, would not leave Atlantis. The eels would strip the flesh from his bones.

Then Cheval was there. She moved so swiftly he caught his breath watching her as she tore two of the eels from the air and ripped them open. A third surged toward her throat. Cheval stopped it, but her left hand grasped its lower jaw and those needle teeth clamped down. It tossed its head up, wriggling as her fingers went down its gullet.

She cried out, more in rage than pain.

Grin ran toward her. Cheval glanced at him. She did not see the eel that knifed through the air toward her back, jaws gaping wide. Grin shouted her name, reaching for her, but his fingers scraped only air. The eel struck her lower spine with a splintering of bone and a rending of flesh. Her belly bulged and then it burst out of her stomach in a splash of blood that soaked the front of her dress, then tore the fabric, boring through her. Burrowing.

Cheval went down on her knees.

Grin heard more screams behind him, but they seemed to come from far away, muffled and inconsequential.

She could still live, he told himself. If we get out of here. If we’re gone.

There was only one way out, now.

Grin grabbed her around the waist-the eel still in her-and ran toward the glass wall overlooking the plaza. The boggart gritted his teeth, dropped his shoulder, and hurled himself and Cheval at the window. It shattered with harsh music and then they were falling, tumbling over one another, twisting down through the air five stories. Grin pulled Cheval toward him, made sure he was underneath her when they hit the stones.

His back hit first. His head struck the plaza. Bones in his skull cracked like a lightning strike. Blackness swept in. As he began to lose consciousness, he felt the eel trapped between him and Cheval twisting, biting at his thick, tough skin. And he felt Cheval’s blood soaking his clothes and the cold touch of her cheek against his own. Deathly cold.

The bright sunlight over the island of Atlantis seared his eyes for a moment, and then he slipped into soothing darkness and knew no more.

Jellyfish swarmed the chamber, coming down the spiral staircase in a wave. Li had burned hundreds of them already, but with the eels now diving toward him, the Guardian of Fire could not destroy them all. A few moments were all the jellyfish needed.

Blue Jay danced in ancient rhythm, swung his arms, summoning his razor-sharp, mystic wings. He sliced an eel in two, then began beating away the jellyfish, cutting them to ribbons as they tried to attack him. Tendrils lashed his face, leaving burning streaks there. He hissed in pain but kept fighting.

A Naga arrow punctured a jellyfish only inches from his eyes and the thing sailed away, impaled. A heartbeat later, one of the Nagas fell hard upon the floor, writhing in agony as the jellyfish covered him, stinging, swarming, killing. The Naga twitched, then lay still save for the undulating jellyfish.

As he fought, Blue Jay glanced around and caught sight of another Naga down, being feasted upon by eels, their bodies waving in the air, as though underwater. A gout of liquid fire engulfed the Naga and those eels, charring them instantly. Then Li raced past Blue Jay, flames and heat flowing from his hands. But he seemed dim, somehow, and the fire weaker. Flickering. Finally burning out.

Cold wind swirled and eddied in the room.

Frost darted around that chamber, lashing out at the things that attacked them. Jellyfish fell to the ground and shattered, frozen solid.

Oliver swung Hunyadi’s sword. His arms and face were streaked with red lashes from the jellyfish, but he’d managed to keep them off of him. Frost moved toward him, helping, keeping the Legend-Born safe as his first priority.

A large section of the glass wall had become a jagged hole, warm island wind and sunshine breezing in. Blue Jay’s stomach clenched with dread, wondering if Grin and Cheval could survive such a fall.

As the room filled with more jellyfish, more eels, he knew.

“Frost!” he shouted.

The winter man and Oliver both turned to look at him.

“We’re screwed. Get the hell out of here.”

Even as the words left his mouth, they were punctuated by a scream unlike anything he had ever heard, mournful and full of surrender. He spun to see that in seconds, Kitsune had been overwhelmed by the jellyfish. They lashed themselves to her face and hair. Some wrapped around her arms. Still others moved beneath her cloak, stinging and struggling there.

Kitsune ran for the shattered window.

Oliver reached out for her as she passed him. Blue Jay saw the way their eyes met, the regret and terror in that glance. The trickster lunged after her as well, but he was too far away. Kitsune seemed almost to dance out through the broken window, for a single breath hanging in midair. Oliver planted a hand on the flat, unbroken glass above the shattered section of window, and it cracked, spiderweb fractures running through the glass as he reached out and grabbed hold of her cloak, that copper-red fur, glittering in the sunshine.

The jellyfish attached to Kitsune stung his hand, several of them in a single moment. Reflexively, he opened his fingers.

Kitsune caught Blue Jay’s eyes as she fell. Her mouth worked silently, speaking words none of them would ever hear. She might have said I’m sorry, but he couldn’t be sure.

“No!” Jay shouted.

Oliver stepped back from the gaping, jagged hole in the glass wall.

Blue Jay didn’t slow down. He barreled past Oliver and out into the air above the plaza. The beauty of Atlantis, its muted colors and gentle spires and elegant curves spread out before him, with the green-blue harbor beyond. He caught his breath, wondering if this would be the last thing he ever saw.

The trickster bent, arms outstretched, and summoned his mystic wings once more. They blurred beneath his arms and he felt-as always-the pull of his other form, the bird whose soaring flight was such pleasure to him. But the blue bird could not save Kitsune. Only the trickster could help her now.

It felt like fire. The stings of the jellyfish burned her flesh and their venom raced through her blood. The stones below rushed up to meet her and Kitsune relished their approach, the escape from pain that impact would bring.

With her fingers, she traced the air, feeling it rushing between them.

A hand gripped hers. Her legs twisted and her free arm pinwheeled and she felt herself caught, her descent slowing. New stings pierced her and she wanted to let go, to fall, but the hand would not let go.

“Change!” Blue Jay shouted at her.

Her weight dragged on him. She tried to focus, realized he was moving and dancing on the air, the only way he could stay up without becoming a bird. Those blue wings that blurred, barely visible, under his arms, were not enough.

Reaching down to the center of herself where there was no pain, no fear-where there was only the fox-Kitsune changed. Her flesh rippled. Her fur clung to her, and as it did the jellyfish were shed from her body. She diminished into the fox-her spirit did not diminish with her flesh, however. The jellyfish on her head and forelegs were still there, too.

Blue Jay touched the ground. He reached down and stripped the last of the jellyfish from her, hurling them away, then set her on the stones of the great plaza. Her veins were on fire with venom, her skin lashed and scarred. Kitsune could not rise.

On her side, the fox saw Cheval and Grin locked in a rigid embrace. There were broken limbs, tangled together, where they lay on the ground twenty feet away. The fox turned her eyes upward and looked into the sky above the plaza-surrounded by the architecture of Atlantis-and saw the body of a Naga falling, serpentine body whipping in the wind, toward the ground. It struck hard and did not move.

The sky filled with horrors. Jellyfish and eels, yes, but also several huge air sharks and dozens of octopuses. They poured from the library, but most had already been there, waiting for them to emerge. Razor fish slid across the sky. Octopuses descended, tentacles dredging toward the stone plaza.

They were dead.

The fox wished she could cry, but her pain had taken even that from her.

A sudden eruption of snow and ice burst from the broken window on the fifth floor of the Great Library. A dark figure rode the storm. The blizzard swept toward the ground and she knew that, within the snow and wind, the winter man carried Oliver to safety.

Still alive, Kitsune thought. That was good. Of course, without Smith, they would all die.

She howled, as if to call out for him.

Perhaps Blue Jay understood, for he began to bellow at the sky, screaming the Wayfarer’s name in fury. His voice echoed off of the polished surfaces of the buildings around them.

The side of the library-the place where they’d all gone out the window-became quickly engulfed in fire. The fox let her head loll back and saw Atlantean soldiers moving in from the edges of the plaza, blocking any hope of escape. Not that they had anywhere to go. They were on an island. Several sorcerers joined the soldiers.

Blue Jay swore. He’d always loved the curses of the ordinary world, of hard men and laughing women. It was part of his charm. Now he scowled as he leaped into the air. Only when the tentacles came down did Kitsune understand that the octopuses had reached him. His blue wings blurred the air again as he danced. He slashed the tentacles from the nearest one, but not all. Not all.

Two tentacles wrapped around his left arm. With his right, Blue Jay cut the octopus’s head in two. It flopped to the ground, dead instantly, stinking, rotting innards spilling onto the stones. But those two tentacles dragged Blue Jay down with it.

He planted his boots and got up, struggling to free himself from that entanglement, pulling against the dead thing. The sound of its corpse sliding wetly over the stones sickened her. Kitsune felt as though she no longer lived in her body. The fox began to breathe quickly, raggedly. The fire on her skin, under her fur, had become all that she knew. Somewhere outside of her mind now-or perhaps withdrawn deeply inside-she could only lie there and watch.

Blue Jay tore himself loose from the dead octopus just as a second descended upon him from above. He didn’t have time to turn, to dance, to slash, to even raise his fists in defense.

The octopus picked him up off the ground like a marionette. Its tentacles wrapped around Blue Jay’s arms and legs, neck and middle. It lifted him up, and then it broke him. Legs and arms, neck and spine, all snapped like kindling.

Blue Jay changed, then, one last bit of magic. One last bit of mischief for the trickster. He became the blue bird again, and slid from the grasp of the octopus.

The bird fell to the ground, struck the stones, and did not move again. Three lone blue feathers spiraled down to land nearby.

The fox wept.

Collette felt wired, like she’d had several gallons of coffee. Adrenaline pumped through her, even though her arms and legs ached. Her clothes were covered with blood and the stink of it filled her nostrils. Twice she’d helped hold together the guts of a soldier so badly wounded that she had to vomit; both times she had returned immediately to the surgeon’s side, doing her part. Doing her best. The smell of blood up inside her nose, the taste of it on her tongue, helped. It was far preferable to the shameful reminder of her vomit.

These men and women needed her.

They were dying down there on the battlefield. Her soul felt torn between the urge to run to their aid-to throw herself into the fight and do whatever she could to help with blade or club or bare hands-and the terror that threatened to drive her screaming over the hill, through the trees, and off into the unfamiliar lands of Euphrasia.

For half an hour, the urge to pee had been nearly overwhelming. Now it became painful. For the moment, the makeshift battlefield hospital-a dying place or a surviving place, but not really a healing place-had become quiet save for the moaning of the wounded. Another wave would arrive shortly, but her opportunity had come.

With a glance, she found Julianna. After all she had endured, some of the beauty seemed to have been eroded from her. Her hair was tied back with a strip of cloth and her clothes were also bloodied. Dirt smeared her face, hands, and arms. Dark crescents had appeared under her eyes. Yet she seemed more herself than ever before. All of the ephemeral qualities had been scoured away, and what remained was a woman Collette loved dearly, and felt proud to know. If they had to endure this, she knew they could survive it together.

Julianna waved. Collette smiled and dashed away toward King Hunyadi’s tent. It seemed somehow disrespectful to piss that close to the king’s tent, but there were precious few places she could go and be out of sight of the advisors and medics and aides, not to mention the wounded.

Once past the tent, away from prying eyes, she noticed the stand of trees at the top of the ridge behind the encampment. Twenty paces or less. Collette raced to the trees and went over the ridge just a few feet, dropped her pants, and crouched behind an old oak with a massive trunk. A sigh escaped her as she relieved herself, the sheer pleasure of reducing the pressure on her bladder enough to make her shiver.

“Not that much different from animals, really,” said a voice.

Collette turned even as she rose, tugging up her pants and fumbling with the buttons. She staggered, nearly fell, her boot sliding in the soft, damp spot where she’d just pissed.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded.

Coyote stood leaning against a nearby tree smoking a cigarette he must have rolled himself. The pungent herbal odor made her nostrils flare.

“Ordinary folk, I mean,” Coyote went on. “You people. Not much different from animals.”

The lithe little man, that legend, glanced up at her from beneath narrowed brows and cast her a dangerous look. His arms were thin but corded with muscle. He stepped away from the tree, taking a long tug from his cigarette. Smoke plumed from his nostrils.

“I should’ve guessed you were the type for cheap thrills.” Collette stood her ground. Then she frowned. Something was wrong. It took her a moment to figure it out, but then she stared at him.

“You’re not Coyote.”

He faltered a moment, then took another drag and gave a soft laugh, both self-deprecating and cynical.

“Coyote’s missing an eye. I saw him earlier. If he could’ve grown one back, he would’ve done it already.”

He sighed. “There’s always someone cleverer than you are, girl. Hard lesson to learn.”

A knot formed in Collette’s chest. No mischief lingered in Coyote’s black eyes, just a wrongness that made her stand a bit straighter, lean away from him.

And then he changed, but not from man to animal. The air rippled around him, his features blurred, and where Coyote had been there now stood a different man entirely. He had silver hair, and the tint of his skin marked him as Atlantean, but he wore dark pants and a blue cotton shirt that hung loosely on him. These were the clothes of a traveler, not the armor of a soldier or the robes of a sorcerer.

Collette took a step back, heart racing, ready to defend herself. “Who the hell are you?”

“One who’s been in the dungeons himself, once or twice, just as you have; one who had to make a deal to get out. He offered my freedom in exchange for your life.”

Collette couldn’t breathe. She said one word. A name. An incantation. An accusation.

“Ty’Lis.”

The Atlantean took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled white smoke. Then he shrugged. “I would’ve died of boredom in there, so I figured, why not? What good are the skills of an assassin if you’ve got no one to kill?”

The killer took two slow steps. He stood between her and the encampment. The only place for her to run was down the open slope behind her or along the top of the ridge, in and out of trees.

Collette shook her head. No running.

“You’ve made a mistake.” She lifted her hands. “I have power you can’t even begin to understand. I can unmake you, asshole. Dust to dust.”

The assassin laughed. Then he lunged, too fast for her to stop him. He drove his fist into her face. Collette staggered back, nearly fell but caught herself, and scrambled away. He pursued her, reaching out with his left hand in an open-handed slap that she mostly dodged, only to see his right fist coming at her again.

Collette stepped into the punch. It glanced off the side of her skull, but by then she was in close. She hit him in the jaw with all her strength and it brought him up short, eyes going wide with surprise. Then she drove her forehead into his nose, felt it give way, and watched in satisfaction as he backpedaled, blood dripping from his nostrils.

He swore, then let slip a laugh. “Where’d you learn to fight like that, girl-creature?”

She could have told the assassin that she’d grown up a tomboy in Maine with rough winters and rougher boys, or that she’d lived in New York City for years and had to learn to protect herself, or that she’d had a husband who’d hit her exactly once before she’d taught him never to do it again.

Collette didn’t say any of that. She just spat out some of the blood that gathered in her mouth from where his first punch had split her lip.

Then she smiled.

Not because she was some kind of tough chick, but because Julianna came over the top of the ridge at that very moment with an ogre’s long-handled war-hammer in her hands. She swung it like a sledge.

The Atlantean heard her coming at the last moment and turned in time to avoid having his skull caved in. He caught the hammer blow in the shoulder. He was on the move when it struck him, but something still cracked in there. Collette heard it.

The swing took Julianna around in half a circle, and that was her undoing. The assassin reached for her hair, tangled his fingers in it, and yanked her backward. He snapped her right wrist and she cried out as she dropped the hammer. Her cry was cut off when he gripped her throat and produced a knife from a sheath at his back. He pressed its tip to her grimy skin, drawing blood.

The assassin started to turn her around, maybe to threaten Collette-Julianna’s life for hers-but Collette didn’t wait. She’d been in motion even as Julianna swung the war-hammer. As he tried to spin her around, Collette knocked the knife away and jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his throat and face, legs scissoring around his torso. Clutching him, she threw herself backward. Her weight dragged the assassin down, tripped him up, but he had a hold on Julianna, and she fell with them.

Collette Bascombe-unmaker, Legend-Born-tasted blood on her lips and knew that this time it was her own.

Time seemed to hesitate in the plaza at the center of Atlantis. Oliver felt off balance, as though the island had tilted a few degrees. Breath held, he stared at the blue bird as it tumbled from the sky, at the feathers that floated down after it. All sound seemed to cease in that moment as he watched the bird hit the stones and lie still. Unmoving.

Blue Jay is dead.

Kitsune the fox struggled to stand, then fell again, badly injured but still drawing breath. Where Grin and Cheval lay in a tangle of limbs, nothing moved.

Oliver looked up at Frost. The winter man stood perhaps twenty feet away, his fingers elongated into icicle spears, his body narrow from the heat, sculpted in knife edges. But when Frost lifted his gaze from the dead blue bird and met Oliver’s eyes, he seemed closer to human than ever he’d been before.

They had been so foolish, these two. Oliver saw it, now, felt it, and knew that Frost did as well. They’d had a bond. The winter man ought to have honored it with honesty, but Oliver ought not to have been so stingy with his forgiveness, particularly when he knew that Frost’s only real sin had been arrogance. Recognition passed between them now.

Whatever resentments had separated them were set aside.

Their friends were dying. They were each other’s only hope.

“Can you reach it now?” Oliver asked.

“The Veil?” Frost said. His eyes narrowed and he reached out, fingers scraping the air, then nodded. “I can. Whatever magic blocked us from leaving the library doesn’t extend to the rest of the city.”

“Get us the hell out of here, then!”

“We can’t leave.”

Oliver spun, staring at him. “What are you talking about?”

“If we go through the Veil here, we’ll emerge in your world thousands of miles from where we would need to cross back over to reach the battle lines, probably on an island with an ocean between us and the mainland. If you want to get back to Julianna and your sister, if we hope to bring word of Tzajin’s death to Hunyadi, we’ve got to wait here as long as we can for Smith to return for us.”

Oliver swore, knowing he was right. “What if Smith doesn’t ever come back?”

The winter man felt the heat first. Oliver had become used to the constant change of temperature around him, the warmth of the island sun and the gusts of icy wind that Frost generated. But when Frost glanced up, already starting to back up, it took Oliver a moment before he felt the blast of heat coming from above them.

He glanced up and saw the Guardian of Fire falling toward them. No, not falling. Li had jumped. He plummeted toward the ground with fire and heat roiling off of him. Li landed on the stones and a tremor shook the plaza. A wave of heat swept off of him. It felt as though Oliver were standing next to a raging inferno, a forest fire.

Then the heat diminished. The fire in Li’s flesh flickered and dimmed, and his skin looked more like charcoal-gray ash than the burning embers it had been before. Even in his eyes, the fire seemed to have abated.

Li looked up at Oliver, weary and full of anguish.

“Do something,” he said.

Oliver began moving before he even became aware of his intentions. He strode toward the library, glancing up at the huge, burning hole they’d put in the side of the building. Li had melted the glass wall on the fifth floor. The fire had begun to spread. Jellyfish followed him down, floating and eddying on the wind as if they had all the time in the world. A few eels were among them, but most had apparently been roasted in the fire.

The jellyfish descended.

A blast of cold and ice erupted from behind Oliver, shooting skyward and freezing half of the jellyfish as they descended. Those covered in ice fell straight down and shattered on the stones, but the others kept on.

Oliver glanced over his shoulder.

Frost and Li kept their distance from one another. Ice and Fire, neither wanted to sap the magic and strength of the other. The octopuses and eels and jellyfish moved in to finish them off. Soldiers started to move in.

An air shark darted toward Li and he burned it in motion. The flames in the Guardian of Fire raged again, rising to inferno level. The shark fell, a black, burnt carcass, and split open when it slapped the ground. A curtain of fire swept across one side of the plaza. Soldiers had begun to advance, but the fire held them back. The first line of armored figures were set ablaze and fell to the ground, batting at the fire on them, or turned to flee, hair beginning to burn.

Li faltered, fell to one knee. Again the embers of his flesh flickered as though his fire might go out.

Frost attacked in the other direction, ice and snow and frigid wind killing some and halting others. But it would only be a matter of time. They could not stand against the forces of Atlantis-not with the sorcerers that were among them.

There would be no going home.

Oliver closed his eyes, just for a moment, and sent up a prayer that might have been to God, or to gods, or just a wish from his heart that he hoped Julianna would hear.

Keep my love with you always.

Collette would have to fulfill the prophecy of the Legend-Born. Her brother had other business.

He reached out and put his hands on the smooth outer wall of the library. His heart filled with sorrow and rage. His nostrils flared angrily and he closed his eyes again, then dug his fingers into the strange sea glass that made up the outside of the building. It flowed like liquid, like glass before it cooled.

The building shook.

Then it began to melt, collapsing in on itself. The wall bowed out above him. Oliver stood back, looked up in terror, and then ran.

“Frost! Li! It’s coming down!”

The winter man burst into nothing but ice and snow, and that blizzard blew across the stones, sweeping up the dead blue bird as it went. Oliver ran to where Kitsune lay, still a fox-why had she not returned to her human form?-and bent to lift her in his arms. She was alarmingly light and she whimpered in pain, but her heart still beat. Her blood felt sticky on his hands, smeared on her fur.

Frost took form again beside the fallen Grin and Cheval.

Oliver ran toward them with the fox in his arms, but he saw the way the winter man stared past him and he paused, turned.

Li had not run. The Great Library of Atlantis melted and collapsed, entropy taking hold, all that held it together now undone by Oliver’s hands. The Guardian of Fire stood his ground. A phalanx of soldiers rushed toward him, even as the last of the jellyfish erupted from the collapsing library. A sorcerer threw himself out of an upper floor, falling end over end toward his death. Two octopuses and several razor-fish aimed themselves at the lone figure still in the shadow of the library.

His hands came up. The fire in him erupted in one final, volcanic explosion. The heat seared Oliver’s exposed skin and the blast blew him off his feet. He went down, cradling Kitsune in his arms, his elbows hitting the stones before he rolled, careful not to crush her.

When he knelt, his first sight was of Frost. Half of the winter man’s face had melted off in the blast of heat. Snow and ice whirled around and tried to reconstruct it, but between the tropical sun and the heat from Li’s fire, it would take time. Frost had been badly weakened. He staggered a little but managed to remain standing.

Oliver saw that Grin still lived. The boggart had a bloody, ragged, abdominal wound, but clapped one hand over it as he drew himself up to cradle the corpse of Cheval Bayard in his other arm.

The Nagas had never gotten out of the library.

That left only Li.

He had incinerated dozens of soldiers and perhaps hundreds of the ocean monsters that patrolled the skies above Atlantis, but one look at Li told Oliver that the Guardian of Fire was through. He still stood, hands raised, pointed toward the remains of those he’d just burned, where the stones were blackened and cracked.

Yet all that remained of Li was ash, standing in the shape of a man. As Oliver looked, the last of the fire flickered out. A pile of gray ash, looking like a statue, stood there in the plaza. The wind kicked up and began to pull the figure apart. Cinders blew away, Li quickly eroding, every ashen particle coming apart as though Oliver had unmade him as well. But he hadn’t done this. The Guardian of Fire had burned out at last.

The upper part of the library toppled down onto the spot where Li had stood, and then he was only a memory.

Oliver swore under his breath.

“Good-bye, my friend,” Frost said, and Oliver couldn’t be sure if he spoke to the ashes of Li that blew on the wind or to the dead blue bird he now held in his frozen grasp.

The fox shifted in Oliver’s arms. Grin hissed in pain, tears running down his face.

The killers of Atlantis-soldier and sorcerer and monster-surrounded them and began to close the circle.

Oliver and Frost exchanged another look. The winter man nodded.

Shifting Kitsune into the crook of his left arm, Oliver knelt on one knee and reached down with his right hand. He splayed his fingers on the stones of the central plaza. The treachery had to stop. The conquerors had to be prevented from fulfilling their dark dreams.

Steadying his breathing, Oliver let himself feel the stones, and the soil beneath them, and the bedrock of the island. His muscles stiffened painfully and he strained, throwing his head back. At his touch, all cohesion began to unravel.

The ground began to quake. Fissures opened in the plaza, cracks running jagged across the stones. Frost called out his name, urging him on. Wayland Smith had marooned them on this island, had left them to die, but Oliver wouldn’t abandon the cause that had brought them here. They could not save the life of Prince Tzajin, could not bring about the end of the war that way. So he would end the war another way.

He would unmake Atlantis.

Buildings cracked. Glass shattered and fell. The plaza buckled and the stones they stood upon sank several feet, surged up slightly, then sank another seven or eight feet. All around them, the structures started to fail, collapsing in upon themselves.

Soldiers broke ranks, fleeing. Sorcerers tried to use their magic to keep buildings from falling, to no avail. Then the water began to flow, rushing in from the harbor and surging up from the foundations of buildings, quickly starting to flood the plaza.

Oliver stood. The damage was done. It had all begun to fall apart.

Atlantis had begun to sink.