Lost Ones

CHAPTER 22

The Sandman appeared on the battlefield in a whirling cloud of dust. As it settled, blowing away, and he was revealed, soldiers on both sides shouted in fear and moved away from him, their war for the moment forgotten. Halliwell shuddered, hating that he wore the hood of the Sandman rather than the Dustman’s coat, but his arrival garnered the response he had hoped for.

He strode through the battle. With regret, he moved between fallen men and women, unable to pause to help them. Others would reach them. Not that they would have accepted help from him in his current guise. Even those with the worst injuries, with open wounds and missing limbs, tried to drag themselves away from him.

Like a ghost, he haunted the field of battle, drifting, the sand rising around him. There were Yucatazcan warriors amongst the bloodied, screaming soldiers, but most were Euphrasian or Atlantean. His mind had touched the Dustman’s. They were still two spirits, but now had full access to the thoughts of the other. Halliwell had become the Dustman. The Dustman had become Detective Ted Halliwell. It was strangely calming.

Giants walked amongst the combatants, but only a handful. There were Stonecoats and tall warriors who could only be what the Dustman thought of as gods. A massive stag-perhaps fifteen feet tall or more-kicked its hooves at Atlantean soldiers and thrashed a Peryton from the air with its antlers. The stag was made entirely of plants, tree branches, wheat and cornstalks. It smelled wonderfully of fruit.

The Sandman smiled. Halliwell smiled. The Dustman smiled.

An octopus drifted above the soldiers. A dead woman, half-naked and missing one leg, dangled broken from its tentacles. It unfurled other tentacles and snatched up a Euphrasian soldier wearing the colors of King Hunyadi. The soldier screamed as his bones shattered. A god in black armor, red eyes burning from within his helm, charged up from a pile of corpses he had created and swung his sword toward the octopus, but the cowardly thing moved away. It would only hunt the easy prey.

Halliwell wanted to kill it. But not now.

A moment later, a Peryton took his choices away. Broad wings threw their shadow down upon him, blotting out the sun. He glanced up with the lemon eyes of the Sandman, glaring at the Atlantean Hunter. It dove down at him, talons hooked and antlers lowered, intent upon tearing him apart.

Halliwell let it come. The Peryton’s talons sank into his cloak and dug into the shifting sand and dust and ground bone of his body, harmless. He reached up and grabbed the antlers of the Peryton in one hand and twisted, snapping its neck. His free hand darted at its face and before he realized what he was doing, his knifelike fingers pried one of the Hunter’s glazed eyes from its socket and raised it to his lips. His tongue reached, yearning, for the dripping, bloody eye.

The Sandman began to shudder.

The Dustman crushed the eyeball in his hand, felt it pop.

Halliwell let the corpse of the Peryton fall to the battlefield and wiped the viscous remains of its eye on his cloak. Disgust coiled serpentine through his heart, his shared soul.

With Sara, back in the ordinary world, he could be himself more easily. Sand, yes, and a legend. A monster. But still Ted Halliwell. Here, in this place, he had to hold the reins more tightly to make sure the little voice of the Sandman down deep inside of him did not rise again. The Dustman helped. Together they could stifle the Sandman forever, perhaps destroy him. But vigilance would be necessary.

We must help Hunyadi’s army.

You know what must be done, the Dustman replied.

Is it difficult?

Not at all. It is part of our magic. What we are.

Halliwell went down on one knee, thrusting the long, narrow fingers of both hands into the blood-soaked dirt. For a moment, he wondered what would happen, and then he knew. All he needed to do was visualize. In his mind’s eye-in the Dustman’s mind-they could see the constructs.

The earth churned nearby. From deeper, where there was dry, rough soil, a hand thrust up from underground. Quickly, the warrior dug itself out. It rose, clad in armor of its own, and drew its sword. But the warrior was only dirt and sand and stone, as were its armor and sword. A construct.

The construct turned, opened its mouth in a silent battle cry-for it had no voice, no life or mind-and it ran into battle. A Euphrasian cavalryman had been toppled from his horse. The animal was dying, bleeding. A warrior of Atlantis stood over the fallen man, more than eight feet tall and splashed with the blood of others. A deadly enemy.

The sand creature brought its sword around-a blade whose edge was as sharp as diamond-and cleaved the Atlantean in half at the torso. Both halves of his body hit the ground together.

Halliwell and the Dustman willed it, and more constructs began to rise. Six. Eleven. Nineteen. At twenty-seven, he could do no more. To extend himself any further could have led to a loss of control, and Halliwell could not risk it. In his mind, the Dustman began to manipulate the constructs, controlling them from afar, a puppeteer.

But Halliwell didn’t mind. What he did next would be for him, and the Dustman did not need to be involved.

The sand of his body shifted and resculpted itself, and now he wore the bowler hat and mustache and greatcoat of the Dustman again. He went to the fallen soldier and held out a hand to help him up.

The horseman stared at him, eyes wide with terror.

“Get up, pal,” Halliwell said, aware of the incongruity of his voice, his words, coming from the mouth of a legend. A monster.

The horseman shook his head once, slowly.

“Suit yourself,” Halliwell said, dropping his hand. In the chaos of war, with shouts of fury and screams of agony and the clashing of weapons, somehow his own voice and the breathing of the downed horseman were louder than anything.

“Julianna Whitney. Bascombe’s fiancee. Is she here?”

Suspicion clouded the soldier’s eyes. A sadness came over Halliwell as he realized that, once again, he would need to use fear to achieve his ends. Fear was always swiftest.

The sand ran like mercury, shaping itself again, and now the cloak returned and his vision became jaundice-yellow. He saw the soldier through the Sandman’s lemon eyes.

Finger-knives reached down for the terrified horseman, snatched his arm and dragged him up to his feet…off his feet. Halliwell dangled him off the ground.

“Is Julianna here?”

The horseman nodded. He pointed up the slope toward the tents at the top of the hill in the distance. The king’s encampment.

“Helping the wounded,” the soldier said, his eyes and voice desperate.

“Of course she is.” Halliwell smiled. With the Sandman’s face, the expression was enough to make the soldier begin to cry.

Halliwell dropped him and started away from the battle, up the hill, leaving his constructs to aid Hunyadi’s defense against the invaders. He would see to Julianna’s safety through the end of this battle. He owed her that. And then he would go home, where Sara waited for him, and he would be her dad again. Whatever else he had become, he was still that.

Sunlight glared upon Ovid Tsing’s face, but his eyes were closed. Half-conscious, he stared at the inside of his closed eyelids, at the bright red glow of the sun. His lids fluttered. He wanted to wake. But he winced at the glare and pressed them closed again, let his head loll to one side. Beads of sweat dripped and ran across his scalp and along his neck before falling. His clothes were damp and sticky, but he felt sure sweat did not get so heavy.

Blood, then.

He shifted, trying to move onto his side. Pain lanced the left side of his abdomen and a trickle of something traced his skin. Might have been sweat, but he doubted that. Blood ought to have been warmer, but as hot as it was outside, perhaps his skin had become hotter than blood.

His blood felt cold on his skin.

Ovid wished for a breeze. The wind had not died. He heard a tent flapping nearby. His body strained as though he could catch the wind if only he were more attentive. It took some time before he realized that the tent itself was acting as a wind-break, keeping any breeze from reaching him.

Darkness claimed his thoughts. When again he became aware of the heat on his face, the glare on his eyes, his side felt tight. Gingerly, he managed to reach down and touch the place where the Yucatazcan spear had punctured his flesh, and he found a bandage there. A sigh of relief escaped him. They’d taken the time to bandage him-probably to stitch him up as well. Ovid interpreted that to mean the field surgeon didn’t think he was going to die today.

Carefully, he tried to sit up. Pain surged through him again and he faltered. The darkness threatened, but did not overcome him. He lay back with his eyes pressed closed, hissing air through his teeth, waiting to feel the trickle of a freshly reopened wound on his side, but no blood flowed.

From far off, he heard the echoes of combat, the shouts of men and women, gods and monsters, the clang of weapons. He wondered how the King’s Volunteers were faring without him, and imagined they were probably doing just fine. His lieutenants were well trained, and they had heart. They had come here with only victory in their minds. Nothing else would do, save death. Ovid only hoped it would not come to that.

Good son.

Ovid frowned, eyes still closed. Had he heard a voice in the cacophony of battle or in the flap of the nearby tent? Perhaps someone inside of the tent.

In his mind’s eye, horrid memory played out against the red-flare curtain of his eyelids. He saw again the broken corpse of his mother in the grasp of the Sandman, the gore-encrusted holes where her eyes had been. He saw, all too clearly, the face of the monster-the face of Ted Halliwell, the man who’d come to Twillig’s Gorge searching for Oliver Bascombe.

What Halliwell had to do with the Sandman, he didn’t know. But whatever face it wore, it was a monster, and it had his mother’s blood on its hands.

Moisture ran down his cheeks again, but it wasn’t sweat this time. Ovid let a few tears fall before regaining his composure. He opened his eyes and let the sun sear them a moment as though it might burn his grief away as it dried the tears. Once again he let his head loll to the side…

And the Sandman passed by. Wearing Halliwell’s face, it weaved amongst the wounded where they had been stretched out on the open ground and strode toward the enormous tent upon which flew the flag of Euphrasia and the colors of King Hunyadi.

He blinked, certain that somehow his subconscious had summoned only a mirage of his mother’s murderer. The heat, the loss of blood. But no matter how many times or how firmly he squeezed his eyes closed, when he opened them, the Sandman remained. Halliwell, the monster, remained.

Its presence created a fresher wound than even those he had sustained on the field of battle.

Ovid gritted his teeth. Slowly, warily, he rolled onto his side and then onto his chest. Breathing evenly, preparing himself, he pushed up onto his knees. Black dots swam at the edges of his vision, but he kept breathing and they faded. Teeth still gritted against pain-which inexplicably spread to his shoulders and legs-he staggered to his feet. Something tugged in his wound, perhaps a single stitch breaking free, and a single track of blood spilled like a teardrop down his belly and thigh.

He began to limp after the Sandman. When he passed a wounded soldier-a woman who’d once been beautiful-he bent carefully and borrowed her dagger, nearly passing out in the process. But he remained conscious. The woman seemed near death. Fluid rattled in her throat when she breathed. She would not miss the dagger.

Ovid had come here to fight a war for the king, for his country, for himself, and for his mother. For all of the Lost Ones, and the things that they believed in.

Fate seemed to have other ideas.

Atop a small mountain peak fashioned entirely of ice, Oliver Bascombe stood with his sword raised-cradling the wounded, shuddering, unconscious fox in his left arm-and waited for the air shark to make its move. Octopuses had tried, but Frost had destroyed them utterly. Now, though, the winter man was otherwise occupied.

The craggy ice structure upon which they stood, back-to-back, had become an island in the great plaza at the center of Atlantis. The ground still shook, aftershocks of Oliver’s power. He had unraveled the very foundations upon which Atlantis stood. To the south, on the far side of the island, red and black lava spewed from a volcanic fissure underwater.

From what Oliver could see, much of the island was underwater now. Buildings still jutted from the rushing flood that poured in from all sides. Hills and trees emerged from the water. In the distance, another island loomed but seemed untouched.

Only Atlantis had been affected.

Atlantis was sinking, crumbling into the ocean. Undone. Unmade. But Oliver and the winter man were sinking with it. They had quickly discovered that the sorcerers here-the ones who had not gone off to war-cared less about murdering them than about saving their city. Magic spread out across the island, bands of energy that seemed to be trying to raise it up, to somehow keep matters from getting worse.

Another building fell, entire stories cascading down upon one another and crashing into the water.

Oliver had a feeling that soon the sorcerers would realize that their efforts were useless, and then their minds would turn to vengeance.

The air shark turned lazily in the air, as though it hadn’t a care in the world. Everything else alive in Atlantis seemed frantic, but the shark moved almost languidly. All that mattered was its prey.

Out where the harbor had once been, massive sea-serpent coils undulated in the water. Ocean waves rolled in through the city. The Kraken-if that truly was the Kraken out there-would soon find the water deep enough to come into the plaza. The ice mountain that Frost had created eroded by the moment as the warm seawater washed over it, and would not survive an attack from the sea monster.

Oliver set Kitsune down at his feet and risked a quick glance over his shoulder.

Frost had thinned to slivers. Mist rose from his jagged body and much of the blue had gone from his eyes, leaving only white-and not even white, but a clear ice. At his feet, Leicester Grindylow sat bleeding, wincing from broken bones, and cradled the corpse of Cheval Bayard close to him. Boggart and kelpy would remain with them, no matter what, as would the dead little blue bird who had once been the most loyal friend to them all.

“Where the hell is he?” Oliver screamed, giving in at last to the frenzy of panic that churned inside of him, spilling over. “Where’s Smith?”

The winter man pointed.

Oliver turned just as the air shark made its move. He raised the Sword of Hunyadi. The shark darted at him, its dead black eyes more terrifying than the fury of any demon. There would be no dodging it, now. Swift as legend, Oliver raised the sword up in both hands and brought it down with all his strength. The blade slit the shark’s head, punched through into the lower jaw and out through the bottom. He forced it down and the thing began to whip its huge, powerful body in the air. In seconds, it would knock Oliver into the water, where other things waited.

Putting all his weight on the hilt of Hunyadi’s blade-its tip now lodged in ice-he drew the other sword, which he’d carried to Atlantis, twisted it and plunged it through the shark’s right eye.

It thrashed again. Oliver lost his footing and slid, beginning to fall, nearly knocking the fox off of the ice mountain with him. He tugged Hunyadi’s sword out of the shark’s snout and the beast fell, twitching and slipping down the ice mountain and into the rushing water, the other sword still stuck through its eye socket.

Heart pounding, muscles torn and aching, Oliver clawed his way back to the top of the ice mountain and stood, wearily holding the Sword of Hunyadi out before him again. The fox looked up at him and he thought, perhaps, she smiled a bit.

“Well done,” Frost said, and his voice had become little more than a chilly whisper on the wind. “I wonder, though…if Prince Tzajin was left here for us, a trap, then where is Ty’Lis? Why is he not here to see our deaths? And if he’s not here killing us, then who is he killing while we fight for our lives?”

Oliver slammed the heel of his hand against his head. He looked down at the rising water, felt the ground tremble underneath the ice. He had wanted to punish them, yes, and to stay alive. But he had never wanted to destroy the whole city. King Hunyadi would cheer-his whole army, and the rest of Euphrasia would want to give Oliver a medal-but how many had he killed?

And where was Ty’Lis?

“Where else would he be?” Oliver snarled at him, lips pulled back, almost feral. “He’s in Euphrasia.”

Oliver felt the truth of it. There were no choices left for them, no way to prevent whatever it was Ty’Lis really had planned. Only one way out of this situation presented itself.

He shook his head, threw up his hands, shaking the Sword of Hunyadi. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit! We’ve got to cross the Veil, right now, no matter where we end up in my world. Smith’s not coming. We’ll worry about getting back to the front lines when we’re out of this mess!”

He sheathed the Sword of Hunyadi and bent to heft Kitsune into the cradle of his arms again.

“Oliver,” Frost said, that voice barely a suggestion, now. “You’ll have to help me. Help me open the way.”

Grin had risen painfully to his feet. The boggart had to be in agony and he swayed there, atop the ice mountain Frost had made, but he picked the corpse of Cheval Bayard up in his arms.

“Do it, Ollie,” Grin said. “Open the soddin’ path for us. We’ve got to find the sorcerer yet, the bloke what started it all. I’ll have his guts for garters.”

Frost held the dead blue bird in one hand- Blue Jay’s dead, oh, shit, how do I tell Damia? -and looked expectantly at him. Oliver nodded his head. The winter man raised a hand. Oliver shifted the fox’s weight onto his left arm and followed suit.

The air rippled. Oliver felt it. For the first time, he touched the fabric of the Veil. Frost had given him something to grasp-he wasn’t sure if he could have done it himself-but now it felt to him like some great curtain in the sky, and he knew it would part just that easily. Reality would not tear, it would simply open.

Before they could move, a figure stepped through the Veil from the other side. He hovered in the air above the flood waters and the drowning city of Atlantis.

“No need for that,” the Wayfarer said.

Oliver stared at Smith. The Traveler had lost his hat and cane somewhere along the way. He seemed thinner, almost skeletal, and a long scar ran across his forehead and slashed down over one eye, leaving a gaping hole. Somehow, the wound was old, yet Wayland Smith wore no patch.

A dozen questions occurred to Oliver, but only one made it to his lips.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.

Smith flinched, eyes narrowing. He shot Oliver a dangerous look. “You’re mistaken, sir.”

Before Oliver could ask him to elaborate, other figures began to appear in the air around the melting ice mountain, one rotund and blind, another ancient and bent, one dark-eyed and wreathed in shadow, another scarred and cruel, and still another bearded and glorious like some ancient storm-god. Among them was one female, thin and lovely, though gray streaked her red hair and wisdom crinkled the corners of her eyes. Of them all, only one did not hover in the air, and this last was a giant, thirty feet tall if an inch.

They had not come through the Veil. Nor were they sorcerers of Atlantis. They had, all of them, simply stepped in from the Gray Corridor where only the Wayfarer could walk.

For they were him, each and every one.

They were all Wayland Smith.

King Hunyadi could no longer feel his arms, save for the dull weight of them and a throbbing in his hands where they were closed tightly around the grip of his sword. He bled from a dozen nicks and cuts and several more grievous wounds. But his heart pounded in his chest and in the back of his throat he felt a new battle cry rising. He opened his mouth and set it free, raising his sword, urging his army to press on. Their ranks had been thinned, but they fought on-soldiers and volunteers, legends and gods alike. They fought on.

His royal guard stood with him, now, and they cut through Atlantean soldiers with ease. Armor cracked like the carapace of some crustacean and dark green blood flowed. It had been some long minutes since he had seen a Yucatazcan warrior, and he wondered if they were all dead or had fled. To the far western battle lines he saw two giants, but no sign of any others. Monsters still darted across the sky above his head, but many had been pulled out of the air or caught in the crossfire of magic as the Atlantean sorcerers and the Mazikeen tore at one another’s souls. Dark light streaked above, whirlwinds of power ripped at green-feathered Perytons.

But the war had begun to wind down. Too much blood had been spilled. Soon, the deciding moment would come, but Hunyadi could not yet guess the outcome.

He stepped over the cadaver of a fallen horse, sword at the ready. His personal guard shouted to one another as they fought on, sword and axe and spear clashing with the weapons of their enemies. The stink of blood mixed with the acrid odor of smoke and burning flesh. Fires flickered here and there on the battlefield.

A figure in ragged, bloody clothing appeared beside him. His face was streaked with gore and one of his eyes had been torn out. The king’s guard moved to attack, but Hunyadi saw that the man did not carry a weapon and raised a hand to wave them back, though he did not lower his own sword.

“Hell of a day, Your Majesty,” said the one-eyed man, and his grin revealed sharp, blood-stained teeth.

Only then did Hunyadi recognize Coyote. The king knew the scruffy trickster’s reputation well enough and was surprised to see him on the field of battle.

“Hell is the word for it,” Hunyadi said, “but we have the advantage now.”

“Then let’s finish the fuckers.”

The king knew he ought to make Coyote swear an oath of fealty, but the blood on his teeth and the wounds he’d already sustained were proof enough of his loyalty in this war.

“Well met, trickster,” Hunyadi said. “We’ll make an end of it together.”

A fresh phalanx of Atlantean soldiers filled the breach Hunyadi’s men and women had just made. Haughty and unmarred by combat, they marched over their fallen brethren.

Raging with adrenaline, half-mad with war, the king laughed and lifted his sword. “Come on, then, traitorous bastards. We shall make the ending swift!”

An Atlantean officer shouted for them to attack.

Coyote transformed from man to beast, dropping to all fours and racing toward the Atlanteans, teeth gnashing.

Hunyadi’s guard did not need an order. They roared and hurled themselves into battle, weapons swinging. Blood flew, spattered Hunyadi’s face and eyes. He wiped it away, ducked the sword thrust of an enemy, and then moved in close to the Atlantean. He grabbed the soldier’s wrist, snapped it, then hacked down at the back of the man’s legs, slashing tendons and muscles.

He left the soldier alive, but crippled. Finishing him would be merciful, but he had no time for mercy.

An arrow took Hunyadi in the shoulder from behind, spinning him around. He had barely begun to stagger toward the archer when two of his royal guard fell upon the man, hacking at him like slaughterhouse butchers.

A voice cried his name. King Hunyadi turned to see one of his royal guard picked up off his feet in the single, massive hand of a Battle Swine. The huge, boarlike creatures moved in-a dozen of them at least. Bones shattered. The royal guard began to fall.

Then the Stonecoats were there as well. One of the Battle Swine charged, head down, at a Jokao. Massive, gore-encrusted tusks shattered on the Stonecoat’s chest, then the Jokao plunged a hand into the Swine’s chest and tore out its black, cold heart. Another Swine roared in fear and pain and went down, Coyote on top of him, jaws ripping at his throat.

Hunyadi let loose another battle cry, his voice almost gone. He rushed at one of the Battle Swine, drove his blade into the softness of its throat, and the beast fell. Atlantean soldiers moved on him and the king rose, battling them off. The rest of his royal guard surrounded him, and soon the Atlanteans had begun to withdraw.

“Push them back into the ocean!” Hunyadi called, hoarse.

The soldier beside him-Aghi Koh-fell to her knees and clutched at her throat, which bulged with purple bruises. Her eyes began to bleed, and then oily black fluid jetted from her mouth. She bent, vomiting tarry stuff onto the ground. What followed was water-only water-but it stank of the sea.

Two other members of his royal guard-loyal soldiers, loyal friends-fell and began to vomit as well. Things squirmed in the water they threw up. Aghi fell dead, her wide eyes turning black. Crimson blood seeped from her ears, streaked with black. The others who surrounded Hunyadi suffered the same fate.

Grieving and enraged, the king spun around, searching for his enemy. He spotted the sorcerer, twenty feet away, standing amidst the soldiers of Atlantis. His skin had the chalky greenish hue of his people, but he was an ancient thing with gossamer silver hair; his beard was thick and had several heavy iron rings tied into its length.

King Hunyadi recognized him as Ru’Lem, one of the High Councilors of Atlantis.

“Now, little monarch,” the sorcerer sneered, “this war is over.”

His spindly fingers scratched at the air, casting his spell anew, and Hunyadi fell to his knees, just as his royal guard had done. He hunched over, losing sight of the sorcerer.

Ru’Lem strode toward him, perhaps craving the satisfaction of watching, up close, as the king died.

“You are hardier than your-” he began.

Hunyadi sprang upward, driving his sword into the robes of the ancient sorcerer. Anything but a heart-strike would not do, but he felt the blade slide against bone, felt the resistance of thick muscle and gristle, and knew that his aim had struck true.

Ru’Lem’s eyes widened and a hiss of air escaped his lips with a burble of greenish-black blood. A question. Hunyadi knew it could only be one question.

“Old fool,” he rasped. “Did you think I wouldn’t prepare for you and your kind, that I wouldn’t have had the Mazikeen place a dozen protective wards around me? Had you struck me down with a blade or had a Swine break my bones, you might’ve killed me. But magic is a coward’s weapon. When a warrior kills…”

King Hunyadi stared into Ru’Lem’s eyes, gripped the sword in both hands, and gave it a powerful twist, destroying the sorcerer’s heart.

“…he does it in close.”

The High Councilor dropped to the ground, corpse sliding from the king’s sword. Hunyadi spun as a Battle Swine rushed at him, but a Harvest god struck it from the side, a massive stag, trampling it underfoot. A shadow fell over them and he glanced up to see the Titan, Cronus-whom Kitsune had brought from Perinthia-arriving as well.

Then Coyote and his own soldiers charged past him, sweeping into combat against Atlanteans and Battle Swine. The Jokao were joined by Harvest gods and Borderkind and legends. An ogre wielding a war-hammer clapped the king on the back with a booming laugh, then rushed into the fight.

The ground began to tremble and up from the blood-soaked battlefield came creatures of dirt and rock and clay, first one and then several more in quick succession. Their eyes gleamed a dreadful yellow, even with the sunlight upon them. King Hunyadi stepped back and raised his sword, staring in horror at these monstrous things, thinking that the sorcerers of Atlantis had unleashed some new abomination upon them.

But the creatures began to attack the Atlanteans instead. Swords plunged through them. Arrows lodged in them but did not slow them at all. They flowed over their victims and brought the enemy soldiers down, smothering them, breaking them, in some cases scouring all flesh from the bone. It was a hideous way to die, and he gave a prayer of thanks to whatever gods might be listening-thanks that these monsters were on his side.

“The tide is turning,” a voice said beside him.

Hunyadi turned and looked into the dark eyes of Damia Beck. She seemed almost unscathed, save that her clothes were coated with dirt and blood and had torn in several places. The sight of her lifted his spirits. If he’d had a crisis of faith, even for a moment, during the battle, Damia restored it. She carried herself like a queen or a legend unto herself.

“What are they, Damia?”

Her dark eyes narrowed. “I don’t know, really. The closest I’ve ever seen were things at the Sandman’s castle, things he created. But the Sandman’s dead, and if he weren’t, he certainly wouldn’t be our friend. But they’re deadly, and magic doesn’t seem to faze them. The Sandmen have tipped the scales.”

“All right. Watch them carefully,” the king said. “Report.”

“Yes, sir. The Yucatazcans withdrew nearly an hour ago,” she said. “We have a prisoner who claims that unrest in Palenque and doubts about their Atlantean allies have caused them to retreat. Those few Yucatazcan Borderkind who were fighting against us have defected to our cause. And the Atlanteans…”

“Yes, Commander Beck?” he said, his ragged voice a growl.

“We’ve got Atlantis on the run, Your Majesty.”