Lost Ones

CHAPTER 8

O liver could not sleep. He had tried, fidgeting awkwardly on the mat, searching for the least torturous position. Then he had gone to the window and stared out at the wall across from his cell, wishing he could see the sky. A view of the stars would have lifted his heart.

At length, he walked across the cell and stood in front of the door. Out in the corridor, nothing stirred. Torchlight flickered somewhere down the hall, giving the walls a wet glow. Beyond the grate in the door to Julianna and Collette’s cell, there was only darkness. He might have heard a low, troubled snore, but that could as easily have been his imagination.

He pressed his forehead against the cool metal of the grate and peered into the corridor. No one stirred. Idly his fingers brushed over the stones in the wall and traced the mortar grooves, just as he’d been doing almost since the moment they’d been locked up. Collette had been doing the same.

How many people believed they were Legend-Born? Thousands? Millions? And if all of those people believed, did that make it true? Once, humanity had believed their world was flat, but they had been proven wrong. How disappointed all the Lost Ones would be if they found out it was all bullshit.

And it had to be bullshit, didn’t it? They’d been in these cells for going on nine weeks and hadn’t been able to summon up a single bit of magic. If their mother was Borderkind-if they were supposed to fulfill some kind of prophecy-why did he feel so damned ordinary?

Or maybe not completely ordinary.

He chewed on that for a second. Ever since coming through the Veil for the first time, he’d felt the way he always did when giving a closing argument in court, or acting onstage. Like what he did was fulfilling some role in a grand plan.

Just a little full of yourself, aren’t you?

Maybe he was. But that didn’t change the way it felt.

And what if it’s true? That was a question he’d asked himself a thousand times ever since Ty’Lis had first talked about the Legend-Born. If it was true, that changed everything.

Could their mother really have been Melisande, a beautiful creature with dragon wings and a serpent’s lower body? Oliver had photographs of her and his memories, and she had always seemed ordinary. She had been sweet and kind, with a light of joy in her eyes. But he had seen Blue Jay and Kitsune and other legends transform themselves easily enough, and it might be possible that Melisande could do the same.

He had also thought about what Julianna had said about his father. If their mother had indeed been Melisande-if he and Collette were half-human and half-Borderkind-that went a long way toward explaining the way Max Bascombe had treated his son. Oliver had longed for magic, all of his life. And yet…

Dad didn’t want you to reach for it. He was afraid of what you might find. Or of what might find you.

Oliver drew in a long breath and bit his lower lip. All his life, all he’d wanted was for his father to love him and for himself to be able to put his resentment aside long enough to return that love.

But his father was dead, now, and that would never happen.

If only the old man had told them the truth, when they were old enough. Yet he’d kept it from them, trying to protect them. Otherwise he might still be alive.

Oliver froze, staring out into the corridor. A frown creased his brow. If Melisande had been his mother, and they had inherited some kind of magic from her legendary blood, what would that be? How did Collette’s escape from the pit at the Sandman’s castle make sense? She had torn the wall of her prison apart, but that didn’t seem like their mother at all. If their mother had magic in her, it wasn’t a magic of destruction. Yet whenever he had tried to dig at the mortar, he’d been thinking about pulling the wall apart with magic. Obviously, that wasn’t working.

The stones beneath his left hand shifted.

Oliver held his breath, then glanced over at his hand. Mortar sifted like dust from the grooves between stones.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

It’s not about destruction. No, it wouldn’t be. Not if they were their mother’s children. Which wasn’t to say that they would have magic similar to hers. From what he’d heard, there seemed no real pattern to the magic that developed in the offspring of legends, and no known precedent to indicate what magic might occur in a child half-human and half-Borderkind. Still, instinct told him that his mother’s magic would not have been cruel or terrible.

All creatures had delighted her. She had loved her garden, right down to every beetle. Her magic, he felt, must have been in beauty and life. In growth. Yet when autumn came and the garden began to wither, she had seemed equally as content as she’d been when the flowers were in full bloom. Oliver hadn’t learned the word entropy until he was in high school, but later, he’d understood it. Things fell apart, lost their cohesion. Everything had its season.

And if you could speed that process along…

Slowly, but firmly, he pushed his left hand forward, and dry, discolored mortar sifted down like powder. The stones began to fall outward.

Oliver drew back his hand and watched as the wall collapsed into the corridor.

He heard Collette and Julianna talking in low voices and knew they didn’t have long before the noise of the collapsing wall summoned the guards.

“Jules! Collette! We’re going now.”

“Oliver?”

Julianna’s face appeared at the grate.

He jumped into the corridor and went up to their door.

“What’d you do?”

“It worked.” His eyes sought his sister in the darkened cell. He saw Collette pulling on her shoes. She stared up at him.

“How?”

“It’s all real, Coll. Melisande was our mother. I went over it a million times, and it’s the only thing that could be true. We crossed the Veil, sis. All the legends are real, here, and we’re one of them. No way would the Atlanteans have gone to such trouble to deal us out of the game if they didn’t believe we were Legend-Born.”

He smiled, then glanced at Julianna, who gazed at him in wonder.

“Now, stand away from the wall. We’re out of time.”

Oliver placed both hands on the stones, ran his fingers and palms over them, and again thought about entropy. About the loss of cohesion. More than anything, he thought about his mother, and wished he could have known her true self.

Once again, the mortar sifted down. He gave the wall a shove and the stones tumbled into the cell. Oliver stepped over the rubble and into the cell.

“I’ve tried,” Collette said.

Their eyes met. He took her hands. “It isn’t about breaking things. It’s about letting them rest. Making them surrender.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Julianna asked.

But Oliver kept his focus on Collette. “You did it before, when you weren’t thinking about it, or when you were so exhausted you couldn’t think straight. Now you’ve just got to…no, believe isn’t enough. You’ve got to know what you are.”

He went to Julianna and slid one hand behind her head, fingers tangling in her hair. They kissed, and he felt like he could just crumble into her arms.

“You ready to go?”

Julianna stiffened, eyes full of pain. “I can’t cross the Veil. You know that.”

“Screw that. We’re out of here, one way or another.”

He turned to Collette. Pointed to the wall behind her. “You take care of that wall. We’ve got maybe thirty seconds, if that, to do something. I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?” Julianna asked.

But Oliver had already jumped back into the hall. His heart raced and he could not erase the grin on his face as he sprinted down the corridor. He ran so quickly that when he had to slow down to make the turn toward the stairs, he nearly lost his footing. But he recovered, and a good thing, too, for as he went through the arch toward the bottom of the stairs he heard the iron gate slam open above and the shouts of Atlantean soldiers berating the Yucatazcan guards.

Oliver ran to the stairs. He took them two at a time, and made it halfway up before a guard rounded the curving stairwell above him and shouted. Oliver heard the scrape of metal upon metal as the Atlantean drew his sword.

He laughed, crouching, and reached out to lay his hands on the stairs just above him. They started to shift and crack immediately. Oliver scrambled backward down the stairs, dragging his hands over the stones as he went.

And the stairs gave way, leaving an empty pit behind.

Oliver leaped the rest of the way to the bottom, but the soldier fell through the gap. The others rounded the corner on the stairs and stopped short, staring at the chasm that separated them from Oliver. He grinned and shot them the middle finger, then ran back down the corridor toward the cells.

Julianna and Collette weren’t there, but the rear wall of the cell had collapsed. Oliver whooped with joy and ran through the opening into the next cell. That one had been opened as well, but in this case it had not been the wall that Collette had taken down. It was the door.

Oliver stepped into the far corridor. The hall was filled with a cold mist, and the stone walls were rimed with ice. He shivered, teeth chattering, as he turned to see Collette and Julianna standing in front of a door that glistened with ice crystals.

Frost.

Collette put her hands on the door and hissed, pulling away from the ice that must have seared her. Julianna glanced at Oliver-past Oliver-and he knew she was remembering the last time she’d been here, and the horrid promises that Ty’Lis had made if they were ever caught again.

Collette tried again, putting her hands against the wall of the cell instead of the door. Oliver ran to join her. The guards would figure out a way to reach them soon, he was sure.

He put his hands on the door. The ice was so cold it burned. His eyelashes stuck when he blinked and his breath plumed in front of him. But the metal bands on the door fell off, and the bolts holding the hinges on pulled loose from the frame. Where Collette touched the wall, the stones began to shift.

“Push,” Oliver said.

Together, they brought down the whole front wall of the cell, door and all. Stones and wood crashed inward. Ice shattered. Frigid air rolled out, and then the three of them stood staring at the winter man. Frost had been placed in a kind of stasis within a dark sphere of magic. At least three quarters of the sphere had been covered with an outer layer of ice and snow. Deep within, where the sphere was not covered, they could see Frost. From what Oliver could tell, he did not look shattered anymore.

“What’s going on?” Julianna asked. “Is he trying to get free?”

“Repairing himself, maybe. And working his way out,” Collette said.

Oliver shook his head. “We don’t have time to wait.” Hesitating only a moment, he glanced back at Julianna and then put his hands on the purple-black sphere.

It crackled at the touch.

Nothing happened.

“What’s wrong?” Collette asked.

Oliver frowned. He could try to concentrate, but what little he knew of the power he and his sister shared told him that it didn’t work like that.

“I don’t know.”

“Magic,” Julianna said, sounding almost dazed. She stared at them both. “You’ve dealt with things that have a real substance before. The sand. The walls. Maybe magic isn’t like that.”

Collette threw up her hands. “Great. What now?” She poked her head out into the hall to scout for guards.

Oliver worked his way around, peering through the sections of the sphere that weren’t covered in ice. Finally he found an angle at which he could see the winter man’s face.

Frost glared at him with blue-white eyes. Long, dagger fingers seemed aimed at a place where magic and ice met. Oliver took a closer look, and saw that that ice seemed to have passed through the sphere at that point, slicing like a knife, instead of having simply formed outside the sphere.

He put his hands on the ice. They were still numb from the door, and now he could barely feel them at all.

Entropy took hold. The ice began to crumble and sift into a fine, powdery snow. With a loud crack, a fissure formed in the thick ice shell. It ran down through the mystic sphere, cracking the ice inside as well.

A frigid wind burst through that fissure and knocked Oliver to the ground. He sprawled there, looking up as wind howled in the cell. All of the ice seemed to flow into the air at the center of the room, churning into a tiny blizzard that drew all of the snow and ice from both within the sphere and without, and from the walls as well.

The blizzard slowed and took form.

The winter man glanced at Collette and Julianna, then stared down at Oliver. He cocked his head, long, icicle hair clinking together.

“Another week and I would have been free,” Frost said.

“Yeah. You’re welcome,” Oliver replied, climbing to his feet.

“From your entrance, it seems you’ve claimed your inheritance. Excellent. Now we must-”

“No time,” Oliver interrupted. Julianna and Collette flanked him, so that the three of them stood before Frost as though trying to bar his exit. “Julianna can’t go through the Veil. Collette can. Take her with you, now. Get back to Euphrasia and help Hunyadi against Atlantis.”

Collette looked at him sadly, but did not protest. She had known this was coming. There was no other way.

Julianna took his hand. Oliver squeezed her fingers in his own.

“And what of you?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure something out. Anyway, you only need one of the Bascombes to fulfill your prophecy, right?”

Frost blinked, then glanced away, and Oliver was surprised to see that the winter man even had the capacity to feel guilt.

“You don’t understand.”

Shouts came down the corridor. Collette looked out. “They’re coming.”

“Go!” Oliver shouted.

Frost reached out and opened a rift in the Veil. It seemed so simple for him, like parting curtains. Oliver felt the lure of that easy safety, but he tightened his hold on Julianna’s hand as Frost and Collette stepped through.

“See you soon,” Collette said. She blew him a kiss, and then they were gone.

Oliver ran to the rear wall of Frost’s cell. He pressed one palm against it, took a breath, and pushed. Powder and stone crumbled and then they were running through into the cell behind it. Opening that door was simple enough. Then they leaped out into the corridor where they’d been imprisoned only minutes before.

The pounding of heavy boots crashed down the hall, followed by loud cursing. Oliver glanced to the left and saw the first of the Atlantean guards emerge through the archway. It was the one he’d skirmished with in his cell. Hate fired his blood, but now wasn’t the time for payback.

He let go of Julianna’s hand and put both hands on the wall in front of him. Before long they were at the rear wall of the dungeon, and outside was the city of Palenque.

The wall crumbled easily. Fresh air rushed in-cool night air still rife with the warm smell of spices from the restaurants around the king’s plaza. Oliver pulled Julianna forward and they dropped onto the grass below. Twenty yards away was an iron fence, and beyond that the cobblestone plaza.

“Run,” Oliver told her.

“Hurry,” she replied, and then she did as he’d asked, bolting for the fence.

Oliver faced the palace. He put both hands on the shattered wall. Breathing evenly, he felt for the integrity of the wall. He could sense its age and all of the places where the stones were already loose, where the mortar had cracked.

One such crack ran up the wall to his left. Oliver nudged it and a portion of the palace wall thirty feet high and twenty wide caved in, burying some of the soldiers alive.

He raced for the fence and grabbed it with both hands. Two of its upright bars rusted and then fell down onto the cobblestones with a clang. Julianna clutched his hand, then they were through the fence and sprinting across the plaza to the nearest alley, disappearing into the maze of Palenque’s streets.

They were lost and friendless in a city whose citizens believed they were assassins who had murdered the king.

But they were free.

And Oliver was Legend-Born.

One morning, the gods came to Lycaon’s Kitchen.

Kitsune had nearly lost track of the days. She and Coyote had been sleeping in an abandoned marble and granite home a quarter of a mile from the restaurant. Bitterness still lingered between them. She knew she ought to forgive Coyote his past cowardice and recognize the courage it had taken him to overcome it, but bitter barbs had been exchanged between them long before the Myth Hunters had begun to kill their kin. And tricksters-like elephants-had long memories.

So she kept to herself and she did all that was in her power to avoid thinking of what danger Frost and Oliver might now be in-if they were even still alive-and the looks on the faces of Collette Bascombe and Julianna Whitney when she had left them all behind.

Yet all of her efforts to avoid thinking about Oliver and the others meant that they were all she did think about.

Until that dismal gray morning when the gods walked in out of the rain. There were three of them. A tall, voluptuous goddess with braids of dark hair and lavender eyes carried a spear and wore a heavy sword at her hip. A war goddess, from the look of her, she had a rusted chest plate and a dented helm that seemed to have served her well long ago. Beside her came another goddess, a slender creature whose pale flesh was textured with scales and whose hair had a greenish hue. Her smile was radiant. The third of their number had the bedraggled dignity of a Romany traveler or a paladin. An aura of light surrounded him, pulsing, mesmerizing.

“Kit,” Coyote murmured, staring at them.

“What?”

But he had nothing to say. They both stared at these faded gods, and wondered what marvels they must have been at the height of their glory.

Lycaon came out of the back with a tray of sausage and eggs that he had fixed for their breakfast. The old gods glared at him, and the cannibal slid the tray onto the table in front of Kitsune and Coyote and made a hasty, silent retreat.

“You are Kitsune of the Borderkind?” asked the goddess.

Kitsune stood, clumsily. These beings were no greater than a thousand legends she had met-no greater than she was. Yet here she was acting as though they were her superiors. But she couldn’t help herself. It was something in the way they carried themselves, their austere dignity.

“I’m Kitsune,” she said. “This is my cousin, Coyote.”

The warrior goddess nodded to him in greeting. Kitsune liked that. At least this one hadn’t ignored him the way the wine gods had.

Coyote stood and bowed his head to them.

“I am Bellona, goddess of war,” she said. Roman, Kitsune thought, trying to keep the two pantheons separate in her mind, though so many of them were facets of one another’s legends.

“This is Salacia, my sister, goddess of the sea,” Bellona went on. A small smile touched her lips. “And you have already noticed our Greek brother, Hesperos, the evening star.”

Kitsune could not look at him, he was so beautiful.

“We know why you have come,” Salacia said, her voice a soft lilt. “But we would hear from your own lips all that you know of the war.”

Hope flickered inside Kitsune.

It was Coyote who asked the question. “Then you’ll help us?”

Bellona shook her head. “That will be a decision for Artemis.”

Kitsune shivered. Her own legend was from the far east, but the name of Artemis still resonated. The daughter of Zeus, she was goddess of the wilderness and the hunt, goddess of the wild animals. Kitsune felt a kinship with this being she had never met, but more than that. Instinctively, she knew that she would follow Artemis to war without question.

“She lives?” Coyote asked.

The old gods turned dark eyes upon him and he looked away.

“Artemis is not what she once was,” Salacia replied. “None of us are. But Artemis bears the scars of time and battle and the betrayal of her father, himself now dead. Her mind often drifts, but our brothers and sisters follow her word. If she agrees to aid you, then those who are willing may join the fight. If she does not, your time has been wasted.”

Hesperos said nothing, but Kitsune felt his gaze upon her. Her skin felt flushed with warmth, and she told herself it was the nearness of the aura of starlight that surrounded him.

But the stars were supposed to be cold.

He distracted her, but she shook it off. All that mattered now would be the decision of Artemis.

“And if she agrees, how many do you think will come?”

Bellona opened her hands. “We three, at least. Perhaps others who still wish to feel alive, or who still have enough pride to punish an enemy who dares threaten us.”

Three, Kitsune thought. If only she had time to go east, to try to persuade the gods of Asia to join them. Many of the legends from the eastern lands had begun to come west to aid King Hunyadi, but the old gods were sleeping, there.

Still, three would be better than nothing. And perhaps there would be more, if Artemis allowed it.

“Do you think I should speak to Artemis myself? I could tell her the tale of what transpires, try to convince her-”

“Not if you value your life. She would not trust you for a moment. The animals turned on her, once, and she has never forgiven them.”

The tale filled Kitsune with revulsion, but she only nodded.

Together, she and Coyote began to tell the old gods all they knew of the war and its origins and the threat of the Atlantean conspiracy.

When they had finished, Bellona made her a promise.

“If Artemis wills it, we will meet you an hour past dawn tomorrow on the southern road, in view of the city walls, with all of the gods who will join us. For my part, I hope to see you again. It has been far too long since I have seen war, and I yearn for it.”