The Borderkind

CHAPTER 17

K itsune did not try to take Oliver’s hand as they forged ahead along the Orient Road, but she seemed more at ease.

Oliver was grateful. Now that they were on their way again-and with a promise of help from the Dustman-his thoughts were centered on Collette and the monster who had abducted her. His mind worried about the conflict that lay at the end of their travels and its outcome. Finding Collette was only the beginning.

For hours they walked, passing through a small village where the rice harvest was under way and a larger town whose buildings had a distinctly Asian flair. The geography on this side of the Veil might be quite different from that of the other, but clearly this region’s Lost Ones and legends corresponded in some way to Asia.

In time, the fields and hills gave way to a tangled forest, and the Orient Road became narrower and more rutted. Several times it snaked to the left or right without any apparent topographical necessity. As the late afternoon shadows grew longer, they saw through the trees a broad expanse of silver lake, its mirror surface reflecting back the beauty of the forest and the sun where it hung low in the sky.

The lake seemed perfectly still, as though it were a sheet of ice. That reminded Oliver of Frost, but he quickly pushed such ruminations away. Questions about the winter man’s friendship and loyalty-about his motivations-had plagued him since Twillig’s Gorge, but entertaining them now would be a distraction he could ill afford.

The road curved around the lake, and on the far side the giant bonsai forest-as he had begun to think of it-thickened once more. They strode past a knot of thick trees that leaned in over the road, and then came to a clearing.

Since the moment that Kitsune had mentioned the stone circle they were meant to seek, Oliver had held a vague impression of Stonehenge in his mind. But this was no feat of ancient architecture. These stones were as black and smooth as onyx and jutted from the earth as if they had grown there, like the teeth of some giant, burrowing beast attempting to eat its way to the surface.

Each of the black stones had grown tall, but not uniformly so. The largest stood perhaps twenty feet in height, the shortest a dozen. The circle they formed was uneven, yet still undoubtedly a circle, placed that way with some purpose. The gaps between stones were as little as a few inches in some places, and at the widest, no more than two feet.

Flowers grew in clumps amongst the knee-high grass of the clearing, as though the black stones themselves were some sort of shrine or memorial and the flowers had been left by mourners.

Oliver paused at the edge of the road, hesitant to enter the clearing.

“What do you think will happen?” he asked without looking at Kitsune.

“I don’t know,” the fox-woman replied, her voice soft and, he thought, perhaps even a bit fearful. “But now we find out.”

The late afternoon sun still reached fingers of daylight into the clearing, but Oliver shivered as a chill breeze rustled the trees. With a nervous grin he stepped into the clearing, tall grass scritching against the legs of his blue jeans as he walked toward the ebony circle.

Oliver tried to peer between the stones, but there was only shadow there, as though night had already fallen within the circle. He could see that the grass grew in the gaps between the stones, and that heartened him a bit, though he did not know why. What would happen, he wondered, if he was unable to pass through, but Kitsune vanished? Would she be able to come back for him? Would she bother?

Thoughts of Collette steeled him.

Kitsune did not reach out for him, but she took a step past him and cocked her head, looking back curiously. Then she reached up and drew back her hood for the first time since they had come back through the Veil. Despite his fear, he caught his breath just to look at her. Her eyes were kind.

“You must try, Oliver. This will save us days.”

He nodded. Collette awaited. The Sandman was also waiting.

Oliver took another step.

As if startled by the motion, a flock of small birds cried out and took off from the tops of several trees at the edge of the clearing, branches waving at the suddenness of their departure.

Something had spooked them.

Oliver glanced at Kitsune and saw that she was sniffing at the air.

“No,” he whispered, jaw set tightly. “Not now.”

A terrible hiss filled the clearing, resounding off of the stones. Oliver turned, trying to find the source of the echoing sounds, but then he saw that Kitsune’s gaze was locked on a spot at the edge of the clearing-at the very same knot of trees that had blocked their view of the stone circle until the last moment.

A creature stood in the shade of those trees, a thing with antlers and green-feathered wings and long, vicious claws. Its features were thin and brutal and its eyes were bright as it stepped into the last of the sunlight and started toward them.

Oliver glanced around. There were others. Of course there were others. Six or seven of the antlered things, each of them terrifying to behold. They carried no weapons, but this troubled Oliver even more than if they had been armed. Their long fingers came to vicious points, and it was clear they needed no other weapon.

Back on the Orient Road, two other figures had appeared from the woods. One was an immense, hunchbacked hag with jaundiced, pustulent skin and a thick mess of gray and black hair. The hag stood at least eight feet high, and she carried a long butcher’s knife in each hand, ready to carve.

But she was far from the worst of them. For beside her came the thing responsible for the hissing in the air. It rose and fell, bobbing in the air, and its upper body swayed back and forth. The head was vaguely serpentine, but beneath that it was simply a mass of tentacles that coiled like snakes, turning in upon themselves. Its body was like a tower of vipers, the tentacles lashing out and then curling inward again. It moved across the dusty road without legs, the tentacles dragging and thrusting and dancing it forward.

“Oliver,” Kitsune whispered.

From the corner of his eye he saw her raise her hood again. Oliver put his hand on the pommel of his sword, holding his breath.

“You’ve gone far enough, I think,” the hag said.

“Black Annis,” Kitsune said, her eyes as cold as her tone. “This is none of your concern. Hunt me another day. We have an errand that will not wait.”

The hag crouched lower, the hump on her back more pronounced than ever, and took a step nearer. “ This errand will not wait.”

The tentacled thing roiled toward them, kicking up dust from the road. Oliver stared at it, hating his fear but unable to rise above it. Twisted as she was, the hag at least had human form. The other was unnatural, a nightmare churning forth from his fevered mind.

With a sound like the flap of a flag in high wind, one of the winged Hunters took flight at the edge of the clearing, throwing a dreadful shadow across the grass. The one that had been directly opposite it took flight as well.

“Kit?” Oliver whispered.

The fox-woman did not reply, only stared at Black Annis, then glanced around quickly at the others. He could practically hear her heart pounding, and he saw in her stance that she wanted nothing more than to bolt into the trees and run for her life.

Oliver knew then that they would die here. They stood no chance at all against so many Hunters. Kitsune could drag them across the Veil again, but could she grab him and step through before they attacked? He did not believe so. And from the look of her, she was so frightened that it had not even occurred to her.

I miss you, he thought, images of his sister, and of Julianna, rising in his mind. And he began slowly to draw his sword from its sheath.

He caught his breath. The Dustman, he thought. If he could summon the Dustman, at least they would not be alone. The numbers might still be too great, but…

And then Oliver realized that there was another alternative.

Leaving his blade sheathed, he reached into his pocket. His fingers pushed aside the feather from the little girl’s pillow and he grasped instead the single large seed that the gods of the Harvest had given him what seemed like so very long ago. Promises had been made that day, of help when he needed it.

He could not imagine ever needing it more.

Oliver dropped the seed to the ground. For good measure, he stepped on it, pressing it into the soil.

The ground began to tremble.

The antlered creatures began to close in, but several of them paused and glanced at one another, confused. The two in the air began to swoop downward.

“What have you done?” shrieked the hag.

The hissing of the other Hunter grew so loud it almost drowned out the rumbling of the earth and it darted across the road, propelled by a hundred thick tentacles.

Cornstalks shot up out of the road and wrapped around it, grabbing tentacles one by one and dragging it down. The thing struggled, at war with the cornstalks as they continued to burst up through the hard-packed soil.

Other things grew. Trees and plants came up amongst the grass, only sprouts and saplings one instant and fully grown the next. The Kornbocke himself was there, antlers raised. A low, snarling shape tore itself from a thick crop of cornstalks, and the Kornwolf bounded free.

The appletree man lumbered toward Oliver, taking up a defensive position beside him. Others quickly joined them; elegant women made of bark and thorns; stout little red-faced men who stank of rotting berries; and the king himself, Ahren Konigen, the corn husk man who had given Oliver the seed to begin with. Corn husks lay over the hollows where his eyes ought to be and formed the crown upon his head.

“As good as our word, Oliver Bascombe. These are dark days, and your fight is ours.”

The Hunters attacked.

The gods of the Harvest were silent but savage, and blood splattered the grass and the circle of black stones. Oliver drew his sword and raced to stand beside Konigen.

“My sister,” Oliver said as one of the antlered things circled above, looking for an angle of attack.

Konigen turned toward him.

“Go, and do what you must,” the harvest king said. “It seems to me our troubles are all connected under the surface, roots intertwined.”

Oliver nodded. With a single glance around at the furious battle, he spotted Kitsune and raced toward her. Though she surely would have been safer as a fox, she had remained in the shape of a woman, standing and fighting side by side with the gods of the Harvest.

He grabbed her wrist and she spun on him, teeth bared, jaws impossibly wide.

“Kit, stop! Konigen said to go. If they lose, we may not have another chance.”

The fox-woman hesitated, jade eyes flashing. Then she shook her wrist loose and ran for the circle of stones. Oliver heard the flap of heavy wings above him, the shadow of a dreadful, antlered thing falling over him, and felt an icy chill grip his heart.

“Fuck that,” he snarled, and ran for the circle of onyx stones that thrust up from the clearing, the entrance to the Winding Way, wondering if he would find himself alone amongst the stones, or if their magic would work for him.

“Kill them all, myths and Legend-Born alike!” the hag, Black Annis, screamed nearby.

Oliver glanced back and saw her, slashing at the rotting berry-men as they overwhelmed her. She was splashed with putrid fruit and blood, but they began to draw her down.

“Legend-Born?” he asked, calling after Kitsune as she darted between two towering black stones.

The fox-woman did not look back.

Oliver ran after her and twisted sideways, pushing himself through the narrow gap. He had just a moment to wonder how the battle they had left would end, and to regret abandoning those who had come to his aid, then he plunged into a cloud of thick, gray mist that pulsed and twisted and flowed around him, like something alive.

Ahead, through the mist, he could barely make out Kitsune’s presence and, beyond her, a road like a curved ribbon of black glass.

The Winding Way.

Blue Jay’s boots squelched in soft, damp earth and water dripped from the feathers tied in his hair as he stepped from the rain forest. The daylight had turned a golden hue, the promise of evening on the horizon. Below, the city of Palenque sprawled across several miles of Yucatazcan valley. He had never been to Palenque. In his mind’s eye he had pictured a city that was little more than a series of pyramids like the one where they’d been attacked by Hunters.

He had not expected this.

Already many of the buildings and homes in Palenque had lights burning within, and some of the streets were lined with oil lamps. Towers rose above the skyline, three or four times the height of the average structure. He did not know if they existed for industry or for worship, but they were formidable structures. Homes had been built into the side of a hill at the eastern end of town, rising one upon the other in terraces, each connected by steps and ladders.

The streets were designed in concentric circles, radiating out from the tallest of the towers, which thrust up from the center of Palenque, providing what must have been a breathtaking view of both the city and the hills surrounding it.

The architecture showed myriad influences. Blue Jay had never made a proper study of the subject, but the colors in the stone and the iconic statues that stood as monolithic sentinels at the far edges of the circular city hinted strongly at the Mayan and Aztec past of those who had founded the city and other ancient civilizations. There was a Palenque still in the human world, but Blue Jay felt sure it looked nothing like this.

Leicester Grindylow stepped out of the rain forest and came to stand beside him. The water bogie crossed his long arms and whistled in appreciation.

“She’s a beauty,” Grin said.

Cheval and Li emerged from the trees as well-each solitary in their grief-with Frost coming along last. The winter man despised the sweltering heat of the rain forest, but at least the moisture helped slow its effects. Now Frost paused on the edge of the hill, not wishing to leave the forest and come into the heat of the waning day. His features were sharp, his body a brittle razor. Blue Jay worried for him, for so many reasons.

Frost started out of the rain forest, beginning the final leg of their journey to Palenque. He moved down the hill toward the outskirts of the city, not even bothering to search the sky for Perytons or glance around for other enemies.

“Watch yourselves,” Cheval Bayard said, treading carefully, gliding down the hill, her wary gaze seeking out any sign of trouble.

Grin and Li followed her. The Guardian of Fire had been silent for hours, mourning his dead companion. Whatever physical loss he had suffered because of the tiger’s death, it appeared to be permanent. He was pale and thinner, the fire inside him burning through his skin in places, small flames licking across his flesh, unbidden. There was power in him still, but somehow the loss of his tiger had put something off balance inside of him, and the flames seemed to be slowly devouring him from within.

Blue Jay wondered how long it would take for the fire to consume Li completely.

The trickster came last in their procession. Perhaps that was why he was the first to notice the things that flew overhead, slipping out of the rain forest behind them and snaking through the air above them.

“Frost!” Blue Jay shouted.

They all looked up at the alarm in his voice and tracked the progress of the flying things above them. At first, Blue Jay thought the winged serpents were Jaculi, but these creatures were far larger than the one that had spied upon them near Twillig’s Gorge.

“Prepare yourselves,” Li snapped, opening his arms wide as though to embrace the sky, flickering fire running across his hands and arms all the way to the elbows. It churned in his grasp as though he might sculpt a sword of flame from the air. The patches of burning ember on his skin grew wider, spreading.

Grin took up position beside Li, awaiting an attack. Blue Jay had certainly not been expecting them to be able to enter the city without a fight, but he was tired of fighting, tired of death, tired of the twisted pleasure the Hunters took in their work.

He began to dance, the rhythm of his movements, the precise placement of his feet a gesture of respect to ancient traditions and ancient peoples. As he made his way down the slope, spinning and leaping in that dance, he felt the magic take hold, and the air blurred blue beneath his arms as his mystical wings formed. Whatever these new Hunters were, he would destroy them as quickly as possible, and then move on.

“They are not alone,” Cheval Bayard called, her silver hair gleaming in the day’s last light. Her eyes were narrow with grim resignation.

Dusk was almost upon them when Blue Jay looked to see what she was talking about. At the base of the hill, just at the outskirts of the city, three large figures slunk catlike along the ground. They raced toward Frost, and the winter man turned to face them.

They rose up on their hind legs twenty feet from where Frost stood. The creatures were jaguars: true jungle cats with black-spotted, golden-brown fur, with white muzzles. Yet they were not jaguars, really, for they stood on their hind legs. They were still built like cats-their faces had not altered and their tails still twitched behind them-but their forelegs were more like arms now, and their claws had lengthened.

“No!” Blue Jay cried.

He took flight, transforming into the bird in a blink. The winged serpents had begun to descend now and were also moving straight toward Frost. These Hunters were here for the winter man. Just as the Borderkind had come to slay Ty’Lis to disrupt their enemies, the Hunters had been sent to murder the leader of the Borderkind.

Li hurled a thin stream of fire into the air and it seared past the serpents. Grin and Cheval raced toward Frost. Blue Jay flew above them all, small wings propelling him forward. He sliced through the air and, just as he was about to reach Frost, prepared himself to change again. In his mind’s eye he could see it. Just before he touched ground, the mystical wings that his magic and his legend had given him would appear. He would dance.

He would slay them all.

Whatever Frost’s faults, he was a friend and a leader, and Blue Jay would not allow him to be slain so callously.

At the city’s edge, where the last of the buildings on its outskirts were capped with tall, ugly-faced stone statues, other creatures began to emerge. Some were troll-like creatures with huge mouths in their bellies. Others were animal-human legends: creatures combining frog and man, or crocodile and woman.

The dusk erupted suddenly with a flash of brilliance, and Blue Jay saw a woman step out from between two buildings and spread glorious wings as she transformed into a bird made of pure golden light.

The winged serpents descended. They were even larger than he’d thought, nearly man-sized, and when they alighted on the hill they held themselves up with their twisting, coiling tails, wings furling behind them, claws outstretched. They had burning red eyes like hot coals, and when they hissed they revealed black mouths full of long fangs.

Somewhere he had heard of these things. The name escaped him, but Blue Jay knew they were a breed of vampire.

He steeled himself for battle, and for death.

Then the jaguar-men bowed to Frost. The vampire serpents did the same, bodies undulating as they lowered themselves into a bow and then lifted their heads again. The rest of the creatures followed suit.

“What the bloody hell is this, then?” Grin barked as he and Li caught up to Cheval.

Blue Jay spun through the air and alighted beside the winter man. Beneath his arms, mystic wings shimmered, almost invisible. He stared around at all of these creatures who had intercepted them, and who now had made this unexpected gesture of respect.

“Frost, what’s going on?” he asked.

The winter man smiled, the ice around his mouth cracking, cold mist streaming off of him.

“You haven’t figured it out yet, Jay?” Frost asked, looking at him with mischief in his frozen eyes. “They’re not Hunters.”

Blue Jay stared at the jaguar-men and the vampire serpents, at the gleaming bird of light and the things with the hideous mouths in their bellies.

“These are Borderkind?”

Frost nodded. “This is Yucatazca, not Euphrasia, my friend. A different kingdom. A different world.”

As Blue Jay watched, others streamed out of the city. Humans. Lost Ones, descended from the ancient races that made up this kingdom and the many who had been lost there after its founding.

“What are they doing here?” Cheval asked, stepping up beside Blue Jay in the gathering indigo gloom of dusk. The fires and electrical lights in the city glowed more brightly as darkness fell.

One of the jaguar-men came forward. “They are here to help,” he said, his words heavily accented. “Just as we all are.”

The Lost Ones and strange Yucatazcan Borderkind gathered more closely around the five who had traveled so far.

“Whispers have come down from the north,” the jaguar-man said, cat eyes bright. “The slaughter of our kin has only truly begun in Yucatazca.”

“Clever enough,” Li said, flames sputtering at the corners of his eyes. The patches of ember on his skin continued to spread like virulent infection. “Ty’Lis wanted the Borderkind here to feel safe, as though it was all happening so far away.”

“But we are not fools,” the jaguar-man said, grim-faced as he stared at Frost. “This trouble comes to all of us. The whispers from the north have carried stories of your struggles against the Hunters. When word arrived that you were coming to Palenque, we knew there would be Hunters here to greet you.”

Frost glanced around. With nightfall, the mist that surrounded him seemed to form a cloud that eddied away on the steady current of the warm night wind.

“But there are no Hunters awaiting us.”

If a cat could be said to smile, that is what the jaguar-man did. “Oh, but there were. And other enemies will await you in the city.”

Once again, the jaguar-man bowed, and the rest of those who had gathered there-human and Borderkind alike-did the same.

“We are here to see that you reach the castle and that you find the answers you seek…and that whoever is truly the master of the Hunters is punished.”

Blue Jay laughed softly to himself, relief washing through him. They were not so alone as they had feared. With all of the setbacks they’d had, he’d expected the worst. It was a pleasure to be wrong for once.

Frost glanced at Cheval, who had been studying the jaguar-man intently. This could be a trap, after all, but she had a sense about things, about creatures and the truth in them. She nodded once. The winter man looked at Li and at Grin and then finally at Blue Jay, his expression clearing.

“What are we waiting for?” Blue Jay said, sliding his hands casually into the pockets of his jeans.

Frost nodded and turned to the jaguar-man. “Lead on.”

Collette paced the confines of her prison, trailing her fingers along the hard-packed wall. Her eyes burned with exhaustion and her limbs ached, but she refused to lie down. She would not sleep. The memory of the horror she had witnessed, the Sandman in the bedroom of that little, murdered child, had etched itself in her mind. The only way for her to shake such thoughts was to focus on another memory, the tactile sensation of the sand as it gave way beneath her fingers.

The wall felt hard as concrete, yet it had given way. That had been no hallucination. Now as she dragged her fingers across it, the wall was like sandpaper scraping the soft pads of her fingertips, but when she’d heard the sound of that child crying, she found a way to push through and the sand had gone soft.

How…she wondered. How had she done it?

Without thinking, that was the answer. When the cries of that doomed child had reached her, she had touched the sand and it had changed. When doubt had given way to necessity, something had happened. And, in her very bones, Collette felt sure that the change had not been the Sandman’s doing but her own. He had been furious when she had intruded upon his crime.

So now she walked, clearing her mind of anything save exhaustion. Trudging around and around the circumference of that room, she kept contact with the sand wall and she let the rest of her thoughts go.

“There’s no place like home,” chimed the Vittora. “No place like home.”

Her luck, her doom, both were tied into that little sphere of light. But Collette had found a strange peace within herself. The Vittora waned, growing smaller and dimmer, and she knew that the luck of her life was being leeched away. But somehow, the presence of the death spirit had become a comfort to her, an odd companion in her imprisonment. It did nothing but mutter bits of sentences that might mean nothing and lines from her favorite films, snatched from her brain, but it was hers. If this was her luck and her death, she embraced it.

The air stagnated down in that chamber, despite the arched windows high above. It felt warm and close, but from time to time a cool, errant breeze would reach her.

Collette closed her eyes and continued walking. Almost unconsciously she began to press harder against the wall. Her fingers made a rasping noise as she scraped them on the rough surface. Around and around, increasing the pressure so much that her arm shook and her fingertips were scraped raw.

Then the sand gave way, loose grains cascading down the wall with a shushing sound.

Without opening her eyes, Collette froze in place and pushed her fingers further into the wall, digging them into the sand, her heart leaping at the feel of the dry sand spilling around her wrist.

Turning toward the wall, still with her eyes closed, she pushed her other hand into a spot higher on the wall. The sand yielded to her touch, but only as far as she pushed. Where her thumb brushed the wall, it remained intact.

Unable to hold off any longer, she opened her eyes.

The last rays of the day’s light streamed into the chamber through those high arched windows, casting odd golden shapes upon the upper walls. Nearby, the Vittora hovered in the air. Collette felt sure it had grown larger and brighter while her eyes were closed. Quietly it hummed a familiar tune, something from a film, she was sure.

A smile touched her lips. It was “In Your Eyes,” by Peter Gabriel, from the movie Say Anything. God, how she loved that film.

Bracing herself, setting her grip in the handholds she’d made in the wall, she lifted her bare foot and pressed her toes against the wall. It slid through the sand as though the toehold had been there all along, just waiting for her. But that wasn’t true. She had investigated every inch of this prison.

Somehow she was doing this herself.

The Vittora hummed more loudly and drifted toward her. Fear tingled at the base of her spine and Collette started to climb as though she might outrun it. Where she thrust her hands and feet at the wall, the sand formed handholds for her to grip. Inch by inch, she scaled the wall as the Vittora danced around her, humming growing louder with each new grip.

It darted across the circular chamber, paused, and then zipped toward her.

Collette tried to cry out, but could not find her voice. The Vittora struck her back and she nearly lost her grip and fell fifteen feet to the bottom of the chamber. But somehow she managed to hold on as the Vittora seared her flesh for a moment…

And then was gone. Its light winked out, its voice vanished.

For several seconds she hung there on the wall, and then Collette realized what had happened. The Vittora had not vanished. It had simply returned to the place from which it had come…inside of her. Her luck had come back to her, and it seemed her doom was not so imminent as she had believed.

A small voice in the back of her mind wanted to know how any of this was possible, but she existed now in a world of impossible things. Stopping the Sandman, getting out of this hellhole, saving those children and her brother…those were the things that mattered.

There were secrets here. Secrets that involved her and Oliver. Collette knew that. But secrets could wait.

With the Vittora back inside her, she felt invigorated. Her pajamas were torn and filthy, her hair matted, her skin like leather from the sun, but she climbed swiftly.

When Collette pulled herself through one of those high arched windows, she had a smile on her face. She dragged her belly and breasts on the rough sand of the window ledge and then stood up, turned, and spat down into the chamber that had been her prison.

Then she glanced around. The view from the ledge that surrounded the cell at the level of those windows was a breathtaking panorama, with the soft white sand of a magnificent beach on one side and what seemed like jungle on the other. The building around her was a castle. No other word could have described it.

A sand castle, on the shore of some tropical land. How it was that, throughout her captivity, she had never once heard or caught scent of the ocean, she did not know. Another secret yet to be exposed.

Collette looked around and found a set of stairs that led downward, into the castle. They were the only possible way down. A jump from this height would surely kill her. Exhilaration and fear raged through her, and her skin prickled with anticipation as she started down the stairs.

All the walls of the castle were constructed from the same hard sand as her prison, and she wondered if she could shape them as well. The corridors were dark, save for torches set in sconces on the wall at long intervals, so at times she walked through nearly complete darkness.

There were many doors in the castle. Many stairwells.

On one of the stairwells, the view froze her in place. It revealed a sprawl of sand and a broad, well-traveled road that ran through a lovely landscape of oak and rowan trees, with mountains in the far distance.

Whatever land that was, it existed far from the place she had seen from the castle’s pinnacle.

For long minutes, she kept on searching for some way out of this endless labyrinth of halls and stairs, passing through great chambers and eventually through quiet, empty rooms. Only the wind moved here, scouring the sand that created every surface.

At last, when she could stand it not a moment longer, she turned to the nearest wall and began to dig. The sand gave way, spilling all around her, and soon her hands burst through to another chamber beyond the wall. Collette paused and used her fingers to carve into the sand an outline of a door.

She pushed, and all of the sand within that outline collapsed on the floor.

Collette stepped through, into a chamber whose ceiling rose up and up like the greatest of cathedrals. All around the edges of the vast room were doors set into the outer walls. And at one end there stood a pair of enormous, wooden doors, large enough for a parade of elephants.

The doors stood closed, but she felt sure this was the exit and started in that direction.

Elsewhere in the cathedral room she heard a shrill cry, followed by sobbing. The whimpering of a child.

No, she thought. Not again.

Escape called to her. But the whimpering continued and she could not simply walk away from that sound.

It took her a minute or two to locate the source of the child’s cries. Collette strode toward the door-a real door, it seemed, not something carved of sand-but as she did she glanced around. Her skin itched as though grains of sand were sliding over her flesh. A point at the center of her back felt warm and she searched the shadows all through that huge chamber, certain she was being observed.

“In your eyes,” she sang softly, “the light, the heat. In your eyes, I am complete…”

It comforted her, like whistling in the dark, though she was hardly aware she was doing it.

Something glittered in the center of the room, in the dark. Careful not to step on it, she bent to pick up a piece of what she thought was broken glass. Yet it didn’t seem like ordinary glass. More like crystal. Or diamond.

Another cry came from beyond that door and she tossed the glass down. The child needed her. She rushed now, certain that she had the right door. If she was being observed there was precious little she could do about it.

At the door she paused, hand on the knob, took a deep breath, and then turned, hauling it open.

On the other side stood a little girl with blond hair, hands covering her eyes as she sobbed, muttering words that might have been prayers. The dress she wore seemed familiar, much like something Collette herself had owned as a little girl, with all the bows and trim that her mother had loved.

The girl stood in shadows in a short corridor like the others in the castle, all sand and darkness, all color washed away. Beyond her stood another door, hanging open, the edges of it spilling sand. Through the open door Collette could see a child’s bedroom.

Her heart trembled at the scene, so like what she had stumbled upon before. But in this room were bunk beds, and in each bed there slept a small boy, twins from the look of them. Posters covered the walls. Books and video games covered the floor as if a tornado had struck.

The last time she had come upon a scene like this, the child had already been dead, murdered by the Sandman. But these boys still slept, untroubled, unharmed.

The sound of weeping grew louder.

The boys stirred in their bunks.

Collette put her hand against the wall to steady herself, one door behind her and another ahead. If the bedroom belonged to the boys, then who was-

The little girl, crying out in despair, lowered her hands and looked up. Collette gasped and staggered back a step. The girl was herself, a mirror image of Collette at five years old.

But her eyes had been torn out.

The girl’s cries turned to laughter as she began to change. Only then, in the shadows, did Collette see that she was not a flesh-and-blood thing but a construct of sand. The sand shifted and twisted and built itself up, a cloak draping around it.

Lemon-yellow eyes peered from beneath the cloak. From the sand.

“Did you think I wouldn’t sense your escape, Bascombe?” the Sandman asked.

Collette swore and took a step backward.

The door behind her slammed closed and she jumped at the noise it made. The Sandman blocked her view of the bedroom with the sleeping boys, but she wondered if the sound had woken them.

Slowly, that door closed as well. She whimpered as the light went away, and the blackness closed in around her. She ought to back up, to claw at the walls, to make herself a new door, but the fear gnawed at her heart.

In the darkness, there were only those yellow eyes.

Something brushed her cheek…the Sandman’s fingers. She batted them away.

There were sounds in the darkness. The swish of his cloak, the rasp of sand against sand. He struck her face, scraping flesh, and she fell to her knees, feeling the sting as blood began to well on her cheek.

Those yellow eyes loomed above her.

“I am not through with you yet,” the Sandman whispered.

“Fuck you,” she snarled, and pistoned her legs to thrust herself upward and grab hold of the Sandman.

Her fingers closed on his arm, and for just a moment his flesh gave way like sand. With a roar, the monster struck her down again, his strength terrible. Her head rang with the blow, but he did not stop there.

Cloak flapping in the darkness, he fell on top of her. His breath was like the desert, and his yellow eyes like poisoned stars. She felt the tips of his talons press against her cheeks, digging in, drawing blood, scratching furrows in her skin that led to the edges of her eyes.

Collette screamed.

“You tempt me so, Bascombe. I want to taste these eyes. The eyes of the Legend-Born. The wishes of my allies mean little when you tempt me so. I care not about the Legend-Born or the cataclysm you may cause. I merely want to feel your eyes pop in my teeth, to taste the warm fluid as it gushes over my tongue. It isn’t very much to ask, after all, is it?”

Those talons pressed harder, drawing tears of blood. Again, Collette cried out.

The Sandman released her. Those yellow eyes floated upward.

“The time has not come. If I were forced to wait much longer, temptation might overwhelm me. But it won’t be long now, girl. Word has come to me. No, it won’t be long at all now.

“We shall simply sit here in the dark together, and wait.”