The Borderkind

CHAPTER 19

H alliwell snapped the reins on his horse and spurred her forward, moving up beside Julianna. The chill night wind raised goosebumps on his flesh but he did not feel cold. In truth, he felt nothing. Exhausted and aching, his butt and thighs pummeled by days on horseback, he felt like a bag of cold and brittle bones.

His frayed nerves felt dulled. The panic that had roiled inside of him for so long had abated with the numb sameness of the hours of their journey. Though they had a clear goal-and Captain Beck’s soldiers seemed anxious to reach it-Halliwell felt as though it was all quite pointless. The only things that kept him moving were the horse beneath him and the need to meet Oliver Bascombe face-to-face. Halliwell would ask him the questions he had waited so long to ask, though by now the only one that seemed important was the one he felt sure he already knew the answer to.

Oliver would almost certainly tell them what Hunyadi and Virginia Tsing and Kara had all told them: they were damned to stay in this world, lost forever to the one they had known.

And then Halliwell could die.

Even in the midst of his malaise, he could not have failed to notice the change in Julianna. The journey had been good for her, as though the exposure to the daytime sun and the cold night air had purified her.

Maybe it was the food that King Hunyadi’s soldiers had shared with him and Julianna along their journey, or just long-term exposure to the…he hated to even think the word, but the magic of this place. From the time they had left Hunyadi’s summer residence with Captain Damia Beck and the detachment of soldiers under her command, Julianna had been filled with a sense of purpose. She had a mission now, and with Oliver at the other end of that mission, she had faith that she would have him in her arms again, and that answers would finally be forthcoming.

Halliwell didn’t have faith in anything anymore.

“Damia says we’re close now,” Julianna said.

She gave Halliwell a sidelong glance but he could read nothing in it. The part of her that was a lawyer, a determined professional, had recently returned to the fore. She behaved not like a woman searching for her lost fiance, but like… well, like a cop, Halliwell thought.

“Hours?” Halliwell asked.

Julianna had obviously been trained to ride. A young New England girl from a wealthy family, she’d probably been on horseback practically before she could walk. She rode upright in the saddle and had total command of her horse. When her mount moved a few feet further away from his and picked up its pace ever so slightly, Halliwell felt certain it was quite purposeful.

“Minutes,” she said.

And turned her face away.

That was when he understood why she’d moved ahead. She did not trust her expression to remain neutral during this exchange. They sought Oliver Bascombe for very different reasons, and Halliwell’s were not altogether pleasant. Julianna did not trust him anymore.

“Minutes,” he said, tasting the word upon his tongue.

Jaw set, he spurred his horse to move a bit faster, catching up with Julianna though he said nothing further to her. It was not a time for chatter. There had been enough talk about what was to come. Even over the course of this journey they had avoided the subject of its end. Julianna had instead engaged Damia Beck and her soldiers in conversation about the Two Kingdoms and the Lost Ones, and from the fugue of his numbness, Halliwell had listened.

At Twillig’s Gorge they had learned a great deal about the legendary and the Borderkind, but by now they realized that ordinary humans-the distant cousins of the people who walked the streets of the world they knew-ruled the Two Kingdoms and most of the rest of the world on this side of the Veil.

In a world of wonders, there was still a place for an ordinary man.

Halliwell should have found some comfort in that. But he could not. If he could never return to his little house in Maine, never see his daughter again, that was the end. There was nothing for him here.

Instead of ruminating on it, he held the reins and he ground his teeth to contend with the pain in his hindquarters from the constant riding. Oliver and this trickster woman, Kitsune, whom he was supposed to be traveling with, had a head start on them, but according to Captain Beck, they hadn’t been going directly to the Sandman’s castle.

The Sandman’s fucking castle. Listen to yourself, he chided. And yet that was only reflex. As absurd as such a thing would once have seemed to him, he knew the truth of it now. Much to his regret.

They rode now, a dozen of Hunyadi’s soldiers and a pair of cast-a-ways from another world, up a long ridge between two mountain peaks. This part of Euphrasia had a breathtaking beauty and elegance, even in the villages they had passed. The bridges and homes and gardens had all been constructed so as to blend into the landscape.

It had been many hours since they had seen a village, but even here the beauty of the land was staggering. Perhaps here more than anywhere else. The air was crisp and the starlight and the scimitar moon cast a golden light upon the snow-capped peaks. There was such peace here, and perhaps that struck him more than anything else.

Peace.

Somehow, it woke him from the fog he’d traveled in-and woke a rage in him as well.

There could be no peace for him.

At the top of the ridge, a point at which the two mountains met, Captain Beck reined in her mount and peered down into the valley on the other side. She raised a hand, a gesture that Halliwell had quickly learned meant she wanted them all to form on her, and quickly.

He snapped the reins and the horse galloped up the ridge. Julianna raced up beside him, so firm and confident on her horse that she seemed to float along above it instead of bouncing painfully in the saddle like Halliwell.

The detective didn’t mind.

They were close.

Fourteen riders gathered at the top of the ridge, in the crux of two mountains. In the starlight they saw a third peak straight ahead. And below, in the cradle formed by the three mountains, a terraced pagoda palace made only of sand.

Halliwell gripped the reins so tightly his knuckles hurt. Answers waited there. One way or another, he would have some answers at last.

“Do you see anything, Damia?” Julianna asked, moving her horse up next to Beck’s.

She was the only one who got away with calling the woman by her given name. Everyone else simply called her Captain-even Halliwell. He doubted she would care if he followed Julianna’s lead, but he was accustomed to uniforms and protocol and there was a comfort in that.

“No sign of movement,” Captain Beck replied. She studied Julianna’s face, her own skin shining in the starlight, then looked at Halliwell. “No horses. No indication anyone’s there at all.”

“The door is open,” observed a powerfully built soldier called Tsui.

Halliwell looked down at the Sandcastle, but his eyes were not what they once were and he could not make out from there if the door was, indeed, open.

“We have no way of knowing if Oliver’s here or not,” Julianna said.

Captain Beck nodded, but her eyes were still on Halliwell. “True. But if he hasn’t arrived yet, and what Bascombe has been told is true, his sister is still a prisoner down there.”

Halliwell drew his gun. “Why don’t we head down, then?”

The captain smiled. “It’s what we came for.”

She spurred her horse and started down into the cradle of the mountains and her soldiers followed. Halliwell and Julianna kept pace with them as they rode toward the towering pagoda palace. The double doors in front were indeed hanging slightly open.

Captain Beck’s horse crossed from rough grass onto shifting sand.

They spread out, taking up position outside the pagoda. Captain Beck raised a hand and Halliwell thought she was about to give the command to dismount, but then the doors were blown wide open from within. The wind howled as a cloud of dust blew out those open doors, originating somehow from within the castle, and three people came out, half stumbling, hurrying as though they feared the place might fall down around them.

Despite her haggard appearance and the dark tan she’d acquired, he recognized Collette Bascombe immediately. The Asian woman in the fur cloak was also familiar, but only vaguely. He’d seen her on Canna Island with Oliver just before they both had disappeared.

And then, of course, there was Oliver himself.

Halliwell held tight to the horse’s reins, frozen in the knowledge that the moment had finally arrived. Staring at Oliver Bascombe, he discovered that he felt both hatred and pity for the younger man. If everything he’d learned in his investigation proved true, Oliver was as much a victim as Halliwell himself had become. But if Halliwell had never become involved in Oliver’s disappearance and later Max Bascombe’s murder case, he would never have had to see the eyeless, mutilated corpse of Alice St. John, or learn about all of the other children who’d been killed the same way. He never would have hunted for the missing man, or for Collette, when she’d gone missing as well.

He wouldn’t have been lured here. Trapped here, in this world.

Oliver was not to blame, but Halliwell blamed him anyway. He might be a victim, but the difference, from what he’d heard, was that Oliver could still go home. If nothing else, Halliwell hated him for that.

The panic took him again, mixed with rage and hatred and despair. Just looking at Oliver stoked all of that emotion, and it surged up inside. He felt as though it might erupt from within. He felt his face twist into a sneer.

“Damn you,” he whispered. “Damn you for killing me like this.”

In his mind, by leading him to this, Oliver Bascombe had destroyed him.

The detective in him wanted answers, wanted to know what had set the Sandman free to slaughter those children and the why of it all. But the man, Ted Halliwell, the father… he wanted Oliver to tell him how to get home. And he wanted someone to hold responsible.

Captain Beck shouted something, but Halliwell wasn’t listening.

Julianna slipped off of her horse, leaving it to wander, and started running toward the castle.

“Oliver!” she cried, giddy with fear and relief.

Half of the soldiers began to dismount, led by Damia Beck. The other six remained on their horses and spread out, backing away slightly to be prepared for anything.

Halliwell climbed off of the horse, bones and muscles aching from days in the saddle. He clicked the safety on his pistol off and turned toward the front of the castle.

Julianna ran toward her fiance. Oliver stared at her, then he started to stumble toward her-incredulous, laughing. The Asian woman and Collette followed, glancing anxiously over her shoulder at the wind and sand that continued to blast out of the castle doors.

Limping, cursing his age, Halliwell started across the sand. The gun felt heavy in his grasp.

Julianna and Oliver were still separated by thirty or forty feet when the wall of the Sandcastle exploded. Massive fragments of the wall came down and burst, spilling sand across the ground. Two figures crashed out through the shattered wall, grappling with one another. One of them, cloaked and hooded, with monstrous, hooked talons, had deep yellow eyes that seemed to float in a cloud of shifting sand. The other seemed a figure from Victorian times, in a bowler hat and long, heavy coat-a statue of Dr. Watson carved from granite or sculpted in sand.

They did not crash to the ground.

The two figures burst into twin clouds of sand that spun and slammed together and tore at one another. In a heartbeat they had reformed on the ground twenty yards in front of Halliwell. He stared at these sand creatures as they attacked one another.

He thought of Alice St. John and all of the other children who had shared her fate.

The Sandman.

It was a sick joke.

Suddenly, Halliwell had found another focus for his rage and sorrow and hate. Oliver might have answers, but at last, Ted Halliwell had found someone to blame. Someone to pay for all that he had lost.

He raised his gun and something snapped inside him. He began to scream, but the words were guttural nonsense in his ears, and he ran at the two elemental creatures tearing at one another’s limbs and faces.

He pulled the trigger again and again. Gunshots echoed across the crux of those three mountains. Bullets tore through cloak and greatcoat, punched holes in the bodies of the Sandman and the other thing, the other myth.

The monsters did not even notice him. The image of Alice St. John stayed in his mind, and he could not stop. Halliwell would never see his Sara again. The monsters felt like a gift to him. After what they had done to Alice and those other children…He marched toward them, finger on the trigger, and knew he had to find a way to get justice for that little girl.

For all of them.

And for himself.

Gunshots echoed off the mountainsides. The wind howled out through the doors of the Sandcastle. The Dustman and the Sandman grappled and tore at one another. Soldiers bearing the crest of King Hunyadi climbed off of their horses and started to spread out, ready to fight if the Sandman should win, but careful to keep their distance.

Oliver barely noticed any of it.

The world seemed to tilt under his feet. Julianna did not belong on this side of the Veil. All that she was and all that she meant to him was so wrapped up in his thoughts of home and Maine that simply seeing her disoriented him. They were supposed to have picnics at the beach and take the catamaran out sailing. In the winter, they’d ski a little, but only to have an excuse to curl up in front of a crackling fire with Irish coffees and blond brownies.

They were not supposed to be here.

Even with Collette standing beside him in her ragged pajamas, skin baked brown from sun exposure, haggard and thin, Oliver had somehow been able to separate himself from the man he had been before Frost and the Myth Hunters had come into his life.

But from the moment he saw Julianna slide from the saddle of that horse and run toward him, something inside of him began to break down. It was as though the Veil had not only separated the ordinary world from the realm of the legendary, but had also split Oliver in two-one the mundane lawyer who’d lived a privileged but plain life, and the other the one who had survived in the wilderness of a world of the fantastic.

Now Julianna stripped that all away.

She raced toward him, calling his name. Oliver sheathed the Sword of Hunyadi. His heart leapt at the sound of her voice and the joy on her face, but with every step she took on the shifting sand, he felt more keenly the horrors that the legendary had inflicted upon his life and his family. His father’s murder and Collette’s abduction, the utter destruction of his own life and reputation, it all was real. How could he ever try to return to his old life when the friends and colleagues he’d known thought him either a murderer or the accomplice of some child-killer?

Yet here was Julianna.

He started toward her, shaking with a mixture of relief and dread. His elation at seeing her was tempered by the fear that, after all that had happened, things might not be the same between them. The last time they had spoken, on the phone, the pain in her voice had been clear. He had never meant to hurt her, but he knew that he had. He wondered how that might have changed her feelings for him, and how much she understood about what had really happened to him.

Then she was there, and all such thoughts fled. None of it mattered.

An icy wind blew down from the mountains. Her features were pale in the starlight, her auburn hair almost black in the night. All of his hesitations and second thoughts became damnably insignificant in the face of his love for her. So much could have been avoided if he had only trusted the soul he saw through her eyes, just as he saw it now-this soul that knew him, that understood and loved him.

“Oliver,” she said, voice barely a whisper, his name quickly stolen away by the wind.

Julianna ran into his arms. He felt her body, so familiar, against his, and pressed his nose into the scent of her hair, holding her tightly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the ache in his heart making it feel as though it weighed a thousand pounds. “Oh, Jules, I’m so sorry.”

“You’re alive,” she said, face pressed to his neck. “Jesus, you’re alive. Don’t be sorry. None of this was your fault.”

“There were…there were always things I should’ve said.”

Julianna reached up to hold his face steady and stared up at him, gaze sharp with the intelligence that had always challenged and thrilled him.

“Do you love me?” she asked, searching his eyes for the truth.

For a fraction of a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Then a pang of remorse went through him, regret for all the time he’d wasted on doubt.

“More than anything.”

“Then nothing else matters.”

Oliver stared at her, his heart racing. In her eyes, he saw fear and regret and a tiny bit of hope, and he knew that it was all just a reflection of what she must see in him.

He touched her face, then bent and kissed her. The feeling of her lips against his, rough from the wind and the sun, filled his heart with such grateful relief that he wanted to just take her hand and run. Whatever hesitations he’d once felt were gone. They ought to have had a lifetime together.

Oliver pulled back and gazed at her, brushing her hair from her face. If the myth of the Legend-Born was true and if he and Collette really were the children of Melisande, then Julianna was wrong. They might not be to blame for what the Hunters had done, but it was because of them that Julianna had been dragged into it.

Now they were together, here in this impossible place. He wanted to know how she had gotten there, to figure out what it all meant, and where they would go from here.

Behind him, Collette screamed, her voice frantic and her throat raw.

“No, you idiot! Stay away from them!”

Oliver spun, one arm still around Julianna. Collette shouted again. Beyond her, the stranger with the gun-the man Julianna had been traveling with-ran at the two brothers where they were locked in battle. He was an older guy with salt-and-pepper hair and a craggy, Clint Eastwood sort of face, fifty years old if he was a day. But he didn’t run like he was fifty. His expression was full of grim rage and he held the gun slightly raised as he hurtled toward the Sandman and the Dustman.

The soldiers called to him. One, a statuesque black woman who was obviously in command, started after him with her sword drawn. The man with the gun appeared not to hear or even remember that the soldiers were with him. He shouted something as he ran at the warring facets of the Sandman, but Oliver couldn’t make out the words.

“Hey! Hey, man, don’t…” He let the words trail off, feeling like an idiot. With the way the man was shouting and the howling wind, there was no way he was going to hear anything.

Then Collette started shouting again, and Oliver pulled away from Julianna. He turned to see his sister running after the man with the gun. Collette, a petite little woman in her torn pajamas, was trying to get in the midst of a fight between myths and one crazy asshole with a gun.

The Sword of Hunyadi felt heavy at his hip.

Whatever truth there might be in the story of the Legend-Born, and no matter how much he wanted to be home, he knew he had become a part of this world. It had changed him. All of the things he had always imagined he might be, had always wished, he was becoming. And there could be no turning back now.

He drew the sword.

In the moment before he ran after his sister, he caught sight of something moving out of the corner of his eye. He glanced over and saw Kitsune by the doors of the Sandman’s castle. He’d assumed she had hung back to watch for the sand creatures that had attacked them inside.

Her soft green eyes gleamed in the dark, her fur almost orange in the starlight. The hurt and bitterness on her face was unmistakable. Oliver caught his breath. In the exultation of saving Collette and the shock of seeing Julianna, he’d barely spared a thought for Kitsune.

He forced himself to break the moment, raised his sword, and ran after Collette.

“Wait!” he shouted. “Coll, wait!”

If she heard him, she did not listen. Oliver raced after her. He figured the Sandman was so occupied trying to stay alive that he couldn’t control the constructs inside the castle anymore, which helped. But even so, the monster’s existence endangered them all. So why weren’t these soldiers helping? Even the commander who ran after the man with the gun seemed only to be trying to stop him, to draw him back. Nobody wanted to go anywhere near the Sandman except the nutjob.

That ought to tell you something, he thought.

But fear would not turn Oliver away. Why none of the Myth Hunters had shown up was a mystery, but he figured maybe Frost and the Borderkind were keeping them busy elsewhere, and whoever their hidden enemy really was-Ty’Lis or someone else-they assumed an ordinary brother and sister, soft and pampered humans, shouldn’t be much of a challenge for the Sandman.

Under other circumstances, they’d have been right. Oliver would have been dead many times over if not for Kitsune, and they’d both be dead if not for the Dustman. And he knew the Dustman had come at his request, but hadn’t been too difficult to persuade. They all faced the same enemy. They were all in danger.

But right now, Oliver wasn’t feeling solidarity with anyone. Not Kitsune or the Dustman or the tall woman with the sword or the soldiers who followed her. And sure as hell not the lunatic with the gun. Collette wasn’t going to fall into the Sandman’s hands again, and now that Julianna was here, he wanted nothing except to get them both away from this place.

“Coll!” he shouted, chasing her.

The sight of the sand-brothers at war sickened him. They tore one another apart, sand swirling and mixing and battering. The Dustman seemed to have weakened, and as he tried to focus himself again, to form the persona he had adopted with his greatcoat and bowler hat and mustache, he faltered. The vague shape remained the same, but the details were a blur, like an old statue with its features eroded by entropy.

After her imprisonment, Collette was in no condition to run. Oliver overtook her easily. He grabbed her arm from behind and pulled her up short. She spun on him, eyes wild.

“Stop!” he shouted. “Stay here. I didn’t come to get you just to watch you die!”

“I won’t die. We’re not helpless here. We can fight! We can hurt him.” Collette held up her hands. “I’ve done it!”

Oliver wanted to ask what she was talking about, but there just wasn’t time. A gunshot rang out, the first one in long seconds, and he turned to see the shooter aiming at the Sandman. In the midst of the churning sand, the twist and turmoil of the warring brothers, the monster turned its yellow eyes upon the man with the gun and stared murder at him.

Oliver glanced at Collette, and then they were running together.

“You’re sure about this?” he asked

She said nothing, but when he looked down at her, he saw the set of her jaw and the grim knowledge in her eyes, and he knew she had never been so certain of anything in her life.

The tall soldier caught up to the gunman and tried to pull him back. He fought her, trying to get the gun free, to shoot again, no matter how useless his bullets were.

“Who the hell is this guy?” Oliver snapped.

“Halliwell. He’s a detective. He was looking for you when you disappeared,” Collette said, huffing, trying to keep up with him.

A cold finger of dread went up Oliver’s spine. So he was responsible for this Halliwell being here as well.

They were twenty feet from the churning tornado of the screeching battle between the Dustman and the Sandman when the gunman shot an elbow into the tall soldier’s abdomen. Cloak billowing out behind her, she staggered back a step and let go of him.

Julianna stared at Halliwell and slowly brought her hands up to cover her mouth. Her fingers splayed across her eyes and she peered between them. Like a marionette whose strings have been cut, all the strength left her muscles and she went down on her knees.

She watched Collette and Oliver run toward Halliwell, but could not rise. A terrible chill enveloped her. She had watched his mood grow darker with each hour that passed, seen his eyes go numb, and his nerves become more brittle. All along, she had wanted nothing more than to keep him going until they could find Oliver, find the answers that they were looking for. Guilt consumed her now as she accepted the selfishness of that. Yet it had not been only for her. She’d wanted to give Halliwell hope, something to hold on to long enough for them to ask Oliver the all-important question: Could they go home again?

Virginia and Ovid Tsing had told them it was impossible, as had the guardians of Twillig’s Gorge, and King Hunyadi himself. But Halliwell had never let himself believe it.

Julianna knew that his denial of that fact was the only thing that kept him from falling apart completely. Without hope that he would see his daughter again, he would shatter.

Now it was happening right before her eyes.

Collette and Oliver ran toward Halliwell. Captain Damia Beck tried to get hold of him again, to keep him back. But Julianna could see, even in profile, the expression on his face, and she knew there was no point. Ted had lost all hope, and now all that was left was his anguish.

Halliwell started firing again, and he ran right into the midst of the sandstorm created by the Dustman and Sandman at war.

“No!” Oliver shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”

Too late, Julianna thought. But, in her mind’s eye, she could see the way the kindly curmudgeon had changed when they had crossed the Veil into this world, could remember the panic and anger and cynicism that had eaten away at him, and she wondered if it had always been too late.

In the starlight, Julianna could see a difference in the hue of the sand and dust that made up the brothers, one more brown and one more gray. Striations of that sandstorm whipped in a frenzy, twisting in on each other. And when Halliwell stepped into their midst, it whipped at him as well.

He fired his gun one last time. His clothes flapped around him, driven by the force of the wind the two Borderkind were creating. Collette screamed. Oliver shouted at the man to get back, to step away, but it was too late. The sandstorm had him, the war of these two brothers had consumed him.

The churning storm must have been like sandpaper, all of that grit spinning around. It tore Halliwell’s clothes from his body and then began to scrape his flesh, stripping the skin and muscle and then scouring every bit of gristle from his bones.

Oliver staggered to a stop in horror. Beside him, Collette also halted.

Where she still sagged on her knees, a hundred feet away, Julianna let her hands slip from her face. Warm tears painted tracks in the dust on her cheeks.

“Ted,” she whispered.

As they watched, the storm abated and a figure began to form. With the winds dying, Halliwell’s bare bones fell to the ground.

Julianna wept for him, and for his daughter, Sara-a girl she had never met. All Ted Halliwell had wanted was to be with her, to tell her that he loved her and that nothing else mattered. Now he would never have that chance, not until they met again in the afterlife.

As she stared at the place across the sand where his bones lay, a terrible thought occurred to her.

Ted Halliwell had died in the world of the legendary, but his daughter lived on the other side of the Veil. If there truly was a heaven, would they be together there, one day, or separated for all eternity?

Numb, she staggered to her feet and forced the question from her mind. But, deep down, she knew it would haunt her always.

The Sandman stood before them, sickly lemon eyes glaring. His hideous, obscenely long face split in a grin. He spared a single glance for the tall soldier with the night-black skin and then ignored her, turning toward Oliver and Collette.

“Bascombes,” the Sandman said.

The soldier raised her sword and barked a command. The men and women in her command began to close in around the Sandman. Oliver knew they stood no chance. The Sandman would slaughter them.

“Come on,” he said.

The Bascombes ran toward the monster that had killed their father.

“Back away!” Oliver called to the soldiers. “Leave him to us.”

“Oh, yes, by all-” the Sandman began.

His voice cut off. Something shifted in his eyes, in his form. Beneath the cloak he wore, things moved and shifted. Puffs of sand erupted from his back and chest and mouth and he started to twist in upon himself like a dog chasing his tail. For a moment his features blurred, and when the sand stopped swirling enough to make out what they were all seeing, Oliver realized he now wore a bowler hat.

The Dustman and the Sandman had merged and become one, and now the Dustman turned toward Oliver.

“Now, while I am ascendant.”

Oliver and Collette raced at him. The Sword of Hunyadi flashed through the night air and cleaved the Dustman’s head from his shoulders. It fell to the ground and burst into a cloud of sand that eddied in the mountain breeze. The rest of his body seemed to have frozen, as though sculpted from sand. Collette began to tear at it, and even as she did it crumbled at her touch.

The Dustman collapsed, sand spilling across the ground, half burying the bones of Detective Halliwell, until no form remained at all. Only sand. Only dust.

“How did you…?” one of the soldiers said.

Oliver turned and saw it was the woman who had chased after Halliwell and tried to save him. She wore the insignia of a captain in Hunyadi’s service.

“That’s just not possible,” she said. “They were legends.”

Collette leaned against him. Oliver put his arm around her, helping to hold her up with his free hand. In the other, his sword hung low, point digging into the soft sand.

He could not claim to understand exactly what had just happened. Had the Dustman destroyed his brother, or did he and Collette really have some kind of magic in them, some legendary power?

Oliver met the captain’s gaze, unflinching. “This world is full of impossible things.”

The entire city of Palenque was a maze, a circular labyrinth of dead-end streets and alleys that twisted back upon themselves. The architects who had conceived it were brilliant, and the king who’d ordered its construction ruthless, for the entire city had been created as protection for the palace that lay at its center. Enemies who intended to destroy the palace or usurp the king would become lost in the maze of stone and wood. Each long, curving street of Palenque looked, with its balconies and lanterns and white-washed walls, much like the others.

Ingenious. But it also revealed how little value the king placed upon the lives of his subjects. Instead of building walls to protect his people, the founder of the city had used those very people as his walls.

Tonight, they showed King Mahacuhta the same courtesy.

Night had fallen, and though the city flickered with electric lights and gas lamps alike, Frost felt invigorated by the darkness. The sun and heat had been a constant drain upon his strength and power. Now only clear black velvet hung in the sky, punctured with starry pinpoints and a sliver moon. The heat of the day seeped away quickly, and while the night was still warm, he felt much improved.

“Not exactly the reception we were expecting,” Blue Jay whispered beside him.

Frost nodded intently, not returning the trickster’s smile. Caution demanded they take care, no matter how cooperative the citizens of Palenque seemed.

“You thought the people would attack us?”

Blue Jay shot him an odd look, punctuated by the rasp of denim on denim and the slap of his boot heels on the street. “Attack? I figured the whole city would be villagers with torches. If Ty’Lis is really the guy behind the Hunters, why would he just let us walk up to his front door?”

The winter man did not reply. This was precisely the question he had been mulling over, and as yet he had not come up with an answer.

The streets of Palenque were alive with life. It was, after all, the capital of Yucatazca, one of the most powerful and most alive cities in all the world. Frost did not eat, but even he marveled at the melange of aromas that filled the labyrinthine streets: scents of cooking meats and spices and fruits and boiling fish stews. Distant sounds of engines and of the hoofbeats of horses carried to them along the curved alleys and roads of that circular maze city as they made their way toward the palace at its center.

Along the way, as though their route had been announced earlier, hundreds of people gathered to watch them pass. Some of them were grim-faced and anxious, but others cheered and whistled in support as he and Blue Jay, Grin, Li, and Cheval passed by. The strange Borderkind who had met them at the outskirts of the city accompanied them, as did dozens of Lost Ones. Others fell in with the parade as they marched through the streets, all of them headed toward the palace in search of answers.

Music and singing, shouts and laughter came from many of the buildings they passed-inns and drafthouses and restaurants alive with the lives of ordinary people who had toiled all day in the sun.

Some of the people seemed troubled by their passing and strode quickly away, not wishing to be anywhere near the trouble that the Borderkind might cause. Frost felt disgust roil in him. If there was danger to ordinary people in simply being in the presence of Borderkind, the Hunters ought to be accountable, not the Borderkind themselves. But regardless of who was at fault, just being near Frost and the others could have been fatal.

Yet on this night, when they were so close to their goal, there were no attacks and no resistance. Frost had seen very few of the legendary in the march through Palenque, and those he had seen had been mostly in shadows, standing in arched doorways or watching from windows and quickly disappearing behind curtains when they realized they’d been seen.

The tide had turned.

The Lost Ones had heard rumors that the Legend-Born had been discovered, that they might be within the Two Kingdoms already, and that somehow this was connected to the Myth Hunters’ slaughter of the Borderkind.

Frost knew the truth, but he would not speak of it.

Not now.

First, Ty’Lis must be stopped. The Hunters must be recalled and punished for their savagery. Those Borderkind who still lived must be saved. Only then would he answer the Lost Ones’ questions about the Legend-Born.

Cheval and Li hung back, both of them grieving, unable to enjoy the camaraderie of the southern Borderkind who had joined them. But Grin caught up to Blue Jay and Frost, took a glance at the winter man, and turned to the trickster instead.

“Right, so what do you think, Blue?” Leicester Grindylow asked. “D’ye think we’ve killed all the Hunters?”

Blue Jay clapped a hand on Grin’s shoulders and tossed back his hair, feathers dancing in the wind. “Not by half, friend. Not by half.”

Grin frowned, once again looking from Blue Jay to Frost. “No? Then why do you reckon they’re not here trying to kill us? Not like we’d be hard to find, is it?”

“I can think of three reasons,” Blue Jay said.

Frost raised an eyebrow, icy mist steaming from his eyes. He said nothing, only continued walking along with his companions, blocking out the sounds of the crowd to listen to the trickster speak.

“First, their master has been moving in secret all of this time, acting without the knowledge of his king or the support of the people, on some kind of personal vendetta against the Borderkind. The people don’t like that sort of lying, bullshit politics. If the Hunters tried to attack us here, it’d be wholesale slaughter. Lots of people would die. That would make it even worse. See, if Ty’Lis is behind all of this, you’re talking a major diplomatic incident here. Atlantis is neutral, remember? They brokered the truce that created the Two Kingdoms. People might blame Atlantis. Worse yet, they might blame King Mahacuhta, and kings tend to frown on their advisors doing things without permission that could cause their subjects to rise up in anger.

“Second, Mahacuhta may have just killed the bastard already and saved us the trouble. Even if we assume he’s been blind and deaf to all that has transpired, kept in the dark by Ty’Lis and his other advisors, by now he’s likely to have heard what the Hunters have been up to. If he’s traced it back to Ty’Lis…well, you see where that’s going. Also, Ty’Lis might have just run off. The pricks who do this sort of thing, secret genocide orders, conspiracies, that sort of thing…they’re cowards. They’re far more likely to run than to fight.”

Up ahead, the road narrowed. They had been curving southwest, the palace to their right. There were shops and homes on either side now, but for the most part the whitewashed stone and the gas lamps looked exactly the same as any other part of the city. A butcher’s and a small bookshop jutted a bit onto the road and after that it was as though the walls were closing in. In this more residential street, dwarf trees grew in front of the buildings and the windows were mostly dark.

The small army that had gathered around them had to stretch out into a thinner line, only four or five across, to walk this way. Up ahead, the jaguar-men who had been the scouts and guides and vanguard of their march paused and sniffed the air.

They turned north along an alley.

Frost frowned, the ice around his eyes cracking.

How many times would the labyrinth of the city’s design turn them away from the direct approach? He could long since have spun himself into a frozen wind, a tiny storm, and gusted toward the palace to find Ty’Lis on his own. That had, in fact, been his plan all along, until they had been met with such a formidable welcome. He’d intended to leave Blue Jay and the others behind to fight whatever enemy tried to block their way, and go up to the palace to face Ty’Lis alone. It would have been best for everyone.

Now the winter man worried that altering his plan might have been an error. The music and the laughter and the spectators had been left behind. Faces watched from windows, but only a few.

“And?” Grin said, staring at Blue Jay. The boggart ambled down the road, long arms nearly dragging on the ground. He seemed entirely caught up in the conversation, and Frost wished he would pay more attention to their surroundings.

Blue Jay paused to touch a damp spot on the road, but then walked on before anyone could collide with him from behind, and before they could lose sight of the jaguar-men as the great cats followed the ever-narrowing alley further northward.

“And what?” the trickster asked, glancing at Frost.

They exchanged a silent but anxious look. The winter man glanced back at Cheval and Li. Cheval Bayard strode along, her silver hair gleaming in the starlight. Several of the Lost Ones walked with her, talking to her quietly, perhaps comforting her. But Li was alone, ignoring the pair of strange vampire serpents that slithered at his side. Much of his clothing had burned away and all over his smooth, ash-gray flesh were large patches of scorched skin, glittering embers. Fully two-thirds of his body seemed to have turned to cinder now, blue-white flames flickering along the surface of his skin. It crackled and flared.

Without the tiger, the Guardian could no longer properly contain the fire within. Even though its strength was diminished, it was consuming him. In time, he would be entirely sculpted of burning embers. What might happen then, Frost did not care to guess.

Li glanced around unhappily, obviously just as concerned about their surroundings as Frost and Blue Jay.

“Three,” Grin said, tapping Blue Jay on the shoulder. “You said there was three reasons you could think of why no one’s tried to stop us getting to the palace. What’s the third?”

Blue Jay moved with a strange grace, there in the narrowing alley, following the jaguar-men. He stepped from side to side, a dark blue blur beneath his arms.

“Hello? What’s the matter?” Grin said, noticing at last that they were troubled.

“The third possibility,” Frost said, answering for Blue Jay. “It may be that there are no Hunters and no soldiers trying to stop us or attack us because those are their orders. Our arrival may all be a part of the plan.”

“Oi, come on, mate,” Grin said, turning to the winter man. “You think this is a trap?”

Blue Jay laughed softly, his eyes wild with mischief. “We’ll know soon enough.”

They followed the jaguar-men until the alley twisted back upon itself once more and they were moving due south, then east, parallel to the center of Palenque again. The alley became so narrow that it was difficult for two of them to walk abreast.

All conversation had ceased. Frost wondered how far back their coterie of Lost Ones and southern Borderkind snaked through the alleys of Palenque, and how vulnerable they all were now.

Then the jaguar-men led them, at last, to a broader avenue. When they stepped out onto the street, they had returned to a city buzzing with nightlife and music. Glasses clinked and laughter came from a nearby bar.

At the far end of the avenue, tall street lamps burned amidst rows of ironwood trees, all of which led to twin sets of high stairs, like those at the pyramid they had passed earlier. At the top of each set of stairs were massive doors, tall enough for gods and monsters.

Mahacuhta’s palace.

Frost hesitated. Perhaps it was not a trap after all. Or perhaps the trap lay within.

Now the Lost Ones and Borderkind who had joined with him gathered around, all eyes upon him, waiting. The winter man did not hesitate. He started down the avenue toward the palace stairs with Blue Jay and Grin on either side. As they approached, Li and Cheval joined them so that all five of the Borderkind who had survived the journey south walked together. Others gathered ahead of them and behind, but seemed to keep away from those five out of respect or, perhaps, fear.

As they neared the palace Frost could make out a dozen guards near the top of each staircase, armed with spears and swords. The sentries stood entirely still, but he was not fool enough to think they were there merely for decoration.

“What is that?” Li asked. The Guardian of Fire raised his ember hands, flame dancing on his fingers. His eyes were tiny infernos.

“What do you see?” Cheval asked.

“Beneath the ironwood trees,” Blue Jay said. “I see them now. What are they?”

Frost glanced around at the crowd with him, wondering at the best path for them to take cover should an attack come now, wondering how many would die in the process. But then he saw what had caught the attention of his comrades. Near the bottom of the right-hand staircase, outside the dome of light shed by the nearest gas lamp, amidst the trees, three figures stood entirely still as though they were iron-woods themselves.

Leicester Grindylow laughed happily. “Well, they’re friends, aren’t they, mates? Friends.”

The winter man nodded. “Indeed.”

The trio of thin, cloaked figures beneath the ironwood trees floated just a bit above the ground, and as the jaguar-men approached they stepped out into the corona of gaslight at the base of the palace steps, the high tower of the king of Yucatazca rising up into the night sky above.

They were Mazikeen.

Cheval quickened her pace. “He called his brothers after all.”

The winter man flowed forward, all of his former doubts dispelled. The Mazikeen would keep to themselves as always and so he did not bother to stop and welcome them or thank them, he simply kept going, past the Mazikeen sorcerers, past the jaguar-men, up the stairs toward the palace doors.

A huge cry and furor rose behind him as Borderkind and Lost Ones alike rushed upward in his wake. Frost reached the top of the stairs before any of the others, and as they began to catch up and gather around him, the guards blocked the doors, drawing their swords.

“Turn back, or face the wrath of the king’s guard!” shouted one of the sentries.

Frost darted at him, tempted to drive sharp ice fingers through his brain. But this man was not the enemy. He was merely an obstacle. He knocked the guard’s sword aside and snatched the man up by the throat, searing his flesh with cold.

“I am Frost of the Borderkind, and on behalf of all my kin, I have come to see the king.”