The Borderkind

CHAPTER 21

D iminished he might be, but Frost remained the winter man, a legend that stretched from ancient to modern times, the harbinger of the blizzard, the first snow of the season. With one possessed of such power, weakened did not mean weak. If anything, as he rushed through the corridors of the palace of King Mahacuhta, Frost felt reduced not to weakness but to the primal essence of his own legend.

Swift and deadly, he swept around corners and beneath doors, nothing but a frigid wind and a swirl of snow. He manifested a physical form-a jagged, cruel-eyed knife-blade of a creature-only when he encountered a member of the king’s guard alone.

When he touched their flesh, freezing bits of them instantly, and bared his icy teeth, they were anxious to answer his question. One single question. Where were the king’s personal chambers? Before Frost bothered to visit Ty’Lis, he wanted to know if Mahacuhta was aware of the Atlantean’s machinations. He wanted to know if the king was also his enemy.

The deeper he went into the palace, the cooler and drier the air became. Frost whipped along the walls, leaving a rime of ice as he passed, the moisture in the air freezing on every surface. He emerged into a large, open space, lavishly appointed and well lit, with a limestone staircase rising at one end of the room, up and up and up so that it seemed the entire purpose of this enormous palace was to encase those stairs. Twenty armed soldiers guarded them. Frost kept close to the wall, a gust of wind, but as he passed, the glass lamps cracked and burst, bulbs popped, and lights were extinguished.

The soldiers began to shout, drawing their weapons and searching the room for enemies.

By then Frost was halfway up the stairs.

At the top stood the heaviest wooden door he had ever seen, ornately carved with extraordinary figures of legend, birds of light and alligators that walked on two legs. There were images of jungles and temples and human sacrifice. In the midst of it was the royal emblem of King Mahacuhta, the crest of Yucatazca.

The winter man-the first breath of snowfall-blew under the door.

In a single moment, so many of his questions were answered.

This was not the king’s bedroom, but a large antechamber where His Majesty might relax or entertain guests. Tonight he had a number of guests, all of them surely unwelcome and uninvited. Three Perytons perched on the far side of the antechamber by a door that must have led into Mahacuhta’s bedroom. In a straight-backed, elegant chair with red silk cushions, a man had been bound with chains that shimmered with unnatural light. A black cloth gag had been stuffed into his mouth. Though bald and thin he had powerful features and a rich, dark complexion that made it impossible to discern his age. But the quality of his clothing alone was enough to identify him to Frost.

The Perytons guarded King Mahacuhta closely, green-feathered wings tight against their backs, antlers hanging low as they stood watch. And they were not alone. Seven soldiers were positioned about the antechamber, but Frost saw instantly that despite their Yucatazcan garb, these were Atlanteans.

Another chair, the lavish equal of the one in which Mahacuhta was bound, faced the king’s. Upon that seat, hands clasped in his lap, Ty’Lis sat casually. Frost had never seen the sorcerer before, but he bore the physical signs of Atlantis, the greenish-white skin and narrow features, and his crimson, black-trimmed robes were among the traditional garment choices for sorcerers from his nation.

Ty’Lis had golden hair so thick and wild it resembled a crest or mane, and a twist of braided beard hung from his chin.

The sorcerer glanced at the door even as the gust of cold air Frost had brought reached him. He smiled and his green eyes were lit with hard intellect.

Frost hesitated. Had he taken Ty’Lis unaware, he could easily have slain him. Face-to-face, the contest was in question, and with Perytons there as well…given an advantage, the savage Hunters would harry him, and the sorcerer destroy him.

Yet he had little choice now.

Ty’Lis did not rise from his chair, but he gestured toward Frost. “You’ve come alone. A brave myth, aren’t you?”

The sorcerer’s body began to emanate a strange aura of purple-black light, a glow that surrounded his entire form. He grinned with all the humor of a cadaver.

“You’ve come all this way, only to die. Before you rush headlong to your own destruction, aren’t you at least curious as to why?”

Manipulating the air, Frost forged himself anew, there by the door. The winter man stood just inside the king’s antechamber, a thin blade of a creature constructed of translucent ice and the very heart of the storm. Frost stared at Ty’Lis, hatred fuming in him, mist rising from his eyes. He tilted his head to one side, staring at his gathered enemies, and the icicles of his hair clinked together, frozen chimes.

“I know why.”

The Atlantean’s eyes widened. He glanced at the Perytons and said something in the lilting tongue of his own nation.

“Do you, really?” Ty’Lis asked. “Tell me of your conjecture, then.”

Frost had been formulating a theory of late and with every passing moment he became more certain of its truth. He glanced around at the Perytons and the Atlantean soldiers, set into a combat stance, ready to fight. No one moved. Chained to his chair and bound with magic, King Mahacuhta stared at the winter man with hope in his eyes.

“You want war,” Frost said, gathering all of the moisture in the room to him and emanating a frigid power that caused ice to form on the ground beneath him and the door behind him. “You want the Two Kingdoms to break their truce and go to war against one another, to destroy each other so that you can step in and try to rule them both. But the Borderkind presented a threat. My kind are not sworn to serve either government, are not citizens of either kingdom or subjects of any king. You sent the Hunters to slaughter us to prevent us from interfering, or from fleeing to the world beyond the Veil.”

Ty’Lis clapped softly. “You have the threads of it. But you miss the largest part. The Veil…the hated Veil. With all of you filthy myths destroyed and the enchantments that hold doors open to the world of men undone, the Veil will become an impenetrable border. There will be no more Lost Ones, no more humans to breed here. Atlantis will rule all and, in time, the existence of the human world will become nothing but…well, a myth.”

Frost glanced around the room, gauging the positions of the soldiers and the Perytons. The temperature in the room continued to drop as he exerted his influence. Ty’Lis had to die first. If any of his allies was able to interfere, Frost wouldn’t have a chance.

“And the Legend-Born? You sent Hunters after them as well,” he said.

“Naturally,” Ty’Lis replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. He still did not rise from his silken chair, as though Frost presented no threat. “They are the most dangerous of all. The Bascombes are the only Legend-Born to appear in the human world for well over a century. Their rare breed have always been eradicated in the past, but it had been so long that the monarchs of our world had become lax, some even doubtful that the Legend-Born were more than myth.

“Of course, I knew better, and took their destruction upon myself. I had hoped they would be dead long before now. Their resilience has forced me to adapt.”

The winter man tensed, about to gust across the room and freeze the air in the sorcerer’s lungs. He would transform in an instant, flowing from solid to storm and then manifesting again as a sheet of ice, shearing the Atlantean’s head from his neck.

Ty’Lis stroked his braided beard, the aura of dark light around him pulsing. “Pause a moment, Frost. Your friends are about to join us. The Sandman failed to kill them, but that’s all right. It would have been convenient, but I planned well for that possibility.”

Frost blocked out the voice, suspecting the sorcerer might use magic to sway him. But there came a blow upon the door behind him that shook its frame, and then a second. With the third the frame splintered and Frost swept aside as the thick wooden door swung open.

Oliver Bascombe stepped into the room, the Sword of Hunyadi brandished before him. Kitsune followed, copper-red fur cloak flowing around her. With them were two women inexpertly wielding swords, one of whom shared enough of his features that she could only be Oliver’s sister, Collette.

“Frost,” Oliver said, and his tone had no warmth.

Ty’Lis clapped again, yet still he did not rise. “Well timed. I’m rather proud of myself.” Then he spread his arms wide, gesturing to the Perytons and the Atlantean soldiers alike.

“Now you may kill them.”

Oliver’s breath plumed in the frigid chamber. His boots slid on the icy floor but he kept his balance. On the opposite end of the sprawling room he saw the two chairs, the two men…and he knew at once that the chained man must be the king. In the other chair, the sorcerer Ty’Lis did not even rise, as though he meant to just sit and watch them die, a spectator at some garish Roman forum.

“Bastard,” Oliver hissed.

That was the instant of his entry into the room. From there, the rest unfolded with such speed that he felt lost in a staccato blast of images and strobing motion.

Frost shouted something to him, but the words were lost in the shriek of the Perytons as the creatures spread their massive wings. They could not fly within the confines of that room, but were no less dangerous. Heads bowed, they seemed to float across the chamber with their antlers down, ready to gore Oliver and Collette and Julianna.

The Atlantean soldiers moved in a sidelong run, trying to surround them, armed with a pair of strangely fashioned daggers, one in each hand.

A gust of icy wind blew past Oliver, so cold that it froze the moisture at the corners of his eyes and seared his left cheek. He stole a glance and saw the two leading Perytons freeze almost solid, ice cracking as they tried to free themselves. The light in their eyes extinguished as they died, and then the third charged through them and their bodies shattered into hideously frozen shards of wing and flesh.

Frost carved himself a shape out of the air. The last Peryton charged at him, antlers down.

The winter man let him come.

The Peryton’s antlers punched through the ice of his torso, shattering his body. Frost screamed in pain, and a burst of white, icy mist that might have been the essence of his spirit exploded around him in a cloud. Shuddering and thrashing, his upper body stuck to the Peryton’s antlers, Frost gripped the creature’s head with one hand and he raised the other. His fingers lengthened to foot-long icicles and he drove them into the side of the Peryton’s head with a final cry.

The Hunter fell dead on the floor of the chamber.

Oliver parried the dagger thrust of the nearest soldier, twisted, and drove his elbow into the Atlantean’s gut. He spun and swung the Sword of Hunyadi and the magnificently sharp blade separated the man’s head from his body with a clean, swift cut, showering greenish-black blood onto the floor, where it froze into a puddle of ice.

Across from him, a streak of copper-red darted through the air and he glimpsed Kitsune, the fox, tearing the throat out of another Atlantean.

Julianna defended herself from a soldier, but only barely. With a cry of anguish, Collette drove her stolen sword through the soldier’s back, the point erupting from his chest and spattering Julianna with his blood.

They and Kitsune would have to take care of themselves for the moment.

Ty’Lis sat grinning in his chair.

On the floor, pieces of the winter man had begun to melt, but a cold wind eddied around them and some of the largest shards disintegrated into snow and began to whip up into the air.

The black light that pulsed around the sorcerer flashed once and Ty’Lis stood. He held his hands out, palms down, and like fire the bruise-black light spread, enveloping what remained of Frost. The wind died, the snowflakes frozen in place, neither falling nor drifting.

Frost might not be dead yet, but Ty’Lis was about to put an end to his legend forever.

Oliver raised the Sword of Hunyadi. Questions of his own heritage raced through his mind as he ran toward the sorcerer. He screamed as he lunged and thrust the blade at the Atlantean’s chest. It shook in his grip as it pierced muscle and flesh and cracked bone.

Ty’Lis screamed and staggered back with the force of the attack. Oliver lifted his boot and kicked the sorcerer’s body off of his blade, then raised the Sword of Hunyadi again. Ty’Lis fell to his knees and Oliver brought the blade down with a strength and savagery he would never have guessed he possessed. As though it were an axe, he hacked downward with it and cleaved the sorcerer’s skull in two. It wedged in bone, and this time, as the corpse fell, he let the grip of the sword slip from his hands, lodged in the dead man’s head.

“Oliver!” Kitsune screamed. She had taken the form of a woman again. “What have you done?”

He blinked and stepped back.

The first thing he noticed was that the black aura still surrounded the shattered fragments of the winter man. The gusting wind and the snow and the broken pieces of Frost’s head were still suspended there as though frozen in time.

But the black umbilical of that sorcery did not stretch to the corpse that lay before Oliver.

It was attached to the man in the other chair, to the fingers of King Mahacuhta.

Yet even as Oliver saw this, the image of the man shimmered and the chains that had pulsed with magic vanished as though they had never been there. Instead, those same chains gleamed around the corpse that lay at Oliver’s feet. Now they too faded, even as the body seemed to shift, the flesh running like hot wax.

His sword, the Sword of Hunyadi, was lodged in the cloven skull of the king.

Ty’Lis sat in the king’s chair in his lush crimson robes, grinning and unharmed.

“No,” Oliver whispered.

“I do so love my puppets,” Ty’Lis murmured, as if to himself.

The door to the king’s bedroom crashed open and more Atlantean soldiers thundered into the antechamber. Shouts came from out in the corridor and more soldiers-the king’s own guard-appeared, herding into the room, angry and brutal.

Collette had already been caught, held by a pair of Atlanteans. Julianna stood in a corner, sword raised, but she had no hope as they gathered round her.

“Murder!” Ty’Lis cried, voice shrill as he leaped to his feet. “They’ve slain the king! Arrest them!”

Kitsune and Oliver stared at one another across the room. For a moment her eyes were full of love and sadness and regret. He saw it all, just as he saw all of those emotions drain from her. The fox-woman reached out and touched the fabric of the Veil, the air at her fingertips shimmered and opened, and she went to step through.

“Wait!” Julianna shouted. “You can’t leave without us!”

Oliver called to her to stop, but Julianna clashed swords with the guard in front of her, then kept going forward. She knocked him down and let go of her blade, skirting around the fallen man even as he tried to grab her long legs. Julianna dodged the hands of two other guards and reached for Kitsune.

She could not pass through the Veil. Julianna was one of the Lost Ones. With her in tow, Kitsune would never have been able to escape.

Even so, Oliver flinched as Kitsune struck her with the back of her hand, splitting Julianna’s lip and staining her own knuckles with blood.

Oliver called her name.

Julianna’s name.

Kitsune sneered at him, eyes cold. She stepped through the Veil, the air shimmered and closed, and she was gone.

Oliver stood staring mutely at the place where she had been as the king’s guard surrounded him. His hands flexed instinctively, but fighting now would be suicide and mean death for Collette and Julianna. They were all disarmed.

They were prisoners.

Ty’Lis strode toward Oliver, picking his way delicately around the dead guards and shattered fragments of frozen Perytons. The aura no longer surrounded him, but it pulsed now around what remained of Frost, and Oliver did not know if that sorcery was his prison or his final destruction.

“Bascombe,” Ty’Lis said, glancing from Oliver to Collette, ignoring Julianna completely. He leaned in toward Oliver and his voice lowered to a whisper. “Legend-Born.”

Oliver gritted his teeth and shook his head. “I don’t even know what that means.”

Ty’Lis blinked and glanced at him. “No? Truly? None of your myth friends ever told you?”

Unwilling to play along, Oliver looked away, staring instead at Julianna and then at Collette, trying to assure them that everything would be all right. Somehow.

“You and your sister, boy, you’re half of this world and half of that. An uncommon breed, and an unwelcome one.”

Collette screamed at him, “You hideous freak! What the fuck are you talking about?”

Ty’Lis ran his fingers over the braids of his beard. “Idiot girl. You haven’t an inkling, have you?” And now he whispered so that only Oliver could hear, so that none of the soldiers, Atlantean or Yucatazcan, could make out a word.

“We made the Veil to separate the ordinary from the legendary. From time to time, couplings between Borderkind and humans have produced creatures that are both. You are the opposite of the Veil in every way, anathema to the magic used to create it. The stories the Lost Ones tell say that one day a Legend-Born will tear the Veil down, reuniting the two worlds, so that at last they can all go home again.”

Ty’Lis pressed his forehead to Oliver’s, heat pulsing on the sorcerer’s clammy skin, and stared into his eyes.

“That is why you must die. To take away any such false hope. But first, I have need of you…”

Again the sorcerer stepped back and gestured broadly to the king’s guards.

“Put them all in chains,” Ty’Lis commanded. “And I shall attend to the Borderkind. They are under arrest on charges of conspiracy and regicide. You are all witnesses to the crime. You see the Sword of Hunyadi, which was wielded by the hand of this Intruder from beyond the Veil. No other evidence is necessary. He and his companions are assassins, sent by Hunyadi himself.

“The king of Euphrasia has shattered the truce between the Two Kingdoms, and in the name of Mahacuhta, my robes stained with his blood, I swear that Yucatazca shall have her vengeance, that there will be justice.

“That there will be war.”