Lost Ones-Veil 3 (24 page)

Dozens of Perytons circled in the sky above the island. Their green feathers were black in the darkness, and when they passed across the face of the moon, their antlers seemed to claw the air. Had he been anyone else, they would have seen him already and attacked. But Smith was the Wayfarer—the Walker Between Worlds. He had eons of practice at being unseen.

But he had already known about the soldiers and sorcerers, the giants and Perytons. What troubled him the most were the other things—the beasts of the deep. A sea dragon rippled in the waves offshore, a thing of such length that he could only think of Jormungand, the Northmen’s so-called world serpent. Three gigantic squidike creatures lay within the harbor, half in and half out of the water. It ought to have been impossible, but it seemed barely surprising in view of the sharks and eels that undulated through the night sky, swimming through the air as easily as they would underwater. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of octopi hung like parachutes in the sky above the glass ships of Atlantis.

At some silent signal, the troops in the plaza began to move out, marching toward the harbor with giants and sorcerers at their side and Perytons flying above.

Smith swore in a language that had been old before the legends of this world had been born. But there was nothing he could do just now, not alone. This was not his world. Not his war. Atlantis could not be allowed to prevail because it might trap him in this one world forever, but his only power to stop them lay in his ability as a puppeteer. He might not have a role to play on the field of battle, but he saw the skeins of fate in every world, and knew when to pull those strings.

At least, he always had.

Straightening, keeping his grip on the spire, Smith reached out with the tip of his cane. He waved it once, twice, and a third time, then tapped downward. Though nothing but the night surrounded the spiral dome of the Great Library of Atlantis, the cane struck something solid.

Smith stepped away from the building and began to descend a staircase of sky. He did not need the cane to find each step, tapping ahead of him like a blind man. Instinct guided him, and power summoned the steps before the soles of his boots touched them. The Wayfarer followed the steps in a downward curve that led to a fifth-story window. He slipped between worlds for an instant and then out again on the other side of the window.

Inside the library.

His passage went unnoticed amongst the cases and shelves displaying thousands of scrolls from an age that Atlantis barely remembered—an age that even Wayland Smith could hardly recall. Glass and pearl architecture created a labyrinth of knowledge, but he navigated it easily. When he came upon guards, he paused. They did not see him, but beyond them, where scrolls had been laid out upon a table, a sorcerer—perhaps a member of the High Council—paused and glanced around, frowning deeply, sensing a disturbance in the air.

The Wayfarer withdrew.

He had seen all he needed, now. At the table, bent studiously over the scrolls the sorcerer had set out, there had been a young, olive-skinned boy with dark, serious eyes.

Prince Tzajin lived.

Damia Beck lay on her bedroll inside her tent. The wind whistled like distant ghosts passing by outside. Far off she could hear the snort and neigh of horses and the low mutter of voices from the soldiers on watch and those who were unable to sleep. Her left shoulder burned where the Battle Swine had gored her, but a healing poultice had already done wonders. Still, her body ached. Sleep would have been a blessed gift, but it would not come easily, if at all.

A dog barked, off in the night, away from camp. She stiffened, wondering if it truly had been a dog, or the signal of some enemy. There were no dogs in camp. Likely it was some wild hound off in the woods or a house pet from one of the villages they had found abandoned on their march south. Three small villages had been evacuated, their residents taking shelter in the mountains or scattering to other towns where they might be safer. One had not been so fortunate. Most of the buildings had been burned to the ground. Old men had been cut down in the street. Women and children had been herded and then executed. Many of the corpses had been picked apart as though by vultures.

Every time Damia closed her eyes, she saw the bodies.

Yucatazcan soldiers had not done this. The Two Kingdoms had been at peace for a very long time. She had known and worked with southerners before. People were no different in other parts of the world, not fundamentally. They were all Lost Ones under the skin, all yearning for a home most had never known.

Whatever had happened in that village, she knew Atlantis must be at fault. Giants and Perytons must have broken away from the retreating Yucatazcan troops, the slaughter in the village a punishment of innocents, retribution for the humiliation they felt at being routed.

Smoke filled Damia’s nostrils, even now. She had bathed in the river near the ruined village, but the stink would not leave her. Perhaps it never would. And perhaps it never should. King Hunyadi might have been waiting for her battalion to arrive, but Commander Beck had been unable to simply leave the dead for animals and carrion birds to gnaw upon. They had lost most of a day digging a mass grave for the villagers. While the infantry dug, she had sent the cavalry out riding in search of any signs that the Atlanteans might still be in the area, but they had found nothing. The oni in her Borderkind platoon, Gaka, was an excellent tracker. His third eye saw things no one else would, and the trail of the giants led directly southward.

From the devastated village of Ashford, Damia had marched her battalion onward. They had lost most of a day and she wanted to make up some of that time. The commander did not halt her troops until long after dark to make camp.

Now they rested, as best they could. Damia wondered how many of them were having nightmares, tonight. Perhaps that explained why she could not seem to get to sleep herself. Dreaming might take her right back to the half-eaten dead of Ashford, lying in the street amidst the charred remains of their homes.

“Heaven help us all,” she whispered to the darkness of her tent, and the starry sky high above. She wished she could see the stars. Breathing the night air might help clear her mind. For a moment she considered leaving the tent.

Instead, she turned on her side and closed her eyes. Damia might be haunted, but she could not let her troops see. They had done the decent, honorable thing in Ashford, but for the sake of morale she had to appear confident and undaunted. They had to believe their commander had a hard edge to her soul.

Eyes closed, she saw the faces of the dead, and instead of drifting toward sleep, she felt more awake than ever. She listened to the wind outside, to the low garble of soldiers talking, and to the restless horses nearby. She caught herself waiting to hear the bark of that lost dog again, searching for its owners.

The night softened.

Instead of that distant bark, she heard a quick fluttering, as though of wings. A frown creased her half-conscious brow. The wind against the entry flaps of the tent—it must be. But the sound came again, and this time she knew it was not the wind at all.

Wings.

Then there came a gentle sound that might have been the entry flaps parting and a light step as someone entered the tent.

Perytons!

Her sword lay in its scabbard. Guns were faster. She lunged from the bedroll and snatched one of her guns from its holster, rolling as she moved, then came up onto her knees and took aim at the entrance to the tent. A dark figure stood there, silhouetted in the opening by starlight.

“I’ve been shot before and it hurt like hell,” a voice said. “Could you point that somewhere else?”

A breeze blew into the tent and the feathers braided into his hair swayed.

Damia stared, letting the gun fall to her side. She strode over, grabbed Blue Jay by a fistful of his shirt, and pulled him into the tent even as she covered his lips with her own. His arms went around her, holding her gently, but Damia did not want tenderness. Not now. She pressed her body against him just as fiercely as she did her mouth. Idly she tossed her gun onto the bedroll and kissed him until they were both breathless.

Only when he broke the kiss and drew back from her, when she saw the powerfully hewn lines of his face in the slight illumination that came through the slit between entry flaps, did she see the concern in his eyes. Damia nearly asked him what was wrong, but then she felt the moist heat on her cheeks and tasted salt on her lips, and realized she had begun to cry.

Any other night, with any other person, she would have been mortified. But this was Blue Jay. Damia smiled and wiped away her tears.

“I missed you,” she whispered. “Especially today.”

She told him about Ashford, about the people who had been butchered there and the children whose bodies had been stripped of flesh by hungry Perytons.

“This war’s about so much more than a broken truce,” she said.

Blue Jay brushed his fingers through her long, wild hair. “For my kind, it always has been.”

She nodded. “I thought I understood that before, but I didn’t. Not really. Victory is the only possible outcome now, isn’t it?”

His eyes darkened. “The alternative is unthinkable.”

“How are you even here?” she asked, gazing at him as though she had just discovered some lost treasure. She could not take her eyes off of him.

The trickster took her face in his hands, studying her just as she had done with him, as though to make sure she was not some illusion, some beautiful mirage in the midst of ugly times.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “Best told on the road, I think. Truth be told, darlin’, it’s fortune that brings us together tonight. We got out of Palenque through the sandcastle and have been heading south to join Hunyadi, just like you. I’ve been scouting ahead from the air and saw your camp, came down to talk to the commander. I had the strangest feeling it would be you, here, but I brushed it off. I’ve never been a clairvoyant. Not one of my skills. But here you are. There’s no magic to it, really. We’re all on the road to war.”

Damia felt her breath stolen from her again as his hands slid down over her body.

“You don’t have enough trust in fate.” A smile spread across her face. “There’s magic in this, all right. All sorts of magic. But you said ‘we.’ Who else is with you?”

Blue Jay nodded, mischief returning to his eyes. Even in that near darkness, she could see its spark. “More than you’d think, and all camped just a few miles away. Li, Cheval, and Grin all came back from Palenque with me. But now we’ve got the gods on our side. Some of them, anyway. Ares and Mercury and half a dozen others or so from Perinthia. Fuck, there’s a Titan, too. Cronus. Wait till the Atlanteans see him. Then we’ve got dozens of Harvest gods with us. The roots told them about the war, they said. Whatever it is, they know what’s going on and they’re helping.”

Damia laughed in disbelief. “That’s incredible. Almost gives me hope. The king will be very pleased. Did you round them all up yourself?”

He arched an eyebrow. “Me? No. It’s all Kitsune’s doing. Hers and Coyote’s. They’ve had a hell of a time. The Sandman’s out and about, hunting for her and for Oliver, apparently.”

“But—”

“We thought he was dead? Yeah. We did. Looks like we were wrong. Maybe the Sandman can’t be killed. I don’t know. But, yeah, he’s still alive. He took one of Coyote’s eyes at the Atlantic Bridge and would have killed Kitsune had Coyote and Cronus not driven him off.”

Damia shivered. “Do you think he’ll come back?”

Blue Jay’s eyes went cold. “No question. But we’re on guard, now. For both Kitsune and Oliver.”

She froze and stared at him. “You’ve got him? Oliver’s with you?”

“And Julianna as well. Collette’s off with Frost somewhere, but we’ll catch up to them eventually. The important thing is that we’re bringing Oliver to Hunyadi. A few months ago, they were hunting him. Now the king will put him up in front of the troops and tell them the Legend-Born has come. That ought to boost morale.”

“We’ll need it,” Damia replied. “So, you really think the Bascombes are Legend-Born?”

Blue Jay stroked her arms. For a moment, his gaze seemed distant. Then he nodded. “They are. There’s power in them like nothing I’ve ever seen. Magic I’m not even sure they understand yet.”

Damia took that in, wondering what it would mean. If Oliver and Collette could really bring down the Veil, take the Lost Ones home, would she even go? She knew the answer. Never. Her loyalty to Hunyadi might have been enough to keep her here, but now she had Blue Jay in her life. She would stay here with him, even if she was the last human in the legendary world.

Exhaustion caught up with her. Her whole body ached.

“You need to sleep,” he said.

“Not yet,” Damia said, as she began unbuttoning his jeans.

The war could wait until morning.

CHAPTER
16

T
he fox trotted through the woods, hoping for a vole or mouse or insomniac squirrel, anything to capture her mind. It helped to have left her human form behind. The scents of the earth and growing things and the creatures of the wood filled her mind. The sounds of the nighttime erased the voices that haunted her from the day. Here she could find joy. Here, she was only a fox, and not expected to be anything but that.

The night offered the fox freedom from so many things.

A small something twitched in the underbrush and her stomach growled hungrily. The fox paused, inhaling the scent. A rabbit, up past its bedtime. Her lips stretched. Kitsune always forgot that as a fox she could not smile.

She lunged, paws clawing the dirt as she darted after the rabbit. It fled between two thick, tangled bushes, a hitch in its step that revealed some old injury. A swift flash of copper fur pursued the rabbit as it weaved around the base of a large tree and ducked underneath a fallen, rotting birch.

The fox leaped the dead tree and came down on the other side, paws digging into the ground, damp with rain from the previous morning.

Kitsune caught the rabbit easily and dragged it down, the two animals tumbling over one another. It tried to rise before she could, but its ruined leg failed it and the rabbit faltered. The fox pinned it under her forepaws, chest heaving with adrenaline and the thrill of the hunt.

Yet it had not been much of a chase, or a challenge. Though her stomach grumbled and she could practically taste fresh rabbit on her tongue, a twinge of regret touched her. What joy could be found in catching prey that could not possibly outrun her?

The fox stepped back.

Panting, the rabbit stared at her a moment, eyes gleaming pink in the moonlight. It rolled over slowly, twitchingly aware of her presence, keeping her in its peripheral vision. Quivering, it took a single hop, then waited to see if she would pursue. When she did not, the rabbit bolted, limping even as it ran deeper into the woods.

Sadness made its nest in Kitsune’s heart. Yet this was not the ache of guilt and lost love that had plagued her before. This new pain came from acceptance. This pain would be with her for a very long time, and all she could do was hold it close. She had been face-to-face with Oliver, and nothing had changed. He did not hate her, but he did not love her. Whatever closeness the future might have held for them—as lovers or friends—she had ruined it by assaulting Julianna and abandoning them in Palenque.

Julianna.

The fox growled quietly, lay back her head to look at the moon, and wished she were a wolf so that she might howl gloriously in sorrow and fury.

Oliver’s woman had been cold to her, but she had also been right. Much as she hated it, Kitsune had to admire Julianna’s self-control. Were their roles reversed, the fox-woman would have torn out her throat.

As a fox, and a trickster, there were many things about humanity that she had never understood or even experienced. A lesson had been learned, now, and she would never be able to unlearn it. Humanity meant pain. More than that, it meant living with pain every day, and still going on as if the world had not changed around you.

So Kitsune would go forward. She would march to war and she would fight for King Hunyadi—for her own kind and for the Lost Ones as well. But when the war ended, she thought she might retreat to the Oldwood where Frost and Oliver had first found her and simply be a fox for a while. Years, perhaps. Centuries. As long as it took to forget the lesson that living as a woman had taught her.

A quiet step came behind her.

She spun, forgetting the moon, and saw the coyote emerging from the trees. He had come to her downwind, so that she would not catch his scent.

His eyes had always laughed, even when he did not wish them to, dancing with the mad light of the jester, the trickster, of Coyote. But the Sandman had taken one, and the other had no laughter in it tonight, only tenderness. His coat gleamed sleekly, and he looked not at all the rangy mutt of a beast that he often seemed.

The fox cocked her head, studying him.

The coyote came nearer, but stopped several feet away. They began to move in a circle, but when the fox halted the coyote kept going around her once, twice, a third time. He lay back his head and howled. It had not the beauty of the wolf’s cry, but the coyote’s lament broke her heart anew. He had borne witness to her pain today, and suffered so much of his own. Now he had come seeking her, though she had made it plain she wished to be alone.

The fox did not try to send him away.

The coyote came nearer. He nudged her snout playfully with his nose, then darted away. Confused, she only looked at him. Again, he nudged her, then loped several yards and glanced back.

Only then did she understand. He wanted her to run with him. To play. To lighten her heart.

It amazed her to discover how wrong she had always been about Coyote. If not for him, she would still be wallowing in hatred and guilt in the cave at the back of his den.

The fox barked a little laugh and gave chase, wondering what she would do when at last the coyote allowed her to catch him.

The ferries didn’t run in Boston Harbor in March, and wouldn’t until the tourists started to show up in May. Sheriff Norris could have contacted the local authorities and gotten their cooperation—Sara had urged him to do just that—but he had balked, not wanting to have to come up with an explanation for their off-season visit.

Cops.

Sara had spent her entire life trying to figure out the mind of a policeman—her father—and still hadn’t gotten very far. They were proud and stubborn and courageous and sometimes damned fools.

The sheriff had tracked down a local tour boat operator who was willing to take them out to George’s Island for a fee. Now, on a startlingly brisk March morning, Sara turned up her collar and pulled her jacket tight across her throat. The similarity to her father’s last known journey—on a rented boat out to a deserted island off the western coast of Scotland—was not lost on her. In truth, thinking of it made her feel a bit nauseated.

She stood inside the tour boat—its engine chugging, filling their noses with a terrible oil smoke—and tried to imagine how cold it would be if she allowed that acrid odor to drive her out on the deck for fresh air. Finally, nearly choking, she stepped out on the prow of the boat and let the wind buffet her, whisking away the smell. Salt and sea filled her lungs now and she breathed it in gratefully. Her teeth chattered and she shivered, but she surrendered to the cold, letting it settle into her body. Somehow it made her feel more alive.

Jackson and Marc Friedle—
his name’s Robiquet,
she thought, reminding herself for the hundredth time—remained inside for another minute or two, just talking. Every time Sara looked at him, she had difficulty seeing the human mask the goblin wore instead of the monstrous features that he had let them glimpse only twice. His true face would always be seared into her memory.

The seas were rough, even here in the harbor, and she stood with her legs wide so as not to lose her balance. The captain and mate moved the old boat easily through the water, laboring on a path between islands. Sara had been out here several times on tours when she was younger. Once her father had taken her out to George’s Island for a picnic, and she remembered it well.

The island loomed ahead. The dock and visitor center were abandoned, left with the haunted quiet of the off season. Beyond them, the fort rose up in an imposing wall of stone, half overgrown. It had been built partially into the natural terrain, and the overall effect made it seem far older than it was. The thirty-acre island had been used as a training area for Union soldiers during the Civil War, and later the fort had become a prison for Confederate soldiers.

Must be a thousand ghosts here,
she thought.

The idea had come to her mind unbidden, but she pushed it out of her thoughts. There were enough impossible things in the world without having to worry about ghosts.

As they approached the docks, the captain slowed the boat. The engine quieted to a dull roar and smoke billowed around them. The waves rocked them and the captain moved forward with caution. The first mate came onto the prow and threw bumpers over the side. The ferry dock was too high, so the captain chugged them slowly up beside the one built for private boats.

Sheriff Norris came out onto the deck with Robiquet behind him. The fussy-looking man made no move to assist, but Jackson took a rope from the mate’s hands. When the mate had hopped up onto the dock, the sheriff tossed him the rope. They worked together to tie the old boat to the dock.

Sara didn’t wait for a hand up. She leaped from the boat to the dock. Robiquet hesitated, but she didn’t have the patience to wait for him. As she strode away, she heard Jackson talking to the captain, assuring him they’d be back to the boat in no more than an hour. Then the sheriff and Robiquet were hurrying after her. Apparently the goblin had gotten over his anxiety about leaving the boat.

When they reached the entrance to the fort, they found the gates padlocked.

Sheriff Norris turned to Robiquet. “There another way in?”

Sara started following the outer wall, turning to call back to the sheriff over her shoulder. “We’ll walk around. At the back, you can walk up the hill—it’s not too steep—and get right to the lookouts at the top of the fort.”

She kept ahead of them. It wasn’t just impatience that drove her on. If all of the things Robiquet told them were true—and she believed they were—then this spot was the closest she had come to the truth of her father’s fate since he’d vanished in December. Sara felt breathless as she hiked the outer edge of the island, keeping the fort to her right. The terrain became difficult, but she did not slow down. That sense of nearness to her father propelled her forward, even as a terrible dread weighed upon her heart.

Robiquet didn’t seem to have any trouble with the hills and pathways on the outside of the fort. Of course, he wasn’t human. Sheriff Norris, on the other hand, labored to keep up. The man was in decent condition, but he wasn’t exactly young, anymore.

Sara didn’t slow down to wait for them until she had reached the rear of the island. There, she stood and stared up at the squat stone towers where the lookouts would have been posted. The frigid wind whipped up off of the water and it was icy on the back of her neck, but she barely felt the cold.

When Jackson and Robiquet caught up, the sheriff gave her a hard look, an admonishment for not having waited. Sara ignored it, and she paid no attention to the way he stood, catching his breath, obviously hoping for a rest.

She started up the hill.

At the lookout post, she moved around the tower and dropped down to the walkway behind it. She could not help wishing that she had brought her camera. Even at the worst of times, Sara saw the world through a photographer’s eyes.

Again, she waited impatiently for the others to catch up with her. Robiquet kept pace with the sheriff, perhaps thinking that he would rather deal with Sara’s impatience than Jackson’s annoyance. When they reached the lookout, the sheriff sat on the edge of the wall and slid down to the walkway. Robiquet hopped down with the ease of a child.

Sara took the peculiar man’s measure once again, still seeing in her mind the image of his true face.

“Lead the way,” she said. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Robiquet turned to look at her, the human mask he wore furrowing its brow in displeasure. “You think I would have dragged you all the way out here if I wasn’t sure?”

Sara shrugged. “I don’t know what I think, especially when it comes to you.”

Slowly, Robiquet nodded. “Fair enough, I suppose. Come along, then.”

He led them to a set of darkened stairs that led down into the tomblike stone passages of the old fort and prison. From above they could see that even during the day the stairwell descended into impenetrable darkness. Sara went to follow Robiquet, but Sheriff Norris put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head.

“I’ll go next.”

She understood immediately. There was no way to know what the goblin might try, down there in the dark, or what else they might encounter. If there was going to be trouble, Jackson wanted to be the first to come up against it. Sara bristled at the idea that she needed protecting, but she couldn’t deny that a part of her was relieved.

The whole world—even familiar places—had become unknown territory to her and the sheriff since they’d met Robiquet. If there was some passage here on the island to the world of legends and monsters that he had told them about, then she was relieved not to be the first one to descend into the dark.

But she followed.

Her father had never asked her for anything except to come home and see him from time to time, but she had failed him in that. Ted Halliwell had his shortcomings, no question. But Sara had spent the last few months coming to terms with the truth, that he had not been the only one at fault.

She needed to tell him that.

Sara blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dark. The stairs led straight down and then turned right. Her fingers trailed along the granite walls as she took each step, just in case she stumbled. The presence of Sheriff Norris in the passage below her only made it darker, blocking out any light that might have come from below.

“It’s this way,” Robiquet said, his voice echoing back to her from somewhere ahead.

Then she reached the bottom step, turned left, and found that the three of them had entered a chamber that must once have been a part of the prison. The walls were featureless, windowless stone, save for one in which a doorway led out into the huge, grassy staging area inside the fort. Whatever door had once hung there had long since been removed, leaving only a crumbling frame.

“Why isn’t there a door?” Sara asked.

“Maybe to keep people from getting trapped? The way they remove the doors from refrigerators at the dump,” Sheriff Norris suggested.