Lycaon seemed to hesitate. “I thought you weren’t here to recruit me.”
Kitsune released him. “We’re not. If you would rather die alone and hunted than on a field of battle, there’s little I can do to convince you.”
The beast seemed diminished by her words. He spoke quietly. “I know about wars, kings, and murder. I promised myself, when I opened the doors of this place, that those things were all behind me.”
Coyote stepped nearer to him. All the mockery had gone from his face. “You put them behind you, Lycaon. But they’ve caught up.”
The werewolf flinched, but kept quiet, lost in reverie.
“When we go, you’re welcome to come along. That will be for you to decide. But no matter your choice, there is something we need from you.”
Lycaon frowned and glanced up at Kitsune.
Coyote cleared his throat. “The old gods.”
The beast looked askance at him. “They’re dead. You know that.”
“No one has ever believed they were all gone, Lycaon, no matter how they wished their legends would end.”
“And if I refuse, then what? For millennia, people have called me a monster. The word is not inaccurate. Do you think you can force me to help you?”
“We are not enemies, Lycaon,” Kitsune said. “If we succeed—if those rallying behind Hunyadi succeed—you will benefit. If they do not, you will die. All three of us here will die. So understand me well when I say that if you do not cooperate with us, then at least one of us will not have to wait for the Atlanteans to end our lives. You will have to kill us both, or we will be eating your black heart for our dinner, cooked upon your own stove.”
“I’ve never responded well to threats,” the beast-man said darkly.
Kitsune shrugged. “As you like. But I wager your response to death would be even less favorable. We’d rather have you as an ally than a corpse. No matter how hungry Coyote might be.”
Coyote took a final drag from his cigarette, then dropped it to the floor and crushed it under his boot.
For long moments, Lycaon said nothing.
Then, at last, he nodded. “I’ll take you to the old gods. But do not be so deluded as to think we are now allies, or that the old ones will trouble themselves with the likes of you.”
Kitsune nodded. “Lead on, then,” she said, as she raised her fur hood, hiding her face once more.
When Wayland Smith led them through the Veil into the human world, Blue Jay felt strangely at home. He had traveled all through the Two Kingdoms and to other lands in the legendary world, but he’d never felt quite so at ease as he did in the badlands of America. The people who’d believed in him and who still told his stories…this was their land, no matter who supposedly owned it now.
When they stepped into the world, they found themselves in an arroyo that hadn’t seen rain in months. The sky had been the deep indigo that only came in the small hours, long after midnight. The moon hung low and cast its light across a hardscrabble land of tangled brush and cactus. Far off, a mesa thrust up from the flat earth, its striated layers lit up by the moonglow.
Blue Jay would have given anything to stop here, just for a while. He could have been at peace.
But Smith wouldn’t hear of it.
They started off immediately. Blue Jay danced into the sky, transforming into a small bird not usually seen at night. Cheval had likewise changed, shifting her form from exotic woman to silver-maned, green-tinted horse. Jay had never met another kelpy, but he wondered if they were all so tragically beautiful. Grin rode astride Cheval’s back. Li spread his arms wide and fire erupted from his hands. From it he forged a flaming tiger, which he mounted and rode as he had with the tiger who’d been his flesh-and-blood companion.
That had left only Smith, who meandered along with his cane. Blue Jay watched the old wanderer, who seemed to move far more slowly than the other Borderkind. Yet every time he glanced down, Smith was no further behind than he had been. The trickster had to remind himself that Smith was a magician of sorts, and the Wayfarer’s power had a great deal to do with his journeys.
All through the night they walked, traveling for hours across the rough country of the southwestern United States and making more progress than an ordinary man on horseback could have ridden in several days. They journeyed through small, sparse towns and over high passes, and Smith gave them not a moment’s rest.
Blue Jay felt many times during those long hours that he had traveled these lands before, but only when he saw the lights of a city to the east did he become certain they were in Arizona. The city was Tucson. The Mexican border was not far away.
Perhaps an hour before dawn, they came over a rise to find a barbed wire fence before them. The ground here was rough and tufted with spikes of prickly grass. Blue Jay circled above their heads and watched as Wayland Smith gestured to Li.
The burning tiger reared back and the Guardian of Fire raised a fist of glowing embers. When he opened his hand, fire rushed from his palm and blew the fence apart, charring wooden posts and scorching the ground.
Smith led the way across the Mexican border. Blue Jay flew in wide arcs, watching for the border patrol, but no one came. He felt a profound relief at that, because he knew that they would not have allowed themselves to be stopped by humans with guns. Innocents might have died.
They walked south into Mexican territory, but less than ten minutes into their journey, a buzz filled the air. Blue Jay sailed down from the sky, spun into a blur of blue light, and alighted upon the ground as a man once more. His cotton shirt and blue jeans felt soft and comfortable after so long on the wing.
“What’s that, then? That odd drumming?” Grin asked, still astride Cheval. The kelpy glanced up with wide, eloquent eyes.
Li stood there on that rough earth, burning, and stared at the sky.
But Blue Jay stared at Smith. “A helicopter. Maybe more than one. Border Patrol, I assume.”
Smith nodded. “Our friend Li is not the most inconspicuous. We’ll cross back over now. No one owns this land, except perhaps the Mexican government. We can breach the Veil from here.”
“Seems a shame,” Grin said. “Got nearly an hour till daybreak. No telling how much further south we could get in that time.”
“No, he’s right,” Blue Jay said. He caught sight of the lights of the helicopter in the distance. “When we cross over, we’ll be in Yucatazca. The war will be north of us.”
He didn’t mention that they’d have to avoid reinforcements that Ty’Lis would no doubt be sending along the Isthmus of the Conquistadors to aid the invasion of Euphrasia. Yet, when the quintet of Borderkind had slipped once more through the Veil into the sunlit world of the legendary, Blue Jay was surprised to find they met no resistance at all.
At first he thought this might be extraordinary luck, but as the hours passed, he began to suspect it had more to do with the fact that Wayland Smith was leading them. It seemed that his path took him only where he wished it to. Somehow he found the most remote areas of Yucatazca for them to journey through. Once, flying above a rain forest mountain with his comrades trekking below, Blue Jay saw an army detachment at least two thousand strong marching northward toward the Isthmus, but they were miles away.
When they camped that night, he asked Smith about it.
The Wayfarer just smiled. “I choose my steps carefully.”
The next morning they resumed their journey at speeds far greater than Blue Jay had ever managed while he, Frost, and Kitsune had been traveling with Oliver Bascombe. Many of the legendary had magic within them that granted them a certain swiftness, and others were simply faster by nature than human beings. On foot, and over short distances, neither Li nor Grin would have outpaced a reasonably fit human. But on a journey that spanned the borders between worlds and kingdoms, and with Grin astride Cheval and Li upon his burning tiger, they covered ground in a fraction of the time.
Cheval had suggested that they find a branch of the Winding Way, but Smith insis
ted that the detour would actually slow them down.
As the day wore on, Blue Jay found himself glad that he was not walking with the others. They were in thick jungle now, with hills and ravines and clouds of insects that seemed to be waiting for unsuspecting travelers. There were creatures in the tangled jungle, of course—some of them ordinary beasts and birds, but others figures of legend. Smith stopped at the edge of a stream to talk to something the blue bird couldn’t quite make out from the sky. Most of the legendary they passed were wild things, however, that would not want anything to do with war or politics or the city of Palenque.
In the middle of the afternoon, Blue Jay saw a glint of gold against the horizon. As he scouted ahead, flying nearer, he saw the terraced buildings and gleaming rooftops of Palenque. Exotic and elegant, it seemed like a city of gods. And perhaps it once had been. The city itself had been designed as a kind of maze, the streets turning in upon themselves over and over. As one walked deeper into the city, trying to reach the palace at the center, the streets became so narrow that it was almost necessary to walk single file. For centuries, the kings of Yucatazca had used their own capital city—and its people—as their major defenses. An army could never take Palenque that way.
No, any attack that was to succeed would have to come from within.
With one last glance, he flew down in a long arc, gliding between the trees. Spreading his wings, the bird became the man, and Blue Jay stepped down out of the sky to stand beside Wayland Smith.
Li turned his great, burning tiger around, staring at the trickster with cinder eyes. Blue Jay beckoned to him, even as Cheval cantered up behind him. Grin slid from the kelpy’s back, and with a wet, cracking noise, she took on her alluring female form once more.
“We’re near the end of the jungle,” Blue Jay said.
Smith watched him calmly.
“This isn’t the same approach we used the last time,” Cheval Bayard said, her accent lilting. She shook out her silver hair, but there was nothing sensual in the action, or in the grim expression on her face. On their last journey to Palenque, her companion, Chorti, had been killed in battle with the Perytons and the other Myth Hunters.
“Right,” Grin agreed. “If I’ve got it sussed, we’re coming in from the northwest this time.”
Li said nothing, the crackling of fire his only audible contribution.
“Remember the mountainside on the west end of the city, with the homes built right into the slope?” Blue Jay said. “We’re going to come in right at the top. The city will be down below.”
“It will not be a simple thing to climb down unseen,” Cheval said.
Blue Jay turned to look at Smith. “There isn’t an approach to Palenque where we could go unnoticed. But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Wayfarer?”
Wayland Smith arched an eyebrow and ran a hand over his full beard.
“Follow me.”
With that, he raised his fox-headed cane and opened a path through the Veil. For the second time in as many days, their strange quintet crossed through into the ordinary world.
On the other side, Blue Jay spun around, staring in every direction, eyes wide in confusion.
“It’s exactly the same.”
And it was. The jungle, the trees, the insects.
“What the hell’s this?” Grin demanded. The bogie rounded on Smith, staring up at him with a warning in his eyes. “We haven’t gone anywhere.”
Li tapped the tiger on its shoulder and it lowered its flaming head so that the Guardian of Fire could reach down and touch the ground. He felt the dirt between two burning fingers.
“Actually, we have. This is the human world,” Li said, looking around at them with those eerie, furnace eyes.
Smith said nothing. He turned and continued southeast through the jungle. They all followed, moving more slowly and warily now. Soon, however, they emerged from the trees and found themselves gazing out across a breathtaking vista. There were mountains in the distance, and hundreds of miles of rain forest.
But twenty yards ahead, they found themselves at the edge of a cliff, staring down at an ancient ruin. All but two or three small structures were unrecognizable as buildings. Walls were little more than strewn stone and earth. But it was clear—once, this had been a city.
“What is it?” Blue Jay asked. “Incan? Mayan?”
“Atlantean,” Smith said.
The trickster stared at him. “What?”
The old wanderer actually smiled. “They had ambassadors in ancient days as well, my friend. This was a colony. Before they became treacherous and were driven from the world.”
Then he turned his back again. When he began to descend the long slope, where indents in the face of the mountain showed that once there might have been caves, they had little choice but to follow.
Smith led them to the nearest of the three remaining structures and through the arch that might once have been a door before more than a thousand years of erosion had been at work.
There was no exit.
Cheval’s green dress swayed around her as she entered, the last of them to follow. Grin rested, apelike, on his fists. Li knelt to whisper to the burning tiger and then slowly reached out his hands and reabsorbed the creature’s flames into himself.
Slowly, they all stared at Smith.
“Well?” Blue Jay asked. “What next?”
“Now you cross over.”
“Us? What about you?” the trickster asked, suspicion flaring in his mind.
“I’ve told you from the beginning I wouldn’t be going with you. Nothing has changed. Your infiltration begins now. If you are fortunate, and as clever as I think you are, you will return with the Bascombes.”
Grin snorted. “Is that supposed to cheer us up?”
Wayland Smith looked at him, thunder in his ancient eyes. “No.”
For a moment, they were all quiet.
Li was the first to raise his hand and pull at the fabric of the world, opening a passage for himself through the Veil. He stepped out of the realm of the ordinary, and back into legend.
Blue Jay cast one final, doubtful glance at Smith, and then went through after him.
The sun had crept nearly to the horizon, with dusk less than an hour away, when Damia Beck heard the shrill whistle of her advance scout. She spurred her horse forward and raced along beside the infantry soldiers in her command. At the outset of the war, only weeks before, she’d begun with two cavalry regiments under her. King Hunyadi had hesitated to part with Damia, but had recognized that she would be more use to him in the field. With the assassination of one of his commanders, the king had given her command of a company of infantry as well. Now, after her performance in the Battle of Cliffordville, the king had transferred an additional three companies to her control, making her the only captain in the history of the King’s Guard ever to be made commander of an entire battalion of the Euphrasian army—one thousand men.
Some of her fellow commanders, particularly Maggiore and Boudreau, had made their disdain for her promotion clear. Others had welcomed her. Sakai and Alborg had gone so far as to salute her. And then they had all gone off to war. Word had come that Maggiore had already been slain by some kind of Yucatazcan monstrosity. Despite the way he had treated her, she regretted his passing. He had been a capable commander.
In addition to her original two cavalry regiments, Damia had a platoon of legendary warriors taking orders from her. There were five ogres who had come down from the northlands, a storm spirit called Howlaa, a trio of Naga archers, a Japanese oni called Gaki, whose red skin and horns would have given him a demonic air even if he did not have the head of an ox and a hideous third eye in the center of his forehead.
The last of the legendary platoon was an ancient, twisted-looking Englishman with ruddy cheeks called Old Roger. His legend had something to do with apples, and from what she understood, he’d been one of the Harvest gods, once upon a time. He had since fallen out of their good graces. Blue Jay had told her
that the Harvest gods would fight the Atlantean conspiracy, but thus far, poor Old Roger was all she had seen of them. What help he might be in battle she could not say, but she appreciated his loyalty.
How many of them might be Borderkind, she did not know. The distinction between the legendary who were anchored on this side of the Veil and the Borderkind was mostly lost on her. Oh, she knew the difference, but not on sight. To most of the Lost Ones—both newcomers and those like Damia who had descended from humans who’d crossed the Veil in centuries past—there were humans and nonhumans. Whether they could or couldn’t cross the Veil was an issue that concerned only the legendary, because the Lost Ones could never go home.
A smile touched her lips as she rode past the troops. She had been near the back when the scout’s whistle had reached her. Dust swirled up from the dirt road, raised by the tramping boots of her soldiers. She wiped grit from her eyes and cleared her throat.
Home. What a strange way for her to think about a place she had never been—never seen. Neither had her mother, or her mother before her. Damia descended from a Nubian mother and a Euphrasian father, but they themselves had ancestors who had crossed the Veil from Africa and from America. Her mother’s people had been Sahelian and her father’s Sioux, many generations ago.
Yet she still thought of the human world as home.
They all did. How could they not, when the legendary never called them anything but the Lost?
Which made her wonder if what everyone was saying about Oliver and Collette Bascombe was true. Were they Legend-Born? Would they lead the Lost Ones home? And if they could, would she want to go?
Again, she cleared the dust from her throat. Men and women looked up from the ranks as she went by and some saluted, though it certainly wasn’t required when the commander was merely riding past. They were courageous and loyal, and she knew they would fight to the death. The rest of Euphrasia might not yet believe that an Atlantean conspiracy was behind the breaking of the Truce and the war between the Two Kingdoms, but the army had no doubt.
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