Lost Ones-Veil 3

by Christopher Golden

  Julianna smiled. “Silly boy. Take her with you.”

  “If she’ll go.”

  “She’ll go,” Julianna said. “She won’t be right inside if she doesn’t.”

  “Have you always been this smart?” Oliver asked.

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  The kiss happened, then, sweet and fine.

  Afterward, Oliver could still feel it on his lips for a while. But the feeling did not linger forever, and when everything went to shit and his friends started dying, he wished he could remember how it felt.

  In a spot almost hidden by the three tents pitched around it—including the tent of King Hunyadi—Kitsune stood absolutely still. The southern sun beat down upon her, but she had her hood raised nevertheless, lost in the shadows of her copper-red fur. For months she had practically hibernated, nursing her guilt and sadness, then she had emerged in search of purpose—and possibly forgiveness. But Oliver had made it clear that there’d be no redemption. He might forgive her, but he wouldn’t help her alleviate her guilt. Kitsune had turned down a path from which she could not retrace her steps. No trail of bread crumbs would lead her back to the moment when she had let her inner fox get the better of her.

  To hell with Oliver, then. She’d find a way to forgive herself. She’d make her own purpose.

  “What the hell are you thinking?” Coyote demanded. Small and lithe, he paced the ground between tents, pausing from time to time to gesture with a red glass bottle of honey mead. The wound where his eye had been had begun to heal, white scar tissue replacing ragged, raw flesh. “You’ve done enough, Kit.”

  “Have I?” she asked, smiling slyly. “I’m not going to go down to that battlefield, cousin. A little slip of a fox would last mere seconds. But I mean to fight, to make the Atlanteans pay for all of our kin they murdered. I’ll do what tricksters do. I’m going to get weapons—daggers and a sword, even if I have to pluck them from the fingers of the dead—and then I’m going to cross through the Veil. I’ll do it just as we’ve done before, slip over to the ordinary world, get behind our enemies, then push back through to this world. In secret, I’ll find the commanders of the invasion—the High Council of Atlantis, if they’re here—and I’ll kill them.”

  Coyote stared at her a moment, then took a long pull from the bottle of mead. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand like a common drunkard.

  “So you’re nothing but an assassin, now?”

  Kitsune curled back her upper lip in a kind of sneer. “I’m whatever I need to be in order to make them suffer for what they’ve done.”

  After another swig of mead, he contemplated her a moment.

  “Fair enough,” Coyote said.

  “I’m pleased you approve,” Kitsune replied, making sure her sarcasm was evident.

  “I don’t.”

  She pulled her cloak more tightly around her, as though within that copper fur she could hide from him. “Why would you say that?”

  Something flickered in his single eye then, but it wasn’t the mischief of a trickster.

  “I wish we could abandon both worlds,” Coyote said, his voice low. Always snide, always mocking, always playing, that had been her experience of him for so long. Seeing the sincerity in him frightened her.

  “I wish we could abandon these bodies,” he went on. “Just be fox and coyote and run in the woods, like we did.”

  Kitsune held her breath a moment, then let it out slowly. “Maybe one day.”

  Coyote moved toward her. His skin glistened bronze in the sun. He held out the bottle of mead for her, and Kitsune took it.

  “Where did you get this, anyway?”

  He smiled. “Stole it from the king’s tent.”

  With a laugh, she shook her head. “Trickster,” she said.

  “Oh, yes. Always.”

  Kitsune tipped the bottle back and took a sip. As she did, she saw the top of an enormous head on the other side of the king’s tent. Cronus ducked down, trying to keep from being seen, but the lumbering Titan was not the most inconspicuous legend.

  “We have a spy,” she said.

  Coyote frowned and, almost imperceptibly, moved into a defensive stance. Kitsune shook her head.

  “No danger. Just an ancient god—a father of gods—simple and sweet.”

  She started around the tent, handing the bottle back to Coyote as he joined her. They emerged near the entrance to the tent and the giant Titan sat crouched there like a child caught at something naughty. A sad twinge touched her heart. Once, this creature had been one of the lords of the world, wise and clever and strong. Cronus still had his strength, but his other faculties had failed him.

  “I thought you’d gone down to war with Salacia, Hesperos, and the others,” she said.

  Cronus rolled his massive shoulders in a shrug. His clothes and arms were spattered with the blood of enemies he had already killed this morning.

  “I did,” the Titan replied. “But I worried about you. When you fight, I’ll fight. Must watch over you.”

  Kitsune smiled and glanced at Coyote.

  But Coyote had no smile. He wasn’t even looking at Cronus. Instead, he stared beyond the Titan. When Kitsune looked to discover what had drawn his attention, she saw Oliver striding toward them, one hand on the hilt of the sword that hung from his hip. With his longer hair and thickening beard, he did not look like someone who had only entered this world the first time months ago. At first glance, she would have assumed he had been here for years. Perhaps even since birth.

  He was a warrior, now.

  Cronus grunted angrily and turned to block Oliver’s path.

  “No,” Kitsune said. The Titan turned to glance back at her. “It’s all right.”

  Dubious, Cronus nevertheless stood back and let Oliver stride up to the spot where Kitsune and Coyote stood. He gave Coyote a brief glance, nodded once, and then focused on Kitsune. Her face flushed under the intensity of his gaze and when he saw that, he glanced away for a moment.

  “I’m sorry if I was rough on you before,” Oliver said.

  She stared in amazement. “You’re apologizing to me?”

  “Maybe I’m just trying to understand.”

  Kitsune glanced at Coyote, feeling awkward now that he and Cronus were the audience for this exchange. Still, things had to be said.

  “That was all I ever wanted,” she told him. “I never meant to—”

  Oliver held up a hand. “I know. And I’m sorry to interrupt, and to rush you now, but we’re out of time.”

  The warm breeze had been blowing the scents of distant flowers around them, but now the wind shifted and that smell was replaced by the stink of blood. Shouts of hatred and screams of pain filled the air, carried up from the field of battle.

  “What do you need?” she asked.

  “If Hunyadi doesn’t win this war quickly, the army may not be able to hold out over time. There’s no way to tell what kind of reinforcements might come from Atlantis.”

  “So you need to end it quickly,” Coyote said.

  Kitsune stared at Oliver. “You’re still thinking about Prince Tzajin?”

  Oliver nodded. “We’re going to bring him back here, alive. Take Yucatazca out of the war or, even better, get them to switch sides.”

  Tentatively, she reached up and lowered her hood. The breeze felt good on her face. A lock of hair blew in front of her eyes.

  “We?”

  “Frost. Blue Jay and the others. Some Nagas. Me. And you, if you’ll come.”

  Kitsune resisted the urge to smile. “Oh, I’ll come.”

  Cronus tapped his chest with one gigantic finger. “And Cronus.”

  Oliver visibly winced. “I’m sorry, but we need to try to do this quickly and quietly. We’d like to slip in and slip out without attracting much attention.”

  Kitsune went to Cronus and reached up to put her tiny hand over his enormous one.

  “I’m sorry, my friend. Go back to the gods—to your family. They need your help. As soon
as we return from Atlantis, I will come and find you.”

  Cronus looked at her, sulking. “I have your promise?”

  She smiled. “I promise.”

  With a dangerous glance at Oliver, the Titan ambled down the hill. When he had gone, only the three of them remained, and Kitsune looked at Coyote.

  “And you? Say you’ll come,” she said.

  Coyote took a long swig of honey mead, draining the last of the bottle, then tossed it toward the entrance to the king’s tent. Calmly, he produced a cigarette from the palm of his hand, as though it had always been there, and lit it with a silver lighter that likewise seemed to appear from nowhere.

  Little nothing sleights of hand, easy for a trickster.

  “I wish you’d come,” Kitsune said.

  Coyote smiled, his single eye twinkling with mischief, but she thought it hid something else entirely. She studied him, trying to understand.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Coyote said, stepping toward her. “It isn’t that I’m afraid. I’m going to smoke this cigarette and then I’m going down to war. I’ll fight, Kit. With claw or sword, I’ll fight. But I want to be with my kin, to fight side by side with the Borderkind. And it seems to me Bascombe’s already got more than enough to take on his secret mission.”

  When the rangy little legend reached out a hand to touch the side of her face, then leaned in to kiss her, Kitsune could do nothing but kiss him back. And she found that she wanted to. He had comforted her when all she could do was howl her sorrow to the night sky. His presence would have soothed her. But she could not force him to go.

  The kiss went on a few moments and then they parted. Kitsune glanced over to see surprise on Oliver’s face. He shifted and looked awkwardly away. After a moment, he smiled slightly, and she knew he was happy for her.

  “Go, Kit. I’ll miss you.”

  “And you, mongrel.”

  Coyote laughed and waved to her, smoking his cigarette as he went off down the hill the way Cronus had gone. He seemed light of heart, mischievous as ever, but there was something quite final about his last words to her, as though he expected them to be a true and permanent good-bye.

  Blue Jay smiled when he saw Oliver and Kitsune come over the top of the ridge.

  “All right,” he said, turning to the others. “Let’s get this done.”

  Cheval rose up from the grass as though floating. She touched Grin’s face tenderly, smiling, and then they joined Blue Jay and the Nagas, who had gathered there on the hillside. Distant cries carried over the hill, muffled and so far away. They could almost have pretended the war didn’t exist, though it was just over the hill. They could have walked away. But the time for walking away had passed a long, long time ago.

  Li rose from the burnt patch of grass where he’d been playing with a tiger cub he’d created from fire. With a gesture, he absorbed the fire-construct into the charred tips of his fingers and turned to walk over to Blue Jay as though there was nothing at all odd about this, as though he had not a care in the world. As though his heart was not shattered.

  Li shot a grave look from those burning ember eyes at Wayland Smith. The Wayfarer stood away from them all, gazing into the sky to the north, back to the Borderkind, and the hill, and the war. He seemed almost to be waiting for a sign, or searching the clouds for angels to descend.

  “Smith,” Blue Jay said. “Are you ready?”

  The trickster resisted the urge to call the Wayfarer “Uncle,” as some of his kin did. Whatever Smith was, Blue Jay felt sure the tricksters had chosen him as a relation by sheer accident, or by Smith’s own manipulation.

  “Hmm?” He turned, eyes hidden in the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat. “Oh, yes. Ready whenever you are.”

  But there was something off about the Wayfarer. Blue Jay couldn’t put his finger on precisely what troubled him. Perhaps it was the way he held his cane, as though he thought he might need it at any moment to fight off an attack, or if it was just the way he seemed so apart from the rest of them. Smith seemed so distant it was almost as if the conflict that unfolded here, the broken truce, the deceit of Atlantis, the murder of King Mahacuhta, concerned him not at all. It almost seemed Smith wasn’t of this world.

  “Oliver’s here,” Blue Jay said.

  The Wayfarer blinked. He stroked his beard and glanced over at Oliver and Kitsune, who hurried now to join the gathered Borderkind.

  “So he is,” Smith replied. He nodded, raising his cane to draw their attention, even though his own attention seemed to wander. His eyes focused for the first time in minutes and he studied first Blue Jay, then Kitsune, and finally Oliver.

  “Gather round, then,” said Wayland Smith. “Like the campfire. Gather round.”

  The strangest look came over his face. Blue Jay saw Oliver’s eyes narrow and knew he’d thought it odd as well.

  As Kitsune greeted the others—though Grin was the only one to give her a warm welcome—Jay sidled over to Oliver. He slid his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans, the heels of his boots digging into soil made soft by a recent rain.

  “Change of heart?” he asked.

  “Julianna thought she should have a chance to fix things,” Oliver replied.

  Blue Jay raised an eyebrow. “Are things fixable?”

  Oliver thought on that a moment. “My sister shattered an antique perfume bottle of my mother’s one time. Pink glass. The stopper was a glass butterfly. My mother collected the things, but that one was her favorite. She glued it back together, but you could always see the cracks and there were a couple of chips from bits we never could find. Probably got vacuumed up. Most things can be put back together, but that doesn’t mean they can be fixed.”

  Blue Jay watched him curiously for a moment. For the first time, he realized that this was not at all the same man he had first met in the Mazikeen’s garden under the streets of Perinthia. In a way, Oliver was like his mother’s perfume bottle. He’d been broken and put back together in a way that would never be quite the same. Yet in Oliver’s case, it wasn’t a matter of being fixed. The man he’d become was an improvement, cracks and missing chips and all.

  “Saw you kiss Julianna good-bye,” the trickster said.

  Oliver smiled. “And Damia? Did you give her a good-bye kiss?”

  An icy chill spider-walked down Blue Jay’s spine. “She refused. Said good-bye was for people who weren’t going to see each other at bedtime.”

  They were interrupted then by Smith, who called again for them to gather round. Gather round like a campfire. Oliver and Blue Jay joined Li, Grin, Cheval, Kitsune, and the Nagas in a circle around the Wayfarer. He leaned on his cane, fingers curled around the bronze fox-head, and one by one he looked at them.

  “Those of you who are Borderkind have traveled between worlds before. What we are about to do is similar, but not precisely the same. We will not be stepping from one world to the next, but walking a Gray Corridor, a space between worlds. This is why I am called the Wayfarer, the Traveler, and other names in other places. You’ll form a line. Grip the shoulder or the arm or the hand of whoever is in front of you, and do not let go. If you do, you will likely be lost forever in the Gray Corridors. Borderkind or not. This is not the Veil. The magic that makes you Borderkind will have no effect.

  “Li, if you intend to journey with us, you will have to withdraw the fire from your hands so that you will not burn whoever precedes you.”

  The Guardian of Fire nodded. It occurred to Blue Jay then that Li had not spoken in a very long time. He wondered if the burning man could still speak at all, or if the fire had seared his voice from his throat.

  Li lifted his right hand. He stared at it a moment, brow knitting in consternation. After several moments, the flames retreated. What remained was blackened and cracked skin with pink raw flesh showing in between tiles of char.

  Cheval looked kindly upon him and reached out. Gratefully, Li grasped her hand. Quickly, they formed a chain. Oliver drifted away from Smith, positioning himsel
f amongst the Nagas, and Blue Jay was left to connect them to the Wayfarer himself.

  “Don’t let go,” Smith said, eyes hard.

  Blue Jay said nothing. After a moment, the Wayfarer nodded.

  “The walk will take some little time. Minutes. Be patient, but also, be ready. When we arrive, it will be suddenly, and there is no way to know what will be waiting for us.”

  “Get on with it,” Oliver said. “We’ve been spoiling for a fight for a long time.”

  Wayland Smith held his cane in one hand and Blue Jay’s grip in the other. Smith took a single step forward. Jay felt his hand jerk slightly to the right, and then the world fell away around them.

  “What the hell?” the trickster muttered.

  “Don’t let go!” he heard Kitsune cry.

  Smith paused and glanced back to be sure no one had been lost. Blue Jay felt his stomach twisting with the terrible sense of dislocation. He had not even taken a step himself. He’d lifted one scuffed cowboy boot and when it came down, he’d been here, wherever the hell here was. Gray mist drifted around them. The path was solid beneath his soles and his heels didn’t sink in the way they had into the rain-sodden hillside.

  “Follow,” Smith said, and he started off.

  Stunned into silence, perhaps afraid, no one spoke a word. Their strange parade followed along behind the Wayfarer without argument or hesitation. They passed hundreds of side paths, little ribbon trails that led off either side, into the mist. The first few times that Smith guided them into one of these turns, traveling paths that seemed barely there, Blue Jay tried to keep track, but soon he could not. Lefts and rights blurred together.

  The place unnerved him with the weight of its possibilities. What would happen if he did let go? How far would they wander? Where did all of those other paths lead? Smith had said something about worlds, but there were only two—the ordinary and the legendary. So if Jay walked along one of the side paths, another ribbon, and tried to pass through the mist back to a tangible world, where would he emerge?

  He decided he did not want to know.