Lost Ones v-3

by Christopher Golden

There were sorcerers as well. He felt sure one of them must be Ty’Lis, but he dared not get close enough to them to find out. The rank-and-file soldiers would shiver with the chill of his presence when they felt that cold wind passing above and around them, but the High Council of Atlantis would not assign such an anomaly to odd weather. Ty’Lis, especially, would know the winter man was there, and Frost couldn’t take that risk. King Hunyadi and the Euphrasian Borderkind had to know what sort of force they were facing.

  To the north of the Atlantean invasion force were four or five ragtag battalions of Yucatazcan warriors. Their armor had been decorated with paint and feathers and the symbols of their Mayan, Aztec, and Incan ancestors. These were proud, noble, brutal warriors, yet their invasion had been driven back by Hunyadi’s forces. Many had obviously been killed and now they were regrouping, promoting officers to replace those whose corpses had been left in Euphrasia.

  Yet something had gone wrong. They seemed sluggish and grim. Frost thought he knew why, though, and Hunyadi would be very interested to hear it.

  He took a final look at the glass ships anchored off of the isthmus. The temptation to destroy them, or see them destroyed, was great. But the army of Atlantis was so formidable he would advise Hunyadi to leave the glass ships alone. If fortune allowed Euphrasia to force the invaders to retreat, they had to have a way to flee. If the ships were destroyed they would have nowhere to run, and would be forced to stand and fight. Frost thought that might be a spectacularly bad turn of events.

  You’re getting ahead of yourself, he thought. First, Hunyadi’s army had to stop the conquerors from invading Euphrasia.

  In a gust of wind, Frost slipped across the sky, away from the troops and the glass ships. He traveled swiftly southwest. The indigo night glittered with a billion pinprick stars. It was warm, but not nearly so warm as it had been to the south. With the breeze blowing across the isthmus and the cool water, he felt good. Stronger.

  He had left Collette in the shadow of a small, abandoned chapel on the outskirts of a small fishing village. The isthmus had little by way of farmland or fields for grazing. For those willing to settle on that unforgiving stretch of land, fishing seemed the only industry, and the only way to stay alive. Still, the chapel-dedicated to some local god or conscripted saint-stood crumbling and dark. Frost had seen such things many times before. Either the village had become prosperous enough to think they no longer needed to appease their god, or so withered that they no longer had faith that they could be saved.

  The icy wind whipped across the roof tiles and through the gaps in stones. Just behind the chapel, where no one on the overgrown path could have seen him, Frost collected mist and ice and moisture from the air, pulling his substance together to sculpt his body anew. He glanced around, icicle hair chiming, and the ice of his face cracked as he frowned. He had expected to find Collette asleep, but did not see her.

  Something shifted in the deeper darkness beneath a stand of trees perhaps fifty feet to the rear of the chapel. The petite figure resolved itself into Collette Bascombe. She had been in a stone grotto built by the architects of the chapel, with a shrine to whatever they had worshipped there. She emerged now, pale features illuminated in moonlight. With her reddish hair, mischievous eyes, and narrow face, she almost looked like a trickster.

  “What is it?” she asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Frost cocked his head, studying her. “You look different. It almost seems that with the truth of your heritage, the legendary part of your bloodline is coming to the fore.”

  Collette shook her head. “I don’t feel any different.”

  “That’s a lie, though whether to me or yourself, I don’t know. You have magic in you. Your mother was Borderkind. As Legend-Born, you’re called to something greater than the ordinary life into which you were born.”

  “Bullshit.” She smiled. “You sound like Oliver. I’ve been trying to tell him since he was a little kid that ordinary people choose to be ordinary. We all have magic in us, no matter who gave birth to us. Maybe the legendary have longer lives, and maybe they can do things that people can’t, but it seems to me most of you are just as lost and wandering as the average guy or girl. It’s what you do, not what you are.”

  Frost didn’t challenge the assertion, but he did ask her why she had that grin on her face.

  “Because I think my brother’s finally come around to my way of thinking.”

  The winter man made no reply. Last he had seen Oliver, whatever friendship had once existed between them had turned to sour resentment. He understood and regretted this, but there was little he could do about it. He could not travel back through time, and even if he had that ability, Frost wasn’t sure he would do things any differently. Collette and Oliver were still alive-thus far the schemes of Atlantis had been thwarted. How could he regret that?

  “So, what’s our move?” Collette asked, ignoring his silence.

  “The invasion force gathers to the north. We leave now. When we reach their encampments, I will have to carry you over them to make absolutely certain they do not see us.”

  Collette frowned. “Over them? As in, through the air?”

  The winter man smiled. “It would take us a very long time to dig a tunnel beneath them.”

  She shook her head. “Wait. Can’t we just go around? Through the Veil? Head north and cross through again when we know we’ve gone far enough?”

  Frost narrowed his eyes. “There are too many variables. Distance and time are different on the other side, as you well know. I am not certain where we would emerge in your world, now. We need to go directly to King Hunyadi, and as swiftly as we’re able. My observations about the invasion force may be of great value to-”

  “All right. I get it.” Collette glanced around. “Which way?”

  He pointed toward the path and they struck out from the chapel, headed due north.

  “This should be loads of fun,” she muttered.

  The winter man smiled to himself in the moonlit night. He wondered if Collette had begun to trust him. And he wondered if he deserved her trust. While he did not want her to die, what truly mattered to him was that one of the Legend-Born survive to see the end of this war.

  “Don’t scream.”

  Collette shivered. She didn’t like the sound of that. But there was precious little to like about anything tonight. They’d walked more than an hour before seeing the dark shape undulating across the night sky above, blotting out the stars as it passed. Frost had turned to her and with a gesture had lowered the temperature around them by fifty degrees. Ice crystals had formed on the air and her breath fogged.

  The thing in the air had slid away from them. Her pulse steadied and she took a breath, then asked Frost what it had been. The answer had made her feel like throwing up. A shark? How could anyone be safe if there were sharks that swam through the air as easily as others swam through water? He believed that however the Atlantis-bred monster located its prey, it would have to do with heat or scent. His creating a little pocket of winter around her had hidden her from it.

  In the midst of freaking out, she felt grateful for that much. Not that she wanted to be grateful to Frost, but she couldn’t help it. She and the winter man had spent a good deal of time, now, keeping each other alive.

  But what he’d just said made her forget any favors he’d ever done her.

  “What do you mean, ‘Don’t scream’?”

  Frost narrowed his eyes. Ice-blue mist swirled up from them. “Precisely what I said. You will want to scream. You will be afraid. But I swear to you that I will not drop you.”

  They had moved on from the air shark sighting perhaps another half mile. From the scrim of a stony ridge, they saw the troops mustered on the isthmus. Many were sleeping, but others were on patrol. Collette found herself strangely unafraid of encountering Atlantean soldiers, but if they were seen and a patrol raised the alarm, she feared what might answer that call.

  She turned to Frost. “
I won’t scream.”

  The winter man nodded. If he doubted her, he did not put voice to those doubts.

  He burst into a swirl of snow and ice. Frigid wind buffeted her. Collette shivered again and turned up her collar. Before her eyes the storm that was Frost grew, churning. The blizzard rose twenty feet in the air and spread a dozen in either direction.

  She held her breath, staring in amazement at the power of the storm. The power of the winter man.

  Then she gasped as the blizzard rushed at her. It whipped around her, circling a moment, and her teeth chattered. Her muscles clenched and she hugged herself against the icy grip of the storm. When the blizzard lifted her up off of the ground, blowing her up into the sky as though she had been catapulted, Collette nearly did scream.

  Her mouth opened, but the freezing wind seared her throat and she clamped her lips. Her eyes went wide and she could not even curl in upon herself for warmth. The blizzard hurtled her through the air, buffeting her, carrying her on a slingshot wind, in a cocoon of driving snow. Her bones ached with the cold and she tried to breathe but found she could not. The wind lashed her face and she felt despair grip her heart. How could she survive this?

  Barely aware of what she was seeing, she glimpsed enormous ships of glass in the distance, festooned with sails. She saw troops massing below as she spun across the sky in the grip of the blizzard.

  Then the wind lessened. She found herself sliding downward, drifting. The blizzard buffeted her, blasted her, keeping her aloft. Her arms and legs pinwheeled as she descended.

  The ground rushed up. At the last moment a final, powerful gust slowed her fall. Collette landed in a pile of fresh snow, tumbling through the white stuff and then onto rough, prickly grass and rocky earth.

  The cold withdrew. The warmth of the southern night felt like a gift. Her flesh was seared. Her cheeks burned with the bite of the cold that had enveloped her. It was like nothing else she had ever felt and she wondered if she had frostbite.

  The thought frightened her, but slowly, feeling and warmth returned to all but her hands and cheeks. Carefully, she sat up.

  The snow was gone. Frost stood over her.

  “We have to go. The hours before dawn are few, and we have no time to lose.”

  Collette stared at him. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What else-”

  “Leave me behind, next time.”

  She wasn’t sure if she meant it, and it seemed clear Frost was not sure either. Collette didn’t care. She got up and marched north with him, bones still aching. It took a very long time for full feeling to return to her hands.

  They’d gone only a few miles when they reached the end of the Isthmus. The Kingdom of Euphrasia spread out to the east and west. Already, Collette felt safer, and less inclined to be hostile toward Frost.

  A Euphrasian cavalry patrol stopped them on the road. When they discovered that these strangers walking north were Frost of the Borderkind and Collette Bascombe, Legend-Born, a kind of euphoria seemed to come over them. One of the soldiers dismounted and gave Collette his horse. As she slid into the saddle, she felt a grim determination settle into her. They had arrived at last. Survived, at least this long. And now the war would truly begin.

  Frost flowed through the air beside her as she rode, and one of Hunyadi’s horsemen paced her on the other side. The familiar feel of the horse beneath her, the leather reins in her hand, filled her with new vigor.

  They rode through the battle lines set up by Euphrasian troops, who were dug in and waiting for the attack they knew would come with the dawn. The cavalryman signaled to the soldiers on the ground and soon voices could be heard. Collette heard them calling her name. At first she didn’t understand. How could any of these people know her name? Then she heard shouts of “Legend-Born,” and she understood.

  The human soldiers were all Lost Ones. She represented the hope of their parents and grandparents and ancestors. For those who had been born in her world and crossed over themselves, she would seem even more like a savior come to their rescue. The legend said she could get them home again. And for the others, she would seem like Moses, ready to bring them to the Promised Land.

  If only they knew that the world they so wanted to return to was only a more ordinary reflection of this one, she wondered if they would still long to go there. But perhaps they would. This world wasn’t home. Not really. They wanted to be reunited with their people. She could understand.

  The thought made her wonder about Oliver. She had done her best not to think of him over the past few hours. But Collette felt sure he was all right. She had come to believe that if anything happened to him-if death came for her brother-she would know. Once, the idea would have seemed foolish to her. But now she knew it was not so far-fetched.

  Hope went through the ranks as they passed. When she rode into the camp on the hill overlooking the battlefield, the word continued to spread. She could almost feel morale rising. Frost whipped along beside her, a blizzard sliding through the night air, but she could almost hear laughter coming from the storm he made.

  The dour winter man was happy.

  A small group of men and women in uniform-officers and advisors-were clustered outside a large tent at the apex of the hill. Twenty yards away, the cavalryman who’d accompanied them held up a hand to halt them. Collette pulled on the reins. She and the horseman both dismounted. The winter man coalesced out of the air and stood beside her. A young soldier-no more than a girl, really-ran over to take the reins of the two horses and led them away. Another, a boy of perhaps sixteen, came over and saluted the cavalryman.

  “Run and tell the king that Frost has come with Collette Bascombe.”

  The boy’s mouth opened in a kind of gasp, and then he grinned as he turned to bolt up the hill toward the tent of King Hunyadi. Collette’s heart soared at the reaction her arrival had brought out in the troops, but a shadow lingered there as well. These people had no idea of the kind of horrors Atlantis had mustered. Hunyadi might, but the soldiers likely did not. She feared for them.

  Moments later, the boy came back down the hill. Behind him walked a bearded man with a wide-brimmed hat and a cane with a brass head that glinted in the moonlight. When he passed the conversing officers, they fell silent and shifted slightly away from him. Power seemed to radiate from him. Yet from the officers’ reaction she knew this could not be the king.

  The man shooed the boy away and came down to meet them. He ignored Collette completely, turning to Frost.

  “I’d not thought to see you alive again.”

  The winter man cocked his head. His fingers were like ice knives and from the way he stood, Collette wondered if Frost would attack the man or embrace him. He did neither.

  “Are you disappointed?” the winter man asked.

  “Quite the opposite,” the tall, bearded man replied. He cast a quick glance at Collette and a smile touched his lips. “You’ve done well, Arcturus.”

  Frost bristled. He tossed his head back, hair clinking. “That’s not my name.”

  The man waved away the complaint. Collette saw that the brass head of his cane was the head of a fox, and she remembered Oliver telling her about him. The enigmatic Wayland Smith.

  “Atlantis attacks at dawn,” Frost said. “I have details on their forces for the king.”

  Smith nodded. “Most of which I’ve already provided.”

  “I also observed the Yucatazcan warriors-those who retreated are now regrouping. But they don’t seem to have the heart for it. I wonder if they haven’t realized, by now, that they’re being manipulated.”

  Wayland Smith frowned. “That may be, old friend, but they will still fight. They will fight and die because that is the command from Palenque. King Mahacuhta is dead, but Prince Tzajin lives. The only way the Yucatazcans will stop fighting is if the crown commands it, and that’s not going to happen as long as Tzajin is a prisoner in Atlantis.”

  Frost swore under his breath. Cold mist pl
umed upward from the edges of his eyes again. “You’re sure of that?”

  “I saw him with my own eyes. Hunyadi needed a spy.”

  The winter man seemed surprised. “That’s unlike you, taking so overt a role. You so love working in the shadows.”

  Smith gripped the head of his cane and glanced again at Collette, who’d watched the whole exchange.

  “Time, I think, for you to speak to the king.”

  CHAPTER 17

  O vid Tsing led his army along the Orient Road. Even above the stink of unwashed soldiers, he could smell the ocean on the breeze. The night was clear and warm and the starlight picked out each man and woman of the long march. At the back of the army, the Stonecoats trudged along at a steady pace.

  The Jokao were tireless. They had also turned out to be an excellent source of information. Whenever the King’s Volunteers-as they had begun to call themselves-stopped to rest, the leader of the Stonecoats would come and report what news the ground knew. As incredible as it seemed to Ovid that these stone soldiers could feel vibrations that traveled from stone to stone underground, he had no doubt of their value.

  Atlantis had landed troops on the Isthmus of the Conquistadors. They massed there, now, preparing for war come dawn.

  Ovid walked with one hand on his bow and the other on the hilt of his sword. He often marched in the ranks, but now he had come out in front of the King’s Volunteers. The Jokao estimated that they were barely a mile northeast of the Euphrasian army.

  We’re here, Mother, he thought. It’s time.

  Shaking off the ache of the long march, Ovid picked up his pace. Even as he did, he heard a familiar clacking sound and glanced to his left. The leader of the Jokao had come abreast of the front ranks of the King’s Volunteers and now joined Ovid in the lead. Once upon a time, the Jokao had been slaves in Atlantis. They despised the Atlanteans-Truce-Breakers, the Jokao called them-more than anyone. Ovid wondered if the three marks on the Jokao’s chest had been given to the Stonecoat while enslaved, but did not know how to ask without risking offense.