Lost Ones v-3

by Christopher Golden

  But it didn’t look as though any attack was imminent.

  Fish and eels slid through the air, but most were far closer to the ground and those who might be high enough to spot the intruders were far away, nearer the harbor and the outskirts of the city. There were weird, dangling jellyfish as well, but not a single octopus. They had all been brought to war, it seemed.

  Very few people were out and about. Smith had reported seeing troops massing and sorcerers walking in the open, not to mention giants. No evidence of the war effort remained in the city center, but in the distance, at the harbor, he could see a single giant standing with his arms crossed, protecting Atlantis like some living Colossus of Rhodes.

  “Quickly, all of you, this way,” the Wayfarer barked, striding to one corner of the roof. From there, they could see an even taller building with a spiral dome, a breathtakingly beautiful thing that appeared, like the structure upon which they stood, to be made of a kind of obscure glass.

  Sea glass, Oliver thought.

  “The Great Library of Atlantis,” Smith explained. “Where I found the prince upon my last visit. I’d wager he’s there now. We’ll cross-”

  A gust of icy wind made Oliver shiver.

  “And how will we cross?” Frost asked. The winter man drifted across the roof to stand beside Smith. “I could carry one or two, but not all.”

  Anger flashed in the Wayfarer’s eyes. He reached his cane out over the edge of the building and swept it back and forth like a blind man. To Oliver’s astonishment, it struck something solid. Wayland Smith looked down at the place where his cane had stopped, raised it, and tapped it down twice on clear air. His mouth formed words Oliver could not hear and from the side, it appeared for a moment that his gray eyes had turned oil-black.

  The air became solid in a narrow bridge across empty space, from the roof upon which they stood to a huge, arched library window.

  “Go,” said the Wayfarer.

  CHAPTER 20

  No way was Oliver going first.

  He had changed dramatically. He felt it in his bones and the way his hands seemed always ready to defend himself. The power of his touch, the destructive magic he could summon, resonated within him. These past few days had made Oliver believe that in his heart he could be a hero. But there was a vast difference between heroics and stupidity, and the idea of stepping off the roof of that building onto thin air seemed vastly idiotic.

  “Hurry, you fools!” Smith barked.

  Blue Jay stepped off the roof onto the solid air bridge. He could have transformed into a bird and flown across. Instead he walked quickly but carefully, barely looking down, even though Oliver found it difficult to see the edges of the bridge.

  Li followed at a run, practically bounding across like one of his fire tigers. Seeing him, Oliver awoke at last to the reality of Smith’s fears. They could be spotted at any moment, imperiling their mission. He swore under his breath and went to the edge. Cheval had already started across, grand and elegant as always, her dress gliding over the bridge like a ballroom floor. Grin paused three steps out. Terror lit his eyes and he gripped the edges of the nearly invisible bridge.

  “Cross, stupid boggart,” Smith snapped at him.

  Grin sneered at him. “Sod off, you silly git.”

  Still, it got the boggart moving.

  Oliver went next. He held his breath as he stepped off the roof. From above, the parameters of the bridge were obvious. That hardened air had a different texture and hue. It was simple enough to make out its edges, but that wouldn’t stop a stiff breeze from knocking him off. Carefully, arms out as though on a tightrope, he went after the others.

  Despite the heat, he felt a shiver go up his spine, and then a gentle gust of cold wind blew past him on the left, snow and ice swirling. Frost moved swiftly and then materialized on the window ledge, ice forming on the glass of the window.

  As the Nagas slithered after him, arrows still strung at the ready in their bows, Oliver picked up his pace. At the end of the bridge, Blue Jay slid out of the way to let Li pass. The trickster winced at the heat that billowed from inside the charred ember flesh of the Guardian of Fire. Then Li reached the window and stood beside Frost.

  Fire and ice.

  Li put his palm against the window. Flames spread out across the glass and its frame, which seemed also to be some kind of glass or mineral. The heat blossomed outward, warping the air around it, and the window began to melt. The Guardian of Fire pushed inward and it collapsed in a dripping, wilting, burning mess on the floor inside the window.

  Frost stepped through the window and with a gesture, snuffed the flames. A layer of ice formed on the melted remains of the window and frame, and then one by one they all entered the Great Library of Atlantis. Oliver knew he could have made the window simply fall apart-any of them could have broken it open-but working together, Li and Frost had made their entry nearly silent.

  Wayland Smith was the last through the window. When he stepped down from the window ledge, the air shimmered behind him and Oliver saw that the bridge had disappeared.

  “Always something new,” Oliver said.

  Smith hushed him. Oliver wanted to tell him to fuck off. The guy’s arrogance could have driven a saint to violence.

  They were in a roughly oval-shaped room with only one door. Cheval had gone to the door and opened it. She glanced out through the crack, then quietly closed it.

  “Coast clear?” Blue Jay whispered.

  Cheval nodded. They gathered by the door in nearly the same order they had crossed the bridge. The Nagas would watch their flank.

  Eyes turned toward Oliver. For a moment he shifted uneasily at this attention, until he realized they were waiting for him to give the word. Frost had always been the one everyone turned to when he had traveled with the Borderkind before, and now Wayland Smith seemed to have taken control. But Smith had only been their transportation, their Traveler. Now that they were in the midst of things, they were all ready to defer to him. It had been his idea, after all.

  “Smith,” he said, “you’re the only one who’s been here before. Lead the way. Get us to the place where you saw the prince. Kitsune, stay with him. If there are scholars or teachers or sentries around, you’ll catch their scent first. We’re going to do our best to take them down quietly if anyone gets in the way. When it all goes to shit-and it will-then we pull out all the stops.”

  Oliver gestured toward the door. “Go.”

  To his surprise, Wayland Smith did not argue.

  Cheval opened the door and Smith went out. Kitsune followed, disappearing into her cloak and diminishing into a fox, a low-slung blur of copper-red fur. She trotted after Smith. Frost and Blue Jay followed. Oliver drew his sword-wishing for the familiar weight of Hunyadi’s blade-and went next. Cheval and Grin hurried after him, then Li, and finally the Nagas, their serpentine bellies making a low hiss as they slid across the floor.

  The library seemed like something made of ice, as if the winter man had built himself a palace. They emerged in a short hallway and followed Smith to what appeared to be some kind of central shaft. Stairwells rose up the inside of the shaft in great swoops of sea glass. Wood and stone were part of the design but the wood was like black ironwood and the stone smooth and contoured as though by centuries of ocean erosion. The architecture had latticework and arches that made Oliver think of beehive honeycombs and spiderwebs, its beauty both breathtaking and unnerving.

  As Smith began to step into the atrium at the core of the library tower, Kitsune growled low and soft, a fox’s warning.

  Oliver snagged Smith’s sleeve. The Wayfarer shot him a dark look but Oliver only returned it and gestured to the fox. Wayland Smith seemed troubled, but then the entire group took a step back into the shadows of the corridor as a small group of Atlanteans emerged on the same floor, across the open atrium, and started up the winding sea glass staircase. They were robed like sorcerers or teachers.

  Smith’s eyes narrowed. He glanced around the
atrium, then back the way they’d come. Neither option seemed to please him.

  At length, he beckoned for the Nagas to come forward.

  As the serpentine bowmen moved past him, Oliver knew he ought to protest. The men and women on the stairs might be Atlantean, but as vicious and cunning as Atlantis had turned out to be, killing teachers in a library was not his idea of war. But even as these thoughts filled his mind, he considered the repercussions of failure and the benefits of their success.

  The Nagas slithered up to the fluted balustrade, raised their bows, and let silent arrows fly with hideous accuracy. Whoever they were, scholars or sorcerers, they fell upon the stairs, some slumping on top of the others, twitching.

  “Go,” Oliver whispered.

  He didn’t want to have to look at those corpses longer than necessary.

  They hurried past the Nagas and Smith led the way up the stairs. In a bustle of copper fur, Kitsune returned to her female form, hood hiding her features. Oliver wished she would turn so he could see her eyes. He wondered if she felt the same hesitations he did. Frost and Blue Jay looked grim as they went upward.

  More quietly than he could have hoped, they moved through the Great Library of Atlantis, along latticework balustrades and up sea glass stairs and through honeycomb corridors. Sunlight streamed through the atrium from above, casting the entire place in the cascade of soft colors Oliver associated with the stained glass windows of a church.

  Distant voices reached them several times and they had to pause, taking cover, or hurry on into a side corridor. Whispers and echoes seemed to travel through the place like some haunted cave. The first sentry they came upon died easily and without a sound. Kitsune slit his throat with her claws and his blood pooled thickly on the floor. Oliver’s nose filled with the low-tide stink of an Atlantean’s blood, and he tried from then on to breathe through his mouth.

  Frost killed the second sentry, freezing him to death just inside a corridor archway. The pain must have been exquisite, for the expression on his face beneath the layer of ice that enveloped him was one of agony.

  Time’s running out, Oliver thought. Any moment bodies will be found. Any second, they’ll be on to us.

  He considered saying this aloud, but realized his companions did not need to be told. They knew. Minutes had passed and they seemed to be moving aimlessly through the library. They had come upon four different chambers that seemed to have been occupied by scholars at some point. Shelves and tables and glass cases showed scrolls and bound books upon display, many spread out as though abandoned in the midst of being examined, but they had found no sign of the prince.

  The Wayfarer took them through the latest of these chambers and to a curving back stair that would bring them to the floor above. They could not be far from the spiral dome of the library, now.

  A scream rose in the library, clear and resonant as a bell, echoing along corridors, rising to a terrible pitch before ceasing abruptly. Oliver exchanged worried glances with Blue Jay and Kitsune, and then shouts followed the scream.

  “Bollocks,” Grin muttered.

  Wayland Smith had paused halfway up the curving stairs to the next level. Voices drifted down to them from the arch at the top. Oliver gripped his sword with both hands.

  “Go,” he whispered.

  But Smith was already moving. The Wayfarer clutched his cane-which he almost never seemed to use to support himself-and took the stairs two at a time. They rushed the stairs, then, hurrying after Smith. Two Nagas positioned themselves at the bottom, bows at the ready, but the library was an enormous warren of chambers and corridors and as long as they were quiet, it would take time for the guards to find them.

  As Oliver went through the arch at the top of the stairs, a new shout rang out.

  “Who are you? Get out of here!” a man’s voice thundered from the chamber they entered.

  Scrolls and books filled the room, just as in the others they had entered. Shelves lined the walls and glass cases displayed ancient manuscripts. Pillows were piled in the corners and several spots around the huge chamber. Upon some of them were sprawled old men who had been interrupted in the midst of study. At the center of the room, a boy who could only have been Prince Tzajin sat at a marble table, around which several teachers were gathered. His olive skin marked him as Yucatazcan, particularly amongst the narrow, green-hued faces of the Atlantean scholars.

  The teacher who had shouted stood just a few feet from the Wayfarer, but Wayland Smith only stepped back, leaning on his cane, and watched expectantly as events unfolded.

  Blue Jay went for the prince.

  The scholars produced daggers from their robes, ceremonial things with stone handles. They moved like fighters, not academics, and they shouted as they attacked the intruders.

  A young, furious scholar tried to grab hold of the trickster, but Blue Jay spun in a quick circle, mystical wings blurring beneath his arms. The scholar lost his hands to their razor edge. Blood spurted and he screamed.

  “So much for keeping silent,” Cheval Bayard said as she rushed at the nearest Atlantean.

  “Smith already screwed us on that,” Oliver snapped.

  The shouts from the chamber would echo through the library. They had seconds.

  Grimly, Li stepped forward and took hold of the scholar who had challenged them upon arrival. The man tried to stab him, but the dagger only stuck in the embers of Li’s flesh. Fire raced up the blade to him and the teacher began to burn, shrieking, and staggered away, crashing into a glass shelf and setting ancient scrolls on fire. Two of the other scholars ran toward him, but they had no concern for their burning, dying colleague. They snatched up the scrolls, trying to save them from the fire.

  The Nagas slithered into the room. The archers moved swiftly, releasing their silent arrows once more. Of the scholars that had surrounded Prince Tzajin, only the two trying to rescue the burning scrolls-weaponless-were left alive.

  Frost moved toward the prince. He knelt by the boy, whose eyes were wide with terror, and spoke to him. Oliver only heard phrases and words as the winter man tried to soothe Tzajin, told him they had come to take him back to Palenque, that all hell had broken loose and his people needed their prince. Tzajin said nothing. He could only shake his head, mouth open, as the corpses of his teachers bled and burned around him.

  Cheval strode across the chamber and slapped Wayland Smith across the face. The Wayfarer’s face darkened with fury.

  “You may’ve killed us all,” she said, rage making her more beautiful than ever.

  “And you have no idea what you’re talking about,” Smith snarled. “I am not meant to interfere, to participate in any of this. I brought you here, and that is already more than I ought to have done. I could be made to suffer-”

  The words were cut off by shouts from one end of the room. There were two entrances-the arch where they had come in, and double doors that led out toward the atrium and the winding stairs.

  Atlantean soldiers appeared in the doorway. Kitsune growled and spun toward them. Oliver shouted to the Nagas. Arrows flew. Several found their mark, but others were stopped by Atlantean armor or knocked aside by the soldiers’ swords. These were no scholars. They would not die as easily. Still, against Li and Frost and the rest, they had no hope of survival.

  The winter man raised both hands and a storm erupted in the room, the air whipping snow and ice around, blowing scrolls off of tables and shattering glass display cases. The two surviving scholars finally drew their weapons, but Kitsune leaped at them, and Leicester Grindylow followed. They did not slay the teachers, disarming them instead. Grin tossed one into a bookshelf. Kitsune drove the other to the ground with pummeling fists and a hard kick to the head.

  The first two guards through the door froze solid in the winter man’s storm. One of the doors blew closed. The other guards retreated, but from the shouts out in the atrium, there were others on the way.

  Oliver went to the boy, Prince Tzajin.

  In the chaos, none
of the others seemed to have noticed, but he still had the same slack expression of terror on his face, as though he had suddenly gone catatonic.

  “Your Majesty?” Oliver said.

  The boy’s gaze shifted slightly.

  Oliver turned just in time to see the sorcerers coming through the arch at the back of the chamber, where he and his comrades had first entered. He shouted, raised his sword, and rushed at them. The first sorcerer-a bald, scarred Atlantean man with sallow skin-sneered at him and raised a hand. A Naga arrow took him in the throat from the side.

  Then Oliver was there. He bypassed the wounded, jaundiced sorcerer and drove his sword through the chest of the second to enter the chamber. The tall, spindly Atlantean fell to his knees, shock on his features. The others were still out in the corridor. Oliver reached out, grabbed the archway, and with his mind he reached into it and called up the entropy that gnawed at the ties of the world.

  Kitsune grabbed hold of him from behind, hauling him backward as the entire archway collapsed, blocking the path of the sorcerers still out on the back stairs.

  Li appeared beside them. On the ground, amidst the rubble, the bald, scarred sorcerer clutched at the arrow in his neck. The Guardian of Fire bent and placed both hands on the Atlantean, and his skin began to smoke, and then he caught fire.

  “Get away from there!” Wayland Smith shouted.

  The Wayfarer gripped Oliver’s arm and hauled him back. A gust of blizzard wind snatched at Kitsune, shoving her aside.

  The rubble of the collapsed archway blew inward, pieces of it colliding with Li. The Guardian of Fire crashed to the floor amidst the debris. Some of it began to burn, the flames out of his control. The fire began to spread.

  Three sorcerers hurtled into the room at once.

  At the doors to the atrium, the guards charged. Oliver didn’t bother turning to see how many there were. The sounds of their pounding footfalls were enough to tell him what he needed to know.

  The killing, the dying, had sickened him from the first blood shed. But there would be so much more.