Lost Ones v-3

by Christopher Golden

  The fox wept.

  Collette felt wired, like she’d had several gallons of coffee. Adrenaline pumped through her, even though her arms and legs ached. Her clothes were covered with blood and the stink of it filled her nostrils. Twice she’d helped hold together the guts of a soldier so badly wounded that she had to vomit; both times she had returned immediately to the surgeon’s side, doing her part. Doing her best. The smell of blood up inside her nose, the taste of it on her tongue, helped. It was far preferable to the shameful reminder of her vomit.

  These men and women needed her.

  They were dying down there on the battlefield. Her soul felt torn between the urge to run to their aid-to throw herself into the fight and do whatever she could to help with blade or club or bare hands-and the terror that threatened to drive her screaming over the hill, through the trees, and off into the unfamiliar lands of Euphrasia.

  For half an hour, the urge to pee had been nearly overwhelming. Now it became painful. For the moment, the makeshift battlefield hospital-a dying place or a surviving place, but not really a healing place-had become quiet save for the moaning of the wounded. Another wave would arrive shortly, but her opportunity had come.

  With a glance, she found Julianna. After all she had endured, some of the beauty seemed to have been eroded from her. Her hair was tied back with a strip of cloth and her clothes were also bloodied. Dirt smeared her face, hands, and arms. Dark crescents had appeared under her eyes. Yet she seemed more herself than ever before. All of the ephemeral qualities had been scoured away, and what remained was a woman Collette loved dearly, and felt proud to know. If they had to endure this, she knew they could survive it together.

  Julianna waved. Collette smiled and dashed away toward King Hunyadi’s tent. It seemed somehow disrespectful to piss that close to the king’s tent, but there were precious few places she could go and be out of sight of the advisors and medics and aides, not to mention the wounded.

  Once past the tent, away from prying eyes, she noticed the stand of trees at the top of the ridge behind the encampment. Twenty paces or less. Collette raced to the trees and went over the ridge just a few feet, dropped her pants, and crouched behind an old oak with a massive trunk. A sigh escaped her as she relieved herself, the sheer pleasure of reducing the pressure on her bladder enough to make her shiver.

  “Not that much different from animals, really,” said a voice.

  Collette turned even as she rose, tugging up her pants and fumbling with the buttons. She staggered, nearly fell, her boot sliding in the soft, damp spot where she’d just pissed.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded.

  Coyote stood leaning against a nearby tree smoking a cigarette he must have rolled himself. The pungent herbal odor made her nostrils flare.

  “Ordinary folk, I mean,” Coyote went on. “You people. Not much different from animals.”

  The lithe little man, that legend, glanced up at her from beneath narrowed brows and cast her a dangerous look. His arms were thin but corded with muscle. He stepped away from the tree, taking a long tug from his cigarette. Smoke plumed from his nostrils.

  “I should’ve guessed you were the type for cheap thrills.” Collette stood her ground. Then she frowned. Something was wrong. It took her a moment to figure it out, but then she stared at him.

  “You’re not Coyote.”

  He faltered a moment, then took another drag and gave a soft laugh, both self-deprecating and cynical.

  “Coyote’s missing an eye. I saw him earlier. If he could’ve grown one back, he would’ve done it already.”

  He sighed. “There’s always someone cleverer than you are, girl. Hard lesson to learn.”

  A knot formed in Collette’s chest. No mischief lingered in Coyote’s black eyes, just a wrongness that made her stand a bit straighter, lean away from him.

  And then he changed, but not from man to animal. The air rippled around him, his features blurred, and where Coyote had been there now stood a different man entirely. He had silver hair, and the tint of his skin marked him as Atlantean, but he wore dark pants and a blue cotton shirt that hung loosely on him. These were the clothes of a traveler, not the armor of a soldier or the robes of a sorcerer.

  Collette took a step back, heart racing, ready to defend herself. “Who the hell are you?”

  “One who’s been in the dungeons himself, once or twice, just as you have; one who had to make a deal to get out. He offered my freedom in exchange for your life.”

  Collette couldn’t breathe. She said one word. A name. An incantation. An accusation.

  “Ty’Lis.”

  The Atlantean took a drag on his cigarette and exhaled white smoke. Then he shrugged. “I would’ve died of boredom in there, so I figured, why not? What good are the skills of an assassin if you’ve got no one to kill?”

  The killer took two slow steps. He stood between her and the encampment. The only place for her to run was down the open slope behind her or along the top of the ridge, in and out of trees.

  Collette shook her head. No running.

  “You’ve made a mistake.” She lifted her hands. “I have power you can’t even begin to understand. I can unmake you, asshole. Dust to dust.”

  The assassin laughed. Then he lunged, too fast for her to stop him. He drove his fist into her face. Collette staggered back, nearly fell but caught herself, and scrambled away. He pursued her, reaching out with his left hand in an open-handed slap that she mostly dodged, only to see his right fist coming at her again.

  Collette stepped into the punch. It glanced off the side of her skull, but by then she was in close. She hit him in the jaw with all her strength and it brought him up short, eyes going wide with surprise. Then she drove her forehead into his nose, felt it give way, and watched in satisfaction as he backpedaled, blood dripping from his nostrils.

  He swore, then let slip a laugh. “Where’d you learn to fight like that, girl-creature?”

  She could have told the assassin that she’d grown up a tomboy in Maine with rough winters and rougher boys, or that she’d lived in New York City for years and had to learn to protect herself, or that she’d had a husband who’d hit her exactly once before she’d taught him never to do it again.

  Collette didn’t say any of that. She just spat out some of the blood that gathered in her mouth from where his first punch had split her lip.

  Then she smiled.

  Not because she was some kind of tough chick, but because Julianna came over the top of the ridge at that very moment with an ogre’s long-handled war-hammer in her hands. She swung it like a sledge.

  The Atlantean heard her coming at the last moment and turned in time to avoid having his skull caved in. He caught the hammer blow in the shoulder. He was on the move when it struck him, but something still cracked in there. Collette heard it.

  The swing took Julianna around in half a circle, and that was her undoing. The assassin reached for her hair, tangled his fingers in it, and yanked her backward. He snapped her right wrist and she cried out as she dropped the hammer. Her cry was cut off when he gripped her throat and produced a knife from a sheath at his back. He pressed its tip to her grimy skin, drawing blood.

  The assassin started to turn her around, maybe to threaten Collette-Julianna’s life for hers-but Collette didn’t wait. She’d been in motion even as Julianna swung the war-hammer. As he tried to spin her around, Collette knocked the knife away and jumped on him, wrapping her arms around his throat and face, legs scissoring around his torso. Clutching him, she threw herself backward. Her weight dragged the assassin down, tripped him up, but he had a hold on Julianna, and she fell with them.

  Collette Bascombe-unmaker, Legend-Born-tasted blood on her lips and knew that this time it was her own.

  Time seemed to hesitate in the plaza at the center of Atlantis. Oliver felt off balance, as though the island had tilted a few degrees. Breath held, he stared at the blue bird as it tumbled from the sky, at the feathers t
hat floated down after it. All sound seemed to cease in that moment as he watched the bird hit the stones and lie still. Unmoving.

  Blue Jay is dead.

  Kitsune the fox struggled to stand, then fell again, badly injured but still drawing breath. Where Grin and Cheval lay in a tangle of limbs, nothing moved.

  Oliver looked up at Frost. The winter man stood perhaps twenty feet away, his fingers elongated into icicle spears, his body narrow from the heat, sculpted in knife edges. But when Frost lifted his gaze from the dead blue bird and met Oliver’s eyes, he seemed closer to human than ever he’d been before.

  They had been so foolish, these two. Oliver saw it, now, felt it, and knew that Frost did as well. They’d had a bond. The winter man ought to have honored it with honesty, but Oliver ought not to have been so stingy with his forgiveness, particularly when he knew that Frost’s only real sin had been arrogance. Recognition passed between them now.

  Whatever resentments had separated them were set aside.

  Their friends were dying. They were each other’s only hope.

  “Can you reach it now?” Oliver asked.

  “The Veil?” Frost said. His eyes narrowed and he reached out, fingers scraping the air, then nodded. “I can. Whatever magic blocked us from leaving the library doesn’t extend to the rest of the city.”

  “Get us the hell out of here, then!”

  “We can’t leave.”

  Oliver spun, staring at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “If we go through the Veil here, we’ll emerge in your world thousands of miles from where we would need to cross back over to reach the battle lines, probably on an island with an ocean between us and the mainland. If you want to get back to Julianna and your sister, if we hope to bring word of Tzajin’s death to Hunyadi, we’ve got to wait here as long as we can for Smith to return for us.”

  Oliver swore, knowing he was right. “What if Smith doesn’t ever come back?”

  The winter man felt the heat first. Oliver had become used to the constant change of temperature around him, the warmth of the island sun and the gusts of icy wind that Frost generated. But when Frost glanced up, already starting to back up, it took Oliver a moment before he felt the blast of heat coming from above them.

  He glanced up and saw the Guardian of Fire falling toward them. No, not falling. Li had jumped. He plummeted toward the ground with fire and heat roiling off of him. Li landed on the stones and a tremor shook the plaza. A wave of heat swept off of him. It felt as though Oliver were standing next to a raging inferno, a forest fire.

  Then the heat diminished. The fire in Li’s flesh flickered and dimmed, and his skin looked more like charcoal-gray ash than the burning embers it had been before. Even in his eyes, the fire seemed to have abated.

  Li looked up at Oliver, weary and full of anguish.

  “Do something,” he said.

  Oliver began moving before he even became aware of his intentions. He strode toward the library, glancing up at the huge, burning hole they’d put in the side of the building. Li had melted the glass wall on the fifth floor. The fire had begun to spread. Jellyfish followed him down, floating and eddying on the wind as if they had all the time in the world. A few eels were among them, but most had apparently been roasted in the fire.

  The jellyfish descended.

  A blast of cold and ice erupted from behind Oliver, shooting skyward and freezing half of the jellyfish as they descended. Those covered in ice fell straight down and shattered on the stones, but the others kept on.

  Oliver glanced over his shoulder.

  Frost and Li kept their distance from one another. Ice and Fire, neither wanted to sap the magic and strength of the other. The octopuses and eels and jellyfish moved in to finish them off. Soldiers started to move in.

  An air shark darted toward Li and he burned it in motion. The flames in the Guardian of Fire raged again, rising to inferno level. The shark fell, a black, burnt carcass, and split open when it slapped the ground. A curtain of fire swept across one side of the plaza. Soldiers had begun to advance, but the fire held them back. The first line of armored figures were set ablaze and fell to the ground, batting at the fire on them, or turned to flee, hair beginning to burn.

  Li faltered, fell to one knee. Again the embers of his flesh flickered as though his fire might go out.

  Frost attacked in the other direction, ice and snow and frigid wind killing some and halting others. But it would only be a matter of time. They could not stand against the forces of Atlantis-not with the sorcerers that were among them.

  There would be no going home.

  Oliver closed his eyes, just for a moment, and sent up a prayer that might have been to God, or to gods, or just a wish from his heart that he hoped Julianna would hear.

  Keep my love with you always.

  Collette would have to fulfill the prophecy of the Legend-Born. Her brother had other business.

  He reached out and put his hands on the smooth outer wall of the library. His heart filled with sorrow and rage. His nostrils flared angrily and he closed his eyes again, then dug his fingers into the strange sea glass that made up the outside of the building. It flowed like liquid, like glass before it cooled.

  The building shook.

  Then it began to melt, collapsing in on itself. The wall bowed out above him. Oliver stood back, looked up in terror, and then ran.

  “Frost! Li! It’s coming down!”

  The winter man burst into nothing but ice and snow, and that blizzard blew across the stones, sweeping up the dead blue bird as it went. Oliver ran to where Kitsune lay, still a fox-why had she not returned to her human form?-and bent to lift her in his arms. She was alarmingly light and she whimpered in pain, but her heart still beat. Her blood felt sticky on his hands, smeared on her fur.

  Frost took form again beside the fallen Grin and Cheval.

  Oliver ran toward them with the fox in his arms, but he saw the way the winter man stared past him and he paused, turned.

  Li had not run. The Great Library of Atlantis melted and collapsed, entropy taking hold, all that held it together now undone by Oliver’s hands. The Guardian of Fire stood his ground. A phalanx of soldiers rushed toward him, even as the last of the jellyfish erupted from the collapsing library. A sorcerer threw himself out of an upper floor, falling end over end toward his death. Two octopuses and several razor-fish aimed themselves at the lone figure still in the shadow of the library.

  His hands came up. The fire in him erupted in one final, volcanic explosion. The heat seared Oliver’s exposed skin and the blast blew him off his feet. He went down, cradling Kitsune in his arms, his elbows hitting the stones before he rolled, careful not to crush her.

  When he knelt, his first sight was of Frost. Half of the winter man’s face had melted off in the blast of heat. Snow and ice whirled around and tried to reconstruct it, but between the tropical sun and the heat from Li’s fire, it would take time. Frost had been badly weakened. He staggered a little but managed to remain standing.

  Oliver saw that Grin still lived. The boggart had a bloody, ragged, abdominal wound, but clapped one hand over it as he drew himself up to cradle the corpse of Cheval Bayard in his other arm.

  The Nagas had never gotten out of the library.

  That left only Li.

  He had incinerated dozens of soldiers and perhaps hundreds of the ocean monsters that patrolled the skies above Atlantis, but one look at Li told Oliver that the Guardian of Fire was through. He still stood, hands raised, pointed toward the remains of those he’d just burned, where the stones were blackened and cracked.

  Yet all that remained of Li was ash, standing in the shape of a man. As Oliver looked, the last of the fire flickered out. A pile of gray ash, looking like a statue, stood there in the plaza. The wind kicked up and began to pull the figure apart. Cinders blew away, Li quickly eroding, every ashen particle coming apart as though Oliver had unmade him as well. But he hadn’t done this. The Guardian of Fire had b
urned out at last.

  The upper part of the library toppled down onto the spot where Li had stood, and then he was only a memory.

  Oliver swore under his breath.

  “Good-bye, my friend,” Frost said, and Oliver couldn’t be sure if he spoke to the ashes of Li that blew on the wind or to the dead blue bird he now held in his frozen grasp.

  The fox shifted in Oliver’s arms. Grin hissed in pain, tears running down his face.

  The killers of Atlantis-soldier and sorcerer and monster-surrounded them and began to close the circle.

  Oliver and Frost exchanged another look. The winter man nodded.

  Shifting Kitsune into the crook of his left arm, Oliver knelt on one knee and reached down with his right hand. He splayed his fingers on the stones of the central plaza. The treachery had to stop. The conquerors had to be prevented from fulfilling their dark dreams.

  Steadying his breathing, Oliver let himself feel the stones, and the soil beneath them, and the bedrock of the island. His muscles stiffened painfully and he strained, throwing his head back. At his touch, all cohesion began to unravel.

  The ground began to quake. Fissures opened in the plaza, cracks running jagged across the stones. Frost called out his name, urging him on. Wayland Smith had marooned them on this island, had left them to die, but Oliver wouldn’t abandon the cause that had brought them here. They could not save the life of Prince Tzajin, could not bring about the end of the war that way. So he would end the war another way.

  He would unmake Atlantis.

  Buildings cracked. Glass shattered and fell. The plaza buckled and the stones they stood upon sank several feet, surged up slightly, then sank another seven or eight feet. All around them, the structures started to fail, collapsing in upon themselves.

  Soldiers broke ranks, fleeing. Sorcerers tried to use their magic to keep buildings from falling, to no avail. Then the water began to flow, rushing in from the harbor and surging up from the foundations of buildings, quickly starting to flood the plaza.

  Oliver stood. The damage was done. It had all begun to fall apart.