Lost Ones-Veil 3 (37 page)

Another building fell, entire stories cascading down upon one another and crashing into the water.

Oliver had a feeling that soon the sorcerers would realize that their efforts were useless, and then their minds would turn to vengeance.

The air shark turned lazily in the air, as though it hadn’t a care in the world. Everything else alive in Atlantis seemed frantic, but the shark moved almost languidly. All that mattered was its prey.

Out where the harbor had once been, massive sea-serpent coils undulated in the water. Ocean waves rolled in through the city. The Kraken—if that truly was the Kraken out there—would soon find the water deep enough to come into the plaza. The ice mountain that Frost had created eroded by the moment as the warm seawater washed over it, and would not survive an attack from the sea monster.

Oliver set Kitsune down at his feet and risked a quick glance over his shoulder.

Frost had thinned to slivers. Mist rose from his jagged body and much of the blue had gone from his eyes, leaving only white—and not even white, but a clear ice. At his feet, Leicester Grindylow sat bleeding, wincing from broken bones, and cradled the corpse of Cheval Bayard close to him. Boggart and kelpy would remain with them, no matter what, as would the dead little blue bird who had once been the most loyal friend to them all.

“Where the hell is he?” Oliver screamed, giving in at last to the frenzy of panic that churned inside of him, spilling over. “Where’s Smith?”

The winter man pointed.

Oliver turned just as the air shark made its move. He raised the Sword of Hunyadi. The shark darted at him, its dead black eyes more terrifying than the fury of any demon. There would be no dodging it, now. Swift as legend, Oliver raised the sword up in both hands and brought it down with all his strength. The blade slit the shark’s head, punched through into the lower jaw and out through the bottom. He forced it down and the thing began to whip its huge, powerful body in the air. In seconds, it would knock Oliver into the water, where other things waited.

Putting all his weight on the hilt of Hunyadi’s blade—its tip now lodged in ice—he drew the other sword, which he’d carried to Atlantis, twisted it and plunged it through the shark’s right eye.

It thrashed again. Oliver lost his footing and slid, beginning to fall, nearly knocking the fox off of the ice mountain with him. He tugged Hunyadi’s sword out of the shark’s snout and the beast fell, twitching and slipping down the ice mountain and into the rushing water, the other sword still stuck through its eye socket.

Heart pounding, muscles torn and aching, Oliver clawed his way back to the top of the ice mountain and stood, wearily holding the Sword of Hunyadi out before him again. The fox looked up at him and he thought, perhaps, she smiled a bit.

“Well done,” Frost said, and his voice had become little more than a chilly whisper on the wind. “I wonder, though…if Prince Tzajin was left here for us, a trap, then where is Ty’Lis? Why is he not here to see our deaths? And if he’s not here killing us, then who
is
he killing while we fight for our lives?”

Oliver slammed the heel of his hand against his head. He looked down at the rising water, felt the ground tremble underneath the ice. He had wanted to punish them, yes, and to stay alive. But he had never wanted to destroy the whole city. King Hunyadi would cheer—his whole army, and the rest of Euphrasia would want to give Oliver a medal—but how many had he killed?

And where
was
Ty’Lis?

“Where else would he be?” Oliver snarled at him, lips pulled back, almost feral. “He’s in Euphrasia.”

Oliver felt the truth of it. There were no choices left for them, no way to prevent whatever it was Ty’Lis really had planned. Only one way out of this situation presented itself.

He shook his head, threw up his hands, shaking the Sword of Hunyadi. “Shit! Shit, shit, shit! We’ve got to cross the Veil, right now, no matter where we end up in my world. Smith’s not coming. We’ll worry about getting back to the front lines when we’re out of this mess!”

He sheathed the Sword of Hunyadi and bent to heft Kitsune into the cradle of his arms again.

“Oliver,” Frost said, that voice barely a suggestion, now. “You’ll have to help me. Help me open the way.”

Grin had risen painfully to his feet. The boggart had to be in agony and he swayed there, atop the ice mountain Frost had made, but he picked the corpse of Cheval Bayard up in his arms.

“Do it, Ollie,” Grin said. “Open the soddin’ path for us. We’ve got to find the sorcerer yet, the bloke what started it all. I’ll have his guts for garters.”

Frost held the dead blue bird in one hand—
Blue Jay’s dead, oh, shit, how do I tell Damia?
—and looked expectantly at him. Oliver nodded his head. The winter man raised a hand. Oliver shifted the fox’s weight onto his left arm and followed suit.

The air rippled. Oliver felt it. For the first time, he touched the fabric of the Veil. Frost had given him something to grasp—he wasn’t sure if he could have done it himself—but now it felt to him like some great curtain in the sky, and he knew it would part just that easily. Reality would not tear, it would simply open.

Before they could move, a figure stepped through the Veil from the other side. He hovered in the air above the flood waters and the drowning city of Atlantis.

“No need for that,” the Wayfarer said.

Oliver stared at Smith. The Traveler had lost his hat and cane somewhere along the way. He seemed thinner, almost skeletal, and a long scar ran across his forehead and slashed down over one eye, leaving a gaping hole. Somehow, the wound was old, yet Wayland Smith wore no patch.

A dozen questions occurred to Oliver, but only one made it to his lips.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.

Smith flinched, eyes narrowing. He shot Oliver a dangerous look. “You’re mistaken, sir.”

Before Oliver could ask him to elaborate, other figures began to appear in the air around the melting ice mountain, one rotund and blind, another ancient and bent, one dark-eyed and wreathed in shadow, another scarred and cruel, and still another bearded and glorious like some ancient storm-god. Among them was one female, thin and lovely, though gray streaked her red hair and wisdom crinkled the corners of her eyes. Of them all, only one did not hover in the air, and this last was a giant, thirty feet tall if an inch.

They had not come through the Veil. Nor were they sorcerers of Atlantis. They had, all of them, simply stepped in from the Gray Corridor where only the Wayfarer could walk.

For they were him, each and every one.

They were
all
Wayland Smith.

King Hunyadi could no longer feel his arms, save for the dull weight of them and a throbbing in his hands where they were closed tightly around the grip of his sword. He bled from a dozen nicks and cuts and several more grievous wounds. But his heart pounded in his chest and in the back of his throat he felt a new battle cry rising. He opened his mouth and set it free, raising his sword, urging his army to press on. Their ranks had been thinned, but they fought on—soldiers and volunteers, legends and gods alike. They fought on.

His royal guard stood with him, now, and they cut through Atlantean soldiers with ease. Armor cracked like the carapace of some crustacean and dark green blood flowed. It had been some long minutes since he had seen a Yucatazcan warrior, and he wondered if they were all dead or had fled. To the far western battle lines he saw two giants, but no sign of any others. Monsters still darted across the sky above his head, but many had been pulled out of the air or caught in the crossfire of magic as the Atlantean sorcerers and the Mazikeen tore at one another’s souls. Dark light streaked above, whirlwinds of power ripped at green-feathered Perytons.

But the war had begun to wind down. Too much blood had been spilled. Soon, the deciding moment would come, but Hunyadi could not yet guess the outcome.

He stepped over the cadaver of a fallen horse, sword at the ready. His personal guard shouted to one another as they fought on, sword and axe and spear clashing with the weapons of their enemies. The stink of blood mixed with the acrid odor of smoke and burning flesh. Fires flickered here and there on the battlefield.

A figure in ragged, bloody clothing appeared beside him. His face was streaked with gore and one of his eyes had been torn out. The king’s guard moved to attack, but Hunyadi saw that the man did not carry a weapon and raised a hand to wave them back, though he did not lower his own sword.

“Hell of a day, Your Majesty,” said the one-eyed man, and his grin revealed sharp, blood-stained teeth.

Only then did Hunyadi recognize Coyote. The king knew the scruffy trickster’s reputation well enough and was surprised to see him on the field of battle.

“Hell is the word for it,” Hunyadi said, “but we have the advantage now.”

“Then let’s finish the fuckers.”

The king knew he ought to make Coyote swear an oath of fealty, but the blood on his teeth and the wounds he’d already sustained were proof enough of his loyalty in this war.

“Well met, trickster,” Hunyadi said. “We’ll make an end of it together.”

A fresh phalanx of Atlantean soldiers filled the breach Hunyadi’s men and women had just made. Haughty and unmarred by combat, they marched over their fallen brethren.

Raging with adrenaline, half-mad with war, the king laughed and lifted his sword. “Come on, then, traitorous bastards. We shall make the ending swift!”

An Atlantean officer shouted for them to attack.

Coyote transformed from man to beast, dropping to all fours and racing toward the Atlanteans, teeth gnashing.

Hunyadi’s guard did not need an order. They roared and hurled themselves into battle, weapons swinging. Blood flew, spattered Hunyadi’s face and eyes. He wiped it away, ducked the sword thrust of an enemy, and then moved in close to the Atlantean. He grabbed the soldier’s wrist, snapped it, then hacked down at the back of the man’s legs, slashing tendons and muscles.

He left the soldier alive, but crippled. Finishing him would be merciful, but he had no time for mercy.

An arrow took Hunyadi in the shoulder from behind, spinning him around. He had barely begun to stagger toward the archer when two of his royal guard fell upon the man, hacking at him like slaughterhouse butchers.

A voice cried his name. King Hunyadi turned to see one of his royal guard picked up off his feet in the single, massive hand of a Battle Swine. The huge, boarlike creatures moved in—a dozen of them at least. Bones shattered. The royal guard began to fall.

Then the Stonecoats were there as well. One of the Battle Swine charged, head down, at a Jokao. Massive, gore-encrusted tusks shattered on the Stonecoat’s chest, then the Jokao plunged a hand into the Swine’s chest and tore out its black, cold heart. Another Swine roared in fear and pain and went down, Coyote on top of him, jaws ripping at his throat.

Hunyadi let loose another battle cry, his voice almost gone. He rushed at one of the Battle Swine, drove his blade into the softness of its throat, and the beast fell. Atlantean soldiers moved on him and the king rose, battling them off. The rest of his royal guard surrounded him, and soon the Atlanteans had begun to withdraw.

“Push them back into the ocean!” Hunyadi called, hoarse.

The soldier beside him—Aghi Koh—fell to her knees and clutched at her throat, which bulged with purple bruises. Her eyes began to bleed, and then oily black fluid jetted from her mouth. She bent, vomiting tarry stuff onto the ground. What followed was water—only water—but it stank of the sea.

Two other members of his royal guard—loyal soldiers, loyal friends—fell and began to vomit as well. Things squirmed in the water they threw up. Aghi fell dead, her wide eyes turning black. Crimson blood seeped from her ears, streaked with black. The others who surrounded Hunyadi suffered the same fate.

Grieving and enraged, the king spun around, searching for his enemy. He spotted the sorcerer, twenty feet away, standing amidst the soldiers of Atlantis. His skin had the chalky greenish hue of his people, but he was an ancient thing with gossamer silver hair; his beard was thick and had several heavy iron rings tied into its length.

King Hunyadi recognized him as Ru’Lem, one of the High Councilors of Atlantis.

“Now, little monarch,” the sorcerer sneered, “this war is over.”

His spindly fingers scratched at the air, casting his spell anew, and Hunyadi fell to his knees, just as his royal guard had done. He hunched over, losing sight of the sorcerer.

Ru’Lem strode toward him, perhaps craving the satisfaction of watching, up close, as the king died.

“You are hardier than your—” he began.

Hunyadi sprang upward, driving his sword into the robes of the ancient sorcerer. Anything but a heart-strike would not do, but he felt the blade slide against bone, felt the resistance of thick muscle and gristle, and knew that his aim had struck true.

Ru’Lem’s eyes widened and a hiss of air escaped his lips with a burble of greenish-black blood. A question. Hunyadi knew it could only be one question.

“Old fool,” he rasped. “Did you think I wouldn’t prepare for you and your kind, that I wouldn’t have had the Mazikeen place a dozen protective wards around me? Had you struck me down with a blade or had a Swine break my bones, you might’ve killed me. But magic is a coward’s weapon. When a warrior kills…”

King Hunyadi stared into Ru’Lem’s eyes, gripped the sword in both hands, and gave it a powerful twist, destroying the sorcerer’s heart.

“…he does it in close.”

The High Councilor dropped to the ground, corpse sliding from the king’s sword. Hunyadi spun as a Battle Swine rushed at him, but a Harvest god struck it from the side, a massive stag, trampling it underfoot. A shadow fell over them and he glanced up to see the Titan, Cronus—whom Kitsune had brought from Perinthia—arriving as well.

Then Coyote and his own soldiers charged past him, sweeping into combat against Atlanteans and Battle Swine. The Jokao were joined by Harvest gods and Borderkind and legends. An ogre wielding a war-hammer clapped the king on the back with a booming laugh, then rushed into the fight.