“She’s no longer among us,” the old woman said softly. Her voice did not sound as strong as she had hoped it might.
It reached down with one hand and laid its palm across her mouth. She felt the sand spilling into her throat. Her eyes widened, and her heart began to race. Terror gave her the courage to reach up and grab its wrist. She felt the sand shifting beneath his cloak as she stared up into those awful yellow eyes.
Virginia gagged as the sand reversed direction, returning from her body to the Sandman’s.
“Where?” he asked.
“Perinthia,” she rasped. “Kitsune’s gone with Coyote to Perinthia, to see the old gods.”
The Sandman bowed his head as though in thanks, the hood of his cloak obscuring his eyes.
“You won’t stop the Legend-Born,” she persisted. “Their time has come.”
The monster laughed. “I don’t want to stop them. Only to kill them.”
As though it were a promise, he lowered himself toward her. Virginia cried out, her scream blotting out the sound of the river. Strangely, in that moment she could smell all of the aromas of the cafe-the coffee, the cinnamon, the flour.
The Sandman dipped its talons toward her eyes.
She studied its face and realized she had seen it before. Once, that face had belonged to a man, a Lost One, who had passed through Twillig’s Gorge.
“Halliwell?” she asked.
The Sandman plunged his fingers into the corners of her eyes and plucked them out. Virginia shrieked and he silenced her with a flow of sand that clogged her nose and throat once more. He flooded her skull with sand and it spilled from the empty sockets where her eyes had been.
Inside the Sandman, Ted Halliwell screamed.
The monster heard his voice, and only laughed in return.
Halliwell knew he existed only as a thought, now. He saw what the Sandman saw, heard what the abomination heard. Yet Virginia Tsing had looked up into the face of her death and she had seen Halliwell himself. Frozen in horror and grief over the woman’s murder, he shivered at the realization that, looking up into the sand sculpted into his own features, the woman had died thinking that Halliwell himself had murdered her.
And yet, as much as that weighed on his heart, he quickly realized it had other implications. Somewhere in the eyes of the Sandman, Virginia had seen him. Had some part of his essence come to the surface in that moment? If enough of me still exists in here for her to see me, is it enough to exert some influence?
Sickened as he was by the old woman’s death, he found in it a glimmer of hope.
When the Dustman had drawn him down into the dark storm at the core of the Sandman, he had shared a terrible truth. They were all one, now. Three spirits in one form. The substance of the Sandman had changed. Now it was sand, and dust, and Ted Halliwell’s bones, ground down to a fine powder by the scouring of the sand.
They were one. The teeth that bit into Virginia Tsing’s eyes were their teeth. The claws that ripped at her flesh were their hands.
“I’m sorry,” Halliwell said.
It might have been that the words came from the Sandman’s lips. And, if so, what else might Ted be able to do down there in the dust, and the sand, and the powder of his own bones?
Ovid woke to the sound of his mother’s voice. As he blinked, clearing his vision and his mind, he realized it was still early. What was his mother doing awake? Yet, now that he listened, he realized there was another voice as well-an inhuman rasp that made the hairs on his arms stand up.
He vaulted from his bed, legs tangling in the sheets. As he extricated himself, he heard his mother coughing. Ovid’s heart beat faster, his skin warming with the heat of panic. He ran to his wardrobe. His sword hung in its scabbard from the door. The metal sang as he drew the blade.
“ You won’t stop the Legend-Born, ” he heard his mother say, coughing. “ Their time has come. ”
Whatever menaced her, it laughed. It didn’t want to stop them, it claimed. Only to kill them.
Ovid froze. The thing-whatever it was-had just confirmed his mother’s belief. The Legend-Born were real.
Then his mother began to scream.
“No!” he cried, and bolted from his room.
Sword in hand, he raced down the corridor. He had recently begun to insist that she lock her bedroom door at night. As she shrieked in agony he tried to work the point of his sword between the door and the frame. His blood boiled with bitter irony.
At last he reared back and began to kick the door, just beside the knob. Again and again he kicked, until at last the wood splintered and the door flew open.
Only then did he realize that her screams had ceased. He peered into the darkened room. His mother lay on the bed, her throat crushed, broken, and bleeding. Her chest had been caved in. Where her eyes had been there were bloody, ragged holes.
Above her stood a thin figure in a gray cloak, its body shifting and flowing, its flesh in motion. But it was not flesh; it was sand. For a moment, he recognized that face, and it was not the face of a monster but of a man he recognized…a man to whom he and his mother had given their hospitality. Ovid even remembered his name. Ted. Ted Halliwell.
Then the sand shifted again and the face became the monster’s. The Sandman turned to gaze at Ovid as it licked its bloody fingers, which were thin as knives.
Ovid screamed and ran toward it, anguish overcoming reason. He raised his sword-grief a hollow pit in his gut-and swung the blade as he lunged for the Sandman.
The sword passed through it. Ovid felt a tug against the metal and heard it hiss as the sand scraped against it.
The Sandman collapsed, losing all cohesion. A wind rose from nowhere and swirled and eddied the sand across the floor and out the windows into the nighttime peace of Twillig’s Gorge.
When it had departed, all that remained for Ovid Tsing was the gentle sound of the river passing by outside.
On a street in Palenque’s inner maze, just outside the great plaza where the king’s palace thrust up from the city’s heart, a small bar called Brasilia provided the pulse of the capital. A pair of musicians played steel drum and guitar, sometimes adding flute and trumpet. The couples who dined or drank on Brasilia’s patio were young and beautiful, with complexions the color of caramel or cinnamon. The waitresses were even younger and more beautiful. Everyone smiled and laughed, and once in a while someone passing by the patio would begin to dance to the music.
The scent of flowers carried on the breeze from a nearby florist. A father swung his daughter up to perch on his shoulders and made the snorting sounds of an angry bull, scraping his shoe against the cobblestones as though about to charge. The girl squealed in delight.
Leicester Grindylow watched all of this from just inside the bar. He sat on a stool from which he could take in both the inside of the bar and the bright, glittering nightlife on the patio and beyond. Inside, however-where the serious drinkers were-things were not so bright, and the patrons were far less beautiful. They had not come for dinner or music, but only to stare into their drinks and to argue bitterly about things upon which they mostly agreed.
Had they been able to see him for what he was, they would not have spoken so freely. Had they realized he was a spy-for what else could one call his present occupation?-they likely would have beaten him bloody. But there was no way for the Lost Ones in Brasilia to recognize his true nature. They would see an ordinary man instead of a long-armed water boggart. When he spoke, they would not hear English with the London accent he had acquired over years of visiting the ordinary world.
The Mazikeen had seen to that.
When Blue Jay and Cheval had first returned to the apartment where the Borderkind had holed up in Palenque, Grin had been dubious. Yeah, the Mazikeen were powerful. But a pair of sorcerers weren’t going to have enough magic between them to take the palace and free Oliver, Frost, and the others. For that, all the Mazikeen in the Two Kingdoms might not have been enough. Ty’Lis had enough sorcery on his own to take out several Mazikeen, at least the way Grin had heard it. And even if Ty’Lis had sent most of the other Atlanteans off to the north to conquer Euphrasia, they had no way to know what kind of forces he had in the palace, or what surprises he had waiting.