His boots pressed into the damp soil on the bank of the river. He dropped his gaze and watched the water while he walked, wondering again at its name. The river washed over rocks, the current picking up as it ran almost imperceptibly downward, with only the occasional small drop-off or waterfall.
When Kitsune touched his hand, he flinched away.
The sting of his reaction showed in her eyes.
“Sorry, you startled me.”
Kitsune gave him a melancholy smile. “You were very far away.”
“I’ve been far away for a long time. Feels like I’ll be far away forever.”
She nodded. Her red fur cloak swayed around her as she walked. The hood lay against her back, draped in her silken black hair. Her green eyes were like smooth jade. Kitsune reached out to take his hand again, and this time Oliver did not flinch away. They continued like that along the riverbank for several minutes. Oliver took some comfort in the contact, but did not fool himself into thinking that all would be well. Kitsune had other allegiances, and he understood that.
But after a while he began to enjoy her touch and remembered the way she sometimes looked at him, recalled the sight of her at the inn in Perinthia, when he had seen her coming out of the shower, and broke the contact again.
Kitsune did not look up, only kept walking close beside him. She was perhaps the most desirable woman he had ever met-though woman was not entirely accurate-but he was engaged to be married, and instead of shaking his love for Julianna, the wildness and terror of recent days had only crystallized those feelings.
He wanted to say something to Kitsune, to express those thoughts, no matter how foolish she might think him. But even as he opened his mouth, he saw that Blue Jay had paused on the riverbank just ahead.
The Native American shapeshifter turned toward them with a satisfied grin. The mischief had disappeared briefly from his eyes, but it was back now.
“Twillig’s Gorge,” he said.
Oliver and Kitsune caught up to him and the three of them stood, awaiting Frost. The river turned slightly eastward ahead, and the quiet forest ended in the shadow of a sheer mountain cliff hundreds of feet high.
The river flowed right into the cliff face. Somehow it had carved a cave into the rock, or else the river went underground.
“I don’t get it,” Oliver said.
“The gorge is further along. Gods and legends, Borderkind and Lost Ones-all sorts of people live there. Creatures who want to hide away from the rest of the world, who don’t want to have anything to do with the Two Kingdoms,” Blue Jay explained. “There are a few places I can think of that would be safer havens for us right now, but nothing else within easy distance. It’s as good a place as any.”
Oliver stared at the cave where the river entered the mountainside. Frost could have gotten over the top easily enough, and Blue Jay could fly, but he would never be able to climb that sheer cliff. There seemed only one way to get to Twillig’s Gorge for an ordinary man.
As he contemplated this, Frost joined them. Oliver glanced at the winter man, at the blue-white ice of his eyes, but Frost was not looking at him at all. With a toss of his head that made the jagged ice strands of his hair jangle together, he turned to Kitsune.
“You’re aware that we’re being followed?”
Kitsune nodded gravely. “A Jaculus. It has paced us since the moment we made the border crossing.”
Oliver began to glance around, looking first across the river and then up toward the branches above them. “What the hell’s a-”
But Frost ignored him, focusing only on Kitsune.
“Kill it,” said the winter man.
Coiled around the branch of a massive oak tree, Lucan could not hear the whispered words of the Borderkind below. But he saw the Intruder-the Bascombe-go rigid and begin to look around, and he knew that his quarry were aware of his presence.
His instinct was to attack. His eyes were excellent and he could see the way the veins pulsed in the throat of the Bascombe. He could smell the femaleness of the fox, Kitsune. What Lucan desired more than anything was to launch himself from the tree and plunge straight down on one of them, fangs bared. They would underestimate him because of his diminutive size, and that would be his advantage. He felt certain that he could use his venom to paralyze them, and then twist his serpentine body around their throats, cracking neck bones even as he drew their life out of their veins. He would have dearly loved to put his confidence-and his speed-to the test.
But Lucan had his orders.
The moment the fox raced toward the tree in which he was hiding, he loosed his grip upon the branch. As she leaped for the lower branches, he spread his wings and sprang upward, bursting up through rustling leaves of the oak and taking to the sky.
There were shouts from below, threats hurled skyward, but the Jaculus did not slow down. If the trickster shifted into bird-shape and followed, Lucan could kill him easily. And the winter man was weakened now, and too slow. In moments, the winged serpent was over the top of the mountain and soaring toward the southern horizon.
The Strigae were excellent spies, but Ty’Lis and Hinque had asked Lucan to come himself to be sure that there were no mistakes, that someone was there to report the outcome of the Myth Hunters’ attack. Now they and the others would be waiting for word. The Bascombe was supposed to be dead many days ago, and the Borderkind who had allied themselves with him as well. These were simple measures, precautions to be taken before the rest of the plan could be put into action.
But it was too late now. The whispers had begun, the violence would follow shortly, and then there would be war. And in the midst of that, the Bascombes and the Borderkind would be little more than an afterthought.
Yet Lucan knew that, to Ty’Lis, nothing would be as important as the death of these most dangerous enemies. The rest of the Borderkind had to be exterminated, no matter how many Hunters had to die with them. And Oliver Bascombe along with the filthy myths he had befriended.
The Veil itself depended upon their deaths.
And an empire would be forged upon their graves.
CHAPTER 2
In the darkness, surrounded by the whisper of the shifting sands, Collette could see nothing except the glowing sphere of white light that waxed and waned and danced in her cell in the Sandman’s castle. Sometimes it disappeared entirely, but it always came back. From time to time it would speak to her in hushed tones about her impending demise. The Vittora was a death spirit, forged of all the luck she had accumulated during her life, now preparing to abandon her because it sensed she would soon die.
It had become her only friend.
Collette needed a friend now, in the madness of this impossible world, for she lived in terror, and her dreams were screaming nightmares.
Most of the time she sat with her back against the rounded wall of the chamber of sand, wiping grit from her eyes and spitting it from her mouth. Her scalp itched like mad, but no matter how she tried she could not get all the sand from her hair. Her captor brought her barely enough water to drink, and trying to use it for personal hygiene would have been idiotic. But still, the itch was maddening. Her body had begun to itch as well and the stale smell that came from her every pore made her nostrils flare in revulsion. Collette often took more than one shower in a day. She hated being unclean.