“ Start spreading the news, ” the Vittora sang, knowing, mocking, and yet somehow sorry as well. “ I’m leaving today. ”
“Shut up!” she snapped, twisting in the sand and glaring up at it.
The light flickered and diminished, the sphere shrinking a bit, as it often did. It even disappeared from time to time, though she could sense its presence. When the time came that it was really gone, she was sure she would know that as well. But by then it would be too late. Her life would be slipping away like a fistful of sand.
Heart hammering with frustration, skin prickling with the cold and with grief for her own fate, she began to walk again, determined to dedicate another fifteen minutes to staying alive.
Then she heard his voice…the voice of the Sandman.
“ You see. A Bascombe. Just as promised, ” it rasped, voice grating and cold, words clipped and alien.
Collette halted and it took her a moment before she could glance upward in search of her captor. Her breath caught in her throat. The monster was little more than a shape framed by one of the windows high above, a deeper darkness silhouetted against the night sky beyond. Those hideous lemon-yellow eyes gleamed, reflecting back the light of the Vittora.
For the first time, the Sandman was not alone.
Beside him was a thing whose appearance made her gasp. It was crouched, like a gargoyle perched on a building’s ledge, and large, feathered wings jutted from its back. In the illumination cast by the spirit of her impending death, she thought the feathers looked green. It wore shapeless, dark garments that only partially covered its long, bony limbs. Yet what unnerved her most was that it had the head of a stag, with wickedly sharp antlers. Some ancient dread welled up within her at the sight, as though in the primitive part of her brain she knew that this thing was a predator. Beneath its gaze, she felt like a field mouse fleeing from a screech owl.
And there were others.
They shifted in the dark, moving to other windows with a rustle of feathers. There were at least three more that she could see, staring down at her as if she were an animal at the zoo.
What did it mean, A Bascombe?
And what were they, these things that the Sandman had brought to observe her?
The Vittora, shrunken now to a size no larger than a baseball, descended in a gliding, drifting pattern until it hovered nearby, and she heard it whisper. Words. Answers to the questions in her mind.
“ Perytons, ” it said. “ Hunters. ”
A shudder went through her and for a time selfishness triumphed over her love for Oliver in her mind. She knew that if he came for her, it would mean his death, but now that she knew the Sandman was not alone, that he had allies, she felt certain they would eventually find him anyway.
“Come on, Ollie. Find me,” she whispered, in a voice that was lost in the murmur of the shifting sands.
If they were both going to die, she would rather face the end with her brother. Nothing terrified her more than the thought of dying alone.
Oliver stared up through the trees as Blue Jay darted down toward them, an astonishingly small figure against the breadth of the sky. The bird opened his wings and glided between branches, not disturbing a single leaf. As he reached the ground, he beat his wings to pause in midair, but for a moment, to Oliver’s eyes, he seemed to continue descending. It was an optical illusion, however. The bird was not descending, but growing, transforming into a man. His wings suddenly spread out behind him, enormous, and then they were barely visible, just a trace of an image in the air.
And then gone.
Where the bird had been, there was now only the man. Blue Jay tossed back his hair, the feathers tied in it whipping in the breeze, and thrust his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans.
“Well, that’s shit luck,” he said.
Oliver might have laughed were it not for the utter gravity with which the words had been spoken. He glanced at Kitsune, who paid him no attention at all. She was scenting the air and studying the branches above, searching for any sign that there might be some other spy about.
Oliver turned to Frost, only to find the winter man studying him as though he were a riddle that Frost could not sort out. Oliver didn’t much like the feeling.
“So what now?” he asked.
Frost glanced at Blue Jay. “We’d hoped that Twillig’s Gorge might be a refuge for us, at least for a time. Now, at best, we can rest there briefly before moving on. We’ve no idea who the Jaculus calls master, but the way it lit out of here upon being discovered, we can be sure it means us ill.”
“Time to go, then,” Oliver said.
Blue Jay frowned, glaring at the sky. “If Gong Gong had been here, the thing would have been dead, and its master none the wiser.”
Kitsune lifted her hood, though they were deep in the shade of the woods. She hung her head slightly so that only her perfect mouth was visible beneath the fold of fur.
“Yet Gong Gong is dead. And so shall we be, I think, if we don’t move now. I am putting my trust in you, Blue Jay, that this Gorge truly exists. And trust is hard to come by today.”
“Isn’t it always?” the bird-man said, and then turned toward the river.
Just ahead, the woods ended at a sheer cliff face and the Sorrowful River continued right through it, a stake through the heart, into a natural tunnel, perhaps some ancient cave system. The light of the sun extended only so far into the tunnel and then all was darkness. The idea of wading into that river and letting the current take him into the dark was not at all pleasant, but neither was the thought of remaining here and waiting for the Jaculus to return with more formidable associates.
Still, Oliver stood and watched as Blue Jay went to the riverbank and stepped in without hesitation, water soaking into denim, making the legs of his jeans a darker blue. Oliver smiled wistfully. Trickster he might be, but Blue Jay was all right. He could easily have transformed back into a bird and flown through the tunnel, above the water.
When he had waded in up to his hips, the river flowing around his waist, he paused and looked back, waiting in silence. Oliver glanced at Frost, saw that the winter man was watching Kitsune, and looked at her.
She was still preoccupied with the trees, and he understood that she was faulting herself somehow for not having caught the Jaculus. It was not that she suspected the presence of other spies, but that she wished there were more, so that she might redeem herself.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Oliver said.
Kitsune glanced darkly at him and bared her tiny, sharp teeth. “Go on.”
He was about to argue, but Frost touched his arm with icy fingers that sent a shock of cold through him, making his muscles ache. Oliver pulled away, but nodded and started for the water. At the edge he sat and removed his boots, tied the laces together and hung them around his neck, with his socks tucked inside. He debated the wisdom of this for a moment, knowing that the river bottom would likely be quite rocky, but even if he didn’t mind soaking-wet boots, they would actually make it difficult to walk, weighted down with water. Using the same logic, he untied the jacket from around his waist, wrapped the Sword of Hunyadi in it, and carried them over his shoulder as he stepped into the river.
Oliver hesitated a moment. He slipped his hand into his pocket and felt for the single, large seed that the gods of the Harvest had given him. Konigen had said it might be helpful to him one day, when he needed it most. The last thing he wanted to do was to lose it or, worse, ruin it now. But he chose to leave it where it was. Better a damp seed in his pocket than a lost seed if he risked trying to stash it in his boots or hold it in his hand.
Frost was right beside him. As the winter man put his foot in, the water on the surface of the river just around his calf formed a thin layer of ice, which broke off and floated away, dissolving almost immediately. Then Frost and Oliver were moving toward Blue Jay. The water turned frigid, the current cold where it had flowed past Frost, and Oliver shivered and let him get ahead a few paces.