The two surviving Mazikeen ran at them, a wave of black sorcery spilling forward, dark tendrils lashing at the newcomers. The four Atlantean sorcerers raised their hands and silver light sprang from their fingers, erecting magical shields that turned away the Mazikeen attack.
For all of his cunning, Blue Jay had been slow to see the truth in the midst of the chaos. Now he swore and twisted his body. One blurred wing deflected the blade of an attacker even as he leaped up and kicked the other in the head, sending the man tumbling down the stairs. Nearby, Leicester Grindylow and Cheval Bayard were fighting the king’s guard. Li faced the surviving giant.
Below in the plaza, at least half the crowd had already been dispersed. The bloody bodies of jaguar-men littered the bottom of the stairs where they had been slaughtered trying to come to the aid of their fellow Borderkind. Other Yucatazcan Borderkind were also dead or had fled. His instinct was to think them cowardly, but now he changed his mind.
“Cheval!” he shouted.
Blue Jay leaped into the air. He did not shift into the shape of a bird, but the spirit-wings beneath his arms let him glide down fifteen stairs to land at her side. He snapped the neck of the guard nearest her and she turned, eyes wild.
“It’s Atlantis,” he said. “Somehow, it’s Atlantis. Either the king’s in with them, or they’ve taken over, or something. We’re not prepared for this. It’s much bigger than we thought.”
Cheval’s silver hair framed a blood-spattered face. “But Frost-”
“He’s in. And he’s our only chance,” Blue Jay said. “If he kills Ty’Lis, maybe this is all over. If not, we need help. We need to get word to King Hunyadi.”
With a nod, she shouted to Grin. The boggart ran to her as she transformed, growing and stretching, bones popping, until she had taken her equine form again. Grin leaped onto Cheval’s back and she started down the steps. Before she reached the phalanx of soldiers coming up at her, a kind of rip appeared in the fabric of the Veil, and Cheval and Grin crossed the border, vanishing from the Two Kingdoms into the world of man.
Blue Jay leaped into the air, spreading his arms, and in a moment he was a bird again, a tiny jay speeding toward Li and the Mazikeen. Seconds later, all four of them did the same, leaving the king’s guard and their Atlantean allies behind, leaving the bloody battle on the steps of Mahacuhta’s palace, leaving Palenque…
Leaving the winter man to his fate.
The Sandman’s castle felt hollow, as empty and dead as an ancient ruin. The only sound was the whisper of the wind as it blew scattered grains of sand across floors and walls. Already, the sand had begun to drift and erode, obscuring edges and wearing at corners.
Collette recalled the feeling of the sand falling away at her touch, at the way she had sculpted it and carved a doorway with her hands. She had thought because of that she might feel a kinship with the place. If there was something of the mythic in her heritage, she must certainly have tapped into that.
But now, with only whispers there, she felt no connection to the Sandman’s castle except as her prison, and she wanted nothing more than to leave it as quickly as possible. Whatever had allowed her to carve the sand, to manipulate the substance of the place, seemed to be gone.
Kitsune had led them back into the Sandcastle and through that vast entry hall. Collette showed the way to the stairs she had used to escape from her prison and soon they were navigating the seemingly endless corridors and staircases of the castle, whose interior seemed far vaster than its exterior would allow. They took care to keep to the outer walls, never entering a corridor or room that did not have windows.
“I hate to just leave him here. It doesn’t seem right,” Julianna said. Despite her obvious elation at reuniting with Oliver, the shock and grief of witnessing Halliwell’s death was eating at her.
“We have no choice,” Collette told her, each time she brought it up. “If it’s at all possible, I swear to you we’ll come back. We’ll bury him.”
Such reassurances did not erase the haunted cast of her eyes.
When they had reached the highest point of the castle, they found the tower where Collette had been a captive. She shuddered and hesitated to go any nearer, remaining upon the top step.
Julianna gasped at the sight of the panorama visible from that pinnacle. Her reaction came not only from its beauty, but from the abrupt shift of the view. The landscape was no longer the trio of snow-capped mountains, but instead the ocean on one side and the steaming jungle of Yucatazca on the other.
Oliver came to Collette and held her hand and reluctantly she went with him. Stepping carefully, they moved around the edges of the pit that had been her prison, only darkness visible through the arched windows that looked down into that hole. The Sandman might be dead, but still she did not feel safe here. Her pulse raced and she bit her lip. There were several stairwells leading down from this tower, but they chose the one directly opposite that which they had ascended.
“I don’t care if this gets us where we’re going,” Collette whispered to her brother as they went down again. “I’m not coming back here.”
Oliver hugged her gently and kissed her head. Flanking her, Julianna reached down and took her hand. Oliver fell back to make sure they weren’t followed, and up ahead, the fox-woman led the way, her harshly beautiful features hidden in the hood of her cloak. At times she turned corners and they lost sight of her for a few seconds, and each time, Collette found herself both anxious at being left alone and relieved to be away from Kitsune.
Their descent proved as uneventful as their climb upward had been, save that through every window now their view was of Yucatazcan jungle or the crashing surf. The air had the salty tang of the ocean, and even in the night they heard the distant cry of sea birds as they passed the windows. There had been no physical awareness of this shift between one kingdom and the other, but at first every time Collette glanced out a window the sense of dislocation rocked her. The Sandman’s castle was an extraordinarily powerful bit of magic and she wondered what would happen to it, now that he had been destroyed. Would it collapse or erode, or would it stand open from that moment onward as a portal that travelers might use to move from one place to another?
A mystery for another time.
When at last Kitsune led them back into the vast entry hall, it seemed entirely unchanged, except of course for the view from the windows and the salty tang of the air. Collette remembered all too well the hideous appearance of the sand-creatures that had been summoned by the Sandman and crafted to be her doppelgangers. No trace of such things remained except for the shifting sands of the floor of that great hall.
The doors hung open. The chill of the mountains of eastern Euphrasia was gone, replaced by a thick, humid heat that was uncomfortable at night but would undoubtedly be unbearable come morning.
“Kit, how far from here to Palenque?” Oliver asked.
The fox-woman flinched at the sound of his voice, or perhaps at the familiarity of his tone. Collette watched her as she paused and turned to face them, and something in the Borderkind’s bearing troubled her. When Kitsune and Oliver had come to rescue her, Collette had sensed only warmth and courage and nobility in the fox-woman. She did not understand what had changed.
“I am not certain,” Kitsune replied, as Oliver, Collette, and Julianna caught up to her, the four of them standing in the midst of that vast hall, whose ceiling was lost in the darkness. “Palenque is a full day’s ride on horseback from the ocean, but there is no way to know where along the coast we will emerge.”
Julianna slipped her hand into Oliver’s. “It’s a shame we couldn’t have brought horses through.”