Oliver ran to the rear wall of Frost’s cell. He pressed one palm against it, took a breath, and pushed. Powder and stone crumbled and then they were running through into the cell behind it. Opening that door was simple enough. Then they leaped out into the corridor where they’d been imprisoned only minutes before.
The pounding of heavy boots crashed down the hall, followed by loud cursing. Oliver glanced to the left and saw the first of the Atlantean guards emerge through the archway. It was the one he’d skirmished with in his cell. Hate fired his blood, but now wasn’t the time for payback.
He let go of Julianna’s hand and put both hands on the wall in front of him. Before long they were at the rear wall of the dungeon, and outside was the city of Palenque.
The wall crumbled easily. Fresh air rushed in-cool night air still rife with the warm smell of spices from the restaurants around the king’s plaza. Oliver pulled Julianna forward and they dropped onto the grass below. Twenty yards away was an iron fence, and beyond that the cobblestone plaza.
“Run,” Oliver told her.
“Hurry,” she replied, and then she did as he’d asked, bolting for the fence.
Oliver faced the palace. He put both hands on the shattered wall. Breathing evenly, he felt for the integrity of the wall. He could sense its age and all of the places where the stones were already loose, where the mortar had cracked.
One such crack ran up the wall to his left. Oliver nudged it and a portion of the palace wall thirty feet high and twenty wide caved in, burying some of the soldiers alive.
He raced for the fence and grabbed it with both hands. Two of its upright bars rusted and then fell down onto the cobblestones with a clang. Julianna clutched his hand, then they were through the fence and sprinting across the plaza to the nearest alley, disappearing into the maze of Palenque’s streets.
They were lost and friendless in a city whose citizens believed they were assassins who had murdered the king.
But they were free.
And Oliver was Legend-Born.
One morning, the gods came to Lycaon’s Kitchen.
Kitsune had nearly lost track of the days. She and Coyote had been sleeping in an abandoned marble and granite home a quarter of a mile from the restaurant. Bitterness still lingered between them. She knew she ought to forgive Coyote his past cowardice and recognize the courage it had taken him to overcome it, but bitter barbs had been exchanged between them long before the Myth Hunters had begun to kill their kin. And tricksters-like elephants-had long memories.
So she kept to herself and she did all that was in her power to avoid thinking of what danger Frost and Oliver might now be in-if they were even still alive-and the looks on the faces of Collette Bascombe and Julianna Whitney when she had left them all behind.
Yet all of her efforts to avoid thinking about Oliver and the others meant that they were all she did think about.
Until that dismal gray morning when the gods walked in out of the rain. There were three of them. A tall, voluptuous goddess with braids of dark hair and lavender eyes carried a spear and wore a heavy sword at her hip. A war goddess, from the look of her, she had a rusted chest plate and a dented helm that seemed to have served her well long ago. Beside her came another goddess, a slender creature whose pale flesh was textured with scales and whose hair had a greenish hue. Her smile was radiant. The third of their number had the bedraggled dignity of a Romany traveler or a paladin. An aura of light surrounded him, pulsing, mesmerizing.
“Kit,” Coyote murmured, staring at them.
“What?”
But he had nothing to say. They both stared at these faded gods, and wondered what marvels they must have been at the height of their glory.
Lycaon came out of the back with a tray of sausage and eggs that he had fixed for their breakfast. The old gods glared at him, and the cannibal slid the tray onto the table in front of Kitsune and Coyote and made a hasty, silent retreat.
“You are Kitsune of the Borderkind?” asked the goddess.
Kitsune stood, clumsily. These beings were no greater than a thousand legends she had met-no greater than she was. Yet here she was acting as though they were her superiors. But she couldn’t help herself. It was something in the way they carried themselves, their austere dignity.
“I’m Kitsune,” she said. “This is my cousin, Coyote.”
The warrior goddess nodded to him in greeting. Kitsune liked that. At least this one hadn’t ignored him the way the wine gods had.
Coyote stood and bowed his head to them.
“I am Bellona, goddess of war,” she said. Roman, Kitsune thought, trying to keep the two pantheons separate in her mind, though so many of them were facets of one another’s legends.
“This is Salacia, my sister, goddess of the sea,” Bellona went on. A small smile touched her lips. “And you have already noticed our Greek brother, Hesperos, the evening star.”
Kitsune could not look at him, he was so beautiful.
“We know why you have come,” Salacia said, her voice a soft lilt. “But we would hear from your own lips all that you know of the war.”
Hope flickered inside Kitsune.
It was Coyote who asked the question. “Then you’ll help us?”
Bellona shook her head. “That will be a decision for Artemis.”
Kitsune shivered. Her own legend was from the far east, but the name of Artemis still resonated. The daughter of Zeus, she was goddess of the wilderness and the hunt, goddess of the wild animals. Kitsune felt a kinship with this being she had never met, but more than that. Instinctively, she knew that she would follow Artemis to war without question.
“She lives?” Coyote asked.
The old gods turned dark eyes upon him and he looked away.
“Artemis is not what she once was,” Salacia replied. “None of us are. But Artemis bears the scars of time and battle and the betrayal of her father, himself now dead. Her mind often drifts, but our brothers and sisters follow her word. If she agrees to aid you, then those who are willing may join the fight. If she does not, your time has been wasted.”
Hesperos said nothing, but Kitsune felt his gaze upon her. Her skin felt flushed with warmth, and she told herself it was the nearness of the aura of starlight that surrounded him.
But the stars were supposed to be cold.
He distracted her, but she shook it off. All that mattered now would be the decision of Artemis.
“And if she agrees, how many do you think will come?”
Bellona opened her hands. “We three, at least. Perhaps others who still wish to feel alive, or who still have enough pride to punish an enemy who dares threaten us.”
Three, Kitsune thought. If only she had time to go east, to try to persuade the gods of Asia to join them. Many of the legends from the eastern lands had begun to come west to aid King Hunyadi, but the old gods were sleeping, there.
Still, three would be better than nothing. And perhaps there would be more, if Artemis allowed it.
“Do you think I should speak to Artemis myself? I could tell her the tale of what transpires, try to convince her-”
“Not if you value your life. She would not trust you for a moment. The animals turned on her, once, and she has never forgiven them.”
The tale filled Kitsune with revulsion, but she only nodded.
Together, she and Coyote began to tell the old gods all they knew of the war and its origins and the threat of the Atlantean conspiracy.
When they had finished, Bellona made her a promise.
“If Artemis wills it, we will meet you an hour past dawn tomorrow on the southern road, in view of the city walls, with all of the gods who will join us. For my part, I hope to see you again. It has been far too long since I have seen war, and I yearn for it.”
CHAPTER 9