The war-hammer seemed no heavier than a baseball bat in her hands.
Collette started back over the ridge.
Oliver and the winter man ran side by side. The temperature here was perhaps fifteen degrees cooler than on Atlantis, but the air hung thick with humidity, and Frost had almost instantly accumulated that moisture to repair himself. His icy figure remained sharp and thin, but no longer the skeletal shape he had become.
They weaved through the wounded, Oliver leaping a man who howled for the doctor, raising the stump of a ruined arm. Frost disintegrated into the air, becoming the churning blizzard Oliver had first encountered a lifetime ago in his mother’s parlor on that stormy December night.
Grin had been left to look after Kitsune-still in her fox shape-and the cooling corpses of Cheval and Blue Jay. Oliver and Frost were the only ones left to fight Ty’Lis, and somehow, despite the mistrust and resentment that had come between them, that seemed right.
They reached the tents of King Hunyadi and his entourage. Oliver kept his focus on the flag flying the king’s banner. He dodged around a tent and then emerged at the rear of the camp, a stone’s throw from the top of the ridge. The Sword of Hunyadi felt right and comfortable in his hand.
When he saw the monsters fighting, his first thought was that two of the legends involved in the war had somehow carried their conflict far from the field of battle. The thing still on its feet had a hard ridged shell like some kind of crustacean, black and wetly gleaming. Ribbons of oily shadow extruded from small holes all over its body, and Oliver had seen dark tendrils like that before. Atlantean sorcery.
But there was no sign of Collette, and that was a good sign.
The ocean creature attacked something else that struggled to rise from the ground, those oily ribbons whipping and tearing, but as Oliver ran-the blizzard of the winter man rushing along beside him-he realized what he saw was the Sandman. The monster’s substance thrashed against those black ribbons, which somehow had power over the shifting sand.
“Magic,” he grunted, breath coming raggedly as he ran. “Ty’Lis can’t be far.”
“ That is Ty’Lis, ” whispered a cold breeze at his ear. “ Dark sorcery, Oliver. He’s transformed himself into a Curlesh, a legend from ancient Atlantis.”
“Why the hell would he-”
“ Harder to kill, ” the icy breeze replied.
But Oliver had stopped listening. As they neared the stretch of rough ground where Ty’Lis and the Sandman fought, he saw two human figures on the grass, covered in the same sickening jellyfish they had barely escaped in Atlantis. A man lay atop a woman, and the disgusting things covered nearly all of the man’s body and lashed at the exposed flesh of the woman he shielded.
Oliver would have known her in a darkened room, or across a crowd of thousands. He knew her now. Julianna’s hair. Her hands. The slope of her jaw, where only a tiny bit of her face was visible. He knew her better than he did himself.
“What have you done?” he screamed.
The Curlesh turned at his voice. The Sandman partially slipped his bonds and a long arm sculpted of sand lashed up, driving finger knives at the eyes of the sorcerer Ty’Lis. The Curlesh dodged its head and its shadow tendrils tore the Sandman’s arm apart, but by then, Oliver and Frost were nearly upon them. He didn’t know where his sister was, but as long as Collette was elsewhere, she would be safe.
Those piss-yellow eyes turned toward Oliver again. Ty’Lis raised his monstrous hand.
“You should be dead!” the sorcerer shouted.
A rush of turquoise light burst from his fingers and shot toward Oliver, who had no defense against magic. In that very instant, the winter man took form in front of him, ice and snow carved into the body of Frost. Ty’Lis’s spell struck him and Frost melted on contact, turning to a cascade of water that splashed to the rough grass with the stink of the ocean at low tide.
“Son of a bitch!” Oliver roared, raising the sword and charging right across the puddle that Frost had become. “ I should be dead? You should be dead!”
He brought Hunyadi’s blade around in an arc with a speed and a strength he knew were inhuman. The sword struck the Curlesh’s carapace at the neck with a metallic clang and glanced off, sending up sparks. Ty’Lis reached for him with a huge hand. Oliver spun inside his reach and knocked the arm away with another blow from his sword.
“Kill him, Bascombe!” shouted a voice.
Oliver caught a single glimpse past Ty’Lis at the Sandman. As the creature struggled against those ribbons of darkness, its murderous features changed and Oliver saw the face of Ted Halliwell. Kitsune had told them the Sandman had survived, but now he knew it was far more than that. Somehow, Halliwell had survived as well, as a monster.
In that heartbeat of distraction, Ty’Lis struck him across the face, the hard shell of the Curlesh gashing his flesh. Oliver staggered back and fell. His fingers managed to hold onto the sword, but as he began to rise, several of those ribbons of darkness-stinking of ocean magic-darted toward him and trapped his arms to his sides even as they bound his legs.
The Sandman, Halliwell, whatever it was, rose up behind Ty’Lis, but the sorcerer’s putrid tentacles ripped him apart again.
“It ends now, Bascombe,” the sorcerer said, his voice low and distant, as though coming up from inside the cavernous chest of the Curlesh.
“What’re you, a complete idiot? You blind as well as stupid?” Oliver raged at him, struggling against the black ribbons. “There’s revolution in Yucatazca, and I only got a quick look at the battlefield, dumbass, but that was enough for me to figure out you’re losing this war!”
The face of the Curlesh had no expression, but its eyes twitched and the hinged mouth opened in what might have been a mocking smile. “It matters little. Every Door leading to the ordinary world is gone. I’ve had them sealed. Only a handful of Borderkind still live, and those will be eradicated. All that remains is for me to kill you and your sister, and the Two Kingdoms will be mine. Atlantis will rule. There are more soldiers to be had, other armies to manipulate. This battle will not decide the war.”
The confirmation that Collette was alive filled Oliver with strength.
He sneered. “I hate to break it to you, asshole, but Atlantis isn’t sending any more troops. All you’ve got left is whoever’s on the ships floating off the coast. Atlantis is gone.”
Those black ribbons continued to tear at the Sandman, off to the sorcerer’s left. But Oliver had his attention now.
“You lie.”
Oliver grinned.
Oily tentacles slammed him to the ground.
An icy breeze ruffled Oliver’s hair. Tiny bits of sleet stung his right cheek. He heard the voice of the winter man in his ear. “Tell him.”
At the very same moment, Oliver saw motion on the ridge behind Ty’Lis. Astonished, he watched Collette slip between two large trees and start swiftly, quietly, down the slope toward the monstrous sorcerer, carrying an enormous war-hammer in both hands.
“ Now, ” the winter man’s voice urged.
So many had died in Atlantis. Oliver felt sickened by what he had caused there. He could not have known the extent of destruction his touch would bring, but he would regret it for the rest of his life.
After today.
“No lie. I’m Legend-Born, remember?” Oliver said hurriedly, not daring another glance at Collette for fear of giving her away as she crept toward Ty’Lis. “You saw what I did to the side of the palace in Palenque. I unmade it. You thought we were only symbols, but the power inside of us is terrifying, even to me. You put your twisted magic inside that little boy, the prince, and left him as a trap for us. You left me no choice. I put all of my power down into the island, into Atlantis. I unmade it, you bastard. It’s gone. Swallowed by the ocean. Lost under the waves, just like the old stories.”