But what choice did he have? He was under a death warrant, an Intruder on this side of the Veil. If he could not do as Koenig had done, and persuade the monarchs of the Two Kingdoms to spare his life, he would soon be dead.
Yet Oliver felt certain that the future weighed even more heavily upon his friends than the past. There was a conspiracy afoot in the Two Kingdoms, a clandestine effort by forces unknown to eradicate all Borderkind from the world. The Myth Hunters had been pursuing them— any creature who could still freely move back and forth through the Veil, from the world of legend to the human realm— and many had already lost their lives. Others had gone into hiding. The Borderkind were so disdained that they could not count on aid from the legitimate authorities of either kingdom, nor could they know who was trustworthy.
An underground resistance had begun to form, but those with whom Frost, Oliver, and Kitsune had contact had already been captured or killed. All save Blue Jay. The time had come for the surviving Borderkind to take action. Frost had fulfilled his obligations to Oliver. He would be determined, now, to discover who was responsible for the slaughter of his fellow Borderkind, to stop the killings and take vengeance. Oliver had to assume that Kitsune and Blue Jay would accompany Frost.
And he would be alone.
In his own world, Oliver’s father had been murdered by the Sandman, who had then abducted his sister, Collette. But why had he not simply killed her? What the Sandman wanted with her and what had driven the monster to kill their father in the first place, he had no idea. But Oliver had no choice except to find Collette. And that did not even begin to address the question of how he would get near enough to the monarchs of Euphrasia and Yucatazca to plead for the time to prove he was worthy of their trust. Finding Collette had to come first.
Oliver had not yet inquired about the origin of the name of the Sorrowful River, but he found it apt. As beautiful and calming as their surroundings were, he was not soothed. There was room for little else but sorrow in his heart, though he managed to find space for dread.
Soon enough, they would reach Twillig’s Gorge and they would rest. And after that, their paths would diverge, and Oliver would be forced to make his way alone.
The Sword of Hunyadi hung heavily at his side, and though he had acquitted himself well with it back on Canna Island, he felt foolish carrying the thing. He was no warrior. No hero. He was just a smartass New England lawyer who wished he was an actor, trying to survive.
He wanted to scream, just to break the silence of his companions . . . the friends who would soon abandon him. But how could he blame them? They were in just as much danger as he was; they and all their kind.
There was nothing for Oliver to do but keep walking, and enjoy their company until their paths diverged.
Oliver had tied his jacket around his waist. Even with the cool breeze and the shade of the trees, he felt warm, but he would not leave the jacket behind. Experience had taught him that the world beyond the Veil was impossible to predict. He ran a hand over the stubble on his cheeks and rubbed at the corners of his eyes. It had been long enough that he could no longer recall what it felt like to get a decent night’s sleep. He would have given almost anything to be able to lie down there on the riverbank, use his coat as a pillow, and sleep with the gentle shushing of the wind in the branches as his lullaby. But there was to be no respite for him. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.
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 dropoff or waterfall.
When Kitsune touched his hand, he flinched away.
The sting of his reaction was in her eyes.
“Sorry, you startled me.”
Kitsune gave 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 him again and this time Oliver did not flinch away. As they walked, she took his hand, and they continued like that along the riverbank for several minutes. He took comfort in the contact, but did not fool himself into thinking that all would be well. Kitsune wanted to soothe him, but she had other allegiances, and he understood that.
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.
Oliver broke the contact. 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 here.
“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 was 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?” he whispered.
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. He could use his serpentine body to crack their bones, to crush them even as he drew their life out of their veins.
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, to nearly all involved, 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, or how many others conscripted to the effort. 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.