Christopher Golden - Lost Ones

Blue Jay would have given anything to stop here, just for a while. He could have been at peace.

But Smith wouldn’t hear of it.

They started off immediately. Blue Jay danced into the sky, transforming into a small bird not usually seen at night. Cheval had likewise changed, shifting her form from exotic woman to silver-maned, green-tinted horse. Jay had never met another kelpy, but he wondered if they were all so tragically beautiful. Grin rode astride Cheval’s back. Li spread his arms wide and fire erupted from his hands. From it he forged a flaming tiger, which he mounted and rode as he had with the tiger who’d been his flesh-and-blood companion.

That had left only Smith, who meandered along with his cane. Blue Jay watched the old wanderer, who seemed to move far more slowly than the other Borderkind. Yet every time he glanced down, Smith was no further behind than he had been. The trickster had to remind himself that Smith was a magician of sorts, and the Wayfarer’s power had a great deal to do with his journeys.

All through the night they walked, traveling for hours across the rough country of the southwestern United States and making more progress than an ordinary man on horseback could have ridden in several days. They journeyed through small, sparse towns and over high passes, and Smith gave them not a moment’s rest.

Blue Jay felt many times during those long hours that he had traveled these lands before, but only when he saw the lights of a city to the east did he become certain they were in Arizona. The city was Tucson. The Mexican border was not far away.

Perhaps an hour before dawn, they came over a rise to find a barbed wire fence before them. The ground here was rough and tufted with spikes of prickly grass. Blue Jay circled above their heads and watched as Wayland Smith gestured to Li.

The burning tiger reared back and the Guardian of Fire raised a fist of glowing embers. When he opened his hand, fire rushed from his palm and blew the fence apart, charring wooden posts and scorching the ground.

Smith led the way across the Mexican border. Blue Jay flew in wide arcs, watching for the border patrol, but no one came. He felt a profound relief at that, because he knew that they would not have allowed themselves to be stopped by humans with guns. Innocents might have died.

They walked south into Mexican territory, but less than ten minutes into their journey, a buzz filled the air. Blue Jay sailed down from the sky, spun into a blur of blue light, and alighted upon the ground as a man once more. His cotton shirt and blue jeans felt soft and comfortable after so long on the wing.

“What’s that, then? That odd drumming?” Grin asked, still astride Cheval. The kelpy glanced up with wide, eloquent eyes.

Li stood there on that rough earth, burning, and stared at the sky.

But Blue Jay stared at Smith. “A helicopter. Maybe more than one. Border Patrol, I assume.”

Smith nodded. “Our friend Li is not the most inconspicuous. We’ll cross back over now. No one owns this land, except perhaps the Mexican government. We can breach the Veil from here.”

“Seems a shame,” Grin said. “Got nearly an hour till daybreak. No telling how much further south we could get in that time.”

“No, he’s right,” Blue Jay said. He caught sight of the lights of the helicopter in the distance. “When we cross over, we’ll be in Yucatazca. The war will be north of us.”

He didn’t mention that they’d have to avoid reinforcements that Ty’Lis would no doubt be sending along the Isthmus of the Conquistadors to aid the invasion of Euphrasia. Yet, when the quintet of Borderkind had slipped once more through the Veil into the sunlit world of the legendary, Blue Jay was surprised to find they met no resistance at all.

At first he thought this might be extraordinary luck, but as the hours passed, he began to suspect it had more to do with the fact that Wayland Smith was leading them. It seemed that his path took him only where he wished it to. Somehow he found the most remote areas of Yucatazca for them to journey through. Once, flying above a rain forest mountain with his comrades trekking below, Blue Jay saw an army detachment at least two thousand strong marching northward toward the Isthmus, but they were miles away.

When they camped that night, he asked Smith about it.

The Wayfarer just smiled. “I choose my steps carefully.”

The next morning they resumed their journey at speeds far greater than Blue Jay had ever managed while he, Frost, and Kitsune had been traveling with Oliver Bascombe. Many of the legendary had magic within them that granted them a certain swiftness, and others were simply faster by nature than human beings. On foot, and over short distances, neither Li nor Grin would have outpaced a reasonably fit human. But on a journey that spanned the borders between worlds and kingdoms, and with Grin astride Cheval and Li upon his burning tiger, they covered ground in a fraction of the time.

Cheval had suggested that they find a branch of the Winding Way, but Smith insisted that the detour would actually slow them down.

As the day wore on, Blue Jay found himself glad that he was not walking with the others. They were in thick jungle now, with hills and ravines and clouds of insects that seemed to be waiting for unsuspecting travelers. There were creatures in the tangled jungle, of course-some of them ordinary beasts and birds, but others figures of legend. Smith stopped at the edge of a stream to talk to something the blue bird couldn’t quite make out from the sky. Most of the legendary they passed were wild things, however, that would not want anything to do with war or politics or the city of Palenque.

In the middle of the afternoon, Blue Jay saw a glint of gold against the horizon. As he scouted ahead, flying nearer, he saw the terraced buildings and gleaming rooftops of Palenque. Exotic and elegant, it seemed like a city of gods. And perhaps it once had been. The city itself had been designed as a kind of maze, the streets turning in upon themselves over and over. As one walked deeper into the city, trying to reach the palace at the center, the streets became so narrow that it was almost necessary to walk single file. For centuries, the kings of Yucatazca had used their own capital city-and its people-as their major defenses. An army could never take Palenque that way.

No, any attack that was to succeed would have to come from within.

With one last glance, he flew down in a long arc, gliding between the trees. Spreading his wings, the bird became the man, and Blue Jay stepped down out of the sky to stand beside Wayland Smith.

Li turned his great, burning tiger around, staring at the trickster with cinder eyes. Blue Jay beckoned to him, even as Cheval cantered up behind him. Grin slid from the kelpy’s back, and with a wet, cracking noise, she took on her alluring female form once more.

“We’re near the end of the jungle,” Blue Jay said.

Smith watched him calmly.

“This isn’t the same approach we used the last time,” Cheval Bayard said, her accent lilting. She shook out her silver hair, but there was nothing sensual in the action, or in the grim expression on her face. On their last journey to Palenque, her companion, Chorti, had been killed in battle with the Perytons and the other Myth Hunters.

“Right,” Grin agreed. “If I’ve got it sussed, we’re coming in from the northwest this time.”

Li said nothing, the crackling of fire his only audible contribution.

“Remember the mountainside on the west end of the city, with the homes built right into the slope?” Blue Jay said. “We’re going to come in right at the top. The city will be down below.”

“It will not be a simple thing to climb down unseen,” Cheval said.