by J. F. Penn
"Are you sure that's what it looked like?"
Mila nodded.
"Then it was Jenny, part of your father's team, Sienna. She was an Illustrator."
Xander turned away, cursing under his breath.
"The fetish map you saw is a version of our world twisted into something darker. It is not real yet – but it could be. Was there anything else that might help you get back there?"
Mila shook her head.
Bridget thought for a moment. "There might be something. Mila, help Perry and Xander prepare for the mission. Sienna, follow me."
They walked together back up the corridor to the wooden door marked Blood Gallery. Bridget stopped outside.
"Blood maps are part of Mapwalker heritage. Each Blood Cartographer tattoos themselves over a lifetime of magic. The tattooing is part ritual, part protecting that which we love." She rolled up the sleeve of her shirt to reveal a tattoo of Dublin, the lines of the port and the River Liffey, marks for the castle and the cathedral. Her eyes softened as she looked at Sienna. "Your grandfather tattooed these for me."
Bridget unlocked the door. "When a Blood Cartographer dies, their skin is kept as a powerful map. It might seem macabre, but the layers of blood and tattoos over generations have kept the border sealed and safe."
She pushed open the door. A cool blast of air rushed out and Sienna's skin goose-bumped in response. Bridget stepped inside. "Follow me."
Like the dungeon, this gallery was hung with skins, but they were displayed with respect here, rather than roughly nailed to the walls. Each was framed with the name of the dead inscribed beneath it, and a portrait or a photo of the Cartographer alongside their five-pointed compass rose. It smelled of tanned leather, of a museum, not of death. But the skins were the same macabre items they had seen in the dungeon.
"This is one of the oldest Blood Galleries," Bridget explained, "although there is one in every major Ministry location around the world. Each Blood Cartographer understands that this is where we will end up. Part of our responsibility is tattooing while we're alive in order to seal the borders with our blood."
Sienna shivered as she looked around at the skins. "So what were the skins we saw in the Borderlands?"
Bridget frowned. "They would have been forcibly tattooed. Jenny was only an Illustrator, her magic wasn't strong, but the Shadow Cartographers could have used her skin to inscribe with blood and pervert what we have done as a sacred rite for generations."
"Who are they?" Sienna whispered.
"Think of the border as the line between light and dark," Bridget explained. "Those who operate beyond it are known as Shadow Cartographers. They have the same magic as us, but it's stronger over there. It gets even more powerful the further out they go, beyond the Borderlands into the Uncharted." She turned and indicated the skins. "But we have the numbers. There are still more of us than them … for now, at least."
"So why can't you just take control? Why are there so many incursions over the border?"
Bridget sighed. "Political events have tipped the balance in recent years. There are more people than ever pushed forcibly over the border, and they remember what it was like over here. Those people want to get home. But the border has been porous one way for generations, and only Mapwalkers have been able to cross both ways. Now we've heard that this Map of Shadows will remake the border in their favor."
"What will that mean?" Sienna asked. "I'm still not clear on how the border works."
Bridget smiled. "It's not like a hard border, patrolled by men with guns and dogs, where you need to present a passport to cross. Think of it more like a river, which acts as an ever-moving flow. When you cross it, you might enter at one point and emerge at another. And it can alter the banks on either side over time."
Bridget walked further into the room, stopping at one of the older skins set behind glass in a temperature-controlled environment. "This is a good example." She pointed at the lines, a group of islands off the eastern coast of Canada. "This is Newfoundland, and this is the Isle of Demons, which first appeared on maps in the sixteenth century, tattooed by one of the new world blood mages back then. But it disappeared in the mid-seventeenth century, and it's now part of the Borderlands. No one cared enough to keep it this side, so the darkness encroached and took it over."
Bridget turned, her eyes serious. "This could happen to Bath. This could happen to anywhere Earth-side."
"Why do the Shadow Cartographers want this land so much?" Sienna asked.
"Think about an olive tree planted in the soil that exists in the same place for a thousand years. The descendants of the original owner still think it belongs to them, but in later generations, as time passes and the man moves away, new owners come and resettle the land. The descendants of the new owners think it belongs to them too. There are many in the Borderlands who believe that Earth-side is still their home. But time moves differently over there and what they left behind often doesn't exist anymore."
"But who's to say which side is right?" Sienna asked.
Bridget smiled. "This is why you're meant to be with us. You see things differently because you haven't been brought up as a Mapwalker. Our mission is always to protect the border, to retain Earth-side as it has always been."
The door opened and Mila walked in, followed by Xander and Perry. Bridget turned to the four of them. "We don't have time to train you any further. Bath has the most ancient gate and the most well-fortified. If the border breaks here, England may fall. Make no mistake about it. We are at war. Some of you have seen what happens to slaves at the edges of the Borderlands. That could be our fate if you do not find the Map of Shadows."
Xander slouched against the doorframe. "No offense to Sienna, but why is she involved in this? She doesn't even know what ability she has."
He looked over at her and shrugged an apology. Sienna smiled back. "Oh, I understand. I didn't even know about this place until today, and now you're telling me I'm going into the Borderlands to find something I don't know anything about. It seems pretty crazy to me too."
Bridget raised a hand to silence them. "Mila mapwalked with Sienna today to a castle at the heart of the Borderlands. I've heard of it but never found it even though I looked, and I've ranged the Borderlands for twenty-five years. There is something that links Sienna to that dungeon, and the Blood Gallery suggests they might be creating the new map there, so you will need her. Your mission is to find the Map of Shadows and bring it back to the Ministry so the fire mages can burn it. Then we can re-strengthen the Border before it is weakened so much that the edges are frayed for ever."
"Why can't you come with us?" Sienna's voice was soft.
"I …" Bridget paused, her eyes full of regret and Sienna sensed she was hiding something. Then her voice hardened.
"It is your time. Your star charts overlap at this point in history. We have seen this conflict coming for many years, and we knew this day would come. Of course, we had hoped to prevent it. That's why the last Mapwalker team went over. But the prophecy speaks of the children of powerful mages coming together to defeat the shadow. The Illuminated Cartographer saw you would come, Sienna." Bridget shook her head. "I have been the one with unbelief. But now we don't have much time. You need to follow the footsteps of the last Mapwalker team.”
"Why doesn't Sienna just mapwalk us back to this basement dungeon?" Perry asked. "Surely that would get us closer to where we need to be."
"I don't know how to get back there," Sienna said, acutely aware of how inadequate her ability was. "I don't even know how I did it the first time."
"Go easy on her," Mila said. "Remember how it was starting out for all of us."
Bridget nodded. "I know you're not a team yet, and if we had all the time in the world I would take you out into the Cotswolds, train you, build you into a team as I did with the last group of Mapwalkers. But we don't have time now. I have to trust you will find it in yourselves to look after each other. This is your home. All of you stand to lose something i
f the Borderland bleeds through, and if the Shadow Cartographers take the Ministry…" Bridget trailed off, and in her silence, Sienna sensed what might happen, how the skins in the dungeon were created and what fate might await them if they failed.
"So how are we meant to find it?" Perry asked. "If you weren't able to locate the castle, how are we meant to?"
"There are many ways into the Borderlands, and you will go in through the same map the last group went through, a map that has the power to take you deeper into the Borderlands than any other, a map that has been protected for a thousand years."
9
The next morning Sienna rose early, excited to be off on the mission, anticipation rising within her. She had spent the night in her grandfather's flat. Although technically it was her flat now, she couldn't yet think of it that way. She had lain awake thinking of him last night, how she wished that she had got to know him while he was alive, but there was no time for regret now. She had eventually fallen asleep, dreaming of flayed skin and beasts from the edge of the map.
As she ate her breakfast, Sienna leafed through some of the journals, looking for anything that might mention a dungeon, a castle, anything her grandfather had written about the Borderlands. But the books were mostly sketches of what he had seen, strange enough, but nothing obvious to help them now. Did her father keep journals like this, and where might they be?
The bell rang, interrupting her thoughts. Sienna opened the door to find Mila standing outside, two takeaway coffees in her hands.
"Thanks. That's exactly what I need." Sienna smiled and took one. She indicated her small bag. "I've brought everything I have. It's not much. I didn't expect to stay long."
Mila laughed. "Don't worry, we have everything we need in the military packs we take with us. There are also dead drops where we leave equipment, weapons, rations and other things over the border." She grinned. "I might also have some extra stashes the boys don't know about."
She pulled a small rolled-up leather map from her bag. "But you should keep this with you. It's your star chart. Just in case."
Sienna took it and put it deep within her pack as a horn beeped from the end of the road. Perry sat at the wheel of a four-wheel drive, Xander in the front next to him.
"Come on, you two," Perry called out. "We need to get going. Hereford awaits."
"Hereford was once Welsh," Xander said, as they drove out of town. "The border has changed multiple times. An early charter from 1189 had Hereford situated in Wales, as granted by Richard the First of England. But now it's English."
"And proudly so," Perry said in his impeccable accent, keeping his eyes on the road.
Sienna felt a little out of place in the car. She was an outsider but the other three didn't seem like a well-honed team either. They were more like a group of students going to a festival together. Xander turned up the radio as they headed west over the Severn Bridge and north through Wales. It wasn't long before they arrived in Hereford and pulled up near the cathedral.
Sienna looked up at the twelfth-century Romanesque church. "It's gorgeous."
Perry stretched as he got out of the car. "This was the Saxon capital of West Mercia in the eighth century, then the Welsh targeted the city in the eleventh century supported by the Vikings. There was once a castle here as big as Windsor in size and scale. The Welsh attacks were repelled, and it became a stronghold for the campaigns of English kings during the Welsh Marches. Pretty cool."
They walked towards the cathedral.
"We need to find a specific book in the chained library," Mila said. "Your father and his team came here before they went missing, Sienna."
"Sometimes I think a missing father might be better than any father at all," Perry muttered under his breath.
They walked into the cathedral and looked up at the decorative Norman columns and arches. Stone tombs with effigies of knights stood in alcoves off the nave and at the south end, there was a Norman font large enough to immerse a child. Knights Templar in chainmail armor decorated one of the tombs. The Bishop buried inside had been a Grand Master long ago. Underneath their feet were markers of the dead, those buried here for years, their bones resting under the flagstones, carved names fading under the footsteps of the faithful.
They walked past the choir, and Mila pointed to a bare patch on the wall. "The Mappa Mundi hung here for many years, but now it's kept safe in a separate building. That's what we're here to see."
"As well as the chained library," Perry said. "The Mapwalker team used the Mappa Mundi to travel through, but it's big, and we need to know which part. There are many entrances to the Borderlands, and we need to make sure we take the right one."
They walked out of the church to the special center where the library and the map were held.
"Mappa Mundi means map of the world," Mila explained, as they walked across the forecourt. "It dates to around 1300AD and gives a view of how the medieval monks understood the world back then."
They entered the temperature-controlled room to find the Mappa Mundi lit with dim lights behind glass. Sienna walked closer to get a better look. It was truly incredible, a single piece of vellum illustrated by the hand of faith, with representations of myth and legend next to places that really existed. Perhaps this was the truth of maps. In part, they reflected the world as it actually was, and in part, they reflected the way the world could be, or as it was imagined. As Sienna looked at the Mappa Mundi, she began to understand why her father had gone on this quest.
At the very top, an enthroned Christ held his hands up to show the stigmata, the wounds of crucifixion. Next to him, believers rose from their graves and entered Heaven, while on the other side the damned were stripped, chained and dragged down to Hell where a great beast waited to devour them. Sienna shivered as she looked at the creature, imagining an Illustrator like Xander drawing it and calling it into existence. She looked over at his handsome profile. Was it possible that he and others like him could create something so terrible?
Sienna turned back to the map. An inaccessible circular island at the top of the world represented Eden, surrounded by a ring of fire and closed gates. A serpent waited while Eve held out her hand to accept the apple, ready to taste the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Sienna understood her temptation, her need to know, because that's just how she felt about the Borderlands right now.
There was a picture of Noah's Ark, the woven hull floating above a sea of red when God sent the great flood to wipe out the wickedness of humanity. The map showed a path through the Red Sea, the color still fresh after so many years, marking the wanderings of the Israelites from Egypt, out of slavery and into the Promised Land.
There were beasts on the map, a unicorn, a lynx slinking towards the southern coast of the Black Sea, a war elephant with a tower on its back, a strange parrot creature with a curled tail. There were strange-looking people too: a man with no head, only eyes on his chest holding a sword, another with one huge foot. There were troglodytes, cave dwellers in Africa, and men with heads of dogs.
"What is this map about?" Sienna asked. "It can't be real, surely?"
"A map is never truly real," Mila said. "It's only one aspect of the reality of the creator. But we need to pay attention to the cities on the map. Maybe your father took the last Mapwalker team through one of those?"
Hereford was marked by a tiny building on the River Wye, almost rubbed off by pilgrims touching it over the years. Jerusalem was right in the center of the map, with a circular wall and a castle city with eight towers, marking the place of crucifixion.
Rome was shown as a towering cathedral with text next to it: 'Rome, head of the world, holds the bridle of the spherical earth.' Towers and pinnacles marked Paris, where the medieval University focused on philosophy and theology.
"The map is apparently a single piece of calfskin, but I think it's something different." Xander bent as close as he could get without the alarms going off. The map was drawn on the flesh side of the skin, not the hair side, ma
king the map undulate as one was naturally more taut than the other. "I think it's the skin of an animal from the Borderlands. There's a vibration from it as if it calls to go home. Maybe something wandered over back then, but it's certainly more than just calfskin from Earth-side."
A labyrinth caught Sienna's eye, a circular maze, like the one in Crete with the Minotaur at the center. In the Middle Ages, many medieval cathedrals had labyrinths and pilgrims would walk around them looking for a way to the center, metaphorically searching for a way to God. She had visited Chartres Cathedral with her father years ago and they had walked the famous labyrinth together.
Mila pointed to a particular area of the map. "This is the camp of Alexander the Great. His conquest of the Persian Empire and domination of the known world was a popular theme, and there are several references on the map about Alexander. This restraining wall was built to save the world from the destructive force of the Sons of Cain." She turned to Sienna. "Does anything here seem familiar?"
Sienna stared at the map, trying to see it with her father's eyes, trying to understand what he might have seen. He had traveled to many of the places portrayed but her eyes kept being drawn back to the labyrinth. "I'm not sure. Maybe we should look at the chained library. We can come back and check the map afterwards."
They walked through into the largest surviving chained library in the world. A librarian stood talking to a tourist group in front of them. "There are over 1500 books in the library and several hundred medieval manuscripts. There has been a library here since the year 800, and people still come from all over the world to examine them."
As the tourist group moved on, the librarian nodded in welcome, greeting the little group and then indicating the stacks. "Our most popular works are the Hereford Gospels, the Hereford Breviary and the sermons of St Bede."
She opened one of the books chained to a wooden lectern. "As you can see, there are miniature paintings and incredible illumination around the edges of many of the books. They were chained for their security, as there weren't very many books back in those days. We keep a few like this for historical accuracy." They walked through to the Hereford Gospels. "This is possibly the earliest surviving book made in Wales containing all four Gospels. It survived the sacking of the cathedral, and is revered as a relic for making it through the fire and destruction."