by J. F. Penn
He smiled at her and in his blue eyes, Bridget saw a glimmer of the man he had once been, his head thrown back in laughter as they danced on the edge of a silver lake in the Uncharted, together for a brief magical moment. She smiled at the memory, bittersweet with the knowledge that they would never again walk those trails together. She was trapped here and the man he once was had been bled out of him, cut away by a Shadow Cartographer in the dungeon of a dark castle.
John had lost more than his blood down there and he could never cross the border again. Even if he could, Bridget didn’t think he would go. He once had the confidence of the true Blood Mapwalker, one who could wield his power against the Shadow and win — but no longer. She only hoped his daughter could find her way to true power.
Bridget bent down to examine the map more closely, the waters of the Bosphorus in a faded green with ramparts of the walled city of Constantinople ringing its shores in shades of umber.
“It’s beautiful, thank you.” She gestured toward the racks of newly built shelving. “Put it on the third shelf down. That’s my to read pile — once we get through the rest of the annals.” She pointed to the stack of thick books by her desk. “We’ve still got hundreds of years to trawl through.”
John carefully rolled the map up with gentle fingers and laid it on the rack. He sat down next to the desk and pulled the next volume off the pile of annals.
“We’ll find something. The answer has to be in these somewhere.” He dusted the cover off, opened the front page and began to read.
Bridget watched him in companionable silence. John came every day to sit in the library and read by her side as they scoured the archives for anything that might help with the border. When it closed, they had not realized the ramifications. But the world beyond deteriorated, earthquakes, tsunamis and people dying because they couldn’t cross over. The Borderlands were home to many; they were an escape to many more. Now they knew that Earthside needed an escape valve, a way to release the pressure — and neither world could exist in isolation.
Bridget stared down at the figure sketch in ash and blood. John had barely glanced at it in the excitement of the rare Constantinople find, so perhaps it was nothing. But blood had always been at the heart of Mapwalker history.
There were family trees in the scrolls, but over time, many of the bloodlines had dwindled in power. Those on Earthside truly had nothing to compete with what the Shadow Cartographers did on the other side of the border: forcible breeding across magical lines to create original forms of magic. There were also tales of a drug given to pregnant women to encourage mutation in children born away from the Fertility Halls, in the hope that nature would produce new kinds of power.
As abhorrent as the practices were, Bridget understood why they did it. Every day more children of magic were born over there, some powerful, some destined to work the mines or fight as soldiers, some discarded as worthless. It was relentless and if things didn’t change, those on Earthside would be outnumbered within a generation.
But the border was the most immediate problem. They closed it to stop the plague coming over in a wave of refugees, but now that seemed like a terrible mistake. In closing the border, they doomed Earthside to an acceleration of natural disasters. They had to find a way to open it again.
Bridget pulled the next volume from the stack and began to read once more.
3
Finn Page pulled his cloak tighter against his body, wrapping the black material around his sword to hide any glint of metal. He stood motionless in the shelter of a temple wall as a band of soldiers ran past through the narrow streets, the half-moon of the Shadow Cartographers tattooed on their faces, the banner of the wolf’s head held high above them. As they rounded the corner of the street and their footsteps faded into the noise of the trader town, Finn shook his head and sighed. That had been much too close.
The price on his head was so high now that he had started to doubt even close members of the Resistance. His father, the Warlord, Kosai, offered riches and status to anyone who would turn him in, alive or dead, so he had to remain vigilant, only walking the streets when he really needed to.
Finn pulled out the vial of blue liquid from within his shirt pocket and swirled it around, inky darkness mixing with a lighter teal within. He hoped this had been worth the risk.
He set off through the warren of dirt streets, staying away from the thoroughfare of the trader town. The city was said to have no name because no one stayed long enough to call it home. Refugees arrived on its stinking shore, drifting across the ocean from Earthside to be swept up by the slave traders and sold to the mines or sent to the Fertility Halls — at least, they had arrived that way until the border closed a month ago. The trader town had emptied after days of watching the becalmed sea and now only a few slavers waited by the beach just in case, while the rest had gone to raid villages on the outer edges of the Uncharted. The tide of new arrivals had stopped altogether on that fateful day.
The last time he had seen Sienna.
Finn remembered her face that night, bruised and muddied but still beautiful, her titian hair streaming down behind her as she told him of her plan. The only way to stop the plague crossing over to Earthside was to close the border.
He had not believed it possible, but she had surprised him once again. Just as she had in the dungeons of the Fertility Halls where she had helped him find his sister moments before her bloody end. It was possible that Sienna’s magic was much stronger than even she knew, and as much as he wanted more, Finn felt the distance between them might now be too wide a gulf.
He had fled the camp that night, guilt chasing him even as he ran through the sea of rats, leaving behind thousands of refugees to die of the plague. There was nothing he could do for them and it was better to live another day than die from the bites of plague-ridden rodents or under the swords of his father’s men.
Flashes of memory from that night still haunted his dreams. Hordes of rats gnawing on the half-dead. A silver-haired girl with arms raised high, clawing life energy from those around her while mutants from the Shadow roamed the corpse-strewn camp, finishing any left alive. There was powerful magic on both sides of the border, but he was one of the majority who were merely human. Finn could only think that his role was to stand against the darkness as much as he could. The Borderlands were his world and he could not wait for the Mapwalkers or anyone else to save his people.
The Resistance had grown in the wake of the plague and mass murder of those in the camps. News had spread of the culling of infected refugees, the indiscriminate destruction of those considered useless once the invasion proved impossible.
Ordinary Borderlanders, those with no magic, had always known of the Shadow Cartographers and those who followed the dark path. It had been a minor part of life, but now, bands of mutants roamed the land, taking women and girls back to the Fertility Halls, increasingly spread across multiple locations. Those who protested, who went to try to get their wives or daughters or sisters back, were taken to Elf, the silver-haired banshee Finn had seen stalking the plague field that night. Her magical ability was like a battery, draining, storing and transforming life energy. It was said that those who faced her were dragged away afterward as a husk of skin and bone, mouths open in a last terrible scream.
Finn turned the last corner into a dirt street a few blocks back from the central slave market. The stench of fish hung in the air from the drying racks nearby, a staple food for those in the trader town, but even that was under threat now. The closing of the border had impacted the giant shoals of herring that once darted through the porous line between the worlds. Nature was out of balance and Finn was sure that those on Earthside must be suffering, too. He could only hope that Sienna was okay.
He ducked between rows of huts and stood for a moment watching the area, alert for any who might track the Resistance. A dirty tarpaulin flapped at the door of a nearby shack, drawing his eyes, but it was just the wind. Children played with a misshapen b
all near a pile of rubbish, but they didn’t even glance in his direction. Those who lived here learned to turn a blind eye almost as soon as they could walk. Better not to notice what went on in these streets.
Finn hurried to a ramshackle hut, pushed the wooden door open and ducked inside. The point of a sharp blade against his throat stopped him, the cold metal tight against his skin.
A beat of silence, then the knife dropped.
“You’re meant to whistle, you idiot.” Titus O’Byrne stepped forward into the light, sandy curls tied roughly back from his face. “I could have cut your throat.”
Finn smiled. “Just making sure you’re staying vigilant.” He walked further inside. The tiny shack was barely large enough for the two of them, both sizeable men used to more generous quarters. It smelled of yesterday’s soup, old sweat and the reek of the open sewers only meters outside but it was only a place to lie low while they investigated the latest abhorrent attempt by the Shadow Cartographers to shape the destiny of the Borderlands.
Finn placed the vial gently on the wooden tabletop. “There were soldiers everywhere and this cost us most of the gold we had left. I hope it was enough to keep the man from betraying our location, but I can’t be sure. We need to move on.”
Titus bent to look at the vial, his blue eyes reflecting the hues of the liquid within. “It’s worth it, brother. This might be the key.”
Finn smiled at his words. They were brothers in the war against the Shadow, but no one could mistake them for blood relations. Finn’s heritage was evident in his black skin and the regal bearing of an Ethiopian king. Titus was stocky and muscular, with the body of a boxer and a face to match, with mixed Irish and South African blood. They had served together several years ago in the Warlord’s army, but Titus had deserted to join the Resistance in the wake of the atrocities against the refugees, many of whom he counted amongst his kin. Titus had knowledge of the mines and training in chemistry, primarily for warfare, and now he used his talents to fight against the Shadow. He was a brother in every way that mattered.
Titus ran a fingertip along the edge of the glass vial. “There’s a midwife who lives on the other side of town near the soup kitchen. She helps women infected with this stuff. The … babies they deliver.” He shivered, as if shaking off a bad dream. “She keeps them hidden from the soldiers, but I’m not sure they’re better off …” His words trailed away.
Finn nodded. “We’ll figure out an antidote. There has to be one. But first, we have to change locations. I know somewhere that might have what you need to analyze this.” He put his hand on Titus’s shoulder. “One step at a time.”
They packed up their meager belongings, pulled cloaks around to hide their weapons and headed out into the night.
Finn led the way, cutting through narrow walkways between the shacks, navigating the warren of the shanty town on the outskirts. He had come this way many times, the makeshift city a perfect place to lie low.
Most people here were just passing through, forced on to work the mines or serve in the Warlord’s army, others for the Fertility Halls, and still more to the farmlands. There were many mouths to feed in the Borderlands, many who went hungry and took handouts from the soldiers who controlled the food supply. The blue poison was an addictive liquid that the destitute begged for, that dulled their minds and took the edge off their hunger. It was added to food in the trader town and handed out on street corners, sometimes in exchange for pleasure quickly taken.
A giggle came from the shadows as they passed by. A young woman sat with her back against a dirt wall, filthy and stinking clothes stretched over a swollen belly. Maybe only a few weeks until she gave birth. She might have been pretty once, but now she looked ravaged, her skin taking on the hue of a corpse. Yet she smiled coquettishly, as if she wandered through fields of poppies without a care in the world.
“Take your pleasure for some blue, why don’t you, boys?”
The sweet smell of something like marijuana hung in the air but it was nothing so mundane as that form of escape. The blue drug was known by many names. Some even called it Liberation because those who took it were finally free from their enslavement, no longer caring about death — or those they left behind. The women who took it gave birth to mutants, many taken to the Castle of the Shadow, most never seen again.
Titus stopped and bent down to the young woman. He pulled half a loaf of bread from his pack and gave it to her. “Eat this. You’ll feel better.”
She looked confused, as if she hadn’t seen real food in a long time and didn’t know what to do with it. Then she tore at the bread with both hands, stuffing pieces quickly into her mouth. Titus turned away, his shoulders stooped as if he carried the weight of her suffering away, but Finn knew the young woman and her unborn child were already lost. They walked on through the streets, leaving her behind. One more life consumed by the Shadow.
Finn heard trickles of information from his Resistance sources, some undercover in the castle itself, risking their lives to reveal the truth. The blue drug twisted the genetics of the unborn, adding a dash of chaos into the mix so new mutations emerged. On Earthside, the numbers of those with magic dwindled, but here in the Borderlands, their numbers grew every day, cultivated as part of a new order dedicated to the dark plans of the Shadow Cartographers. The children were tested for their magic and many were found wanting. They were taken for sacrifice at the Tophet, or shoveled into the plague pits. Those with a touch of magic were siphoned, drained of what little they had. Finn had heard tales of the silver-haired Elf sapping newborns dry, leaving their tiny corpses as husks to blow away in the wind.
Finn’s sister, Isabel, had died in the Castle of the Shadow, his baby niece lost to him when the traitor, Jari, had betrayed him in the hunt for the Map of Plagues. Titus, too, was driven by love to find an antidote to the blue, but Finn knew it went deeper for both of them. There were rumors that the drug was made in a camp by a lake out east and for the sake of all the sisters and daughters of the Borderlands, they were determined to find the source and destroy it.
The edge of the city soon bled into the desert, ever encroaching sand that claimed more dwellings by the day. Finn and Titus trudged out into the dunes, the way made harder as their feet sank down with every step. Far ahead, the stark lines of a ruined temple cut a line through the cliff at the base of an escarpment. As they drew closer, Finn remembered the last time he had come here — with Sienna and the Mapwalker team, on the way to the forgotten city of Alexandria and the library at its heart. But this time, the temple was a waypoint for a different reason and Finn could only hope that the sanctuary still held its long-forgotten treasure.
By the time Finn and Titus made it to the entrance of the ruined temple, clouds hid the face of the moon. Statues of the old gods stood in alcoves around the walls, some with faces smashed in by followers of Moloch, devourer of children, and others painted with curses in languages from foreign shores. Finn walked slowly to the stone altar, his footsteps echoing in the empty space. Dried garlands of marigolds and lilies bound with ivy hung from its edge, evidence of believers who still honored the lost religion. The temple might be empty now, but its power still lingered.
Finn knelt in front of the altar, holding his sword in front of him as he had knelt so long ago back when he entered his father’s service as a soldier in the Shadow Guard. But now he pledged allegiance not to the half-moon, but to the people of the Borderlands, and to the Resistance. He prayed for guidance and for strength in the inevitable battle to come.
A minute later, Finn stood up, leaning on his sword with a scrape of metal on stone.
Titus emerged from the shadows. “We need to get out of here before dawn. Patrols come here all the time.”
Finn nodded toward the back of the temple where stone steps led down into darkness. “This way.”
He pulled a metal torch from a bracket on the wall. It had a small patch of oil left inside. Finn lit it and carried the flame down the stairs.
&n
bsp; A ritual bathing pool filled the chamber below, empty of water except for a few brackish puddles. A mosaic of cavorting gods in faded colors hinted at the temple pleasures in earlier times, but now it was only a breeding ground for mosquitoes.
At the opposite end of the room, an arched doorway led into darkness topped with a carving of heaped bones.
Finn walked on, through the arch and down a spiral staircase into the halls of the dead below the temple. Torchlight flickered across alcoves in the walls, some with linen-wrapped desiccated corpses, others with piles of bones.
“Only the most powerful were buried down here,” Finn said, his voice echoing through the chamber. “There is one who was buried with everything he worked on, so no one could continue his quest. Superstition keeps people away even now.”
He stopped in front of a massive boulder roughly hewn into an oval shape and rolled in front of an opening. There were symbols carved into the rock — triangles of fire and water, the circle of the golden sun, and curved lines representing the metals of the alchemist.
In the center, a roughly carved skull, eyes of pitted rock that seemed to stare out from the abyss. A warning in every culture. Death lies within.
4
The door to the Antiquities department of the Ministry of Maps was suitably ancient. Some said it was made of wood from the cedars of Lebanon that King Solomon spoke of in his Song of Songs. Others that it was hewn from the spars of Greek warships after the sack of Troy. Love and war, appropriate reminders of the inevitability of history. Zoe Saroyan pushed open the door and stepped into what had become her world in the last month.
She had transferred from the Ministry office attached to the British Library in London, a promotion of sorts since the corridors of Bath were hallowed ground and most ancient maps now rested here. Zoe could sense the difference in power. The earth almost throbbed with it, amplified by the magic of those who worked within. But it had been thrown off balance, wounded by the Borderlander attack. The fire destroyed so much, and now it was all hands on deck to restore what remained.