by J. F. Penn
“It’s done.”
Mila looked into the darkness. “I still don’t see anything.”
“You won’t, but it’s there. A funnel of strings that will take us down to the exit below.”
“Will it hold if those creatures attack?” Sienna asked.
Zoe shrugged. “I hope so.” A screech from above. “But let’s not wait around to find out.” She looked at the team. “You trust Sienna to walk you through the map. Trust me now.”
She stepped out into blackness, shimmering strands of the weave world around her. A sense of power thrummed in the cords as she slid down the funnel toward the rock wall below. The net shifted with the weight of the others as they followed Zoe down. She rested her hands on the strings, sending energy back up to them, cushioning her friends, surrounding them with light. The gleam reflected off the scales of the serpents as they pushed against the lattice, but Zoe knew they could not penetrate her magic — as long as she could hold it together.
She reached the bottom of the cave floor and stood, arms raised, as the others landed around her. Behind them, a round boulder blocked the way ahead.
Mila rolled up to stand. “That was pretty crazy.”
“I can’t hold the lattice for much longer.” Zoe felt the push of the serpents increase behind the light, the weight of their bodies, their slithering presence and hissing sound permeating her net.
One tiny snake dropped through. Perry stamped on its head, crushing it to a pulp. “Then let’s get out of here. Help me with this.”
Together they pushed the boulder away from the tunnel mouth and eased inside. It was big enough for two abreast if they crouched away from the low ceiling. Mila and Sienna went in first, and Perry helped Zoe inside. She backed away, pulling her net closer and closer, until finally, she used it to pull the boulder back in front of them.
In the darkness beyond, thick bodies thudded against stone as the snakes tried to reach them. But the barrier held.
Perry opened his palm, holding a flicker of light aloft as the four of them cowered in the tunnel. Zoe saw her own exhaustion reflected in the faces of the others. They were physically drained and almost spent of magic. They couldn’t fight another battle today.
Mila pulled Kendal Mint Cake from her pack, broke off some pieces and they ate in silence, letting the sugar sweetness return some energy.
“Where next?” Perry asked. “What’s at the end of this tunnel? Please, not another creature cavern.”
“From what I can remember, it’s not much further,” Zoe said softly. “We’ve almost made it through.” Her words sounded convincing, but she still felt a presence in the caves, something watching them, something aware of their trespass.
Sienna nodded. “We need to get out of this cave system before we rest. Come on.” She got up and walked on, half-crouched, along the tunnel. Mila slowly followed, stretching her limbs as if frozen from the chill of the cave.
Perry helped Zoe up. “That was impressive,” he whispered. “Nicely done.”
Zoe flushed, appreciating his words as she walked ahead of him in the tunnel, his tiny light a welcome warmth at her back.
Sienna kept her face toward the tunnel ahead, even as Perry’s flame lit the way from behind. She didn’t want the others to see her expression because she was terrible at hiding her thoughts and right now, they were dark indeed.
A Shadow presence watched them, she was sure of it, and she thought Zoe felt it, too. The Weaver was a wildcard and something in her magic called to Sienna’s own, like the young woman was always meant to be part of the Mapwalker team. And yet, she seemed to know so little about her gift. Sienna smiled to herself in the darkness. She had been in that position herself not so long ago. Perhaps she was still testing the bounds of her own magic.
Their footsteps echoed in the passage as it looped around, each turn making it harder to sense where they were under the earth. Sienna shivered as the chill air touched her skin, turning her breath to frosted mist as she walked. She could smell minerals in the surrounding rock, metallic with a hint of moss and lichen. It was strange to feel so untethered, to have no place of physical reference. This place negated her own magic, because she needed to know where she was and where she was going in the world. Neither was clear right now.
“What’s that?”
Mila’s voice brought Sienna back to the rocky tunnel. There was a light ahead, brighter than the reach of Perry’s flame. It glowed a warm orange, a welcoming glimmer in the dark and cold of this never-ending cave system. But the biting cold snaked into Sienna’s blood as she sensed the Shadow strengthening with every step. This place was no sanctuary, but there was no choice. They had to keep moving onward.
Finally, she clambered out of the end of the tunnel, emerging into a hollowed cavern that stretched high above into darkness. Stone walls with arched doorways created a circular space and above them, hundreds, maybe thousands, of niches cut into the rock, like a mausoleum waiting for the remains of the dead.
The light came from an altar, an enormous slab of rock surrounded by thick beeswax candles. Clearly someone tended the place, but Sienna didn’t want to find out who would venture down so far.
Mila walked over to a niche and picked up a sharp-edged rock.
Perry came closer to examine it with her. “Obsidian. Volcanic glass.” He looked around at the other niches. “There are many different kinds of rock here. What is this place?”
“The map indicated a temple at the heart of the border,” Zoe said. “A place between the worlds.”
Sienna sensed a shift in the air, like a breeze from above or the last sigh of a dying soul. Perhaps there had been balance here once upon a time, but now it reeked of decay, withering every second their worlds were held apart.
Mila dropped the obsidian, her hold weakened by the toll of the journey. A crash of rock splintering.
“Sorry! I’m so tired.” She shook her head and Perry bent to help as she tried to sweep up the fragments from the ground.
“Ow!” Mila jerked upright as a shard bit into her skin. She held up a finger, a drop of blood rolling down … dripping …
Sienna watched it fall toward the slivers of broken obsidian as it reflected the light like glass. A moment of dread rippled through her as blood touched stone.
A smoky haze rose up.
Mila and Perry stepped back as shadow billowed from the rock, a bloom of darkness that coalesced into the faint shape of a woman. With soft curves draped in folds of silk, her lips a perfect bow, her cheekbones high and aristocratic, she looked like an angel trapped in smoke. She spun around in the mausoleum; her face twisted in grief and madness. Her eyes darted around the cave — a trapped, tormented soul, desperate for escape.
Her gaze alighted on Sienna, and her expression changed. She bared her teeth, growling like a wild animal, her delicate features dissolving into decaying flesh hanging off a skeletal frame. Her visage shifted to that of a demon as she opened a vast mouth with bloody chunks of flesh inside.
She rushed at Sienna with a howl of rage.
12
Finn and Titus waited until night fell once more before leaving the safety of the underground hideout for the streets of the trader town. The sounds of raucous laughter came from the usually busy slave square, drunken merchants idling away the hours until their trade in human flesh began once more. While the flow of immigrants had died down when the border closed, they still sold slaves from Uncharted villages to work in the far reaches of the Borderlands. There was no end to the appetite for servants and with the breeding program ever expanding, girls were particularly sought after.
Finn pulled his cloak tighter and ducked into the alleyway behind the houses, heading away in the opposite direction, Titus right behind. They had no time for a fight, but Finn couldn’t help but clench his fists in anticipation of such a confrontation. He knew that Titus would appreciate letting out some of his pent-up anger and there could be no more deserving group of self-serving bastards than the slave traders. But t
hey could not attract the attention of the Shadow Guards tonight. They had to get out of town undetected.
They slipped one more time through the warren of streets, ducking and diving into the shelter of shacks, behind shadows cast by ruined walls, a broken place that somehow sustained a pulse of life. Titus took the lead as they emerged from the northern edge, heading away from the desert toward the mountain pass that would lead to the Resistance camp. But instead of heading up to the ridge, they turned into a line of thick forest.
Once they were out of sight of the road, Titus paused, his face turned toward the mountain pass. The air smelled of fresh pine after rain. The hoot of an owl came through the boughs of the trees above, and Finn looked up to see the silhouette of the hunter on the wing.
He waited in silence, watching emotion play over his friend’s face as Titus fought the urge to return to the side of his beloved. He imagined Maria up there, her bloody corpse washed and laid beside what was left of the baby. Perhaps they had already been buried.
If Titus wanted to go and mourn them, Finn knew he would proceed alone. He thought of Sienna and wondered if he would ever have a chance to love as Titus did. Such love came at a price, but it was worth trying for. After he had left her in the plague camp that night, Finn’s anger had been all-consuming. Sienna had saved her world at the expense of his, but would he have chosen any differently? In the end, we all choose our own tribe over others.
Besides, it was not for the Earthside Mapwalkers to save his people — Borderlanders must save their own. He and Titus were but two of the growing Resistance, but their mission would light a flame that others could follow. The future of the Borderlands did not have to rest with those of the Shadow anymore.
Titus turned, the tracks of tears down his cheeks shining in the moonlight. He took a deep breath and nodded once. “We go on, brother. I will write her name in the sky with the blue flames of the burning crop and honor her death with the end of that which killed her.”
He reached out a hand, and they clasped arms, a bond that went far beyond blood. Finn knew they would rather die together on the mission than return to this place without achieving their goal.
Titus walked on, Finn right behind, as they wove between the trees, their footsteps crunching on a bed of fallen pine needles. The sounds of night hunters came through the branches, the bark of a fox, the roar of a mountain lion in the distance.
When they reached a break in the trees, Titus checked the stars before leading the way once more. Finn hadn’t served in this part of the Borderlands. He could navigate around Old Aleppo and its surrounding region with his eyes closed, but here in the mountains, Titus was the expert. He had been with a ranger troop, searching far and wide for resources that the Shadow Cartographers could use in their never-ending war.
As they went on, walking became more like a meditation, their footsteps in time as they marched under shelter of the forest until the fingers of dawn crept across the sky catching the snowcap of the mountain peak high above them.
As the demon enveloped her, Sienna reached for her magic in a desperate attempt to get away from its grip. But before she could travel, a suffocating mist descended, choking her, wrapping her limbs in a cold dense fog, pinning her arms to her sides. She could hear the cries of the others as they tried to find her, but she was somewhere else now, somewhere between the worlds.
The woman had disappeared, but Sienna could feel her imprint all around. A desperate melancholy. She had lost her child, her family, her home — and her soul. A deep sense of rage throbbed through the air, an anger that would rip flesh from bone to defend a loved one. At the same time, a hopelessness, a desire for oblivion, a need to extinguish life in order to end pain. Sienna doubled over as a wave of anguish washed over her. She cried out in understanding as the world went black.
“Sienna, Sienna, wake up, please.”
The voice was insistent, but Sienna couldn’t move. Cold deadened her limbs, heavy with ice, as hard as the obsidian in the surrounding walls, souls trapped within each one.
She opened her eyes. Mila bent over, relief on her face, Perry and Zoe behind, standing close together as if finding solace in one another.
“We couldn’t get to you,” Mila said. “We thought you were gone.”
“It’s okay. I know what this place is now,” Sienna whispered, her voice croaking from the effort.
Mila helped her sit up, leaning back against the rock wall as Perry passed over a water bottle.
Sienna took several sips before speaking. “This place sits right under the border, at the place where the worlds meet. Sometimes people are lost between Earthside and the Borderlands — over water, in the air, sometimes when the border shifts by deliberate action or chance. These souls are trapped here in obsidian, locked into volcanic rock, creatures of neither world.”
Mila looked around at the many thousands of niches, each with a captured soul inside. “Should we smash all the rocks? Set them free?”
Sienna shook her head. “No. They can’t exist anymore. They are like flies in amber, captured at the moment of crossing. The woman you released is one with the Shadow now. I don’t know if that’s any better than where she was.”
Sienna couldn’t share what else she had experienced — kinship, an affinity within her blood for those between one world and the next. A sense that fate swirled ever closer.
“I’m okay, honestly.” She stood up. “The good news is that this is the center of the border, so we’re almost on the other side.”
Zoe nodded. “Yes, it’s not much further.” She turned around, her arm outstretched as she pointed at the many arches surrounding them. “We just have to find the right way out.”
Sienna found her gaze drawn to the altar. “Can you guys start looking? I need a minute to pull myself together.”
Perry and Zoe went in one direction and Mila in the other, working their way around the base of the mausoleum, checking each door for any distinguishing features or a hint of the way forward.
Sienna walked to the altar, the smell of beeswax lingering in the air as the flicker of flame drew her in. The candles were as thick as the waist of a man with multiple wicks designed to burn for months on end. A constant light in the darkness. A representation of hope in every culture.
There was a mosaic above the altar, each tile a precious stone fixed to the rock behind. Its backdrop depicted a vortex of light and shadow, strings of silver and black twisting together in an everlasting web. A representation of balance, perhaps?
Sienna leaned over the altar to examine the mosaic more closely. There were more colors entwined within — a line of rubies scattered amongst the black and silver, behind and between the lines. In the foreground, a young woman clothed in robes of Marian blue stood with upturned palms in surrender, her face lifted to the heavens, her features obscured by silver mist. Scarlet gems streamed from slashes on her arms and with a start, Sienna realized what it showed.
Blood magic at the very heart of the border.
She stepped back, heart pounding, her gaze fixed on the woman whose blood maintained the border. She thought of Bridget back in the Ministry, maps entwined in her veins, ink mingled with her blood. The book on her desk with the sketch of the figure in a vortex of shadow. Could Bridget be the balance?
Or could the voice that called to her from the Tower of the Winds be such a creature? And if so, did that mean its power could never be vanquished?
“Come and look at this.” Zoe’s voice echoed through the vault. “I think it must be the way out.”
Sienna took one last look at the mosaic figure, fixing the image in her mind, then turned away from the altar, pushing down her unease as she joined the others.
The door was thick oak, patterned with intricate carvings of a spiked mountain range. A massive keyhole, far bigger than any human lock, sat under a handle carved in the shape of a lemur.
“Each portal has a distinct image,” Zoe explained. “But the map I saw suggested a forest of bar
bed stone like this image.”
Perry shrugged. “It’s as good a guess as any and I’m keen to get out of here as fast as possible.” He pushed down on the handle. The door didn’t budge. He pushed harder, slamming his body against the door, then raised his hands, conjuring his fire, ready to burn their way out.
Zoe placed a hand on his arm. “Wait. Let me try.”
She walked to the door and lifted her hands, her fingers weaving in the air in front of the lock. Sienna watched her magic in action, wondering at how Zoe manipulated reality. The weaver magic was most akin to her own, shaping the world anew, gently encouraging a shift that others could only achieve with brute force.
The lock clicked.
Zoe pushed down on the handle, and the door opened.
Sienna smelled the tropical rainforest before she saw it, a heady scent of wet leaves and night flowers that swept into the dead cavern on a warm breeze. It was dark up ahead and as the team walked through the door and into the trees, a bright moon shone above in a field of stars.
The rhythmic chirp of cicadas greeted them as the call of a night bird rang out above and the hoop-hoop of a monkey echoed through the trees. The air was humid and Sienna could feel sweat pooling at the base of her spine as they stood in silence. Was this even the right way?
Between the trees, spiked shards of needle-shaped peaks surrounded them, moonlight reflecting off blades of rock. A narrow path wound through the forest, the way ahead marked by a cairn of stones left by previous travelers.
Mila turned with a smile on her face. “This is the Borderlands. I can feel it.”
Sienna nodded. “I sense it, too, but we need to rest before we travel on.” The exhaustion of the cave journey crept through her bones, fatigue from physical exertion and the use of magic draining the energy from her. The others must feel the same. She still had a faint unease, but the sense of being watched had dissipated a little. The sounds of the surrounding forest were curiously welcoming, as if they were all just animals seeking shelter for the night.