by J. F. Penn
Zoe’s words about Elf ran through her mind. What did the young woman intend at the Tower of the Winds?
There was only one way to find out. It was time she faced whatever called in her nightmares.
“Morning,” Finn whispered, his breath caressing her ear as he shifted position, wrapping his arms more tightly about her. As he pulled her closer. Sienna could feel his muscular body down the length of her back and she longed to stay right there, sheltered in his warmth. But the sun rose higher in the sky and every minute that passed was another minute that Elf traveled before them.
Titus sat up, yawned and stretched his arms. He looked over and smiled as he caught Sienna’s gaze. “I’ll make coffee. You lovebirds stay right there.”
He set up a small fire near the entrance to the cave then pulled his pack over, scouring through it for matches.
“Damn, I must have dropped them when we set off the charges.” He looked over at Finn. “You have any?”
“Let me do it.” Perry’s voice was weak but Sienna heard determination as he rocked up to his hands and knees and crawled to the pile of wood, Zoe helping him with a steady arm. Sienna sat up, Finn sitting with her, all of them willing him on.
Perry reached the pile of kindling as the rising sun caught his face with an orange glow, brightening his pale countenance. He reached a hand out, extended his fingers, looked down into his palm. His brow furrowed as he concentrated, curling and tensing his grip until his hand was almost a claw.
Sienna held her breath, willing him to find that spark, desperate to know what was left of his power.
22
The seconds ticked past with not even a flicker.
Perry tightened his fist and slammed it down on the cave floor. He hung his head and then looked out to the horizon, biting his lip in frustration. Zoe wrapped her arms around his shoulders, silent in her support.
Sienna wondered whether his power was gone completely or just weakened. In such a state, should she really take him with her to the Tower of the Winds? With Mila leaving, she needed Perry — but he could be more of a liability in this state.
Finn rummaged in his bag and pulled out a box of matches. He tossed them to Titus, who lit the fire and soon had water boiling for coffee.
“What did I miss?” Mila sat up, her expression confused at the tense silence in the cave.
“Nothing,” Perry whispered, a hint of bitterness in his tone. “Nothing at all.”
The twins stirred, their small hands reaching for Mila as they awoke. Sienna smiled to see the way her friend gathered them to her, a Waterwalker family on its way home. At least something good had come out of the camp.
Titus made coffee, a thick brew in the Turkish style, a shot of caffeine to send them off suitably fired up. Sienna sipped at hers, trying to hold off the inevitable. But as the sun rose higher over the lip of the cave, she knew they had to go.
There were clouds on the horizon, a gathering storm that would sweep over the camp within hours. Mila could leave in the shelter of its rainfall and the rest of them would be long gone by then.
“Pack up,” she said. “We need to leave.”
It didn’t take long to ready themselves, but it took longer for Mila to say goodbye to everyone. Perry clung to her the longest and Sienna had to turn away to hide the tears in her eyes. She had to believe that the team would be together again — sometime, somewhere.
She put her hands on the wall of the cave, cold stone anchoring her to this place in this moment. Once she took the team through the blood map, her path was set, but she could see no other way forward.
The border must open once more or Earthside would be wracked by increasing natural disaster. But the opening must be controlled otherwise the Borderlanders would stream over and take what they believed to be theirs. If Elf was truly going after whatever lay in the Tower of the Winds, Sienna had to get there first.
They had one advantage. Elf had to travel by road, and even with her mutant pack running at full pace, she would still be hours away. The rest had been worth it. Sleep in Finn’s arms had renewed Sienna’s strength and revived her sense of purpose. She was ready.
She drew on the stone wall with a fingertip, lightly etching a map over the rock. One that seemed carved on her heart. She had seen it so many times in her nightmares. It would be easy to travel there. All she had to do was follow the voice that called and drop down through the clouds to the tower. She could find the place easily. The only question was what waited there — and whether she could resist the pull of the Shadow once inside.
“Sienna?” Mila touched her arm gently.
Sienna turned to embrace her friend. “Go safe.”
Mila nodded, her eyes betraying both her sadness but also excitement at the start of a new adventure. “One time of life ends, another begins.”
Sienna smiled. “Perhaps for both of us.”
Mila stood back by the cave entrance, the twins on either side, hands curled in hers, their faces curious but trusting. They had seen so much of magic, but perhaps never the strange exit of a Blood Mapwalker.
Sienna turned her back to them so they would not see her pull out the ritual knife, the sharp blade almost a friend to her now. She cut into the side of her palm, blood welling fast, and used it to sketch over the lines on the wall.
Her fingers moved with accuracy and speed, as if the map was carved inside her, just waiting to burst free. Sienna’s skin itched, and she sensed the dark whorls eddy and throb as they drew closer to their home.
As she inscribed the last line, she reached out her other hand. Perry and Zoe, Finn and Titus grasped it, palm over palm, holding onto each other as Sienna drew them into the map. As the world shifted, she met Mila’s gaze in one final goodbye.
The caves fell away. Below them, the expanse of the camp and beyond that, the lake of strange creatures, then the river heading off toward the coast where Mila would swim home. Sienna rose higher, reveling in the sensation of freedom as she reached out across the Borderlands with her magic.
She flew like one of the giant eagles they encountered in the eyrie back in the search for the Map of Plagues, with keen eyesight that could pick out detail in the expanse below. Beyond the towering sharp peaks, a track stretched out into an arid plain spiked with cactus and patches of scrub. A dust cloud headed east, thrown up by the running feet of a pack of mutants. Elf was amongst them, carried on the back of one beast and beyond, in the distance, the Tower of the Winds.
Sienna circled up into the clouds that obscured the sun. Without the distraction of the world below she could hear her name more clearly, a whisper that rippled down her spine, causing her to ache for some dark pleasure she could not quite name.
Sienna.
Did Elf hear her name called like this? Were they both summoned for the final reckoning? Sienna shivered as the clouds darkened and a sudden rainstorm blew across the sky, bringing with it rolls of thunder.
A flash of lightning caught a jagged outline above, the wings of a huge beast with talons raised like a hunter. She had seen something like it when imprisoned within the shadow weave, and she had no wish to encounter such a creature again.
Sienna dived back down through the clouds, emerging close to the Tower of the Winds. The fortress spiraled into the sky, a citadel of many levels. It was made from pieces of black stone locked together in intricate patterns with fragments of obsidian and black onyx mixed in with the pocked surface of volcanic lava and glossy agate. Polished to a sheen, the tower rose with curves as smooth as glass, impossible to climb from the outside even if someone were to brave its heights.
She soared around it, sensing the intensity of shadow in the highest part of the tower. Some part of her wanted to land right there, cast the others off into the space between the worlds and go alone to meet whatever waited. Her blood hammered through her veins, a pulse that demanded to be shed. For what was a Blood Mapwalker unless her power could be wielded?
Sienna.
The whisper gre
w louder now with the heady sensuality of a lover’s call. It promised gifts and pleasure, and the dark whorls of shadow on her skin wanted only to give in.
But the weight of her friends anchored her, and Sienna fought against the desire to rush to the summit. She swooped lower, spotting a library through arched windows with giant books chained to wooden lecterns and shelves full of ancient tomes. She plunged down in her mind’s eye and when she could feel the solid floor under her feet and smell the faint musty vanilla scent of old books, Sienna opened her eyes.
The others lay on the floor around her. Titus coughed and retched, reeling from his first mapwalking experience. The others were more used to the nausea and lay still for a moment as they recovered. Sienna gazed down at them. They were weak, pitifully so.
The sudden thought was shocking. These were her friends. How could she think that way?
Finn sat up and looked at her, his eyes widening as he mouthed a prayer to the goddess. Sienna saw fear in his expression where such a short time ago, there had been only love. What was happening?
She gazed down at her bare arms, now deeply mottled with black symbols that writhed on her skin as if alive with dark magic. There was a mirror against one bookcase and she walked to it quickly. The same marks now covered her face and neck, signs of shadow whirling on her skin, winding in and out of her tattoos depicting the city of Bath. Sienna’s entire body was now a fusion of light and dark, a battleground for the Shadow — and it felt good.
Sienna knew that Finn was right to be afraid. Her power was rising. She needed to ascend the tower but the others must not come with her. She didn’t want them to see what she might become — or what she might do to them once she reached her goal.
Zoe rolled onto her hands and knees and pushed down the queasy sensation in her stomach. They should have a name for the travel sickness that came with mapwalking, but then naming it would only make it seem more normal, and there was nothing normal about traveling through a map made from the blood of a friend. She looked around for Perry, saw him lying near her, his face pale, no longer traveling with ease. She reached out a hand—
A gasp.
Zoe looked up to see Finn’s horrified expression as Sienna gazed at herself in a mirror. Dark whorls of shadow eddied across her skin and in the reflection, Zoe saw Sienna transformed. The blood that ran through her veins now channeled the power of the Shadow and yet, her eyes were still clear and bright. Somehow, she managed to keep the darkness in some kind of balance — but for how long?
Zoe’s vision shifted, and she saw the strings of the world bend around Sienna, warping away from her as if repelled by her aberration, then attracted back in. They hummed with increased power, charged by her very presence. Whatever was happening, it intensified the closer Sienna came to the peak of the tower.
It wasn’t much further now, but this was a strange place to make their last stand. The vast library was round with a central staircase the only route up from below. A single narrow doorway with stairs of black stone wound up to the higher levels.
Mahogany bookshelves spread like spokes from the middle of the room, leading to arched windows at the end of each corridor, allowing light to illuminate the halls of knowledge within. There were books here that were rare on Earthside, heresies thought lost to history, but each found a place off the edge of the map. Vanished ideas melded into something new, every dark entreaty giving power to the Shadow. Some of the books had crumbled in place, their spines damaged by the years. In another time, Zoe would have taken them for restoration and granted the tomes a new life. But not today.
“They’re almost here,” Titus shouted, pointing out the window at a dust cloud approaching. Zoe could just make out figures on the wide open plain. A pack of mutants ran on thick limbs, Elf riding high on the shoulders of one colossal beast.
“They’ll have to come this way to get up to the top.” Finn leaned over the balustrade of the spiral staircase to look down to the levels below. “We need to block this as much as we can.” He glanced over at Sienna. “We’ll buy you time for whatever you need to do up there.”
She nodded and without a second look, walked through the narrow doorway to ascend the black stone stairs.
Finn watched her go. As soon as she disappeared, his expression hardened. He dragged one of the huge lecterns toward the hole and put his back against it, muscles bulging, legs straining with the effort. Titus joined him and with a crash, the lectern fell down onto the intricate staircase.
It was a start, but they would need much more to stop anyone coming up.
Zoe dragged herself to her feet, pushing aside the leaden weight in her limbs as she helped Perry up. Together they all pulled piles of books off then shouldered the heavy shelves onto one side, sliding them over the holes left in the staircase, slowly forming a great pile of heavy wood blocking the only entrance.
A dull thud came from way below. The sound of a massive door opening.
“Keep going.” Finn’s chest heaved in great breaths as he pushed another bookcase onto the pile, now stacked three deep.
Heavy footsteps came from below, shouts in a guttural tongue and the high-pitched voice of Elf urging the mutants on.
A hammering sound thumped through the library. The bookcases shook, jolting up and down as if the heavy wood were nothing more than kindling.
Finn and Titus drew their swords, stepped back into a fighting stance as they faced the stairwell, bodies taut as the warriors took their last stand.
Perry retreated to one arched window, his back against the wall as he raised his hands, palms up. He closed his eyes and whispered something, a prayer or an entreaty, it didn’t matter which. Zoe could see the frustration on his face as he desperately searched within himself for a tiny glimmer of the flame he once called easily to his bidding. But his palms remained empty. Not even a flicker of light left. She wanted to go to him, but Zoe knew she could offer nothing that would help. He had to face this moment alone.
The thumping came again.
The sound of cracking wood and splintering timber. The middle set of bookshelves crashed down, opening a hole big enough to climb through.
Two mutants surged up through the gap, faces contorted with rage. They looked similar to the giant Hashim, but where he had carried Zoe with gentle arms, these beasts now swung clenched fists like steel hammers.
One forced Finn back with a flurry of blows, oblivious to the cuts and slashes that the rebel Borderlander managed to land.
Titus went down under the blade of another, a deep gash on his forehead, his arms and torso quickly bloody and bruised. Finn rushed to stand over the body of his friend, sword flashing in the air, faster than ever, a warrior in his prime.
More mutants clambered out of the hole, hacking with their short swords. Finn parried and thrust, dancing around the lumbering creatures.
But they kept pouring from the hole. There were too many. They were almost out of time.
Perry tried desperately to rekindle his flame in the maelstrom of the library, but Zoe could see he was broken.
She stepped in front of him and shifted her vision. The weave of the world appeared in shades of gold and silver thread shot through with black. But now she understood that the Shadow was just one aspect of the whole and it could be manipulated just as other threads.
Zoe reached out and weaved the cords together, creating a net around the mutants. With one tug, she pulled them away from Finn.
They struggled and grunted, striking at the air as they tumbled over one another, clutching at nothing. The net was invisible but as strong as her magic, and Zoe clenched her fists as she entangled them further.
Finn fell to his knees, gasping for breath in a moment of welcome respite. Perhaps they could hold off the attack after all.
A sudden white light shot out of the well of the staircase, blowing the Mapwalker team backward and tearing the strings of the magic net apart.
The mutants rolled out of their entanglement, bellowing with rag
e.
Elf rose out of the staircase behind them in a blaze of silver light. The jagged edge of a bolt of lightning with as much fury as the oncoming storm. She looked down upon them, cold violence in her gaze. She raised her hands for the slaughter.
23
Sienna ran up the stairs toward the top of the tower. The sound of fighting below soon faded to nothing as she climbed higher. The staircase narrowed, winding tighter as she rose. The walls seemed to suck in the light from the tiny arrow-slit windows, smothering it with pitch like a dying animal sucked to the bottom of a peat bog.
Her footsteps slowed as she reached an open wooden door carved with runes of power.
Sienna.
The voice she had heard high in the clouds was now a caress, inviting her in.
Sienna pulled her grandfather’s compass from her pocket, holding it in her hands like a talisman, anchoring her to Bath. Her home, her family, her world.
She stepped inside.
The circular room had high ceilings with thick wooden beams that met in the middle, vaulted like a cathedral. Between each, arched windows hung with heavy drapes that must look out over the plains in every direction. Etchings covered every surface of the walls, the stone carved into tableaux of war and violence, plague and suffering, lust and cruelty. The shadow side of humanity’s existence.
Sienna tore her eyes away from the depravity and stepped further into the room. Shadows shifted around the walls, snaking behind the drapes, pooling around the corners of the beams.
The metallic stink of dried blood hung heavy in the air, evidence of recent sacrifice to the dark power that ruled here. The remains of an offering lay on a stone altar against one wall, a dismembered corpse the size of a child. Sienna gripped the compass tighter, her skin crawling with the sense of being watched.
A circle lay marked out in the middle of the room, bounded by a ring of skulls. They were all different sizes, some animal, some human, others of mutant origin, some hideously disfigured, others from creatures long extinct on Earthside.