by J. F. Penn
The forest path emerged at the base of a rock face pitted with fissures as if gouged by giant talons. Jagged peaks spiked into the sky toward the sun. It burned hot now they were out of the shade of the forest, the air more humid. Sienna wiped her brow of sweat as she searched for the way ahead.
She had a sense of time ticking down to some imagined countdown, when Earthside would crumple into the hard border, triggering an unstoppable series of natural disasters that would devastate her home. Yet being here shifted her perspective and made her wonder whether it was time for such a dramatic change in fortunes. Time for a new power to rise.
Sienna shook her head, banishing the thought that seemed to come from nowhere. Her skin burned under her t-shirt, and she sensed the whorls of shadow spinning ever faster. Was she transforming now she grew closer to the source?
“Are you okay?” Mila asked, putting a hand on Sienna’s arm.
Sienna gave a faint smile. “Just over-heating, I guess.” She pointed ahead. “We need to hurry. I don’t think we have much time.”
Zoe woke to a jolting rhythm, a bump-bump stride that jerked her into consciousness. She half-wondered why the rock beneath her moved, then remembered the shadowy figure looming above before all went black. She opened her eyes and froze as she looked up at the thing that carried her.
A craggy face with skin cracked like dried mud, muscles heaped like sacks of rock under a tunic stretched tight over its colossal body. It smelled like moss and minerals leaching from a mountain stream. As Zoe shifted, it stopped walking and looked down at her. Something like a smile crossed its face, a wide mouth opening like a cleft in stone, eyes like tiny emeralds hidden in the crevices.
“He likes you.”
Zoe turned in the creature’s arms to see a young girl, perhaps ten years old, blonde hair in messy plaits tied with twine, wearing a tunic the color of ripe olives. She signed with her hands and the living rock placed Zoe gently on the ground. She found her legs a little unsteady, and it held an arm out for her to lean against. There was consideration in the gesture, but Zoe understood that its docile manner would change if she tried to run. She glanced around at the high cliffs surrounding them, serrated edges like flint knives spiked with cactus and thorny scrub. There was nowhere to run to, anyway.
The girl approached and examined Zoe, looking her up and down with a maturity far beyond her age. “You have a strange aura. I’ve never sensed it before. What magic can you do?”
Zoe frowned. “You can sense magic?”
The girl nodded. “I see colors and textures around those with ability and I can usually tell what they can do. We’re scouts, me and Hashim.” She reached out a small hand and stroked the creature’s arm. It was a familiar gesture, a touch of connection between friends. But as much as Zoe found these two fascinating, she had to figure out a way to get back to the Mapwalker team.
“Who are you scouting for?”
The girl looked puzzled. “Who else? The silver-haired one and the old man. They offer good coin for such as you. We need to take supplies back for my family and your trade will mean we can return with food.” Her eyes darted away. “Maybe even medicine. My little brother …”
As her words trailed off, Zoe wondered how it was possible that this young girl was the only way her family could get the supplies they needed. It was a glimpse into a side of the Borderlands she had never appreciated before. This was not some utopian world of magic and plenty. It was a land of desperately poor people ruled by an upper class of Shadow Cartographers whose obsession with reclaiming Earthside reduced all to poverty. If they would only spend their energy building and improving what they had, this side of the border could prosper.
“I sensed there were others with you,” the girl continued. “Maybe one with greater power than yours, but I have seen her kind before. I’ve seen no one like you.” She came closer, this time reaching out a hand to caress the air around Zoe’s face, like a blind girl reading features with touch. “It’s beautiful.”
Zoe didn’t sense any danger from the pair and yet she knew their destination might lead to her end. They might not know what happened to those they delivered up — or they chose to ignore it — but Zoe understood loyalty to family above all else. Perhaps she would do the same in their position.
She shifted her vision to examine the strings of the world around, allowing the weave of nature to come into focus. After the cave, she knew her magic was strong enough to manipulate the strands. She could trap these two and then escape into the labyrinth of rocks — but the use of magic would sap her energy and exchange drops of shadow for its use, the toll greater if used here in the Borderlands. The Mapwalker team would surely look for her once they woke and would come in this direction. She would bide her time for now and wait a little longer.
“I’m a Weaver. My name is Zoe.”
The girl’s eyes widened. “A Weaver. Oh, my. You’re worth so much.” She skipped around in a tight circle, plaits flying, dancing with joy as she beamed with pleasure. The rocky hulk of Hashim shook and then a booming laugh rang out at his friend’s delight. Zoe couldn’t help but join in, giggling a little at the strange scene, even as she questioned why the hell she might be so valuable.
The girl stopped spinning. “I’m Callen.” She held out a hand. “Pleased to meet you, Weaver Zoe.”
Zoe shook her hand with appropriate solemnity, wondering if the pair treated all their captives so well.
Callen turned suddenly, looking back into the forest, as if hearing a far-off sound. “We need to get moving. Your friends are on the trail, but we will trade well before they arrive.”
Zoe hadn’t realized they were so close to the camp. She had to get away.
She raised her hands, focusing on the strands of light and shadow — but the giant Hashim folded his bulky arms around her, crushing her to his chest. She couldn’t move, could barely breathe.
Callen stepped in closer, transformed from a charming little girl to the steely eyed bounty hunter once more.
“You don’t have to do this,” Zoe gasped. “I can help your family. Please don’t—”
Hashim squeezed more tightly, cutting off her pleas.
Callen remained silent as she clambered up onto Hashim’s back, riding his shoulders as if they were one creature, a strange pairing in a land of aberration.
The mutant lifted Zoe up, locking her into a vice of stone. He stood and strode on past the towering cliffs, each stride ten times that of a man. Zoe knew that the Mapwalker team would never reach her in time. She would face the mutant camp alone.
14
“It’s not far now.” Titus pointed to the flank of the mountain, the blush of dawn painting it in shades of coral and amber. “The munitions dump is on the edge there, near the snow line to keep it cool and away from the major trade routes.”
Finn hunkered down on a log and made a small fire, boiling up water for coffee while they both ate in silence from the supplies of meat and bread that Kabila had given them. Both men were used to marching on military rations, so they ate quickly and before long, they were heading up the side of the mountain.
Titus scanned the rocky escarpment above, pointing out features of the slope. “It’s between three points — the summit, the woman’s profile, and a dead tree struck by lightning. The cache is equidistant from each.”
They zigzagged up the side, navigating the scree and patches of scrub where tiny wild flowers grew, purple against green. Finn found his breath ragged as they climbed, the slope becoming ever steeper.
Finally, a dead tree came into view, its stark white limbs reaching for blue sky as the sun burned down upon them. Titus turned to scan the surrounding area, then pointed at a rocky outcrop a little higher and to the east. “There.”
Finn supposed it could be a woman’s profile at a stretch, but Titus seemed sure and set off to climb higher, picking up his pace as they neared their goal. Finn turned to look back over the plain. They were high above the forest line now and below
, the trader town stretched to the coastline, the sea shimmering beyond to the horizon. It looked so peaceful from up here, with no sense of the suffering that lay within its streets. But as much as this wild place had a stark beauty, Finn was a city boy, and his life blood beat to the pulse of a faster pace of life. If he survived this mission, he would return to Old Aleppo and liberate it from the iron grip of his father. Perhaps Sienna would even join him and they would eat oranges together in the market in a time of peace.
He shook his head and gave a rueful laugh. If only life could be so simple.
“Come and help me!” Titus shouted down from higher up. He was on his knees by a thorn bush, scrabbling at the ground.
Finn hurried up the slope and together, they cleared the rocks and dug down into the ground beneath.
“There should be enough explosives in here to destroy the main crop.” Titus grinned in anticipation at what they would find. “It’s been way too long since I’ve done some proper demolition, but I’m sure I’ll get back into the swing of it.”
They soon hit upon a metal trunk and as the sun rose high overhead, they levered the lid open and revealed what lay within.
Finn sat back on the hard ground, staring into the chest with despair. It was completely filled with rocks, hiding the fact that the explosives had been taken long ago.
Titus picked up one of the stones and hurled it down the slope with a violent shout. He picked up another, then another, throwing until he exhausted his frustration.
“We’ll go on anyway,” Finn said. “We don’t know what we’ll find at the camp. Maybe fertilizer you can use. There will surely be something explosive.”
Titus sat down heavily and sighed. “You’re right. I just hoped this would give us some advantage. It’s the two of us against whatever is out there. We have no chance.”
Finn pulled out a flask of water and took a sip before passing it over to Titus. “There’s always a chance. Besides, what else do you want to do now? We can at least scout the camp and if it’s impossible to destroy the crop, we’ll return to the Resistance for reinforcements.” He pointed back to the trader town. “Think of all the people down there taking Liberation, addicts getting their fix, women carrying monsters. Every day that drug is loose it corrupts more Borderlanders and turns them to the Shadow.”
“Or leaves them dead in its wake,” Titus said quietly. “So we go on.” He pointed up the face of the mountain. “It’s faster to go up and over than around at lower altitude. If the weather holds, that is. The forest lower down ends in towering pinnacles of rock and a labyrinth of stone needles. It’s hard to navigate. If we descend from above, we can at least figure out the best way into the camp.”
They both stood and brushed down their clothes, then set off up the mountain, faces set toward the peak, footsteps even, breath panting as they rose higher.
To be honest, Finn had never wanted to climb a mountain and after this experience, he never wanted to climb one again. Titus kept up a grueling pace from years of experience on this kind of terrain, but Finn felt every single step of the hard ground, his leg muscles screaming in pain as they wound their way up toward the peak.
The weather held, sun baking down on them with no shelter from the heat even as the wind whipped their faces. But each step took them closer to the camp, so Finn gritted his teeth and kept walking.
Just another ten paces.
And another ten.
Finally, they skirted the summit in a haze of clouds, the valley before them obscured in mist. But Finn felt a change in the air and sensed a kind of shimmer in the gloom beyond. The way down was even harder on his leg muscles and his knees ached with every jolt on the rocky ground.
As they descended, the mist cleared, and the sun came out again. Suddenly, they saw the camp laid out below them.
A wide lake lay in the center with organized barracks, and before it, a central plaza with some kind of temple. Further out, a patchwork of crops in shades of green and fields of blue.
“All different stages of growth,” Titus said. “They’ve got a year-round crop here. Enough to dose the whole of the Borderlands.”
Finn marveled at the scope of the Liberation project, the drug an effective route to the ultimate goal of creating a superhuman army to take back Earthside. His father, the Warlord, Kosai, was a man of great cruelty with no love for Earthsiders, but Finn doubted that even he would countenance dosing his own people with such a drug. This was masterminded by those closely aligned with the Shadow.
Resolve hardened within him as they descended into the valley. Finn would not leave this place without burning those crops down.
As they approached the fields, they stopped behind a rocky outcrop to plan the next step. Workers tended the plants, immigrant slaves amongst the crops, while Shadow Guards patrolled the perimeter. The balmy evening made the guards relaxed and lazy, and at some command posts, they played cards and joked with each other. Clearly, tending fields was not a high-stress position, and they were not concerned about possible attack.
Piles of fertilizer lay at specific points amongst the fields and workers occasionally went into huts, so perhaps more lay within. It was peaceful, a deadly beauty with a malignant harvest. But as Finn watched the pastoral scene play out down below, he knew they couldn’t possibly destroy this entire crop. They didn’t have enough people to start fires at the same time, and both he and Titus would likely be caught trying to set the fields alight alone.
It was an impossible mission.
15
Zoe smelled the camp before she saw it, a stench of too many people, cooking fires and the faint metallic scent left after an electrical storm, the residue of spent magic. Hashim had carried her for several hours, Callen on his back, never slowing, never stopping until they reached the end of the tangle of paths through the rocky chasm and emerged at the edge of a valley.
A river ran down from the mountains into a vast lake with a church submerged in the middle, perhaps drowned on Earthside and pushed through here by lack of belief. There were fields of some kind of crop with blue flowers in vast terraces up the slope, workers moving in channels between them.
Around the lake, the camp was divided into clear sections, more like military barracks than the ramshackle place Zoe had imagined. There were permanent structures built at strategic positions around the edge and open training grounds where groups of soldiers marched in formation. The sound of laughter echoed up from children out at play in a schoolyard. It looked just like any other small town—
A flash of blue light above a temple by the side of the lake.
The soldiers stopped marching. The children fell silent. Even the birds muted their song. Hashim and Callen froze, eyes fixed on the scene.
The light rose like a mushroom cloud from the vaulted roof and then dissipated into haze.
Zoe felt the tension drain from her captors as all evidence of the light disappeared.
“Let’s go,” Callen said. “It’s a good time to trade.” The girl’s voice trembled a little, as if she had to convince herself to go on.
Hashim walked into the valley. He stepped more carefully now, covering the ground a little slower as he dodged the boulders on the way down.
“Why is it a good time to trade?” Zoe asked. “What was that light?”
Callen was silent a moment and then spoke softly. “They always need more resources after they use someone up.” She looked down at the ground, her young face haunted. “They say it doesn’t hurt when they take your magic. They say it’s quick …” Her words trailed off, her gaze fixed on the camp ahead.
They soon reached the perimeter where two guards with the half-moon tattoo of the Warlord waved them through, clearly recognizing Callen and her strange partner. But as they moved into the camp itself, Zoe saw that Hashim was not so strange after all.
The path led directly toward the temple cut across by concentric circular routes that linked each area. Hashim or his kind were clearly unremarkable as no one gave
him a second glance as they walked through, although Zoe noted a few people looked up at her with interest. A pair of twins, long-limbed with black skin and curious eyes, ran past and circled back for a second look. But no one challenged or even spoke to them. Guards on patrol walked by at regular intervals, keeping a tight grip on security.
Hashim strode down through the camp until they reached the back of the temple where two guards stood either side of a staircase that led up to a finely carved wooden door. As they approached, one guard ran up the stairs and knocked twice, then once again.
The door opened an inch and Zoe glimpsed a swirl of shadow inside and a hand with bony fingers. She felt eyes upon her, a chill creeping up her spine as if she had been plunged under ice, drowning in the depths under a thick layer of impenetrable blue.
The figure dropped back into darkness; the door left ajar.
The guard stepped forward to meet Hashim. Callen jumped down, her demeanor one of a trader far beyond her years.
“He’ll take this one.” The guard pulled a leather pouch of coins from his belt and handed it to Callen. She opened it, her eyes widening in appreciation. “And he’ll take any more like her you can find.”
Callen wouldn’t meet Zoe’s eyes as Hashim placed her gently on the ground. The giant patted her head in a friendly manner. He clearly did not understand what part he played in the demise of so many who carried magic in their veins.
Callen clambered up onto his shoulders and without even looking back, they began the long climb out of the camp.