by J. F. Penn
The guard grabbed Zoe’s arm and thrust her up the stairs toward the door.
“Please,” she begged. “Don’t do this.”
The guard didn’t acknowledge her words and as the door opened wider; he pushed her forward and darted away down the stairs without even a glance back.
Zoe stumbled inside the darkened room and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. It was starkly beautiful, like a forest transformed into architecture. Thick pillars of cedar wood stretched from the floor carved with vines and the faces of mutated woodland creatures, twisted into visages of horror. The delicate smell of cedar pervaded the space, refreshing and cool after the hot exterior. Oak beams stretched up into a coffered ceiling painted in shades of midnight and on the side facing the lake, an arched window stood covered by thick drapes. A sliver of light lanced across the wooden floor, empty except for a single chair — and the man who stood in the shadows behind it.
“You’re a Weaver.” His voice held the kind of interest that a predator has in a particularly tasty prey.
He walked toward her, avoiding the ray of light on the ground, and it seemed as if he merely skimmed the earth. Zoe blinked once more to try to focus on his figure, but his outline constantly shifted, as if smoke wreathed his flesh. She caught her breath as she realized this man was almost a creature of pure shadow. She had read of these powerful Mapwalkers who turned, but she had never wished to meet one.
He came closer, distinguished features betraying his nobility on Earthside and an old facial scar evidence of past battles.
“I’m Sir Douglas Mercator. What’s your name?”
“Zoe.” She blurted it out quickly, then clapped a hand over her mouth. It had been a reflex, a polite response to an unremarkable question, but she had totally failed interrogation 101.
Sir Douglas laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. You’re safe with me.” He glanced toward the door to the lakeside. “At least for now. Come. Sit. You have nowhere else to be.” He pointed at the chair.
Zoe’s heart beat faster as she walked across the floor and sat, straight-backed. She needed to stall for time because there was no easy way out of here. Guards stood outside the doors and in here, a Shadow Cartographer who could wrap her in shadow weave or crush her lungs with a wave of his hand.
“How did you get here?”
“The bounty-hunter girl, Callen, and her giant friend, found me lost in the forest.”
Sir Douglas took a step forward. “Try again. How did you get into the Borderlands? The border is closed and none have passed through it since the Ministry slammed it shut, damning us all.” His features contorted with rage as he spat the final words.
He bent down until his angular nose almost touched hers and gripped her chin hard, turning her face up toward him. His grey eyes were the color of a wolf pelt, an old alpha male with sharp teeth covered in the blood of its prey.
“Tell me.”
Zoe thought of her desk back at the Ministry, the calm, quiet atmosphere of the Antiquities department. She should have just stayed down there and told no one of what she had seen. Bridget had not prepared her for any of this. She was just a Weaver, after all, but she had to tell him something.
“We came through a path of the dead, one of the ancient Egyptian tombs full of creatures and traps and—”
“We?” Sir Douglas snarled as he cut off her words.
Zoe bit her lip as she realized her mistake, but she wouldn’t give her friends up. Whatever he did to her.
Sir Douglas turned away, his robes a swirl of smoke. He strode across the floor, shaking his head as if deeply troubled. “The way has only been used in rare times,” he muttered. “It cannot be crossed without …” He spun around. “A powerful Blood Mapwalker. You came with Sienna Farren. Perhaps he is with her …” Sir Douglas’s voice trailed off and Zoe thought she saw something wistful in his gaze, an edge of vulnerability.
The door from the front of the temple banged open and his eyes turned cold once more, like a graveyard as storm clouds gathered overhead. The sound of a growing crowd came from outside, cheers of excitement mingling with the anticipation of carnival pleasure.
A young woman with pixie features entered, her silver hair reflecting the sun from outside, a white dress swirling around her slight figure. This must be Elf, but even though Sienna had described her, somehow, the girl was smaller than she expected.
“Oh, wonderful. You found me a fresh one. We just have time before the challenge.” Elf reached out a hand.
Zoe felt a jerk inside, as if the girl reached inside her chest to tug on her heart. Her ribcage contracted and suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. Something — her magic — seeped from her in tiny pulses. Like the death of a thousand cuts, Elf would drain her dry.
Zoe gasped for breath, tears running down her cheeks as she doubled over, clutching her hands to her aching chest.
Sir Douglas stepped in between them and the pain stopped. “Not yet,” he said sharply. “She came with others more powerful. We need to know more.”
Elf spun on her heel, her face like thunder as she marched to the window and threw back the drapes, letting light flood into the temple. Sir Douglas shrank back into the shadows, but not before Zoe saw the smoke at the edge of his robes disappearing in the sun, evaporating like clouds on a summer day.
The window had a view out over the vast lake and the ruined church at its center. Four huge vats of a deep blue liquid sat directly in front on the shore.
“She is enough for this batch of Liberation. You can’t stop me.” Elf turned around again and raised her hand. Zoe shrank back, waiting for the pain once more. They were both in sunlight now and Sir Douglas could not stop her again.
“Sienna came over the border,” he said from the shadows.
Elf frowned and dropped her hand. “How? The border is closed.” She shook her head, eyes narrowing in concern. “No matter. Her blood is the key. If I can siphon it at the Tower of the Winds, I can amplify my power and smash down the border for good. Earthside will be ours for the taking.” She smiled triumphantly. “Where is she?”
Sir Douglas circled the edge of the temple, staying out of the light. “I was just about to find out. But your magic is of no use for — persuasion. Give me more time. I will find her.”
Elf smiled in anticipation. “Then I will take whatever you leave behind of this one when you’re finished.” A cheer rose up from outside. “But hurry, the challenge begins soon.”
She pulled the drapes closed, leaving the room in semi-darkness again, and swept out the door. Zoe watched her go, icy fear creeping through her veins as Sir Douglas circled behind her.
Chill fingers touched her neck, gently brushing her hair to one side.
“Tell me where they are,” he whispered, the threat clear as his grip tightened, bone digging into flesh as if he might burrow within her.
16
Forbidding shards of rock loomed above the Mapwalker team as they wound through the labyrinth of paths below the jagged peaks. Sienna no longer knew how she chose the forks ahead, only trusting that the pulse of shadow inside drew her on to her fate. It felt symbiotic now, a separate presence inside her, but one that belonged there. She couldn’t talk about it with the others and she wondered whether all those who ended up in a shadow coma felt this way before succumbing to the darkness. Whatever it was, it pulled her on.
They reached the end of the path in the balmy early evening. A gentle breeze wafted over the valley before them as they crouched in the lee of a pile of boulders and looked out over the camp.
“It’s huge,” Perry said. “More like a small city. How will we find her?”
“And get out of there alive,” Mila added. She tilted her head to one side as she stared down at the lake. “What is that?”
Within the blue waters, an electric storm churned, crackles of energy radiating out from thick serpentine bodies. They writhed together, then raced around the sunken church at the center.
“They look like e
lectric eels but they must be gigantic.”
Mila sounded both fascinated and appalled at the same time, and Sienna wondered if her friend longed to sink into those cool waters. Perhaps she understood the dichotomy of both longing for the Shadow and fighting against it? She remembered Mila’s face in the caves under Ganvié as she left Ekon behind to finish the mission. Perhaps they both had regrets about what — and who — they had left behind.
A cry rang out overhead, a sound of desperate loss with a distinctly human quality. Sienna looked up to see the silhouette of a giant creature against the clouds, its body some kind of hybrid bird, its wings like monstrous sails criss-crossed with bones of human anatomy, talons like razor blades hanging below. She shuddered and looked away. She didn’t want to see its face, didn’t want to imagine how they could have created such a beast. It cried out again and winged its way across the valley, heading out over the lake.
“We need to get moving. We can’t leave Zoe here any longer.” Sienna tamped down the rising fear as she watched the creature fly away.
On Earthside, the theory of eugenics involved breeding the best of a species to create superior beings. But the dark side of the practice involved killing those considered inferior by the ruling class, no matter their true worth. Here in the Borderlands, they had taken the philosophy to extremes, breeding whatever they could in terms of magical ability and physical deformity with the aim of creating an overwhelming force that could take back the land they believed was rightfully theirs. If they were too late, Zoe would be the latest victim in an endless bloody war.
They walked down the side of the valley as quickly as they could over the rocky ground, approaching the camp from an oblique angle and staying away from the main entrance which bristled with guards. A rubbish tip spilled out from the side of the camp toward the cliff face, a deep crevice scarring the rock face behind.
Sienna pointed up to it as they approached. “If anything happens, if we get separated, we meet there. Wait one sunset and one sunrise.” She hesitated a moment. “Then leave.”
Perry and Mila both nodded and Sienna could only hope that they would all walk out of the camp together with Zoe by their side.
The stench of waste greeted them as they reached the edge of the tip, rotting produce underpinned by a copper tang of butchered flesh and spilled blood. Perry pulled up his t-shirt, holding it against his mouth and nose. Sienna tried to breathe shallowly through her mouth, but nothing kept the awful stink from them. At least it kept the guards away from this area and only a few scrawny children sifting through the rubbish at the edge of the tip witnessed their arrival, skeletal frames on the edge of survival unheeding of the passers-by.
Mila clambered up the pile of rubbish to where it spilled over a wall into the camp, Sienna and Perry close behind her. They dropped down into a warren of ramshackle shelters and weather-worn tents fortified by sheets of metal and planks of wood.
Like all shanty towns, this one was filled with desperate people, working however they could to feed their children. With no magic, they were worthless to the Shadow Cartographers, used only for manual labor in the mines and camps. Were they also used as pure life energy, transformed into darkness by the silver-haired Elf?
Grief jolted through Sienna as she remembered those terrifying last moments as Elf sucked the life from Xander and his lion, Asada, using it to power the infection and transformation of the mutant plague rats. Sienna had no direct evidence that the girl was here, but she sensed the presence of a powerful Shadow Cartographer, one who commanded the camp and directed the metamorphosis of the creatures within.
An old woman peered out from behind a ragged curtain, her features etched with deep lines betraying her years of suffering. She looked at them with bleary eyes, a flicker of interest quickly dying as they passed by.
The team walked in silence, alert for any sign of danger, but the streets seemed oddly deserted as they skirted a path leading downhill toward the lakeside.
The sounds of a crowd soon came from up ahead. There was a sense of excitement and festivity in the air, incongruous in a place that seemed so full of desperation.
A slow drumbeat began, booming out across the valley.
Perry shook his head and sighed. “Nothing good happens when the drum starts.”
Sienna knew what he meant. They had heard the drums at the Tophet, the Warlord’s place of child sacrifice, and again at the eyrie where Perry almost had his liver devoured by giant eagles.
The drum was the sound of death.
They ran toward it.
The drumbeat startled Finn, a sudden interruption to his concentrated study of the valley below.
Workers in the fields stopped pruning the plants and stood up to rub their backs and ease aches and pains. The guards gestured down the hill, giving permission to stop working. Groups of laborers set off toward the plaza, laughing together with a sudden sense of celebration.
Finn followed the lines of the paths as they walked down the slopes to the barracks at the bottom, neatly organized in ranks with dirt tracks between.
In the center of the camp, an open plaza lay in front of a lake with a sunken church at its heart. Finn could just make out black shadows undulating within the depths and he shuddered to think what monsters lay below the surface.
A sizeable building — a temple of some kind — stood in front of the lake and behind it, by the water’s edge, sat deep vats of inky blue liquid. Finn narrowed his eyes as he focused on the unusual feature. Then he realized what they must be.
A great deal of water would be needed to turn the plant extract into liquid doses of Liberation that could be bottled and distributed. Someone needed to add the twisted magic to the belladonna before it was shipped and it made sense to store it centrally.
Finn pointed to the pools of blue. “We destroy those and it will disrupt the entire supply chain, at least for a time. Then we bring others from the Resistance to help finish the place.”
Titus nodded and pointed at a roughly hewn hut on the edge of the plaza with more guards than the rest. “I’d say that’s where they keep weapons, maybe explosives. We should duck in there on the way down.”
The drum beat faster, its rhythm steadily increasing.
Finn stood up. “Come on. This is our chance. We’ll join the workers and mingle with the crowd.” He set off at a run down the hill between rows of deadly plants, Titus right behind. They tagged along at the back of a group of farmhands, laughing and joking as if they had come from plantations higher up the mountain.
“Good day for a sacrifice,” one man said. “Helps the crops grow faster, see. Goddess be praised.”
Finn nodded, the words bringing back memories of his father’s sacrifices at the Tophet. Blood always drew a crowd. He pitied the victim, but the distraction would be perfect. He and Titus could proceed with their plan unseen.
As the crowd streamed into the plaza, they peeled off, skirting the edge of the barracks and circling around to the back of the guard’s hut. Constructed of wood and raised on stilts, the hut had a 360 degree walkway around the perimeter and a central staircase up the middle. One way in, one way out.
Heavily armed guards walked the perimeter, but as the drum beat faster, those at the back edged forward so they could see the action.
Finn and Titus ducked underneath the walkway and ran to the staircase. The boom of the drum grew louder and faster, the resonance so deep it made Finn’s heart beat in time. A neat trick to fire up the crowd and make the soldiers above want to join the party. He could only hope they stayed distracted.
Finn pulled his sword and ran up the stairs on light feet, eyes darting around for any guards. No one in sight. He beckoned Titus up and stood watch while the explosives expert ducked inside the building, leaving the door ajar as he searched for something they could use.
Seconds passed, and Finn counted his breaths. He stood motionless, listening for footsteps under the drum beat, but the soldiers stayed riveted to the scene in the pla
za.
Then the drumbeat stopped.
A rustle inside and then silence as Titus must have frozen in his search, aware that the soldiers were only meters away.
The crowd erupted into a cheer, their shouts and applause a deafening roar.
Titus ducked out the hut, bag in hand, triumphant grin on his face. He ran down the steps and Finn dashed after him with no fear of being heard under the sound of celebration. They kept moving until they were well away from the guard’s hut.
Behind one of the barracks, Titus stopped and opened his bag. Sticks of dynamite used for mining rock and a long roll of detonator cord lay inside. “I only wish I could have taken more.”
Finn looked back at the raucous crowd. Working Borderlanders, some mutated, but most here as slaves.
“We should try to minimize the damage and only blow the Liberation vats. Maybe bring down that temple on whatever dark power is inside.” He pointed at the building. “We just need to get around the back. We’ll rig explosives while the crowd is fixated on whatever the hell is happening out there.”
They ran on, skirting the edge of the crowd as a carnival atmosphere took hold. Couples reveled in the shadows, so engaged with each other that Finn and Titus passed unnoticed.
Four huge vats stood on the edge of the lake, giant wooden structures made from aged oak on tall stilts with lines of taps underneath for the bottling process. A ladder up one side led to a series of walkways between them.
Titus pointed up. “Take the detonator cord and wind it between the vats, then drop it down. I’ll set the explosives underneath and then connect it together. Hurry now, we’re running out of time.”
17
Mila pulled ahead of Perry and Sienna as the path narrowed on the hill, switch-backing between the shanty town structures to emerge between military style barracks. People thronged the street, heading down toward the central area. Street vendors hawked their wares in a carnival atmosphere, the smell of roasted nuts mingling with hops as revelers drank ale from barrels. Mila slowed down to walk next to a buxom young woman, who swayed a little as she swigged from a pewter mug.