A Mapwalker Trilogy

by J. F. Penn

  There are no answers, but there are always stories.

  Places in the book

  As usual with my fiction, I have set the story in real places and modeled the Borderland locations on reality too. You can see some of the pictures that inspired the story at Pinterest.com/jfpenn/map-of-shadows.

  Bibliography

  I read a lot of books as part of my research. Some of them include:

  The Mapmakers' World - Marjo T. Nurminen

  Maps: Their Untold Stories - Rose Mitchell & Andrew Janes

  Collecting Antique Maps: An Introduction to the History of Cartography - Jonathan Potter

  Great Maps: The World's Masterpieces Explored and Explained - Jerry Brotton

  The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps - Edward Brooke-Hitching

  The Un-Discovered Islands - Malachy Tallack

  Tragic Shores: A Memoir of Dark Travel - Thomas H. Cook

  Atlas of Cursed Places: A Travel Guide to Dangerous and Frightful Destinations - Olivier Le Carrer

  You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination - Katharine Harmon

  “We are a plague on the Earth.”

  David Attenborough

  * * *

  “Anyone who was alive during the outbreak of the bubonic plague in the 14th century experienced something terrifyingly close to the widespread death and chaos of an apocalyptic event.”

  Alan Huffman, International Business Times

  Prologue

  The storm broke over London in the early hours of the morning. Rain crashed down onto the cobbled street that ran past Traitor’s Gate, the passage to death in the Tower above. Lightning flashed, forking across the city, illuminating the skyscrapers that reached heavenward. A confident city, secure in its power, with no heed of the threat below.

  Beneath the gate, the murky river Thames began to boil. A fetid stench bubbled from the depths as four men swam up from below. As they reached for the shore, another flash of lightning caught their faces in profile. Hard ridges of bone, thick jaws set in determination and the half-moon tattoo of the Warlord that painted their faces in shadow.

  As the Feral Borderlanders climbed from the water, pulling their muscled bodies easily up the side of the wall, a man stepped from the shelter of the Tower. He wore a plague doctor’s mask, the hooked beak of an ibis, the Egyptian bird of the dead. Two bags lay at his feet.

  He called softly down to the climbing men. “Quickly now. We don’t have much time.”

  The four men changed into dry clothes, pulling up hoods to hide their faces in this city of ever-present cameras. Two hefted the bags onto their backs. The plague doctor pulled a long cloak around him, set his face against the storm and led the men around the perimeter of the Tower. He glanced up at the symbol of a once-great empire. Fragile flesh would rot away but these stones would remain even as a new power took this city in the days to come.

  The men crossed Smithfield within sight of what had once been the Royal Mint, the white imperial facade of what was now the Chinese Embassy lit with spotlights from below. They skirted the edge of the light, staying in the shadows, until they reached a door on the building beyond marked with No Entry signs. It was bolted and padlocked, set with multiple alarms. The plague doctor stood in front of the door and the four men ranged around him, alert for danger.

  A spark of flame from his fingers, a flash of electrics. The bolts fell off, the padlock dropped, the door clicked. He held his breath for a moment, half expecting the high-pitched squeal of alarms. But it remained silent.

  The plague doctor pushed the door open and the men stepped inside. They turned on torches, revealing stone steps that wound down into darkness. Water dripped from their clothes onto the stone, droplets as dark as blood. It smelled of damp earth and decay.

  They headed down with heavy footsteps, their boots marking time like the inevitable march of history.

  At the bottom, they emerged into a wide cavern, the roof supported by metal reinforcing pillars so as not to disturb the graves beneath. The excavation was just one of many in London, part of the ever-expanding development of the transport network. This site had once been a Cistercian Abbey and in 1349, during the Black Death, it had become a plague cemetery, a mass grave for the diseased bodies of parishioners.

  Pieces of rope bisected the site, dividing the plot into specific areas and orange flags marked the bodies beneath. Skeletons embedded in the dirt reached for freedom, bony fingers clutching at the air as if they tried to rise again even as their remains crumbled to dust.

  The plague doctor ignored these common dead, his cloak swirling about him as he strode to the back of the cavern where a stone wall barred the way. It was made from mismatched blocks, some of the stones weathered as if they had once stood against ferocious storms like the one raging outside. The plague doctor ran his fingertips over the blocks, leaning close to them as if he could sense their history through his skin.

  According to ancient texts, these stones had been carried from Jerusalem, taken from the rubble of the Second Temple, borne across plague-ravaged Europe to stand guard at the entrance to the knights’ final resting place.

  After years of research, the plague doctor suspected that the graves of those who fought the plague also rested here. A secret order of knights who believed that the contagion ravaging the continent had been sent by the Devil himself, a curse that could somehow be lifted by those of faith — and power. Secret annals suggested that they had achieved their goal, pushing the last of the plague out of this world — and into another.

  But after years of searching in the Borderlands, the plague island was still out of his reach, lost as the borders continued to morph over time until the original contours disappeared. The only chance to find it now was the map that the knights had made, a map of skin made from plague victims that linked to the island of the dead, a portal back from that lost world to this one.

  The plague doctor thought of the gleaming skyscrapers in the city above, the millions who slept secure in their beds. They had no idea what was coming for them.

  He stood back from the wall. “Take it down.”

  The four men with half-moon tattoos put down the bags and pulled out lump hammers, shovels and picks. One man hefted the weight of a hammer, a grin spreading across his face as his meaty hands dwarfed the handle.

  He stepped toward the wall and smashed the weapon into the stone. The sound echoed through the chamber but the blow made scarcely a dent. The man swung again. Another stepped beside him and together they pounded the ancient wall, muscles flexing.

  The striking of metal on stone rang through the plague pit but the plague doctor was confident that the thick walls of the old Cistercian Abbey would shield the noise from above. By the time the workers arrived in the morning, his team would be long gone.

  The men hammered away until they made a hole in the wall big enough to step through, then stepped back, panting with exertion. Sweat ran down their faces, carving a path through the dust that had settled on their skin. The plague doctor held his torch high and stepped through the hole into the chamber beyond.

  The mass grave of the outer room was crammed full of the dead, but this inner tomb was spacious. Intricately carved arches rose to a dome overhead painted with faded images of demons devouring plague victims beneath the watchful eye of a vengeful god. Around the walls, deep niches held the remains of the band of brothers, but the plague doctor ignored them and stalked toward the centerpiece of the vault.

  A huge stone sarcophagus sat in pride of place in the middle of the chamber topped with the effigy of the knight who slept beneath. He lay resplendent in full armor, the pommel of a longsword clutched between his hands. Lichen covered his craggy face, eating away at the features of a man who had been feared once, but was now forgotten in time. The plague doctor pointed, his finger shaking just a little as he considered what might be inside.

  “Open it.”

  Two of the men hefted the li
d from the top of the stone sarcophagus, grunting with effort as they pushed it to one side revealing darkness within. The smell of rotted leather with a metallic edge filled the air, permeating even the plague doctor’s mask as the men pushed again. The stone crashed to the floor.

  The plague doctor walked to the edge of the sarcophagus and peered in. A suit of armor lay with its hands on its chest, sunken in death, the patina of age turning the once shiny metal to rust red. A yellowed skull grimaced from within the helmet, bones held together by metal hundreds of years after death. This knight had died fighting a foe that could not be beaten by any sword, a creeping invisible enemy that slaughtered loved ones with no hope of reprieve. The plague doctor could only imagine what this man had done to try and rid Europe of the devastation.

  In his skeletal hand, the knight clutched a rough box fashioned from lead with rivets at the edges. The plague doctor reached for it, his heart pounding. He had searched for so long, could this finally be the moment?

  As he touched the knight’s hands, the bones turned to dust, leaving the box resting on top of the armor. He lifted it from the remains and beckoned for light. One of the men shone a torch at the box while the plague doctor gently levered the top open.

  A folded piece of parchment lay inside, grimy with the dust of generations but still intact. The plague doctor lifted the tattered piece of parchment from its resting place with care, placing it lightly on the stone beneath. He unfurled it, revealing a piece of an ancient map, the edges rough where it had been ripped into quarters. It was only one fragment, but it was the beginning of the end for Earthside.

  “The plague wreaked havoc on Europe,” he whispered. “Some say it killed six in every ten people. It heralded the end of civilization.” He looked more closely at the tattered map, a silver-grey gleam in his eyes, like a wolf identifying its prey. “It can do so once again.”

  1

  Morning sun lanced through the windows of the flat above the old map shop, lighting on the walnut wood bookshelves laden with notebooks and leather-bound journals. The cry of seagulls wafted in as they hung on the breeze above the Georgian streets of Bath, tasting the ocean on the air as it blew inland from the Bristol Channel.

  Sienna Farren sat cross-legged on a cushion by the bookshelves, a tendril of titian hair escaping from her blue striped headscarf as she pulled down another of her grandfather's journals. The cover was grey leather, faded in parts, marked by the sun of another time. It looked like elephant skin, but as she ran her fingers over the whorls and lines, she sensed a different vibration. It was from a creature of the Borderlands, lost to Earthside but hunted over there, brought back in death.

  The journals captured fleeting moments from the years that Michael Farren had spent as a Mapwalker on missions off the edge of the map. That world was lost in time, but the moments he had spent watching were captured here on the page, passed from his memory to hers across the generations. Sienna had not really known her grandfather in the years before he was murdered, sacrificing himself to save the city of Bath from Borderland invasion. She had inherited his map shop as well as his lifelong mission and in many ways, she was still trying to come to terms with the new direction of her life. These journals were an insight into the mind of a man she wished she had known better in life, but perhaps could still help her even in death.

  She flicked through the pages of the journal, past line drawings in thick black ink, some highlighted with color. A bright kingfisher sketched on the edge of a sparkling stream with feathers of burnt orange and turquoise, his spiked beak slightly open. A mountain range with numbered passes, a thin line to show the path of the Mapwalker team. Red-hot lava spilling over the top of a volcanic cone, trailing a path of destruction toward a village that lay beneath.

  The face of a young Nubian woman gazed out from another page, loving lines and delicate shading betraying a deeper connection. Sienna wondered who the woman was, and how long ago her grandfather had loved her.

  She read on past pages of temples and buildings and ruins, some overrun with vines, others as pristine as if they had been built yesterday. He had noted the sounds and smells of the jungle next to the sketches, the call of monkeys, the fecund aroma of tropical flowers. The scent of berries rose from the page, the purple ink made from the juice of some unusual Borderland fruit that Sienna didn’t recognize.

  The journals were numbered with tiny Roman numerals etched into the spine. They were ordered on the shelves, but number twenty-four was missing. Her grandfather’s compass was still missing too, stolen by a Shadow Cartographer just round the corner from the map shop where she now sat. Sienna wondered where the notebook was now.

  She understood that the sketchbooks weren't absolute truth, they were her grandfather’s perception of a moment of time. But who's to say where art, truth and history intersected? The notes he made and the drawings he sketched told his version of the tale, even if the annals of the Mapwalkers told something different. None of those who traveled there could take pictures. The boundaries of the Borderlands turned all technology to dead metal. When the borders were formed in the days of stronger blood magic, only the old ways remained off the edge of the map. So Michael had used pen and ink, paint when he could. Charcoal, ash, dust.

  Blood.

  Sienna pulled up her shirt sleeve to reveal her healing scars, tattooed ley lines of The Circus and the Royal Crescent. Her grandfather’s skin had the same lines, his own blood map providing protection for the city of Bath and the portal that they guarded here. Now it was Sienna's turn to be the guardian of the gate. But she wanted more than that. She wanted to be fighting the Shadow Cartographers, trying to build a future for the Borderlanders.

  Alongside Finn.

  She flicked through more of the pages, pulling down the journals faster now. Her grandfather had traveled all over the Borderlands. He must have visited the trader town on the edge of the Uncharted, he must have known a way to get back there. Sienna thought of Finn’s face as he stepped back through the gate as the border closed around him. It had only been a month ago, but it felt like forever. He had said his mother came from the slave markets there and after the battle with his warlord father, it made sense that he would flee to the edge of Borderlander civilization, where there were plenty of places to hide.

  But it was hard to find and she couldn’t just walk back there through a map of her own creation. She had no context, no anchor, and as with all locations in the Borderlands, its position changed as new places were pushed off the edge of Earthside. As the landscape of the Borderlands shifted, it pushed the trader town even further into the Uncharted. Few dared stay too long, as time moved differently out there.

  Sienna wondered if Finn thought of her. She saw his face every night when she closed her eyes, and she longed to go to him.

  But there was also a darker thread to her desire.

  When she had cut into her skin and used her blood to create a powerful map, she had let the shadow inside. Now it beat within her, drawing her back to the dark magic of the Borderlands, pulsing deep within her heart.

  She had to go back there, but she didn't want to go alone. There was one person who understood this craving, one person she could trust. Sienna picked up her phone and texted Mila.

  The low thrum of the engine beat time as the canal boat moved slowly through the water under the shade of overhanging trees. As her phone buzzed, Mila Wendell kept one hand on the tiller while she read the text from Sienna.

  When are you back?

  A bark of excitement made Mila look up as Zippy, her golden cocker spaniel, greeted the local ducks as they turned toward the aqueduct at Dundas, just a few miles out from Bath. Sunlight dappled the water with shades of green and the smell of elderflower rose from the hedgerows as they passed.

  After the battle with the Borderlanders, Mila had fled the city, needing time to let her body return to its Earthside physicality. She could travel in the ripples between waves, spin liquid into weapons, turn her body to water. I
t was freedom, but every time the Mapwalkers used their magic, a sliver of shadow weaved its way inside — and Mila knew that she had used too much of it in those last days.

  And yet every day for the last month, she had fought the desire to go back to the Borderlands alone. She held Zippy close in the night, weeping into his fur as she resisted the pull to darkness. It was an addiction that only grew worse with time. Their mentor, Bridget, had warned of this and it was why Mapwalkers must always travel in teams into the Borderlands. If they had too much shadow, they could no longer cross over for fear of losing themselves. Too many of their kind had been lost over the years, too many had shifted into Shadow Cartography.

  Like Xander had done on the last mission.

  Once the golden child of Mapwalker lineage, his skill as an Illustrator had marked him out for greatness, but he had betrayed them all for a chance to use his magic every day. To stop resisting the dark.

  Mila understood why he had made that choice, but she hoped that she could resist it long enough to help Sienna find Finn and maybe, just maybe, there was a chance for peace between Earthside and the Borderlands.

  Zippy ran up and down the roof of the canal boat, happiness on his doggy face. He knew the smells of this place, and they both had friends here, friends who would look after the little spaniel when she had to travel alone. It was time to moor up again, to settle for a time in a place she had come to call home.

  Mila texted back. Soon.

  In the stone corridors beneath Bath Abbey, the whoosh of fire echoed before ending in a metallic slam. The sounds repeated again and again, faster now, until suddenly it stopped. Peregrine Mercator leaned over, hands on his knees, panting with effort, his t-shirt damp with sweat in the over-heated room.