by S. E. Grove
Then she heard another sound—one that was entirely unexpected: the crack of a pistol. The pirates don’t have their pistols, Sophia thought, bewildered. Suddenly a sharp report echoed just over her head, and a chunk of calcified rock crashed to the ground beside her. She turned, hardly believing her eyes: crouched low by one of the towers was a Sandman, pointing his revolver directly toward her. Three other men standing beside him took aim.
35
Below the Lake
1891, July 1: #-Hour
In some parts of the Triple Eras, there is a great devotion to the Chronicles of the Great Disruption. In Xela, believers celebrate the “enday of the world,” a day that will spell the end of the human world. Followers of the Chronicles claim that the Great Disruption was the first of many, and that the Final Disruption will result in an end of all days.
—From Veressa Metl’s Cultural Geography of the Baldlands
FAR ABOVE THEM, up past hundreds of feet of rock, the glaciers were encasing Lake Cececpan. Ice had surrounded the lake, sending the few families who lived on its banks fleeing northwest toward Nochtland. The waves of refugees from farther south had already rushed past the city, convinced that even the high stone walls would offer no safety. Though the Southern Snows were still out of sight of the city, no one could now deny their inexorable advance. A line of boldevelas streamed out through the northern gates, trailed by even longer lines of people who traveled on foot or in wagons. The exodus northward had begun.
But the glaciers had not yet reached Nochtland, and for the moment they had halted at the banks of Lake Cececpan. Though the lake was no longer visible, it was still there. It appeared to have been swallowed by a large chunk of ice shaped like a perfect pyramid. The ice struggled to gain purchase against the patches of hot soil that protected the lake and portions of the tunnels below it. The vast city below ground remained buffered from the frigid air, but beyond it, where the tunnels and caverns were cut from ordinary earth, the water had frozen solid, marbling the rocks with veins of ice. The freezing water loosened rocks, causing innumerable tremors and crumbling the walls of the underground warren. As the rocks settled, the shaking stopped and cold air filled the tunnels.
Down in the underground city, Sophia ran as fast as she could, her damp boots sticking to the dirt. She and Theo followed Shadrack as he raced through the city, away from the Sandmen’s pistols and the falling rocks caused by their bullets. Sophia tried to call to him, but she was so out of breath that she could hardly find her voice. They had reached a narrow avenue, and while Shadrack slowed to find the easiest way out, Sophia managed to say, “Shadrack, up there.” She pointed, feeling sure that she could see the staircase and the opening high in the cavern wall. As she did so, a bullet hit the tower near her and a chunk of white limestone splintered over her head.
“Go on, then,” Shadrack replied urgently. “Hurry.”
Sophia took off. Her breath came more and more painfully. She turned a corner, slipping on the loose soil, and sped over a broad archway that led to the aqueduct. This has to be it, she thought, running beside the aqueduct, following it under two slender bridges.
Abruptly she found herself at a gate identical to the one at the city’s entrance, only a few feet from the far wall of the cavern. And she had been right—the stairs were there: cut into the stone, they zigzagged upward precipitously toward the opening in the wall. “This is it,” she cried, turning to the others.
There was no one behind her.
She stood, stock still, staring in disbelief at the pale buildings. She could hear shots and the thundering of footsteps, but she could not tell whether they were near or far. She was about to dive back into the city in search of Shadrack and Theo, but then the rocks above her head splintered with a loud crack, showering her with dust.
One of the men had seen her. He came from beside a building a good distance away, advancing steadily. While he held the revolver with his right hand, he loosened the long rope of the grappling hook with his left. Sophia had only two choices: she could run along the perimeter or she could climb the stairs. For what seemed like an eternity to her, she stood, full of doubt, as the man came toward her. Then she whirled and began to climb as fast as she could.
The steps were only three feet wide, and there was no railing. She kept her eyes forward and did not look down. He won’t climb, Sophia thought desperately, he’ll shoot rather than climb. As she heard the wall splinter behind her, she knew that she had guessed correctly. I have to make sure the others see me. Without stopping, she reached into the pocket of her skirt and dropped a seed—she did not wait to see if it sprouted. Her legs were beginning to feel weak and she could tell, from the trembling sensation in her knees, that she was slowing down. The stair beneath her bottom foot suddenly gave way, and she looked down in horror to see it crumbling beneath the prongs of the Sandman’s grappling hook. Keep going, keep going! she told herself fiercely, gritting her teeth and pushing forward. She passed another turn and dropped another seed. There was another turn, another twenty steps, another seed, another turn. . . . How much longer? she thought, not daring to look up or down. She counted, ticking off twenty steps and a turn and then another twenty steps. And then, at the top of the next flight, there it was: a narrow entrance in the stone.
She ran the last twenty steps and ducked into the dark entryway. Stopping to catch her breath, she looked out into the immense, domed cavern. The sight made her dizzy. The city seemed small, like a cluster of spun-sugar houses. She could still hear the occasional burst of gunfire. The Sandman was nowhere to be seen. The seeds she dropped had burst into brilliant bloom, climbing up the limestone wall and casting a piercing white light into the chamber. If they look up they’ll know where I went, Sophia thought, her breath painful in her chest. They can’t possibly miss it. I can wait here until they notice.
She looked out over the city desperately and suddenly saw a pale glimmer from among the buildings—a brief silver flash. It was not a torch or a sword blade; it reminded her of something. Light reflected on a mirror, moonlight on a windowpane, something else—what is it? There was the flash again, and she realized that it was Theo’s hand, wrapped in the silver thread. She took a deep breath. “Theo!”
A chunk of rock burst from the wall beside her leg. The Sandman was still several flights below, and the angle of the stairs did not permit him a clear shot. But he would keep climbing, and sooner or later he would reach the doorway.
Sophia turned away in anguish; she would have to keep going. It was impossible to see inside the tunnel. She dropped a seed and waited impatiently as the vine climbed the tunnel wall, springing to life with a hundred blossoms. The air smelled like honeysuckle; the flowers shone like tiny stars, and as they bloomed Sophia saw the wide tunnel that curved upward along a set of wide, stone stairs. “More stairs?” she cried in despair.
She kept her strength by walking at a measured pace, and whenever the faint light of the last vine grew dim, she dropped another seed so that the sweet-smelling flowers would light her way. Soon the sound of shots faded, and she could hear nothing but her own steps and rasping breath. Although there were no footsteps behind her, she did not allow herself to believe that she had outrun her pursuer.
The climb felt interminable. Her feet in the wet boots moved woodenly. She knew that she had to keep climbing, but she felt a sense of despair at having left the others. They will see the vines, she said firmly. They will see the vines and know where I went. She tried to keep track of time by counting her steps. One step per second. One seed every fifty steps.
When she reached five hundred steps, her legs began to shake. At eight hundred steps, she was certain she could not go on. But if she stopped, surely she would lose track of time. If she rested for what felt to her like a moment, an entire hour might pass and the man behind her would catch up. I have to, she thought desperately. Just for a few seconds. Her legs seemed to stop moving of their own accord. Leaning against the wall in the dark, she closed her ey
es. Her knees were shaking so hard she could not even stand. With an involuntary sob, Sophia sank to a crouch and rested her head on her bent knees. She counted carefully: one, two, three, four, five, six . . .
The seconds passed. Sophia counted. She realized, as the numbers grew larger, that what was happening to her was the thing she had always feared the most: being alone, in a place where time passed invisibly, where she might close her eyes and suddenly wake up to find that days, months, years had passed. This is what I’m afraid of. This is what I’m always afraid of. But the thought brought her no terror. It seemed, rather, to bring a kind of clarity. What really keeps me here, in the present? Nothing. I could open my eyes and be in the future. Instead of memories of a whole life, I’d have . . . She opened her eyes and stared into the darkness. She had forgotten to count. The silence around her was absolute. Several thoughts flashed suddenly in Sophia’s mind at once; her eyes widened.
She had a vivid recollection of standing on the deck of the Swan. Grandmother Pearl’s voice came to her in the darkness, clear and sweet: “What else is there, that no one else is seeing because they’re looking at the time?”
“Not bound to time,” Sophia whispered aloud in the darkness. “Future, past, present—it makes no difference to me. I can see them for what they are.” She rose unsteadily to her feet. The sight of Theo’s hand, bound in silver thread, glinting in the underground chamber, filled her mind like a light. It’s Theo, she realized, it’s Theo who runs toward me when the tower collapses. She remembered the first time she had read the glass map, aboard the Seaboard Limited, sitting across from Theo in the moonlight. Then she had read it again, and again, and each time that same figure—more well-known, more painfully dear—had appeared at the end. The memories had seemed so vivid, so familiar, so real.
“I can see them for what they are,” Sophia murmured.
No longer counting, no longer having any need, she rose and climbed. Her legs seemed to spring forward without effort, despite her exhaustion and the darkness.
She reached into her pocket for another seed. Then she noticed with surprise that it was unnecessary. She could see the steps beneath her feet. A pale light spread toward her from the top of the stairs. Without pausing to look up, she climbed onward. Suddenly a cold rush of air hit her brow and she lifted her head. There was an opening only a few steps above her. Sophia took the final step. Numbly, she dropped the seed pinched between her fingers.
She found herself at the edge of a frozen lake, inside a high pyramid with glassy walls. Beyond their frosted surfaces, snow fell silently while flashes of lightning lit up the gray sky in the distance. It was just as she had seen so many times before on the surface of the four maps. We all thought the memories on the maps came from the past, she thought, but they were from the future. They are my memories. My memories of destroying this place.
36
A Map of the World
1891, July #: #-Hour
Cartographites: The tools of the trade belonging to a cartologer. In portions of the known world where cartologers are believed to possess the skill of divination, cartographites are considered instruments of great power. The belief has some basis in fact, as the cartologer’s tools are frequently found objects from the other Ages.
—From Veressa Metl’s Glossary of Baldlandian Terms
A LONG, SPIRALING balcony circled the walls of the pyramid, leaving the frozen lake in the center untouched. Its surface, a clear slab marbled with white rime, could not entirely conceal the remarkable waters below. Sophia did not need the Tracing Glass to know that the lake was a map—the largest map she had ever seen. The carta mayor.
From the banks of the lake, she could see faint spurts of color swirling like tiny fish trapped below the ice. Lost for a moment in time, she considered how the memories she was about to create had found their way onto the four maps. Her mind folded hours of deliberation into a brief, illuminating second.
I had forgotten, Sophia thought, what a map really is: a guide for the path one must follow. The glass map does not contain memories. It contains directions. It has been telling me all along what I alone must do.
She stepped forward to look more closely at the carta mayor and knelt to press her palm against the frozen surface. The cold burned and rushed to her brain. She stayed there for a long time, her mind lost to the gentle movements that beckoned from beneath. As she took her hand away, she felt entirely calm. The ice had cooled her lungs and her aching legs. Her mind was refreshed. Taking a deep, cleansing breath, she turned toward the curving balcony and again prepared herself to climb.
I will climb to the top, she thought steadily, and from there push the stone that will bring the tower down. That is what the maps say I must do. But then something unexpected happened. Stepping onto the balcony, she placed her hand against the wall to steady herself, and a sudden rush of memories flooded her mind. She pulled away and looked at the wall more closely. The glass squares, slippery and slightly damp, were alive with finely graven images. As she glanced upward, she understood that every block in the pyramid was a carefully placed map: a map with memories of the Southern Snows.
She could not resist the temptation to walk slowly, tracing her finger across the smooth surfaces, letting the memories fill her mind.
She remembered dark days without sunlight and long seasons of bitter cold that seemed to chill her to the bone. She recalled seeking shelter in snowy caves and struggling to find warmth in the weak flames of a fire fed with animal bones. But then the memories changed, and she began to understand how the people had carved their lives out of the ice. The world of their Age was a vast, frozen expanse. Glaciers stretched across the earth, interrupted only by the freezing waters of the sea. There was no soil, no plant life, and hardly any sunlight. The inhabitants cut their homes out of the glaciers and ate from the ocean. For hundreds and hundreds of years, they survived with nothing more.
And then, Sophia recalled, one among them received a map. There were no memories of where it came from. Painted on sealskin, the map showed a route through the heart of the glaciers to caves deep underground. Caves that were warm and dry—and dark. They built their homes in the underground chambers, hollowing out larger and larger spaces for the growing subterranean cities. They never entirely abandoned the aboveground world of ice, but over time they traveled less frequently back and forth.
Sophia paused at the map that brought her the memories of the first experiments with soil. As she walked on, her fingers passing lightly over the glass, she was overwhelmed by the discoveries that had taken place. She did not understand them, but she could see the laborious task of finding rare soils and the even more arduous tasks of transforming, transmuting, and finally inventing soils.
She was almost a third of the way up the pyramid. She walked slowly, unaware of the empty stairway; crowds of people filled her vision as the memories flashed before her.
The discoveries in soil led to the growth of new plants—those that grew on small patches of underground soil, without sunlight, and those that grew on soil scattered across the ice. As the soils were adjusted, the roots grew more sophisticated, incorporating metals from the soil that permitted them to break through and acquire nourishment from even the most inhospitable rock and ice. The plants were bred to every purpose: to illuminate the underground caverns, to provide food where no ordinary crops would grow, to fill the labyrinthine tunnels with voices that would guide the way.
As the people grew in their accomplishments, they also grew bolder, and some migrated to the aboveground world of ice. The miraculous soil of their age meant that no climate was too harsh; they had no limits. They built wonderful cities upon the glaciers, filling the continents, making those ancient days of insurmountable cold seem a distant nightmare. And they became explorers. In their intrepid expansion across the globe, they learned to create memory maps. Cartology in the glacial Age reached the pinnacle of its achievements.
Sophia stopped. She took her hand from the wall a
nd her mind away from the memories that had absorbed it. Something had interrupted them, but she was not sure what. Had she heard a sound from within the pyramid? No—not a sound; something else. She brought her face close to the clear wall and looked through at the world beyond. The strange storm of snow and lightning continued, but from her high vantage point she saw for the first time that the pyramid was surrounded by an entire city. Almost invisible against the glacier, the white buildings stretched out along broad avenues. She saw, too, the sight that had distracted her from the maps: there were people here and there walking far below.
She could not tell, from such a height, who they were. She did not know if Shadrack and Theo might be among them, having found their way out of the tunnels, or if the people of the Southern Snows were walking along the icy streets, unconscious of the fact that someone from another Age was scaling their pyramid, intent on destroying it.
Sophia felt a spasm of unease and continued walking purposefully up the shallow steps. She knew that she had lost track of time. The skies were the same color, but the strange electrical storm taking place over the glacier made it unclear whether it was dawn, daytime, or dusk. For all she knew, hours might have passed.
From time to time, as she scaled the steps, she tried to catch glimpses of the people she had seen before. But the higher she climbed, the more difficult it was. They had become small specks, moving imperceptibly across the ice. As she reached the top of the pyramid, the streaks of lightning grew brighter and fiercer. Above her, a rounded balcony jutted out from the wall directly below the pyramid’s peak.
