Borderlands (23 page)

But instead, here we are. Five teenagers playing at soldiers. And we're not here to help King Morrigan's war plans. We're here to destroy them.

In the final flush of evening light, we reach the western shore of a lake. I spot it coming through the trees: a vast body of water, swathed in the bite of a sinking sun. We position ourselves in a thicket and peer around the trunks to get our bearings.

Radnor points across the lake. ‘Army camp's on the southern shore.'

I squint, but I can't see much from here: just a smattering of distant lights. Camp fires, perhaps. The lake is too huge, the army too distant. Water stretches like a blanket across the land. Around us, rivers roll out from the forest, spilling down to feed into the lake.

No, not just a lake. A draining bowl.

And to the east, directly across the water, there is no shoreline. Instead, the water collides with a massive stone wall.
A dam
. A dam to keep the water from returning to the Valley.

The feet of mountains rear on either side of the wall, erasing the horizon. From this short distance, their height is staggering. I can see why the Eastern Boundary Range is called impassable. No hope of biplanes flying over them, or soldiers scaling their peaks in one piece.

‘Look,' Clementine whispers. ‘That's it. Just behind that wall.'

I follow her gaze and my breath catches in my throat. After all this time – all this running, fighting, terror, surviving – we're so close. There's only one passage through these mountains. A truncated ‘V' of empty air, rising behind the dam wall.

The Magnetic Valley.

The emotion hits me so hard I can barely breathe.

This isn't how I always thought I'd react when I finally reached the Valley. I thought I'd stand there looking stoic, and stare down the barrel of our route to freedom. Maybe give an inspiring speech, or something like that. But instead, I double over. I clutch my knees. My head is awash with memories – memories I thought I'd buried long ago.

My father sits at my bedside, telling me a story. Lantern-light winks upon the rims of his glasses. ‘The Magnetic Valley,' he says, ‘is a place where the king's bombs do not fall. It's a place where –'

I'm cold and alone, curling in a doorway in the snow. The air stinks of garbage and dying flame. Somewhere out there, my home is burning – and all I can do is rock back and forth, singing through the sobs.
‘Chasing those distant deserts of green . . .'

I stand in the Rourton sewer, as a young crew plans to flee Taladia.

And then I place my hand upon the city wall, and steel myself to climb. I can do this. I can find the Valley . . .

The memories are hot and sharp and cold. It's like a house of cards is collapsing, and I'm just a crumpled figure in the middle. I've dreamed of the Valley my entire life: a song, a hope, a promise. And here it is. Its top rises behind the dam, a V-shaped cleft of evening sky.

Maisy places a hesitant hand on my shoulder. ‘Danika, are you all right?'

I don't know whether to be ashamed and try to hide my reaction, or just stand up straight and admit to the moment of weakness. I manage to wipe my eyes on my cloak, then pull myself back upwards. ‘Yeah, I'm fine.'

Maisy slips the hand back down and nods, looking thoughtful. ‘It's been a long time coming, hasn't it?'

‘Yeah,' I say. ‘I guess it just . . . I never thought this is how I'd react when I actually got here.'

‘You're not the only one,' Maisy says quietly.

I glance to the side, and see that Clementine's face is streaked with tears. She stands upright, as stark as a statue, but makes no effort to hide the moisture on her cheeks. All she seems to notice is the Valley.

And beside her, one hand on her shoulder, is Teddy. He's angled away slightly, so I can't see if he's teary too, but I've never seen him stand so still before.

‘See that?' Radnor says, standing stiffly to our right. ‘That's a symbol of hope for every soul in Taladia. And the king wants to invade it and destroy it. Are we going to let him?'

I wonder if he's been practising this speech in his head, or if it just came out when he saw our reactions. Either way, it doesn't have the inspirational effect Radnor was hoping for. It cracks our moment of silent awe, and we all return to ourselves.

Clementine wipes her eyes. Teddy snorts and says, ‘We're not a street-ball crew, mate. We don't need corny pre-game speeches.'

Radnor looks slightly deflated, but rallies himself. ‘Well, come on then. The guards are down by the lake.'

The lake ripples insistently, rubbing against the dam wall like a stray cat. All that holds it back is that wall. The dam rises high above the current waterline, as dark as the mountains that frame it. If those stones were to topple, the Valley would flood again in minutes.

But as the clouds shift, something catches my eye. A ray of sunset spills across the wall, and its stonework no longer looks blank. Strange writing covers its surface: a trio of enormous symbols, painted in crimson. They loom high above the lake, as vast as the wall itself – and in the evening light, they wink with an unnatural shine.

Maisy lets out a little gasp. ‘Kindred runes.'

‘What?'

‘They must be supporting the wall! Kindred runes are one of the oldest forms of magic – they've been illegal for hundreds of years. But some of the oldest families still keep their symbols hidden away, like an heirloom . . .'

She turns to Clementine. ‘Uncle Augustus had some, remember? He showed them to me once – they were hidden in the back of his great-­grandfather's notebook. You have to paint the runes in a family member's blood.'

I stare up at the eerie symbols. ‘If they're holding up the wall,' I say slowly, ‘does that mean if we destroyed them, it would collapse?'

Teddy's eyes widen. ‘Hey, that'd flood the Valley again, right? I bet that'd put a crimp in the king's plans.'

We stare at each other, alight with excitement. Until now, our only hope was to sabotage the catacombs. But perhaps there's another option. If we destroy the dam wall and send water rushing back into the Valley . . .

Maisy shakes her head. ‘It won't work. The whole point of kindred runes is that only your kin can erase them.'

‘Meaning . . .?'

‘The runes can only be undone by someone of the same bloodline,' Maisy says. ‘A descendant of whoever painted those runes, back when they built the dam wall.'

‘The royal family,' I say. ‘Lukas . . . this is what he saw! When he looked through that eagle's eyes, he saw the wall with his family's runes painted all over it and –'

‘He came here to undo them,' Teddy finishes.

I turn to Maisy. ‘How do you undo the runes?'

She bites her lip, avoiding my eyes.

‘Maisy, how do you –?'

‘Self-sacrifice,' she says.

A sharp pain stabs the back of my throat. I think of Lukas's final note, with his silver star charm wrapped inside. A note to say sorry. A note to say goodbye.

‘But he's been gone for days.' My voice cracks. ‘He'd have to be here by now – he can't have . . . he can't be . . .'

Radnor scoffs. ‘If a Morrigan's decided to off himself, I say good riddance.'

‘He's not dead,' Maisy says quietly. ‘The kindred runes are intact. If a Morrigan had slain himself near here, I don't think the wall could still be standing.'

‘But if Lukas came here to undo the runes, and he hasn't done it . . .' I shake my head. ‘Then where
is
he?'

‘Who cares?' Radnor says. ‘The coward probably ran off and wet himself in the woods. Look, if we can't destroy this dam then we'll just have to trash the tunnels.'

‘Won't those runes stop us doing it?' Clementine says. ‘We don't have any royal blood.'

Maisy shakes her head. ‘I don't think it matters. The kindred runes are painted on the dam, but we're not attacking the dam – we're attacking the tunnels underneath it.'

Radnor nods. ‘Then let's get on with it.'

A fleet of rowboats waits by the shore, with guards nearby. Compared to the smugglers' houseboats, these vessels look tiny: each is barely large enough for five or six people.

‘They'll row us across to the army base,' Radnor whispers, as we hide near the edge of the trees.

Clementine peers at the soldiers. ‘Couldn't we just walk around the lake?'

Radnor shakes his head. ‘Our story is that we're coming from the north. It'd look dodgy to turn up on the wrong side of the camp.'

We adjust our uniforms and check our identity cards. Our necks must remain bare, of course, since we're supposed to be adults – but this creates a new problem. Our cards read Earth, Water, Stone, Dirt and Mud: useful proclivities for reconstructing the catacombs. Unfortunately, our own tattoos include Fire, Beast and Night.

‘Take out your hair,' Radnor advises the twins. When they untie their buns, blonde curls spill across their backs. It detracts a little from their soldier disguise, but at least it hides their necks.

I can't resist one last peek at Clementine's neck before her hair covers it. I'm half-hoping she's developed a tattoo without anyone noticing. Clementine's proclivity is late to emerge, and there's no guarantee that it will be Flame like Maisy's. Even among identical twins, proclivities can differ. I'm hoping Clementine will get Water or Stone. Something useful. But there's still no tattoo on her neck – just unblemished skin.

Too much to hope for, I suppose.

‘What about us?' I glance at Teddy. My own auburn hair only reaches my chin; there's no hope of it covering my Night tattoo. And as for Teddy, with the messy short hair of a scruffer boy . . .

‘Could cover ourselves in mud,' Teddy says, brightening. ‘Say we fell in a swamp or something. I don't reckon they'd want to look too closely.'

‘Won't work,' Radnor says. ‘They'd make you wash yourselves off in the lake before you set foot in an army boat.'

‘What if you just disguised your tattoos?' Maisy says. ‘You could dab a bit of mud around to make them less clear. If we wait until it's really dark, and don't give anyone a look at your necks, they might not notice.'

It's risky, but it's the best plan we've got. The others set to work disguising our tattoos. Carlita Jones's proclivity was Earth, and it's not hard to dapple my upper spine with dirt. Teddy is a little harder, since the soldier who owned his uniform had a Stone proclivity, but Clementine smears some mud into rocks and mountains on his skin.

‘It's not too hard,' she says, when we stand back to admire her efforts. ‘It's a bit like makeup, isn't it?'

The evening fades, and the sky grows darker. Soon the Valley is just a ‘V' of starlit sky framed by sloping bulks of black. We glance at each other as we wait, then drop our gazes again. My stomach is tight with anxiety. We're about to infiltrate King Morrigan's army. The odds of us all surviving the night aren't great. If this were a back-alley marbles game, I'd bet my coins on the other side.

Finally, Radnor clambers to his feet. ‘All right,' he says. ‘It's not going to get any darker.'

We venture towards the lake. My instincts say to duck and hide, to slither on my belly and crawl beneath the bushes. But the time for hiding is over. We have to look confident now: a line of soldiers reporting for duty. Radnor leads our group and the twins bring up the rear. Teddy carries the supply pack that I rescued from the
Firebird
. It doesn't cover his neck, unfortunately, but at least it might distract from the smudge of his markings.

The guards watch us approach, faces lit by alchemy lamps. They look more bored than worried, even at this time of night. I suppose they must see patrols coming and going all the time – especially if these rowboats are the easiest route to the camp.

‘Names?' says the first guard. He's a bald man in his thirties, as knobbly and thin as a praying mantis. ‘Cards?'