The Glass Sentence

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 and 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.

From the balcony, Sophia could see beyond the walls in every direction. To the south, the craggy face of the glacier stretched to the horizon. To the north were the deserted plains of the Baldlands and the gray contours of Nochtland. The city seemed pitifully small from such a distance: no more than a rocky bump in the glacier’s path.

At the center of the balcony was a stone sphere almost as tall as she was, and balanced on it was a miniature reproduction of the pyramid itself, cut in glass. Her eyes traveled down the length of the wall, over the thousands of maps that spiraled toward the base of the pyramid. They recounted a long, continuous history of the Age. Surely, Sophia thought, the map on the pedestal is the last—the last memories stored for the creation of the pyramid.

Before approaching it, she walked to the edge of the balcony. The sight made her dizzy. She stepped back to steady herself and then leaned cautiously forward once again. The frozen lake was visible in its entirety. The map of the world lay below her, created by some unknown hand with some unknown instrument, trapped below the ice. It was not still. A restless light appeared to move across it, altering the colors and patterns below the surface. Sophia was mesmerized, uncomprehending. What vision of the world did it reflect? What possibilities of past and future did it capture in its frozen depths?

She pulled herself away from the balcony railing with a sense of piercing sadness. How can I destroy all this? she thought. There was no doubt in her mind that the memories from the four maps were meant to be hers, but she could not bring herself to do the thing that would make those memories real. Below that frozen surface lay a world of knowledge, visions, truths. She imagined the slender current of water that carried the story of how her parents had left New Occident, never to be seen again. It lay somewhere there below the ice, containing all the secrets of her parents’ lives. Sophia was overwhelmed with such a sense of longing to know—to finally know—that she sank against the railing.

As she leaned forward, she heard an unexpected sound—a footfall. Someone had followed her. Someone had climbed all the way up through the pyramid without being seen and was about to step onto the balcony beside her. Sophia steeled herself against the Sandman with the pistol who had pursued her in the underground cavern. She did not feel afraid; her stomach hardened as if preparing for a sudden blow.

But it was not the man with the revolver. As the person who had followed her came into view, Sophia drew back inadvertently. The veil was gone and the scarred face was pale against the unbound hair, which was tousled and tangled and wet with snow.

Blanca had found her.