The Gate
“Wait,” Berend says as they reach the bottom of the stairs. The house is still dark, but it’s an ordinary darkness, and the streetlights are visible from the front windows. An intermittent dark stain leads from the front door toward the back of the house.
Isabel takes an instinctive step back. Is it blood? It was too dark, before, even with her candle, and she hadn’t noticed it. There are no other signs of violence that she can see, though the holy symbol of Alcos on the mantel remains corroded and black.
“We should keep moving,” she says. She doesn’t want to give Geray a chance to begin another ritual. She had sent the ghosts away, but a powerful enough draw could bring them back, and others besides.
Gods. For the briefest moment, she had held their tethers, felt them straining against her will. It was nothing like the gentle touch of the bell and her own ritual circles. The ghosts were in terrible, agonizing pain, crying out with a sound that Isabel could feel rather than hear. She had released them as soon as she had the awareness—she should have taken the time to guide them across the veil properly, but she could barely think. Still, the sensation of it lingered.
If that is what necromancy feels like, she cannot think of a reason why anyone would willingly perform it.
Berend has taken the time afforded by her hesitation to reload his pistol, packing in powder and a single heavy shot almost without looking. He touches a hand to the deepest cut on his chest and scowls when it comes away bloody. The wounds are neat, not cut by a blade but split from within, as a result of the wrath of the spirits. It’s something Isabel has only read about before now. Geray’s control must have been very strong indeed, to allow them to harm intruders without damaging the house.
Berend’s shirt—the one Lady Breckenridge had given him, what seems like days ago—tears reluctantly, the fine silk fibers holding strong. It takes several precious minutes for him to tear enough strips to bandage the worst of his wounds.
Isabel fights back another wave of nausea. Her faculties aren’t returning fast enough. The ritual must have taken more out of her than she’d anticipated. She won’t have enough left for whatever Geray still has to throw at her.
When Berend is ready, they follow the trail of stained floorboards to the kitchen. It’s a small room, suited to a bachelor who usually eats elsewhere. The most prominent feature is the cellar door at the back.
It’s locked. Probably barred, as well, from the other side. As far as Isabel can tell, it’s the only way downstairs.
Berend gives the handle a gentle shake. “I don’t suppose they teach you to pick locks at the Temple of Ondir,” he says.
She shakes her head. Even that small motion makes it feel like she’s on a ship in the middle of a storm. She must look close to as terrible as she feels, because Berend’s face twists in awkward concern.
To her relief, he doesn’t ask. “Right, then,” he says. “So much for the element of surprise. Stand back.”
She does, one hand protecting the flame of her candle. Berend holsters his weapons and kicks the door, planting his heel just below the handle. Wood cracks, and splinters fall to the floor. He kicks it again. On the third kick, the latch breaks and the door swings free.
He draws his pistol in one hand and his sword in the other. “I’ll go first,” he says, and starts down the stairs.
Isabel follows him. More candles, dim and yellow, light the packed-earth cellar. Someone, likely Geray himself from the uneven workmanship, has expanded the space, digging into the wall opposite the creaking wooden stairs. The floor has been marked with a complex ritual circle, maybe fifteen feet in diameter, scratched into the dirt. A table holds glass bulbs and tubes, while another has a desiccated corpse strapped to its surface. Two more corpses lie in a heap of limbs and chains in the back corner. Thankfully, none of them move.
Another exit has been dug up into the buckling ceiling, and a rusty metal ladder provides access. Why hasn’t he left, already? Isabel wonders. He’s had time. At least, she thinks he has. It’s hard to tell how long she’s been in this house.
A third table stands in the center of the dug-out portion of the cellar, and the body on that one struggles against its bonds. It’s Warder, and he’s alive, strapped to the table with a rag stuffed into his mouth. His device lies at his feet, just outside the magic circle.
Geray stands over him, a knife to his throat. It draws a thin, angry line of blood as Berend and Isabel reach the bottom of the stairs.
“Don’t come any closer,” Geray snarls through his teeth.
Berend’s pistol is already in his hand. Unflinching, he levels it at Geray. “Put down the knife.”
No one moves. Isabel knows Geray would kill Warder in an instant—he’s done worse, with less provocation, several times over already—but Warder is his last bargaining chip, the one thing preventing Berend from shooting him where he stands.
Isabel takes a cautious step forward. The candles in the room gutter, splattering wax into the dirt. She can’t quite determine the purpose of the ritual circle, but it can’t be anything good. A brown, crusty residue indicates that it has been filled with blood before, and she knows before she sees them that the tables have drains; there’s one right beneath Warder’s head, with a hammered metal channel to direct the flow down to the floor.
“Sentinel!” Geray cries out. “This isn’t—you don’t understand. We’re on the same side. You of all people should realize the value of what I’ve achieved.”
Isabel prickles, suddenly defensive. She’s nothing like him. She set the ghosts free.
It won’t do her any good to argue with him. If she makes him angry, he’ll cut Warder’s throat, and whatever magic he has prepared will ignite. Only the gods know what will happen then. “We can talk,” she says, her voice calm even though she doesn’t feel it. “Just let Warder go.”
“Listen,” Geray commands. “The heretics, the nonbelievers, they were going too far. Look at what I’ve inspired. The people are gathering in the streets night after night to oppose the filthy Resurrection Act!”
What he’s saying doesn’t make any sense, but his words ring with clear conviction. The hand holding the knife does not tremble.
“What you’ve done here is heresy,” Isabel says. “Worse than anything the council could do. Do you understand that?”
She regrets it as soon as the words leave her mouth. Geray turns from Berend and the gun to her, the muscles on either side of his jaw spasming in rage. “I served the gods,” he says. “Everything I have ever done has been to serve Alcos. The father needs his children to know the dangers of all their idle sins. I never summoned a demon, that was all for show. I wanted people to believe again, and they do! They’re in the streets—”
A sudden flare of anger erases Isabel’s resolution to remain calm. “You performed necromancy. You created ghosts and held them captive, you were torturing them—”
Geray cuts her off. “Sacrifices needed to be made.”
“What did you do to Mikhail?” Berend interrupts, his voice low.
Geray’s face is utterly blank. The name means nothing to him.
“Mikhail Ranseberg. He was a Son of Galaser,” Berend says. He draws the hammer back with his thumb, keeping the barrel trained on Geray. “He was a wounded veteran. He begged in the streets and never harmed a soul in this city. His only sin was love of drink, which he used to calm the terrors, and you murdered him—you cut him into pieces and destroyed his soul. What happened to him?“
“He died for a higher cause,” Geray says. He sounds no less arrogant, but he’s eyeing the gun. “He’s doing more good in death than he ever did in life.”
“How do I fix him?” Berend asks. “What does that thing have to do with it?” He gestures to the abandoned device with a nod. His gun hand remains perfectly still.
Geray sneers. It doesn’t hide the fear in his eyes. “You’ll have to ask Professor Warder. If he survives the night.”
Warder, strapped to the table, makes a muffled sound. He strains his arms against the bonds, but it’s no use. He’s in tight, and if he moves too much, the knife will cut through his windpipe or sever his arteries, filling the magic circle with blood.
Isabel can’t let that happen.
“I will see the city terrified into righteousness,” Geray says, getting louder with each word. “I will bring about a kingdom that the gods will be proud to call their own, and then they’ll come back. They’ll listen to us again, and it will be like it was.”
With her candle raised and her other arm held out clear of her sword, Isabel takes a slow step forward. Her boots press into the soft, disturbed earth—are there more bodies, buried under here? She won’t think about that now—and break the outer ring of the diagram.
“Don’t come any closer, Sentinel,” says Geray.
She freezes in place. Maybe this is enough to disrupt the spell, but she can’t be sure. “Just let Warder go and we can talk.”
He scoffs. “I should have known you wouldn’t listen. The church of Ondir has been corrupt since the days of the Inquisition.”
The knife presses down. It’s cruelly sharp, and a gush of red spills from Warder’s throat and drains down to the floor. With preternatural speed, it begins to fill in the lines in the dirt.
The gunshot is so loud it shakes earth and roots from the ceiling. Geray drops like a stone. Berend tosses the empty pistol aside and runs for him, his sword in both hands.
Warder continues to bleed, and now Geray’s blood, from the gaping hole in his chest, is also flowing into the circle. Isabel’s ears are ringing, but she can still hear the hum of magic filling the room. She runs across the circle. Her feet slip and she stumbles, but at least that’s more damage to the diagram. She hopes it will be enough.
Berend drives his sword into Geray’s chest. Isabel collides with him, knocking him to the ground, and the room explodes in black and violet fire.
Time passes. She isn’t sure how long. She sits up and realizes with dizzying vertigo that she is much farther above the ground than she thought she would be. In fact, she can see herself, lying in a heap beside Berend.
The spell, possibly aided by her previous trip, has shunted her into the nether world. That, or it has torn through the veil between planes. It’s not a common effect, but it has been recorded in the past. Her body still has a spark of life, as does Berend’s. Warder lives as well, though his light is weaker. He’s bleeding out.
Geray is dead. His body is dark, and his spirit is spinning through the house, wailing like a wind through the mountains.
“Stop that,” Isabel says. “It’s over.”
He isn’t listening. She’ll need her bell to get his attention, and that would require returning to her body. It would normally be a simple matter of concentration to reconnect herself, but right now it’s proving difficult.
Come on, come on. She has to save Warder. She needs to get everyone, body and spirit, out of this house.
It’s still standing alone in the void, surrounded by ragged holes in the fabric of the nether. Like mouths, they open and shut, and within each one is a field of stars. Once again, Isabel wonders where the rest of the city is, and if Geray had done something deliberately to isolate the house, or if this is another unintended effect of his spells.
The vision disappears, and Isabel feels pain all through her chest as she gasps and breathes in dust. She’s back in her body, and all the lights have gone out, buried in the explosion.
She gets her arms underneath her and pushes herself up. There is something digging into her ribs that turns out to be her candle. There are still matches in one of her pockets. Thank the gods.
With light achieved, she crawls through the dirt and the remnants of Geray’s laboratory. There are stones and broken glass under her hands and knees, and if she tilts her head too far she can see the nether world again, but Warder isn’t far. He’s still breathing—barely. She presses the sleeve of her coat to his open throat and brushes most of the dirt from his face.
Maybe someone heard the explosion. Isabel doesn’t know how else they’re going to get out of here.
She looks over at Berend. What’s left of his shirt is completely ruined, and he’s bleeding from a gash on his head, but his breath stirs the dust.
There is something else moving in the remains of the room. The bodies—Geray’s, and the others he still had here—are beginning to animate. Geray himself is still screaming, though Isabel can only see him out of the corner of her eye. More earth rains from the ceiling.
She keeps one hand on Warder and traces out a circle with the other. Her bell, in another pocket, has a tiny dent along the rim, but it rings with a clear, piercing sound.
“In the name of Isra, mother of creation,” she begins, her voice hoarse and her throat choked with dust, “and of Alcos, king and father, and of Ondir, lord of the gates: I call the name of Arden Geray.”
He appears, shimmering and hollow-eyed as one of his former captives. “No, no,” he mutters. “This can’t be. My work cannot end.”
“It’s ended. Leave this place.”
Geray’s ghost rushes toward her with a gust of cold wind. “This is your doing,” he growls. “The gods are watching, Sentinel. They will judge you for this.”
“Perhaps,” Isabel says, trying not to show fear. The corpses are trying to stand, now, and every time they move some more earth comes down from the ceiling. The whole place might collapse at any moment. “But that will come later. Go, pass through the gate, and meet the gods yourself.”
He drifts closer to the candle flame, but stops before the light envelops his misty form. “What gate?”
Isabel shakes her head. She doesn’t have time for this. “You’re dead, Geray. You’ll only suffer more if you remain here.”
“What gate? There is no gate!” he cries. “There is nothing!”
The effect of his failed spell isn’t quite gone, and for a moment, Isabel can see what he sees. Here is the house in a sea of churning void, and beyond it, only stars. Ondir’s bridge is nowhere to be found, and the new moon door itself is gone. Not once in all her years as a Sentinel has this happened, and not one of her predecessors ever wrote of it. Since there have been human beings to give the god of death a name, there has been a gate.
And now it is gone. Geray wails again.
Alone at the center of the collapsing cellar, in the roiling wastes of the nether realm, Isabel can only pray. She hopes there is still a god to hear her.
Back to Chapter Twenty-Eight
Forward to Part Two, Chapter One
This concludes Part One of The Book of the New Moon Door! I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it.
There will be a Part Two, and eventually a Part Three. There will also be new things to read, so check back soon. I will be holding a poll sometime in the next week or two, to decide what my next blog project will be, so if you’re dying to know what happens next to Berend and Isabel, be sure to vote in it!
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Congrats this is so awesome!
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