I awoke to the sound of water lapping against the hull of a boat. My breath came in ragged gasps, and my body shook, my teeth chattering and my hands trembling. I had gone numb from the cold. An indigo sky greeted me when I opened my eyes, and the stars danced in my vision. I exhaled a white cloud that obscured them until they stood still.
I pushed myself up. I lay in the hull of my boat, in a layer of water a hand’s breadth deep. All around me, the sea was black, and stirred by the whistling wind. It lifted my tiny craft, pushing it along to some unknown destination. The stars stretched across the sky down to the horizon in all directions, with no landmass to obscure them. I was lost, and I was well on my way to freezing to death.
I remembered standing beside the towering marble gate, Khalim’s insubstantial hand in mine, the city slowly crumbling. Had I dreamt my landing upon the gray beach, my conversation with Fearghus, my trek across the plain, my long-awaited but ever so brief meeting with Khalim?
The gate of bone was gone. A dark sky and darker waters surrounded my little boat. Either it had vanished as quickly as it had appeared, or I had drifted far away.
I moved to the stern and took up my makeshift oar, gathering my winter cloak around me. In a small measure of good fortune, it had stayed mostly dry, and feeling began to return to my hands and feet. I found my flint, but my lantern was empty of oil. I would have to remain in the dark.
Time had passed, but I could not tell how much. My sail hung in tatters; I used scraps of it to plug up the gaps that cold water had forced between the timbers of my hull. My light had burned down and gone out.
My thoughts moved slowly in the persistent cold; too slowly to be afraid. I also had, burning in my chest, the hope that all I had seen had not been a dream. Khalim had said to meet him in Phyreios.
So, to Phyreios was where I would go.
I knew these stars. I had spent long evenings underneath them, building my boat. Over the horizon behind me, a constellation the pilgrims had called the wineskin of the gods hung in the sky. It would lead their way home after the day without a sun, they had said, and they would make the months-long journey back to wherever they had come from on foot.
It would not lead me home, but it would show me the way back to shore. I plunged my oar into the icy water and turned my battered craft around. Its driftwood sides creaked, and water sloshed around my feet, but it held together. I rowed toward the unassuming oval of stars in the distance, the muscles in my arms protesting against the cold and exhaustion that weighed them down.
It hadn’t been a dream. I had walked the forests and plains of the world of the dead, my mortal body bending the world around me, as wandering spirits pursued me for a pound of my flesh. I had met Khalim at the gate, and confronted the god Torr, and now I was on my way to Phyreios once again.
My oar pulled the boat along. I was back in the world of the living, as strange as it might have appeared. Splinters pressed into my palms. My body, as spent as it was, moved as I expected it to, and the oar and the water responded. Gone was the feeling of heaviness, the sense that I was about to drop through the world and fall forever. Gone, too, was the warping of the world behind me. As my boat crept forward, the sea was unchanged, as if I had never passed this way. I was growing hungrier by the minute.
Some hours later, my boat met the rocky shore. A sharp, black spire pierced my hull, and water rushed in. I gathered my cloak and my harpoon and leapt onto the land.
The pilgrims were gone. Their fire was dark. Only the faint hint of smoke in the air proved they had ever been here. The first rays of sunlight crept above the eastern horizon, pale and faint against the depths of the sea and the winter sky, and I was alone.
They had left me a small bundle, tied in a scrap of cloth. In it was a small portion of grain from their stores and the last of the seal meat. It wasn’t much, but it would see me on my way.
I ate my fill and wrapped myself in my cloak for a few hours’ rest. It was dark again when I woke. With my harpoon as a staff, I set out over the rocks, stumbling through the long winter night. The gods’ wineskin hung in the sky, taunting me from just out of reach.
I walked, and the days grew longer, and slowly, the constellation I followed climbed up from the horizon. The land flattened and grew green, and soon I passed among low, twisted trees, as bent as I was in the howling wind.
I walked for months. I ate through my meager stores in a few days, and then hunted what I could catch and dig up from the ground. I was hungry, but I had been hungry before. I had made a similar journey on the opposite end of the world. Then, I had wandered because the only alternative was death. Now, I had a destination.
I did not know what I would find when I reached Phyreios, if indeed my stubborn refusal to die preserved me long enough to arrive there. I had to place my faith in Khalim, and in those I had left behind when I left the city, that they would be there to welcome me.
I came to a port—a tiny, windswept village with a battered pier, but it had fishing boats that could travel farther up the coast. I bartered with the fishermen until one agreed to let me row for him in exchange for passage.
“Are you strong enough to row?” he asked me, looking me up and down, his eyes two bright sparks in the weathered bark of his face.
“To row, to fish, to fend off pirates,” I answered. “Yes, I’m strong enough.”
He put down his nets and crossed his arms over his narrow chest. They were wiry, strong people here, aged quickly by the sun and wind. “You look like you’ve been to the deepest hells and crawled your way back,” he said with a shrug.
“You’re more correct than you could possibly know,” I said.
He asked me no more questions as we pushed off from the pier and began our trek up the coast. The trip was a short one, as he had a family to return to once his nets were full, but I found another village, another port, and another boat after his, and another. I rowed and cast nets and dined well on fish, regaining the strength I had lost in my winter wanderings.
And with each passing day, I came closer to Phyreios once more.
The waters turned from gray to blue, and I came to the North, arriving upon the Summer Sea as the winds grew warm and the towering forest that held the upper city Rhakyan in its branches turned a vibrant green.
I hoped to find Hamilcar again in the harbor of the lower city, but he was elsewhere, pursuing his own ends.
Perhaps, one day, our paths would cross again.
Across the Summer Sea, then, in a ship with tall, white sails; its swift rowers and clever pilot brought me to a port I had not visited before. It was a city built of pale yellow stone, its domed roofs painted blue as the sea, the streets crowded with people in colorful dress, calling to one another in more languages than I could count. It reminded me of Svilsara—the illusion of Svilsara. Its serpent god must have gleaned his inspiration from a place like this.
Four weeks later, in the company of a caravan of traders, I came across the real Svilsara. It was half-buried in sand, the ruins of its buildings smoothed over until they were almost invisible. No one walked its buried streets or sang hymns in the shadow of the temple’s remains.
Svilsara was empty at last. I could only hope that its people had found true safety. If they lived, would they have forgiven me now for what I had done?
There were many others from whom I might have begged forgiveness. I had been so focused on my only goal that I had trespassed and stolen and left without so much as a farewell. I bore a weapon and the ability to use it, and I had abandoned so many people I had met to their fate when I could have stayed to prevent it.
Or, I thought, I might have died in the attempt instead, and ended my quest. When I was young, my choices were simple ones: between what my father wished and what would ignite his anger. In Phyreios, I had only to do as I was instructed, and defy the tyrants of the holy city. In all these years alone, I had only my own poor judgment on which to rely.
For better or worse, I was going back to Phyreios. I could not envision anything further into the future than that.
I crossed a river valley well in bloom, where insects sang in a raucous chorus. If I followed the river, it would take me at length to Nagara, but for now I turned north again to where the green country turned once more to desert. I joined another caravan, this one of horse merchants who brought the fabled beasts of the steppe to the lords of the river valleys, and returned north with silk and spice. They told stories of a tribe led by a woman, who broke the chains of the enslaved and brought them into her warband, and had amassed a herd of ten thousand horses. The dust kicked up by their hooves, the merchants said, could be seen for miles.
It was everything Aysulu would have wanted.
“And what of Phyreios?” I asked. “Do you have news of the city?”
“Some time ago,” the caravan leader said, “the king left his throne, and his council rules in his stead.”
His brother nodded, staring into the campfire. “It wasn’t so long ago that the earthquake claimed the lives of their last rulers. Perhaps the place is cursed, and soon no one will rule it.”
“The city was rebuilt,” the leader argued. “I think he decided his work was done, and he’d rather spend his days doing whatever kings do when they no longer need to rule. Maybe he has a garden.”
As much as I tried not to betray anything, a smile crossed my face. Khalim might have liked a garden. Torr, however, had not allowed any to grow in his citadel in the world beyond.
I would find Khalim in Phyreios. I had so much to tell him—I had walked the length and breadth of the world, contended with gods and monsters and wicked men, witnessed strange magics and walked stranger paths. And all the while, Khalim had lingered in the world beyond, wandering paths of his own but remaining unchanged. Would he recognize me here, in the world of the living? I had only known him a short while. I could not tell what his new life might hold for him, or if there would be a place for me in it.
I could not worry about it for much longer. The Iron Mountain rose in the distance, half the height it had been when I had first laid eyes on it so long ago. I was almost there.
Back to Chapter LXVI: The Crumbling World
Forward to Chapter LXVIII: The New Phyreios
I want to do more with Aysulu, because I do love her so, but Journey is already so much longer than Beyond the Frost-Cold Sea that I don’t think we’ll have room. We’ll see how it goes in the next draft.
Thanks for reading! Stop by next week for the last chapter!
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