Journey to the Water Interlude Six: The White City

Journey to the Water cover image: three evergreen trees stand on a hillside, shrouded in bluish fog. Subtitle reads: the sequel to Beyond the Frost-Cold Sea.

Khalim’s fist struck the vast marble door and made no sound. The wall of the white city loomed above him, high as the red twilight sky, its perfect flat surface marred only with its faint, gray veins. The seam between the doors let none of the perpetual low sunlight escape. The city was exactly as Khalim had left it: flawless, impenetrable, and silent.

Khalim did not belong here, and he never had. His hand was dark against the great door, the tattered threads of his clothing brighter than even the sky. He had left the dust of the road and the wet earth of the forest behind, but he felt as though he would leave a mark on the marble just by touching it.

He knocked again, scraping his knuckles against the stone but leaving neither dirt nor blood on the surface. The marble only appeared smooth.

“I know you’re there,” Khalim said to the door. “I was in your presence for fifteen years. I could find you again even in this place.”

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Journey to the Water Chapter LIII: Departing Once More

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Ashoka fell quiet, gazing up at the kingly statue. It was as though I fell out of his awareness, disappearing along with the city in the fading sunlight. In Phyreios, he and I had barely spoken—until the very end, he believed in the might and benevolence of the Ascended, so we had little to speak about. He’d called Khalim a charlatan and a sorcerer, and me a barbarian. I’d had no kinder terms with which to address him, though I’d had few occasions to do so.

But here stood a man with a familiar face, who had seen the triumphs and the horrors I had seen. Here stood a man whose gods had betrayed him. Though the animosity between us remained, filling the temple’s air with a tension like a taut bowstring, I could not yet bring myself to turn from him.

“You haven’t found a god here?” I asked. “I count seven.”

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Journey to the Water Chapter LII: A Temple of Faces

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Of all the strange things that Deinaros had told me, and of all the evil that I had seen in the pages of his book, nothing disturbed me more than this key he asked me to retrieve. A blade of obsidian glass must have traveled far to end up in the forests south of my homeland, where the earth lay steady beneath one’s feet and the fires at the heart of the world slept without waking. In all its wandering, passed from hand to wicked hand, it carried the lingering miasma of spilled blood. What sorcery had caused this? Surely, the knife had been used to take innocent lives—why else would it be afflicted so?

I steeled myself and held my tongue. Deinaros’ face, at the same time ancient with archaic knowledge and unlined with youth, betrayed no emotion. He stared at me without blinking.

This is a test, I thought. Is he judging my loyalty and willingness to obey, or am I meant to recognize an evil relic by its description, and refuse to lay a hand on it?

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Journey to the Water Chapter XLVIII: To the Upper Kingdom

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A procession of pilgrims, all following the darting, bobbing light of a single lantern suspended from a hooked staff, approached from the direction of the seaside city. Kural swept aside his drawing of the estates above with an open hand, erasing it from view. My eyes lingered in the place it had been, recreating its lines and circles from memory. A few of the shapes escaped me.

I would take the hidden path, I decided, and avoid the court of the kingdom above. What could I say to the gathered noblemen of the treetops that would convince them of my need for their relic? Here was a land where the living worshiped the dead, and where hidden, shadowy gods dueled for control of honored corpses kept within vaults of stone or living wood. Whatever I said had an equal chance of offending with grievous blasphemy as it did of earning their sympathy.

No, for better or worse, I would take the Sage’s Mirror from their vault, and I hoped to board a ship back to Gallia before anyone noticed it was missing. I could make the treacherous climb, I was sure of it.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XLVII: Under the Trees

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Kural took it upon himself to guide me, leaving the strange, silent folk around their bubbling cauldron. The eyes of the market followed us as we went, me leading Bran and Kural on my other side. At his direction, I purchased a great length of rope, as well as enough grain to fill my saddlebags and feed all three of us for several days. On the forest floor, Kural said, only the fungus grew, and while some of its many varieties were safe to eat, it was wiser not to take the risk.

“The mushrooms are better used for holy days,” he said, “or times of great need.”

The grain merchant was a woman of about thirty, tall and stately, with her hair covered in a silk wrap the color of the sea. She eyed Kural with suspicion, and caught my eye when his back was turned.

“That man is a heretic,” she said.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XLVI: Ksadaja, the City of the Dead

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I had left one city and come to another, just as grand, upon the shores of the summer sea. The last city was Gallia, Ramla told me, and this one was Ksadaja, which those from the north called the city of the dead. Indeed, its greatest edifices were tombs, built above and below the ground in towering structures and mazes of tunnels, none of which I would ever be permitted to see. Only the people of Ksadaja could walk the halls of the temples, and only their priests could venture below, where the bodies of the esteemed dead awaited the call of their gods, who at the end of an age of calamity, would bring them once again to life and place them as rulers over the transformed world. Towering obelisks, carved with prayers to the same gods in an ancient language, stood like sentries between the temples and greeted us as Ramla’s ship made its way into the harbor.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapter Twenty-Two

Sacrifice

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

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“What have you done?” Isabel gasps.

In an instant, the sky full of eyes turns to her, stretching the loose flesh of each socket. Though the eyes are bright and alert, the skin is gray and soft with advanced decay. Rot has settled in to the wall of books, as well, and the pages swell and blacken as white mold creeps over the covers. Isabel can only guess what happens once they disintegrate entirely. A cold, damp wind whistles between the moldering bookcases and across the office floor, tugging at stacks of wet, sticky paper and the lines of the ritual circle.

She takes one cautious step into the room and weighs a quick escape over the impending panic that will surge through the temple if the people there can see what’s happened. She closes the door and turns the lock.

The diagram on the floor is one she doesn’t recognize. Three concentric circles enclose the office from the line of books to a foot before the door; the outermost circle is solid and thick, while the inner two are thinner, with deliberate gaps of thirty degrees or so that don’t overlap. In each gap is a sigil. Isabel can recognize Ondir’s, Alcos’s, and the symbol for protection. Inside the innermost ring is the sigil for sacrifice. In front of it sits Father Pereth.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Three

Questions

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Everything hurts.

It’s a sure sign that Berend is alive. He’s never heard of Ondir’s realm being a painful one, though he’d have to ask the Sentinel to be certain. A high, shaky note rings in both ears. Beyond it, muffled voices and footsteps move in and out of his awareness. There is light, also, pressing against the lid of his good eye.

What a beautiful day it will be, he thinks, but when he opens his eye, pain shoots through his skull. The ringing in his ears reaches an agonizing crescendo. He closes both the eye and the empty socket, squeezing them shut, and the pain subsides to a dull throb.

All he can remember is Arden Geray—serial murderer, mad sorcerer, and destroyer of souls—and how Berend shot him in the chest and cut him down. After that, something had slammed into Berend’s body, and he must have lost consciousness. The brightness tells him that it must be broad daylight now, so he’s been out for several hours, at least.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Two

Disbelief

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Isabel shivers. The water turns cold around her, and a lattice of frost spreads out across the side of the metal tub from Geray’s ghostly hands. She draws her knees up to her chest.

“I didn’t do anything,” she says, and she’s almost sure she’s telling the truth. “You were doing unregulated, experimental black magic in an unstable space, and now you’re surprised something went wrong?”

He sneers. His teeth shine white against the black hole of his mouth. “Fix it.”

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