Journey to the Water Chapter LXVII: The Long Way Back

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.

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.

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Journey to the Water Chapter LXVI: The Crumbling World

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“Flesh,” the sharp-toothed one repeated, a keening whine that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

“Hush, Kelast,” the one who looked like Khalim said, soft and placating. “You’ll be all right.”

He sounded like Khalim. I searched his face, looking for some flaw that might give away a shapeshifter, or a detail that would prove that my eyes did not deceive me. There were his dark eyes, untainted by the deceiver’s gold, exactly as I remembered them. There was his smile, warm and guileless.

Khalim had left the citadel where the god Torr had confined him—that I knew. I also knew that he would seek out the lost and wounded, and how else could one describe these strange people gathered around the fire? They showed no visible injuries on the hands and faces that emerged from their robes, but their eyes—the eyes of deer and frogs as well as of men—were hollow and hungry.

But I had been deceived before. I was spared, then, by having witnessed the serpent-god of the desert reach into my memories and put on the image of Khalim. This vision might have been more of the same.

I reached out, and the image of Khalim did the same, but my hand passed through his. I drew it back, startled.

“You really are made of flesh,” he said, awe and wonder on his face.

The sharp-toothed man, Kelast, made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.

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Journey to the Water Chapter LXV: The Long Walk

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Fearghus waited, ginger brows raised in an unspoken question. He’d always called me impatient, and said that his fiery hair belied which of us was the more hotheaded. I had missed him so—even in the long years when I had thought of nothing and no one but Khalim, I carried Fearghus with me. I dared not reach out to touch him for fear that he would vanish into the salt-heavy air.

“What are you doing here?” I said, finding my voice at last. “You should be upon the summer plains, hunting with the gods of our people. Please, tell me that you haven’t been banished to this desolate place.”

The gray sea broke against the shore in a whisper, lifting my boat and pushing it further into the rocks. I’d have to pull it farther ashore if I ever planned to return to it, but for now, I could not tear my eyes from Fearghus’s face.

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Journey to the Water Interlude Six: The White City

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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 LXIV: The Gate of Bone

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From the wreckage of a hundred or more ships, I crafted a sturdy canoe, large enough to withstand the crashing waves but small enough that I could hold its sail and its single oar alone. I cut apart the robe that had been given to me at the temple of the dragon, stitching its panels together to craft a sail; the oar was a fortunate find, washed up in a frigid tide pool. Water and weather had split it almost in two, but I tied it together with sinew and rope, and it held well enough. It would get me out to sea.

All the while, the sun rose lower and set more swiftly with each brief, passing day. I worked by firelight. The pilgrims maintained a bonfire of driftwood and animal dung. We ate from our shared stores and from what little we could gather in the tide pools: tiny shrimp and spiny urchins, as well as kelp and seaweed. I harpooned a seal soon after my arrival, and that fed us well for many days and earned me a place among the pilgrims.

How they stared at me, day and night, watching me work. They were a strange, pale lot, with sunken eyes and bodies bent from carrying heavy packs and eating little for months at a time. They had walked, they said, for the better part of a year, almost entirely on foot. When the bitter winter ended, they would make their return journey, carrying with them all that they would need.

Still, when a great squid washed up upon the shore, its dead flesh shining like still water and reeking of the deep, they left it alone. One must not eat the flesh of a god, they said.

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Journey to the Water Chapter LXIII: The Last, Lonely Harbor

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If I had gained nothing else from my term in the service of Deinaros the All-knowing, I had obtained several volumes of esoteric maps and the goodwill of the new master of the sorcerer’s tower. Both of these I gave to Hamilcar, in exchange for his aid on this most perilous of journeys.

We would sail west first, out of the Summer Sea and into the vast, unforgiving ocean. We would then turn south and sail as long as the Lady of Osona could withstand the wind and the waves. She was a sturdy vessel, reinforced with the best shipbuilding techniques known to all the peoples of the trade routes, but Hamilcar warned me that even she would not hold together in the waters at the end of the world. I would have to traverse the last miles over land, alone.

Bran, my faithful companion, the bravest of horses and the last gift that I still carried with me from Phyreios, would have to stay behind. He had already endured a number of sea voyages, none of them even a tenth of the length of the one I was about to undertake. He deserved solid ground beneath his hooves, green growing things to eat, and the open sky over his head. Confining him to the ship’s berth for so long would be little better than torture.

I wandered Marenni for hours in widening circles, delaying the moment of our parting. In the evening, I left the city proper and stepped out into the surrounding hills, where the late-autumn fields spread out bare and brown beneath a cloudless sky.

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Journey to the Water Chapter LXII: Farther Shores

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“So,” I said to Cricket, trying to appear nonchalant, “you’ve been reading.”

She regarded me with a look of utter disdain. Of course she’d been reading. “First, I read the safe books, and I learned to bind the monsters between the pages.”

As if in response, the bookshelf at her side shuddered, its heavy tomes shifting in place. I took an involuntary step back toward the stairs.

“Then I read the others,” she continued. “I didn’t sleep for four days. I know all of Deinaros’ secrets, and some he didn’t even know. He wasn’t all-knowing, after all.”

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Journey to the Water Chapter LXI: The Empty Tower

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When Bran had healed, and warriors from other clans of the forest folk began to arrive in small bands from elsewhere, I turned south again, my hands empty. I had been unable to secure the ritual knife, and I had decided, for better or worse, not to try to take it with me back to Deinaros’ tower. I had contended with gods before, and on occasion even emerged victorious, but I did not wish to confront the god of the grove. The knife belonged to the people of the forest, whether it was being kept from them within the silver tree or not. It was their choice and their duty to take it by force, if they saw the need, and not mine.

My duty was to confront Deinaros. He had lied to me about the knife—it did not belong to him, and by all evidence, it was not the creation of his teacher Maponos. It was a gift of the god of the grove, to be given and taken away as his divine whim dictated. What other falsehoods had he told me? I had been so eager to follow his orders, to finally have someone to give me a heading on this directionless journey I had undertaken these past years, that I had swallowed his word whole. I had even received a warning from Ashoka, champion of Phyreios, reappeared after all this time. He had said not to trust Deinaros. I had dismissed him. Having been deceived by his gods, I thought, Ashoka was too wary and too willing to believe frightening stories told by superstitious townsfolk. I thought myself wiser, having seen more of the world. I had been wrong.

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Journey to the Water Chapter LX: The Fire

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I caught up to Bran just as the last of the daylight bled from the evening sky. He was a shadow in the darkness of the woods, his movements fearful and erratic, pain driving away his accustomed calm. I tore a length from the hem of my shirt and pressed it against the spot where the arrow protruded from his skin. Without light, I did not trust myself to remove it without injuring him further.

I held his reins and spoke to him in soft words. I told him he was safe, and the pain had to be endured but would soon pass, and he had nothing to fear from the dark. I hoped everything I said was true.

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Journey to the Water Chapter LIX: The Edge of the Forest

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“If you were hoping for another chance at the knife, my friend,” Cullen said at last, “I’m afraid your luck has run out.”

He turned, his shoulder twisting away from my hand, and busied himself with striking a flint. Sparks bloomed from his fingers to die upon the mossy ground. His torch, an oily rag wrapped around a splintery fragment of wood that might have come from the palisade, flared to life and illuminated the standing stones.

My arm dropped to my side. The loss of contact was like ice in my chest, far too cold for the mild evening. I looked away. “That’s not why I’m here.”

He raised the torch, and I could feel his gaze on my face. “No?”

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