Queer Fantasy and Weird Tales for the People
I fell. The rope went taut, tearing at my hands, just as I broke through a web of thin branches and struck the surface of a wide limb below the platform. The rough bark bit through the thin fabric of my trousers.
As expected, the guards cut the rope. It fell in loose coils at my feet. I stood, brushed myself off, and held out my hand to summon my harpoon.
Continue reading “Journey to the Water Chapter L: The Way Down”If I had done evil, I told myself, then the evil I had done was a trivial thing. I had freed Svilsara from the serpent, and left the mage-king alive, giving his foes nothing. If I had to do penance, I would do it after I found Khalim.
Chapter LI: Friendlier Shores
I’ve got a shiny new chapter for you over on Patreon, in which Eske returns to the sorcerer’s tower and grapples with the consequences of his quest. Also, as you can see, I am back to working on the draft!
I remained still, one hand on the latch to the vault door and the other hanging in the air, half-reaching for my harpoon. Who was this man? What was he doing here? Kural had assured me the vault would be empty of watchmen, but perhaps I was a fool to trust Kural. He did not make the climb himself, after all. My heart sank into my belly as I thought of Bran’s fate, left alone on the forest floor with an untrustworthy caretaker.
Bran was a steppe horse—a gentle one, but trained for a warrior, nonetheless. I had to trust that he could look after himself.
“Who are you?” I asked the incongruous man in the vault.
Continue reading “Journey to the Water Chapter XLIX: The Treasure-Hall of the Mage-King”His heretic cult might gain some infamy if I had fought with Alaba, but what use was a dead outlander to their mysterious cause?
Chapter L: The Way Down
Eske makes a daring escape in the latest chapter of Journey to the Water, which you can read right now on Patreon. For all the previous chapters, visit the Stories tab above.
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.
Continue reading “Journey to the Water Chapter XLVIII: To the Upper Kingdom”“You’re not an assassin? You’re a common thief?”
“Hardly common,” I said.
Chapter XLIX: The Treasure-Hall of the Mage-King
Eske faces off with a mysterious monarch in a treasure vault high above the forest floor. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon.
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.
Continue reading “Journey to the Water Chapter XLVII: Under the Trees”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.
Chapter XLVIII: To the Upper Kingdom
Under the guidance of a man who might be a cult leader, Eske makes the climb from the forest floor to the treetop vault where the artifact he seeks should lie. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon.
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.
Continue reading “Journey to the Water Chapter XLVI: Ksadaja, the City of the Dead”“Mostly, though, we offer hope that the world will be different, when the gods return, than what has been promised.”
Chapter XLVII: Under the Trees
Eske encounters a strange new landscape and an even stranger new traveling companion in the latest chapter of Journey to the Water. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon.
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