This small community of green-robed women had been constructed around a deep well. The underground spring, they told me, belonged to the goddess Isra herself, and it was her will that the water be given to any who asked for it. It also irrigated an expansive garden of small, hardy vegetables and a date palm on either side of the chapel. No matter how much I stared at the garden, it stubbornly remained, its thin yellow-green leaves trembling in the harsh desert wind. This was no illusion. Already this goddess stood higher in my esteem than the serpent god of Svilsara.
“Does this Deinaros know how to read?” I asked. The girl’s face turned to disdain. “Of course he does. He’s all-knowing.”
Chapter XLI: The City on the Cliffs
Eske arrives in the first city of the West, perched on the cliffs looking out to sea. He may have found a lead, but the answers he seeks won’t be so easy to achieve. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon.
“Your serpent is dead,” I said. “I slew him upon the sacrificial stone. He will never devour anyone, willing or not, again.”
Chapter XL: Isra’s Well
Eske of the Bear Clan is back! Now that The Book of the New Moon Door is out, I’m writing new chapters of Journey to the Water. Barring any unforeseen disasters, I hope to publish it next year. If you’d like to follow along, all the previous chapters are under the Stories tab above (under the Menu if you’re on mobile), and this latest chapter is available on Patreon.
Two others stood up with Fenin: young men, one in the tattered remnants of an attendant’s white robe, and the other carrying a pitted, splintery staff that might have been enchanted to look like a spear. Had I met either of them before the illusion broke? I could not imagine a connection between their gaunt cheeks, thin hair, and missing teeth and the bright, bronze faces I had seen yesterday. Except for Fenin, everyone here was a stranger.
The elders remained where they were, kneeling on the dusty ground. They bowed their heads, turning their faces away from me. They would not look at me, or their three defecting subjects, again. In a rasping, wavering voice, they sang a hymn to their dead god, and we left the barren garden in search of enough provisions to survive in the desert.
We would not take everything. Though part of me wished to punish them for their treatment of me, and reasoned that if they were going to do nothing, they deserved whatever fate the sun and wind had in store for them, I could not leave them to starve. I found a little dried meat, caked with dust, some handfuls of grain, and another few days’ worth of water, murky and tasting of mud. The rest I left where it was, hoping that the people of Svilsara would recover it before the rats did. I could hear movement in the walls and the scratching of many tiny claws.
The midday sun burned like a forge overhead, and the heat bore down on me with searing claws. I had the presence of mind to gather my belongings and move them to the narrow band of shade beside the sacrificial stone, where the wind took up the frayed ends of the rope that had bound me.
At the foot of the stone was a black scar, a smear of soot barely a hand’s breadth wide on the burning rock where the god of Svilsara had lain. It was a small, inconsequential thing—in a few hours, a day at most, the wind would scour the surface clean, and nothing would remain of him but a memory. Gods, I knew well, could die. They did not die easily. If I had indeed slain him, and I had no reason to believe I hadn’t, the consequences to myself and the hostile land on which I stood were far beyond my foresight.
I tried to hold in my mind’s eye the image of Svilsara as it would have been without the illusion: emaciated people, streets of ruined buildings filled with desert dust, and cramped, smoky corridors.
The only thing I could see was Khalim, lying upon the stone, hands clutching the harpoon in his belly and his face contorted in pain.
“You are a demon from the wastes!” Fenin screamed, harsh and shrill across the dark expanse of the ruined garden. “Begone from here! The Serpent will strike you down and devour your flesh!”
Chapter XXXVIII: Svilsara, As It Always Was
Eske has narrowly escaped being devoured, but all is not well. You can read this chapter right now on Patreon.
I had been warned of this. At the temple of the dragon, the warrior Jin had told me of the devious spirits that haunted the world beyond death, luring the unwary into certain doom. He had described them as less than gods, but what was a god to a man who lived in the shadow of an ancient dragon who refused all those who would worship her? A god, to Jin, would have been something beyond imagining. The thing calling itself Svilsara’s god was far beneath his acknowledgement.
And what was a god to one such as me? The Ascended, hungry for blood and willing to destroy their thousand-year reign to obtain it? Their master, who could not prevent the destruction of the city, and yet thought it right to rule over it afterward? The gods of my people were hunters and wanderers, warriors and magic-workers, and the great beasts that roamed the vast icy plains of the world beyond. I could not imagine any of them here in the desert, so far from the place of my birth.
“Do you promise me that?” I asked, more to the shimmering air than to the figure beside me. “A home in the city, and my love exactly as I remember him?”
Chapter XXXVII: Within the Illusion
As promised, there is a shiny new chapter of Journey to the Water available on Patreon. If you have a spare $3, consider subscribing! If not, this chapter will be available to read here on the blog next week.
I had been tied to the iron ring in the stone more securely than Fenin had been. Though Svilsara’s priests had accepted my repentance all too easily, having never encountered an outsider with no faith in their serpent, some suspicion as to my motives remained. In a way, I was grateful for the rope chafing my wrists. The people of Svilsara were like children, naive, trusting, and unable to imagine that another person might not share their belief in the benevolence of their god. If they could doubt me, then perhaps they had within them the capacity to break free of the serpent’s hold.
That, however, was a concern for later. The blinding desert sun bore down upon my head, its heat like a burning iron weighing down on my face and the exposed skin of my arms. My thin traveler’s robe did little to protect me, and I could feel my flesh redden and burn.
“Come on, you foul creature,” I shouted into the burning expanse. “I’m waiting.”
You are not the first petty god who has desired my blood, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. What makes you think you’ll be the one to take it?”
Chapter XXVI: The Sacrificial Stone
At last, Eske confronts his foe, the being who has kept the city of Svilsara under thrall for generations. This petty god, however, has a secret weapon that Eske doesn’t expect. You can read this chapter right now by subscribing to Patreon.
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