Journey to the Water Chapter LV: The Hall of Lord Oeric

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 got to my feet. All I had was an eating knife, sheathed at my belt, and my hand came to rest on its hilt. If I could place some distance between myself and the others at this table, I could summon my harpoon. I hoped the man who had taken it from me possessed the good sense to keep his face clear of its sharp edges.

Ansgard reached out a hand and gripped my elbow. “This man has come from the south,” he said. “He is on an errand in search of a particular weapon.”

“I mean you no harm,” I added, and let Ansgard pull me back into my seat.

The old man, Oeric, peered at me through the smoke that filled the room, his eyes pale blue and rimmed in red. These eyes were sharp despite his age, and made all the more so by the mistrust I had evidently sparked in them.

“You’re painted like one of them,” Oeric muttered.

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Journey to the Water Chapter LIV: The Ring-Fort

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I left Gallia behind, and it receded until it was only a bright spot against a hazy horizon. Then it and the sea beyond were gone, and everything became green, from the canopy overhead to the moss under Bran’s hooves. Only the sky remained a stubborn gray. Rain fell in brief fits from an impenetrable layer of cloud, and the wind blew cold. Autumn was coming to the North, and it would reach me here before long.

For now, though, the forest was emerald green, and the birds sang summer songs in its branches. After the first day out of the city, the stream of caravans in and out of its gates slowed to a trickle. By the time a week had passed, I saw another traveler only once every few days. I sang as well, as I rode, a rowing song of the frost-cold sea, to warn anyone else on the road of my presence and reassure them that I was not a bandit lying in wait for them.

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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 LI: Friendlier Shores

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The ship that took me back across the Summer Sea was not Ramla’s, but the vessel of a woman from the northern shore. Her name was Astraea of Danar, and she possessed the golden hair and sky-blue eyes that I had only ever seen before in my countrymen from the far reaches of the North. I myself, however, favored my mother, and my hair was dark and my eyes were the same as any other man who walked these southern shores. Only my build set me apart from the people who walked the streets of Gallia, whence I was returning.

I asked, but Astraea had never seen the floating mountains of ice, nor walked among the mountains that I had crossed in the early days of my exile. She did not speak my mother tongue. In response to my next question, she declared that she had met the man called Hamilcar and his ship, the Lady of Osona, and remembered him fondly.

“He sails these waters from time to time,” she said. “At the beginning of the year, when the winds are swift and the waves high. If you stay in Gallia, you might see him again.”

I hoped that I would, but my hope lasted only a brief moment. What could I tell him of my adventures since we parted? That I had found the birthplace of my beloved Khalim, and found that I had known him for so short a time that I was hopeless to follow him through the land of the dead? That I had destroyed the city of Svilsara by slaying the being who called himself his god, and left them starving and alone without even the illusion of prosperity to comfort them? That I had aided a man who wished to assassinate a king, and escaped only because I was deemed a lesser threat than my guide?

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Journey to the Water Chapter L: The Way Down

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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.

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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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Journey to the Water Chapter XLV: The Summer Sea

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Cricket was charged with provisioning me for my journey. She took me to a passage hidden behind a tapestry on the first floor, with a staircase that led us into the rocky bowels of the cliff. At the bottom, a tiny kitchen, no larger than a ship’s galley, sat dark and cavernous with only a clay chimney pipe to relieve the smoke. Why this place was hidden, and why it had to be here under the rock, Cricket did not say. Perhaps this was the only kitchen she had ever known. It certainly was her domain; a selection of copper pots and iron pans hung well within her reach, and I had to duck to avoid another rack of herbs hanging from the ceiling.

“Has Deinaros told you anything of my journey?” I asked her.

She rolled a selection of dried fish in a thin cloth and handed it to me. “No. If you return, you can tell me of it.”

“If I return?” I echoed. I could not help but smile at her utter lack of faith in me. “You think I won’t?”

She shrugged, and the trinkets still around her neck clattered softly. “We’ll see.”

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