Journey to the Water Chapter XLIV: Beside the Water

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 spent three days before Deinaros the All-knowing summoned me. The three floors of the tower to which I had been confined soon lost their novelty, and I wandered the city instead, taking in the sights and sounds of the sprawling metropolis. The markets beckoned me with the scents of fresh fish and warm bread, and the taverns promised strong drink—with some effort, I avoided them, to keep my wits about me. Wherever I went, the steepled temple looked down on me from above, its seven carved pillars a constant reminder of Phyreios. What relation the Ascended had to these tall, faceless gods of the West, I could not deduce. These seven stayed confined to their temple and the small carved icons in the windows lining each winding street, and for that I could only be grateful.

Cricket left each morning to sell her trinkets at the harbor. I went with her, on the first day, curious as to why her teacher sent her alone to the market. At best, I feared she would be robbed, weighed down as she was by such a quantity of silver; at worst, I had just recently learned of the flesh-markets of Nyssodes. A clever kidnapper needed only to coincide with a waiting ship, and Cricket would never have returned to the tower.

She bade me keep my distance, though, when we reached the docks. She had charms to sell, and my looming presence frightened away her customers. I asked if she was afraid, and if she had the means to defend herself.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XLIII: The Book-Collector

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With the book removed from my care at last, a weight lifted from my shoulders. The relief came with a flare of panic—had I handed my one and only lead to the realms beyond death to a charlatan? Deinaros turned the pages, his brows furrowed in concentration and a pleased smile playing upon his lips. I had already faded from his awareness.

If nothing else, Deinaros knew this book. On the word of his young attendant, he had expected it, like an old friend returned at last from a journey of decades. He greeted each horrifying diagram with a nod, each twisting line of text with a tap of one long finger.

“Well done,” he said, more to the book than to me. “This copy is nearly complete. The only things missing are the long, rambling musings of my former master. Everything useful is here.”

“Your master wrote it?” I asked. “He must have traveled nearly as far as I. I retrieved this book many months ago, from an island in the southern sea.”

Deinaros glanced up for the briefest moment before his eyes returned to the page. “No, he only penned the original, centuries ago. He never left the city of his birth. His followers, myself among them, made copies, and those who found those copies made more still.”

My heart sank. How many ambitious rulers became like the king of Salmacha, their souls clinging to their bodies even as their flesh rotted and fell from their bones? A second, selfish question followed the first: how many ill-starred lovers, grieving parents, and lonely widows had taken the book and attempted the same task I had undertaken? Had the gods already taken up arms against a sea of sorrowful humanity, chasing away any chance I had of breaching their ordained defenses?

“Very few now,” Deinaros said. “It was purged from the kingdoms of the West. So many were burned that the pyres reached the heavens. I have not seen a word or line from this book in many years.”

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Journey to the Water Chapter XLII: The Sorcerer’s Tower

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The girl led me through the market, her trinkets ringing like tiny bells and catching the afternoon sunlight. She glittered from shoulder to wrist. She wore straw sandals with fraying edges, and her steps on the stone pavement whispered like wind through a stand of reeds, disappearing under the din of the market and the roar of the surf below the cliff. The smell of salt and fresh fish filled the air.

I had missed the sea. My persistent melancholy lightened, like a small weight removed from the heavy pack on my back, as the white sails bloomed like flowers on the far horizon and the sun touched the waves with gold. Perhaps I should not have gone to Nagara, and instead stayed with my companions on the Lady of Osona, making my way here by means of the trade winds. There was no guarantee that Captain Hamilcar would have brought me here any faster; he followed his own maps, and went where the call of treasure and adventure led him.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XLI: The City on the Cliffs

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I left the tiny commune around Isra’s well, and I left the serene face of the goddess, and I wandered across the desert to the lands of the West. Somewhere beyond the northern horizon lay the lands of my people, where our gods walked the plains of endless ice in pursuit of the great beasts that ever eluded them, and my dragon-headed ship lay beneath water cold and dark as death. My journey would not lead me back there. I had to press forward.

Once, my friend Aysulu had told me of the gods of the West. There were seven of them, she had said, like the seven Ascended of Phyreios, though they moved between faith and legend and metaphor and not in the streets of their cities. Isra was one of them. Like her, the others had wind-scarred faces and the faded implements of their stations held in their stone hands: a shepherd’s crook, a set of balancing scales, a scepter, a smith’s hammer. They towered over the dunes, their eyes long since etched away, the human hands who carved their figures buried beneath centuries of sand. At their feet, the remains of their temples crumbled into dust.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XL: Isra’s Well

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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.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Three, Chapters Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six

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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Chapter Twenty-Five: Answers

The mass of people under the dome turns to Isabel, and by extension to Berend, leaning on her shoulder. They’re packed in side by side, with barely enough room to rotate in place. There’s no room to sit. An old man leans on a younger relative, exhaustion and pain written in the lines of his face.

The little boy with the grubby face shoves his way out of the foyer. He stops short, pigeon-toed feet in too-large shoes skidding on the smooth marble, and stares at the sky.

“It’s all right, Jemmy,” Isabel says, but there’s no weight behind her words. It’s not all right. It’s probably never going to be all right again.

Jemmy’s eyes go wide, and he breathes in short gasps. A thin, terrified whine escapes his throat.

“Are we still safe?” someone asks from inside the foyer.

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

Endings

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Isabel can only stare at him. “You’re bleeding out,” she says, uselessly. “I don’t think you can stand.”

Berend takes another breath, thin and shaky. “Sure I can,” he says.

“Why? Where do you want to go?” She’s got to find some way to stop the bleeding—and keep him where he is before he wanders off, numb from shock. She pushes his left arm aside and puts both hands to the spreading dark stain on his coat. The fabric squelches under her weight.

“Don’t know. Just would rather die on my feet.” He stops, breathes for a moment, and adds, “If I can help at all, more the better.”

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The Book of the New Moon Door, Chapter One (Free Preview)

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

Time

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“Well, hello,” Berend says through his teeth, wincing from the renewed pain in his side as Isabel’s weight falls on his chest. “Fancy meeting you here.”

As far as grateful embraces after harrowing journeys go, he’s had better. Isabel’s sharp elbows dig into his shoulders, and she smells like mold, soot, old paper, and something that reminds him of lightning storms out at sea. He puts his arms around her anyway, despite the strain it puts on the wound in his side, and breathes in the terrible smell and feels like maybe things aren’t so bad, really.

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

Sacrifice

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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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