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

Choices

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.

“I’m sorry,” Isabel mutters, her eyes sliding from his face down to the mist-shrouded earth between her feet. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

It looks bad, Berend admits—a whole swathe of the city is gone, swallowed up in dense gray fog streaked bloody with the strange red sunlight. The sun should have set by now, he’s fairly certain, but the light lingers dim and cold over the wet landscape. He can just make out the sharp, flickering shapes of broken ghosts, gathered at the edge of what’s left of the cemetery. The solid, heavy shape of the Temple of Ondir stands firm and untouched at his back, but it doesn’t offer much reassurance. It doesn’t have Isabel in it. She’s out here, instead, which means she has already been inside. It’s the first place she would go—church folk are predictable like that, and Isabel is a particularly churchy sort of church folk. And she’s not still inside where it’s safe and dry and relatively warm, and where there are a few people nominally devoted to the safety of the city and the maintenance of the terribly abused order of the world, so something must have made her leave.

Whatever it was, it doesn’t bode well for Berend’s immediate future. As bad as things look, here at the edge of the familiar world, he’s sure they’re actually much worse.

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

Locked

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“The geography of the nether world is complicated,” Isabel explains. “It’s governed not by distance and space but by the spiritual and conceptual relationship of one place to another.”

Not one of the words in her second sentence makes any sense to Berend. It must be evident on his face, because she looks at him and continues, “My point is that there are a lot of places in the world beyond that haven’t been discovered, and no one knows what might be lurking there.”

“Like the place with the eyes,” Berend says. He still can’t shake the feeling that the next time he looks out a window, they’ll be there again, filling the sky and staring down at him with malevolent, predatory intentions. “Or was that a thing? A creature as big as the world?”

Isabel shrugs. “There isn’t much of a useful distinction. Ondir is the gate, and the gate is Ondir. He is the realm of the dead and its lord.”

There’s a reason Berend never even entertained the thought of joining the clergy as a young man. He rubs at his own eyes, hoping they don’t look as dry and crusty as they feel. His borrowed coffee is wearing off. “Right. So you’re saying that there’s a place, or a person, or a…thing that eats souls like a fire eats wood. Nobody’s heard of it before, because it just appeared out of nowhere, but that happens sometimes.” He blinks, willing himself to stay awake and coherent a little longer. “Do I have that right?”

He looks at Warder, who glances expectantly up at Isabel.

She holds up two empty hands. “It’s more complicated than that, but yes. More or less.”

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

Trade Secret

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Berend retreats to a stiff wooden chair, the upholstered seat little more than a suggestion of padding, placed in the hallway. Isabel slumps heavily into its companion a few feet away and on the opposite wall and stares, her expression blank and her eyes hollow, at nothing. He’s going to have to find a place for her to sleep, and soon, before she falls off the chair and knocks her head against either the wall or the floor.

For himself, he figures he has about two hours before the coffee he borrowed from Emryn Marner wears off. The young man was too soundly asleep to be asked, so it might be more accurate to say that Berend stole the coffee, but either way, it was a justifiable acquisition. He should have stolen some for Isabel.

As it turns out, Lucian Warder is alive. Berend had worried that wouldn’t be the case by the time they got here, though he didn’t breathe a word of his fears to Isabel. Warder’s alive, and that means that his entire plan hasn’t gone to hell. Yet.

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

Departure

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It’s nothing, Isabel tells herself. It’s a traveler’s tale, embellished with every telling until it’s unrecognizable as the original story. An entire village did not turn to metal overnight.

She’ll believe that anyone who chanced to be awake last night saw the red star fall. It had been bright as a jewel, burning like a distant bonfire through the sky of this world and of the next. But the rest? It would require a ritual from the old legends, a coven of mages made immortal by their own power, the sacrifice of dozens of innocents. The next part of the story would involve a holy warrior of the church of Alcos, in enchanted armor that shone like the sun and a sword that could cut through both flesh and lies, riding a winged steed into the place of their power.

Emryn Marner himself doesn’t seem to believe it. He eats his pie like a starving man—all men his age are starving—and doesn’t bring it up again. He and Berend take the tub down to the gutter and dump out the dirty water, and then he retreats to his room with his books. “There’s an exam next week,” he explains. “Though if the world’s ending, maybe I’ll get to miss it.”

“When I was a boy, my teacher said that one of the hells was just endless written exams, over and over, for all eternity,” says Berend.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Nineteen

Isolation

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Berend takes the desk chair from Emryn’s bedroom and places it against the wall between the sitting room and the kitchen, facing away from the kitchen door. Its slats dig into his back. He’s reasonably sure he won’t fall asleep in it, but he wouldn’t be willing to wager any actual coin.

Water splashes as Isabel wedges the huge kettle sideways into the first bucket and takes it back to the stove. The hiss of steam follows.

When she asked him to stay by the door, Berend had assumed there would be some sort of conversation. He’s starting to doubt that the uncomfortable chair will be enough to keep him awake.

“I wasn’t ever going to take you to the temple of Isra,” he says. “You know that, right?”

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Eighteen

Rest

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Emryn Marner’s address leads to a narrow, three-story house in the University quarter. The first level is red brick, stained with soot, while the upper two are panels of gray plaster between wooden beams. Someone, not too long ago based on the degree of grime, had painted the door red in a spasm of artistic fervor. Upon closer inspection, its original wood color shows through between brush strokes.

It’s early afternoon, and the street is quiet, its occupants away at their classes. From what Berend can see from below, this house is empty as well. He knocks anyway, one fist on the poorly-painted door, and waits.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Seventeen

Warning

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The young man stands slowly, rolling his shoulders, as though the somber temple of Ondir is a country park and he’s contemplating concluding his picnic and heading home. He walks unhurried to the end of the row and starts up the center aisle, his hands in the pockets of his fine trousers and his polished riding boots sending a slow rhythm to echo against the dome.

Berend stands, dragging Isabel up with him. His free hand goes first to his pistol—it’s empty, Isabel remembers, because he shot the animated corpse in the morgue and hasn’t had a chance to reload—and then to the hilt of his sword. His cloak hangs over his elbow, hiding the weapons from view.

She twists her wrist out of Berend’s grasp. “Don’t do anything stupid,” she whispers.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Sixteen

Friends

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Berend marches Isabel out of Father Pereth’s office. His grip on her arm is immovable as a rusted iron hinge. Isabel struggles, twisting her elbow and pulling against him, but it’s no use. Fear restricts her vision to the end of the hall, where the dome allows in a few thin beams of sunlight. She expects the chapel will be filled with constables, but she might still be able to get away, to disappear into the back corridors and out into the graveyard—if she could only get herself free of Berend.

She trusted him. She’d thought he cared enough about the state of the world, about protecting the people of Mondirra, that he would help her. He saw the same terrible vision in the nether that she did. She’d even thought he supported her against the high priest’s accusations, until he’d smiled and acquiesced and grabbed her by the elbow.

“I’m not going to the temple of Isra,” she snarls through her teeth. She doesn’t want to hurt him, but if she has to, she’ll drive the heel of her boot straight into the soft leather instep of his. It’ll have to be quick, and then she’ll have to run. He’s still injured. That will slow him down.

Instead, Berend lets go. He holds both hands out, spreading his fingers to show they’re empty. “I know.”

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Fourteen

Trouble

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Dawn breaks over the city by the time they reach the gates. Berend is usually good at keeping track of time, always waking right before his watch is due to start, but the night seems to have passed by in just a few hours. He doesn’t like it.

Isabel is half a step ahead of him. Though she stops once more at the gate to make sure he’s following, she says nothing. She may have been weeping, silent and stone-faced, but it’s too dark still for Berend to tell.

We are in trouble.

Berend doesn’t want to have to be the reasonable one between the pair of them. His hands still itch as he pictures wrapping them around Arden Geray’s ghostly neck. It feels satisfying in his imagination, even though he’s aware that dead spirits don’t work that way. Failing that, he wants to go straight to the university hospital and shake Lucian Warder awake, his injuries be damned. Isabel is supposed to be preventing him from doing that, at least until she’s explained how best to not get himself killed in the process.

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The Book of the New Moon Door: Part Two, Chapter Thirteen

Fracture

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Berend stands under a sky filled with blinking, staring eyes, surrounded on all sides by the restless dead. A red star shoots overhead like a firework, disappearing below a distant horizon in a blaze of ruby light. The world shakes with a terrible shriek, and Berend falls into it, the sound tearing him apart from within, his vision turning black at the edges and a burning pain spreading from his heart to his fingertips.

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