Journey to the Water Chapter XXIII: The Port of Charkand

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.

The Lady of Osona passed into the storm’s eye. Where there had been wailing wind and rain beating against my back, there was now an empty, yawning stillness. The ship rested lightly upon calm waters.

My hands had contorted into stiff, aching claws, and splinters dug into my palms and the exposed skin of my legs. I climbed down from the mast, forcing my limbs to stretch. My head spun; though the ship beneath me lay as if in a deep, dreamless sleep, I felt as though it would throw me into the sea. When my rope-burned feet reached the deck, I fell to my knees and shut my eyes, forcing myself to breathe evenly until rain brushed against my shoulders and the back of my neck once again.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XXII: The Tempest

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We left the shallow seas and the sandy isles the following day, our ship heavy with provisions and our hearts light. We would sail north, Hamilcar said, and in a few short weeks we would find ourselves on the shores of a vast green country, the land that my Khalim had called home. It must have been a gentle land, I thought, one of soft rains and bountiful harvests. My homeland was harsh, and my people scratched out a living among the mountain stones and struggled with one another for everything we had, and it had made me a warrior. I feared I would be too much a stranger in a country that produced healers.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XXI: Calm Seas

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With the terrible book in my hands, I retraced my steps through the neglected garden and returned to the palace. A cold wind had come in from the sea as the sun set, and the strange warmth of the book’s leather binding cooled until it felt like the skin of a dead man. I considered throwing it from the ship as soon as I reached open water. I could only guess at its contents, but I was filled with the grim certainty that it was an evil book, and I would find no help in its pages that did not cost me my very soul.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XIII: Empty Salmacha

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“Where is everyone?” Hamilcar asked the crew, the island itself, or the gods, giving voice to the unspoken question we had in common.

No one answered.

A high tide had carried our ship to the harbor, but the six thatched-roof houses and solitary central structure stood well clear of the water, raised up on wooden beams against the possibility of a flood. Their doors were shut tight, and their windows covered. A wind from the sea moved across the sand, but the village was otherwise still.

I led Bran by his halter to the deck and down the plank to the dock, keeping my hand below his chin so he could not turn his head and see the terrifying expanse of ocean surrounding him on three sides. Once his hooves touched solid ground, his body relaxed, and so did my grip. I, on the other hand, felt a nervous energy like crackling lightning in my bones. There was a threat here in this silent place.

“I don’t like this,” Halvor muttered.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XII: The Lady of Osona

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The first night I spent on board the ship, I dreamed.

I floated in the abyss before the gate of bone, with blackness pressing around me and the shape of the goddess Nashurru moving in the depths below. The water was cold, and my body ached with it, my limbs stiff and shivering. I kicked my legs and reached my arms toward the gate, but the chill pierced my bones and filled my belly with ice no matter how much I moved. In the vision, I had felt no need to breathe, but now my chest contracted painfully, sucking against nothing. The bright white of the bones blurred as my vision faded. At last, I could withstand no more, and I inhaled frigid water. It burned my chest and stole away the last of my sight.

I would die here, I thought, and my bones would join the gate as Nashurru looked on, indifferent. I would never see Khalim again.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XI: Ashinya Waters

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“What will you do now?” Luana asked me.

Though the morning was bright, and the sky over the mountain shone in sapphire blue, a dark cloud had passed over me. I had done what I had intended upon traveling to the island; I had gazed into the Dreaming Eye, and through the help of its creator goddess I had caught the briefest glimpse of my beloved. True to the word of the first hero, the god of Phyreios, Khalim was unharmed, but he no longer remained in the place in the realm of the dead where I thought I would one day find him. He had set off, alone, across a strange, unknown country.

How foolish I was, to think that he would simply stay and await rescue. My Khalim was many things, but patient was not one of them. He must have hated that pale, dead city. It had nothing that he loved in its meager confines; no living beings, no open sky, no growing things. Once, he had told me that he had never been alone. Torr’s realm must have been terrifying in its stark loneliness.

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Journey to the Water Chapter V: The Emerald Sea

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I was a day out of Banwa town, and I had yet to see another soul on the muddy road beside the river. It likely would not have made a difference—Bran was a steppe horse, an exceedingly rare sight this far south. Any other traveler would have been just as much at a loss as I.

I took him down the riverbank and into the snow-fed water, letting it cool his legs and his belly. He rallied after a few minutes, and we continued on our way, but after an hour he slowed again, panting.

Aysulu would have known what to do. But she was half a world away, and I had not seen her in more than a year, since I had left Phyreios. Bran had been her last gift to me. I considered, briefly, leaving him, or selling him in the hopes that he would find his way into the hands of someone who could better care for him, but as soon as the thought came to me, I pushed it aside. He deserved better, as did Aysulu’s friendship, and I feared he was the only thing keeping me from the madness of solitude as I traveled alone in this strange land.

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