Journey to the Water Chapter XXXVI: The Sacrificial Stone

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 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.”

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

Empty Road

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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Berend leaves Warder in the nurses’ capable hands. He’ll be back later, when he’s found his things and a safe place to sleep, and maybe something resembling a meal. It’s not like Warder is going anywhere.

Bodies in varying states of decay clog the stairwells, lying piled against the doors and draped over the edge of the stairs. Some are fresh, their wounds raw and crimson, dressed in bloodstained nurses’ uniforms or fresh bandages. Berend steps over a gray-skinned body, naked except for the torn remains of a shroud clinging to its shoulders, its arms broken off above the elbows. He finds the missing limbs a few steps later, clutched in the hands of a fresher corpse, the back of its skull smashed in from a fall. Blood slicks the steps, sticking to Berend’s boots.

They were tearing each other apart. Behind the sleeve he put up to shield his nose from the haze of disinfectant and decay—so thick he can almost see it—Berend grimaces. A horde of undead isn’t an army; there’s no loyalty or camaraderie. They’re a haunting by another name, a manifestation of the pain and rage of a spirit who can’t accept that it’s dead. Losing limbs doesn’t stop them, nor does smashing their faces against a stone wall. A little collateral damage wouldn’t make a difference.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XXXV: Outside the Temple

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I ducked beneath the window. The bright lights within had seared my eyes, and I could see nothing of the benighted garden without for a long moment. I held out an arm, blinking to clear the colorful spots from my vision as I groped for my harpoon with the other hand.

“Who’s there?” I whispered.

A human shape resolved out of the gloom, tall and slender and dressed all in black. An angular face at last came into view, and along with it, a sharp, too-wide smile reflected the light from the window. The skin of his face was a pale brown, almost like sand, and from his hood emerged a handful of shining black curls.

I had seen this man before. “You!” I cried, remembering at the last second to keep my voice down. “Who are you? What do you want?” Now that I could see, I freed my harpoon from its sling and held it between myself and the stranger.

“They can’t hear you,” he said. Though the voice emanated from him, his mouth did not move, maintaining its viper’s grin. “I thought I’d give us a moment to speak, while the good people of Svilsara are finishing their performance.”

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

Circles

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Father Pereth is, in fact, still alive. The novice with the smudged face escorts Isabel through the sanctum, where the priests in prayer don’t look up to acknowledge her, and down the narrow hallway to the high priest’s office. The door is closed, and someone has carved the sigils of the seven gods into the wood with a pocketknife, in an attempt to ward the room against the dead, should they have breached the outer doors. There had only been one body in the morgue, and the rest seem to have been repelled by other means. It’s fortunate that this warding wasn’t put to the test. Isabel doesn’t know what might have happened.

The novice knocks, and the sound of furniture being moved and the lock disengaging follows. The door swings open to reveal Father Pereth, his cassock dusty and his hair disheveled, but otherwise unhurt.

He takes one look at Isabel and says, “You.”

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

Chaos

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At the head of a column of ghosts, with Risoven and the dead priests of Ondir at her side, Isabel approaches the crumbling wall. It buckles outward, looming toward her, holding back the weight of the thing behind it by faith and force of will. The many eyes, clustered together like sprouting fungus, roll in unseen sockets to appraise her, pupils contracting to pinpricks.

It’s foolish, what she’s doing. At best, it will stave off the destruction of the world for only a little while longer. She hopes it will be enough time for someone wiser than she to find a more permanent solution.

Another step, and an ear-splitting whine shakes the shattered sky. Isabel puts her hands over her ears, but it doesn’t help—neither the sound nor her hands have a physical presence here in the world beyond. Ripples form in the mud beneath her feet as the high-pitched note goes on and on, stabbing through her spirit form like a hot knife. Stones fall loose from the wall and dissipate upon hitting the ground.

There is triumph in this horrible song, and a warning, and something else Isabel can’t name, a sort of mad, painful delight at causing the world itself to tear apart at the seams, as it screams with both love and hate of the task. If ever this thing possessed the power of reason, the ability is long gone. It is a creature—a structure, an all-pervasive thought—of pure chaos.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XXXIII: The Temple of the Elders

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Two guardsmen in polished armor escorted us into the city. I could not tell from their demeanor if they would have allowed me to leave Fenin and flee, and I decided not to test them. They stared at me, thinking I wouldn’t notice, glancing away whenever our eyes met. I was taller than they were, though not by much, and my clothing covered my tattoos—I was no stranger a sight than any other traveler in the desert. I suspected Svilsara did not receive many travelers.

I could not say why. It was remote, yes, but so was every other waystation. Blue and white walls cast off the desert’s heat, and well-watered flowers bloomed from every window. A clothesline cast across the thoroughfare held tunics of bright, patterned silk dyed blazing orange and verdant green, floating gently in a cool breeze. Our small procession passed by a woman and her three children, all dressed in silk, gold baubles dangling from their ears and hanging around their necks. They, too, stared at me.

I put on a confident swagger, pretending that I had planned to return their sacrificed priestess all along, and that I knew exactly why the serpent had not devoured her as planned. Of course, none of this was true, but I hoped that I could mask my uncertainty and deter the guards watching me from attempting to do me harm.

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

Impossible

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One by one, the dead fall still and drop to the tiled floor. Silence falls over the hospital wing.

Berend stands on legs shaky with exhaustion, adrenaline the only thing keeping him upright, his empty pistol gripped in one hand as stiff as a corpse’s. A slow fire that reeks of disinfectant and rotting flesh eats at what’s left of his barricade.

Is it over?

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Journey to the Water Chapter XXXII: Svilsara

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Confined by this new stranger’s grasp, his wicked knife inches from the pale veins of her emaciated arms, Fenin was surprisingly calm. Her eyes closed, and she knelt without struggling, her hands stretched upward above her captor’s curled fist, as if in supplication.

“I’m not from Svilsara,” I said, a needless clarification that I nonetheless felt compelled to make. Whatever devilry Fenin’s city had concocted and inflicted upon its citizens, I wanted no part of it. “I am a warrior of the North. Unhand the girl, and I’ll let you depart from here in peace.”

His smile only stretched wider. “I might have known.”

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

The Void

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Isabel gets to her knees and grips the back of the driver’s seat. It’s empty, and the carriage jerks and bumps over the fog-shrouded terrain with no apparent guidance. Ghostly figures part like water before it, barely lifting their heads to acknowledge it. Their attention is focused on the crumbling wall, and the seething mass of eyes behind it.

Where are we going? Either the carriage is compelled by a base, inanimate desire to move despite its lack of horses, or it has some destination it seeks out mindlessly like a compass needle finding north. Isabel can’t wait to find out when it will stop. Her body, and Brother Risoven’s, are still sitting on the carriage’s physical counterpart, less than an arm’s length from the horde of undead filling the streets of Mondirra. When the angry corpses pull the wheels off the carriage, which won’t be long given their numbers, both she and Risoven will be torn to bloody shreds in no time at all.

Risoven’s spirit crouches behind her, one arm over his eyes and the other hand gripping the edge of the open window below him. He prays in a breathless, whispered litany: “Watcher on the wall, master of the gate, guardian of the bridge, shepherd of all souls, deliver us, please.”

Ondir isn’t listening, wherever he might be now. Isabel reaches out and shakes Risoven by the shoulder. “We have to hurry.”

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Journey to the Water Interlude Four: The Land of Ghosts

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Khalim took a breath. Cold, wet air, heavy with the scent of rain and decaying vegetation, chilled him from the inside of his chest, where his heart only shivered instead of beating, down to his feet and the tips of his fingers. He took a step back.

The beast rose up out of the underbrush, its forelimbs thick as tree trunks. Thick, black hair covered each arm and the shadowed body, wet and shiny in the scarlet glow of its eyes. A mask of bone, the larger mirror of the one on the creature still clinging to Khalim’s back, reflected an oval of burning red light. Below the mask, two rows of sharp teeth stretched out in a sinister smile.

Khalim had the distinct impression that this was a smile, not just an animal’s threat display in response to the sound of his approach. It could see him, and the sight of him amused it.

“Is this your mother?” Khalim whispered to the creature on his back, “or did you just take me here to be eaten?”

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