Journey to the Water Chapter XXXVIII: Svilsara, As It Always Was

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 midday sun burned like a forge overhead, and the heat bore down on me with searing claws. I had the presence of mind to gather my belongings and move them to the narrow band of shade beside the sacrificial stone, where the wind took up the frayed ends of the rope that had bound me.

At the foot of the stone was a black scar, a smear of soot barely a hand’s breadth wide on the burning rock where the god of Svilsara had lain. It was a small, inconsequential thing—in a few hours, a day at most, the wind would scour the surface clean, and nothing would remain of him but a memory. Gods, I knew well, could die. They did not die easily. If I had indeed slain him, and I had no reason to believe I hadn’t, the consequences to myself and the hostile land on which I stood were far beyond my foresight.

I tried to hold in my mind’s eye the image of Svilsara as it would have been without the illusion: emaciated people, streets of ruined buildings filled with desert dust, and cramped, smoky corridors.

The only thing I could see was Khalim, lying upon the stone, hands clutching the harpoon in his belly and his face contorted in pain.

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

Red

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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Isabel had never received a reply to her letter asking the Sentinels of Vernay to weigh in on the conundrum of the broken spirit of Mikhail Ranseberg—or, maybe, an answer was waiting for her at the temple, never to be reclaimed. She wasn’t going to risk the high priest’s wrath by setting foot in there now. She’d answered her own questions in the weeks that followed, anyway, and now here she was, with the thing that had torn Mikhail’s soul apart grasping at her through the gaps in a wall of bone.

Still, she’d like to see something familiar. If she had a home, it would be Vernay, in the church where she’d spent her childhood sweeping between the headstones and her adolescence poring over dusty tomes in the library. She’d been trying to return there ever since arriving in Mondirra, the city’s bustle and noise straining her faculties even when she had time to eat and sleep, which hasn’t been often, of late. Vernay is quiet, as a rule, and the dead do not wake there. The turning of its ancient mill has continued uninterrupted since the time of the Inquisition. It’s hard to imagine the cataclysmic changes that have come to Mondirra visiting Vernay’s ancient, packed-earth streets.

The dying red sun refuses to set as the evening grows late, and long after nightfall should have arrived, it burns like a stubborn ember on the horizon. Perhaps, Isabel muses as she strains her eyes over the as-yet-untouched West Gate district, the light there isn’t the sun at all, but rather some alien fire that was transferred here from the nether when the world was torn apart and stitched back together.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XXXVII: Within the Illusion

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I had been warned of this. At the temple of the dragon, the warrior Jin had told me of the devious spirits that haunted the world beyond death, luring the unwary into certain doom. He had described them as less than gods, but what was a god to a man who lived in the shadow of an ancient dragon who refused all those who would worship her? A god, to Jin, would have been something beyond imagining. The thing calling itself Svilsara’s god was far beneath his acknowledgement.

And what was a god to one such as me? The Ascended, hungry for blood and willing to destroy their thousand-year reign to obtain it? Their master, who could not prevent the destruction of the city, and yet thought it right to rule over it afterward? The gods of my people were hunters and wanderers, warriors and magic-workers, and the great beasts that roamed the vast icy plains of the world beyond. I could not imagine any of them here in the desert, so far from the place of my birth.

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Journey to the Water Chapter XXXVI: The Sacrificial Stone

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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

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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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Journey to the Water Chapter XXXIV: The Garden House

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Alas, my mind was not like water, as the Dragon Temple acolytes had encouraged. Almost as soon as the illusion had been drawn away, it fell over my eyes again, and the filthy, smoke-filled room became clean and bright again, and its occupants were once more dressed in fine white silk and showed no evidence of their long starvation.

I had seen enough in my brief moment of clarity. This place—the whole of Svilsara, as Fenin had acquired health and beauty upon entering the city—was under the sway of a powerful magic-worker, for whom the whole city was a ritual chamber. Such a feat was beyond my experience of magic, but I did not doubt it could be done. It had been done, one way or another, and here were four wizened men ruling Svilsara from their secret throne room underground. I looked around, searching for sigils on the walls, but there were none to be seen.

“Please, wise elders,” Fenin said. “Help me to understand. I saw the serpent, but it vanished. I swear I did only as I was instructed.”

She knelt at the feet of the men, upon the rich rug that I now knew was only a faded, moth-eaten scrap. If the stone beneath it hurt her knees, she made no indication. Her rich hair fell over her shoulder, catching the torchlight like volcanic glass, and it looked perfectly real.

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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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