When Jackals Storm the Walls

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  “We’ll go to the valley,” she said slowly, each word like bile. Then, without warning, she stalked toward Cahil.

  Cahil’s eyes went wide. He lifted his hammer and, as she closed in, swung it at her in a strong yet mystifyingly incompetent manner.

  Çeda was more than ready. She leaned away from the blow, then ducked below Cahil’s clumsy recovery. As the hammer whirred above her head, Çeda rose, transferring all her power into an uppercut to Cahil’s jaw.

  His head snapped back. He reeled and tried to mount a new offensive, but it was over in moments. Çeda crossed with her elbow, landing it to the side of his head, then rotated her hips to send a deep punch to his gut that knocked the wind from him. When he bent over, she raised her knee to meet him, which sent him reeling backward, eyes glazed.

  She stood over him as he curled into a ball. “That’s for Osman, you piece of shit.” Then spat on him where he lay.

  Ihsan watched with a flat stare. Zeheb’s eyes moved rapidly, and his lips were moving. Husamettín surprised her—during her fight with Cahil, he’d prevented Yndris from interfering.

  “This isn’t over,” Çeda said to Husamettín, then took in Zeheb and Ihsan as well. “None of this is over.”

  With that she stalked back to River’s Daughter, picked it up, and headed for their horses.

  Chapter 31

  WILLEM WATCHED IN HORROR as Cassandra began stuffing her things into one of several large, shapeless bags. She was leaving, and it looked like it was for good. But Willem needed her. She was his only connection to Davud, and Davud hadn’t found Nebahat yet.

  Davud had scoured the grounds after Willem’s most recent message. He’d explored each of the collegia’s halls, most of them several times. Willem wanted desperately to help him, but he couldn’t. The binding that kept him from communicating with others had already been pushed to its limits. He’d given Davud the story of Bahri Al’sir and the fabled scroll. Davud had taken it to mean Nebahat might be hidden away in the largest of the collegia’s many libraries. When he’d found nothing there, he’d searched the smaller ones, including the private collections kept by many of the faculty. But of course he hadn’t found Nebahat’s hidden archives there. He needed to go to the science building.

  Willem made a mental list of the stories he might give to Davud through the use of the pendants—stories of alchemysts and astrologists, tales Davud might connect with the hall of science—but each time he thought of going to get one of the books, he was prevented. The will simply left him. No matter how tightly he held it, the notion would slip between his fingers—it was simply too close to the truth. He was even prevented from gathering loosely related stories that, when viewed as a mosaic, might give Davud the clues he needed.

  So it was that he was forced to watch as Davud tried different tacks, the first of which was sneaking into the collegia’s hall of records to look for clues of Nebahat’s past. Nebahat had attended the collegia decades ago but had had the foresight to expunge his official records. Chancellor Abi had known him, but Nebahat had closed off that loose end in the same ruthless and efficient manner he used to deal with most problems.

  To keep from being discovered after giving Davud the stack of books by the statue, Willem had returned Cassandra’s pendant to the heart-shaped box where she kept her jewelry. So great was his desire to bask in Davud’s light, he often returned to her room while she slept and stared into the pendant. Most nights Davud would watch from the other side, clearly hoping for more clues, but Willem could do no more than stare while cloaked in darkness. He even felt spells Davud had crafted in hopes of catching him, but as Willem had in the past, he forced them to slide past him. His binding not only prevented him from speaking; it forced him to avoid spells he knew would give him away as well.

  Then one morning, as the sun resumed its unending battle against the night, something terrible happened. Cassandra was snoring softly in her bed when a knock came at her door. Willem had been so caught up with the pendant he hadn’t heard anyone approaching. He should have made for the window immediately, but he didn’t. He was too afraid of losing Davud forever. So when the knock came again, he slipped inside Cassandra’s wardrobe.

  Just as he was closing the door, he heard Cassandra stirring. “Coming!”

  Again came the insistent knock.

  “I’m coming!” The metallic rattle of the door being opened. “Why so early, memma?”

  “I told you I’d be here at dawn. Are you ready?” A pause. “Cassandra, I told you to pack.”

  “I did!”

  “One small chest? We need everything, Cassa. Or have you forgotten?”

  Through the crack between the doors, Davud saw Cassandra stuffing her clothes into a large canvas bag, one of several her mother had brought to the room with her. “I haven’t forgotten,” Cassandra said, her movements slowing. “I just don’t see why it’s necessary to go home.”

  “Your father is sick.”

  “I have my studies.”

  “You’re studies are going to have to wait.” Cassandra’s mother was out of sight, but there came the sound of ruffling, of cloth being snapped—Cassandra’s clothes being picked up from the floor. “I need you at home with me.”

  Willem made himself small in one corner of the wardrobe. He was hidden beneath the ranks of dresses hung from above, but the moment they were pulled aside . . .

  “Memma, I don’t want to go.”

  The sound of footsteps came closer. Shadows passed over the gap where the slightly warped doors of the wardrobe met imperfectly. The leftmost door thumped hard, making him shiver with fright. Fabric was dragged across the stone floor.

  “Honestly, Cassa, I thought I taught you better. Do you really have to dump your clothes everywhere?”

  Gods, they were about to open the wardrobe. They were going to see him. All these years, never being found, never being seen, and he would be caught inside a bloody wardrobe because he’d been too dimwitted to leave when he should have. He’d been so taken by the pendant, though, and by Davud, and with trying to concoct some way to lead him to Nebahat.

  He thought of running. He thought of bursting from the wardrobe and making for the window. But the same thing that kept him from speaking kept him from willfully revealing himself. He was so terrified tears gathered at the corners of his eyes. The wardrobe door flew wide. Willem cringed as light flooded the interior.

  “By the gods who breathe, Cassa, how many dresses do you have.”

  Just then another knock came. “There’s just the matter of a signature?” came a tiny voice. Willem knew that voice. It was the dorm mistress.

  “Keep packing,” the mother’s voice said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Memma, I don’t want to go!” Her voice had begun to dwindle. “Let me stay until the end of term at least.”

  A great wave of relief swept over Willem. They were heading for the dorm mistress’s office! The moment the door clattered shut behind them, Willem rushed from the wardrobe. He’d already taken two long strides toward the window when he glanced at the table beside Cassandra’s bed.

  The heart-shaped box was there. The pendant.

  He wept at the thought that he’d not be able to see Davud again, not be able to help him further.

  Then a thought struck him like a thunderbolt. He refused to think about it lest it expand into something more fully fleshed. If he did, he would be compelled to leave. He was certain of it. So instead he reasoned with himself. Might it not be in Nebahat’s best interests if the necklace were taken for safekeeping? Indeed, might he not want to examine it to see the sort of threat it represented?

  Yes. Yes. Nebahat would like to see the pendant.

  So he took it. He stuffed it into his shirt and flew through the window just as the voices of Cassandra and her mother grew stronger and the door opened behind him.

  “I’ll talk of
it no further, Cassa. You’re leaving, and that’s that.”

  Cassandra’s response was too faint to hear as Willem made his way over the angular landscape of the dormitory’s roof. He returned to the hall of science and slipped through Nebahat’s spells of hiding. He made his way to the hidden archive, nearly though not quite certain that he would wake Nebahat and show him the necklace.

  No, he reasoned. Why wake him now?

  He stuffed the necklace beneath his pillow instead, in the tiny alcove he called home. He’d show it to Nebahat later. Or tomorrow. Nebahat was a busy man, after all. He didn’t need to be bothered with such inconsequential things.

  Perhaps when his project was complete.

  Yes, that was it. After Nebahat’s project was complete, he would have time for such things.

  Satisfied that he’d done the right thing by his master, Willem curled up and fell asleep.

  Willem waited for days. He left the pendant where it lay. He avoided thinking about it lest the wrong sorts of thoughts begin to blossom. He couldn’t even bring himself to go looking for Davud lest he begin to have hope. Hope, and his thoughts would surely give him away, and then what would be left but to reveal everything to Nebahat?

  So he went about his days as he had since he was old enough to remember. He collected books from shelves all around the collegia. He returned those that Nebahat said he was finished with. He read stacks upon stacks of others, often to occupy his mind but just as often to satisfy Nebahat, who would quiz him about their contents, which would often lead to his asking for additional texts. Of late Nebahat was quite curious about the desert gods, the years leading up to Beht Ihman, and the early reign of the Sharakhani Kings.

  So it was that Willem read hundreds upon hundreds of books, scrolls, and tablets that spoke of the desert gods. So it was that he began to see a pattern. Most stories focused on the gods coming to Sharakhai and speaking to the Kings on the mount, but there were a number that spoke of the gods visiting the desert tribes. They’d wanted the war to happen, he realized. King Kiral was mentioned in three separate accounts as having been visited in his palace by Tulathan well before Beht Ihman. The gods had made sure that Kiral knew he and his fellow Kings could turn to the gods if they wished. And so they had. The tribes united. They sailed on Sharakhai. They assaulted her walls. And the Kings, all too predictably, had begged the gods for help.

  Of course the gods had granted it. It’s what they’d wanted all along. Willem could see it clear as day.

  But why? That was the burning question Nebahat wanted to answer.

  Now that he saw it, Willem became obsessed with the very same question. Why would the gods do that? They were the gods! Couldn’t they get anything they wanted with a snap of their fingers?

  He reread all the texts Nebahat had given him, then read them again. He found others that Nebahat had never mentioned. And in these texts, he found a new pattern. There was something the gods wanted. There was something they couldn’t get with a snap of their fingers.

  It was the touch of the old gods. Those who had made them, who’d breathed life into them then, then left the world for the farther fields. The young gods ached for their touch but were forbidden from leaving this world for the next. As Willem was bound to the collegia, they were bound to this earth, unable to follow. So it had been from the beginning. So it would always be.

  Then one day Nebahat brought three crates of old clay tablets to the hidden archive and said to him, “Read these.”

  This calls for silence, Willem thought. Silence and darkness.

  He took them to his alcove and read them by the light that glittered off the angles in the cuneiform. The tablets were old. Very old. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’d come from the time of Beht Ihman or before. Most of them were poems and simple parables, tales that had spawned countless offshoots over the centuries, but there was one near the end that made his fingers tingle. It had been written by a woman who’d witnessed Beht Ihman. She’d stood on the mount and watched the gods arrive, watched the Kings sacrifice Tribe Malakhed that the city might be saved, watched as the people of that poor, cursed tribe were transformed into the asirim.

  That night, the gods spoke verses to the Kings. The Kings had been granted wondrous powers. They’d been given weaknesses as well. Both were shared with the Kings in the form of an epic poem, voiced by Tulathan herself. When the cursed asirim had been sent to deal death upon the tribes attacking the city, and the Kings and all the other witnesses had left, the woman lingered, transfixed by the gods who remained. There she spied the golden goddess, Rhia, who turned directly to her, where she hid behind an outcropping of rock.

  It was in that moment Rhia spoke one last verse of the poem. The implications of that final verse kept the woman up night after night. She would wake, sweating, Rhia’s voice haunting her. The only way she could think to be free of it was to write it down so that it was recorded for history.

  Willem stared at those words: the final stanza of the poem, the one that revealed all.

  Breath of the desert. Breath of the desert.

  He was about to go to Nebahat and tell him when he noticed something shining beneath his pillow. He lifted it to find Cassandra’s pendant. It was shining bright. Shining with Davud’s light.

  He was near. He’d come. Sand and stone, he’d found Nebahat’s lair!

  Willem’s heart lifted in joy. He wanted to sing. To dance. Nebahat would pay for what he’d done to Altan and so many others. Davud would bring him to justice!

  But then a horrific urge was born inside Willem’s heart. Nay, a directive.

  His hands shot beneath his chin. He swallowed. He shook his head so violently stars swam in his vision.

  I can’t. I can’t. Please don’t make me.

  And yet the tablet that had so entranced him went practically forgotten in his left hand. In his right he took up the pendant. He carried it and the tablet down the dark, winding tunnel. He reached the maze of shelves, the spiraling stairs, the ground floor, where Nebahat was reading a massive tome that was laid out on the desktop before him.

  Willem stood there before him, at which point Nebahat raised a finger, as he often did when finishing one last paragraph or page.

  Go, a voice inside Willem screamed. Take the pendant and run!

  But he couldn’t, and soon Nebahat was lifting his head and staring at Willem in that way of his, asking him what he wanted without saying a word.

  Willem watched in horror as his own arms extended before him. He tried to cry out, to warn Davud that he shouldn’t come, but he was bound never to do such a thing.

  Oh gods, he should have warned Davud away. He should have laid a false trail. Now Davud was going to die because of him.

  Willem opened his hands so that Nebahat could see the pendant. He then pointed to the tunnel that led to the way up. He put on a worried face, making it clear that there was danger.

  Nebahat immediately stood. He stared down the tunnel and disappeared in a waft of green smoke.

  Willem turned toward the tunnel’s mouth, where two shapes were resolving from the darkness. How he wished they would think better of this. How he wished they would flee.

  But they didn’t. Why would they? They stepped into the light, Davud wary, Esmeray wearing the sour look that seemed to define her.

  “Hello,” Davud said simply.

  Run!

  “Was it you who left us the clues?”

  Run!

  Davud stepped forward, his hands raised in a gesture of friendship. “I won’t harm you.”

  Run! Run! Please run!

  But it was too late. Nebahat materialized behind them. They’d no more turned than a nest of black cords flew from Nebahat’s outstretched hands to wrap their necks, their mouths, their wrists and their ankles. As they fell to their knees, then to the hard stone floor, Willem watched, horrified, un
moving, tears streaming down his face.

  Chapter 32

  AS DAWN BROKE over the darkened streets of the Shallows, Brama and Mae followed the boy they’d rescued from the adichara. His clubfoot caused the boy to limp, which slowed their journey, but he eventually led them to a dusty, stone-lined yard that sat between a small house and a squat building: the mill Brama had seen in the boy’s memories. Using the power of Raamajit’s bone, Brama had taken on the guise of a young street tough. His skin was smooth, the lump on his forehead gone. Mae had refused his spells, choosing instead to wear a simple shirt, a leather jerkin, breeches, and sandals.

  Brama found the spot where the boy had gone to piss the day before. “Go on home,” Brama told the boy, who wasted no time. He headed into the house as quickly as his deformed foot would allow.

  As he called for his mother, Brama stepped carefully along the alley, with Mae following. Halfway along it, Brama crouched, placed his hands flat on the ground, and felt for the presence of those who’d trodden over that particular stretch of packed earth. Had it been along a busy street, he’d likely have been unable to detect the presence of the one who’d bewitched the boy and sent him into the desert to die, but the alley wasn’t well traveled and he sensed it after a time.

  Touching his fingers to his forehead, Brama called upon the power of the elder gods, willing the path to unwind. Before him, footsteps lit faintly in the early dawn light, footsteps he and Mae followed deeper into the Shallows.

  As the city around them woke, Rümayesh fumed. She was angry she’d been beaten and was surely plotting a new path to ascendance, but she was curious as well, perhaps even more so than Brama. The riddle of the adichara, the very reason for their existence, was four hundred years old and had yet to be solved, and Rümayesh was as interested as anyone in the answers.