When Jackals Storm the Walls by Bradley P. Beaulieu

When Jackals Storm the Walls by Bradley P. Beaulieu

Author:Bradley P. Beaulieu [Beaulieu, Bradley P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2020-07-14T00:00:00+00:00


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.



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