When Jackals Storm the Walls

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

He roared and stumbled back, surely hoping to escape as he had in Sharakhai’s northern harbor, but Nalamae was ready. She swore by the sun that bakes, the sand that shifts, and the water that grants life that Goezhen would never leave this place.

  Goezhen sent dark, roiling clouds at her, spells she split with a swipe of her spear. Shifting to the attack, she landed a mighty blow to his jaw, then reversed her swing, cutting deep into his flesh while avoiding a lash of his tail.

  For long moments they fought, Nalamae watching carefully for her opening and, when it came, moving like lightning, surging forward and thrusting Yerinde’s spear into his chest with a mighty thrust.

  Goezhen’s eyes went wide as she drove him back. He clawed at her, swung at her with his tails. There was no avoiding his blows now, but she ignored the tearing of her flesh and pushed him further, faster, until he fell into the nearby pool.

  Nalamae yanked her spear free as he plunged beneath the surface. The water churned and frothed. The waves became tinged with black, the blood of a fallen god. Goezhen’s violent thrashing churned up mud from the pool’s bed, but he failed to regain the surface. He stared up through the water. Realization dawning, his movements slowed, then stopped altogether.

  When the waves had calmed, and the surface of the pool had settled into a mirror-like smoothness, Nalamae stepped onto the water, which was solid as stone. She strode forward until she stood above him, then crouched and stared down. Renewing his struggle, he clawed at the pool’s unyielding surface, pounded his fists against it, but slowly he came to understand what Nalamae already knew: that he was trapped.

  “How does it feel to be the hunted, brother?”

  “Release me!” His words were muffled and muted. “Release me!”

  Nalamae only smiled. “I know you hope to reach the world beyond. I know you all long for it. But I can’t allow it. I won’t. It would lay waste to the desert.”

  Goezhen stared with baleful eyes. His one remaining horn clunked and scraped against the underside of the pool’s hardened surface. “Thou couldst still join us,” Goezhen said. “The wish to feel the touch of our elders burns in thy heart, as it does in ours. I know that to be true.”

  He wasn’t lying. The presence of the elder gods were distant memories now, but they were the deepest, sweetest, and richest Nalamae had ever felt. Even now she could feel the soft touch of Iri’s hand on her cheek, the bliss it brought. She could hear the sound of Annam’s voice as they walked among the newly made mountains to the west. She could recall perfectly the joy of pleasuring, and being pleasured by, Raamajit.

  “That time is gone,” Nalamae said, “never to return.”

  “Lies! Thou hast told thyself lies! Look within thy heart and see the truth. We may rejoin them, be reunited, and leave this foul world behind.”

  “That’s just it. It isn’t foul. It’s grand, just as they meant it to be.”

  Goezhen stared up at her, his expression turning hard. He thrashed harder than before, and she felt the water’s surface thump beneath her feet. He swam down and clawed at the pool’s bed, hoping to escape another way. But Nalamae lifted a hand and Goezhen rose with it. She rotated that same hand, and Goezhen’s body twisted until he faced her.

  Nalamae stood, her spear held easily in her right hand. “Tell me how to stop it.”

  Goezhen revealed the yellowed peaks of his teeth in a leering smile. “There is no way to stop it.”

  “There must be.”

  “There isn’t,” he replied.

  And Nalamae found that she believed him. She’d hoped to get answers this day. She’d hoped that, even if Goezhen gave her none, she might get what she needed from one of their brother or sister gods, but she was starting to think she never would.

  “So be it.” Nalamae gripped the haft of her spear and pressed the tip against the water’s surface, which gave ever so slightly. “Whether or not it can ever be stopped, you won’t live to see it.”

  She put weight on the spear and pressed downward. Like a knife through cold butter, the water gave, the spear’s honed point coming closer and closer to Goezhen’s chest. Goezhen’s eyes went wider than ever. He thrashed so hard the surface of the pool split, fracturing around the spear’s point of entry. The surface buckled, lifting Nalamae where she stood. She thought it was going to shatter—such was the dark god’s strength—but then the spear drove into his chest. Deeper and deeper it went, until it pierced his heart.

  His screams shook the foundations of the earth. The buildings of the caravanserai rumbled. Stone cracked. A small roadside shrine nearby crumbled and fell. Even Nalamae stumbled back when, in a final burst of desperation, Goezhen struggled to break free. But then he went perfectly, utterly still.

  Nalamae stared into his lifeless gaze for a long while, then used her spear to stab down, over and over, until the cuts had formed a rough circle around Goezhen’s heart. Setting the spear aside, she reached into the hole she’d made in the thickened water, rooted through his ruin of flesh, and took up his heart.

  “It may be unstoppable,” she said to Goezhen’s lifeless form, “but if so, none of you will benefit from it.”

  She walked across the pool until she trod upon sand once more, only then realizing how filthy her spear’s blade was. She stabbed it into the sand over and over until it gleamed, then she became a column of sand, which collapsed and spread outward, settling until no one would know a goddess had once stood there.

  Chapter 49

  IT WAS NIGHT when Rümayesh walked among the blooming fields. Rhia waned gibbous in the east. Tulathan was a delicate, waxing crescent in the west. As distant as they were, they seemed displeased with one another, angry.

  Generations ago, Rümayesh had become obsessed with the blooming fields. She’d spent weeks walking through the groves. She’d watched the blooms open and turn to face the moons. She’d watched them come alive on the holy night of Beht Zha’ir. She’d pricked her finger on the poisoned thorns, reveling not only in the pain but the faint taste of mortal blood, the redolence of lost souls.

  She’d studied the asirim. She’d listened to their tortured screams, shared in their tortured dreams. She’d watched as they’d risen from their sandy graves and lumbered to the city to gather the tributes marked by the Reaping King. She’d stood by as the asirim threw the tributes, alive or dead, into the waiting trees and watched them die, strangled by the branches. She’d even saved some of the tributes and basked in the warmth of their gratitude before they fled back to the city.

  In all those years, she’d only ever seen the branches move on the holy night of Beht Zha’ir. She thought it a rule inviolate, and yet here they were, over three weeks since Beht Ihman, just a bit over halfway until the next holy night, and the branches swayed ever so slightly, rubbing against one another. The thorns clicked, the branches clacked. It was a pleasant sound, like a leafless winter tree swaying in the wind.

  The fact that they were swaying at all was an indication that things were changing. So few knew what was about to happen. The gods did. Rümayesh did. Brama did as well, a few of the Kings, a handful of others. A storm was about to fall upon the desert, to change the Great Mother forever.

  How could you want that? Brama asked from deep inside her.

  She railed against him, pressing him down, stifling his presence until her awareness of him faded.

  He’d been trying to resurface more and more of late. She knew it would happen eventually—they shared the same form, after all, their souls commingled. As had been true when Brama was dominant, she could not be watchful at all times, and the longer she went without rest, the less strength she would have to prevent his ascension.

  Well, she thought, I’m not so tired that he’ll gain dominance tonight.

  Since meeting Queen Meryam in the cavern, Rümayesh had been wandering the blooming fields again, considering them more deeply than she ever had before. Meryam nee
ded one final component for her grand spell to work, an ancient and complex sigil, and the chances of her finding it on her own were slim at best.

  Another twinge from Brama.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said while ducking beneath the gnarled bough of an adichara. “Once we reach the other side, this will all become a faint memory.”

  Brama said nothing, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she’d treated him so ruthlessly or because he’d grown tired of the argument. She found she didn’t care.

  She came to a tree that looked sickly. Its blooms were not fully open, nor were they as bright as the surrounding trees. Its branches were stiff and unmoving. These were the key, Rümayesh knew. These were the ones that were ready to pass. It was imperative she find the sigils Meryam could use to draw tributes to these trees specifically, not to the healthy ones—the crystal needed their disease.

  She sat crosslegged, pressed her sharpened thumbnail to her wrist, Brama’s wrist, and drew blood. Using the blood, she painted sigils onto the adichara’s bark, words written in the desert’s mother tongue. She tried many variations using bond, search, sympathize, unite, and strengthen. To these she would eventually apply a very specific form of summon, a sigil she’d learned long ago when her mate, Behlosh, had used it on her.

  Occasionally in these experiments she would draw too many sigils on a single tree and have to move to another and begin the process anew. It was painstaking work, but she could feel herself coming closer and closer to what she wanted.

  Over and over she tried, and eventually moved on to the seventh tree of the night. Seven by seven they came from the heavens, went the old rhyme, referring to the number of elder gods who’d made the world, not realizing that there had been one more, the forgotten god who resided in the desert still.

  This is no night to think of Ashael. Seven is a lucky number. The seventh tree will deliver that which I need.

  And so it did. When she drew the symbol she’d been refining over the course of the night, she felt them, the diseased trees spread all throughout the blooming fields. They shone brightly, like stars ready to fall to the earth.

  She reveled in the anticipation the discovery brought. These trees would deliver the gods from this plane of existence. They would deliver her as well. How she ached for it. It was so close she could taste it.

  “Brama?”

  Rümayesh spun, peering into a darkness that was ready to give way to dawn.

  It had been a long, long while since she’d been surprised by anyone. “Who’s there?” Rümayesh asked, wary of the gods, wary of the other strange creatures of the desert who might have come to stop her.

  “It’s me, Mae.”

  Rümayesh felt Brama’s distress as Mae stepped out from the trees. She might have been wearing armor. Rümayesh couldn’t tell. Mae was strangely difficult to look upon. She looked like an afterimage, the sort that remains on the eyes after staring at a thing for too long.

  Magic. No doubt a gift from her queen. Rümayesh was forced to look away as she began to grow sick from it. “Why have you come?”

  A pause. “I come for my friend.” Mae had grown quite good at telling which of them was inhabiting Brama’s form. “I have no wish to hurt you. I only wish you to leave him alone.”

  Only then did Rümayesh realize Mae was holding a drawn bow. Rümayesh peered close, barely able to perceive the glint of its diamond tip, but then she had to look away. Whatever magic Queen Alansal had given her was effective.

  Rümayesh took a step across the rocky earth toward Mae.

  As brave as she was, Mae took a step backward. “Brama? Can you hear me?” Nearby, an adichara branch clicked. “Fight her. Fight Rümayesh. You can win!”

  “Shall I kill her?” Rümayesh asked aloud. “Shall I take her so that she’ll be there, waiting for you on the other side?”

  Brama’s terror rose to new heights. Leave her be. Let her go!

  Rümayesh took another step. “Why should I?”

  Mae retreated and drew the bowstring to her ear. “Brama, hear me. I know you can find yourself again.”

  She’s done nothing to you, Brama cried.

  “She has a weapon trained on me.”

  She’s only trying to save me. Let me speak to her. I’ll tell her to leave.

  Brama’s and Mae’s terror were playing off one another so deliciously Rümayesh didn’t want it to end, but the diamond-tipped arrow did have some effectiveness against the skin of—

  She felt the release of Mae’s arrow. Saw it glint in the space between them, growing larger and brighter. She lifted one hand and cast a spell to block it, but the arrow wasn’t where she thought it was. An illusion of some sort had been applied to it.

  It punched through her magical shield and caught her along the ribs. Lightning quick, Mae released another arrow, which sank into her thigh.

  As Mae released a third arrow, Rümayesh finally felt the edges of the spell that was obfuscating the arrows and flung her arm up. The arrow flew over her, lost in the adichara with a sound like snapping sticks. Catching the barest hint of Mae’s sword being drawn, Rümayesh lunged backward, narrowly avoiding the swift cut. Crouching, Rümayesh gripped a fistful of sand and flung it toward Mae, infusing it with power as she did so.

  As she dodged another swift swing of Mae’s sword, Rümayesh heard the sizzle of the molten sand against Mae’s armor. Mae screamed, flung herself backward with one arm across her face, hoping to put distance between them.

  But Rümayesh was already on the move. She sprinted forward. Backhanded Mae’s sword and sent it flying. It swirled away, a gyre of dizzying darkness.

  “Brama!” Mae cried desperately.

  Rümayesh, blinking fiercely from the vertigo threatening to overwhelm her, fell on Mae. She pinned her down, one hand on her throat. She used her other hand to paw at the neck of Mae’s armor. And there she found it. An amulet.

  She ripped it free and sent it flying away, and suddenly Mae was plain to see. A Mirean woman with a grinning demon helm and bright, lacquered armor.

  One hand still around her throat, Rümayesh ripped away the mask and stared into Mae’s bright, jade-green eyes. Spittle gathered around her mouth. She made choking sounds. Her light-colored skin turned dark, almost purple, as she fought for breath, and her eyes reddened. She looked desperate, but there was still hope—Brama might yet save her.

  How perfectly rich, Rümayesh thought.

  Brama could feel the sharp, stinging pain from the arrow wounds as well as Rümayesh could. He could feel the blood trickling over their shared skin. He sensed Rümayesh’s anger at being tricked.

  “She knew better than to come here,” Rümayesh said to him.

  It was then that Brama rose up like a creature from the depths of a dark, ancient lake and assaulted her. She was immediately on her heels, trying to fight him off. He was much, much stronger than she’d thought he would be. How he’d managed to store up so much energy she didn’t know.

  You’ve taught me many things, Rümayesh.

  She knew it was so, but had thought him incapable of overwhelming her. She knew that if she were to kill Mae, it would empower him even more, and if that were to happen, she might be powerless for too long.

  She couldn’t let that happen. All her efforts with Meryam would be put at risk—the very thought of missing the day the gods walked to the farther fields put a deep fear into her. But doubts were already beginning to surface in Brama’s mind, doubts about what he wanted versus what would be best for his friend.

  If he acted as she suspected he would, she’d be back in control soon enough. So she let him take control. She let him have his precious Mae.

  She could hardly wait to taste his sorrow.

  Brama was suddenly returned to himself. He trembled and tipped over, falling across Mae’s legs. He tried to rise again and this time managed to kee
p his feet. His skin tingled. His fingers felt numb but were slowly regaining their feeling in waves of pins and needles. His world spun like a black lotus high and the pain from the arrow wounds was so bad he thought he might pass out from it, but slowly he regained control over himself, then the pain.

  By then Mae stood before him, her bow drawn, the string pulled to her cheek, the diamond-tipped arrow pointed at his chest. Her whole body shook.

  Brama didn’t know what to say. Part of him wanted her to pierce his heart. Another part was just scared, so he stood there, his breath loud in his ears, hoping Mae would lower her aim.

  “Brama?” Mae said.

  “Mae, you have to go.”

  She glanced to her left, probably toward her hidden qirin, Angfua.

  “Mae, you have to go! I won’t be able to hold Rümayesh forever. And when she resurfaces, she’ll finish what she started. She’ll kill you.”

  The regret was plain in Mae’s eyes. She’d come to the blooming fields hoping to free Brama, and gods, he loved her for it, but she was starting to see the truth—that she would never be able to free him, not truly—and so she did the thing she least wanted to do, the thing she’d kept as a last resort. As Brama took a step toward her, she let her arrow fly.

  With perfect clarity, Brama reached up and grabbed it. The tip only a finger’s breadth from his chest. As he snapped the arrow and threw it aside, Mae stood perfectly still, a shocked look on her face.

  “I told you to leave!”

  Brama put power into his voice, amplifying it, and finally it worked. Mae turned and fled and Brama watched as she was lost beyond the adichara grove. The full weight of what he’d done was starting to press in on him. The last person in the world who cared about him had just left him. He’d needed to frighten her—had he not, Rümayesh would eventually have resurfaced and killed her—but gods how it hurt.

  He turned and walked to the pendant Rümayesh had torn from her neck. A pearl, pink and misshapen, in a gold setting. He wished he could slip the pendant over his head and disappear from the world as Mae had. He couldn’t, though. His life wasn’t his anymore.