Silent Hall (46 page)

T
he candle blew
out as the bolt left his crossbow and buried itself deep in the priest's back, between his shoulder blades. Bestillos reeled and fell face forward to the ground. Narky dropped the crossbow and scrambled toward Hunter before any enterprising soldier could cut
him
down from behind. Nobody tried. There was a deafening roar and Silent Hall shot toward the heavens, borne by the Yarek's massive branches. Hunter's broken sword lay forgotten on the ground as the two of them stared upwards, watching Psander's fortress disappear atop the primordial tree. Then a winged figure appeared in the sky, flying down toward them.

The fire that came from Salemis' jaws made Criton's flames look like a dying ember. The armies of Ardis and Parakas screamed as their camp became an inferno, vaporizing men and tents alike. Those who were not killed in the first breath of flame scattered in all directions. Salemis caught some in a second breath before climbing back toward the heavens, his scales shining like a second sun. Narky did not see him pierce the clouds: he had to double up coughing from the smoke that rose off the battlefield behind him.

He stayed on the ground, waiting for the smoke to clear. His eyes watered. When he opened them, he found that he was staring straight at Bestillos' corpse. The priest of Magor's eyes were open wide as if in shock, and it took Narky a moment to remember that he hadn't even seen Salemis appear. He had died still believing in his side's victory.

Hunter knelt beside Narky and tried to tell him something, but Narky could not hear him. His ears were still ringing, and the Yarek was making a sort of enlarged creaking sound as its roots burrowed into the ground and new limbs burst out of its trunk, already halfway to the clouds. When the sound died down somewhat, Narky asked Hunter to repeat himself.

“You cheated,” Hunter shouted. “You shot him in the back.”

Narky nodded. He was a murderer; he had known it since the beginning. The hand that had killed Ketch knew no honor. He had hoped, once, that repentance might transform him into someone he was not, but such was not the way of the world. Narky would always take unfair advantage where he could. He would always be willing to cheat.

Hunter interrupted his thoughts. “Thank you,” he said, as the world around them shook. “I never would have done what you did, and I would have lost a friend. I owe you my life.”

“Don't worry about it,” Narky said. “I probably owe you mine several times over.”

They found Phaedra and Bandu kneeling over Criton. Bandu had Goodweather safely in her arms, and Criton was crying out in pain while Phaedra tested his legs. “You'll be all right,” she said reassuringly. “I think they're only sprained.”

“Where's the king?” Narky asked.

“I don't know,” Phaedra said. “I haven't seen him since the Yarek started growing. I don't know if he's still alive. But he didn't really want to live. You heard him, right? He already considered himself rescued.”

Narky nodded, but she kept her gaze on him. She knew, he realized with a sudden sinking feeling.
Let he who was murderer rescue the damned.
She might not know Ketch's name, or any of the details, but she knew.

Yet she said nothing. Did she somehow forgive him, even without knowing the details? Perhaps she felt that the prophecy absolved him – that the Gods had chosen him as the murderer long before it had happened, and had manipulated him into doing the deed. Or perhaps not. Wishing it worked that way didn't make it so.

Phaedra finally turned away from him, and Narky wandered off to find the king. The battlefield was still smoldering to his left, and Goodweather's trunk was growing to his right. He looked up at the heavens, wondering if he would find the dragon there. There was no sign of Salemis.

Everything is changing,
Narky thought. Smoke and live wood rose up to the sky together, and clouds of gray ash billowed around the Yarek's new foothold in the world. Narky wiped stinging, smoky tears from his good eye. He did not know what tomorrow would look like. He hoped it was better than today.

T
here are so
many people I would like to thank for their help in bringing this book into the world. Firstly, to my wife, my siblings, and our friends David Chapman and Kate Costello for helping me plot out the outline before we even knew it was an outline. Thanks to Shauna Gordon-McKeon and Molly LeBlanc for pointing out gender imbalances and other social assumptions in the first few chapters, and thereby being responsible for making Psander a woman. Thanks also to Sam Ross, to my sister-in-law Becca, and to my parents (and to Dave and my wife and siblings again) for helping me read through the whole thing out loud to catch my mistakes, and to Laurel Amberdine for being an excellent (and very fast) gamma reader.

Thank you also to Jon D Levenson, whose book
Creation and the Persistence of Evil
served as inspiration for the theology of my world. And thanks to Christopher Luna for recommending it!

Enormous thanks go to my agent, Evan Gregory, for finding this book a loving home, and to the talented and amazingly supportive folks at Angry Robot for being that home. I'm truly honored to be working with you all.

Lastly, thanks to you! Yes, you, the reader, for giving my book a try and even making it to the acknowledgments page. I hope you enjoyed it!

N
S Dolkart is
a graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. By day, he leads activities in a nonprofit nursing home; in the evenings he cooks with his wife and plays with their two children, and only late at night does he write his tales of magic and Godhood. He doesn't sleep much.
Silent Hall
is Noah's first novel.

A
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The gods must be angry

A
n Angry Robot
paperback original 2016

C
opyright © N
S Dolkart 2016

N
S Dolkart
asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A
catalogue record
for this book is available from the British Library.

U
K ISBN 978
0 85766 566 9

US ISBN 978 0 85766 567 6

EBook ISBN 978 0 85766 568 3

S
et by Epub Services
.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

T
his book is sold
subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

T
his novel is entirely
a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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