Heart's Desire Read Online Free PDF Page A

understood where Jack was coming from, at least to the extent of agreeing that they probably didn’t need a strenuous battle against the massed forces of the Goa’uld at the moment. Jack had looked glad for a moment’s rest himself the day before, leaning back on a bench in the sunlight, the brim of his hat tilted down over his eyes.
    Daniel couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Jack looking relaxed. The answer might have been before Sha’re died and Jack started trying so hard to take care of everyone else, and also possibly never. It was hard right now for him to remember if any of them had ever felt at ease, and if there had ever been a time since he first came back through the Stargate without Sha’re that had seemed like a happy one. And if there had been, what did that say about him?
    â€œDr. Jackson?” Anath prompted. Daniel shook his head. There was no point in standing around asking himself questions he didn’t really want to answer, and it wasn’t why he’d asked for this tour.
    â€œRight, let’s move on,” he said. He followed her down the length of a hallway cut deep into the stone of the mountain, with condensation collecting in patches on the wall and making the wool rugs underfoot smell musty and sour. “What are we looking at down here?” It had better be carvings, he thought; the damp would surely make short work of any attempt at painting these walls.
    â€œDecorated stones,” Anath said. “They are found from time to time when new fields are being constructed, or in high places where few people go.”
    â€œAh,” Daniel said. “Well, yes, let’s look at the stones.” He wished he felt more genuine enthusiasm. He should, he told himself. Every artifact was important, every fragment of pottery or shaped stone one more piece of a puzzle much bigger than himself. It was fairly indefensible to feel that he wished there were more chance of finding a good alien artifact here.
    Anath stopped at an open doorway, pushing aside the musty hangings in the doorway for him to step through. He was expecting something utilitarian, stone tools or boundary markers no longer in use, but once she lit a lamp in the small storeroom, he could see the pair of tablets propped up on a shelf on the opposite wall. They didn’t look like stone; more likely clay, by the way they were deteriorating badly at the edges.
    â€œThese used to hang in one of the audience chambers, but Walat had them taken down,” Anath said. “He said they looked like something out of a temple. Not modern.”
    â€œWalat might want to keep these somewhere dryer,” Daniel said as patiently as he could manage. “Or at least copy the inscriptions on them before they entirely dissolve in this damp. What do they say?” He squinted in the lamplight, and then fished a flashlight out of his pocket.
    â€œIt’s not writing,” Anath said, sounding amused at his foolishness. “Don’t you know what writing looks like?”
    So far all the inscriptions he’d found had used either a variant of the Caananite alphabet or the Goa’uld hieroglyphics. There was a great deal more of the former than the latter, which suggested the Goa’uld weren’t frequent visitors. In his experience, they didn’t like to be confronted with things they didn’t understand.
    â€œWell, yes, it is writing, it’s a pattern of regular symbols, but it may be using an older alphabet, or an entirely different… oh, hey.” He held the flashlight closer, wishing now for a lot more light. It was hard to make out where the breaks between words had been intended to go, but if the first word ended there …
    Then the next word was an impossible string of consonants. Okay. Still, there was no mistaking the alphabet, even with some of the letters stylized a little differently than he’d seen them before, with stronger crossbars