Blackbone (7 page)

He had provided references for her job with the Metropolitan, but she had not requested them. Yazir bore no grudge: he had many former students who didn’t like to be reminded that before they became experts they had been pupils.

But now Loring was back, and Yazir’s sharp sixth sense told him he was about to be drawn into something unpleasant. He stood up and drained the last of his tea.

She looked better than he remembered, although the Middle Eastern tan was gone and she was back to that New York City museum pallor. But she seemed flushed with excitement, or was it agitation?

Yazir guided her to a chair and offered to make tea. She accepted graciously and thanked him for agreeing to see her. Yazir got the hot plate going again and smiled at her. “So, student, how can I help you?”

She managed a smile. “I hope you still have that great open mind that I recall from the old days.”

“I hope so, too.”

“When I came home from Iraq, I wanted to tell you about this. You were the only one I could trust, but, as I was about to tell it, it suddenly seemed so far away and unbelievable. So... I ran out. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted, but if you do it again I shall be very upset.”

There was no reply. He glanced back. She was working her hands together and frowning. He brought her the tea and waited. When she looked up, he saw fear in her eyes. He knew what was coming—one of those farfetched, mystical experiences that every archaeologist dreams of having, and many concoct because their imaginations demand it.

“There were three of us at the dig,” she began. “Aside from the workers, there was Selim Bayar—an Armenian linguistics expert, and Ismet Moulin—a hieroglyphics man from Syria.”

Yazir sat down. “I know Moulin. Good fellow. Experienced.”

Loring relaxed. “We were on our own. Working apart from the rest of the expedition, we dug through the ruins of a building and found a cache of artifacts, many of them smashed by the weight of accruing sand. But some of them had identifying marks which Moulin was able to decipher. We determined that they had all been the property of a Babylonian sorcerer named Korbazrah.”

“Sorcerer?”

“Necromancer, magician, whatever you want to call him. He lived in Ur-Tawaq, a small city in constant friction with Babylon during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. For most of his life he produced crafted silver and made a living from a small shop in the city, but in his last years he became a secret ally to the king and was probably responsible for a panic that brought the city to its knees and permitted Nebuchadnezzar to destroy it. The ruins we uncovered were evidently Korbazrah’s work chamber. Moulin deciphered a stack of clay tablets that turned out to be a cabala, a set of occult rituals.”

Yazir showed mild interest, but inwardly his stomach was beginning to protest.

“I found a box made entirely of handworked silver, covered with satyrs and devils and winged lions—Babylonian imagery crossed with the occult. Inside the box were several clay tablets and a silver flask, which was stoppered and sealed and... warm to the touch. It contained some sort of liquid, but we never opened it to find out precisely what.” Her voice caught, and there was a fleeting look of regret in her eyes. “Moulin took the tablets away to translate. A few nights later, he sat down with us around the fire and told us what he had deciphered. The tablets described how Korbazrah had trapped a demon in that silver flask—”

“A demon?” Yazir’s eyebrows went up.

Loring nodded. “And that anyone opening it would be releasing a plague of evil.”

She sat quietly a moment. Yazir stared at his wall maps but said nothing. Finally, he nodded for her to continue.

“The Iraqis, who were around the fire with us, were terribly frightened. They demanded that we put everything back where we had found it, rebury the site, and leave. Moulin and Bayar did their best to calm the men down, but they were insistent. They threatened Bayar, until finally he went down into the excavation to prove there was nothing harmful. He made a lot of noise— shouting at imaginary demons, warning them to leave or risk being destroyed by a man without fear. Quite a performance.”

“Did it work?”

“On the Iraqis, boasting is very effective. They relaxed and went to sleep. Moulin and I stayed up drinking. Nervous. We started kidding around. Moulin read some of his translations from the hieroglyphics. He gave me one of Korbazrah’s spells—a chant that was supposed to bring water.”

She stopped a moment and sipped her tea, lost in reflection. “I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen, so I climbed up on a rock and began chanting. It was—it was a joke.” She hesitated. “But then I fell into the rhythm of it and there was a moment when... when I knew I was doing it right.... The sound became a singsong effect I copied from the Iraqis.... All of a sudden I knew how that chant should sound... and then... then there was the water.”

“Water?” Yazir’s brow darkened.

“A boulder over the excavation disintegrated—and water erupted out of it. It came rushing down—”

She stopped with her hands in the air and sorted through a torrent of thoughts.

“It completely flooded the excavation, overran the dig, washed down into our camp, and then”—her eyes went wide and her voice quavered—”I just couldn’t get down there fast enough. I was shouting—Moulin and I were both shouting to warn them, but they didn’t hear us over the roar of the Water—” She choked. “They never had a chance—”

“The workers ...”

Loring nodded, her eyes filling with tears. Her hand covered her mouth. “They were all caught sleeping. All of them—drowned.”

She was very still for a moment. Yazir stared at her but she couldn’t meet his gaze. “I see,” he said. “You recited a chant, a rock broke, water flooded the excavation and drowned the Iraqis—leading you to the inescapable conclusion that
you
were somehow responsible.”

Loring looked at him miserably. Yazir packed a pipe with a foul-smelling Turkish tobacco and lit it. He spoke around the stem. “What did you do about this
accident?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Did you report it?”

“They were washed away without a trace—down a gully into a canyon filled with erosion holes. We searched when the water stopped flowing. We tramped down miles of that gully and never found anything.”

“Then what did you do?”

“Packed up the artifacts... the silver flask and the clay tablets... whatever was left up on the ridge. We returned to the expedition and told them that our workers had run off and the excavation had been destroyed in a flood.”

“Ah.” Yazir puffed hard on his pipe.

“What was I going to tell them? What could I possibly have said to the Iraqi authorities? They would have reacted exactly as you—”

“Never mind my reaction. What did you do next?”

“Returned to England, deposited everything in a basement vault at the British Museum, left orders that nothing was to be disturbed. Moulin swore never to speak of it again. I don’t think he returned to Iraq. He disappeared, and took all the translations with him. I lost track of Bayar, too. I stayed at the museum for a while and researched what we had found.... Eventually, I caught a boat home and took the job at the Metropolitan, The last few years I’ve been on staff, and occasionally I’ve done more research. I had been planning to go back after the war, to get the artifacts out of storage and work on them but never could get up the courage. Then recently I was informed that the British Museum was dispersing its collection to get it out of danger. I didn’t want that material inspected, so I arranged to have it sent here. But the ship it was on, the
Delaware Trader,
was torpedoed and sunk a few days ago in the Atlantic by a German U-boat. I thought that was the end of it—the stuff went to the bottom of the sea and there was nothing more to worry about. Then it turned out that the U-boat was almost immediately bombed and sunk by one of our planes. A survivor saved himself by climbing onto the crate containing my artifacts, which he evidently dumped out to make room for himself. I hope.”

She was silent a long time, then she got up and paced to the map. Her hand floated over the area labeled Babylon. “There is a book of collected tales about ancient Babylon called
The Light of Days—”

“I know it.”

“In it, Korbazrah is described as a tall, thin, ascetic silversmith who specialized in occult designs on shields, goblets, and urns. Sorcery was a profitable sideline. He hired himself out as a demon remover. He would go to the-homes of people suffering from unknown maladies, and he would invariably diagnose demonic possession. He would then perform an elaborate ritual—burning incense, placing silver objects decorated with occult designs all around the room, speaking in strange tongues—it was a hell of a show. Then he would force the victim to ingest a substance to make him vomit up the demon. The bile was collected in a silver container which the family paid for in advance. Afterward, Korbazrah would seal the container and supposedly place it in a secret vault, where it would be kept for all eternity. He sold a lot of demon containers. More likely, he sold the same one many times over. The victims would recover from whatever ailment they had—probably nothing more serious than a case of flu. But the whole performance was probably a great comfort to the Mesopotamians. In
The Light of Days
this is all passed down as part of the folklore. Korbazrah’s giant catacomb with its endless shelves of silver urns—most likely never existed.”

“I recall that story,” said Yazir. “I’ve read other accounts.”

“Imagine a quack like that suddenly finding himself face-to-face with a real demon.”

“The one in the flask?” Yazir’s pipe had gone out. He ignored it.

Loring smiled back at him. “That flask was not one of Korbazrah’s customary demon containers. It was specially designed for a special demon. A djinn.”

Yazir removed the pipe and fixed Loring with a reproachful stare. “Miss Holloway, a djinn is nothing more than a Middle Eastern gremlin. The goat won’t eat, the crops won’t grow, the sun is obscured—there must be a djinn around somewhere. Please—we’re going now from water spells and exorcism to the sublimely ridiculous!”

Loring waited for him to finish, then said, “The demon in that flask is mentioned in
The Light of Days
and in two other books. The flask is described as being made of crafted silver, with a pentagonal base tapering up to a long rounded neck, a five-sided opening, and corresponding stopper.”

Yazir frowned. Loring went to her chair, sat down, and opened her handbag. She gave him a sheet of paper listing book titles and page references. Yazir recognized several titles.

“These titles are all cross-referenced,” said Loring, “and I’ve summarized them here.” She produced a thick typescript, yellowed and dog-eared. Yazir flipped through it.

Loring continued, “This is no ordinary gremlin—no genie in a bottle—no wish-granting mythical being with long fingernails and pointy ears. This is a monster in every sense of the word. Of course, Korbazrah’s mum- bojumbo must have been useless. No, incantations and vomiting into a silver container. Capturing it must have been a very difficult, dangerous job.”

Yazir cleared his throat. “There is an expulsion ritual for djinn—”

“Invoking certain passages from the Koran? This djinn has been sealed away in the flask for twenty-five hundred years—that’s longer than recorded Arab history. It predates the Koran. The ritual would have effect. If there is a spell for dealing with the djinn, it might be in the tablets, but there isn’t enough time to start a manhunt for Moulin—”

“I think, my dear, you are getting ahead of yourself. How did Korbazrah capture the djinn?”

Loring stared at him; for the first time a flicker of doubt crossed her face. “I’m afraid those accounts are inconsistent. But I think it went something like this.... He managed to find the demon a host body to live in—an assistant over whom he had complete power. He was then able to coax the demon into doing his bidding. He struck a bargain with it. That’s not hard to do. Traditionally, the forces of evil love a good bargain. Throughout the folklore, the djinn are described as mischievous creatures who thrive on beguiling humans. Korbazrah probably thought he had the upper hand and, for a while, perhaps he did.

“When Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Ur-Tawaq, Korbazrah sold the king his conjuring services. I found enough evidence to suggest he was being paid by Nebuchadnezzar. In return for his money he got the demon to do what it did best, unleash a plague of psychological terror, reducing the citizens to a state of panic. Ultimately demoralized, many of them killed by strange inexplicable incidents, they surrendered to the Babylonians. Nebuchadnezzar had them all slaughtered.

“Korbazrah was then ordered to subdue his demon, which he did, believing he was about to come into his life’s great reward. He fashioned a silver flask in the shape of a pentagon—the flask that I found. He lured the demon into it—how, I don’t know—then slammed on the stopper and sealed it. After that, he probably hid it in his chamber, figuring he might need it again. Then he went to the king. And the king... the king had him executed. The body was burned, the work chamber sealed, and the location heavily salted to keep the demon from rising again.”

“Salt,” mumbled Yazir. “Salt and silver...”

“Yes,” echoed Loring, relieved that Yazir’s resistance was crumbling. “Salt and silver—two of the ancient deterrents against demons. When we excavated our dig, we found the ground heavily laced with salt. The water that burst from the rock was salty. That far inland, an underground spring should have produced fresh water—pure and sweet, not salty. And the flask, made of silver—and the shape of it—a pentagon...”