Servant of the Bones (23 page)

“Then striding out of the fog there came a mighty spirit, shaped like a man as I was, smiling at me in cunning fashion, and immediately I sensed danger. He flew at me with both
hands, fastening onto my neck, and then the demons closed in again. I fought him furiously, cursing him, and declaring him powerless, rattling off incantations galore to send him hence, and finally throttling him and shaking him until he was screaming for mercy; he lost his human shape; then he flew away, turned into a wisp of a veil as it were, and the demons fled.

“ ‘I have to get back to my Master,’ I said. I closed my eyes. I called to my Master, and to my body that waited, and my clothes that waited, and then I woke up, sitting in the Greek chair in my Master’s study, and he was at his desk, one knee raised with his foot on a footstool, tapping his fingers, and watching all.

“ ‘Did you see where I went and what I did?’ I asked.

“ ‘Some of it. I saw you rise, but then you could go no higher, the spirits of the upper air wouldn’t permit it.’

“ ‘No, they wouldn’t, but they were kind. Did you see the light, way beyond them?’

“ ‘No, I didn’t,’ he said.

“ ‘That must be the light of Heaven,’ I said, ‘and down must come a ladder, a stairway, yes, to the earth, but why not for all the dead, why not for all the muddled and angry?’

“ ‘No one knows. You don’t require an answer from me. You can reason it out for yourself. But what makes you so sure there will be a ladder, a stairway for anyone? Is it the promise of the ziggurats, the pyramids? The legend of Mount Meru?’

“I thought a long time before answering. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Though those are proofs of course, no, not proofs but indications. I know because of the faces of the higher spirits…as they directed me to go down. There was no meanness in them; no evil; no wrath. They didn’t shout like gatekeepers of a palace; they simply made it impossible for me to pass, and over and over they offered by gesture the way I was to go…back to the earth.’

“He pondered that one in silence. I was too excited to be silent.

“ ‘Did you see that strong one who attacked me,’ I said, ‘the one who walked up to me as though he were my height and weight and was smiling, and then flew at me?’

“ ‘No. What happened?’

“ ‘I choked him and shook him and vanquished him and threw him away.’

“My Master laughed. ‘Poor foolish spirit.’

“ ‘You’re speaking to me?’

“ ‘I’m speaking sarcastically of him,’ he said.

“ ‘But why didn’t he talk to me? Why didn’t he ask me who I was? Why didn’t he greet me as a creature of equal power, you know, engage in some way other than battle?’

“ ‘Azriel, most spirits don’t know what they’re doing or why,’ he said. ‘The longer they drift the less they know. Hate is common to them. He tested his strength against you. Perhaps if he had vanquished you, he would have tried to enslave you among the invisible, but he couldn’t do that. He knows nothing else, most likely, but combat, dominance, and submission. Many human beings live in exactly the same way.’

“ ‘Oh, yes, I know,’ I said.

“ ‘Go there, to the pitcher of water,’ he said. ‘Drink all of it. You can drink whenever you wish. Water will make your spirit body in any form stronger. That’s true of all spirits and ghosts. They love water and crave the damp. Oh, but I told you this. Hurry up. I have something for you to do.’

“The water did taste wonderful and I drank an amount which a normal man could never have drunk. When I set down the pitcher, I was ready for his command.

“ ‘I want you to retain your body and walk through the wall into the garden and then back again. You’ll feel resistance. Ignore it. You are made of different particles from the wall, and you can pass among the particles of the wall without hurting it. Do it, do it over and over until you can walk through anything solid without hesitation.’

“I found this very easy. I walked through doors, I walked through walls three feet thick, I walked through columns. I walked through furniture. Each time I did feel the swirling
particles which made up the barrier or the object, but the penetration was not hurtful and it took only will to override any natural instinct to bow or retreat.

“ ‘Are you tired?’

“ ‘No,’ I said.

“ ‘All right, this is your first real errand for me,’ he said. ‘Go to the house of the Greek merchant Lysander in the street of the scribes, steal every manuscript out of his library, and bring them to me. You will take four trips to do it. Do it in the flesh and ignore anyone who sees you, remember that to make the scrolls pass through the wall, you have to put them inside your body, which includes now your robe. You have to envelop them in your spirit. If it is too hard, then go and come by doors. Anyone who strikes you…can’t hurt you.’

“ ‘Do I hurt them?’

“ ‘No. Not unless they have some power to detain you. In general, their daggers and swords will pass right into you and do nothing. But if they take hold of the scrolls, which are material, you may have to knock them away. Do it…gently, I suppose. Or…as it suits you, depending on how much the person offends you. I leave it to you.’

“He lifted his pen and began to write. Then he realized I hadn’t moved.

“ ‘So?’ he asked.

“ ‘I’m to steal?’

“ ‘Azriel, my conscientious one, my newborn spirit, everything in the house of Lysander is stolen! He obtained it all when the Persians came through Miletus. Most of the library was mine. He is a bad man. You may kill him if you like. Doesn’t matter to me. But get going and bring back all those books. Do as I say, and never question me on such matters.’

“ ‘Then you will never want for me to rob the poor man, or hurt the afflicted, or frighten the humble and the meek.’

“He looked up. ‘Azriel, we have been over this ground. Your words sound like a variation on one of those pompous inscriptions at the feet of Assyrian Kings.’

“ ‘I didn’t want to waste your time with lengthier questions,’ I said.

“ ‘I have no interest in anything but good behavior,’ he said. Try to remember my lessons. I love even the pesty familiars I keep here to do my bidding, but Lysander is evil and steals and sells for profit, and cannot even read.’

“The chore proved easy enough. I had only to knock about the servants to send them flying and in three journeys back and forth I was able to transport the entire library to my Master. It was hard, however, with great bundles of scrolls to pass through doors. I couldn’t envelop them with my spirit and pass through the particles. But I got better at this as time passed on. Indeed, I learned something he hadn’t told me, that I might make my body diffuse and large as I passed through the solid walls and doors, that way better enveloping the scrolls and then contracting again to the normal size of a fleshly man as I walked on with my bundle of goods.

“To be open and fair with him, I did this on my last trip, coming through the wall of his study, with a very large cache of loot, making myself very big and then contracting to lay down the bundle itself.

“He gave me a steady look, and I realized something. All day and night since I had come, I had been amazing him. And he masked it with this look. He showed no fear.

“ ‘I don’t feel any fear of you,’ he said, answering my thoughts, ‘but you’re right; it’s not my habit as a magus or a scholar or a man to look startled and to shout.’

“ ‘What now, Master?’ I asked.

“ ‘Go into the bones, and do not come out until you hear me…hear my voice, calling you. That I dream of you or think of you is not enough.’

“ ‘I’ll try, Master,’ I said.

“ ‘You’ll disappoint me if you disobey; you’re too young and strong to run rampant. You’ll hurt my soul if you try to come out when I think of you.’

“Again I felt the ready tears. ‘Then I won’t do it, Lord,’ I said.

“I went into the bones. For one moment before my eyes closed I saw the casket itself and that it had been moved to a hiding place, a niche within the wall, but then came the velvet
sleep, and the thought, ‘I love him, and I want to serve him.’ And that was all.

“The next morning I waked but didn’t move. It was a long time, lying in the darkness, feeling nothing of the physical at all, waiting, and then when I heard his voice very distinctly, I answered the call.

“The bright world opened up all around me again. I was seated in the garden, among the flowers, and he was on a couch there, reading, mussed and yawning as if he’d spent the night under the stars.

“ ‘Well, I waited this time,’ I said.

“ ‘Ah, then you felt yourself wake before I called you?’

“ ‘Yes, but waited, so that you’d be pleased. Some bit of memory came back to me, or has come at this moment, enough to ask a question.’

“ ‘Ask. If I can’t truly answer I won’t make anything up.’

“I laughed and laughed at that! I had some firm conviction in my utter forgetfulness that priests and Magi lied ferociously. He nodded in satisfaction at this.

“ ‘Your question?’

“ ‘Do I have a destiny?’ I asked.

“ ‘What a strange question. What makes you think anyone has a destiny? We do what we do and we die. I told you. There is but one Creator God and his name does not matter. Our destiny, for all of us, is to love and to gain greater appreciation and understanding of all around us. Why should yours be any different?’

“ ‘Ah, but that’s just it. I should have a special destiny, should I not?’

“ ‘The belief in a special destiny is one of the most rampant and harmful delusions on earth. Innocent babes are lifted from the teats of queens and told that they have a special destiny—to rule Athens, or Sparta, or Miletus, or Egypt, or Babylon. What stupidity. But I know what lies behind your question. And you’d better listen now. Go get the Canaanite tablet and don’t break it. If you break it, I’ll have to put it back together and I’ll make you cry.’

“ ‘Hmmm. It’s easy for you to make me cry, isn’t it?’

“ ‘Apparently,’ he said. ‘Get the tablet. Hurry. We have a journey ahead of us today. If you can take me to the steppes of the north, to the mountains where the great mountain of the gods is supposed to stand high above all else, then you can take me other places too. I want to go home to Athens. I want to walk in Athens. Go on, powerful spirit. Get the tablet. Hurry. Ignorance is of no use to anyone. Don’t be afraid.’ ”

I
  laid hands on the Canaanite tablet, though it filled me with revulsion and hate. Indeed, I rocked with hate. I was so full of hate that for a moment I couldn’t move. His voice called me back, with the command that I was not to break it. The writing was very small, he reminded me, and one chip would hurt the contents, and I must know it all.

“ ‘Why should I?’ I asked. I gestured towards the pillows inside the room. Might I bring one out, so that I could sit at his feet without soiling my robes? He nodded.

“I crossed my legs. He was on his couch, one knee up, which seemed his favorite position, and he had the tablet now where he could read it clearly in the sun. This memory is so vivid to me, perhaps because the wall was white and covered in red flowers, and the olive tree was twisted and old, and many-branched as they get, and the green grass sprouting between the marble squares of the garden was soft. I loved to run the palm of my hand over it. I loved to lay the palm of my hand on the marble and feel the sun’s heat.

“And of course I remember him with love, in his loose, long, baggy Greek tunic, the gold threads worn off the edging, looking rather scrawny and content and ageless as his blue eyes moved over the tablet, and he drew it close to his face now and then and then moved it far away. I think he must have read every single little word carved on it, in its long narrow columns of cuneiform. I hated it.

“ ‘You escaped into the spirit world at the hands of idiots,’ he said. ‘This is an old Canaanite incantation to call up a powerful evil spirit, a servant of evil as powerful as the spirits of
evil that might be sent to earth by God. It is to create for a magician a mal’ak, strong as the Mal’ak which Yahweh sent to slay the firstborn of the Egyptians.’

“I was stunned. I didn’t answer him. I knew many translations of the story of the flight from Egypt and I knew an image of the Mal’ak, the shining angel of the Lord’s Wrath.

“ ‘This information was regarded dangerous by the Canaanites and sealed in this tablet, if the date is correct, a thousand years ago. This was black magic, bad magic, magic like that of the Witch of Endor, who brought the spirit Samuel up to speak with King Saul.’

“ ‘I know these stories,’ I said quietly.

“ ‘The magician here would make his own mal’ak which could be as strong as a Satan or fallen angel or evil spirit that had once participated in the power of Yahweh Himself.’

“ ‘I understand.’

“ ‘The rules are very strict here. The candidate for the mal’ak must be thoroughly evil, opposed to God and all things good, one who had despaired of God in contempt for God’s cruelty to man and the injustice He allowed into the world. The candidate for the mal’ak is to be so determined and angry and evil that he would fight God himself if he could or is called upon to do so. He should be able to meet any Angel of the Lord hand to hand and fight him down.’

“ ‘You speak of good angels?’

“ ‘Yes, good and bad; you were to be the equal of them and you may be. You are a mal’ak, not an ordinary spirit at all. But as I said, the one who would become this must be evil to the core of his heart, he must have no patience any longer with God and want to serve the rebellious spirit in mankind, that which has refused to accept God’s rules. This spirit is not being created to serve a Devil or Demon, but to be one.’

“I gasped.

“ ‘You seem rather young to have been so wretchedly evil…at least in the form you’ve chosen on your own, which does seem the perfect emanation of what you were when you were alive. Were you that evil? Did you hate God so much?’

“ ‘No, at least, I don’t think I did. If I did, I didn’t know.’

“ ‘Did you choose to become the Servant of the Bones?’

“ ‘No. I know I did not.’

“ ‘More bungling. You weren’t evil, you weren’t willing, and you did not make a vow to serve whoever would own the bones, did you?’