Servant of the Bones (24 page)

“ ‘Certainly not!’ I tried to remember. It was so difficult now, the past grew bright, then faded, but I could push back to Cyrus’s bedchamber, I could remember that Cyrus had sent me here to Zurvan, and I could remember something before that…a priest dead on the floor.

“ ‘I killed the one who would be Master,’ I said. ‘I killed him and there was death all around me, I was dying when I was made. Only a little flame remained in me. I was to die. The stairway to heaven was to come down perhaps, or I was to go into the light and be part of it. I don’t know which happened. But whatever the case, I was not willing to be the Servant of the Bones, I tried to escape…I remember running and calling for help, saying this was a Canaanite curse, but I don’t remember to whom I appealed. Only afterwards I brought my bones in a sack into the bedchamber of the King.’

“ ‘So he’s told me. Well, according to this, you should have been an expert on evil and cruelty before you were chosen, and you should have begged for the privilege of eternal life equal to God’s angels, and you should have been willing to endure a terrible death. At the moment when the pain became too great for you, your spirit should have separated from the body, and watched the body be boiled down to bones. But only once the pain became too great. Only then. You were to endure the boiling cauldron of gold for as long as you could to perfect your hatred of God that he had made men sentient beings, and then and only then you should have risen free, aware of the power of your triumph over death, and your hatred of God, who made death, and your desire to be the mal’ak who is as strong as Yahweh’s cruel heart when he turned it against those whom Saul or David or Joshua would slay.

“ ‘You are to be the avenger of Adam and Eve, that they were foully tricked by your God. What does that say to you?’

“ ‘It was all a blundering affair, as you said. I can’t remember being
in
the cauldron, only a terrible, terrible fear of it. I think I escaped my body before the pain came, I think I couldn’t endure it, all was confusion, I was surrounded by weak and self-seeking individuals, all grandeur had gone. All majesty had gone. I had done something, something that others wanted me to do, but it seemed tainted, horribly tainted and I’d been confused.’

“ ‘And there had been majesty in this tainted act?’

“ ‘Well, I think there had. I can remember a sense of great sacrifice, purpose. I can remember rose petals and a sleepy slow death whose worst pain was knowledge that it was irreversible and would take its time, but not be changed. I don’t know why I said majesty. What did Cyrus say of me to you?’

“ ‘Not enough, I don’t think. But according to this tablet, you cannot be destroyed. If the bones are destroyed then you are loosed upon the world to take vengeance on everything living, like a pestilence.’

“Despair descended on me. It descended on me utterly, a despair that would have been impossible for the spirit I had been only a few hours ago. When I wandered upwards towards those with joyous faces, when I saw the gleam of light, I hadn’t known despair! I hadn’t known it any more than a child being turned away from a plate of sweets. Now I knew.

“ ‘I want to die,’ I whispered. ‘I want to truly die as I was supposed to die, before they did this to me, misguided fools that they were! Before they tried this fearsome magic. Ah, idiots! Ah, God!’

“ ‘Die?’ he asked, ‘and wander among the stupid dead? Become a demon growling among other spirits, become a great foul enemy of all that is good, a bringer of death and torment!’

“ ‘No, just die, die as if in my mother’s arms, die as if to lie in my Mother Earth, and if I become light and if there is Heaven so be it, but if not, then simply to die, and to live on in the memory of anything good I ever did for anyone, any good act, any act of kindness and love, and…’

“ ‘…and what?’

“ ‘I was going to say that I wanted to live on in memory for the acts I had done in praise of God, but I don’t care about that now. I just want to die. I would rather God would leave me alone.’ I stood up. I looked down at him. ‘Did Cyrus tell you who I was in life? How he came to know me?’

“ ‘No, you can go read his letters for yourself. He said only that your strength was too great for any magician but myself, and that he owed you a great debt, that your death had been his doing.’ He stopped, thinking, pulling on his beard. ‘Of course the King of all the world is not going to add to a letter that he was personally frightened of a spirit and wishes to get it as far from him as possible, but there was that, shall we say, tinge to the letter. You know, “I cannot command this spirit. I dare not. And yet I owe him my Kingdom?” ’

“ ‘I can’t remember his owing me anything. I remember asking to be sent…I remember…’

“ ‘Yes?’

“ ‘Being forsaken by all.’

“ ‘Well, these fools haven’t made a demon. They have made something more like an angel.’

“ ‘Angel of might,’ I said. ‘You used those words yourself. Cyrus used them. Marduk used them…’ I stopped. Stumped by the name Marduk, and seeing nothing to surround the name or make it plausible in my speech.

“ ‘Marduk, the god of Babylon?’ he asked.

“ ‘Don’t mock him, he suffers,’ I said, amazing myself.

“ ‘You want vengeance on those who did this to you?’

“ ‘I took it. I can’t remember anyone else who is not dead. It was the priest’s doing, and he…and the old woman, she died, the witch, the seer. I can’t remember…I knew only Cyrus could help me and I knew that I had a right to walk into his bedchamber, that I would make him listen to me. No, I don’t want vengeance. No. I don’t remember anything enough to want it, any more than I hanker after life. I don’t. There is something I want…to die…to rest, to sleep, to be dead in the sweet-smelling earth…or to see the light as I become one with it, one tiny spark of the light of God returned to his flame.

I want death most…even more than the light. Just the quiet of death.’

“ ‘You want this now,’ he said. ‘You didn’t want it when you went walking, or roaming the realm of the spirits, or bringing the scrolls for me. Or when you first sat down in this garden and kept touching the grass with your hands.’

“ ‘That’s because you’re a good man,’ I said.

“ ‘No, that’s because
you
are a good man. Or were. And goodness burns as bright in you now as it ever did. Souls without memory are dangerous. You remember…but you remember only the good.’

“ ‘No, I’ve told you how much I hate them…’

“ ‘Yes, but they’re gone, they’re receding from you fast. You can’t remember their names, or their faces…you don’t hate them. But you remember good. Last night, you told me you found gold in your pockets. What did you do with it? You didn’t say.’

“ ‘Well, I gave it to the poor and hungry, a family of them, so they could eat.’ I reached out and gathered the loose grass that would come up from the cracks between the marble. I looked at the tender green shoots. ‘You’re right. I do remember goodness, or I know it. I know it, and I see it and I feel it…’

“ ‘Then I’ll teach you everything I can,’ he said. ‘We’ll travel. We’ll go to Athens and then down into Egypt. I have never been deep into Egypt. I want to go. We’ll travel by magic. Or sometimes merely in the natural way, because you’re a strong guardian, and you must remember everything I teach you…your tendency, your weakness, is to veer away from pain by forgetting it, and when I die, you’ll feel some pain.’

“He fell quiet. I think the lessons were at an end for a little while. He closed his eyes. But I had a further pressing question.

“ ‘Ask it, then, before I go to sleep.’

“ ‘These Canaanites, who made this curse. Were they Hebrew?’

“ ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Not Hebrew as you are. Their Yahweh was one of many gods, only the strongest, a war god
it seems. They were ancient peoples and they believed in other gods too. Are you glad to hear this?’

“My mind had drifted. ‘I suppose I am,’ I said. ‘Yes, I am. But I belong to no tribe now. My destiny is to belong to the best of Masters, for without them I may forget everything, I may drift…I may cease to see or hear or feel…and I won’t be dead, merely waiting for the one who calls me forth.’

“ ‘I won’t live long,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach you every trick I know that you have the power to do, and how to deceive men with illusions, and how to create spells over them with words and attitudes…that’s all it is…remember…words, attitudes…it’s the abstract…not the particular. You could make a curse of a list of barrels of grain if you said it right, you know? But I’ll teach you and you will listen, and when I die…’

“ ‘Yes…’

“ ‘We’ll see what the wide world teaches you by that time.’

“ ‘Don’t expect too much of me,’ I said. I looked at him directly, which I had rarely done in all this time. ‘You ask me what I remember. I remember killing the bedouins and I liked it very much. Not as much as the flowers, gathering them, you know, but killing…what is there like it on earth?’

“ ‘You have a point,’ he said. ‘You have to learn that to love is better…to be kind is even better. In killing you crush a universe of beliefs and feelings and generations in that one person whom you kill. But when you do kindness, it’s like dropping a pebble in the great ocean and the ripples go on forever and ever, and no wave, not even those as far away as Italy or Egypt, is the same. Kindness actually has considerably more power than killing has. But you’ll come to see it. You knew it when you were alive.’

“He considered for a moment, and then concluded his advice for the day.

“ ‘You see, it’s a matter of how well you can measure these things. When you strike down a man, you don’t see the full implications of his death, not then. You feel the blood rush in you, even as a spirit you are formed in the likeness of man. But when you do something good, you can see it often…you
can see it and see it and see it…and that’s what overrides the desire to kill finally. The goodness shines too bright; it’s too…undeniable. When you walked you saw it in people’s faces, didn’t you? Goodness. No one tried to hurt you. Not even the palace guards. They let you by. Was it your clothing and your demeanor? Or did you smile at them as well? Did your face shine with goodwill? Each time you return to me, you are happy, and your spirit, whatever made it, has a great capacity to love.’

“I didn’t answer.

“ ‘What is in your head now?’ he asked. ‘Tell me.’

“ ‘The bedouins,’ I said. ‘What fun it was to kill them,’ I answered.

“ ‘You’re stubborn!’ he said.

“He closed his eyes and went to sleep. I sat there watching and gradually I slept too, asleep in my body, listening to the flowers next to my ears, and looking up into the branches of the olive tree now and then to see the birds there, and the distant sounds of the city became a music to me. And when I dreamed, it was of gardens, and light and fruit trees and joyous spirits with faces filled with love.

“Words were woven into my dreams.

“ ‘And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call
thee
by thy name,
am
the God of Israel…I form the light, and I create darkness: I make peace, and create evil…’ My eyes opened, but then I knew sweeter verses, and sank back into a half sleep of song and willow trees swaying in the breeze.”

F
or fifteen years, I traveled with Zurvan. I did his bidding in all things. He was rich, as I’ve said, and many times he wanted to travel merely as men do, and we went by ship to Egypt, and then back again to Athens and to other cities which he had visited in his youth and had despaired of ever seeing again.

“Almost never did he let on that he was a magician, though now and then he was recognized by one with second sight. And when called upon to heal the sick, he would do what he could. In every place we traveled he bought or had me borrow for him, or even steal, tablets and scrolls of magic, and these he studied and read to me and made me memorize, further reinforcing his conviction that all magic was more or less the same.

“That I can remember these years with crystal clarity is a mercy, because during the time that separated me from his death and the present I have few distinct memories at all. I know there were times after Zurvan’s death when I woke with no memory and served my masters out of boredom, and sometimes watched them bring destruction upon themselves and thought it amusing, and even now and then took the bones from them myself to another. But all this is hazy, fog. Meaningless.

“Zurvan was right. My response to pain and to suffering was to forget. And it is the overall tendency of spirits to forget. Flesh and blood, bodily needs, these are what inspire memory in man. And when these are wholly absent, it can be sweet to remember nothing at all.

“During Zurvan’s life, he made a better casket for the bones. He made it of very strong wood, plated inside and out with gold, and he made a carved-out space for the bones to rest in their curled position, as that of a child asleep. He had carpenters work on this because, in truth, the work of his spirit familiars was not exact enough for him. Those who know the material world work with greater respect for it, he said.

“On the outside of this casket which was a rectangle just long enough to contain my skeleton, he carved the name of what I was and how I was to be called, and he carved the stern warning that I must never be used for evil, lest that evil descend upon the one who calls. He cautioned against the destruction of my bones, lest all restraint upon me go with it.

“He wrote all this in the form of incantation and sacred poetry in many languages all over the casket.

“He put a Hebrew symbol or letter which means life on the casket.

“It was very good that he did all this early, because his death came quite by surprise. He died in his sleep, and I was called forth only when his house in Syracuse was being raided by petty thieves and people of the village who knew he had no kin and were in no fear for him. And as he had left no demons to guard his body, they sacked the house, found the casket, spoke of the bones, and I awoke.

“I slew everyone present, down to the smallest child who rummaged through Zurvan’s clothes. I slew them all. That night, the villagers came to burn the house of the Magus in hopes of dispelling its evil. I was glad of this because I knew that Zurvan, being Greek by birth, though a man of no nation or tribe by choice, wanted his remains to be burnt, and I had arranged them within the house so that they burnt first and fast.