The Bones of the Old Ones (Dabir and Asim) (36 page)

“But the club is nearly drained,” Anzu pointed out. “Can’t you see?”

“They aren’t sorcerers,” Lydia answered.

“It is true, though,” I confirmed.

“Usarshra all but drank it dry,” Lydia added.

“She didn’t get hands on the spear, or Erragal’s staff,” I pointed out.

“Do you know how to use them?”

“The spear, yes,” Dabir admitted.

Anzu shook his head. “It’s not enough. Even if you knew how to use Erragal’s staff, it’s still not enough. Do you know how much magical energy it’s going to take to power a banishing circle of the one Erragal hid, not to mention this circle here? And don’t forget, you’ll be under attack the entire time. You’ll need even more power to defend yourself.”

Dabir spoke to him at last, slowly. “What do you advise?”

Anzu met his eyes briefly, then looked away. I swear that he was shamed. “It is too late. You have Koury’s animals. Take them and ride, as far as you can.”

“You just said that you are partly to blame for this,” Dabir said. “Will you not stay to fix it?”

Instead of answering he tried to excuse his actions. “We miscalculated.”

“How many hundreds of thousands will die,” Dabir asked tightly, “because of your ‘miscalculation’?”

“There’s nothing more I can do!”

“Good people are dead already,” Dabir continued.

“I used every tool at my disposal to assist Erragal. It will take me decades to return to my full power. I am all but finished.”

“What of Lamashtu?” Dabir asked him. “Will she help?”

Anzu let out a short bark of a laugh. “You’re jesting. She won’t care.”

“Then why did she work with you in the first place?”

“I thought you understood. Koury is … was … a maker. He knew the words of power to shape life.”

“Yes,” Dabir said. “What more do you mean?”

He glanced over at Lydia. “It doesn’t matter now. You should run. Climb on board the wooden animals and ride south, as far as you can go. The ice can’t reach
everywhere.
”

“No. It does matter.” Dabir took a half step closer to him. I think, were he a fighting man, he would have grabbed the Sebitti by the scruff and shaken him. “What were you really planning? You wanted the spirit’s power to grow, didn’t you? By God, I think you even wanted this—a circle of power. You anticipated this.”

“Almost all of it. We wanted the spirit to grow angry and call down its full power. But we needed Koury to live. It is no good now. You see, as the spirit’s power grows, so does the tear it carries with it, the gate between the frozen realms and our own. When we assault her, she will surely summon more power through the tear. And when that gate opens, it rips a gap through our reality and briefly exposes the byways of the universe itself—the very wellspring of creation. A small gate, open for a little, would yield nothing. But if it were a great gate, like Usarshra would call forth to counter a powerful attack, a shaper mage with a great tool might use that access to recast anything in whatever form he wished.”

Seeing the expressions upon Dabir’s and Lydia’s faces, I guessed that this was somehow more horrible than I understood. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Suppose you do not like olives.” Anzu glanced up at the bent little tree on the height of the slope. “A shaper might rename them all so that they transformed into oaks. Suppose,” he said, steel shining now in his voice, “that you did not want hunger to trouble man. A skilled shaper might snip these threads from the tapestry of the world’s making.”

“And if you wanted a kingdom watered by running rivers, where crops flourished…” Dabir said, then let his voice trail off.

“You but glimpse a portion of what we would have given you. Not only a fertile kingdom. But a people blessed with health, and intellect. Beasts that would willingly give up their flesh. A sun that would warm, but never burn. Skies that would bring rain, but only just enough. There would have been an end to earthquakes, and famine, and disease. Earth would be a garden!”

“And would you have been its gods, or its serpents?” Dabir asked. “This is what Lamashtu wanted?”

He shrugged. “She had special requests, for her help.”

“More sacrifices, for the cause?”

“I thought you, above all, might understand.”

“I do. Such compassion you have,” Dabir went on, “to take such risks for us. But it is we who have bled, and died, so that you might play at gods. You’re worse than children, delighted with your cleverness. Blind to your cruelty.” Dabir’s voice shook with barely contained passion. “My friend, Jibril, whom you impaled upon your hook, actually admired your supposed wisdom!”

“We are not so different, Dabir,” Anzu offered. “I, too, love knowledge. Moreso even than Erragal, who hid in his caves for a thousand years. I have never given up my search for it. We would have delivered a world where wisdom was no longer threatened by ignorance or prejudice. Where learned men and women would not perish before their time.”

“If this is what you always intended,” Lydia said slowly, “why didn’t you stop after you’d found one of the weapons?”

“Many reasons, perhaps the most important of which was that there were four of us, and the spirit sensed three more weapons than we strictly required. Koury swore he would allow Lamashtu and I a hand in the shaping magic. Gazi didn’t care. But more than that, Koury desired as many bones as possible on hand to command the sorcery, in case he drained them as he worked.”

“And so great a sorcerer could not simply open this gate himself?” Dabir asked.

“Not and hold it open for any length of time. We needed sorcerous energy, and the spirit could find it for us. It seemed a perfect plan.”

Dabir’s frown deepened.

“There is no way to stop Usarshra at this point,” Anzu went on. “The spirit’s power has increased exponentially, not just because of the energy absorbed from the bones, but the life force consumed. You cannot cage her now, to send her back. Maybe if Erragal—”

“Go, then.” Dabir interrupted. He sounded almost spiteful.

Anzu saw from my hard look there was no point in speaking to me, thus he directed his inquiry to Lydia. “And what of you?”

“I will stay,” she said. Her chin rose, and she said, proudly, “This is partly my doing as well.”

Anzu was silent for a long moment, then crouched down in the snow near the fire, and, with a gloved finger, sketched a jagged symbol in the snow. It glowed briefly green, then burned through the snow and left a smoking pattern in the ground. He rose to his feet. “Stay within fifty paces of this,” he said, “and Enkidu will not be able to play with your mind. It will last you a day. So you will not be puppets when they kill you,” Anzu added darkly. He turned his back to us and climbed up the hill, pulling his hood up as he did so. A most peculiar thing happened then, for he faded swiftly to nothing, as if he walked into a fog bank none of the rest of us could see.

Then there were but three of us, with the cloth-covered dead.

“You’re planning something,” Lydia said to Dabir. “I see it in your eyes.”

He considered her shrewdly.

“You drove him away on purpose,” she continued.

“I meant every word I said.” Dabir turned to me. “Help me brush out an area. Six paces wide should do.”

Lydia continued her harangue as I set to shoving snow aside with my boot. “Oh, you pretended well. But I have only seen you lose your temper once, even amongst all that we have done.”

“You do not know me that well,” Dabir said as he joined me.

“Do not play games. I have your measure.” Her brow darkened. “Now you are readying a summoning circle. For Lamashtu?”

“Yes.”

I stopped, my boot in front of a widening mound of snow. “She tried to kill us Dabir,” I reminded him. “Jibril died, fighting her.”

“Yes. But she knows how to wield Erragal’s staff.”

Lydia threw up her hands. “You don’t know that! Erragal just said that she had used it once. He might have activated it and handed it off to her, like Asim did with me.”

“That might be so.”

We both carried on clearing snow.

“And should you really be activating a circle inside another one?”

Dabir looked blandly over to her. “The larger one isn’t active yet, is it?”

“No,” she admitted grudgingly.

“So there will be no problem.”

Lydia threw up her hands. “No problem? You chased the most rational of the Sebitti off to contact the most deadly?”

Dabir returned to his work. We had exposed a circle of sparse grass pressed low by snow.

“Talk sense to him, Asim!”

Dabir shot me a look.

“It does seem a little desperate,” I admitted.

“But we are desperate.” Dabir sounded wearily playful. At some level, Lydia’s worries amused him.

“Surely,” I agreed.

“Desperate?” Lydia frowned at me. “Asim’s too polite. He thinks you’re as crazy as I do! Lamashtu doesn’t work for free! What can you possibly offer her?”

“Now is not the time for debate,” Dabir said.

“But what are you hoping for?”

“To work with people who ask fewer questions!” Dabir snapped, and whipped out his knife so suddenly that Lydia drew back. But Dabir crouched and cut into the ground, shaping the curve of a circle in the cold earth.

Lydia announced she would have no part of things, and stomped back to the fire.

Though I liked it not, I used my own knife to assist Dabir’s work. He seemed pleased enough with the result, though it was more a lopsided oval than a circle. He then set to work creating a second, inside it. I aided with this, also, and fought back the urge to ask any questions. “Perhaps Lydia could help you speed this along when you start carving the symbols.”

“That would be nice. We are not dealing with a surplus of time.” He paused, looked up, then frowned as he realized he could not see around the hill. “We are crowding each other now anyway, Asim. I’m nearly done. Why don’t you keep an eye on the horizon?”

I wiped dirt from my blade, sheathed it, and walked off to find Lydia beside the fire. Her jaw was set firmly.

“He plans something foolish,” she said.

“Surely he does.” I studied the skies to the east. The gray clouds sagged low over the white-blue blanket of snow shrouding the earth.

“Are you not worried?”

“Lydia,” I answered patiently, “we are at the point where anything we do is foolish. I pray to Allah that Dabir chooses wisely, but then he is expert at that kind of thing. As for me, I am sworn to guard him, so that whatever step he takes, I take with him. His risk is mine, and if we fall, I shall fall first.”

She stared up at me, searching my eyes, and she looked as though she meant to curse for a long time. I was not in the mood for an outburst, and so I looked off toward Mosul, but she wouldn’t let the matter go.

“Look at you. He told you to scan the horizon, so you do. Brave and loyal to a fault. You don’t know what he really plans, but you do not question.”

“I trust him,” I said.

“Yes”—she frowned sourly—“and he trusts you. I would that I had someone so loyal.” She muttered this last almost inaudibly.

“You did,” I pointed out. “Those soldiers gave up their lives for you.”

“They but followed orders.”

“Then you do not value enough what that means. With his last breath, Alexis made me pledge to safeguard you.”

Her stare grew more fixed upon me. “He did?”

“Aye. He was most adamant.”

“Is that why you rescued me?”

“In part,” I said. “But you are our comrade.”

“‘Our comrade’?”

“Our friend,” I explained.

She stared, as though she had suddenly heard that fish could speak, or that horses played shatranj. To hide her surprise, she turned her head. A long moment passed, and I scanned the horizon. It had not changed. There was only the vast white expanse, and the blowing wind.

“I didn’t understand at first,” Lydia said. Her voice was slow and quiet, but great passion roiled beneath. “I thought you were a thug.”

“I would not have attacked your father if he had not held a knife to Jaffar,” I said. That was not an apology, for I did not regret killing the man. I just wanted her to see the situation clearly.

“I know that,” she said peevishly. “My father”—she paused to suck in a long breath—“wasn’t a good man.”

I grunted in surprise.

“You thought I didn’t know that?”

“I assumed you hated me because I killed him.”

“And for what I thought you were.”

“A thug, you said.”

“A thoughtless lackey. And I thought Dabir was little better; a clever servant. Unquestioning. Blindly obedient to the established order.” She turned to look at him. Dabir’s back blocked sight of his work, but we could hear the sound of his blade scratching into the soil. “Scheming and fawning and scrabbling for place like everyone else.”

“Why would you say that?” I asked. “Dabir’s no bootlicker.”

“And it’s a wonder he’s risen so far.” She laughed to herself, glanced at me. “A week ago, if someone had told me my feelings would be hurt because Dabir ibn Khalil did not trust me, I would have…”

“Cursed him?” I suggested.

“Likely.”

“He does trust you,” I said. “He has asked for your help.”

She sighed at me. “Don’t you see, he’s planning something, but he will not tell us. You, because you would not approve, and me, because he thinks I might betray him.”

“If you want him to trust you,” I said, “you must trust him.”

She studied me for a moment, and the wind tugged at her coat. She muttered something then in Greek, and extended her hand. “May I borrow your knife?”

I handed it to her hilt first.

“My thanks.” She turned and walked over to Dabir.

She joined my friend and, working mostly in silence, they drew in the strange symbols that were almost familiar to me now. After a time Dabir sat back, and Lydia looked between the circle and his ring, which he rubbed absently as he contemplated the curling lines and wedges and triangles.

I joined them. “There is nothing coming, yet.”

“Good. They will surely be here soon.” He frowned at the circle.

“What is the trouble?” I asked.

“I believe I have spelled Lamashtu’s name properly, but I cannot be certain about the lettering. Jibril’s notes were a little unclear on this point, because once he finally had it working he did not record confirmed findings. By then,” he said, “he was through with magics.”