The Bones of the Old Ones (Dabir and Asim) (37 page)

“With sorcery it is the intent, often, that matters more,” Lydia offered.

“Then this will have to do. If she comes,” Dabir added with a sharp look to us both, “I am to do the negotiating. Is that clear?”

We agreed that it was.

“Asim, you say there’s a little more energy left in the club. Let’s reserve the spear, and use your club to activate this circle.”

“Now?”

Dabir let out a long breath and nodded. He was exhausted, of course. He climbed to his feet, extended his arms in a long stretch that also conjured a yawn, then gathered himself. He stepped over to retrieve the spear. “I will keep this on hand. In case Lamahstu proves less receptive.”

“Allah forbid.” I lifted the club, ran the form through my mind, and set the heavy end upon the circle. The club of Herakles did not light as brightly as previous, but still took up its brave glow. Apart from noticing that my own senses could not extend more than a few paces, the first thing I saw was that Lydia’s farr was different. The blackness about her was not so pronounced, and the silvers were bolder. Dabir, too, had changed. All of his colors had a fuzzy edge, as though ebbing with his strength.

The paired ovals in the ground and the symbols between them flared with energy. Nothing else, though, happened at all.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Behind you,” purred a low feminine voice, and we turned as one to find a stocky woman in white dress, her face pale as the moon, her straight hair dark as the night.

Lamashtu. Her face was plain and expressionless, and her farr was a web of midnight darkness. “You have called; I have come. Though if you mean to fight me—”

Dabir was blunt. “Erragal is dead.”

Lamashtu let out a short laugh, peered at us, then laughed again. “This is a strange bluff.”

“No,” Lydia told her. “Gazi is dead.”

“And good riddance,” she said.

“Koury is dead,” Lydia continued.

“He was ever too arrogant. And what about his little helper, Anzu? Has he crept away?”

“More or less,” Dabir answered.

“But what ploy of Erragal’s can this be?” she asked. “He and I ceased playing games against each other centuries ago.” She looked to right and left, as if she expected Erragal to step suddenly from hiding.

“He fell in freeing us,” I said.

“In freeing you? Now I know you lie.”

“He was after the weapons, really,” Dabir said. “We just happened to be holding them.”

“What’s left of him lies yonder,” I said.

She followed my gaze. She stared with those remorseless eyes for a long moment, then strode nimbly over, keeping us in her sight. Then she bent and cast back the robe to reveal the bloody hunk of man that had been a portion of the world’s greatest wizard.

Realization spread slowly over Lamahtu’s face, and then long unused muscles twitched along her jaw and brow. Grief came to her, as water comes sometimes to the deep desert, raging, destructive, and unfamiliar. Her teeth showed, and she struggled mightily to hold herself in check. Her farr rolled like a black thunderhead. “Have you called me to gloat?”

Dabir shook his head. “No. I called you to help finish what he began. His last work.”

She cast the robe angrily over his remains and spun to face us full-on. “I have no need of his stupid works. His pointless plans for the ignorants who shall never perceive his worth!”

It was strange, to my thought, that she might hold all that the man did in contempt. Yet she had loved him, in her way.

“You and yours set the spirit free,” Dabir said in a measured tone of voice. “Erragal died trying to ready the means to send her back.” He tipped his spear, slowly, toward the horizon. “We stand in the midst of a great banishing circle that he has hidden in the snow. Usarshra is sure to come, before long, to retrieve the final weapons, and what is left of the power in the club. When she does, we will send her and her spirit army back to the cold hell from whence they came. We cannot do it,” he finished, “without your help. We need to know how to unlock the magics of Erragal’s staff.”

“He did not tell you?”

“No.”

“Perhaps I should take it, in memory of him.”

“You could do that,” Dabir said. “But I think if you had truly desired one of the bones, he would have gifted one to you centuries ago.”

Her eyes narrowed, as though by doing so she might see Dabir better. “You are right,” she admitted. “They are powerful, but their magic is … uncomfortable to me.” She paused and considered Dabir with a crafty, covetous look I did not like. “I shall help you if you help me. We shall trade favors.”

“What sort of favors?” Dabir asked.

“There is no need for a bargain,” Lydia objected. “You need the world unfrozen as much as we do.”

Dabir shot Lydia a warning glance before returning his attention to Lamashtu.

“Child,” Lamashtu told Lydia, “I always profit from chaos, though some pleases me less than others.” She stepped nearer Dabir. “Those are my terms. The favor is unspecified, as of yet, for I have not yet decided what it shall be. But you must swear a blood oath unto me, to bind it.”

“We can swear no oath,” Dabir said, “that breaks the commandants of Allah, or the teachings of Muhammad, may peace be upon him.”

I nodded solemnly in agreement.

She bared her teeth. “You would make conditions?” Her face contorted in wrath and I think she readied to curse us, but then Lydia’s voice rose up behind us.

“I pledge,” she said, “without condition!”

“No!” Dabir cried, turning to her. Before me I saw Lamashtu’s face shift into a smile and then she winked away, only to appear beside Lydia. The Greek woman had raised one hand, bleeding. Her other held a slim knife, dripping with her own blood. Lamashtu clasped the bleeding palm, then pressed her lips to it.

“No,” Dabir said weakly.

Lamashtu stepped back, triumphant, and licked her bloody lips as she smiled at Dabir. “I meant not only to teach you the secret of the staff, but to loan you my own magics. Now you must but watch as she wields it. Great, though, must her services be, for now she owes for the three of you!” She turned to Lydia. “For one day I gift you a portion of my magic.” Again the Sebitti pressed her lips to Lydia’s hand, and drank deep. God help me, for because of the club I saw more than the shudder of the Greek as she cast back her head. I witnessed the energy flowing between the two, saw the darkness pass through from the ancient sorceress to Lydia. The woman stumbled, and would have fallen had not Dabir reached out to catch her.

Lamashtu cackled. “I shall return for you, my sweet Greek. Fare you well!” And with that she vanished, though her laughter hung in the air a moment after.

Lydia blinked. She turned her noticeably paler face to Dabir, who still held to her.

“You should not have done that,” he told her.

“We had no choice.”

I stared at her farr. It flowed in turmoil, but, you may not believe this, no matter the influx of darkness from Lamashtu, the silver strands in Lydia’s energies burned more brightly than ever.

“I told you to let me bargain!” Dabir’s voice rose, and his mouth twisted in torment.

“Stop speaking of what is done!” Lydia shouted, standing straight. “There was nothing else we might offer her!” She wiped something from her eyes. “I have the pattern of the staff now, in my mind. And the magics … I may just have saved us, Dabir.” With that she turned back to the fire and walked stiffly for the staff.

Dabir did not move.

I let go of the club then so that whatever energy remained would not be wasted, and put a hand to my friend’s shoulder.

“She did not have to do that,” he whispered fiercely. “I cannot fix this!”

“She wants to help,” I said.

Dabir sagged against the spear, head down, then slowly straightened his shoulders. “Come, Asim.”

We joined Lydia at the fire, and she watched him through lowered lashes.

“So,” Dabir said in a heavy tone. “There are two circles, created by Anzu and Erragal. The obvious one that will protect us. And the great outer one that Erragal concealed. You shall use the staff to defend us with the smaller circle, and the spear shall be used for the larger banishing.”

“Will that be enough?” I asked. “Anzu said it would take a great sorcerer besides.”

“I am a great sorcerer,” Lydia asserted. “For today, at least.” Lydia stared down at her hands, flexing fingers. I sensed, somehow, that she considered her own farr. She then studied the distance for a time. “There will probably be enough power to banish the lesser spirits. But what will we do if it doesn’t bind Usarshra?”

“We will do almost exactly what the Sebitti planned. When Usarshra is threatened, she will widen the portal to call in more energy, more resources. I will then use the words of shaping to destroy the spirits.”

Lydia stared at him. “How…”

“Erragal had me study Koury’s magics, that I might counter them. Remember?”

A smile dawned slowly over Lydia’s face. “But you did not say that to either Anzu or Lamashtu,” she said.

“No. And I did not want either of you to reveal, through word or gesture, what I planned. I did not think…” His eyes sought Lydia’s.

“Wait a moment,” I said. “You know the words of creation?”

“I know the words of dissolution,” he said, “to counter Koury’s. And I have reasoned out a few more things.”

Lydia laughed with joy. “You are a genius, Dabir!” She smiled at me, then took his hand. “You can remake everything as we wish! We can do what Anzu wanted, but to our ways. Why, we could reshape time itself!” She paused, her expression falling. “Why do you look like that?”

“Even if I knew enough to do such things, where would I stop?” Dabir asked. “Should I remake the day when Jibril died, or the moment when you pledged troth to the Sebitti? What about the day my wife perished with my newborn son? Might I undo
that
moment? It is a string of pearls, Lydia, and more, for if I reshape one thing, who is to say what others would happen.”

She growled in frustration. “Don’t you see what we might do?”

“First,” Dabir said calmly, “I am not certain that I can even succeed. The only magic of Koury’s or Erragal’s I have worked was to get these beasts moving. I will be manipulating the very fabric of reality, and I have but a few words with which to guide me. Second, I shall only undo these otherworldly invaders. Nothing else shall I change. That is the work of God, and I am but a man.”

“A foolish, stubborn man,” she spat.

“Probably. And a very weary one at that.”

This talk had grown pointless. “So,” I said, “we await the spirits.”

“Yes. Because the larger circle is hidden and not yet active, no wizard will detect the thing. It is a most excellent noose, if we but have the strength to pull the line.”

I nodded in appreciation. “Do you recall how Najya said she’d foreseen herself advancing with an army of frost djinn and furred warriors toward a hill?”

“I do. I asked her about it at length.”

I adjusted my fingers on the club. “Do you think that this is the place?”

“I have gambled upon it. Enkidu might be inclined to come alone, or to send only a few spirits after us. But we have angered them too many times, and then there is Najya’s vision.”

“God gives,” I said.

“Look there,” Lydia said, and we followed her pointing hand to the eastern horizon.

Storm clouds were rolling toward us at great speed, hugely gray and white.

“Unless I miss my guess,” Dabir said, “they are on their way.”

20

There are standard preparations before any battle, and these I saw to, though I wondered whether any of them would be of use. First I looked over weapons and gear, little of it though there was. Between us we had only the two knives and Dabir’s sword, for I had cast mine down in the Khazar camp. I sharpened them anyway, and oiled Dabir’s scabbard.

Next I saw that we were fed. I’d had the sense to bring as much of the Khazar meal as I could carry, and we sat around the fire with it, though both Dabir and Lydia claimed they had no appetite. I broke some branches off that poor tree on top of the hill and tossed them on the fire to keep it going. They were green, of course, so that set the fire smoking, but there wasn’t anything else to use as fuel.

The horse shrank suddenly to its miniature size as we finished, then plopped over in the snow. All three of us stared, and Dabir rose slowly to recover it. He brought it back to the fire, weighing it in one hand. For a moment I thought he meant to throw it in.

“What happened to it?” I asked.

“The magic wears out eventually, depending on how much the creature is used.” His eyes strayed to the bull. “I imagine Koury used the horses more. I don’t know how to go about restoring it.”

“What are you going to do with it?” I asked him

“It looks like a plaything.” He smiled wistfully. “I thought I might send it on to Sabirah’s child.”

“It was created by a dark wizard,” Lydia remonstrated, “likely with blood magics. I would give that to no child.”

“It might fit in well upon our curio shelf when this all is over,” I suggested.

At this he snorted. “You think that even one of us shall live?” He pocketed the horse nonetheless.

“It shall be as Allah wills,” I said. “We should pray. The storm will reach us soon.”

Lydia did not join us, saying she would rather rest a little longer.

Dabir and I washed in the snow for our ablutions, then threw down our prayer rugs and knelt.

Afterward we climbed to the hill’s summit to see the creatures that moved within roiling, ashen clouds: towering figures of white and smaller, gliding figures that soon resolved themselves into rank upon rank of the snow women accompanied by monstrous wolves all the size of that we had battled, gigantic bears and cats, and all sorts of indistinct flitting things in white and blue. Behind all this were hundreds of dark riders.

“And all I have,” I said, “is a club and a knife.”

“And a magic bull.” Dabir put a hand to the animal, which he had brought up top with us.

The club was a reassuring weight in my hand, and my fingers tightened around the haft. I wondered how many times Herakles must have adjusted it himself before striding into battle. His exploits had become legend, and his bravery immortal. He had been placed by loving hands within a tomb fashioned by the same people who had revered him. I was most likely to die forgotten, my bones covered only by frost.