Servant of the Bones (14 page)

“We came now to the gates…we went into the courtyard, where the great poem ‘In the Beginning’ would be read, and the actors would begin their pageant. I felt a sadness suddenly, a terrible sadness and confusion. Something was wrong.

“But all of a sudden as if it were the answer to a prayer, the thing was made right. I heard my father singing. I heard him and my brothers:

“I struggled to hear it more clearly, their blessed familiar voices:

“ ‘Turn your head to them, Lord God Marduk,’ said Cyrus. ‘It is your father, singing with all his heart.’

“I turned. I saw nothing but a blur of waving arms, of garlands tossed in the air, of flowers falling, but I heard my father:

“The singing went on and on, following us to the gates of the temple. And then came the shouts, ‘Messiah, Messiah, Messiah!’ And Cyrus waved and threw them his kisses, and at last it was time for the coronation.

“We were taken down from the chariot and the wagon, and walked on a bed of flowers up and up the seemingly endless stairway of the great ziggurat Etemenanki, so that the people from far off could see us through the wide gates. I thought I might die before I reached the top; I couldn’t look above, only at the golden stairs before me and I thought of the stairway to Heaven which Jacob had seen in his dream with the angels coming and going.

“At last we stood on the summit, the mountain made by and for the god, and I was given the crown. By now it seemed I did not control my limbs at all. I felt nothing. I smiled because it was easiest to smile, and my arms ached suddenly with tiredness as I lifted the big Persian crown of gold and placed it on the head of the Living King.

“ ‘Now may I die,’ I whispered. Exhaustion overcame me. My knees were in pain, my feet, all of me that could no longer move or stand with any freedom.

“Distinctly I saw the loving eyes of Cyrus, I saw the solemnity in his face, I saw…the dedication to Kingship in him. I saw perhaps a little of a King’s madness.

“Slyly and cleverly the priests crowded around me and painted me over and over that I might move my limbs, and some vitality came back to me. ‘Keep your eyes open,’ Remath said. ‘Keep your eyes open.’

“I did. We were taken down to the courtyard. The banquet lasted for hours. I know the poets came and they sang, and I know that the King dined and all the nobles dined. But I sat rigid staling. My eyes wouldn’t close now whatever I did. They had been stupid to add paint. They only softened the lids when they did, I thought to myself, and I looked down at my hands lying on the table, and I thought, ‘Marduk, I have never once called on you.’

“His voice came in my ear. ‘You have had no need of me, Azriel. But I’m with you.’

“Finally it came to an end. Darkness had fallen. It was finished. The King was crowned, Babylonia was Persia, the city was drunk beyond the palace gates and the temple gates, and within these two buildings others drank and sang.

“ ‘Now,’ said the young priest, ‘we will carry you up to the shrine. You need walk no more. You need only take your place at your banquet table there, and if you do not die within a few hours we will give you the gold in your mouth.’

“ ‘Not quite yet,’ said Remath. ‘Follow me and quickly, for we have one more ritual to perform and it must be done properly.’

“The young priest was confused. So was I but I didn’t care. I didn’t give a damn. I didn’t care at all. I was slumbering already, and when I saw the vague shapes of the dead hovering about, staring at me in fear, I was pleased. I would have thought they would have come thundering down upon me like an army and dragged me out of my gold clothes and said, ‘Come stumble through eternity with us!’ but they didn’t.

“Suddenly I felt an unbearable heat. I saw a huge fire. I thought I heard my father’s voice, but I wasn’t sure, and then I heard Asenath say,

“ ‘It is powerful powerful magic! Do you want him to die! Give it to me!’

“For one brief second I saw my father, and in confusion, he gave over to her the old tablet, in its clay envelope. ‘Azriel!’ he called out. He reached beyond her, towards me.

“I wanted to speak but I was past it. I couldn’t do anything.

“The doors were slammed shut on my father and on the world.

“We were in a chamber with a hot, hot fire, the cauldron full of gold boiling, and the air almost impossibly hot. And Asenath then broke the clay envelope of the old tablet. She just smashed the outer clay as if it was nothing, and then she held up the secret tablet to the light of the torch.

“I was standing on my own, too rigid to move, too rigid to fall, stating at them. I wasn’t even too horribly afraid of the fire. What were they doing, Remath and the old woman? Where was the High Priest? Hadn’t I glimpsed him now and then?

“And then Asenath began to read, but this was not Sumerian, it was Hebrew, old old Canaanite Hebrew.

“ ‘…and that he should see his own death and that he should see his soul, his tzelem and his spirit and his flesh all boiled together in the bones, to live in the bones, forever, only to be called forth by the Master who knows his name, and calls his name…

“ ‘No!’ I screamed. ‘That is not a charm! That is Hebrew. That’s a curse. You lying witch.’

“The gold covering on me cracked all over as I sprang with all my drunken strength at her, but she backed up like a dancer and Remath had me by the throat. I was as stupefied and weak as those lions who had come against it.

“ ‘You witch, that’s a curse,’ I said.

“ ‘That he shall see all of him that is visible and invisible and all fluids of his body boiled down into the bones, and that he shall be bound to those bones and whoever is Master of
those bones, and that he shall not be taken into the darkness of Sheol nor the eternal life of God forever and ever.

“ ‘Marduk!’ I screamed.

“I felt myself heaved backwards, and thrown into the boiling gold. I screamed and screamed. It was unthinkable. It was not possible that I could know such pain. It was not possible that such a thing could happen to me, that boiling gold should choke my mouth and cover my eyes!

“And when I thought I would go blank mad, blank mad with horror and pain, with nothing of human thought left, I shot upwards out of the cauldron, free-floating above the body that was slumped and boiling in the pot, with only one open eye above the bubbling gold. The body that had been mine! And I was not in it.

“I was there above, arms outstretched, staring down. And I saw the face of Asenath upturned.

“ ‘Yes, Azriel,’ she screamed, ‘watch, watch the gold boil, watch the flesh fall from your bones, watch the bones become the gold, don’t take your eyes off it, lest you be drawn back down into agony and death.’

“ ‘Marduk,’ I cried.

“ ‘It’s your choice,’ he said. ‘Go back down into that cauldron of pain and you die.’ His voice was broken or sad. I realized that he was below me. He stood looking up.

“And for the first time he looked small to me and simple. Not grand or godly. And Asenath was just an old fool of a woman. And Remath staring at the body sinking into the bubbling pot was jumping up and down and making his hands into fists and cursing and screaming.

“There was no time. There was no decision. Or maybe it was pure cowardice. I could not go down into that pain. I could not be boiled alive. I could not bear that such a thing would happen to any human being. I watched and I watched, and the flesh floated loose in the golden muck and the skull floated to the top, and the pot boiled and boiled and boiled and the room grew denser and denser with steam.

“Asenath was choking. She could not breathe, and she fell
forward on her face. Remath stood staring at the pot. And Marduk merely looked up at me with wonder.

“At last the pot was empty save what was left of me. Remath kicked and poked at the fire to put it out. He drew as close as he could to the hot metal and he looked down at the heap of golden bones that lay in the bottom of the pot. The cloth was gone, it had dissolved, the flesh was gone, it had dissolved, the liquid was gone, it had dissolved. Only the bones were left and in this sealed chamber all the fumes and particles of what had been my body. And the bones were all gold.

“ ‘Call it to you, spirit,’ said Remath. ‘Call the flesh to you, call it to you now from all the world, call it from the depth of the bones and from the air to which it has tried to flee, call it.’

“I moved downwards and stood on my feet. In the thick torturous steam, I saw I had a body. It was vapor. But it was mine, and then it grew denser and denser.

“Marduk took a step backwards, shaking his head.

“ ‘What is it? Why do you do that?’ I asked.

“ ‘Oh gods of old, Remath,’ said Marduk, ‘what have you and the witch wrought?’

“Remath roared, ‘You are mine, Servant of the Bones, for I am the Master of the Bones. You will obey me. You will obey.’

“Marduk backed up against the wall, staring at me in perfect fear.

“Remath grabbed a heavy bunch of cloth from the couch to protect his hands and with this he managed to throw over the cauldron. The bones spilled out and what did not spill he reached for, hurt by the heat until he had all the bones on the floor.

“ ‘Wake up, old woman!’ he screamed. ‘Wake up! What do I do now!’

“I stood beside him. My body was dense as if it were living. It was pinkish and vivid as his body, but it wasn’t real. It didn’t feel real. It had no heart, no lungs, no soul, no blood; it had only the shape that my spirit gave to it, down to the last detail.

“ ‘Look, fool,’ I said, ‘Asenath is dead. If you want to know what to do, you’d better bring that tablet to me, I am the only one here who can read the old Canaanite words.’ ”

R
emath did not move. He was far too frightened to move. He even let go of the bones. They lay gleaming on the glazed floor. Scattered, hideous, teeth among them, and the tiny bones of my hands and feet like pebbles.

“Marduk remained still.

“There was a low howling sound gathering round us. I could hear it as if a wind moved through the rest of the palace and temple, slowly, corridor by corridor, alcove by alcove, and then I looked up and saw the dense world of spirits as I had never seen it before.

“The walls and the ceiling of this cell were gone. The whole of the world was the lost mumbling souls staring and pointing and leaping towards me with grasping hands, yet afraid.

“ ‘Get away!’ I roared. And at once the entire cloud dispersed, but the howling pierced my ears and hurt me, and when I looked again I saw that Marduk’s face was alien to me, and no longer afraid, but neither trusting nor gentle as always before.

“I turned, walking easily and light as a man would walk to the body of the fallen Asenath, and I took from her the tablet. The text wasn’t easy for me. It was a form of Hebrew, yes, but a dialect from the time before my time. I stood reading to myself.

“I turned around. The priest had withdrawn to the farthest corner and the god merely stared. I read the words as best I could:

“ ‘And having seen his death, and having seen the fluids of his body, and the flesh and the spirit and soul boiled into the
bones, and sealed in the bones in gold forever, let him be called down into the bones, made to enter them, and made to remain in them, until his Master should call him forth.’

“ ‘Do it,’ Remath cried. ‘Go into the bones.’

“I looked down at the tablet. ‘And once these bones are assembled, they shall forever contain his spirit, passing from one generation to another, to serve the Master by ownership and by power, to do the Master’s bidding, and roam only at the Master’s will. When the Master shall say, “Come,” the Servant of the Bones will appear. When the Master says, “Take on flesh,” the Servant of the Bones will take on flesh, and when the Master says, “Return to the bones,” the Servant of the Bones will obey him, and when the Master says, “Kill this man for me,” the Servant of the Bones shall kill that man, and when the Master says, “Lie quiet and watch, my slave,” the Servant of the Bones shall do it. For the Servant and the Bones are now one. And no spirit under heaven can rival the strength of the Servant of the Bones.’

“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘that is quite a story.’

“ ‘Into the bones,’ he declared. ‘Go into the bones.’ He stood trembling, clenching his fists and bending his knees. ‘Return to the bones!’ he declared. ‘Lie quiet and watch, my slave!’ he declared.

“I did nothing.

“I studied him for a long moment. Nothing changed in me.

“I saw the linen he’d pulled from the couch. There was a sheet, fresh, changed from when I’d last slept here, and I picked it up now, and formed a sack out of it, and into it I put the tablet, and then the bones. I picked up the thigh bone, and the leg bone, and the arm bones, and the skull, my very own skull, still hot and gleaming with gold, and I gathered every tiny fragment of what had been Azriel, the living man, the fool, the idiot. I gathered the teeth, I gathered the bones of the toes. And when I had all of this in a small sack, knotted, I slung it over my shoulder and then I looked at him.

“ ‘Damn you into hell, go into the bones!’ he roared.

“I went forward towards him and I put out my right hand and broke his neck. He was dead before he hit his knees. I saw
a spirit rise blundering and in terror, gauzy and soon shapeless and then dispersed and gone.

“I looked at Marduk.

“ ‘Azriel, what will you do?’ he asked. He seemed utterly confounded.

“ ‘What can I do, Lord? What can I do, but find the strongest Magician in Babylon, the one strong enough to help me learn my destiny and my limitations, or shall I simply wander as I am? I am nothing, as you see, nothing, only the semblance of the living. Shall I wander? Look, I am solid and visible, but I am nothing, and all that is left of me is in this sack.’