Servant of the Bones (19 page)

“ ‘Ah, I see. Well, your eyes are fine now. I need the Canaanite tablet that brought you into being. I need the bones.’

“ ‘You don’t have them here?’

“ ‘Hell, no,’ he said. ‘A pack of fools stole them. Desert bandits. They set upon Cyrus’s party, slew them for every bit of gold they wore, and went off with the casket. They think the bones are solid gold. Only one Persian lived to reach the nearby village. Messages were sent. Now, you have to go and
find the bones and the tablet, the whole casket, and bring it to me.’

“ ‘I can do this?’

“ ‘Certainly. You came when I called you. Go back to that place, or to the place from which you came. See, this is the secret of magic, my son. Be specific. Say I wish to return to the very place from which I came. That way, if the bandits have wandered ten miles from where you were when you heard my summons, you’ll apprehend them. Now when you reach that place, remain corporeal and kill these thieves if you can. If you are not strong enough to do this, if they combat you with physical weapons which make you stagger, if they hurl charms at you that frighten you—and I warn you there isn’t a charm on earth that ought to frighten the Servant of the Bones—then become incorporeal, but take the bones with you, gather them to yourself as though you were a funnel of desert wind, gather them and bring them to me. I will deal with these thieves later. Go, bring the bones to me.’

“ ‘But you do prefer that I kill them?’

“ ‘Desert bandits? Yes, kill them all. Kill them easily with their own weapons. Don’t bother with magic. It would be a waste of strength. Grab their swords and cut their heads off. You’ll see their spirits for a moment, shout at them to frighten them, believe me you won’t have any trouble. Maybe that will soothe your pain. Go on, get the bones for me and the tablet. Hurry.’

“I stood up.

“ ‘Do I have to tell you what to say?’ he prodded. ‘Ask that you be returned to the place from which you came, and that all the articles of your present body wait at your beck and call to surround you and make you visible and strong when you reach the location of the bones. You’ll love it. Hurry. I estimate this will take you until suppertime. I will be dining when you get back.’

“ ‘Can anything happen to me?’

“ ‘You can let them frighten you so that you fail and I can laugh at you,’ he said with a shrug.

“ ‘Could they have powerful spirits?’

“ ‘Desert bandits, never! Look, you’ll enjoy it! Oh, and I forgot to tell you, when you begin your return, of course become invisible. They’ll all be dead, you’ll hold the casket tightly inside your spirit body, like so much wind surrounding it. I don’t want you walking back here in a body with that casket. You have to learn to move things. If anyone sees you, ignore that person because you’ll be gone from the sight of that being before he begins to make sense of what he’s seen. Hurry.’

“I rose to my feet and with an immense roaring in my ears, I reappeared with the whole shell of the body in a small thick desert house, where a group of bedouins were gathered around a fire.

“At once they leapt to their feet and screamed at the sight of me and drew their swords.

“ ‘You stole the bones, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘You killed the King’s men.’

“I had never felt such pleasure in all my human life; I had never felt such prowess or such utter freedom. I think I gnashed my teeth with happiness. I took a sword from one of them and hacked them all, every one, to pieces, easily cutting off the hands that tried to defend them and slicing some heads from some bodies and kicking their limbs about. I stared at the fire. I dropped the sword and I walked into the fire, and then back out of it. It didn’t hurt this body, or its appearance of humanity! I gave out a roar that must have been heard in Hell. I was hysterically happy.

“The place stank of blood and sweat. The death rattle came from one of them, and then he lay still. The door came open, two armed bedouins flew at me, and I grabbed one of them and twisted his head off his neck. The other was now on his knees. But I killed him the same way too—easily. I could hear the noise of the camels outside and shouting.

“But the room was now empty of living beings, and I saw a great heap there covered by rude wool blankets. Throwing them back I discovered the casket of my bones and looked inside. This I have to admit was not a pleasure. It broke the stride of my lusty killing. I looked and saw the bones, and then
I sighed and thought, ‘Ah, well, you knew you were dead. So what?’ There was much other treasure there, too. Sacks of it.

“I gathered everything up into the blanket, clutched it with both arms, and said, ‘Leave me, particles of this body. Allow me to be invisible, swift, and strong as the wind, and keep these precious articles safe in my arms, and take me to my Master in Miletus from whom I was sent.’

“The great treasure was like an anchor, a stone, which made my travel slow but delicious. I felt the ascent with exquisite pleasure as I reached the clouds and then came down over the shimmering sea. I was so stunned by the beauty I almost dropped everything, but then I got stern with myself and said, ‘Go to Zurvan now, idiot! Return to the man who sent you
now.’

“I and the casket landed in the courtyard. Dusk. The sky was filled with a glorious fresh-colored light. The clouds were tinged with it. I was lying there, in manly form, apparently simply by wishing it, and the treasure was there, the casket, now broken from my having crashed, and another box of letters, thrown open.

“Out into the garden came my new Master, who at once started to pick up the letters. ‘These miserable bastards; all this is from Cyrus to me! I hope you killed them.’

“ ‘With great joy,’ I said, I stood up, lifted the half-broken casket of the bones, and stood ready for any help he would need. He piled my arms with a few soft sacks that apparently held jewels, I wasn’t sure, it felt like it, and that was all I’d brought with me, other than the casket and the letters, and he cast aside the blanket.

“To my utter amazement the blanket just drifted off, as if wafted on a draft, and then went over the walls, snarling in the breeze, and disappeared.

“ ‘Some poor hungry person will find it, and do something with it,’ he said. ‘Always remember the poor and the hungry when you cast aside what you don’t want.’

“ ‘Do you really care about the poor and the hungry?’ I asked. I followed him. We went back into the great room, which was now lighted by many oil lamps. I noticed for the
first time shelves of tablets and lightly built wooden racks for the scrolls which the Greeks preferred. This had all been behind my back when I’d been slouching about before.

I set down the broken casket on the floor, and opened it. There were the bones, all right.

“He took the letters and the sacks of jewels to his desk, sat down, and at once began to read all the letters, quickly, leaning on his elbows, and only now and then reaching for a grape from a silver disk beside him. He opened the sacks, dumped out great clumps of jewelry, most of it looking Egyptian to me, some of it Greek obviously, and then he went back to reading.

“ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘here is the Canaanite tablet with the ritual that created you. It’s in four pieces, but I can put it together.’ He assembled the four pieces and he made the tablet whole.

“I think I was relieved. I’d forgotten all about it. It had not been in the casket. It was small, thick, covered in tiny cuneiform writing, and seemed perfect, as if it had never been broken.

“He looked up suddenly and then he said, ‘Don’t just stand about. We need to work. Look, lay out all the bones in the form of a man.’

“ ‘I will not!’ I said. My wrath came up so hot I felt it even in this shell. It didn’t make me melt. But it gave me a shimmer of heat which I could almost see. ‘I will not touch them.’

“ ‘All right, suit yourself, sit down and be quiet. Think, try to think of everything you know. Use your mind which is in your spirit, and never was in your body.’

“ ‘If we destroy these bones, will I die?’ I asked.

“ ‘I said for you to think, not talk,’ he said. ‘No, you won’t die. You can’t die. Do you want to end up a tottering idiot of a spirit mumbling in the wind? You’ve seen them, haven’t you? Or a stupefied angel roaming the fields trying to remember heavenly hymns? You’re of this earth now, forever, and you might as well forget any bright ideas of simply dispatching the bones. The bones will keep you together, literally. The bones will give you a badly needed resting place. The bones will
keep your spirit formed in a manner that will allow it to use its strength. Listen to what I’m telling you. Don’t be a fool.’

“ ‘I’m not arguing with you,’ I said. ‘Have you finished reading the Canaanite tablet?’

“ ‘Hush up.’

“I sighed angrily and sat back. I looked at my fingernails. They were splendid. I felt my hair, thick and the same. What was this like? Being alive in perfect health at a perfect moment of wakefulness and energy, untouched by hunger, fatigue, the remotest discomfort…a seemingly perfect physical statue. I smacked the floor with my slippered feet. I had on my favorite embroidered robes, naturally, and velvet slippers. The slippers made a good noise.

“Finally he put all the tablets aside and said, ‘All right, since you are so reluctant to touch your own bones, finicky, cowardly young spirit, I’ll do the work for you.’

“He came to the center of the room. He dumped all the bones out on the floor. He stood back and he stretched out his hands and then he lowered himself slowly, bending his knees, and out of his mouth came a long series of Persian incantations, murmurings, and I saw from his hands something coming forth, like heat perhaps from a fire, but nothing more visible than that.

“To my amazement the bones assembled themselves in the form of a man laid out for burial, and now he continued his exhortations, and making a whipping gesture with his hand, as though sewing, he brought to him an immense spool of heavy wire, copper, or gold, or what, I couldn’t tell, and now with the gesture repeated over and over he made the wire thread the entire skeleton together as if it were beads. He hooked bone to bone with this wire, without ever touching anything, merely making the motions, and he let his hands linger long over the hands and feet of the body which had so many little bones. Then he moved to the ribs and the pelvis, and finally, with a long sweeping gesture of his right hand, he laid out the spine of this skeleton and connected it to the skull. He now had it all threaded together. One could have hung it from a hook to jangle in the wind.

“I saw a skeleton laid there as though in an open grave. I pushed aside all memory of the cauldron, of the pain, and I merely looked at it.

“Meantime he had rushed into another room and now returned with two short little boys, boys about the age of ten, which I realized in an instant were not real, but spirits, barely corporeal. They carried with them another casket, smaller than the first, rectangular, smelling of cedar, yet heavily plated in gold and silver, thick with jewels. He opened this casket. I saw a bed of folded silk. He told the little boys now to take this skeleton and to arrange it as if it were a child in its mother’s womb, with its arms drawn up, and its head bent down, and its knees to its chin.

“The little ones obeyed these commands. They both stood up and looked at me with ink-black eyes. The bent-up skeleton just fit into the casket. It hadn’t an inch to spare.

“ ‘Go!’ he said to the little ones, ‘and wait for my next command.’ They didn’t want to. ‘Go!’ he roared.

“They ran from the room, and stood peeping at me from the far door.

“I stood up and came towards the casket. It was like an old burial now, one found in the hills, from the ancient times when they buried men like this, in the womb of Mother Earth. I looked down at it.

“He was brooding. ‘Wax,’ he said. ‘I want a great deal of melted wax.’ He stood up and turned. At once I felt a shock of fear. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he demanded.

“His two servants appeared again, eyeing me cautiously and carrying a big bucket of the melted wax. He took the kettle from them, for that’s what it was, more or less, and he poured the wax all around the bones, so that as it hardened before my eyes, it fixed them in place. It was a soft, white fixture for them. And then he told the little ones to go again, get rid of the kettle, and that they could play in the garden for an hour in their bodies if they didn’t make noise. They were overjoyed.

“ ‘Are they ghosts?’ I asked.

“ ‘They don’t know,’ he said, still staring at the bones now
fixed in wax. Obviously the question didn’t interest him. He shut the casket. It had strong hinges and a strong lock. He tested this and opened it. ‘In time,’ he said, ‘though I won’t wait too long, being as old as I am, I will make a tablet of silver to go with this, containing all that is needed from the Canaanite tablet, but for now, the bones are as they should always be. Go into them and come back out.’

“Naturally I didn’t want to do it. I felt a loathing for the bones, and a rebellious temper. But he waited me out like a wise teacher, and I did it, dissolving, feeling the smooth calm darkness, and then being sucked out of it in a whirl of heat and finding myself standing beside him, embodied again.

“ ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Excellent. Now tell me all you remember of your life.’

“Now that request on his part began one of the most unpleasant arguments of my entire immortal existence. I couldn’t remember anything of my life. No matter how he badgered me I couldn’t remember. I knew I feared a cauldron. I knew I feared heat. I knew I feared bees and the wax had made me think of them. I knew that I had seen Cyrus, King of Persia, and that the favor I had asked of him had not been unreasonable. Other than that? I knew only general things.

“Over and over he demanded I try. Over and over I failed. I wept. Finally I told him to leave me alone, what did he want of me, and he touched me on the shoulder and said, ‘There, there, don’t you see, if you don’t remember your life, you can’t remember its moral lessons.’

“ ‘Well, what if there were none!’ I said ominously. ‘What if all I saw was treachery and lies.’