Servant of the Bones (22 page)

“Meantime the six warriors, stinking worse than their horses, filthy men of the steppes, came riding in a circle around us. My Master called out to them in a language I hadn’t heard before, but which was understandable to me, and he asked where was the mountain that was the navel of the world.

“They were taken aback and began to argue, and then all pointed more or less in the same direction, which was north, but no one knew for certain and no one had ever seen it.

“ ‘Become invisible, lift me and take me away from them. Leave them befuddled. They can’t harm us, and what they see is no concern of ours.’

“Once again we were moving north. The wind was now unbearably cold for him. I didn’t think I could protect him any better, I had summoned skins to enclose him and I made my
heat as strong as I could but then this began to hurt him. I had gone too far.

“ ‘Meru,’ he said. ‘Meru.’

“But this gave us no direction, and suddenly he said, ‘As fast as you can do it, Azriel, take me home.’

“There was a great roaring noise as I accelerated, and the landscape virtually vanished in a burst of whiteness, and it seemed that spirits ran at us from all directions, falling back as if blown off their course by our strength. My vision was flooded by the yellow of the desert, and then once again, the city of Miletus was plain to me, and we were in his living room and I picked him up in his blankets and skins and carried him in and laid him on the bed.

“The host of little spirits stood around in awe.

“ ‘Food and drink,’ he said to them. And they scurried to obey, bringing him a bowl with some broth in it, and a golden goblet of wine. The goblet was Greek and very beautiful, as all Greek things were then, seemingly more graceful and less rigid in form than things Oriental.

“But I feared for Zurvan. He lay there, frozen it seemed, and I lay on top of him, warming him, swirling around him, then hugging him and then finally when he had turned the proper color of a living being, and his eyes were wide and blue, I let go, laying out the covers.

“His flock of little spirits helped him to sit and even brought the spoon to his lips and the cup to his lips.

“I sat at the foot of the bed. I had no need of broth and was proud of it. Released. I was also very strong. After a long time he looked at me.

“ ‘You did well,” he said. ‘You did wondrously well.’

“ ‘I never found the mountain.’

“He laughed. ‘And you probably never will, nor I, nor anyone else.’ He banished all the others, and they fled like slaves, and the room was clean of them. ‘Every man holds some myth sacred in himself, some old story told to him, which for him had the ring of truth, or maybe just the allure of beauty. So it was with me and the sacred mountain. And so with your power I have journeyed to the very top of the world
and seen for myself that Meru is not a place, no more than I thought it was, but a thought, a concept, an ideal.’

“He rested, and the curious expression returned to him. Any disappointment or fatigue was swallowed by it. He looked at me and his eyes seemed to fill with delight.

“ ‘What did you learn, Azriel, on your journey? What did you see?’

“ ‘I learned first and foremost that such a thing could be done,’ I said. Then I told him all I’d seen, and how the cities looked like traps to lure the gods of Heaven to earth.

“This amused and interested him.

“ ‘They seemed,’ I said, ‘to have been designed especially to get the attention of the gods, to make the gods cease their ethereal flight and come down, as to the temple of Marduk. The mountain, as you said. They dotted the earth like so many open hands of invitation, or perhaps that is wrong, perhaps they looked like fancy entrances to earth, gateways, ah, that’s the word the priest would like, I’m sure, that Babylon is the Gateway of the Gods.’

“ ‘Every city,’ he said contemptuously, ‘is the gateway of some god.’

“ ‘What were the higher spirits I saw, the ones who looked joyous and ran to and fro, the ones who passed right through the middle spirits, the ones the dead could not see?’

“ ‘As I told you,’ he answered, ‘every magician will have a different explanation, but you saw what there is to see; you saw a great deal of it. Over time you’ll see more, but you saw your own power and how they respected it, you saw that the middle spirits, as you call them, could not hurt you, and the demon spirits are idiots, and you can rout them with a nasty face. You saw.’

“ ‘But what is it all, Master?’

“ ‘It’s what I told you yesterday. It’s all that we can know on this earth. The joyous ones ascend, the middle ones see, the pale and sorrowful dead become as the middle ones, and whence the demons? Who knows? Were they all humans? No, I think not. Can they possess and confuse men? Oh, yes they
can But you, the Servant of the Bones, can see them in all their weakness, and you have nothing ever to fear from them, remember? Should they block your path, merely shove them aside. Should they come to invade a human under your protection, to penetrate his flesh and enliven him with their own intentions, reach out with your invisible hand and grab the invisible body of the invader and you will find you can lift it up and hurl it away from its human host.’

“He gave a great sigh. ‘I have to rest now, the journey was arduous for me. I’m human. Now, go and walk about the city. Walk in your fleshly body, walk as men do and see as men do. Do not walk through doors or walls, lest you frighten someone, and if the spirits come down to assault you, send them flying with your anger and your fist. If you need me, call out to me. But mostly, you walk now.’

“I was delighted at the prospect. I got up and went to the door. His voice called me back.

“ ‘You’re the strongest spirit I ever saw or knew,’ he said. ‘Look at you, in your splendid blue robes and gold, and with your hair shining as it falls to your shoulders. Look at you. Visible, invisible, an illusion, solid, it’s all possible for you. You could be the perfect instrument of evil.’

“ ‘I don’t want to be!’ I said.

“ ‘Remember that, remember that above all things. You were imperfectly made by bumbling idiots. And as the result you are stronger than any magician could have ever wanted, and you have what men have…’

“I started to weep. It was that same instantaneous and uncontrollable weeping that had come on me before. ‘A soul?’ I asked. ‘I have a soul?’

“ ‘I don’t know the answer to that question,’ he said. ‘I was speaking of something else. You have free will.’

“He lay back and closed his eyes. ‘Bring something back for me which hurts no one.’

“ ‘Flowers,’ I said, ‘a beautiful gathering of flowers, from this wall and that gate and this garden.’

“He laughed. ‘Yes, and with mortals, be gentle! Don’t hurt
them. Even if they insult you, thinking you mortal, don’t hurt them. Be patient and kind.’

“ ‘I will, I vow it,’ I said.

“And I set out on my way.”

W
hat Zurvan taught me in the next fifteen years was all an extension and elaboration of what was learned in the first three of our days. That I can remember them now clearly for the first time in all these centuries floods me with happiness. I want to tell you the details. Ah, God, that I remember being alive and then not alive that I can connect one memory to the other, this is…this is something more merciful than an answer to prayers.”

I told him I thought I could understand, but I said nothing more because I was eager for him to go on.

“After Zurvan released me to go wandering in the flesh, I didn’t return until called, which was midnight or after. I had by then a huge bouquet of extremely delicate flowers, no one the same, and these I put in a vase of water for him and set on his study table.

“He made me recount everything I had seen and done. I described every street in Miletus in which I’d wandered, how I’d been tempted to try to pass through solid objects but stayed with his prohibition, and how I had watched the ships in the harbor for the longest time, and listened to the languages being spoken along the shore. I told him I felt thirst at times, and drank from a fountain not sure of what would happen, and that the water filled my body, not through internal organs which I did not possess, but every fiber of it over all.

“He listened to all this and he said: ‘What is your estimation of all you saw, or each thing, however you wish to tell me?’

“ ‘Splendid,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Temples of incredible beauty. Marble, such marble. The people here are from all
nations. I never saw so many Greeks before; I stood listening to a group of Athenians arguing about philosophy, which was very funny to me but I enjoyed watching it, and of course I wandered near the Persian court and was allowed entrance both to the temple and the palace, apparently because of my clothing and demeanor and I wandered in these newly constructed citadels of my old world, and then back out to the temples of the Greek gods, and rather liked their openness and the whiteness, and the whole stamina of the Greek people, which I think is more different from the Babylonians than I ever supposed.’

“ ‘But,’ he asked, ‘is there anything you are burning to tell me, anything that made you angry or sorrowful?’

“ ‘I don’t want to disappoint you but I can’t think of a thing. Everywhere I beheld splendor. Ah, the colors of the flowers, look at them. Every now and then I’d see the spirits, but all I had to do was close my eyes to them, so to speak, and again there was the bright, living world. I coveted things. I coveted jewelry, and I knew I
could
steal it in this form. In fact, I did discover one little trick. I could make the jewelry come to me, if I stood close enough and beckoned to it with my whole will. But I gave back what I stole. And I found money in my pockets. I found gold. I don’t know how it got there.’

“ ‘I put it there,’ he said. ‘Anything else? Did you notice or feel anything else?’

“ ‘The Greeks, you know,’ I said. ‘They are as practical as our people were…whoever the hell my people were…but they believe in ethics in a way that is not connected to divine worship; it is not merely a question of do not oppress the poor, uphold the weak, and all for the glory of the gods, but some further confirmation of much that is…is…’

“ ‘Abstract,’ he said. ‘Invisible and detached from the self-serving.’

“ ‘Yes, precisely. They speak of laws that pertain to behavior in a manner that is not religious, that’s it. They don’t possess more conscience, however. They can be cruel. Can’t all people?’

“ ‘That’s enough for now. You’ve told me what I want to know.’

“ ‘Which is what?’ I asked.

“ ‘You don’t envy living people.’

“ ‘Good heavens, why should I? I’ve wandered all day and I feel no fatigue, nothing, only a little thirst. No one can harm me. Why would I envy people who are still alive? I feel sorry for them if all that lies ahead is to be a stumbling spirit or a demon. I wish all of them could be born again as I have, but then I know that all I see is, how did you put it, only what is of the earth. Besides…’

“ ‘Yes…’

“ ‘I don’t remember ever being alive. I know you said that I was, or I myself said it, or it seems to be something we both know, and we spoke of that cursed tablet and bungling, but I don’t remember being alive. I don’t remember aching or being burnt or falling or bleeding. By the way, you are right. I have no need of internal organs. And when I cut myself I can bleed or not bleed as I choose.’

“ ‘You realize, of course,’ he said, ‘that many of the dead you see hate the living! They hate them.’

“ ‘Why?’

“ ‘Because their own existence is shadowy and weak and full of longing for things which they can’t have. They cannot be visible, they cannot move objects, they can but buzz like invisible bees through the world.’

“ ‘What would happen if I became invisible,’ I asked, ‘and I went up with the more joyous creatures, the ones who are so busy and seem to range so high?’

“ ‘Do it and come back safe to me, unless you find Paradise,’ he said.

“ ‘You think I might?’

“ ‘No, but I would never deny you Paradise or Heaven; would you deny such a thing to anyone?’

I immediately obeyed, throwing off for the first time the weight of the body and the clothes yet commanding them to be at hand.

“I went out into the courtyard, looked for the spirits and
found them surrounding me, thickly, and now that my eyes were focused on them, the demonic among them became ferocious, and I had many a struggle on my hands. Over and over the meandering dead detained me with pathetic questions, questions pertaining to those they’d left behind in the living world.

“And I found these meandering dead were in the higher levels as well as the very low, only they had grown lighter and stronger apparently, or at least they were better off than the shuffling blinded anguished dead that roamed the very earth itself.

“I came into the upper air of the joyous creatures and at once they turned to me, their faces filled with amazement, and with gentle gestures they ordered me down. In an instant I was surrounded by them, many of them having vague yet sparkling shapes, some even wings, and some long, white robes, but to a one, they ordered me down, they pointed, and they gestured, and they urged me as if I were a child blundering into a sanctuary. There was no wrath or contempt in them, they simply pointed downward and told me I must go.

“ ‘No, I won’t go,’ I said, but when I tried to go higher, I saw the way was wholly covered over with them and their bodies, and it seemed for one instant I perceived, far beyond the layers of them, a light shining but it hurt my eyes, and I fell, plummeted, crashed right back down to the earth.

“I lay in some dark place and the demons closed in on me, tearing at my invisible hair and body so that I dissolved and defeated them simply by slipping away and up, and then I made a right arm and a left arm and swept them aside, cursing them in their own tongues until they had fled.

“I tried to get my bearings; was I below the surface of the real earth? I didn’t know. I had fallen into an ashy gloom, a fog, through which I could see nothing material. The spirits that fled from me or hovered near me were part of the pollution and density of this place.