The Bones of the Old Ones

by Howard Andrew Jones

  I was numb now almost to the core of my being, and could no longer even feel the club I clasped, but I drove on. Dabir and I stabbed and slashed and bits of the monster fell away. Yet it always re-formed, seeming to draw sustenance from the storm and the wind. My breath came in gasps, and it felt as though I breathed in chunks of ice.

  Jibril meanwhile had staggered directly into the cloud, raising his bloodstained parchment with shaking hands. He let out a full-throated cry and the paper dissolved in flame. It fell in ashes but for a spark that swept forth into a ring. I was warmed, instantly, to the core of my being, and the monster dissolved, a splatter of rain upon the snow. I dropped my arms in stunned awe at the sudden change in fortune.

  Jibril sank to his knees. I helped him rise, but refrained from comment about the profusion of blood still leaking down over his clothes or his pasty complexion. His beard was white with frost.

  Dabir thanked him, but did not look pleased. “What have you done, Jibril?”

  “There was no choice,” the scholar said wearily.

  “There is no time for talk,” I cried over the storm. “More of the monsters come.” I pointed to two of the snow things barely visible against the darkness.

  We turned and stumbled away as fast as we could, Dabir and I half-carrying the old bookseller. The vile clouds, at least, seemed a little slower than a man might run.

  “Where’s Anzu?”

  “Vanished,” Dabir said grimly. “I finished the other two frost women.”

  “Kharouf?”

  “When last I saw, he was charging Anzu.”

  “The brave fool. I ordered them to flee. Their weapons would be useless against the ice spirits.”

  Dabir frowned in agreement.

  I whistled in the faint hope our horses might return. They did not, of course. My Noura would have come running, but she was still in Mosul.

  It was no easy going in that thick snow, but fear made us fleet. A look over my shoulder showed the cloud monsters trailing at the edge of sight, but with the storm and almost all daylight faded, there might be less visible spirits on any side.

  Once more I whistled, and something black came sailing out ahead of us. For a brief moment I thought it might be Jibril’s mare, but as it drew through the howling snow the image resolved into a person seated upon a carpet suspended a sword length above the earth.

  “More Sebitti?” I wondered grimly how one of them might take to the club of Herakles across the forehead. I gripped the weapon tightly.

  The carpet settled to the snow only ten paces off, and the person seated on the thing stood and called to us at the same moment. “Dabir! Asim! Hurry!”

  It was a woman, and I did not place her voice no matter its Greek accent, until we had almost reached her. It was then that I knew her for the sorceress Lydia.

  “Climb aboard,” she urged.

  Dabir’s voice rose with incredulity. “You are the Sebitti’s pawn!”

  “No longer!” She spoke rapidly, her accent growing thicker as she did. “We have no time! Get aboard!”

  The last time we had trusted Lydia it had nearly been our death. I fully meant to say something of this, but Lamashtu appeared then beside Dabir.

  The Sebitti did not come striding slowly up, or drop out of the air, or even coalesce out of the mist. She just popped into being, and if I hadn’t just then been turning to skeptically say something to my friend, I would not have noticed.

  “Down!” I cried, and he acted without question. Mine was a powerful backhand swing, and it missed Dabir’s head by inches. It seemed destined for Lamashtu’s chest, but she sidestepped with inhuman speed.

  She did not bother addressing me. “Thief,” she spat to Lydia.

  Again I swung; again the Sebitti dodged with stunning alacrity, the expression on her face not so much worried as annoyed.

  “Give over the weapon, Arab,” she ordered. She held out her hand as if she expected me to obey.

  Dabir was up then with leveled spear. “What will you use it for?”

  She grinned maliciously. “Something wonderful.”

  Dabir swung clumsily at Lamashtu. Only a moment did I wonder at his poor aim, for I saw then he’d deliberately driven her toward Jibril, who’d raised another bloody paper. He brushed against her robe, and the Sebitti was instantly consumed in a rain of fire.

  Lamashtu shrieked as the blaze swept with alarming speed across her dress and into her hair, the sound cutting the air like the sharpest knife. She raised shaking hands, then vanished before I could land a blow.

  Jibril sank to one knee, and I saw his eyes streamed with tears.

  “By all that’s holy,” Lydia muttered. She sounded impressed.

  “That … that’s it,” Jibril mumbled.

  Dabir passed the spear off to me and bent quickly to his friend.

  “Hurry!” Lydia urged.

  I glanced back at the monsters, once again only a couple of dozen paces off.

  Jibril was shaking his head, and sinking. And I realized that the white in his beard was not just snow. His face was deeply lined. He had aged decades in the last quarter hour.

  “All that I have here … is yours,” Jibril said, pressing the notebook into Dabir’s hands.

  Dabir took it without examining the thing, or caring that his hands were drenched with his friend’s blood. “Jibril…”

  “I hope I killed her. She tricked me, Dabir. She changed Afya, to save her.” He choked. “I had to kill her.… I had to kill my Afya.”

  “Jibril…” Dabir’s voice shook as he said his name.

  Jibril gripped his hand tightly, and his eyes brightened with a last burst of strength. “Do not damn yourself, as I have done.” His breath caught in his throat. “Look for angels.”

  “Allah,” Dabir said, his voice failing, “shall send angels to greet you.”

  “That is not…,” Jibril said weakly. “I wish to see but one…”

  “Hurry, fools!” Lydia shouted to us, and indeed, she was right, for the monsters were but a few paces off.

  Jibril’s eyes fixed on a point beyond Dabir’s shoulder, and saw their last.

  I pulled Dabir up and he choked out that we could not leave the body. Thus I grabbed the dead scholar and scrambled onto the carpet with Dabir, behind the Greek woman. Lydia spoke a phrase in a musical language and the carpet rose slowly, its edges fluttering. It did not hang loosely, but seemed flat, solid, as though it rested on a palace floor. At another command, we shot swiftly into the air and then away. From above I had a brief view of the battlefield—more of the snow women were knotted around a pair of figures that might have been Koury and Anzu, for dark men and beast shapes fought beside them. I thought also that I caught a glimpse of riders, my riders, galloping away at speed. I could not count their number. Of Najya there was no sign.

  11

  That carpet was very old, and a number of its threads hung out over the side, waving in the wind. I did not stare at them too long, for they threatened to shatter the already fragile illusion that I was in no danger while borne upon woven wool hundreds of feet above the earth.

  Dabir was just behind me holding the body, his back against mine. Lydia sat in front, and she set hands to the carpet whenever she spoke a command. The rug itself was about ten hand spans wide and perhaps fifteen in length. And it was steady, no matter the speed or direction it took. The wind and snow pushed at us a little, yet my seating felt solid. That was good, for there was nothing whatsoever to hold on to, lest I wished to clasp Lydia. This, for many reasons, I was disinclined to do.

  “Where are you taking us?” Dabir called up to Lydia. I could barely hear his voice, not just because of the wind, but because grief rendered him halting.

  Her dark hair blew wildly as she glanced back over her shoulder. “Away!” And then she warily searched the darkening sky to right and left, and above. She put a hand to the carpet again and we shot upward. I felt my stomach rise, as though I had been thrown into the air by a horse.
/>   Visibility here was just as poor as it was below, so there was not much to be seen, including, at that point, the ground itself.

  Dabir forced more strength into his voice. “Lydia—can the carpet rise above the storm?”

  “It could,” she said with another brief glance, “but Gazi is here with his bird.” Her accent again grew more obvious as she continued. “If he survived, he’s probably circling on high.”

  I thought then of the huge creature that I’d heard flying through the center of the storm earlier, and I bethought myself of my duty to protect Dabir. In that, at least, I had not failed. But all else … “What sort of bird?”

  Her head turned up. “Gazi killed the master of a roc many generations ago, and ate his heart. The bird has obeyed him ever since.”

  “Did she say a roc?” Dabir asked.

  I was not sure she heard him over the wind, so I added: “Just how large a bird is it?”

  “Large enough to bear two or three Sebitti. Large enough to lift a horse—or pluck you from the carpet.” She seemed to savor the latter part of her explanation.

  This I relayed back to Dabir, who in turn asked me to pass on our thanks.

  “It is the bones I need,” Lydia admitted. She raised her voice so that Dabir might hear her above the wind. “But I think you might prove useful. We will have to work together. To stop them.”

  At no point in this exchange did she look to me, and I realized I was merely along for the ride. It might be that if I weren’t holding on to the club of Herakles, I would already have been rolled off to my death.

  “Why,” Dabir shouted up, “did you leave the Sebitti?”

  “Because I could not trust them,” she yelled. “We will talk when we land,” she added.

  Dabir nodded. Conversing upon the back of the carpet with the wind whipping into our faces and whirling snow bits besides was a little challenging.

  It was easier for me, for I had only to lean toward her ear. I was hard put to bottle my rage, and the menacing snarl that came out surprised even me. “Are you the one who put the spirit inside Najya?”

  She twisted at the waist so that we two looked face-to-face. But in that near darkness I could only be reminded of her appearance from the general shape of her face and form. She was small and dangerous and beautiful, with a proud nose. Her hair was shorter than Najya’s, reaching only the nape of her neck, and rich with curls. “If you push me from the carpet,” she said coolly, “you and Dabir will plummet to your deaths.”

  “I am no murderer.”

  “You are the one who killed my father,” she said sharply. “I have not forgotten.”

  She turned from me.

  I could think of nothing further to say.

  A hand closed upon my shoulder, and I started. For a brief moment I had forgotten Dabir was behind me.

  “I am sorry about Najya.”

  At those words the rage dropped away from me, and I discovered that my face was wet. I brushed tears away and half turned to him. “I am sorry about your friend.”

  “His death gave us life,” he said joylessly.

  “And what does Najya’s death bring?” I asked bitterly.

  He squeezed my shoulder. “There may yet be hope, Asim.”

  That I did not believe, but I did not waste breath saying it to him. Instead I leaned back to warn him. “We cannot trust this Greek.”

  “We have little choice at the moment.”

  This was true.

  I turned from him, and the time passed without words. The only sound was the plaintive whistle of the wind, which suited my mood.

  Those who flew carpets in the old tales never rode them through snowstorms. I swiftly grew very cold, so that apart from dark thoughts about Najya and Jibril and the men, what chiefly occupied me on that trip was holding my jaw steady so that my teeth would not chatter. My feet grew numb despite my efforts to stretch and flex them within my boots. I had heard tales of men who had lost fingers and toes in the mountain heights, and I did not mean to be disfigured that way. I tucked my hands under my arms with the club still awkwardly gripped jutting behind. Just as my limbs were beginning to complain I felt us descend. The snow, at least, had stopped, and the moon was up. The ground lay hundreds of feet below, the rolling plain of snow a lambent blue in the moonlight. There were occasional trees, bent and skeletal.

  I leaned forward. “Tell me where you take us.”

  “To my allies,” Lydia said. I could see her profile against the sky as she half turned to me. “Will you try to kill me now?”

  I had never killed in cold blood, and did not mean to do so then, as deserving as she might be. “No.”

  “Dabir I may need. You…” She twisted in her seat so she might fix me with a scornful look. “You had best say as little as possible.”

  Dark linear shadows resolved into the outlines of a small stone fort set atop a slight rise. There are many such on either side of the border, and most of them are abandoned and fallen into ruin, for the border itself has changed many times over many years, leaving the bones of men and their structures to litter the countryside.

  Three of its four walls were completely intact, and stood three spear lengths high. The fourth, and nearest, sagged inward where it was not already crumbled away. Towers rose in two corners. Within the structure were the remains of three fair-sized outbuildings, one of which was covered by a new thatch roof. I knew a chill unrelated to the cold as lanterns showed me the now familiar pattern of a circle within a circle painted on the courtyard flagstones beside the north wall, half filled with characters. This one was far larger than that Jibril had drawn. It might easily have encompassed our Mosul stable. Soldiers were even now brushing snow from it.

  A cloaked and helmeted warrior was posted on the height of one tower, and called down to the men posted in the fortress center as we descended past him to settle at its base.

  The wind brought with it scents of cooked meat, and the smell of horses and sheep. Of more immediate import were the armed soldiers already stepping forward and forming into a line. I had counted several dozen on our descent. Fully ten of them were alert and ready to receive us, and their casually confident stances made it obvious these were no raw recruits or infantry levies. Each had cast back thick robes to clear the way to a sword, revealing chest mail known as jazerant, a kind of armored shirt made of small interlocked plates. Their coifed helms were decorated with horsehair plumes, dusted with snow and frost. And each wore a beard, black and thick as a patriarch’s. A few were even lined with a little gray.

  One, a little broader across than the others, stepped forward to salute Lydia, then quickly bent to assist her as she stood. She stretched her arms and back, for she, like us, was stiff from the long trip. It was impossible to ignore that she was a striking woman—though she was not so curvaceous as Najya—for the clothes hugged her wide hips and rounded breasts as she flexed. She was either oblivious or unconcerned, and was soon chattering at the Greek officer as the rest of the veterans regarded us dourly. I saw that if Lydia gave the order to kill us, it would be over quickly.

  “I do not think we should move,” Dabir said softly to me, “without invitation.”

  “Sound advice,” I said from the side of my mouth.

  Lydia was pointing at the thatched roof, and the officer was looking over at it, nodding as he made another comment. He was not as old as some of the men under his command, but his face was leathery, and one of his eyebrows puckered because of a scar.

  I leaned back toward Dabir. “What are they saying?”

  “She has conveyed that the scouting foray was more successful than she could possibly have dreamed, and tells him to keep the courtyard center clear. She said she will have to work quickly, and that the men should stand ready, in case the Sebitti follow.”

  “She must have a lot of faith in these fellows.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Lydia said as she turned to look down on me. She pulled a curling lock of hair from full lips. B
ehind her, the officer was ordering all but two of the soldiers off with him in short, barking phrases. “But I have other defenses, for even brave men like these will be insufficient against the Sebitti. I will have two of them dig a grave for your friend. But you two must come with me. Bring the bones.”

  “The body must be cared for,” Dabir objected.

  Lydia scowled. “The Sebitti and the spirits are looking for us now. Unless you want to end up just as dead as your friend, we must make plans to stop them. Now come!”

  She turned with a whirl of dark hair and cloak and walked through the blowing snow for the tower base. Dabir and I climbed to our feet, slowly, like old men, cramped from the ride. Dabir glanced down at Jibril, then said something in Greek to the two waiting near the body. They exchanged a few words with him, then nodded assent. After that, we lifted the bone weapons and followed Lydia through the open tower door. Our guards came after. I couldn’t decide whether to feel lucky or affronted they assigned us only two.

  “What did you say to the Greeks?” I asked.

  “To dig the grave, but to set Jibril’s body aside until I had time for a proper ceremony. They said that there was an unused storeroom.”

  Soon we were before an ancient soot-stained fireplace filled with blazing logs. Lydia swept an arm toward the crackling hearth. “The fire is yours. Food is coming.”

  Gratefully, I stepped forward to feel the touch of warmth upon my cheeks.

  “Your fortune has risen in the empire,” Dabir said to Lydia. “Does that mean your opinion of the empress has changed?”

  When last we’d met, Lydia had voiced clear contempt for the empress regent Irene, who she’d said was controlled by bearded fools.

  The Greek lowered herself into the single wooden chair beside the fire. It was old and battered, but the small woman sat it with the dignity of a monarch on a golden throne. “The less we mention our last meeting,” she said, “the better for all of us.”

  Dabir and I took the floor across from her. The Greeks apparently had no cushions. This meant we looked up at Lydia, even though she was two heads shorter than either of us.

  Lydia raised a well-manicured finger toward Dabir. By that she apparently meant him to wait. “I know that you have many questions. But now is not the time. The Sebitti will be on our heels, and the ritual I must perform will take all the time we have.”