The Bones of the Old Ones

by Howard Andrew Jones

  He stopped before me and hefted up his weapon. “On your death, a new age begins.”

  With that, the axe rose once more, up over his off shoulder.

  “Stop!”

  Najya’s voice echoed as through she had spoken from a thousand throats. Enkidu stood poised to deliver my deathblow, but looked from side to side, searching for her.

  Dozens of the snow women shifted and flowed and converged one upon the other. Color came to them as they overlapped. Najya stepped forward as still more of the snow women flowed into her form. “Asim,” the multiple voices said. And then, in the last three steps, she was suddenly there, in the flesh, her hand thrust up toward Enkidu, as if she meant physically to restrain the axe from falling.

  Far above that hand, a transparent red dome of energy flickered into existence. A roar of anger, half curse, half wind, swept up from the thousands assembled there.

  Najya spun to face Dabir and screamed worldlessly. I swear that icy winds rolled up as she did this. Enkidu backed away from her.

  I pushed to my knees and threw myself for the club, grasped it, remembered those forms a final time. Its enhanced senses warned me of a looming power to my rear and I ducked as I turned. Enkidu’s cut missed the top of my helm by only inches. He was just a little slower now, for all that I had injured him, and I managed to regain my feet.

  Overhead I saw a tear within the sky itself all about Najya, widening at her gesture. A bright, deadly whiteness swept out, roaring, as though the old woman of the north had fully opened her sack of winds. Najya screamed also at her Khazars, who charged forward with their battle cries, lances leveled. The wind was too chaotic for accurate bow work.

  Their beasts thundered around Enkidu and myself and they let us be, to battle alone to the death. I thought us well beyond the protective power of Anzu’s magic, but it might be Enkidu was so taken with rage it had not even occurred to him to control me. Spittle flecked his beard and mustache like the froth of a mad dog. He pressed on, swing after tireless swing, driving me back and farther back through the ranks of snow women and up against a vast wall of some white cloud thing.

  But it broke apart just as I approached it, and around me a strange, great horned beast fell suddenly into frosty fragments. It was as though a mighty hand was sweeping through the mass of spirits, and where it touched, all dissolved. Enkidu held off, staring in astonishment. Over his shoulder, I saw Dabir atop the hill. He had lifted up the spear and was laying waste, calling out in a clear, deep voice, the fingers of his free hand raised, clawlike. Where he swung that hand, swathes of the monsters fell before him.

  Lydia stood beside him, just visible through a cloud of fire and smoke. She leaned still upon the staff, fixed to the circle, but in her other hand she wielded a string of fire like a whip, and where it touched it left empty saddles and seared, tumbling corpses.

  The Khazars shouted and charged the slope, and I thought all was done until Dabir left off slaying spirits, his eyes glowing golden as the sun. I think he cast up the earth before their feet so that their horses plunged madly, and they fell or galloped clear.

  Enkidu shouted, though I could not make out his words. And though I wearied, aye, almost unto death, a faint spark had lit once more within me, and it was hope. I backed from him, the club held down to my right. He came on again, and again, swinging madly, like an animal. From left. From right, from left, each time missing me by only hairs. Any single blow would have taken my head. He was swift, aye, but that one arm was slower on the recovery, and when he swung by once more on the left, I sprang.

  The club blazed as brightly as it had that first time, light once more as the air itself. I came up from the lower right. Surprise warred briefly with rage in Enkidu’s eyes as the club rose up and up, and he jerked back his chin, thinking he might avoid me. Yet he was too late. When I hit, a grisly crack echoed across that bitter landscape and he was lifted bodily into the air, his head half parted from his neck. Blood spewed fountainlike as he arced backward to land beside his axe with a thud. The blood flowed out for some time, dyeing the surrounding snow, but he had perished the moment I connected with him.

  I stumbled after him, lost my balance, sank to one knee. The club was but dimly glowing now, its energies all but spent. Dimly could I perceive the sorcerous battle that went on around me. I thought at first the ground shook because my senses reeled, but at the last moment I turned my head to see Enkidu’s oryx a few feet off, charging at full strength and snorting fire. I tell you, at that moment I knew I was done.

  But a huge wall of earth reared up and swept the animal off its feet and away. I stared in wonder as the creature was shunted off, crying in distress, and the wall struck against a dozen Khazars beyond, charging the hill on foot. I looked up to find Dabir upon the height, sweeping that glowing spear from right to left. With each movement, landscape rose and fell. Beside him Lydia’s whip stretched on for the length of a noble’s courtyard. With a single blow she sent ten Khazars screaming from their saddles.

  Najya, though, still shouted, and the spirits obeyed. Dozens at a time they tossed themselves against the barrier. They dissolved as they struck, impacting so often that the circle about the hill was a permanent wall of transparent scarlet energy. This one was far more powerful than that Jibril had once erected in his house, but there were hundreds of spirits set against it, and Najya herself conjured more from the rift every moment. Sooner or later that barrier was going to go down, just like Jibril’s. Overhead, the red of the greater mystical dome—what I surmised to be the height of the banishment circle—flickered on and off. Anzu had been right. We did not have the power, probably because Dabir had to expend so much of it to fight the spirits.

  I breathed in through battered ribs. Around me the spirits multiplied with astonishing speed, twelve appearing where but one had stood a moment before—women, clouds, vaporous monsters from ancient days—shunted in from the huge gap in the sky. The temperature plummeted further as they crowded into being, and the nearest stretched out to me with hands, tendrils, whatever they possessed, for I was life, and energy.

  The club still flared, albeit dimly, and they recoiled. I knew that my protection could not possibly last much longer, and that they multiplied faster than Dabir could destroy them. I flung myself into a staggering charge. There was no longer any clear ground on which to walk, so thick were the frost spirits clustered, but they parted or disintegrated on contact with the club. My hands and face had left off stinging some time back and were now quite numb. Two Khazars and their mounts were toppled nearby, sheathed in frost and consumed by huddling spirits. I pressed on past a leering face formed of vapor, and an icy, skeletal bird thing. A few paces from Najya the club failed at last, crumbling apart in my hands as I passed through a final snow woman. Intent as I was, I knew a sense of remorse at the loss of the great weapon, which had served Herakles so well and never failed me.

  And then I flung myself at the back of the woman I loved. Alerted by some sorcery, she spun in surprise just before I tackled her.

  We hit the ground, hard, and the world spun. Starshot blackness blossomed across my vision. I shook my head. Najya, beside me, was already rising on her elbows. I rolled to face her, weakly raising one hand as she gritted teeth and brought one toward me, hate glittering in her sapphire eyes.

  “Najya!” I gasped. “I know that you are there!”

  “Weakness!” she screamed at me, and her cold hand dove at my neck.

  The dome above us glowed gold, pink, red, blue. Najya’s eyes widened and she withdrew her hand to stare at the sky. “No!”

  I felt the greater circle’s magic sweep over me like a strong current of water. Something pulled at my inner being, from far away, as though a hook had caught my soul. I pushed at thickened air with my hands, fighting it, willing myself to stay. Beside me, Najya convulsed. Her mouth worked, but no sound came.

  “Asim!” Lydia shouted. “Get back to the inner circle!” Now, clearly, I heard Dabir chanting, and the spear
in his hand glowed, brighter than ever, as though it burned its energy at an accelerated rate.

  I looked down at Najya. I could not leave her there, like that. I supposed that if I had the strength to flee and if I bore her with me to safety, the spirit would be left within her. Better we should meet our end here, together.

  The ice beings all about us raised voices in whistling agony, a song of death from a thousand throats. Najya screamed, too, a lone human voice among the monstrous things. She shuddered and shook, her eyes rolling in pain.

  “I shall take her with me!” the spirit screamed.

  Tightly I grasped those shaking, frigid hands. “Do not let her have you!”

  “She is strong,” she cried, and I did not know if it was spirit or woman who spoke.

  The beings, all of them, blurred and stretched and twisted in upon themselves, and suddenly there was nothing there but thickened mist and droplets of water, cascading onto that cold ground as though a rainstorm had birthed only feet above the surface of the earth. I have never heard anything like the sound of those spatters before or since.

  Najya dropped limp in my arm as if she were boneless.

  “Asim!” I saw Dabir racing down the hillside toward me, frantic.

  It was then the great wave of water rushed in from every side.

  Instantly I was engulfed in a freezing wave and knocked from my feet sideways. I came up sputtering in the frigid, swirling water, clinging to Najya’s arm. The current was too strong for me to stand. Though every use of my left arm brought agony, I stroked with it, and my hand struck something solid. It felt like wood, and I clung tightly to it.

  It was the wooden bull, kicking its forelegs to propel itself. I knew then that Dabir must be controlling the thing still and praised Allah for my friend’s cleverness. It ceased its kicking. I held Najya with a death grip, keeping her face above water. Dabir clung to the bull’s other side with one of the handholds.

  “Alhamdilillah!” he said. “You’ve made it!”

  “Thanks to you.” I said. “Help me with Najya!”

  This proved a challenge, for the wooden bull was spinning in the wild, rocking current. Dabir managed to board and sweep Najya onto his lap, but he could not also leverage me. I had little idea whether Najya even lived still.

  “Is she alive?”

  “She breathes!” Dabir managed.

  “Where is Lydia?”

  “Safe on the hill,” he said. “I think.”

  It is no easy matter to learn such things when spinning in a mad current holding on to the leg and tail of a wooden bull.

  It seemed that we floated thus for a mad hour or four, but on later reflection I think only a few grains in an hourglass would have dropped. As we struggled we saw hundreds of Khazars floating lifelessly around us. Also there were horses, some of which screamed and fought the water. But most of them, and their riders—men and women both—were dead.

  Of a sudden my feet struck earth solidly. The bull lurched to a halt. The water had simply spread outward in a wave, and in a moment more it was but waist-deep, then barely to my ankles.

  Of course I was thoroughly frozen, and shivering uncontrollably, yet that was nothing. I turned Najya’s limp body to me and checked for her breath. I could find none.

  “She does not breathe!” I cried. I thought for a moment Dabir had lied to me.

  But he looked as horrified as me. “I could not always keep her above the water!” He hurried around to the side of the bull. His teeth were chattering, but he did not slow. Mine, too, were rattling. Around us was left a tide of washed-up, fur-clad warriors.

  Dabir lay her over the motionless wooden beast and pressed against her back once, twice, a dozen times. I stood shivering, watching him, thinking this a lonely place to dig a grave and that this was a poor time to lose her, after she had come through so much.

  But then Najya coughed. She vomited water and coughed once more and lay weakly against the bull’s chest. I stepped to her side and touched her face with shaking fingers. She looked up at me and her eyes were brown.

  “Asim,” she whispered.

  So great was my joy that tears slid from my eyes.

  21

  The hill where we’d made our stand was a fair distance off. Even with love to warm me it was a long, cold way to its height, and I was in some pain. Yet we three managed, shivering the while. Here and there lay the occasional Khazar corpse, or mount, or bits of their equipment. A few horses galloped away further off, shaking water from their manes.

  The flood had not touched the hilltop. Lydia slumped at its height, her breathing shallow, her eyes rolling. But she had somehow fashioned a pit, with heated rocks, and with failing energy she set hands to our soaking garments and used her borrowed power to dry them.

  Almost at the same moment the clouds rolled away, and the sun stood out in a clear sky. The wind died, and quiet, exhausted, we four sat crowded about the fire, feeling the sun on our backs. I ached thoroughly, throughout my body, but I did not care, for we had survived, and Najya was at my side. She did not mind that my good arm was about her; indeed, she was pressed tightly to my shoulder.

  “Where did all that water come from,” I asked Dabir, “at the end?”

  He smiled sheepishly. “That wasn’t on purpose. I was trying to break the hold the spirits had on any physical substance. I’d been shaping earth pretty effectively, and I’d broken smaller groups of them apart. When I tried it with the larger group … somehow I ended up transforming all of them to water. I warned you,” he added, “I didn’t really know much shaping magic.”

  “You knew enough.”

  Lydia had been listening attentively. She sat beside Dabir. Close, but not so close as Najya to me, who watched her with suspicion. “There at the end,” she said, “were you actually using shaping magic to power the circle?”

  “Yes.” Dabir seemed strangely reluctant to speak of it, and hesitated for a moment. “I used the words of dissolution to break Usarshra’s hold on the magics. Once it was no longer keyed to her, I ‘grabbed’ hold, and it worked. Though I could never have broken through her defenses if Asim hadn’t distracted her.”

  Lydia’s eyes were huge now, as though she meant to drink down every word. “What was that like?”

  “To have that kind of power?” Dabir thought a long while before answering. “I only dared use it for a moment,” he admitted finally. “It was frightening. I understood then the things I might do, if I but knew the proper words. And it was tempting to try them anyway. But then things went awry with the water, and I used all the spear’s remaining power to seal the gate. Such deeds,” he finished, sighing, “are not meant for one such as me.”

  “Well,” I said, noticing that it hurt a little even to grin—I seemed to have pulled a neck muscle—“God be praised for your fine judgment and quick wit.”

  I then noticed Najya staring at Lydia. “Lydia helped us,” I told her. “She worked hard to set things right.” I thought then of her promise to Lamashtu, and frowned. “Dabir, what are we to do? The witch will come for her.”

  The Greek shifted in her seat. Her dark ringlets hung wild and unkempt as she lifted up her open pendant and pressed it for a long time to her lips. Quietly she lowered it, then faced me. “You would stand no chance against her, Asim.”

  “But we cannot let her take you.”

  I looked to Dabir, who stared fixedly at the fire while furiously rubbing the back of his ring, then back to the Greek.

  She smiled, gently, as a man does when a young child says something foolish. Her careworn eyes roved over each of us. “Najya, I hope that … I hope that you will be well from here on out. I am glad you survived.”

  “Asim says that you helped them,” Najya said guardedly. “I suppose I have that to thank you for.”

  “You owe me no thanks.” Tired as she was, Lydia’s accent was more pronounced than usual. “I am surprised you can offer anything but curses.”

  “I thought I would hate you,” Na
jya replied. “But I cannot muster the will. Perhaps I am too relieved, or too tired.”

  “Do you feel any of the spirit still?” Lydia asked.

  “Nay. I am wholly myself.”

  Lydia looked over to me. “Asim, I forgive you my father’s death. He brought it upon himself.”

  She sounded very much like someone saying her good-byes, and I checked with Dabir to gauge his reaction.

  One last time Lydia looked at the woman beside me. “Najya, he is all that he seems to be, and nothing more. If you love him as I think you must, treasure him for that. It is a rare thing.”

  “Lydia?” Dabir asked cautiously.

  “Dabir.” She smiled then, and no matter her fatigue, she lit with a shadow of her beauty.

  She reached out and touched the side of his face with one hand. His hair hung loose about his face, owing to the loss of our turbans, and she ran her fingers through it.

  He met her eyes tenderly, then bent forward and put his lips gently to her forehead, kissing her very softly. She closed her eyes at his touch.

  When they pulled apart, she smiled again, sadly, and I saw that her eyes were wet with tears. “I could have loved you,” she said, shuddering a little.

  “Lydia?” Dabir asked.

  “It will be hard for her to”—once more she shuddered, though it was for a longer time—“take me if I am already dead.”

  “No—” Dabir’s words came out in a gasp, as though he had just been struck in the stomach.

  “Do not be too sad…” She convulsed, and Dabir reached out for her.

  “What have you done?” Dabir demanded, horrified.

  “Poison. In my locket. A careful woman always keeps some on hand.” I think she meant to laugh, but she sucked in a painful breath instead.

  Tears glistened in my friend’s eyes, and Lydia reached up to try and brush a drop from his face, but her hand was shaking. He took her in his arms.

  She was a while dying, and it was hard to watch. Dabir murmured to her as she did so, and they spoke quietly together, but Najya and I did not listen, aye, and my love even cried a little, for she was of generous spirit.