Servant of the Bones

by Anne Rice

  " 'I don't feel any fear of you,' he said, answering my thoughts, 'but you're right; it's not my habit as a magus or a scholar or a man to look startled and to shout.'

  " 'What now, Master?' I asked.

  " 'Go into the bones, and do not come out until you hear me...hear my voice, calling you. That I dream of you or think of you is not enough.'

  " 'I'll try, Master,' I said.

  " 'You'll disappoint me if you disobey; you're too young and strong to run rampant. You'll hurt my soul if you try to come out when I think of you.'

  "Again I felt the ready tears. 'Then I won't do it, Lord,' I said.

  "I went into the bones. For one moment before my eyes closed I saw the casket itself and that it had been moved to a hiding place, a niche within the wall, but then came the velvet sleep, and the thought, 'I love him, and I want to serve him.' And that was all.

  "The next morning I waked but didn't move. It was a long time, lying in the darkness, feeling nothing of the physical at all, waiting, and then when I heard his voice very distinctly, I answered the call.

  "The bright world opened up all around me again. I was seated in the garden, among the flowers, and he was on a couch there, reading, mussed and yawning as if he'd spent the night under the stars.

  " 'Well, I waited this time,' I said.

  " 'Ah, then you felt yourself wake before I called you?'

  " 'Yes, but waited, so that you'd be pleased. Some bit of memory came back to me, or has come at this moment, enough to ask a question.'

  " 'Ask. If I can't truly answer I won't make anything up.'

  "I laughed and laughed at that! I had some firm conviction in my utter forgetfulness that priests and Magi lied ferociously. He nodded in satisfaction at this.

  " 'Your question?'

  " 'Do I have a destiny?' I asked.

  " 'What a strange question. What makes you think anyone has a destiny? We do what we do and we die. I told you. There is but one Creator God and his name does not matter. Our destiny, for all of us, is to love and to gain greater appreciation and understanding of all around us. Why should yours be any different?'

  " 'Ah, but that's just it. I should have a special destiny, should I not?'

  " 'The belief in a special destiny is one of the most rampant and harmful delusions on earth. Innocent babes are lifted from the teats of queens and told that they have a special destiny--to rule Athens, or Sparta, or Miletus, or Egypt, or Babylon. What stupidity. But I know what lies behind your question. And you'd better listen now. Go get the Canaanite tablet and don't break it. If you break it, I'll have to put it back together and I'll make you cry.'

  " 'Hmmm. It's easy for you to make me cry, isn't it?'

  " 'Apparently,' he said. 'Get the tablet. Hurry. We have a journey ahead of us today. If you can take me to the steppes of the north, to the mountains where the great mountain of the gods is supposed to stand high above all else, then you can take me other places too. I want to go home to Athens. I want to walk in Athens. Go on, powerful spirit. Get the tablet. Hurry. Ignorance is of no use to anyone. Don't be afraid.' "

  12

  I laid hands on the Canaanite tablet, though it filled me with revulsion and hate. Indeed, I rocked with hate. I was so full of hate that for a moment I couldn't move. His voice called me back, with the command that I was not to break it. The writing was very small, he reminded me, and one chip would hurt the contents, and I must know it all.

  " 'Why should I?' I asked. I gestured towards the pillows inside the room. Might I bring one out, so that I could sit at his feet without soiling my robes? He nodded.

  "I crossed my legs. He was on his couch, one knee up, which seemed his favorite position, and he had the tablet now where he could read it clearly in the sun. This memory is so vivid to me, perhaps because the wall was white and covered in red flowers, and the olive tree was twisted and old, and many-branched as they get, and the green grass sprouting between the marble squares of the garden was soft. I loved to run the palm of my hand over it. I loved to lay the palm of my hand on the marble and feel the sun's heat.

  "And of course I remember him with love, in his loose, long, baggy Greek tunic, the gold threads worn off the edging, looking rather scrawny and content and ageless as his blue eyes moved over the tablet, and he drew it close to his face now and then and then moved it far away. I think he must have read every single little word carved on it, in its long narrow columns of cuneiform. I hated it.

  " 'You escaped into the spirit world at the hands of idiots,' he said. 'This is an old Canaanite incantation to call up a powerful evil spirit, a servant of evil as powerful as the spirits of evil that might be sent to earth by God. It is to create for a magician a mal'ak, strong as the Mal'ak which Yahweh sent to slay the firstborn of the Egyptians.'

  "I was stunned. I didn't answer him. I knew many translations of the story of the flight from Egypt and I knew an image of the Mal'ak, the shining angel of the Lord's Wrath.

  " 'This information was regarded dangerous by the Canaanites and sealed in this tablet, if the date is correct, a thousand years ago. This was black magic, bad magic, magic like that of the Witch of Endor, who brought the spirit Samuel up to speak with King Saul.'

  " 'I know these stories,' I said quietly.

  " 'The magician here would make his own mal'ak which could be as strong as a Satan or fallen angel or evil spirit that had once participated in the power of Yahweh Himself.'

  " 'I understand.'

  " 'The rules are very strict here. The candidate for the mal'ak must be thoroughly evil, opposed to God and all things good, one who had despaired of God in contempt for God's cruelty to man and the injustice He allowed into the world. The candidate for the mal'ak is to be so determined and angry and evil that he would fight God himself if he could or is called upon to do so. He should be able to meet any Angel of the Lord hand to hand and fight him down.'

  " 'You speak of good angels?'

  " 'Yes, good and bad; you were to be the equal of them and you may be. You are a mal'ak, not an ordinary spirit at all. But as I said, the one who would become this must be evil to the core of his heart, he must have no patience any longer with God and want to serve the rebellious spirit in mankind, that which has refused to accept God's rules. This spirit is not being created to serve a Devil or Demon, but to be one.'

  "I gasped.

  " 'You seem rather young to have been so wretchedly evil...at least in the form you've chosen on your own, which does seem the perfect emanation of what you were when you were alive. Were you that evil? Did you hate God so much?'

  " 'No, at least, I don't think I did. If I did, I didn't know.'

  " 'Did you choose to become the Servant of the Bones?'

  " 'No. I know I did not.'

  " 'More bungling. You weren't evil, you weren't willing, and you did not make a vow to serve whoever would own the bones, did you?'

  " 'Certainly not!' I tried to remember. It was so difficult now, the past grew bright, then faded, but I could push back to Cyrus's bedchamber, I could remember that Cyrus had sent me here to Zurvan, and I could remember something before that...a priest dead on the floor.

  " 'I killed the one who would be Master,' I said. 'I killed him and there was death all around me, I was dying when I was made. Only a little flame remained in me. I was to die. The stairway to heaven was to come down perhaps, or I was to go into the light and be part of it. I don't know which happened. But whatever the case, I was not willing to be the Servant of the Bones, I tried to escape...I remember running and calling for help, saying this was a Canaanite curse, but I don't remember to whom I appealed. Only afterwards I brought my bones in a sack into the bedchamber of the King.'

  " 'So he's told me. Well, according to this, you should have been an expert on evil and cruelty before you were chosen, and you should have begged for the privilege of eternal life equal to God's angels, and you should have been willing to endure a terrible death. At the moment when the pain became too great for you,
your spirit should have separated from the body, and watched the body be boiled down to bones. But only once the pain became too great. Only then. You were to endure the boiling cauldron of gold for as long as you could to perfect your hatred of God that he had made men sentient beings, and then and only then you should have risen free, aware of the power of your triumph over death, and your hatred of God, who made death, and your desire to be the mal'ak who is as strong as Yahweh's cruel heart when he turned it against those whom Saul or David or Joshua would slay.

  " 'You are to be the avenger of Adam and Eve, that they were foully tricked by your God. What does that say to you?'

  " 'It was all a blundering affair, as you said. I can't remember being in the cauldron, only a terrible, terrible fear of it. I think I escaped my body before the pain came, I think I couldn't endure it, all was confusion, I was surrounded by weak and self-seeking individuals, all grandeur had gone. All majesty had gone. I had done something, something that others wanted me to do, but it seemed tainted, horribly tainted and I'd been confused.'

  " 'And there had been majesty in this tainted act?'

  " 'Well, I think there had. I can remember a sense of great sacrifice, purpose. I can remember rose petals and a sleepy slow death whose worst pain was knowledge that it was irreversible and would take its time, but not be changed. I don't know why I said majesty. What did Cyrus say of me to you?'

  " 'Not enough, I don't think. But according to this tablet, you cannot be destroyed. If the bones are destroyed then you are loosed upon the world to take vengeance on everything living, like a pestilence.'

  "Despair descended on me. It descended on me utterly, a despair that would have been impossible for the spirit I had been only a few hours ago. When I wandered upwards towards those with joyous faces, when I saw the gleam of light, I hadn't known despair! I hadn't known it any more than a child being turned away from a plate of sweets. Now I knew.

  " 'I want to die,' I whispered. 'I want to truly die as I was supposed to die, before they did this to me, misguided fools that they were! Before they tried this fearsome magic. Ah, idiots! Ah, God!'

  " 'Die?' he asked, 'and wander among the stupid dead? Become a demon growling among other spirits, become a great foul enemy of all that is good, a bringer of death and torment!'

  " 'No, just die, die as if in my mother's arms, die as if to lie in my Mother Earth, and if I become light and if there is Heaven so be it, but if not, then simply to die, and to live on in the memory of anything good I ever did for anyone, any good act, any act of kindness and love, and...'

  " '...and what?'

  " 'I was going to say that I wanted to live on in memory for the acts I had done in praise of God, but I don't care about that now. I just want to die. I would rather God would leave me alone.' I stood up. I looked down at him. 'Did Cyrus tell you who I was in life? How he came to know me?'

  " 'No, you can go read his letters for yourself. He said only that your strength was too great for any magician but myself, and that he owed you a great debt, that your death had been his doing.' He stopped, thinking, pulling on his beard. 'Of course the King of all the world is not going to add to a letter that he was personally frightened of a spirit and wishes to get it as far from him as possible, but there was that, shall we say, tinge to the letter. You know, "I cannot command this spirit. I dare not. And yet I owe him my Kingdom?" '

  " 'I can't remember his owing me anything. I remember asking to be sent...I remember...'

  " 'Yes?'

  " 'Being forsaken by all.'

  " 'Well, these fools haven't made a demon. They have made something more like an angel.'

  " 'Angel of might,' I said. 'You used those words yourself. Cyrus used them. Marduk used them...' I stopped. Stumped by the name Marduk, and seeing nothing to surround the name or make it plausible in my speech.

  " 'Marduk, the god of Babylon?' he asked.

  " 'Don't mock him, he suffers,' I said, amazing myself.

  " 'You want vengeance on those who did this to you?'

  " 'I took it. I can't remember anyone else who is not dead. It was the priest's doing, and he...and the old woman, she died, the witch, the seer. I can't remember...I knew only Cyrus could help me and I knew that I had a right to walk into his bedchamber, that I would make him listen to me. No, I don't want vengeance. No. I don't remember anything enough to want it, any more than I hanker after life. I don't. There is something I want...to die...to rest, to sleep, to be dead in the sweet-smelling earth...or to see the light as I become one with it, one tiny spark of the light of God returned to his flame.

  I want death most...even more than the light. Just the quiet of death.'

  " 'You want this now,' he said. 'You didn't want it when you went walking, or roaming the realm of the spirits, or bringing the scrolls for me. Or when you first sat down in this garden and kept touching the grass with your hands.'

  " 'That's because you're a good man,' I said.

  " 'No, that's because you are a good man. Or were. And goodness burns as bright in you now as it ever did. Souls without memory are dangerous. You remember...but you remember only the good.'

  " 'No, I've told you how much I hate them...'

  " 'Yes, but they're gone, they're receding from you fast. You can't remember their names, or their faces...you don't hate them. But you remember good. Last night, you told me you found gold in your pockets. What did you do with it? You didn't say.'

  " 'Well, I gave it to the poor and hungry, a family of them, so they could eat.' I reached out and gathered the loose grass that would come up from the cracks between the marble. I looked at the tender green shoots. 'You're right. I do remember goodness, or I know it. I know it, and I see it and I feel it...'

  " 'Then I'll teach you everything I can,' he said. 'We'll travel. We'll go to Athens and then down into Egypt. I have never been deep into Egypt. I want to go. We'll travel by magic. Or sometimes merely in the natural way, because you're a strong guardian, and you must remember everything I teach you...your tendency, your weakness, is to veer away from pain by forgetting it, and when I die, you'll feel some pain.'

  "He fell quiet. I think the lessons were at an end for a little while. He closed his eyes. But I had a further pressing question.

  " 'Ask it, then, before I go to sleep.'

  " 'These Canaanites, who made this curse. Were they Hebrew?'

  " 'Not really,' he said. 'Not Hebrew as you are. Their Yahweh was one of many gods, only the strongest, a war god it seems. They were ancient peoples and they believed in other gods too. Are you glad to hear this?'

  "My mind had drifted. 'I suppose I am,' I said. 'Yes, I am. But I belong to no tribe now. My destiny is to belong to the best of Masters, for without them I may forget everything, I may drift...I may cease to see or hear or feel...and I won't be dead, merely waiting for the one who calls me forth.'

  " 'I won't live long,' he said. 'I'll teach you every trick I know that you have the power to do, and how to deceive men with illusions, and how to create spells over them with words and attitudes...that's all it is...remember...words, attitudes...it's the abstract...not the particular. You could make a curse of a list of barrels of grain if you said it right, you know? But I'll teach you and you will listen, and when I die...'

  " 'Yes...'

  " 'We'll see what the wide world teaches you by that time.'

  " 'Don't expect too much of me,' I said. I looked at him directly, which I had rarely done in all this time. 'You ask me what I remember. I remember killing the bedouins and I liked it very much. Not as much as the flowers, gathering them, you know, but killing...what is there like it on earth?'

  " 'You have a point,' he said. 'You have to learn that to love is better...to be kind is even better. In killing you crush a universe of beliefs and feelings and generations in that one person whom you kill. But when you do kindness, it's like dropping a pebble in the great ocean and the ripples go on forever and ever, and no wave, not even those as far away as Italy or Egypt, is t
he same. Kindness actually has considerably more power than killing has. But you'll come to see it. You knew it when you were alive.'

  "He considered for a moment, and then concluded his advice for the day.

  " 'You see, it's a matter of how well you can measure these things. When you strike down a man, you don't see the full implications of his death, not then. You feel the blood rush in you, even as a spirit you are formed in the likeness of man. But when you do something good, you can see it often...you can see it and see it and see it...and that's what overrides the desire to kill finally. The goodness shines too bright; it's too...undeniable. When you walked you saw it in people's faces, didn't you? Goodness. No one tried to hurt you. Not even the palace guards. They let you by. Was it your clothing and your demeanor? Or did you smile at them as well? Did your face shine with goodwill? Each time you return to me, you are happy, and your spirit, whatever made it, has a great capacity to love.'

  "I didn't answer.

  " 'What is in your head now?' he asked. 'Tell me.'

  " 'The bedouins,' I said. 'What fun it was to kill them,' I answered.

  " 'You're stubborn!' he said.

  "He closed his eyes and went to sleep. I sat there watching and gradually I slept too, asleep in my body, listening to the flowers next to my ears, and looking up into the branches of the olive tree now and then to see the birds there, and the distant sounds of the city became a music to me. And when I dreamed, it was of gardens, and light and fruit trees and joyous spirits with faces filled with love.

  "Words were woven into my dreams.

  " 'And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel...I form the light, and I create darkness: I make peace, and create evil...' My eyes opened, but then I knew sweeter verses, and sank back into a half sleep of song and willow trees swaying in the breeze."

  13

  For fifteen years, I traveled with Zurvan. I did his bidding in all things. He was rich, as I've said, and many times he wanted to travel merely as men do, and we went by ship to Egypt, and then back again to Athens and to other cities which he had visited in his youth and had despaired of ever seeing again.