Servant of the Bones

Sit there. I want to see you move about, walk, talk, lift your arms. Go on, sit down.'

"I did. It was a Greek chair, graceful with high arms and no back.

Everywhere around me the light seemed glorious and different; outside, the clouds were piled higher. The air was clearer.

" 'That's because you are on the shores of the sea,' he said. 'Do you feel the water in the air, spirit? That will always aid you. That is why the addle-headed ghosts of the dead and the demons like damp places, they need the water, the sound of it, the smell of it, the coolness creeping into them, in whatever form they possess.'

"He made a long stroll about the room. Arrogantly I just sat there, showing him no respect. He didn't seem to care.

"A Babylonian or Persian full suit would have been more flattering to him with his thin old legs and feet. But it was too warm.

"I drifted from looking at him. I was marveling at the mosaic floor. Our own floors at home had often been as colorful and as well crafted, but this floor was not full of stiff rosettes or processional figures, but with frolicking dancers and great clusters of grapes for ornament, and there was every kind of inlaid marble around its borders. The designs were fluid and jubilant; I thought of all the Greek vases I had handled in the marketplace, and how I had loved their graceful work. The murals on the walls were equally lovely and lively, and there were the repeated bands of color which utterly delighted my eye.

"He stopped in the middle of the room. 'So we admire the beautiful, do we?' I didn't answer him. Then he said: 'Speak, I want to hear your voice.'

" 'And what shall I say?' I answered without rising. 'What I want to say? Or what you tell me to say? What my true thoughts are, or some servile nonsense-that I am your spirit-slave!'

"I broke off suddenly. I lost all confidence in myself. I realized didn't know quite why I was saying these things. I struggled to remember. I had been sent to this man. This man was a great magician. This man was supposed to be a Master of his craft. I was a Servant. Who had made me that?

" 'Don't make yourself dissolve with all this petty worry,' he said 'You speak well and clearly, that's what I wanted to know, and you think, and you are most powerful. You are perhaps the greatest aneel of might I've ever seen, and nothing I've ever conjured has had your strength.'

" 'Who sent me? It was a King,' I said, 'But my mind is muddled suddenly, and it's agony not to know.'

" 'It's the trap of spirits, it's what keeps them weak, it's the hobbling of them provided by God, you might say, so that they don't ever gain strength enough to hurt men and women too much. But you know who sent you. Think! Make yourself come up with the answer. You are going to start remembering things now, you are going to start paying attention. And first, let go of the raging scream in you. I had nothing to do with those who hurt you and killed you. And I suspect there was much bungling to the whole affair, which a weaker spirit than you might never have overcome. But you did overcome it. And the man who sent you? He did as you asked him to do, remember? He did what you asked.'

" 'Ah, yes, King Cyrus, he did send me to Miletus as I asked.' It came clear and it was all the more clear when I tried to let the anger pass from me like so much air out of my lungs. I even felt my lungs. I felt myself breathe.

" 'Don't waste your time on that,' he said. 'Remember the questions I put to you? Your fingernails? Your eyelashes? Details that are visible. You need no inside organs. Your spirit fills up the perfect shell that you are, which no one can tell from a real man. Don't waste your strength making hearts for yourself, or blood or lungs, just to feel human. That's stupid and foolish. Only now and then you'll need to make a little blood flow from your body. That's nothing, but don't go hungering after your human form. You're better now!'

" 'Am I?' I asked, still slouching in the chair, ankle on my knee, as this older wiser man put up with my arrogance. 'Am I good, or am I something to do evil? You said angel of might. I heard the King use those words. But then he also said demon. Or was it someone else?

"He stood in the middle of the room, rocking a little, and composed, studying me through narrow eyes.

" 'I suspect you will be what you want,' he said, 'though others av try to make you what they will. You have such hatred in you, Ariel, such hatred.'

" 'You're right. I do hate. I see a boiling cauldron and I feel terror and then hate.'

" 'Nobody's ever going to be able to hurt you like that again. And remember, you rose above the cauldron, did you not? Did you feel the scalding gold!'

"I shuddered all over. I gave way to tears. I can't even stand to talk now of it, and I didn't want to talk to him. 'I felt it for an instant,' I said 'one instant I felt it and what it would mean to remain in it and die in that pain. I felt it ... I felt it piercing through some covering on me, some thick numbing armor, but where it hurt me . . . was my eyes.'

" '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. We'll 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.'