The Bones of the Old Ones

by Howard Andrew Jones

  Dabir read aloud from the manuscript. “‘And thus did Bilgames turn the old ones back, and destroy them all.’ Ocnus doesn’t say how.”

  “By stabbing them with the spear?” I asked. “Does he say what the other weapons are?”

  “No. He’s long-winded on the most insignificant matters,” Jibril said, “then glosses over the important points. But I have been reading Ocnus for the better part of two hours. The gist is that in a time of great snow and ice, strange beings that hunted men could take physical form when they took on matter from our plane of existence, and they liked blood. Five weapons were fashioned from the body of the most savage of all the spirits, and its life force was divided among them. They had planned for six, but not all of the spirit’s energy could be trapped.”

  “Jibril.” Dabir looked pensive. “The part that couldn’t be trapped—would that survive?”

  “It would depend upon the strength of the spirit,” Jibril said. “Probably not, but … you’re thinking that’s what the Sebitti put in Najya?”

  “I but speculate. Still, it would explain why she is sensitive to the bones, wouldn’t it? Because they contained part of her own life force?”

  Jibril looked stunned.

  Dabir, though, was still thinking aloud. “The Sebitti surely knew of the prophecy the Assyrian mentions. They knew that the ice would come again, and that the weapons would be needed to fight the spirits.”

  Jibril assented with a quick nod. “Surely. Anzu and Koury are supposed to have worked with the Assyrians. They had to have known. They might even have been the ones who told the scribe who wrote this.”

  “What if,” Dabir said slowly, “they’re gathering these weapons to drive back the winter?”

  Jibril’s eyebrows rose in alarm.

  “Wait a moment,” I said. “You’re saying the Sebitti are trying to help us? That they mean to find these bones to fight the spirits?” We had been ordered to locate and kill Tarif’s murderers, not cooperate with them.

  “I am just suggesting it.”

  “Please tell me,” I said to Dabir, “you don’t mean to turn Najya and this spear over to them.”

  “No, but we could ask them what they intend, if we could find a way to negotiate from a position of strength.”

  “That would be mad!” Jibril said sharply. “They cannot be trusted. Do not forget they were said to be the scythe to the grain, harvesters of men when the god of the underworld grew angry.” His words were laced with venom. “The Sebitti cannot be reasoned with, cannot be negotiated with. They will lie, then take what they want!” Jibril swore then, rather foully.

  Our discussion seemed to have unsettled the older man. By contrast, Dabir was strangely calm. He studied Jibril. His voice was very quiet. “You have spoken with them.”

  After a long, long moment, Jibril bobbed his head in assent.

  “How long ago?”

  “About three years.”

  “Jibril.” Dabir now addressed him very slowly. “Did they have something to do with Afya’s death?”

  Jibril raised his head and shook it, as though he were in pain.

  “What happened?” There was naked concern in Dabir’s voice.

  For a long moment, Jibril said nothing, and when he finally mustered the strength to speak, his voice was but a whisper. “There was nothing anyone could do for her. She was wasting away.” He glanced up at me, then over to Dabir. “Always before I had used magic only to break things. To help people. I thought, this once, I might use it to help my family. Just this once.”

  Dabir would not relent. “And?”

  “I … made bargains, and learned how to summon them. I called upon Lamashtu, mistress of life and death. And she came. Allah forgive me, but she came.” He shook his head. “She swore she would save Afya.”

  “What did she do?”

  But this question Jibril would not answer. He only shook his head. “And so she died, and I put away my books, and tools. I should have burned them.”

  “I am glad you have not,” Dabir said.

  Jibril’s eyes gleamed wetly, and it seemed that he had aged a dozen years.

  I felt for the fellow, but it was not my place to offer solace, and I did not think he desired it. “So what do we do?” I asked.

  I think Dabir was grateful for the change in subject. He tapped his ring thrice, then cleared his throat. “Let us review what we know. A great winter has come, one predicted by the ancients. The Sebitti are working with a Greek sorceress to summon a spirit to find ancient weapons, which were fashioned to fight spirits that arrived with just such a winter. The weapons seem to be the only thing, apart from fire, that could turn them back, but they are also repositories of magical energy which might be tapped by any mage who knows how to unlock them. If I understand you correctly.” Dabir looked to Jibril.

  “You do.” Jabril straightened a little. “And I’ll tell you what must be done. We must track down the rest of these weapons and keep them from the Sebitti.”

  “You must be joking,” I said.

  “He may be right. If the spirit inside Najya is trying to claim its lost energy, we might free her by finding and banishing the magics in each of these bones. If it can’t claim them in this world, it has no reason to remain in Najya’s body.”

  This was the first hopeful news I’d heard. “But how will we find them?” I asked.

  “Najya will lead us,” Dabir answered. “She can sense their location, remember?”

  “But what of her?” I asked. “What about this woman in Raqqa that Jibril mentioned? Shouldn’t we go to her and see if she can remove the spirit?”

  “This is beyond even her, I’m afraid,” Jibril said. “And Dabir’s reasoning is sound. If a spirit has no reason to remain, it is far easier to dispel. This may well bring a halt to the winter, and it will surely frustrate the Sebitti.” His jaw set with determination. “I will go with you.”

  Dabir’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “You need me,” he continued. “There is no one alive who knows more about the Sebitti.”

  “I cannot take you from your family. The odds against us are high. And you hate to travel! When’s the last time you left Harran?”

  “None of that matters now,” Jibril said bluntly. “What good shall I be to my family if the world is frozen over? I will go with you. I am not so old, yet, that I am a burden. Besides, who else can unlock the power of the spear and the other weapons?”

  I thought to hear Dabir remonstrate. But after a time he said only, “I shall be glad to have you.”

  8

  When we left Harran the next morning Najya wore Jibril’s trinket prominently. Dabir had spoken alone with her at length, after the evening meal with Jibril’s family, and he told me that it had gone about as well as might be expected. I did not know what Najya thought, for she remained disinclined to answer any questions I put to her with more than a yes or no.

  The wind shrilled and moaned as our horses plodded north across the plain toward the Taurus Mountains, where Najya said we must go to find the nearest bone. She said that it felt a little closer to Harran than Mosul had been from Isfahan, when she’d heard the call of the spear, and Dabir had calculated the rest. Najya insisted that she only sensed four weapons, including the spear, no matter that the accounts claimed five, and Dabir speculated that something had been destroyed in the intervening millennia.

  “I suppose it is a wonder,” he said, “that four survive after so long.”

  We two rode just behind Kharouf and far-eyed Ishaq, our vanguard that day. I glanced back to see Jibril riding at Najya’s side, trying, in vain I think, to draw her out.

  “At each stage,” I said to my friend, “news grows worse for her.”

  “I worry there will not be good news for any of us for a long while,” Dabir confessed. “I cannot help thinking the Sebitti are watching, or waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “Perhaps they want us to find the weapons, then will move against us
.”

  I grunted. “To let us do their work.”

  “Yes.”

  “We shall find out, in time.”

  I heard Jibril chuckle behind me and glanced back to see Najya gesturing to him, as if in midspeech.

  “Jibril has her talking,” I said.

  “Good,” he replied, then added quietly, “I am worried about him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s not telling us everything.”

  “He does not wish to speak of his wife’s death,” I said. This, at least, was no great mystery.

  “There is more to it than that.” Dabir relented with a sigh. “But you are partly right. They were very close.”

  “I could tell that. My mother would screw up her face like that, sometimes, when she spoke of my father.”

  “Afya was very kind.” He smiled wistfully. “Even when she scolded and he grumped, they were playful about it, and often I saw them holding hands, or touching a shoulder. His bitterness is new,” he finished. “But I suppose losing the love of your life might make you bitter.”

  The way that his voice trailed off, it was easy to see where his own thoughts led, and I could not help rolling my eyes a bit. “Allah preserve me,” I said. “You’re not going to start brooding again, are you?”

  He flashed a sad half smile. I thought I would point out the obvious, something that someone so intelligent should surely have noticed. “Sabirah is happy now, and has a child.”

  Dabir objected. “We know that she has a child. We do not know that she is happy.” He fell silent for a moment, and then his words came sharp and swift. “I think I should have asked for her hand, Asim.”

  I could only stare.

  He sounded defensive as he explained. “The caliph would have given me anything that day.”

  “Ai-ah! Jaffar would have been your enemy from that moment forward!”

  “I am not sure that’s very different now,” he said quietly. “I was guilty, that day, of not thinking with my heart.”

  “And with good reason! Would not she have been shamed to have been pulled from her bridal bed? Would not you have ruined Jaffar’s plan to marry her to that merchant family? And what would the merchant’s family have said, to have the alliance with Jaffar’s family dashed? Two of the caliphate’s most powerful families would have been after your head!”

  “I suppose,” he said, “that you are right.”

  “No, you were right. I’m just reminding you.”

  He fell silent then, and perhaps because of the subject, my thoughts went to Najya, for it had occurred to me that she might be as lost to me as Sabirah was to my friend.

  Something of my feelings must have shown on my face, for Dabir commented, “Here I am wearing a track into the same worthless ground while my friend is weighted with a heavy load.” He added sadly, “I don’t suppose it would have helped if I’d warned you not to grow attached to her.”

  Of course, he’d guessed it all. “I doubt it,” I admitted. I stared into the distance, lest my longing be fully evident upon my face. “She is a woman such as I have never known, Dabir. I do not intend to fail her.”

  Dabir followed my gaze, beyond the dull white gray haze that was the horizon. “I shall do everything in my power to save her,” he promised. I wished that he might tell me all would surely be well, but it was not Dabir’s way to mislead his friends. I dared not ask him what he thought her chances were of surviving the whole of it, for I saw the truth in his eyes.

  “Perhaps,” Dabir said, “you’ve noticed the way Jibril and his family speak of angels.”

  He sought to distract me by changing the subject. It was none too subtle, but I was grateful anyway. “I had,” I replied. “Why do they do that?”

  “They are Sabians.”

  Now there were some Sabians living in Mosul, but most of them had fair hair. I knew little of them, other than that they were people of the book to whom prophets had come, like Jews and Christians. Yet I was still puzzled. “He prays five times each day, with us.”

  “Yes, that is the way of Sabians. They revere Allah and all his prophets, but they feel that there are other wise traditions to follow God. Many of them live in Harran, and are especially interested in angels. They think one dwells in each star, and that the truly virtuous may be reborn as angels when they die, to assist Allah’s works.”

  “That is strange.”

  Dabir laughed shortly. “Yes. But so must many teachings seem to those who do not grow up among them.”

  I pondered that briefly, then strove unsuccessfully to think only of more hopeful matters.

  Though we journeyed along another major caravan trail, we passed no living men in the hours after dawn, only three wandering horses. Disquietingly, they were saddled and trailing their reins. We gathered the animals and led them after us. The soldiers wondered whether the mounts had fled during a bandit attack, and I think they longed for action like me; they desired an opponent they could face and defeat and tired of the fruitless travel through the cold.

  Just after midday prayers we saw a small village across the vast plain of white, and our horses picked up their pace, thinking that rest and food lay just before them.

  Yet as we drew closer Dabir grew tense and shifted in his saddle. “Asim,” he said, “do you see any smoke from that village?”

  He was right. There should have been cooking fires, at the very least. Yet from the dozens of huts and outbuildings I saw nothing. “Nay,” I told him. “Perhaps they conserve their fuel. It cannot be easily had in this place.”

  “Perhaps.”

  I knew better than to ignore a warning from Dabir, so I put the men on alert.

  As we drew closer we saw that the village was oddly empty. No urchins threw snowballs. No children ran to the animal sheds for chores. No one was walking back and forth between the buildings. The wind alone moved in that place, moaning softly. Finally, though, we heard the whinny of horses calling to ours. I thought for just a moment all might be well, and then we discovered nine men and women lying in the road just beyond the last hut, as though they’d been overcome by cold during an attempt to flee. Each was covered separately in their own sheet of ice.

  The soldiers muttered and made the sign against the evil eye, as you might expect, but I ordered them silent.

  “What could have done this?” Kharouf asked me quietly. His left arm was still held before him in a sling, like a bird wing.

  I could but shake my head. I doubted that there was some ordinary explanation.

  We carefully picked our way around the bodies, peering alertly toward the shuttered windows and sealed doors, as if some earthly enemy lingered in wait. I raised my voice, calling out to any who might be in earshot.

  After my second call I held up a hand, for I had heard the faint whisper of voices. “Hold,” I ordered.

  Over the snuffle of our own horses and the lonely wind I now perceived the low chant of a woman, though I could not make out her words. There was an answering mutter from male voices. I motioned Abdul to split our forces so that we might come to the square from three directions. This was swiftly accomplished, and as two groups of four trotted to approach from the flanks, I led the way forward, steel bared.

  The narrow street broadened into a wide square centered about an old well. Its stones glistened with ice dusted over with snow, which would have looked almost charming had there not been three men frozen in upright slabs just to the right. Two were half turned, as if they had begun to run in the moment before death. The third had been caught flat-footed and stared out at us now through a dagger’s length of ice, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping in terror.

  To the left of these grisly monuments a half-dozen impatient horses were picketed—four saddled, two laden—and they whinnied again to our animals and pricked up their ears eagerly. More striking than all of this were the three living men kneeling on prayer rugs in front of a tableau of frozen corpses, and the woman before them chanting words in a language I did not
know. The men echoed her. All were Khazars, the men in heavy furs and thick hats, armed with curved swords. The woman was small and thickly set. She was garbed in a bulky robe fashioned of gray furs, and her boots were adorned with bands hung with small iron animals.

  As she fell silent, the Khazars looked up at us, and the rest of our force riding in from east and west. You would have thought to see fear in their eyes to behold so many tense, armed warriors, yet their expressions were blank.

  “Have you come,” the woman asked in heavily accented Arabic, “to witness the miracle?”

  Dabir stared sternly at the gathered Khazars, and his voice was heavy with distaste. “What miracle?”

  The soldiers behind us muttered darkly, and I heard Gamal asking permission to cast the Khazars naked in the snow. Abdul ordered him silent.

  A bracelet that had been hidden by the woman’s sleeve was revealed as she raised her hands. The animal images hung from it jangled together. “This is sign that the final days are come. Soon the savior shall walk the earth, and lead the just to paradise.”

  The wind keened then, as if it were a willful thing that had heard her words and approved them. Abdul had to snap again at the men to silence their outraged grumbling.

  “How did you know where to find this miracle?” Dabir asked.

  She raised her hands to the empty sky. “I followed the song heard in my heart.”

  Jibril drew rein beside Dabir and stared down at her. “Have there been other signs?”

  “Are they not everywhere? Are you desert folk not brought low? If you do not turn from the false faith, you shall lie like these, forever within a frozen hell.”

  I heard the shift of hooves in the snow behind me and looked back to see a grim Abdul riding up on his gray mount. His eyes were narrowed, and his hand at his sword hilt. Yet the Khazars watched with seeming indifference, as though the warrior were no threat whatsoever.