“What sort of ritual?” Dabir asked.
“Did I not say to hold your questions?” Her slim arched eyebrows rose. “You are either my allies, or my prisoners. It is your choice. But”—she indicated me with a casual flick of the wrist—“if you choose to be prisoners, I have little use for your guard dog. I suffer him only as a gesture of goodwill. So”—she eyed Dabir—“what is your choice?”
“We are allies,” Dabir said, “so long as we fight against the Sebitti.”
“Of course. If you aid me, I shall let you both go free, alive. I will see you equipped with the appropriate supplies for return to your people. But I will keep the bones.”
“For use against the caliphate?” he asked.
“You have other things to worry about, currently. But no, not for the immediate future, at least.”
Even I could see the way her mind bent. She meant to place herself or some puppet upon the throne of Constantinople. These men with her were either members of her family guard, or the adherents of some powerful noble she worked for.
“So, we are allies.” Lydia smiled thinly. “How nice. You will teach me to use the power in the bones, and I shall use them to control one of the great snow spirits to fight the Sebitti. I will presently begin its summoning.”
Dabir made no attempt to hide his astonishment. “You’re going to summon another one?”
“Who are you planning to put it in this time?” I growled.
She rolled her eyes at me. “I’m not binding the spirit to anyone, idiot. I mean to call one of the great spirits—like the ones I saw you fighting. Or more powerful still.”
“What makes you think you can control one?” Dabir asked.
“Leave that to me,” she said sharply. She tapped a fingernail against the underside of her lip, and her gaze fastened upon the club. “How is it done? Is there a certain phrase to access its magics?”
I looked over to Dabir, and he did not answer. How could he?
Lydia pursed her mouth, and her eyes narrowed.
Dabir wrestled with a reply as the woman’s expression darkened. Finally my friend sighed with a slight inclination of his head. “Lydia, we have not yet unlocked the secrets in these devices.” His hand drifted to the book in his satchel. “My friend Jibril and I made some progress, however—”
Her upper lip twitched as Dabir spoke; those delicate nostrils flared. When most women discolor because of sorrow or anger, they transform into ugly caricatures of themselves. By contrast, Lydia’s beauty flared as her pale cheeks reddened. “You mean that you were just swinging the bones at those things?”
She saw the answer from our expressions, and she almost exploded with anger. A string of Greek words, some obviously profane, accompanied exasperated gesticulation before she pointed at Dabir. “The Sebitti thought you were some kind of mastermind!”
“Dabir is the brightest man I know,” I shot back.
“Who else do you know?” she snapped.
“In our defense,” Dabir said tightly, “we’ve had to learn on the run. We’ve had little time for research, and few sources to help us.”
She composed herself and leaned forward. Her voice was low and tense. “Listen to me, wise man. The Sebitti didn’t know I’d betrayed them until I plucked up the two of you. You can be sure they will shortly find their way to us, and it will not go well.”
“I understand,” Dabir told her.
“I’m not sure you do. With the right power, I can control the spirits as well as them. Better even. But I have a summoning circle to finish before I can even try.”
Dabir eyed her speculatively. “You have been planning this for a long while.”
“I have been prepared,” Lydia countered, “to defend myself. That will be far easier to do with the bones than with ordinary blood magic. Now. You will put your lauded brain to working out how to tap those magics before we’re surrounded by a band of power-mad wizards or we’re hip-deep in an army of frost spirits.” She rose, spat a few words in Greek to our guards, then strode from the tower, slamming the door behind her.
The guards then turned to us with grim expressions. I thought that they might demand our weapons, but they did not. Their bearing, however, indicated no illusion that our alliance was anything beyond a polite imprisonment.
“What did she tell them?” I asked.
“To make sure I worked.” Dabir looked at me with a worried expression, then reached down for Jibril’s notebook, which must have satisfied the Greeks because they exchanged a brief word, and settled into a wary watch.
A short time later, the door banged open, and a blast of air heralded the arrival of a soldier who carried a steaming pot of mutton broth and another with a tray of cheeses and breads and empty bowls. Also there were several jugs of what proved to be icy water. I had become greatly hungry and set to without waiting for invitation. Dabir but picked at the tough bread, his expression growing more and more clouded as he flipped through Jibril’s book. I knew how he felt.
“We cannot dwell on what we have lost,” I told him. “Eat. Gather your strength.”
“That’s not it,” he said. “I mean, it is, but … Jibril’s book is in code. It’s a substitution cypher.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said wearily, “that I’m looking at gibberish until I can crack the code.”
“Shouldn’t you be examining the bones anyway?”
“I have looked at the spear a hundred times.”
This was quite true.
“The club is little different,” he went on. “I had hoped Jibril’s notes might inspire me, but…” He lifted a hand, helplessly, and the book slid from his knees. He managed to snatch it before it fell, then sat it at his side and resumed gnawing on his hunk of bread.
“You should dip it in the broth,” I suggested, “to soften it.”
His look was withering.
At that moment one of our guards rose and demanded a question of Dabir, who answered in fluent Greek, then bent to retrieve the book.
“I thought you said it was gibberish,” I asked.
“Why don’t you look at the bones for a while?” he replied, irritated.
I did not think that would do anyone much good, so I kept eating. Dabir turned away to pace the room a time or two before sitting again to open the first page. He sighed, staring at a faint image there, then froze in place. I watched him, and I swear that he did not move for a full five heartbeats. Finally I heard him whisper, “By the Holy Ka’aba.” His finger traced slowly across the page, and I saw him smile.
I leaned closer. “What is it?”
“Angel.” Dabir looked up. “His last words, as Jibril passed off the book, were ‘Look for angels.’ Do you remember?”
“And?”
He spoke excitedly. “A substitution cypher has the same number of letters in a word, just different letters. So if I assume this word”—he pointed at the paper, on which I could only make out some dark squiggles from where I sat—“is angel, I can deduce other words that employ some of the same letters, and from there find the meanings of the rest. Do you see?”
I thought that I did. “How do you know that word is ‘angel’?”
Dabir lifted the book up to me, and on the front page was a little faded sketch of a pretty young woman with high cheekbones and a slight overbite. Underneath the image was a smattering of unfamiliar symbols. “This is a young Afya,” he told me. “His angel.”
He then rifled swiftly through his own supply pack, produced his notebook, pen, and ink, and dropped to the filthy floor to draw up a chain of letters and what they stood for in Jibril’s text. In a few moments more, Dabir took to studying the final pages of Jibril’s book, sometimes referencing his sheet of letters. He must have understood what he was reading, for he looked absorbed, though troubled. The guards could not see what, exactly, he did, but seemed satisfied that he was busy.
Once I ate my fill, I thought of wandering to the door to learn how far Ly
dia was with her circle, but knew I would not be able to explain my action to the guards. I tried, and failed, not to think about Najya, and the future now lost to us. It was too painful to contemplate.
I knew that if I was to sit I would simply brood longer about smiles I could never see, so I decided to look at the bones. The club, at least, I had barely observed. Yet I found nothing that I had not already seen: dozens of stick figures facing beasts or striking poses. The only thing that even slightly resembled a letter was the emblem Dabir had identified as Erragal’s sigil.
I had little gauge of time, but I thought it likely a half hour or more had passed. Dabir was now frowning into Jibril’s book, which did not fill me with hope. “Do you have anything?” I asked.
He looked up and blinked distractedly. “Oh, yes,” he said, though he sounded dejected. “But nothing we can use right now.”
That wasn’t much comfort. It was as I glanced back down at the weapon that I finally noticed something new. I grew more and more certain as I searched among the carvings, then positive as I rotated the club in my lap. I fought down a rising sense of excitement, set it down, then sank down beside the spear. As I turned it slowly, I understood what neither of the scholars had perceived, and I grinned.
“What have you found?” Dabir asked me. He might have missed the markings, but he had not failed to notice my sudden engagement.
I could not hold back a brief laugh.
“What is it?”
“Look!” I put my finger to the figure holding a spear beside Erragal’s sigil. “Everything else besides this stick man fights someone else, or is a monster or squiggle.”
“Yes,” Dabir agreed slowly.
“But rotate the spear. What do you see?”
Dabir glanced at me, speculative, then gingerly took the weapon from me and did as I bade, slowly turning the thing.
I glanced over at the Greeks, who watched with interest.
“Again and again there is a figure standing alone,” Dabir said. “But he is in a different position each time.”
“It is a weapon form, Dabir! There is another one on the club.”
He blinked at me.
“If you had ever actually bothered to train, maybe you wouldn’t be so unfamiliar with practice stances!”
“By God! You are right!” He stared down at the weapon.
Those of you who are not warriors may not know that one of the tried and tested means of mastering a weapon is to practice proper stances and movements until they become automatic. Since antiquity, weapons instructors have devised patterns of these strikes and parries to aid in memorization, and these are sometimes conveyed in pictures. I had seen a number of them over the years, beginning with those carved on an old Persian chest my father had given me, may peace be his. But Dabir had never seen them drawn out like this.
I did not hear his sigh of relief, but I saw his shoulders ease, and he turned gratefully to me. “Asim, what would I do without you?”
Before I could voice a response, he spoke on. “They are wrong, all of them. Jaffar, the caliph, the governor. Lydia. They think I am the hero and you are only a shield.”
“But I am your shield,” I reminded him.
His look was grave. “Nay, you are more akin to my right arm. And you are always there to shake sense into me when I despair.”
These words touched me, and even years later, despite all else, they bring a smile to my lips when I recall that day.
“What do you think will happen if we hold the weapons and move through the forms?” he asked me.
“Hah! You suddenly think I have the answers? Maybe it will unlock the magic. But maybe it’s just advice on using the weapons.”
He chuckled and smacked my shoulder. “There’s one sure way to find out,” he went on. “I’m just wondering if we should do so here.”
I glanced up at our observers, watching with keen interest from their post by the stairs. “You think it might concern them if we start waving weapons around?”
“There is that. But I’m more troubled by what Lydia will do once she learns how to wield them.”
“I think she is right about the immediate dangers.”
“Yes,” he said reluctantly. He then handed the spear back to me, shoved Jibril’s notebook into his own shoulder satchel, and rose to approach the Greeks.
They stood on the instant.
In those days I knew little Greek apart from curse words, so I could only guess what they said. One of the two soldiers had a broken nose, and he did most of the talking. There were several exchanges, and Dabir turned to indicate the club and the spear, and possibly me. The two Greek soldiers then spoke to each other, and Broken Nose seemed to give assent, for he nodded as he answered.
I learned from Dabir that the Greeks would allow us our experiment so long as it met with Lydia’s approval, and so long as it took place outside, presumably where we could not launch a surprise attack against them as we worked with the weapons. Thus we threw on our cloaks, gathered our gear, and headed out the door.
The biting chill in the outside air was a rude shock even though we’d been inside only a small part of this day. So fierce were the gusts that I thought for a minute the snow was falling once more.
The Greeks, no strangers to frigid temperature, were well mantled in thick garments. Some stood watch. Some were at work stuffing the gap in the wall with shattered clumps of stone mortared with snow and cold water, an ingenious strategy in this weather.
Those dozen selected to aid Lydia had been busy sweeping snow clear from the courtyard flagstones and running errands to and from where Lydia was painting symbols between the two circles. She used black on the light gray stones, as you might expect for the working of dark magic.
Broken Nose left us and advanced to speak with Lydia. He leaned forward over the ring of snow brushed from the circle rather than risk approaching closer, which amused me. Both Lydia and her second in command, the broad scarred one, looked up at his words, then over to us.
Lydia climbed to her feet. “Dabir. Come here.”
Dabir traded a glance with me, then went off to speak with the woman. The other guard remained with me, looking alert and cold.
“Asim.”
I thought at first I dreamed, for I had heard Najya’s voice, faint, behind me. I blinked and turned, only to see a shape emerging through a gust of wind near the tower.
“Asim.” As the figure spoke my name and extended snow-white hands I heard the strange, hollow quality to her voice and saw that she did not walk, but drifted.
I had been called by one of the life-draining frost women.
My Greek warden called out in alarm, but I advanced, the club at hand.
The tower door was just visible through Najya’s outline. Her face was not a mask of frost like the others I had seen; it was more expressive and twisted in sadness as I drew close. “Why did you leave me?” she asked.
I hesitated even as I brought up the club.
“You said you would protect me.”
I had never heard any of the other witches speak, and this one seemed inclined to talk, rather than attack. And then I remembered Najya’s vision that she would come to me in a fortress tower and I would spurn her. Could this be what she had seen?
Yet this was not the woman I knew, just a thing in her image. “You are not Najya. Look at your hands, if you can see, for you have no eyes.”
Dabir called to me; Lydia was shouting in Greek. But the wind was whipping up, and the thing with Najya’s face stared at shaking hands before her voice rose in a wail of agony. “What has happened to me?”
Misgiving wrenched at me. I began to think that I did not witness a trick, but a tragedy. “Najya?” I took a tentative step closer. “Are you … is this your spirit, not hers?”
There were footsteps behind me, and I glanced back to find Dabir running forward with the spear. Lydia, the Greek officer, and half-a-dozen soldiers followed.
“Back!” I called to them, and held up
a hand.
“Am I dead?” she asked me softly, and my heart ached.
Suddenly I realized what must have happened, and horror threatened to engulf me. “Is this your soul? Has she cast it out?”
Dabir joined me and stood with leveled spear, his eyes locked upon the snow ghost.
Again Najya eyed her hands, and her face twisted in grief. “Kill me,” she said then, her voice a whisper of wind.
“Nay, that I will not—”
“Kill me. Do not let her have my body. I—”
She fell silent, and her face took on a placid expression.
“Najya?” I asked.
Lydia was chattering something in Greek to Dabir, who snapped back an answer.
A light like shining crystal bloomed in the sockets of those eyes and the creature flung herself at me like a youth eager to embrace.
12
Dimly I knew that strength ebbed from my body, but I found myself unable to act.
Dabir’s battle cry was almost in my ear, and then, suddenly, the spirit broke into shards of frost and flakes that I stumbled through.
“Asim!” I felt Dabir’s hand on my shoulder, slowing my fall so I could catch myself. He somehow spun to face me. “Are you all right?”
I was shivering, yes, but it was the shock of the moment that had wounded me more. “That was Najya,” I said, looking to him for some reflection of the horror I felt.
“That was just a spell the spirit casts,” Lydia said dismissively. “She sends forth her image to collect life energies for her sorceries.” She then turned and spoke to the officer with the scar, who adjusted his horsehair helm and shouted men into their positions.
Her words were no salve to my torment. “It was Najya. She spoke with me,” I insisted to Dabir. “Did you kill her?”
Lydia walked toward her circle. “If Usarshra found us, her forces cannot be far behind. I have work. Dabir, you’d best test your theory.”
The Bones of the Old Ones Page 17
