The Bones of the Old Ones (Dabir and Asim)

by Howard Andrew Jones

  Dabir then took me by both shoulders. “Asim.” He sought my eyes. “I do not think she is dead.” He said this very seriously, very slowly.

  Even so, I scarce believed him. “What do you mean?”

  “You truly spoke with her?”

  “Aye,” I said. “She was confused, and did not know how she had gotten here. When she realized she was but a spirit, she despaired, and asked me to slay her. But then the spirit took back control…” I shook my head, trying to push the moment from my memory. “Do you think she was still there when you … when you saved me?”

  “Najya and the spirit may be more closely linked than either realize,” Dabir said. He released my shoulders. “Do you recall? When Gazi attacked in the caravanserai, Najya conjured frost women to defend you. Not the spirit—Najya. She was in control.”

  This was true.

  “And now the spirit sent forth some part of herself to scout. But she accidentally included some part of Najya with her, before the spirit took control again. I think it likely that Najya’s soul is still trapped within her body.”

  I caught sight of hope then, where I had only known despair, and I clutched desperately for it.

  Dabir saw my look. “I cannot say for certain, Asim, but … there is still a chance. I have Jibril’s notes—I could duplicate the spell he tried using to banish the spirit.”

  “But the spirit broke his circle.”

  “We,” Dabir lifted the spear from the flagstone, “should be able to power a far greater one.”

  I smiled. Oh, certainly, there were immense challenges yet—avoiding the Sebitti, escaping from Lydia, somehow bringing the spirit into a circle once more—but Najya at least was alive.

  “Come,” Dabir said.

  I nodded once, suppressing a shiver. “Very well. But I will try the form first, in case something goes wrong. And besides,” I added, “your stances are too narrow.”

  Dabir smirked.

  I had dropped the club while the spirit attacked. I knelt to rotate the weapon in my hands and considered the steps again. The form had seven movements, and began with the club pointed with heavy end toward the earth, to the right. From there it moved to what seemed a strike position from the high right, then up from low left. Then there were two block positions, one vertical, one horizontal, and finally an upper strike from the left. The pattern was designed so that the user would finish in the same stance he started with, a symmetry that I admired.

  “Do you have it?” Dabir asked.

  “It is not so simple as it looks,” I explained. “I must choose how to move between stances.” I scratched at my beard. “Will anything bad happen if I don’t move properly?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Probably?”

  Dabir offered a lopsided grin.

  So it was that I found myself practicing fighting stances under the stars and a full moon in a snow-topped ruin with an old club formed all of bone, watched by enemy warriors. After the first run-through I halted in the final position, waiting to see lightning bolts or rainbows or some other magical thing.

  Nothing happened.

  “Do you feel any different?” Dabir asked me urgently.

  I shook my head, feeling a bit self-conscious. “No. Let me try again.”

  There proved to be many variations, because the more I considered the pictures, the more ways I thought possible to move between each stance. Each time an attempt ended in failure Dabir offered speculation that was mostly useless, for he was finally outside an area of his expertise.

  After close to a quarter hour, I tried shifting the horizontal parry a little higher and adding a flourish to move lower into the next strike position. That proved the last necessary adjustment, although nothing felt different until I returned to the beginning stance. At that moment, my conception of the world around me changed completely.

  The club, now light as a stick, glowed without blinding me, pulsing with a mighty heartbeat. I then understood what farr was, for I witnessed it myself on every hand. While I still saw the Greeks, I also saw the very force of their lives, even the beat of their hearts and the thread of blood through their veins. Too, I understood that the colors radiating from them were tied to choices they had made and deeds they had done. You would think that, being warriors, and therefore shedders of blood, they would be black as pitch, but most of them were touched only by a shadow of darkness.

  Dabir, closer at hand, was brightly lit, tinged with a wedge of silver and black. The spear glowed in his hand, almost incandescent, but veiled, as if under a cover.

  Dabir was talking to me, asking if I was well, but I did not answer, for I was gazing at Lydia.

  I knew that she had sensed the release of the energy in the club, for she rose, stared, and immediately crossed toward me. She was darkest of all that I saw, with strings of brown and orange. Yet even she was crossed by patches of pure light, and silver. Hers was one of the strongest life forces present, and this strength was somehow like a beautiful musical note in harmony with that of the club, marred only by the discordant wail of tiny, black wraiths writhing within a packet at her waist.

  “Asim?” Dabir’s voice had grown more agitated. “Answer me! Are you all right?”

  “He has gotten it working!” Lydia said, breathlessly.

  “I am … fine, I think,” I said to Dabir at last. I held my hand up so that I might see my own aura, and was not displeased with what I saw.

  “What is it like?” she asked me. “What can you sense, and do?” She turned then on Dabir. “Why did you have him try it first?”

  “He deciphered it, not I,” he said. At her look of disbelief Dabir said, simply, “Asim is far more valuable than you realize.”

  This pleased me, but I did not comment, for I was enraptured by the magics. I sensed the lives of the animals in the barn, bleating sheep and patient horses, and knew their numbers. I reached a little further, testing the limits of my senses, and felt the life of rats nesting in the southeast corner of the stables, and a snake sleeping deep under a hidden stone in the north of the fortress. But I grew conscious of another force. It was powerful, and as I sensed it, even at a distance, I knew suddenly that it heard and desired the power of the club, and that it had grown excited by the awakened magics I wielded.

  “Najya’s coming,” I said, and I realized then I did not know how to stop doing what I was doing.

  “The spirit is named Usarshra,” Lydia corrected. “Can you also sense the Sebitti?”

  I thought to say no, but there were other sources. They could not sense me, but stalked us, like blind lions who crept forward ahead of Najya, readying to spring.

  “They are almost here,” I said. And then my awareness stretched further, and I knew that there was another tool, like the one I held, but weaker, somewhere further north, and one just as powerful south and east of us. Before I could give much more thought to that, I felt the awareness of the thing that was Najya reaching out not just for the club, but for me, and I knew no way to disengage. In a moment of panic I dropped the weapon.

  It thumped to the ground, the narrow end missing my boot by only a fingerspan. Its power faded after a moment, and I shook my head. The real world now was dull.

  “What did you do that for?” Lydia demanded.

  “The spirit could sense me,” I said. “It is very close, but the Sebitti are closer.”

  “Then there is no time to waste.” She reached down for the club herself, clasped the end, then cursed as she tried to lift it. I thought her angry that it was so heavy, but her look had another cause. “It has stopped working!”

  Dabir spoke quickly. “It must only be active if held by the person who—”

  Lydia cut him off. “Obviously! Have him do it again and get over to the circle. Alexis!”

  The officer with the scar turned quickly and saluted her. She gave him orders in Greek, and then he dashed away, barking at his soldiers, who scurried like squirrels. Those building the walls scrambled to find helmets an
d armor and I stopped to lift my own helm back to my head.

  “She’s told him to ready firepots,” Dabir said.

  I had heard of, but never seen, the secret weapon of Constantinople, and was thankful it would not be directed against us. That, though, was not my immediate concern. Quickly I told Dabir of the other bones I had grown aware of. “How far south?” he asked of the bigger one.

  “It seemed near a great cluster of lives—maybe a city.”

  Dabir frowned thoughtfully, then motioned me ahead of him, scanning the walls as we strode ahead. “Our allies don’t have a great deal of strength.”

  He was right. In all there were perhaps fifty Greeks, which was not enough to make the four crumbling walls look particularly well-defended, especially since ten remained below assisting Lydia. Many were equipped with bows, and some had javelins. The gap in the wall near us had been partly repaired, though I doubted a combination of ice and broken stone would hold out snow spirits, or, for that matter, wizards, for very long.

  The courtyard was of decent size, some seventy-five paces across, with Lydia’s circle taking up twelve of those. It was too large an area to defend with these few men.

  “If she can’t command this spirit, I do not like the odds,” I said.

  “I don’t like the odds in any case,” Dabir said as we neared Lydia’s circle. “It’s not what I would have done. Though firepots against snow spirits is not a bad idea. Did you have any sense that magic enhanced the club as a weapon?”

  “Not really. It seemed lighter. That would make swinging it easier, but…” I let my voice trail off. I was embarrassed to say I had hoped for something more, like searing holy light.

  Lydia had set up two small cauldrons just outside her circle. Steam wafted up from them into the chill air, and I knew from the disquieting smell exactly what was within. I shook my head. Jibril had worked the name of God into his incantations. Somehow I doubted Lydia had done the same, especially after I had seen the dark specters borne at her waist. I had meant to mention those to Dabir, but there had not been time. But then I glumly surmised he already knew Lydia’s magic was black.

  Dabir stopped beside Lydia. “Why do you need blood?” His tone was polite, betraying only a hint of challenge.

  “I know blood magics,” she answered. “This is my fallback, if I have trouble wielding the sorcery in the bone.” She put gloved hands to her waist and turned to me. “What are you waiting for, Captain?”

  It troubled me that I should be performing the movements under close watch of her and Alexis, who had just arrived to make a short report.

  I decided not to ask where she’d gotten the blood.

  She scowled at my hesitation. “Be on with it! Work the sorcery!”

  Surely the scarred Greek would see what I did and be able to duplicate it after a few tries. But Dabir suggested no solution and I had none, thus I gathered my breath and moved through the form. In a little while the world glowed once more, and I tried not to stare overlong at the trapped spirits at Lydia’s side. What were they?

  There were more pressing worries, though, for with aid of the club’s sorcery I felt the approach of other forces, like the onrush of a monster storm.

  “Put it to the circle,” Lydia instructed, and I swallowed my worries and sat the club’s fat end to the circle rim.

  She fished a pendant out from under her collar, kissed it quickly, replaced it, then came to my side. She gasped the moment she touched the club. Her eyes lit with innocent, childlike wonder. And then a blizzard of disjointed images hit me: Lydia’s bearded father, face apoplectically red in anger, raising a clenched fist. A sudden plunge into dark, cold water. A smiling young man brushing his mustache and leaning forward with love in his eyes.

  I released my hold on the club, for I had no wish to see more of her memories, and less for her to see anything of mine. She retained her own hold on the weapon, blinked at me, then raised her free hand to the sky and began to chant.

  Instantly energy spun out from the club and filled in the circle rim and the characters as if they were lit by a fire beneath. The hairs on my neck and arms stood as they do when the air is alive with lightning. All about me the men shifted uncomfortably.

  Lydia’s clear voice rose in a long wailing note that turned swiftly to a rain of syllables in a language unknown to me. I have no love for singing to start with, and this grim melody flowed in unsettling ways. Her eyes gleamed, and her head was high. There, in her moment of power, she was like a savage creature of the elements, beautiful and terrible.

  Dabir clung to the spear as Lydia’s song reached crescendo.

  A white mass was born high in the circle’s midst and spilled out into a cascading wave of whirling snow, like a white sand devil, then spread out to the circle’s edges, defining for all who watched the walls of the invisible cylinder that encased it.

  The thing spun violently and twisted in upon itself and after a moment it was a lean wolf shape larger than an elephant, formed all of snow and frost. Its front limbs and part of its torso were transparent. It stood glaring down at us through sockets empty of all but a brilliant blue gleam.

  “It worked! Praise the saints and the holy virgin!” Lydia laughed a little madly. She leaned against the club—still pressed to the circle—and shouted an incantation.

  The wolf opened its mouth, and though its lips did not move, words streamed out in a torrent, like the wind given voice.

  “Needwantblood! Give! Give!”

  I am not sure it spoke Arabic, or Greek, or that it truly spoke at all, but I understood its craving.

  Lydia shouted in Greek. Dabir was kind enough to translate for me, under his breath.

  “She says that it must do as she commands.”

  The wolf sat back on its haunches and howled, a haunting sound so loud that I flinched.

  Lydia lifted her free hand and began to shout another spell. She seemed agitated.

  “Is it working?” I asked Dabir.

  He looked troubled. “It does not seem to be.”

  Lydia finished this new spell with an exultant shout.

  Yet the wolf only howled.

  From behind on the wall came a cry of alarm. Dabir and the nearest soldiers turned with me.

  A piercing call erupted so close that it might as well have been into my ear, and then a large object passed overhead at great speed. I looked up to find a gigantic amber hawk sweeping over the fort walls clutching a screaming Greek soldier in its talon. Its huge feathered wings beat the air above us, and the unfortunate Greek was dropped into a rank of his fellows. The wolf went berserk, growling and snapping, and, though it did not cross that invisible ring that kept it trapped, I swear that the air about us grew even colder.

  13

  Dozens of black-garbed men were racing through a postern gate that had no business being open, and wasn’t the last time I had looked. I could only assume the Sebitti had worked some trick. The Greeks on the walls formed in ranks to launch arrows and javelins. At least twenty intruders dropped with the first volley, but then they were close enough to attack the defenders within the fort, and the archers ceased their work lest they hit their comrades.

  I drew my sword.

  “Spare the scholar and the woman,” called a voice from amongst the black-garbed soldiers. “Slay the rest!”

  The nearest Greeks shouted to God and St. Michael and unlimbered swords. Behind me Lydia was still exorting the wolf to do something, but it merely howled. On the north wall, a short swift man was sending Greek warriors tumbling with a blur of sword strikes and a hook propelled from the end of a shining silver line. Anzu was garbed much the same as the warriors he must have brought with him.

  A huge black with a tremendous sword was behind the front rank of the intruders. He called out to me. “Do you remember me, Arab?”

  Surely I did. Twice before I had barely escaped Gazi with my life. I slung my shield from my back and hurriedly dressed it.

  “Do you think you can keep hi
m busy for a few moments?” Dabir asked. “I have an idea.”

  Now I had no strong desire to face Gazi alone, for he was the greater warrior. But suddenly the Greek officer, Alexis, was beside me with his own sword, pointing at the enemy.

  “We will entertain him,” I said. “But hurry!”

  I stepped forward with the Greek veteran. Gazi giggled at us, though he could not move yet to attack, for there were troops in front of him.

  Black robe flapping like a cape, one of the invaders charged me with a high cut. I caught it on my shield, slashed down and tore out his unprotected throat. He fountained blood and dropped, frantically scrabbling at the wound.

  Beside me Alexis bellowed a challenge and swung into our foes. I blocked a low strike from a tall man. My opponent grunted as his chest armor absorbed my blow, then tried to punch at me with his small shield. I leapt back. Gazi, moving up, was flanking me. I repositioned to keep him in sight.

  Most men fight with straight blades, and unless they have seen action against Khazars or Indians, they think a curved sword cannot thrust. It is a common misconception. When my opponent’s weapon passed from left to right, I back stepped so he missed me by a fingerspan, then smashed my shield rim against his sword. This left him off balance and open, and I drove my point under his right arm. He fell with a scream.

  Alexis dropped another foe, and then Gazi was there before us, grinning. He looked us over, unhurriedly, then he giggled a little.

  On every side were the battle cries of fighting men, and somewhere overhead the bird keened. Behind us the wolf howled. I had known many battlefields, but this was by far the strangest.

  “He’s very dangerous,” I warned Alexis as we moved in. I did not know if the Greek understood me, and there was no time to say more.

  Gazi charged, slashing suddenly at Alexis, who dropped to save himself from beheading.

  I heard the cry of the great bird shred the very air. Gazi’s eyes twinkled. The cursed roc was diving. If I threw myself flat, Gazi would drive a blade through my body, and if I retreated, the thing would likely crush me in its claws. So I drove forward.