The Bones of the Old Ones (Dabir and Asim) (18 page)

A narrow passage stretched forward, one low enough that I would have to bow my head to proceed, though Jibril might have moved comfortably.

Dabir advanced slowly across the cave detritus lying over the uneven stone here, sidestepping a small whitish bug trundling across the trail. Once Dabir reached the tunnel’s end his torchlight spilled into a small chamber with a rectangular niche carved into its wall a few feet off the floor, opposite us. There in the shifting glow I made out a gleam of ivory. Dabir was lifting his foot to cross into the chamber when he pulled suddenly back from the threshold, as if he had spied a scorpion nest.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Come here.” Dabir bent to inspect the cave floor.

Jibril and I crowded forward. Once Dabir pointed to the ground, I perceived a line of bug husks and dust along the very edge of the doorway.

“Insects,” Dabir said. “Hundreds and hundreds of dead insects. All on this side of the line. Whatever has been striking them dead has been doing so for a very long time.”

“Step back,” Jibril ordered gruffly. “Give me a moment.” He passed me the spear.

We had to give him more than a moment, as it turned out. At Dabir’s suggestion I hurried back to get a few more torches from the men above, making sure to retrace my steps exactly lest I trigger some other death trap. When I returned, Jibril had rubbed clean a patch of stone floor two steps from the doorway. Over the next quarter hour, while I held two torches, he labored over a small charcoal drawing I was becoming all too familiar with. A wizard’s circle. He measured each symbol precisely, fussily rubbing out and redrawing portions several times, referring occasionally to his battered book. A half hour must have passed before he finally rose with a groan.

“We will see if there is a power there, and if so, the symbols I’ve drawn should break it.”

Dabir had watched the entire process with great interest.

“Stand well back, Dabir,” Jibril instructed. “All of you.”

A troubled-looking Dabir gestured for Najya and me to depart, and we three left the tunnel to stand, looking in, beside the grinning creature on the canted stone door.

The older scholar raised his head and faced the ceiling. I realized after a moment he addressed heaven, for he was softly praying for Allah to watch over him.

Najya drew close to me, her expression taut. Her voice was a whisper. “The pull is very strong, Asim,” she said. “With both the weapons close.”

“You should stand further back,” I suggested.

“That will do no good.”

“Think of something pleasant. A ride, on your favorite horse, in the spring.”

“Her name is Asilah,” Najya told me, softly.

“Well, then,” I said in a whisper, “think that you’re at full gallop, and the wind in your hair is rich with the scent of spring flowers.” I could picture the scene rather clearly myself, but found it distracting, so I focused on the tunnel instead.

Jibril raised a knife to his hand. I heard Dabir’s breath catch in his throat. Before any of us could speak, Jibril cut his thumb deeply with the blade. He then squeezed the digit, dripping blood on the circle’s rim.

The effect was immediate and overwhelming. The circle glowed with silvery light at the same moment a coruscating field of energy appeared across the entrance, a glittering window formed of lightning. It bowed toward us as if pushed on by a giant, invisible hand, then was drawn crackling into the circle’s center. There was little sound, but the energy stiffened my face hairs and even those upon my arms and neck. It felt as though we were in the midst of a violent summer storm. I turned quickly and pushed Najya and Dabir to safety. “Back!”

So bright was the light it was as though we had opened a gateway to the sun. The bookseller scrambled back from the magic he had wrought. I grabbed his arm as he stumbled from the passage and pulled him safely to us. Then we four watched from a few paces beyond the tunnel mouth. Jibril’s breath came in great gasps, and I heard him muttering in astonishment.

The energy flowed for long moments, brilliant but fluctuating in intensity. Its cessation was abrupt and final, and the little passage then seemed incredibly dim, even with the sorcerous circle still glowing.

“Amazing,” Jibril breathed.

“That was well done,” Dabir told him.

Jibril favored us with a lopsided grin, and for a moment I imagined him as a much younger man. “We shall see if it has worked.” He slid carefully past the glowing ring. I felt Dabir tense beside me as his mentor thrust his hand across the threshold.

Nothing happened.

“I think that’s done it,” Jibril told us. “Stay clear of the circle,” he added, as if the matter were not already obvious.

We followed with great care, conscious still that there might be more traps. Yet there was another reason for caution, beyond even the dangers we had already witnessed. As dark and foreboding as the cave had already been, the atmosphere in this smaller chamber was more oppressive still, and it took me a little while to see why. The walls were richly decorated with even greater detail, and in some places life-sized reliefs of men stalked unseen prey with uplifted spears. There were but two columns here, and all the vertical surfaces were smooth, apart from the shallowly carved figures. Even more time had been taken in the fashioning of this place.

My gaze shifted to the waist-high opening in the wall across from us, and thence to the long thick ivory piece I’d spotted from the entranceway. At that point, I understood why I was uneasy, for torchlight fell on a browned skeleton beside it. We had entered a crypt. I breathed out. This was no good deed. Surely any man revered so well deserved his rest.

I heard a swift breath beside me and found Najya staring fixedly at that niche.

“Easy,” I told her. “Think of Asilah.”

She managed a nod, but did not look away.

Dabir and Jibril had stopped at the doorway and now examined the wall at its left. Symbols were etched there, glowing intermittently with the same shimmering light that had flowed from the invisible barrier and into Jibril’s circle. Three I did not recognize. A fourth, though, was that same squiggle of flame beneath an arch they had told me stood for Erragal.

“This puts matters in a new light.” Dabir frowned at the mark with arms crossed.

“Do you mean the Sebbiti symbol or the fact that we’re now grave robbing?” I asked.

Dabir absently answered while his eyes roved the images beyond the portal. “Erragal helped protect this weapon, so he surely knew where it lay. He seems to have made the spear. Likely he fashioned that club as well. Either the other Sebbiti work against him, or he is no more.”

Jibril grunted in agreement.

Maybe this was interesting, but it had no bearing on our immediate situation. “If we must take that bone, let us do so and leave, Allah forgive us. I have no liking for this crypt.”

“We must still be cautious.” Dabir turned, and, picking his steps with care, led the way over to the niche. Finally he took to looking over the images painted all about the opening to the loculus. I stepped up beside him and stared down first at the gleaming ivory near the remains of the dead man’s clawlike hand. The weapon was carved, as Dabir had noted, into a club shape as long as my leg and weathered with symmetrical brown stains at its smaller end, where dessicated, warped leather still hung—the remains of an ancient grip, and from the position of the dead man’s hand, I thought it likely his people had interred him with his fingers wrapped about the weapon.

My eyes were drawn then to the empty eye sockets in the skull. Eternity stared back at me, and I looked away from the grinning visage. The body had been long in its tomb, for the bones were dry and brittle-seeming. Even still, they were of goodly size, straight and thick.

Dabir gasped beside me. “Jibril!”

I thought at first some harm had come to him, but Dabir’s face was flushed with awe. “Do you see?” He tapped the stone beneath the niche, and an image there.

Dabir brushed grit from the decorations around the opening so he might see them better. The older scholar crowded forward, and I looked to Najya, who stood with closed eyes just where I had left her. I checked also on the skeleton, for I was wary he would rise up and deal with those who had dared disturb him.

“God and his angels,” Jibril said, and he and Dabir exchanged a stunned look.

I peered more closely at the images that drew them, and did not understand. These were more of the childlike drawings of stick men. Here one shot an arrow at a lion-like beast, there another figure with what might have been a cloak faced a monstrous serpent. All the figures but the first wore cloaks, no matter if they were grappling a giant-sized man or a boar, or confronting those drifting snow clouds with eyes.

“Do you think those men are fighting the sort of enemies we will face?” I asked.

Dabir spoke with barely suppressed excitement. “These aren’t a bunch of men. These are the exploits from one man’s life, the man who lies there.”

“A mighty man, indeed,” Jibril said.

I still did not see, and looked back and forth between them, tired of the games of scholars.

Dabir jabbed a finger toward the stone. “The carvings are crude, but they tell episodes from one man’s life. The slaying of a lion. A battle with a serpent. The wrestling of a giant. The defeat of a great stag. Do you not see? And look, here—after he fights the lion he wears a cloak—”

It was then understanding came to me. “Herakles?”

“Aye!”

This truly was a wondrous thing. I could not have been more astonished if I had chanced upon a tomb of one of the prophets. I was to witness many marvels in my life, but that one still stands tall as one of the most thrilling. Here was a man from legend who had spent his life at great deeds, working always for his people, a hero so grand that his legends had passed on even to folk from different lands. I had no love for the thought of any kind of tomb robbery, but the thought of taking grave goods from such a man tormented me with shame.

“This is Anatolia,” Jibril observed. “We are weeks from Greece. Weeks! It doesn’t make sense.”

Dabir answered. “It may be that his fame spread and the Greeks took up the story more eagerly than all others. Or it may be that he lived in Greece and ended his days here.”

“There are no tales of Herakles fighting snow women,” I pointed out.

Dabir accepted this truth with a tilt of his head. “Who knows what else has been forgotten, or changed in the telling?”

Behind us Najya finally moved, and we three eyed her as one as she stepped carefully closer. “It is still me,” she said. “I but wish to see the pictures.”

“That would be fine,” Dabir told her. “But we’d best remove the club before you come any closer.”

She stopped.

I put my hand into the niche, but did not yet set it to the old weapon. “I do not think we should disturb him,” I confessed, and pulled back my fingers.

“We have no choice,” Jibril said in his clipped way.

Dabir was a little more understanding. “If Herakles still lived, he would wield that weapon at our side. But he is gone. It is up to us to carry it.”

Sometimes one hears words that are simply woven but rich with truth. Dabir had the gift of saying such things. I knew that he was right. I nodded once, solemnly, to the ancient skull. Be it Herakles or some other fellow, I meant no disrespect. I clasped the handle of the time-worn weapon, bending so that I might grip it in both hands. It was heavier than it looked.

I removed it carefully, watching both to see that I did not brush it against the top of the niche or rouse the wrath of the ancient. Herakles slept on, and the club came free. I then raised it in both hands.

There should have been no comparison between the holding of a simple club and a finely crafted blade. Yet I knew the exact same sensation brandishing that ancient weapon that I did when first practicing with my father’s sword. It brought me joy, until I recalled that Najya had once predicted I would wield such a weapon in battle, and this unsettled me for some reason, moreso even than standing within the confines of the tomb.

After Najya came to look over the glyphs Dabir led us in a short prayer for Herakles, and we left, though not before stopping to once more seal the crypt with the round stone door.

The return trip felt much shorter, and the wan winter sunlight pouring in through the hole pleased us all, until we noticed that snow was drifting down.

Large white flakes decorated the turbans and shoulders of the soldiers as they stepped forward to greet us. Dusk lay at most an hour away, so I suggested we work fast to seal the tomb before we rode for Edessa.

“Seal the tomb?” Jibril repeated.

“We are hard pressed for time,” Dabir reminded me.

“Surely,” I said, “you do not think it right that we leave the way open so others can disturb the rest of a hero.”

Jabril grumbled a little, but I’d made my point, and Dabir smiled in a resigned sort of way. He enlisted Jibril’s aid, and between the two of them they reasoned that taking down the earthen pillar closest to the opening would probably collapse the roof. So long as I was to stand in the tomb’s opening while I swung inward, they thought I would come to no harm. So it was that the first time I wielded the club of Herakles, it was to secure the man’s resting place. It took but two swings of that great club, and then the pillar collapsed in a cloud of dust and a clatter of rock. The ceiling sagged immediately and Dabir shouted me to safety. As they pulled me up on the rope, the tomb’s entryway was closed off in a rain of stone. For all I know, it remains sealed to this day, which is right and proper.

The men were eager to be away from that place, and to sleep at last in an inn, so they were quick about packing. Dabir and Jibril, naturally, took to studying the club, for its surface was also carved with figures, as well as another of Erragal’s symbols. They were still talking about it as we rode out even though the weapon was tied to the side of my saddle.

Najya was on my left, and I caught her looking over at me. Or perhaps she caught me looking at her. She looked worried, though she denied it, and thanked me for my kind query.