The Bones of the Old Ones (Dabir and Asim) (20 page)

“Hah!” Jibril spat victoriously. “I sent him my pain.” He winced as he set up. “Blood is simpler to get today than usual,” he told Dabir.

My friend bent to the scholar, telling him to hold still. It was then that our horses neighed and danced and cantered past us. A half dozen of the snow women sped toward us, glowing a bit in the dying light. Behind came what seemed, at first glance, a cloud of snow. Yet it was solid, and, like the women, moved with purpose. A frigid cold rose from them all, and I thought of the strange snowy blobs with eyes that the ancients had drawn on the spear. Was this what they had sought to depict?

I sheathed my sword and hefted up the club. “Get clear if you can,” I said to Dabir.

“Asim!” Dabir called, but I was already charging toward the enemy, and calling out to God.

My first swing passed through the arm and shoulder of one of the frost women, destroying her in a shower of ice, then struck the second. She, too, dissolved. A third touched me with ice fingers so cold they burned, and the whole of my forearm numbed. I gritted my teeth as I pushed the weapon back through her, stepping forward into the next. Najya’s icy face stared up at me and in the center of holes where its eyes should have been was a maelstrom of swirling blue and white. I closed my own eyes so I would not see as I jammed the pointed haft of the weapon into her forehead. I heard the fragments of her rattle together as she disintegrated. The other two had drifted on, but I could not chase them down until I confronted the cloud thing on my flank. It stretched a full man-height above me, and was easily the width of two wide stable doors. I saw no eyes or limbs within, but a wind rose up from it, of even greater cold than that radiated by the snow women. I gritted my teeth and stepped forward swinging, hoping Dabir could escape the two I’d missed.

My club tore a hole through the creature, yet it did not react. I was buffeted in a bone-numbing wind and I heard my teeth rattle. My arms shook as I swung again.

This attack tore another hole, and I might have rejoiced save that I saw my first strike already filling with more snow. I had to struggle hard against the instinct to curl in upon myself for warmth.

I swung, and swung again, staggering, and finally there came the sound of splintering ice.

I heard Dabir’s voice. “Behind you!” And then he was at my side, and stabbing with the spear.

“Get back!” I told him.

He did not, though, and I glimpsed Jibril hurrying up as well, a paper pressed to his leaking wound.

I was numb now almost to the core of my being, and could no longer even feel the club I clasped, but I drove on. Dabir and I stabbed and slashed and bits of the monster fell away. Yet it always re-formed, seeming to draw sustenance from the storm and the wind. My breath came in gasps, and it felt as though I breathed in chunks of ice.

Jibril meanwhile had staggered directly into the cloud, raising his bloodstained parchment with shaking hands. He let out a full-throated cry and the paper dissolved in flame. It fell in ashes but for a spark that swept forth into a ring. I was warmed, instantly, to the core of my being, and the monster dissolved, a splatter of rain upon the snow. I dropped my arms in stunned awe at the sudden change in fortune.

Jibril sank to his knees. I helped him rise, but refrained from comment about the profusion of blood still leaking down over his clothes or his pasty complexion. His beard was white with frost.

Dabir thanked him, but did not look pleased. “What have you done, Jibril?”

“There was no choice,” the scholar said wearily.

“There is no time for talk,” I cried over the storm. “More of the monsters come.” I pointed to two of the snow things barely visible against the darkness.

We turned and stumbled away as fast as we could, Dabir and I half-carrying the old bookseller. The vile clouds, at least, seemed a little slower than a man might run.

“Where’s Anzu?”

“Vanished,” Dabir said grimly. “I finished the other two frost women.”

“Kharouf?”

“When last I saw, he was charging Anzu.”

“The brave fool. I ordered them to flee. Their weapons would be useless against the ice spirits.”

Dabir frowned in agreement.

I whistled in the faint hope our horses might return. They did not, of course. My Noura would have come running, but she was still in Mosul.

It was no easy going in that thick snow, but fear made us fleet. A look over my shoulder showed the cloud monsters trailing at the edge of sight, but with the storm and almost all daylight faded, there might be less visible spirits on any side.

Once more I whistled, and something black came sailing out ahead of us. For a brief moment I thought it might be Jibril’s mare, but as it drew through the howling snow the image resolved into a person seated upon a carpet suspended a sword length above the earth.

“More Sebitti?” I wondered grimly how one of them might take to the club of Herakles across the forehead. I gripped the weapon tightly.

The carpet settled to the snow only ten paces off, and the person seated on the thing stood and called to us at the same moment. “Dabir! Asim! Hurry!”

It was a woman, and I did not place her voice no matter its Greek accent, until we had almost reached her. It was then that I knew her for the sorceress Lydia.

“Climb aboard,” she urged.

Dabir’s voice rose with incredulity. “You are the Sebitti’s pawn!”

“No longer!” She spoke rapidly, her accent growing thicker as she did. “We have no time! Get aboard!”

The last time we had trusted Lydia it had nearly been our death. I fully meant to say something of this, but Lamashtu appeared then beside Dabir.

The Sebitti did not come striding slowly up, or drop out of the air, or even coalesce out of the mist. She just popped into being, and if I hadn’t just then been turning to skeptically say something to my friend, I would not have noticed.

“Down!” I cried, and he acted without question. Mine was a powerful backhand swing, and it missed Dabir’s head by inches. It seemed destined for Lamashtu’s chest, but she sidestepped with inhuman speed.

She did not bother addressing me. “Thief,” she spat to Lydia.

Again I swung; again the Sebitti dodged with stunning alacrity, the expression on her face not so much worried as annoyed.

“Give over the weapon, Arab,” she ordered. She held out her hand as if she expected me to obey.

Dabir was up then with leveled spear. “What will you use it for?”

She grinned maliciously. “Something wonderful.”

Dabir swung clumsily at Lamashtu. Only a moment did I wonder at his poor aim, for I saw then he’d deliberately driven her toward Jibril, who’d raised another bloody paper. He brushed against her robe, and the Sebitti was instantly consumed in a rain of fire.

Lamashtu shrieked as the blaze swept with alarming speed across her dress and into her hair, the sound cutting the air like the sharpest knife. She raised shaking hands, then vanished before I could land a blow.

Jibril sank to one knee, and I saw his eyes streamed with tears.

“By all that’s holy,” Lydia muttered. She sounded impressed.

“That … that’s it,” Jibril mumbled.

Dabir passed the spear off to me and bent quickly to his friend.

“Hurry!” Lydia urged.

I glanced back at the monsters, once again only a couple of dozen paces off.

Jibril was shaking his head, and sinking. And I realized that the white in his beard was not just snow. His face was deeply lined. He had aged decades in the last quarter hour.

“All that I have here … is yours,” Jibril said, pressing the notebook into Dabir’s hands.

Dabir took it without examining the thing, or caring that his hands were drenched with his friend’s blood. “Jibril…”

“I hope I killed her. She tricked me, Dabir. She changed Afya, to save her.” He choked. “I had to kill her.… I had to kill my Afya.”

“Jibril…” Dabir’s voice shook as he said his name.

Jibril gripped his hand tightly, and his eyes brightened with a last burst of strength. “Do not damn yourself, as I have done.” His breath caught in his throat. “Look for angels.”

“Allah,” Dabir said, his voice failing, “shall send angels to greet you.”

“That is not…,” Jibril said weakly. “I wish to see but one…”

“Hurry, fools!” Lydia shouted to us, and indeed, she was right, for the monsters were but a few paces off.

Jibril’s eyes fixed on a point beyond Dabir’s shoulder, and saw their last.

I pulled Dabir up and he choked out that we could not leave the body. Thus I grabbed the dead scholar and scrambled onto the carpet with Dabir, behind the Greek woman. Lydia spoke a phrase in a musical language and the carpet rose slowly, its edges fluttering. It did not hang loosely, but seemed flat, solid, as though it rested on a palace floor. At another command, we shot swiftly into the air and then away. From above I had a brief view of the battlefield—more of the snow women were knotted around a pair of figures that might have been Koury and Anzu, for dark men and beast shapes fought beside them. I thought also that I caught a glimpse of riders, my riders, galloping away at speed. I could not count their number. Of Najya there was no sign.

11

That carpet was very old, and a number of its threads hung out over the side, waving in the wind. I did not stare at them too long, for they threatened to shatter the already fragile illusion that I was in no danger while borne upon woven wool hundreds of feet above the earth.

Dabir was just behind me holding the body, his back against mine. Lydia sat in front, and she set hands to the carpet whenever she spoke a command. The rug itself was about ten hand spans wide and perhaps fifteen in length. And it was steady, no matter the speed or direction it took. The wind and snow pushed at us a little, yet my seating felt solid. That was good, for there was nothing whatsoever to hold on to, lest I wished to clasp Lydia. This, for many reasons, I was disinclined to do.

“Where are you taking us?” Dabir called up to Lydia. I could barely hear his voice, not just because of the wind, but because grief rendered him halting.

Her dark hair blew wildly as she glanced back over her shoulder. “Away!” And then she warily searched the darkening sky to right and left, and above. She put a hand to the carpet again and we shot upward. I felt my stomach rise, as though I had been thrown into the air by a horse.

Visibility here was just as poor as it was below, so there was not much to be seen, including, at that point, the ground itself.

Dabir forced more strength into his voice. “Lydia—can the carpet rise above the storm?”

“It could,” she said with another brief glance, “but Gazi is here with his bird.” Her accent again grew more obvious as she continued. “If he survived, he’s probably circling on high.”

I thought then of the huge creature that I’d heard flying through the center of the storm earlier, and I bethought myself of my duty to protect Dabir. In that, at least, I had not failed. But all else … “What sort of bird?”

Her head turned up. “Gazi killed the master of a roc many generations ago, and ate his heart. The bird has obeyed him ever since.”

“Did she say a roc?” Dabir asked.

I was not sure she heard him over the wind, so I added: “Just how large a bird is it?”

“Large enough to bear two or three Sebitti. Large enough to lift a horse—or pluck you from the carpet.” She seemed to savor the latter part of her explanation.

This I relayed back to Dabir, who in turn asked me to pass on our thanks.

“It is the bones I need,” Lydia admitted. She raised her voice so that Dabir might hear her above the wind. “But I think you might prove useful. We will have to work together. To stop them.”

At no point in this exchange did she look to me, and I realized I was merely along for the ride. It might be that if I weren’t holding on to the club of Herakles, I would already have been rolled off to my death.

“Why,” Dabir shouted up, “did you leave the Sebitti?”

“Because I could not trust them,” she yelled. “We will talk when we land,” she added.

Dabir nodded. Conversing upon the back of the carpet with the wind whipping into our faces and whirling snow bits besides was a little challenging.

It was easier for me, for I had only to lean toward her ear. I was hard put to bottle my rage, and the menacing snarl that came out surprised even me. “Are you the one who put the spirit inside Najya?”

She twisted at the waist so that we two looked face-to-face. But in that near darkness I could only be reminded of her appearance from the general shape of her face and form. She was small and dangerous and beautiful, with a proud nose. Her hair was shorter than Najya’s, reaching only the nape of her neck, and rich with curls. “If you push me from the carpet,” she said coolly, “you and Dabir will plummet to your deaths.”

“I am no murderer.”

“You are the one who killed my father,” she said sharply. “I have not forgotten.”

She turned from me.

I could think of nothing further to say.

A hand closed upon my shoulder, and I started. For a brief moment I had forgotten Dabir was behind me.

“I am sorry about Najya.”

At those words the rage dropped away from me, and I discovered that my face was wet. I brushed tears away and half turned to him. “I am sorry about your friend.”

“His death gave us life,” he said joylessly.

“And what does Najya’s death bring?” I asked bitterly.

He squeezed my shoulder. “There may yet be hope, Asim.”

That I did not believe, but I did not waste breath saying it to him. Instead I leaned back to warn him. “We cannot trust this Greek.”

“We have little choice at the moment.”

This was true.

I turned from him, and the time passed without words. The only sound was the plaintive whistle of the wind, which suited my mood.

Those who flew carpets in the old tales never rode them through snowstorms. I swiftly grew very cold, so that apart from dark thoughts about Najya and Jibril and the men, what chiefly occupied me on that trip was holding my jaw steady so that my teeth would not chatter. My feet grew numb despite my efforts to stretch and flex them within my boots. I had heard tales of men who had lost fingers and toes in the mountain heights, and I did not mean to be disfigured that way. I tucked my hands under my arms with the club still awkwardly gripped jutting behind. Just as my limbs were beginning to complain I felt us descend. The snow, at least, had stopped, and the moon was up. The ground lay hundreds of feet below, the rolling plain of snow a lambent blue in the moonlight. There were occasional trees, bent and skeletal.