The Bones of the Old Ones (Dabir and Asim) (22 page)

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.”

I glared her direction. “This is all Lydia’s fault. There will be a reckoning.” Also, the weapons forms were my idea, but I did not say this.

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.