breathe.
“ ‘Don’t waste your time on that,’ he said. ‘Remember the questions I put to you? Your fingernails? Your eyelashes? Details that are visible. You need no inside organs. Your spirit fills up the perfect shell that you are, which no one can tell from a real man. Don’t waste your strength making hearts for yourself, or blood or lungs, just to feel human. That’s stupid and foolish. Only now and then you’ll need to make a little blood flow from your body. That’s nothing, but don’t go hungering after your human form. You’re better now!’
“ ‘Am I?’ I asked, still slouching in the chair, ankle on my knee, as this older wiser man put up with my arrogance. ‘Am I good, or am I something to do evil? You said angel of might. I heard the King use those words. But then he also said demon. Or was it someone else?’
“He stood in the middle of the room, rocking a little, and composed, studying me through narrow eyes.
“ ‘I suspect you will be what you want,’ he said, ‘though others may try to make you what they will. You have such hatred in you, Azriel, such hatred.’
“ ‘You’re right. I do hate. I see a boiling cauldron and I feel terror and then hate.’
“ ‘Nobody’s ever going to be able to hurt you like that again. And remember, you rose above the cauldron, did you not? Did you feel the scalding gold!’
“I shuddered all over. I gave way to tears. I can’t even stand to talk now of it, and I didn’t want to talk to him. ‘I felt it for an instant,’ I said, ‘one instant I felt it and what it would mean to remain in it and die in that pain. I felt it…I felt it piercing through some covering on me, some thick numbing armor, but where it hurt me…was my eyes.’
“ ‘Ah, I see. Well, your eyes are fine now. I need the Canaanite tablet that brought you into being. I need the bones.’
“ ‘You don’t have them here?’
“ ‘Hell, no,’ he said. ‘A pack of fools stole them. Desert bandits. They set upon Cyrus’s party, slew them for every bit of gold they wore, and went off with the casket. They think the bones are solid gold. Only one Persian lived to reach the nearby village. Messages were sent. Now, you have to go and find the bones and the tablet, the whole casket, and bring it to me.’
“ ‘I can do this?’
“ ‘Certainly. You came when I called you. Go back to that place, or to the place from which you came. See, this is the secret of magic, my son. Be specific. Say I wish to return to the very place from which I came. That way, if the bandits have wandered ten miles from where you were when you heard my summons, you’ll apprehend them. Now when you reach that place, remain corporeal and kill these thieves if you can. If you are not strong enough to do this, if they combat you with physical weapons which make you stagger, if they hurl charms at you that frighten you—and I warn you there isn’t a charm on earth that ought to frighten the Servant of the Bones—then become incorporeal, but take the bones with you, gather them to yourself as though you were a funnel of desert wind, gather them and bring them to me. I will deal with these thieves later. Go, bring the bones to me.’
“ ‘But you do prefer that I kill them?’
“ ‘Desert bandits? Yes, kill them all. Kill them easily with their own weapons. Don’t bother with magic. It would be a waste of strength. Grab their swords and cut their heads off. You’ll see their spirits for a moment, shout at them to frighten them, believe me you won’t have any trouble. Maybe that will soothe your pain. Go on, get the bones for me and the tablet. Hurry.’
“I stood up.
“ ‘Do I have to tell you what to say?’ he prodded. ‘Ask that you be returned to the place from which you came, and that all the articles of your present body wait at your beck and call to surround you and make you visible and strong when you reach the location of the bones. You’ll love it. Hurry. I estimate this will take you until suppertime. I will be dining when you get back.’
“ ‘Can anything happen to me?’
“ ‘You can let them frighten you so that you fail and I can laugh at you,’ he said with a shrug.
“ ‘Could they have powerful spirits?’
“ ‘Desert bandits, never! Look, you’ll enjoy it! Oh, and I forgot to tell you, when you begin your return, of course become invisible. They’ll all be dead, you’ll hold the casket tightly inside your spirit body, like so much wind surrounding it. I don’t want you walking back here in a body with that casket. You have to learn to move things. If anyone sees you, ignore that person because you’ll be gone from the sight of that being before he begins to make sense of what he’s seen. Hurry.’
“I rose to my feet and with an immense roaring in my ears, I reappeared with the whole shell of the body in a small thick desert house, where a group of bedouins were gathered around a fire.
“At once they leapt to their feet and screamed at the sight of me and drew their swords.
“ ‘You stole the bones, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘You killed the King’s men.’
“I had never felt such pleasure in all my human life; I had never felt such prowess or such utter freedom. I think I gnashed my teeth with happiness. I took a sword from one of them and hacked them all, every one, to pieces, easily cutting off the hands that tried to defend them and slicing some heads from some bodies and kicking their limbs about. I stared at the fire. I dropped the sword and I walked into the fire, and then back out of it. It didn’t hurt this body, or its appearance of humanity! I gave out a roar that must have been heard in Hell. I was hysterically happy.
“The place stank of blood and sweat. The death rattle came from one of them, and then he lay still. The door came open, two armed bedouins flew at me, and I grabbed one of them and twisted his head off his neck. The other was now on his knees. But I killed him the same way too—easily. I could hear the noise of the camels outside and shouting.
“But the room was now empty of living beings, and I saw a great heap there covered by rude wool blankets. Throwing them back I discovered the casket of my bones and looked inside. This I have to admit was not a pleasure. It broke the stride of my lusty killing. I looked and saw the bones, and then I sighed and thought, ‘Ah, well, you knew you were dead. So what?’ There was much other treasure there, too. Sacks of it.
“I gathered everything up into the blanket, clutched it with both arms, and said, ‘Leave me, particles of this body. Allow me to be invisible, swift, and strong as the wind, and keep these precious articles safe in my arms, and take me to my Master in Miletus from whom I was sent.’
“The great treasure was like an anchor, a stone, which made my travel slow but delicious. I felt the ascent with exquisite pleasure as I reached the clouds and then came down over the shimmering sea. I was so stunned by the beauty I almost dropped everything, but then I got stern with myself and said, ‘Go to Zurvan now, idiot! Return to the man who sent you
“I and the casket landed in the courtyard. Dusk. The sky was filled with a glorious fresh-colored light. The clouds were tinged with it. I was lying there, in manly form, apparently simply by wishing it, and the treasure was there, the casket, now broken from my having crashed, and another box of letters, thrown open.
“Out into the garden came my new Master, who at once started to pick up the letters. ‘These miserable bastards; all this is from Cyrus to me! I hope you killed them.’
“ ‘With great joy,’ I said, I stood up, lifted the half-broken casket of the bones, and stood ready for any help he would need. He piled my arms with a few soft sacks that apparently held jewels, I wasn’t sure, it felt like it, and that was all I’d brought with me, other than the casket and the letters, and he cast aside the blanket.
“To my utter amazement the blanket just drifted off, as if wafted on a draft, and then went over the walls, snarling in the breeze, and disappeared.
“ ‘Some poor hungry person will find it, and do something with it,’ he said. ‘Always remember the poor and the hungry when you cast aside what you don’t want.’
“ ‘Do you really care about the poor and the hungry?’ I asked. I followed him. We went back into the great room, which was now lighted by many oil lamps. I noticed for the first time shelves of tablets and lightly built wooden racks for the scrolls which the Greeks preferred. This had all been behind my back when I’d been slouching about before.
I set down the broken casket on the floor, and opened it. There were the bones, all right.
“He took the letters and the sacks of jewels to his desk, sat down, and at once began to read all the letters, quickly, leaning on his elbows, and only now and then reaching for a grape from a silver disk beside him. He opened the sacks, dumped out great clumps of jewelry, most of it looking Egyptian to me, some of it Greek obviously, and then he went back to reading.
