powerful spirit. Get the tablet. Hurry. Ignorance is of no use to anyone. Don’t be afraid.’ ”
12
I laid hands on the Canaanite tablet, though it filled me with revulsion and hate. Indeed, I rocked with hate. I was so full of hate that for a moment I couldn’t move. His voice called me back, with the command that I was not to break it. The writing was very small, he reminded me, and one chip would hurt the contents, and I must know it all.
“ ‘Why should I?’ I asked. I gestured towards the pillows inside the room. Might I bring one out, so that I could sit at his feet without soiling my robes? He nodded.
“I crossed my legs. He was on his couch, one knee up, which seemed his favorite position, and he had the tablet now where he could read it clearly in the sun. This memory is so vivid to me, perhaps because the wall was white and covered in red flowers, and the olive tree was twisted and old, and many-branched as they get, and the green grass sprouting between the marble squares of the garden was soft. I loved to run the palm of my hand over it. I loved to lay the palm of my hand on the marble and feel the sun’s heat.
“And of course I remember him with love, in his loose, long, baggy Greek tunic, the gold threads worn off the edging, looking rather scrawny and content and ageless as his blue eyes moved over the tablet, and he drew it close to his face now and then and then moved it far away. I think he must have read every single little word carved on it, in its long narrow columns of cuneiform. I hated it.
“ ‘You escaped into the spirit world at the hands of idiots,’ he said. ‘This is an old Canaanite incantation to call up a powerful evil spirit, a servant of evil as powerful as the spirits of evil that might be sent to earth by God. It is to create for a magician a mal’ak, strong as the Mal’ak which Yahweh sent to slay the firstborn of the Egyptians.’
“I was stunned. I didn’t answer him. I knew many translations of the story of the flight from Egypt and I knew an image of the Mal’ak, the shining angel of the Lord’s Wrath.
“ ‘This information was regarded dangerous by the Canaanites and sealed in this tablet, if the date is correct, a thousand years ago. This was black magic, bad magic, magic like that of the Witch of Endor, who brought the spirit Samuel up to speak with King Saul.’
“ ‘I know these stories,’ I said quietly.
“ ‘The magician here would make his own mal’ak which could be as strong as a Satan or fallen angel or evil spirit that had once participated in the power of Yahweh Himself.’
“ ‘I understand.’
“ ‘The rules are very strict here. The candidate for the mal’ak must be thoroughly evil, opposed to God and all things good, one who had despaired of God in contempt for God’s cruelty to man and the injustice He allowed into the world. The candidate for the mal’ak is to be so determined and angry and evil that he would fight God himself if he could or is called upon to do so. He should be able to meet any Angel of the Lord hand to hand and fight him down.’
“ ‘You speak of good angels?’
“ ‘Yes, good and bad; you were to be the equal of them and you may be. You are a mal’ak, not an ordinary spirit at all. But as I said, the one who would become this must be evil to the core of his heart, he must have no patience any longer with God and want to serve the rebellious spirit in mankind, that which has refused to accept God’s rules. This spirit is not being created to serve a Devil or Demon, but to be one.’
“I gasped.
“ ‘You seem rather young to have been so wretchedly evil…at least in the form you’ve chosen on your own, which does seem the perfect emanation of what you were when you were alive. Were you that evil? Did you hate God so much?’
“ ‘No, at least, I don’t think I did. If I did, I didn’t know.’
“ ‘Did you choose to become the Servant of the Bones?’
“ ‘No. I know I did not.’
“ ‘More bungling. You weren’t evil, you weren’t willing, and you did not make a vow to serve whoever would own the bones, did you?’
“ ‘Certainly not!’ I tried to remember. It was so difficult now, the past grew bright, then faded, but I could push back to Cyrus’s bedchamber, I could remember that Cyrus had sent me here to Zurvan, and I could remember something before that…a priest dead on the floor.
“ ‘I killed the one who would be Master,’ I said. ‘I killed him and there was death all around me, I was dying when I was made. Only a little flame remained in me. I was to die. The stairway to heaven was to come down perhaps, or I was to go into the light and be part of it. I don’t know which happened. But whatever the case, I was not willing to be the Servant of the Bones, I tried to escape…I remember running and calling for help, saying this was a Canaanite curse, but I don’t remember to whom I appealed. Only afterwards I brought my bones in a sack into the bedchamber of the King.’
“ ‘So he’s told me. Well, according to this, you should have been an expert on evil and cruelty before you were chosen, and you should have begged for the privilege of eternal life equal to God’s angels, and you should have been willing to endure a terrible death. At the moment when the pain became too great for you, your spirit should have separated from the body, and watched the body be boiled down to bones. But only once the pain became too great. Only then. You were to endure the boiling cauldron of gold for as long as you could to perfect your hatred of God that he had made men sentient beings, and then and only then you should have risen free, aware of the power of your triumph over death, and your hatred of God, who made death, and your desire to be the mal’ak who is as strong as Yahweh’s cruel heart when he turned it against those whom Saul or David or Joshua would slay.
“ ‘You are to be the avenger of Adam and Eve, that they were foully tricked by your God. What does that say to you?’
“ ‘It was all a blundering affair, as you said. I can’t remember being
“ ‘And there had been majesty in this tainted act?’
“ ‘Well, I think there had. I can remember a sense of great sacrifice, purpose. I can remember rose petals and a sleepy slow death whose worst pain was knowledge that it was irreversible and would take its time, but not be changed. I don’t know why I said majesty. What did Cyrus say of me to you?’
“ ‘Not enough, I don’t think. But according to this tablet, you cannot be destroyed. If the bones are destroyed then you are loosed upon the world to take vengeance on everything living, like a pestilence.’
“Despair descended on me. It descended on me utterly, a despair that would have been impossible for the spirit I had been only a few hours ago. When I wandered upwards towards those with joyous faces, when I saw the gleam of light, I hadn’t known despair! I hadn’t known it any more than a child being turned away from a plate of sweets. Now I knew.
“ ‘I want to die,’ I whispered. ‘I want to truly die as I was supposed to die, before they did this to me, misguided fools that they were! Before they tried this fearsome magic. Ah, idiots! Ah, God!’
“ ‘Die?’ he asked, ‘and wander among the stupid dead? Become a demon growling among other spirits, become a great foul enemy of all that is good, a bringer of death and torment!’
“ ‘No, just die, die as if in my mother’s arms, die as if to lie in my Mother Earth, and if I become light and if there is Heaven so be it, but if not, then simply to die, and to live on in the memory of anything good I ever did for anyone, any good act, any act of kindness and love, and…’
“ ‘…and what?’
“ ‘I was going to say that I wanted to live on in memory for the acts I had done in praise of God, but I don’t care about that now. I just want to die. I would rather God would leave me alone.’ I stood up. I looked down at him. ‘Did Cyrus tell you who I was in life? How he came to know me?’
“ ‘No, you can go read his letters for yourself. He said only that your strength was too great for any magician
