The Bones of the Old Ones (Dabir and Asim) (16 page)

“That is strange.”

Dabir laughed shortly. “Yes. But so must many teachings seem to those who do not grow up among them.”

I pondered that briefly, then strove unsuccessfully to think only of more hopeful matters.

Though we journeyed along another major caravan trail, we passed no living men in the hours after dawn, only three wandering horses. Disquietingly, they were saddled and trailing their reins. We gathered the animals and led them after us. The soldiers wondered whether the mounts had fled during a bandit attack, and I think they longed for action like me; they desired an opponent they could face and defeat and tired of the fruitless travel through the cold.

Just after midday prayers we saw a small village across the vast plain of white, and our horses picked up their pace, thinking that rest and food lay just before them.

Yet as we drew closer Dabir grew tense and shifted in his saddle. “Asim,” he said, “do you see any smoke from that village?”

He was right. There should have been cooking fires, at the very least. Yet from the dozens of huts and outbuildings I saw nothing. “Nay,” I told him. “Perhaps they conserve their fuel. It cannot be easily had in this place.”

“Perhaps.”

I knew better than to ignore a warning from Dabir, so I put the men on alert.

As we drew closer we saw that the village was oddly empty. No urchins threw snowballs. No children ran to the animal sheds for chores. No one was walking back and forth between the buildings. The wind alone moved in that place, moaning softly. Finally, though, we heard the whinny of horses calling to ours. I thought for just a moment all might be well, and then we discovered nine men and women lying in the road just beyond the last hut, as though they’d been overcome by cold during an attempt to flee. Each was covered separately in their own sheet of ice.

The soldiers muttered and made the sign against the evil eye, as you might expect, but I ordered them silent.

“What could have done this?” Kharouf asked me quietly. His left arm was still held before him in a sling, like a bird wing.

I could but shake my head. I doubted that there was some ordinary explanation.

We carefully picked our way around the bodies, peering alertly toward the shuttered windows and sealed doors, as if some earthly enemy lingered in wait. I raised my voice, calling out to any who might be in earshot.

After my second call I held up a hand, for I had heard the faint whisper of voices. “Hold,” I ordered.

Over the snuffle of our own horses and the lonely wind I now perceived the low chant of a woman, though I could not make out her words. There was an answering mutter from male voices. I motioned Abdul to split our forces so that we might come to the square from three directions. This was swiftly accomplished, and as two groups of four trotted to approach from the flanks, I led the way forward, steel bared.

The narrow street broadened into a wide square centered about an old well. Its stones glistened with ice dusted over with snow, which would have looked almost charming had there not been three men frozen in upright slabs just to the right. Two were half turned, as if they had begun to run in the moment before death. The third had been caught flat-footed and stared out at us now through a dagger’s length of ice, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping in terror.

To the left of these grisly monuments a half-dozen impatient horses were picketed—four saddled, two laden—and they whinnied again to our animals and pricked up their ears eagerly. More striking than all of this were the three living men kneeling on prayer rugs in front of a tableau of frozen corpses, and the woman before them chanting words in a language I did not know. The men echoed her. All were Khazars, the men in heavy furs and thick hats, armed with curved swords. The woman was small and thickly set. She was garbed in a bulky robe fashioned of gray furs, and her boots were adorned with bands hung with small iron animals.

As she fell silent, the Khazars looked up at us, and the rest of our force riding in from east and west. You would have thought to see fear in their eyes to behold so many tense, armed warriors, yet their expressions were blank.

“Have you come,” the woman asked in heavily accented Arabic, “to witness the miracle?”

Dabir stared sternly at the gathered Khazars, and his voice was heavy with distaste. “What miracle?”

The soldiers behind us muttered darkly, and I heard Gamal asking permission to cast the Khazars naked in the snow. Abdul ordered him silent.

A bracelet that had been hidden by the woman’s sleeve was revealed as she raised her hands. The animal images hung from it jangled together. “This is sign that the final days are come. Soon the savior shall walk the earth, and lead the just to paradise.”

The wind keened then, as if it were a willful thing that had heard her words and approved them. Abdul had to snap again at the men to silence their outraged grumbling.

“How did you know where to find this miracle?” Dabir asked.

She raised her hands to the empty sky. “I followed the song heard in my heart.”

Jibril drew rein beside Dabir and stared down at her. “Have there been other signs?”

“Are they not everywhere? Are you desert folk not brought low? If you do not turn from the false faith, you shall lie like these, forever within a frozen hell.”

I heard the shift of hooves in the snow behind me and looked back to see a grim Abdul riding up on his gray mount. His eyes were narrowed, and his hand at his sword hilt. Yet the Khazars watched with seeming indifference, as though the warrior were no threat whatsoever.

“They insult God and his prophets,” Abdul spat gruffly, “and mock these dead.” Abdul was a quiet, amiable sort, and I was surprised to see him so furious. He would have attacked had I given him leave.

“Would you cut us down?” the woman asked, almost inviting destruction. “It will not stop the savior. Better to raise a sword against a snowstorm.” Her throaty voice rose in a zealous quaver. “Slay us if you will—we shall go straightaway to paradise, martyrs who witnessed the hand of God.”

“We will not kill you,” Dabir stated firmly. “But you must depart. You profane those who perished here.”

She stared at him, then chattered at her men, who climbed to their feet and walked to their horses. The woman smiled once more, her eyes lingering last on Najya. “We will go. We will tell others what we have seen.”

I ordered Ishaq and Abdul to monitor the Khazars and told the others to search the village, mostly so they would be too busy to contemplate violence against the priestess and her followers, who were slow about departing.

Dabir, Jibril, and I joined the search, with Najya.

We looked for the better part of an hour, but found no creature alive in that frozen village. Men, women, and children were dead where they had dropped or where ice had propped them in place, their faces rigid in fear. Dogs, cats, even fowl, had died with them. Donkeys and horses were frozen upright in their stalls.

Najya spoke at last upon sight of a small family sitting around a cold brazier, their blue hands raised to the coals that had been extinguished at the moment of their death.

“What could have done this?” she asked, her voice low, her face hidden beneath hood and veil. And then she answered her own question. “It was the snow women I called, wasn’t it?”

“How could those two have done all this?” Dabir asked. “It is something more powerful still.” He did not say what that might be, and we did not ask. I don’t think any of us wanted to hear the answer.

We knew not how to bury so many dead in frozen ground, so we prayed for them after we gathered fodder, and returned to the road.

We set double sentries that night, no matter that we took shelter in a large caravanserai with high walls. Jibril whispered to Dabir that whatever had slain the villagers would not be stopped with walls, and I knew he was right. But what more could we do?

A small caravan loaded down with textiles arrived from the south after us, and they quickly spread word of the grisly village to travelers from the north, who relayed that they’d heard of giant monsters roaming the wasteland, two-headed blood-drinking men, and other tales that sounded even less likely.

The soldiers were worried, for only fools are immune to fear, and we had seen much that would trouble any sane man. I shared with them the story of the ghul and the soldier’s sister, thinking to reassure them that awful things could be overcome. I do not know that they were altogether heartened, even though they cheered in the proper places. The wind had come to seem like the enemy, and its moan had not relented since the afternoon, a reminder always that we were surrounded by an intangible antagonist of unknowable strength.

I had noticed Najya peering out from her tent, and called her out to play shatranj even though she had withdrawn by the time the men were bedding down around the fire. I honestly did not expect her to accept, but she said that she would, and I knew a fumbling, nervous joy as we set up beside the fire, which blazed on our right hand. Jibril and Dabir sat a little ways off, comparing the marks upon the spear with Dabir’s record of them, and the two sometimes exchanged low-voiced comments. From their somber demeanor it did not seem like they made much progress deciphering all the symbols.

Najya spoke little until we were halfway through the game.

“Captain,” she began quietly, her voice almost lost over the crackle of the burning logs, “I have noticed a theme in your tales.”

Her renewed formality stabbed me. Still, I did not let the disappointment show in my voice. “What is that?”

“You meet a monster, and you kill it.”

That was a drastic simplification. “That’s one way to describe it, I suppose.”

“Have you ever met something strange that you did not kill?”

“I have met evil things that I could not kill, though not for lack of trying.”

“What of the spirit within me?”

How best to answer did not come quickly enough to me, and I found myself staring dumbly.

“What will you do if the spirit takes full control?”

“You are asking if I would kill you, and I swear upon all things that are holy that this I would never do.”

My fervent reply gave her pause, and her next question was more subdued. “Suppose that the thing within me attacked you.”

“I would find some other way to stop it. It is only your enemies who should fear me; against you I shall never lift a hand.” Ah, that was too close. I wondered if my ardor was as obvious to her as it had been to Dabir.

She looked down at the board, and only after a long moment did she reach to take one of my pawns. I advanced a chariot to threaten one of hers, and she pounced upon it with a knight.

“Nicely played,” I told her. “The amulet protects you now. You have no need to worry about such things.” I put forth a pawn. Three squares more and it would reach the far side of the board. Yet I did not think she would let him pass.

“I dreamt again, last night,” she confessed softly. “A true dream. You and Dabir and I walked in a dark cavern, surrounded by carven images. Like the ones on the spear.”

That sounded both troubling and promising. “What more did you see? Did we find another of the weapons?”

“No. But I dreamed also that you stood within a fortress and recoiled from me when I asked your help.”

That couldn’t be right. “I will never fail to aid you,” I promised.

She stared at me through her lashes. “How do you think this all shall end, Asim?”

Never before had I known such pleasure merely at the sound of my name. Yet my happiness was troubled. I forced cheer into my voice and relayed the best possible outcome. “We will find the bones and cast out the hateful spirit. Then I shall personally lead your escort back to Isfahan.”

“And what of the Sebitti?”

“We shall likely have to fight them,” I conceded. “Dabir and Jibril will concoct something clever.”

“You have such faith in him.”

“So should you.”

It was many more moves before she spoke once more. “It is in you,” she said, “that I place my faith.”

I think I may have defeated her, that game, but in truth I was so pleased with her simple words that against that glow all else has dimmed.

*   *   *

Come morning the foothills of the Taurus Mountains filled the horizon. We passed through outlying villages as we drew nearer and nearer to the ancient city of Edessa. Najya informed us that she sensed one of the bones strongly now, and pointed northwest. “It is there.” Her voice quavered with something between fear and excitement. “On the height of that hill.”

Like Mosul, Edessa had overflowed its walls. My father, who had once been posted there, had told my brothers and me that it was older even than Mosul. From him I had learned Ibrahim had once been tormented by Edessan unbelievers who meant to burn him alive. Allah turned their fire to water, and transformed their firewood into carp, the descendants of which live on to this day in a pool of water. No man is allowed to slay them. Merchants sell special food to pilgrims who come to see the fish, and my father had told me the fish eat the food from your fingers. When I relayed this story to Abdul, he was as eager as me to see this, but it was not to be. We bypassed the city altogether, much to the disappointment of the men, who’d hoped for a warm meal at least.

By early afternoon we’d arrived at the small rounded slope Najya sought. There were tracks of beasts, but none of humans. Once we sat our mounts near the height of the place, I could look southeast beyond Edessa to the snow-white flatness from which we had come. To north and west mountains ringed the horizon. Here and there hawks soared, and below some wild asses rooted in the snow for grass.

Najya walked carelessly along the gentlest slope of the hill, near its crown. Dabir followed, and Jibril and I came after. The men began to unload our packs to set up camp at the base. I had no wish to advertise our presence against the skyline.

“Have you noticed,” Jibril asked me softly, “that she does not mind the cold?”

Once he mentioned it, I realized Najya’s outer robe was thinner even than mine, and, moreover, it had blown open in the chill wind. She had not bothered to draw it back. Thick, strong men like Abdul kept theirs tightly closed.