The Bones of the Old Ones (Dabir and Asim) (17 page)

“She is too proud to show her frailty?” I offered.

Jibril cocked a thick eyebrow at me. “Too proud? Surely you do not believe that.”

“No,” I admitted. “But I do know that it was no spirit I spoke with last night, or this morning. That is Najya.”

“So she seems,” Jibril said. “But I see the spirit’s dark farr more and more clearly.”

I stopped with him, sensing he had some weighty matter to discuss.

He gave up waiting for whatever realization I had not reached. “There is something Dabir does not have the heart to say.”

“What is it?” I knew then a mounting sense of dread.

“There may be a time when the woman can no longer keep back the spirit.”

“But your amulet—”

He cut me off with a brusque chop of his hand. “The amulet will not work forever. The spirit is growing stronger. There may be no choice, in the end.”

I scowled at him. “You need to spend less time worrying, and more learning how to break the spear.”

“I am trying,” he said, somewhat taken aback. “Do you think it is easy?”

He looked as though he meant to say more, but at that moment Najya reached a hump of snow near the summit of the hill and called out that it was here. I stepped away from Jibril and called down to the men to bring shovels.

Others have spread tales of the exploits I shared with Dabir, but I tell you that most of them get it wrong. They would have you think Dabir and I rode everywhere in ease, pausing only now and then to solve a riddle or slash our swords, then departing with baskets of jewels and the gratitude of beautiful maids. In truth we spent more time in the dark recesses of libraries, or riding through bad weather in forsaken countryside where there was neither good food nor drink, or shoveling. You would not believe how often finding secrets came down to manual labor.

Once the men and I scraped clear the snow, we found ourselves contending against cold winter ground. We were but a half hour into our effort when two of us at once, Abdul and I, struck bedrock. At Dabir’s suggestion we cleared a larger swath of cold, dry dirt away, uncovering more stone, and he tapped it with the handle of a pick, listening carefully.

“Hollow,” he told me. He stood and addressed the four of us who were digging, while the rest kept watch. “We must find the edges of this stone.”

Other soldiers traded out, to spell each other, but Abdul and I did not relent, and soon stripped off our outer garments—no matter the chill wind, our labors warmed us.

By late afternoon we had exposed some eight feet, but never found an edge. Dabir said it was probably enough. He joined me as we set to the limestone with picks, which was hard going.

“Rock and more rock.” Hot from the labor, Dabir had removed his gloves and now stroked his beard in thought, staring at the limestone slab, scored with our efforts.

“What now?” I asked.

“We need wine,” Dabir said thoughtfully.

“Wine?” Ishaq perked up.

“Not for what you’re thinking.” Dabir smiled thinly. “Any sort of wine. Vinegar and dregs should be cheaper. I should say we need a dozen barrels of the stuff.”

Ishaq looked crestfallen. The wiry Kurd was a fine fellow, but not so abstemious.

Dabir turned to Abdul, standing just to his left. “Ride to town and bring it as swiftly as you are able.”

Abdul blinked at him. “Whatever for, Honored One?”

“To crack the stone,” Dabir said impatiently; then, at the man’s uncomprehending look, he added, “Go, take three men with you, and do not tarry.”

Good soldier that he was, Abdul obeyed, though he looked as confused as I. He called the men with him and rode off at a good clip.

Dabir then ordered us to gather as much wood as we could find. “I want a mighty blaze, to heat all this limestone.”

Najya passed me a waterskin, which I drank gratefully before passing back.

“What are you planning?” I asked Dabir.

Jibril exposed his teeth in an appreciative grin. “Dabir is thinking of Livy!”

“Exactly,” Dabir said.

I did not know the meaning of the word; it sounded to me as though it were a tool or instrument of some kind. “What is a livy?”

“Livy is a who, not a what,” Dabir explained.

“Livy was a Roman historian,” Jibril told me. “He wrote in great detail about Rome’s fight against Hannibal.”

Now that name I knew, for some said Hannibal was as great as Iskander, one of the finest of all generals.

Young Kharouf had come up beside us, panting rather heavily, and I realized that he had been listening when he asked a question himself. “What country was Hannibal?”

“Hannibal was a general,” Dabir said. “He fought against the Romans. You would probably enjoy reading of him, Asim.”

“I am not completely unfamiliar with him,” I said, and turned to Kharouf. “He took tens of thousands of men, and horses, and even some elephants, over tall mountains to battle the Romans, and he won many great victories.” Saying this, I thought, would remind Dabir that I was not completely without scholarship.

“Correct,” Jibril said. “While high in the range of mountains separating greater Frankistan from Italy, his way was blocked by gigantic boulders. Hannibal heated the boulders, and then poured sour wine onto them, and they cracked.”

“Why?” Gamal asked. All of us workers had gathered round, and if Jibril had been a better storyteller he might have entertained us.

But he was not so fine. By the Ka’aba, the scholar loved to hear himself talk of learned things, and brought out the worst in Dabir. I forget the precise whys; either of them
might
merely have said that temperature changes are just as bad for rock as for metal, and that limestone is especially responsive to such things. That is how I best explain it.

“Let us hope that it works as well as the historian reported,” Dabir finished.

Abdul and his men returned in the evening hauling a wagonload of bad wine.

“It was more expensive than you would suppose,” he told Dabir and me when he’d guided the rig up the hillside and slipped down from his horse. “I made the mistake of sounding too interested in purchasing it.”

Dabir waved off his concern. “It is good enough.” He then commanded us to put out what remained of the fire and brush it from the slab. This we did, then four of us rolled bitter-smelling casks. Dabir positioned Abdul and me on opposite sides of the stone, one cask on its side beside us both.

“Open them,” Dabir ordered.

Abdul and I stove in the casks with picks. Wine flowed free upon the stone in red streams like blood spilling across a pagan altar. The liquid sizzled the moment it struck, sending up a cloud of foul steam. The limestone groaned in anguish and a crack spread, widening and branching off through the ashes left from our fire. With another loud crack, the fissure in the stone widened.

“We need more wine!” Dabir called sharply.

Abdul and I broke open two more barrels. With the influx of more liquid, more popping and loud snapping sounded, and then the ground rumbled. The limestone fell away in two large halves. Dabir yelled to get back, and, too late, I remembered that the stone we’d broken did not begin and end directly at the hole we’d dug. The snowy ground gave way beneath me and I plunged into darkness.

9

The barrel dropped with me. I knew an instant of panic, and then my heels struck ground, for the hole proved only two spear lengths deep.

“Asim!” Dabir called.

I fell backward onto cold stone, though I did not strike my head, praise God. To add to my woe, the cask landed hard on my right, bounced over me, and rolled on, spraying sour wine the while. I reeked like a tavern after Ramadan.

I pushed quickly to my feet, gagging on the wine fumes, flexing and unflexing my left hand, which stung mightily. Fortunately neither the hand nor any other part of me seemed broken.

Dabir was backlit so harshly by the sun as he leaned in to check on me that he looked like a blackened paper cutout. Once more he called to me.

“I am all right!” I shouted up, though my voice was almost as unsteady as I felt. I could see nothing of my surroundings.

There was much shouting overhead about ropes and lanterns, and before too long Dabir was lowered down on the former while holding the latter. He advanced swiftly to my side. “Are you hurt?”

“More surprised than hurt. I stink.”

“You do,” Dabir concurred. A look of amused relief crossed his face, lit orange in the lantern glow.

Shortly thereafter Dabir called for the spear, and we were soon joined by Najya and Jibril, who carried torches, which we lit from the lantern wick. I ordered Ishaq and Gamal down to guard the entrance point and told the rest of the men to stand watch above, reminding them to look from the hill but to keep low.

The darkness covetously gobbled at our torchlight as we looked about so that we had only an impression of a wide space. The ceiling was fairly uniform at twice the height of a man, and the floor likewise was mostly level. The chamber was intermittently supported by thick earth columns, each smoothed over and painted with rounded black predatory creatures: scorpions, wolves, lions, and snakes.

Dabir tapped his fingers near a pictograph incised into the wall as we passed, glancing meaningfully at me. There were predators, yes, but there were also man shapes, with spears, and mountaintops, and low-lying clouds, or mist, or phantoms. It was hard to tell what exactly they were except that they had eyes and that they scattered fallen man figures in their wake. They were very similar to the carvings on the spear. You might think that I was pleased to know we were surely following the correct trail, but I felt on edge. Likely this place had been sealed since the time of Nuh or Moses. Who was to say what might dwell within? It would be a fine breeding ground for evil djinn.

“I dreamed this,” Najya said quietly. “We will walk over there, to the left. That is where the bone lies.”

“Did your vision show you anything more?” Dabir asked.

“Not of this room.” Najya started forward past columns, which were spread irregularly through the dark interior. I took up a torch and followed, Dabir at my side. Jibril trailed, lingering to study the images, I think.

We proceeded only ten more paces before the space closed in to form a narrow opening. Najya hesitated, for rough chunks of stone and earth lay across her path, and the right-hand wall sagged inward. An old cave-in had wrought damage, and the straight way forward looked none too safe, thus Najya started to the left of a column.

“Hold,” Dabir said quickly, and grabbed her arm.

She halted, eyes showing white with concern.

“There is something amiss.” Dabir released her and bent to run a finger along the floor next to her feet.

“What is it?” I asked.

Dabir beckoned for my torch and with it examined the partially collapsed wall. He reached out, touched it, and peered closely. “This is deliberate,” he said. “The wall has not collapsed; it has been carved to look as though there was a cave-in.”

“Why?” I asked.

Dabir handed me the torch, searched through the stones beside the wall, then hefted a bucket-sized one, with a grunt, into the path before us. The moment it struck, an eight-foot span of floor dropped away mere inches from Najya’s boot. She gasped. It was a long moment before we heard the sound of stone shattering against something in the gloom below.

“You should let Dabir lead,” I told Najya. She did not dispute the advice.

Dabir took up the torch again and peered into the dark pit, the bottom of which we could not see.

We moved slowly but steadily from that point on. Less than two dozen steps farther, though, we arrived at a sealed door, of sorts. The torchlight flickered over a circular stone set into the wall and chiseled with the simplistic depiction of a snarling beast’s head. I thought it might have been a boar, but the art was so rudimentary it was difficult to be certain. Four notches were carved about the grotesque face, clearly designed as handgrips.

Dabir pressed his palms gently to the stone, then stepped back to contemplate. “It can be rolled out of the way,” he thought aloud. He pointed down at the curved bottom of the stone, at least half a foot thick.

“Perhaps,” I said, “but it will not be an easy task.”

He handed the spear to Jibril, stepped to the right of the stone, crouched, and ran his hand along it. Then he stepped to the side where I waited and repeated his actions.

“Think how long it has been since men stood here.” Jibril’s voice was almost reverent. “More than a thousand years.”

“It feels like a tomb,” I pointed out, for I felt no wonder, only the press of the blackness lurking on every side.

Najya stepped closer to Dabir, and I could not help noticing how she visibly struggled to take her eyes from the spear beside her. “What are you looking for?”

“Any kind of pulley or gear system would long since have rotted away,” he said. “But there could be more weighted traps. They clearly valued this weapon, or they wouldn’t have worked so hard to conceal it.”

He stepped back and considered the door as a whole, then bent down beside it once more. I saw his expression clear. “Ah.” He stood. “If we roll this stone along this useful track, it will strike these bumps.” He patted a roughened patch of rock along the wall that looked little different to me than any other. “And then it will go off track and slam down to crush whoever’s holding these convenient handholds. Ingenious,” he added.

That wasn’t the word I would have chosen to describe it. “How are we to move it, then?” I asked.

“Off the track,” Jibril offered.

“Aye,” Dabir agreed.” He set to investigating the space to the right of the wheel, nodding as he did so. “Yes, if we roll it this way, the door will lean against the wall as it rests.”

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“Fairly sure,” he said, emphasizing the first word.

“Fairly,” I repeated.

“Just to be safe,” he said, “don’t use the handholds on the door. We must be wary.”

“That had not occurred to me,” I muttered, but I do not think anyone heard.

Dabir and I stepped to one side of the stone and pushed against it with all our strength. It was a challenge, but once under way, the heavy disc rolled aside and, as Dabir promised, leaned easily against the wall, showing no inclination to crush us.