Servant of the Bones

"Wait a minute, man!" he said to me. I sank the pick into his chest, the same three times, to make it good, and pushed him towards the wall. People stepped out of our way, turning the other way. He slid down to the pavement dead, and a woman cursed as she stepped over his left leg.

Now I understood the genius of their crime in this crowded city. But there was no time to think on it. I had to return to Esther. My body was formed, I was running, and I had to make my way, like any other human now, solid, back to the glass doors of the palace.

The air was filled with screams. Men ran into the emporium of clothes. I pushed to get close. I could feel my tangled black hair. I could feel my beard. All eyes were on her.

Out she came, laid and covered on a white linen stretcher. I saw her head tumbled to my side, her big glossy eyes, with their pearly whites so pure, her mouth leaking blood like an old fountain. Just a trickle.

Men screamed for others to get back. An old one wailed at the top his lungs, bowing as he saw her. This was her driver, her guard perhaps, the gray-haired man. His face was furrowed, his narrow back bent. He bowed and cried out, he cried out in a dialect of Hebrew. He loved her. I pushed carefully towards her.

A white car came speeding to the spot, printed with red crosses and topped by swirling lights. The sirens were unspeakable. Might as well have been the picks through my ears, but there was no time to worry about my pain. She was still living, breathing, I had to tell her.

Into that car, they carried her, lifted high, like an offering over the crowd . . . Through the back doors she went inside, her eyes looking for something, for someone.

Gathering all my strength, I moved others out of my path. My hands-true and familiar and mine-hit the long glass windowed side of the white car. I looked into the glass. I felt my nose against it. I saw her! Her big sleepy eyes full of dreamy death, I saw her.

And she said aloud, I heard it, a whisper rising like a whiff of smoke.

"The Servant . . . Azriel, the Servant of the Bones!"

The door was open. The men ministering to her bent low.

"What is it, honey? What did you say?"

"Don't make her speak."

She stared at me through the glass, and she said it again, I saw her lips move. I heard her voice. I heard her thought. "Azriel," she whispered. "The Servant of the Bones!"

"They're dead, my darling!" I cried out. No one around me, pressing as hard as I pressed to see her, cared what I said.

She and I, we looked at each other. Then her soul and spirit blazed for one instant, visible and together, the full shape of her body over her, hair like wings, face expressionless or turned away from the earth forever, who can know, and then she was gone, risen, in a blinding light. I ducked from the light, then tried to see it again. But it was gone.

The body lay an empty sack.

The doors slammed shut.

The siren split my ears again.

The car roared into the stream, forcing other engines out of its path, people shifted and sighed and groaned around me. I stood stock-still on the pavement. Her soul was gone.

I looked up. Knees pushed against my leg. A foot came down hard upon my own. I wore the same kind of dirty string shoe as my enemy. I was almost toppled from the shallow curb.

The car was beyond my sight, and the Evals dead not a hundred feet away, yet no one here in this melee knew, so crowded was it, and I thought-without context, without reason-of what was said about Babylon after Cyrus conquered it, that funny remark which the Greek historian Xenophon had made, or was it Herodotus, that so big was Babylon and so dense with people that it took two whole days before people in the middle of the city knew that it had been taken at all.

Well, not me!

A man said, "Did you know who that was?" This was English, New York talk, and I turned just as if I were alive and I were going to answer, only there were tears in my eyes. I wanted to say,

"They killed her." Nothing came out of my mouth but I had a mouth and the man was nodding as if he saw the tears. My God, help me. This man wanted to comfort me. Someone else spoke:

"That was Gregory Belkin's daughter, that's who that was," the man said, "That was Esther Belkin."

"Belkin's daughter-"

". . . Temple of the Mind."

"Temple of the Mind of God. Belkin."

What did these words mean to me?

Master! Where are you? Name yourself or show yourself! Who has called me? Why have I been made to witness this!

"Gregory Belkin's little girl, the Minders-"

Which way?

I began to fade. I felt it swift and terrible as it always is, as surely as if the Master had commanded all the artificial and gathered particles of me, as it is written, Return now to your place. Just for a moment, I clung to the storm of matter, commanding it to sheathe me, but my cry was a wail. I stared down at my hands, my feet, such filthy shoes, cloth and string and leather shoes, slippers more than shoes, shoes on the pavement:

"Azriel, stay alive!" came the voice from my mouth.

"Take it easy, son," said the man beside me. And he looked at me as if he felt sorry for me. He lifted his arm to embrace me. I put my hand up. I saw the tears.

But the wind had come, the wind that comes for all spirits. I was losing my hold.

The man was looking for me and he couldn't find me, and he didn't know why, and thought it was his own confusion.

Then he and all those with him-and the great city-was gone too.

I was nothing now, nothing.

I struggled to see the crowd below, but I couldn't find the spots where the Evals lay dead in their blood still or were being taken away with such care as the queen with her dark hair, the goddess who had died seeing me. She had said it, I heard it, she had said, "Azriel, the Servant of the Bones." I had heard her as a spirit hears, though the man in the car with her might not hear something so small and tragic as her whisper.

The wind took me. The wind was filled with the wail of the souls, faces bearing down upon me, hands seeking to grip me, and turning my back on it as always, I let go. I saw the last dim outline of my hands for one instant; I felt the form of arms and legs; I felt the tears on my face. Yes, I felt that. Then I was a goner.

Into the bones, Azriel. I was safe.

So there you have the picture! Masterless, risen, to witness this, to avenge it? Why? The darkness overcame me like a drug. Safe, yes, but I didn't want to be safe; I wanted to find the man who had sent those Evals to kill her.

16

Time passed.

I felt it more intensely than usual. I knew that I was listening. I was there.

I knew what the world was now, more or less, as always. Bear with me. I knew what men and women knew-those whom I'd seen and touched in the New York street.