Servant of the Bones

Cults existed for peace and war.

Around the death of Esther Belkin swarmed the argument over cults.

Again and again, her face flashed on television screens.

She herself, a member of nothing, was related to everything- those who were anti-government, those who were anti-God, those who were anti-wealth.

Had her father's cult members actually killed Esther? She herself had once been heard in private to remark that the Temple of the Mind of God had too much money, too much power, too many houses worldwide. Or had it been the enemies of Gregory Belkin and his Temple who sought through the death of Esther to hurt the father, to warn him and his powerful cohorts that his organization had become too big, and too dangerous, but to whom? Cults could be liberal, radical, reactionary, old-fashioned. Cults could do terrible things.

I drifted, I watched, I listened; I knew what people knew. It was a world of empires, nations, countries, and gangs; and the smallest gang could dominate the television screens of the entire world with one well-planned explosion. The news would talk all day about the leader of fifty as easily as it might about the leader of millions.

Enemies were the beneficiaries of the same democratic and competitive scrutiny as victims.

The faces of the Evals-Billy Joel, Doby, and Hayden-rose to the fore, blazing as bright as Esther's on the television screens for brief seconds. Had these men who killed Esther Belkin belonged to a secret movement? People spoke of backwoods "survivalists" with barbed-wire fences and vicious dogs, who suspected all kinds of authority. Conspiracy. It might be anywhere in any form.

And then there were the Apocalyptic Christians, having more cause than ever before to say that Judgment Day was at hand.

Had the Eval brothers come from such organizations?

Gregory Belkin, the stepfather of Esther, spoke in a soft compelling voice of plots to hurt all God-fearing peoples. The innocence of Esther was significant and cried out to heaven. Terrorists, diamonds, fanatics-these words encircled the brief flicker of Esther's face and name.

The news in all forms-printed, broadcast, computerized on internets-was continuous, alarming, prophetic, fatalistic, detailed, ludicrous by intention and by accident in turns.

As I said, any ghost could have grasped these things.

The question with me was why was I thinking of anything. Why wake from my deep sleep, just short of death, always just short of death, and find myself walking amongst Billy Joel, Hayden, and Doby Eval-a sudden horrified witness to their crime?

Whatever the case, I had for the moment lost my taste for merely drifting, for merely existing, for merely hating.

I wanted to pay attention. I wanted to make full use of my mind unfettered by flesh and cast into eternity, a mind that had been gaining strength with each new awakening, taking back into the darkness with it not merely experience but emotion, and possibly a certain resolve.

Inevitably, it was a Master who would put all of this in order through his responses, his reactions, the vitality of his will.

But a very specific question tormented me. Yes, I was back and I wanted to be back. But had not I done things to ensure that I would never be brought back again?

If I wanted to, I think I could remember what I'd done. Forget the world and all its pomp and racket for a moment. I was Azriel. Azriel could remember what he'd done.

I had slain masters.

If I wanted to, I could remember more dead Magi than those I've already described here. I could smell again the camp of the Monguls, leather, elephants, scented oil-flicker of lights beneath the sagging silk, the chessboard overturned and tiny carved figures made of gold and silver rolling on a flowered carpet.

Cries of men. Destroy it, it's a demon, drive it back into the bones!

A series of windows in Baghdad looking out over a battle. Back into the bones! Fiend from Hell. A castle near Prague. A stone-cold room high in the Alps. And maybe even more-even after the vivid enchanting gaslight on the flowered wallpaper of the sorcerer's room in Paris.

This servant serves no more!

Yes, I'd proved to myself and them that I could slay any conjurer. So where was the sly, covert consciousness which had brought me here to this presentation of power?

Oh, I could like to aver that I loathed being conscious again and forswore all life and everything that goes with it, but I couldn't really do that. I couldn't forget Esther's eyes, or the beautiful glass on Fifth Avenue, or the moment when the heat came through the soles of my shoes, and when the man, the kindly unknowing man had put his arm around me!

I was curious and free! In an orbit, I was bound to these bizarre events. But no Lord directed me.

Esther knew me but she hadn't called. Had it been someone on behalf of Esther, someone whom I had already tragically failed?

Two nights passed in real time before I realized I was once again awake, and moving through the air: the angel of might, the angel of evil, who knows?

This is what I saw:

17

This was a nearby city, in view of the other. The car moving through the rain was the car that had carried Esther to the place where the Evals surrounded her with their picks. Other cars traveled with it, filled with guards whose eyes roved dark and deserted buildings.

The procession was furtive yet full of authority.

Through the rain, I could actually see the shining towers of the street on which she had died. Grand as Alexandria, or Constantinople, this rock-hard capital of the Western world, New York-in its greedy nuclear splendor. Yet its soaring buildings reminded me of the weapons carried by the Evals. Hard and very sharp.

The man in the car was very proud of the car, proud of the guards who traveled with him, proud of his fine wool coat and the neat trim of his thick curly hair.

I drew in close to see him through the darkened glass: Gregory Belkin, her stepfather, founder of the Temple of the Mind of God, rich man. Rich beyond the dreams of kings in earlier times, because they couldn't fly on magic carpets.

The car? Mercedes-Benz, and the most unusual of its kind, made from a small sedan and elongated by three perfectly welded and padded parts so that it was twice the length of the engines all around it, shiny and black, deliberately glamorous, as if carved of obsidian and polished by hand.

It prowled for blocks before stopping, the driver quick to obey the rise of Belkin's hand.

Then this proud high priest or prophet or whatever he deemed himself stepped unaided out into the light of the street lamp as if he wanted it to shine on his youthful clean-shaven face, hair clipped short on the back of his neck like a Roman soldier, yet softly curly despite its length.

The full length of the dingy dirty block he walked, alone, past dismal boarded-up shops, past signs in Hebrew and in English, to the place he meant to visit, his guards sweeping the night before him and behind him with their glances, the raindrops standing like jewels on the shoulders of his long coat.