Anne Rice - Servant of the Bones

I winced, and he started to question me again. I put my hands up for him to be quiet.

I backed away from my own thought. I turned and stared at the gleaming bones, and I bent down and laid my own fingers, my material fingers, upon my own bones.

At once I felt as if someone were touching me as I touched them. I felt someone’s touch on my own legs. I felt my own hands on my own face as I touched the skull. I sank my thumbs into the empty sockets defiantly, where my eyes had been, my eyes…something boiling, something too ghastly to think of—I uttered a small sound that made me ashamed.

The room quivered, brightened, then contracted as though it were receding. No, stay here. Stay in this room. Stay here with him! But I was imagining things, as humans say. My body had not weakened at all. I was standing tall.

I opened my eyes slowly and closed them and looked down at the golden bones. Iron fastened them to the rotted cloth beneath them, iron fastened them to the old wood of the casket, but it was the same casket, permeated with all the oils that would make it last unto the end of time, like the bones. An image of Zurvan flashed through me, and with it came a flood of words…to love, to learn, to know, to love…

Once again came the huge city walls of blue-glazed bricks, the golden lions and the cries of voices, and one of them pointing his finger and screaming at me in the old Hebrew—the prophet—and the chants rose and fell.

Something had happened! I had done something, something unspeakable to be made this ghost, this old ghost who had served Masters beyond recollection.

But if I dwelt on this, I might vanish. Or I might not.

I stood very still, but no more memories came. I withdrew my hands. I stood looking down at the bones.

Gregory brought me out of it.

He moved closer and he put his hands on me. He wanted so much to do this. How his pulse raced. It felt wondrously erotic, these fleshly hands touching my newly formed arms. If I was still gaining in strength, I didn’t feel it anymore.

I felt the world. Safe inside it for now.

His fingers clenched the sleeves of this coat. He was staring at it, the precision of it, the dazzle of the buttons, the fine stitches. And all of this I’d drawn to me in haste with the old commands that rolled off my tongue like nothing. I could have made myself a woman suddenly to frighten him. But I didn’t want to do that. I was too happy to be Azriel, and Azriel was too afraid.

Yet again…what was the limit of this masterless power? I contrived a joke, an evil joke. I smiled, and then whispering all the words I knew, fashioning the most mellifluous incantations I could, I changed myself into Esther.

The image of Esther. I felt her small body, and peered through her big eyes and smiled, and even felt the tightness of her garments on that last day, the flash of the painted animal coat in my eye.

Thank God, I didn’t have to see this myself! I felt sorry for him.

“Stop it!” he roared. He fell back onto the floor, scrambling away from me, and then leaning back on his elbows.

I returned to my own shape. I had done this and he had no control of it! I had control of it. I felt proud and wicked suddenly.

“Why did you call her the lamb? Why did the Rebbe say you killed her?”

“Azriel,” he said. “Listen carefully to what I say.” He climbed to his feet as effortlessly as a dancer. He walked towards me. “Whatever happens after, whatever happens, remember this. The world is ours. The world , Azriel.”

I was startled.

“The world, Gregory?” I asked. I tried to sound hard and clever. “What do you mean, the world?”

“I mean all of it, I mean the world as Alexander meant the world when he went out to conquer it.” He appealed to me, patiently. “What do you know, Spirit Friend? Do you know the names Bonaparte or Peter the Great or Alexander? Do you know the name Akhenaton? Constantine? What are the names you know?”

“All of those and more, Gregory,” I answered. “Those were emperors, conquerors. Add to them Tamerlane and Scanderbeg, and after him Hitler, Hitler, who slew our people by the millions.”

“Our people,” he said with a smile. “Yes, we are of the same people, aren’t we? I knew we were. I knew it.”

“What do you mean, you knew it? The Rebbe told you. He read the scroll. What are these conquerors to you? Who rules in this electric paradise called New York? You are a churchman, so says the Rebbe. You are a merchant. You have billions in every currency recognized on earth. You think Scanderbeg in his castle in the Balkans ever had the wealth you have here? You think Peter the Great ever brought back to Russia with him the luxuries you possess? They didn’t have your power! They couldn’t. Their world wasn’t an electrical web of voices and lights.”

He laughed with delight, his eyes sparkling, and beautiful.

“Ah, that’s just it,” he said. “And now in this world so filled with wonders, no one has their power! No one has the force of Alexander when he brought the philosophy of the Greeks to Asia. No one dares to kill as Peter the Great killed, chopping off the heads of his bad soldiers until the blood covered his arms.”

“Your times are not the worst of times,” I said. “You have leaders; you have talk; you have the rich being kind to the poor; you have men the world wide who fear evil and want goodness.”

“We have madness,” he said. “Look again. Madness!”

“What does this mean to you? Is this the mission of your church to gain control of the whole world? Is that what drives you, as the old man asked? You want the power to chop off the heads of men? You want that?”

“I want to change everything,” he said. “Look back over those conquerors. Look back over their accomplishments. Use the finest reach of your spirit mind.”

“I will. Go on.”

“Who really changed the world forever? Who changed it more than any single man?” I didn’t answer.

“Alexander,” he said. “Alexander the Great did it! He dared to kill empires that blocked his path. He dared to force Asian to marry Greek. He dared to break the Gordian knot with a sword.”

I considered. I thought. I saw the Greek cities along the Asian coast, long after Alexander had died in Babylon; I saw the world as if I were standing back from it. I saw it in patches of light and dark.

“Alexander changed your world,” I said. “The world of the West. I see what you see. Alexander is the cornerstone of the rise of the West. But the West isn’t the world, Gregory.”

“Oh, yes, it is,” he answered. “Because the West that Alexander built has changed Asia. No part of the globe has not been changed by the West that Alexander built. And no mind today stands ready to change the world as he would, and I…as I would.”

He drew in close to me, then suddenly with a darting motion, pushed me with both hands. I didn’t move. It was like a child pushing a man. He was pleased and sobered. He took a step back.

I pushed him with one hand. I pushed him into a stumble and then a fall, from which he rose slowly, unshaken, refusing to be shaken.

He didn’t become angry. He was knocked back a step, but he planted his feet squarely and he waited.

“Why are you testing me?” he asked. “I didn’t say I was a god or an angel. But you’ve been sent to me, don’t you see? You’ve been sent on the eve of the transformation of the world, you are sent as a sign! As was King Cyrus of old, that the people would go home to Jerusalem!”

Cyrus, the Persian. My whole frame ached; my mind ached. I struggled to be still.

“Don’t speak of that!” I whispered. My mind went blank with rage. You can well imagine. I was beside myself. “Speak of Alexander if you will. But don’t speak of Cyrus. You know nothing of those times!”