The Waters Of Eternity Part 4

"This was not Harim," I concluded.

"No."

"Then who?"

Dabir rose, sighing as he brushed mud and dirt from his robe. He finally quit the futile exercise, frowning. "How I long for a bath, Asim." His eyes searched the horizon, and his thoughts returned to the curiosity. "I would like to find out by following the mystery, but we have not the men to seek far. You follow his tracks out, and I shall follow his tracks in, and we shall see if there is more to be learned."

"Do not wander from the camp," I told him as we parted.

"Aye," he said in acknowledgment.

The tracks proved a muddle, but I pursued them from the site of the conflict. Whatever it was had swung through the middle of camp after the battle, then lingered outside of the scholar's tent. It was strange, and I did not care for the way my thoughts turned.

I was readying to follow the tracks away when I heard a girl's voice, protesting, and a man commanding. I knew the lower tones for Sabih, our finest swordsman. On the other side of the tent, the scholar's daughter cowered beside a horse, her shoulders hunched. One of the horse's saddlebags was open. Clearly Sabih had come upon her searching through it.

"Just a look," he was saying, "a reward for the man who helped defend the camp and your honor." He reached out and tore away her veil.

She let out a cry and threw up her hands to cover her face. I was upon him in a moment, one hand on the wrist of his sword hand, my other holding the sputtering torch.

"Dog-born!" I cried. "Greek wh.o.r.eson! Have you no women at home?"

"I meant no harm," he said, his beard twitching with his mouth.

"Touch her again and answer to me! Go-we are packing camp, not hunting kisses!"

He frowned as I released his hand. "She's ugly anyway," he said, and slunk away.

I turned to the girl, who had retrieved the veil and now held it, forlornly staring at the mud-splattered cloth. She looked as though she might cry. The poor thing had her father's face, thin, with pointed chin and eyes too closely set, and I saw now that her cheeks were pockmarked. Aye, no beauty, but my heart went out to her.

"Scrub it clean. It is all one, as wet as our ride will be."

She glanced at me and looked back down.

"And do not worry as to his words," I said more gently. "Does not a fox curse the grapes he cannot reach?"

She looked up shyly once more.

"I will watch for you, little bird," I said. "Soon you will have a warm bed and many sweets, for the governor of Mosul employs the finest cooks, as does the vizier, whom you shall meet in Baghdad." I smiled at her and stepped away, almost running over Dabir in the process.

"My apologies," I told him.

"That was kind of you," he told me quietly as we moved off.

He told me then that the tracks entered the camp from the east, which was almost the same spot from whence the tracks had exited, which is how he ended up back at me.

Neither Dabir nor I knew what to make of it. Even he for once knew that we should not venture farther in the dark.

The next morning there was another corpse.

III.

Sabih lay upon the edge of camp. Musa discovered him, and Dabir naturally came to investigate, despite my call for haste.

"We have no time for mysteries."

He ignored me and probed the corpse's grisly wound with his fingers.

Sabih's body was thoroughly wet, for G.o.d had sent water pouring from the heavens during my watch last night. Even now it drizzled down, coaxing mist from the foothills all about us. The dark clouds hung low. About us our two remaining soldiers and the scholar and his daughter stowed our gear, though their eyes kept returning to us.

And the body, lying there in the mud. I have seen worse, but it was no pleasure to observe his skull smashed to red and muddy paste. Dabir seemed untroubled, only curious. "Dabir," I prodded. "The Greeks-"

"Did not do this," Dabir snapped. "This is our 'ally.'"

He pointed to the mud, where I had already noticed waterlogged prints that matched those from the night before.

"They are the same," Dabir said.

"You are right." I wished to repeat that this was no time for puzzling over such things, but during my hesitation Dabir spoke once more.

"This is connected with the scholar and his daughter."

I felt the truth of this as well. I had told him how the prints had pa.s.sed by the scholar's tent.

"It is time for answers, Asim."

"They will have to wait," I added with emphasis. "Now we must ride. Acteon will surely be on our track."

Praise be to G.o.d, Dabir reluctantly agreed. We paused only for morning prayers before rubbing down the horses and mounting. We ate in the saddle. Neither the scholar nor our remaining soldiers seemed pleased with our haste, but there was no help for it. We were still a day out from the nearest settlement of any size, and a week from Mosul itself. There was little choice but to stay upon the roads, for the foothills gave few options for cross-country travel.

Truly the weather was miserable. Our cloaks were thick and shielded my chest, but my legs and feet were thoroughly soaked. Mud caked our poor mounts up to their haunches. I thought it unlikely that even Acteon could drive on through conditions like this, and so I called a halt at the time of mid-day prayers. We picketed the horses and took shelter in a shallow cave set back from the road. Also I set Musa to watch the entrance, promising to rotate between him and Nawaf and myself every quarter hour, then set up a fire. I had only a little kindling, but we crowded around it, desperate for warmth.

Dabir's wet hair hung down in thick strands below his turban, a soaked and lumpy ma.s.s of cloth. He would have looked comical save for the hard look in his eyes.

"It is time to tell us the nature of your ally, Azzam," Dabir told the scholar. "I did not mind so much when it fought on our side, but this morning it killed one of my men."

Azzam's hairy eyebrows drew together. "What do you mean?"

"I mean the time for pretense is at an end. What is the thing that follows us?"

Azzam scratched his knee. For a moment I thought he meant to dissemble, but as the thunder boomed with all the strength of G.o.d's mightiest drum, he began his tale.

"There came into my possession some years ago a book. The Hilkot Yetzirah. I do not expect you to know-"

"The Hebrew rules of creation," Dabir said.

Azzam stared at him. Clearly he had not yet deduced the measure of the man with whom he spoke.

"Go on," Dabir prompted.

"You have read this book?" Azzam asked in wonder.

"I know of it. Pray, continue."

"It came to my mind that I wished to fashion a servant, having come upon the secret of its making in the Hilkot Yetzirah."

Again the thunder rolled. One of our horses whinnied in answer.

"It as not so easy as the book promised," the scholar said bitterly, as though the book's author had failed him personally. "It took many long years. I have been after it since before my daughter was born. I had to master many skills, sculpture among them. It required special clay...and even blood. But I succeeded in the end."

"This is the thing that follows us?" Dabir prodded. "A man shaped by man, from clay? A golem?"

I made a sign against the evil eye.

"His name is Butrus," the girl said softly. I had forgotten she was there, against the wall behind her father.

"Can such things be?" Nawaf asked.

"You saw the footprints," I told him. "Let Dabir speak."

"This is what you wrote the vizier about," Dabir said to Azzam.

"Yes. Did you not know?"

A brief downturn of Dabir's mouth was the only sign of the enforced ignorance that had irritated him so long.

"I have had him keep his distance," Azzam volunteered. "I did not want to frighten any of you."

"You are a thoughtful man, Azzam." Dabir's voice was heavy with sarcasm, to which the scholar only grunted. "How does it live?" Dabir asked.

"Live? What is life? It moves. It hears. It obeys. It needs no further magic, if that's what you mean."

I could no longer contain my own anger. "So you told him to kill Sabih?" I demanded.

"He protects," Azzam said. "He protects me and mine." His head turned to his child. "My daughter has...a special bond with Butrus."

Dabir considered the girl. "Did you tell it to kill Sabih?"

"He...he has a mind of his own. He knew the soldier had upset me."

"Golems are supposed to be servants," Dabir said to Azzam. "Stone slaves."

"A minor flaw in the spell, I think," Azzam said. "He is mostly obedient."

"Murder is a troublesome flaw," Dabir said dryly. "Where is it now?"

"Somewhere close."

"Summon it here."

Azzam licked his lips and turned to his daughter. She glanced furtively at Dabir and myself, then at her father.

"Butrus is close," she said. "He will be here as soon as he can."

"You are not its master," Dabir said to Azzam.

"No. I used Rabi's blood in the mixture...I thought that since her blood was mine, he would attend us both. It answers only to her, but I am final controller, for I wield the tablet that gives it life. And Rabi is mine to command."

"You shed your own daughter's blood for magic," I said, my voice rising, "but did not risk your own?"

"Do not question me." His voice was like a whip. "I had been sick. If I had grown weak, she would have had no one to care for her."

"Asim, let us speak. Your pardon, Azzam, Rabi."

Dabir rose and we stepped near the cave entrance. The rain pattered against the stone overhang.

Dabir's voice was a whisper. "It occurs to me that a man who wrote our vizier about his powers might write a Greek lord, seeking the best of two offers."

I blinked in astonishment. "You think that has pa.s.sed?"

"Consider how he dallied upon our arrival. Consider how polite the Greeks were when they came. Would not they have surrounded the place or come in the night if they planned mischief?"

I had not considered that point. Sometimes Dabir's intellect shamed me. Should not I, a military man, have noticed this? "You have surely seen the truth of the matter."

"If Azzam does not lie-and evidence suggests his golem is real-then he has fashioned a thing any ruler would prize. And his knowledge could fashion more. You saw what it did to men. Imagine an army of these things, Asim."

I tried, but could not. "It is a statue, brought to life?"

"A man of fired stone, with the breath of life. What use would swords and arrows be against one? Look how a little rain holds up our own progress, how we must stop for food, and sleep, and prayers. An army of these things needs stop for nothing. Rain, mud, sandstorm-it is all one to them."

Now the matter had achieved clarity for me. "We cannot let the Greeks have it, or its maker."

"Yes. Azzam must be watched carefully, Asim. I think he would betray us if he could."

One of the horses nickered. I stepped before Dabir, pushing him behind me as I studied the darkness. Something moved beyond the horse shapes. A man?

Lightning flared and my eyes fastened upon the golem as it walked. My view was brief, an impression only, yet my blood cooled. If you have never looked upon a thing that defies G.o.d's plan for life, you cannot know the fear that clawed at me.

The golem was the color of dull, red brick, and thick about the trunk. Lines inlaid upon its torso suggested the shape of armor. The wide legs drove it on through the mud, producing a relentless, rhythmic splatter. The motionless arms were only a little smaller than the legs, ending in thick fingers clasped tightly into fists. Above the trunk was the head-there was no neck-and of all the golem's attributes this was the most disturbing, for the face was lifelike in feature but not in movement, as though it were a corpse. Strong jawed, with beard and mustache, even the suggestion of a stone turban, it might have been the face of a proud and st.u.r.dy warrior save that the mouth was held open and slack.

"Bismallah," Dabir whispered.