Free Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice Page A

spirit, but I couldn’t have known it then.
    “ ‘Azriel,’ he said. ‘I want you to do this. Look at me, and strip me in your mind of this gold, and see me pink and alive as you are, with my beard black and my eyes brown, and then reach out and touch me with both your hands. Let the god out of the gold. Let’s try it.’
    “I was trembling.
    “ ‘Why are you so scared! Nobody will see anyone across from you but a noble in fine dress, that’s all.’
    “ ‘I’m scared because it might work, my Lord,’ I told him, ‘and the most troubling thought has come to me. You want to escape, Marduk. You want to get away. And if this works, if my eyes and my touch can render you a visible body, you can escape, can’t you?’
    “ ‘And why the hell does that frighten a Son of Yahweh!’ He took in his breath. ‘I’m sorry I was angry with you. I love you over all my worshipers and all my subjects. I’m not
going
to abandon Babylon. I will be here as long as Babylon needs me. I will be here when the sands come to bury us all. And then maybe I will escape. But yes, this would give me freedom. It would teach me that as a god I could slip into a visible human body and walk about. It would teach me something about what I can do, you see? I can make storms, I can heal sometimes though this is very very tricky, and I can make wishes come true because I know things, and I know the demons the people fear are just the restless dead.’
    “ ‘This is true?’ I asked him. But let me say here that in Babylon getting rid of demons was a big business. I mean men made fortunes getting rid of demons from houses and sick people and so forth. There were rituals and charms for it, and you went to the exorcist and you did what he said. So I wanted to know if there were no demons. But he didn’t answer me right away.
    “Then he spoke up, ‘Azriel,
most
of the demons are the restless dead. But there are strong spirits, spirits as strong as gods and some of them are full of hate, and like to hurt. But most ofthe time they don’t bother with making a milkmaid sick or cursing a little house. That’s the mischief of the restless dead! And the restless dead need to make mischief so that the fog and the smoke in which they wander will lift.’
    “I didn’t wait any further. I was impressed with his generosity and patience with me—and you must realize how splendid he looked sitting there, covered and permeated with gold, this beautiful noble creature—that I loved him with a beating heart. I loved him with tears. I loved him with laughter.
    “I reached out, and as I touched him, I asked that all the gold covering him be stripped and that he have the freedom of a man to walk amongst us. Can you guess what happened?”
    “He became visible as real,” I said.
    “He did, and I learnt something then about spirits that I was later to use to my advantage and used up till not very long ago. He did. He became visible, a great noble gentleman in festival dress sitting opposite me at the marble table with the wine cup in front of him, and he smiled. There was a stir all around as people saw him, and took notice. I don’t think they had seen him materialize as we would say in this day and age. They just noticed him. For he was beautiful.”
    “Was it clear that he was Marduk?” I asked.
    “No. Without the gold he could have been a King, an ambassador. You know. The statue, you see, it was more stylized, remember. But everybody saw
him
. Even the musicians stopped their piping until he turned his head and gave a gesture for them to go on. And they saw him! And they went on.
    “I was frozen with anxiety. ‘Come on, friend,’ he said. ‘I see more clearly than ever, and though this body is light, I like the form of it, and it draws eyes to me which give me power such as the New Year’s Procession itself gives. They see me! They don’t know who I am but they see. Come on, friend, let’s walk, I want to walk up on the walls and