Free The Bones of the Old Ones (Dabir and Asim) by Howard Andrew Jones Page B

I swept in, hard.
    Yet Gazi would not be so easily taken. He somehow anticipated my strike, and as his sword arm was not in position to parry, he released the spear and threw himself backward. My stroke missed, and I marveled as he tumbled in the air, touched down briefly on one palm, and somehow pushed from there up to the battlement, where he alighted on the balls of his feet.
    I could never have managed that backflip, much less a safe landing on a merlon barely a hand’s span wide. I think I probably goggled at him a bit, and as I did, his face writhed like a snake. In but two heartbeats he was another man entirely, an ebon giant who completely filled the clothing that had draped his guise as Tarif.
    I knew then I had stared too long. I barely deflected a wicked cut at my jaw. He laughed as he leapt over my return slice at his legs, landing on a second merlon. I thrust again, but he jumped lightly to the battlement on my left.
    As I swung to face him he sprang at me.
    “Down!” Dabir shouted, and I dropped to one knee, spinning to face the rear as Gazi’s redirected sword stroke brushed my beard. This time the scholar wielded no spear, but the lantern, which smashed and broke across Gazi in the midst of his leap. Flames raced over his clothing. The Sebitti stumbled slightly as he landed, but recovered fast, pivoting to face us. The fire ate at his robes, yet he stood ready with his weapon, looking more irritated than alarmed. I shot to my feet. He paused a moment with narrowed eyes, his mouth turning up in a disgusted smile. His form shifted, though his expression did not change. Now he was an older man, white as a Frank, tall as the black but leaner. He shook his head, once, his face now partially obscured behind the rising blaze, then turned his back to us and sprang for the balustrade opposite me. I ran after, but before I could reach him he had vaulted off into space.
    Dabir and I reached the edge in time to see the fire failing as the wind from his descent whipped it away. And then he smashed through the snow-sheathed stable roof. There was a mighty crash of timber and sun-dried clay, and a spray of frost.
    I stared down in silence for a short moment, slightly stunned, then turned my head to Dabir. “Was that something to wring hands about?”
    He blinked at me, then burst into laughter. He stilled it after just a few moments, then fixed me with a warm but worried smile as he backed toward the stairs. “Come, Asim, I don’t think Gazi’s dead.” He turned, spear in hand, and started down.
    I came after. “Not dead?” I called to him. “He dropped eighty feet!”
    “He jumped to put out the fire,” Dabir said as he took the stairs two at a time, “and shifted to a form that he valued less.” He turned the corner, winded already from the combat. “Probably he changed again the moment after impact, to an uninjured body.”
    “By God! How do you kill such a man?”
    “Well, fire might have worked,” Dabir offered.
    “How did you know he was not Tarif?”
    “His manner. His clothes. His sword.”
    “I wonder what Tarif will say when he learns of this,” I said, picturing my friend’s consternation.
    We had reached the ground level, and the last window.
    Dabir’s expression was grave as he looked back at me. “Tarif is dead.”
    “How can you know?”
    “Gazi must eat his victim’s heart to assume the shape.”
    This cut me without warning. Tarif was my closest friend in Mosul, apart from Dabir, and one with whom I shared more common interests. Perhaps I should have guessed this already, but I’d hardly had time for deep reflection in the last few minutes. “Are you sure?” I asked, hoping Dabir had it wrong.
    He made no reply, but pressed his lips into a doleful grimace.
    As usual, Dabir was right. We raised an alarm and put the whole palace on alert. After an hour Tarif was found, dead and mutilated, stuffed behind some scrap wood outside the stable. As for a body mangled ’neath the torn