The Waters Of Eternity Part 5

When it was halfway up the slope a distant lightning strike again showed me the face. Its gaze, from dark sockets, was empty and remorseless.

On the thing came, step after methodical step. The gentle slope to the cave proved no obstacle. As it neared, the golem's true size was revealed. Azzam had formed a mighty servant, one who towered over even me by half a head.

"Azzam," Dabir called. "Your creature is here."

Our soldiers crowded behind Azzam and Rabi. Nawaf whispered a prayer.

The golem walked to the mouth of the cave and halted. The rain hammered down over his stone skin. A man would have breathed in and out after such a climb, s.h.i.+fted his stance, flexed his muscles. Looked us over. This golem merely stood, still as the mountain.

Dabir moved toward it for a closer look. Curiosity was ever his failing.

"Be careful." I motioned the soldiers away. How might I protect Dabir if all of them were crowded around me? "Watch without," I said to Musa.

"This is remarkable, Azzam," Dabir said. He had not ventured too close. He knew as well as I that the thing had killed, likely with those very hands he was in reach of.

The scholar preened his beard. "Have you ever seen anything like it?"

"In truth I have not," Dabir answered. "Does it speak?"

"Nay, that skill it cannot learn. But my daughter knows its thoughts."

"Indeed? What is it thinking now?" Dabir turned to Rabi, who stood beside her father.

"Butrus is content to be with us once more."

"With us?" Dabir asked. "Or with you?"

She seemed too embarra.s.sed to answer.

But Dabir was not to be dissuaded from inquiry. "How fine is your control over him, and how does it work?"

"I think a thing, and he does it," Rabi answered shyly. She looked at me. "Though not always in the way I antic.i.p.ate," she added. Her father stepped back to the fire.

"So if you told him to bend and touch his toe-"

The thing moved suddenly and I thrust Dabir back, raising my sword.

"I will not let him hurt you," Rabi promised me softly.

The golem bent at the waist to reach down and touch stone fingers to stone boots. He straightened, stood statue-still once more.

"Remarkable," Dabir said.

"He requires no food?" I asked, though I was sure I knew the answer.

"Nothing," the girl answered.

"Does he require anything else?"

"No. I think, sometimes, he is lonely."

I stared into those sightless eyes. How might a statue be lonely? Surely it was the girl's fancy.

"Is there a weakness?" Dabir asked. "What if he were to kill, again, unbidden? Is there a way to unmake him?"

"He was protecting me," the girl said quickly. "He would never-"

Light flared in the cave behind us; Nawaf cursed. I whirled as flames died down, in time to see Azzam's hand drawing back even as Nawaf pointed his own finger accusingly.

"What are you doing?" I demanded.

"He tossed powder on the flames," Nawaf said.

Before I could inquire further Dabir called out to me and I turned to find him in the golem's grasp. A stone hand clasped either of my friend's shoulders.

"I am sorry," the girl said, and briefly I thought this an accident, until Acteon and his Greeks stepped into the cave mouth.

"At them!" I cried.

"Dabir dies," Acteon said, "if you move."

I lowered my sword. "Hold!"

"You Moslems are like children," Acteon gloated. His Arabic was flawless, though his rasping words were accented. "I felt sure you would have seen us creep up in that last lightning flash, but no, you were all staring at the stone man, as though you'd found a new toy in the market."

Dabir struggled against the stone arms; Acteon laughed. He sneezed, then laughed once more. Never had I been less pleased to see a Greek, although I noted with some satisfaction a dirty bandage wrapping his forehead. The armored Greeks, meanwhile, filled the mouth of the cave. Azzam and his daughter hastily moved behind them.

"Throw down your swords," Acteon commanded, then sneezed again. "You heard me. Your master can be crushed in a moment."

I cursed. "Throw down your blades." I dropped mine at my feet. I heard Nawaf's and Musa's clang on the cave floor.

Acteon then turned his large, round eyes upon Azzam. "So you are he." He then considered the golem's prisoner. "Have the thing release the great Dabir ibn Khalil," he finished, with gloating sarcasm.

Azzam looked to his daughter, and the golem lowered his hands. Dabir faced the Greek, glowering.

"Is that the best fire you can manage?" Acteon asked Dabir.

My friend did not reply.

Acteon grinned. "You are doubtless wondering how I followed so readily."

"Nay," Dabir answered. "There is no mystery. You and the scholar traded notes via the golem, who led you on through the mud and twisting roads."

Acteon frowned. "Wise men should practice silence," he said.

I could not help myself. "Yet your tongue wags ever on," I said. "How is your head?"

"You..." Acteon pointed his knife at me. "Dabir will be prized when I return with him. But you? Feh. Show me your golem's power, Azzam. Have it kill his mongrel servant."

Azzam obediently looked at his daughter. Rabi, though, looked at me.

"The golem is tired," she said to Acteon.

Her father cuffed her cheek. "Do as he bids!"

The golem stirred. The Greeks, who doubtless had seen more of the thing than we if it had led them here, stepped back.

"Is this what you wish, Rabi?" Dabir said quickly. "Are you a murderess?"

"Silence!" Acteon cried. "Have the thing kill Asim!"

The golem's head turned and seemed to stare at the girl. I watched it, wondering if I might fling myself at Acteon as it attacked.

"Inshallah!" Azzam slapped her cheek so hard it jerked her head back. "Do as the Greek bids!"

The girl cried out. The golem s.h.i.+fted, but did not move against me.

Acteon scowled. "Very well," he said, and came at me with his knife.

The golem flung up both hands and stepped in front of me. Acteon leapt back, his guards rushed to his side...

And I praised G.o.d and stopped to grab my blade.

"Stop him! Stop him!" I heard Azzam crying.

But the golem did not stop: it waded into the Greeks, its stone arms las.h.i.+ng out like clubs. Armored men were cast from him like cloth dolls to lie crushed and moaning along the slope. In a moment I was at its side, my heart leaping with joy.

Nawaf and Musa fell in behind me with glad shouts.

"Acteon!" I called.

A wide-shouldered Greek unknown to me, with gray in his beard, stood ground. He parried my first strike, then my second, then he fell as I struck through his helmet and half his face in a spray of blood. I meant to have Acteon, who was backing away just beyond.

Acteon stumbled backwards, lost his footing, and rolled down the slope into the darkness. An armored Greek dodged beyond my strike, then slipped in the mud along the cave. As he struggled for balance, the golem's stone arm swung out and caught him in the chest. He folded around the arm until momentum flung him clear. He arced high in the air, landed in the distance with a crunching noise, and did not rise.

Only two Greeks survived to flee. From somewhere in the darkness Acteon cursed us. I was about to ask the golem to seek him, but it turned and stomped to the right, crus.h.i.+ng the pelvis of a p.r.o.ne Greek body. Azzam was shaking his daughter by the shoulders, shrieking unpardonable names at her. Dabir was trying to force them apart.

It was Dabir's gaze, lifted up toward the oncoming golem, that drew Azzam's attention. The scholar let go his daughter and fumbled with something at his neck as he backed toward the side of the cave. He produced a small gold tablet hung on a neck chain. "Stop him, daughter!"

But the golem came on, its fist rising.

"Stop him!" The scholar lifted the tablet with shaking fingers.

It was no s.h.i.+eld for the coming blow. The fist of the thing smashed through the scholar's tablet, hand, and rib cage. Blood and skin and flecks of bone sprayed outward. The girl screamed.

Her father gurgled and slumped against the golem's arm. It ceased motion altogether.

"Butrus!" Rabi cried. "Butrus!" She clutched his arm, weeping. "Why don't you move?"

Dabir shook his head, slowly, and his eyes were sad.

Musa, panting, stared toward the direction the Greeks had gone. "Should we go after them?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No. Tell me, where were your eyes, when the Greeks sneaked close?"

Musa lowered his head.

"I thought as much. Give thanks to G.o.d that we all still live, and ask him to strike me with lightning when next I think to set you watching."

Musa hung his head farther and slunk out to peer into the darkness.

The girl clung to the golem's unmoving arm, crying.

I stepped up to my friend. "Dabir," I said quietly, "what's wrong with the golem?"

"When it killed Azzam it also destroyed the tablet that brought him life. The creature's one weakness."

"That is a shame. It was a mighty warrior. I am glad it chose to fight at our side."

Dabir's tired look spoke volumes. "The girl chose its side, not the golem. It was a thing of stone."

"But she said..."

"You were kind to her; who else in her little world was ever so? She showered affection upon a creature with no heart, no feelings, and imagined it gave them back. Perhaps she even thought it avenged her honor against Sabih. I do not know."

"So she has killed her father."

"Yes."

"And her friend."

"Yes. With them dies the secret for the golem's making. It may be we are fortunate in that, Asim."

I did not see how we were so, but I did not press him. "It has all been for nothing, then."

"Indeed." He raised a hand, as if he meant to rest it upon the girl's shoulder, but did not touch her.

And then there was only the sound of the pounding rain, and a girl weeping.

Sight of Vengeance.

I.