The Waters of Eternity by Howard Andrew Jones Read Free Book Online Page A

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 sturdy warrior save that the mouth was held open and slack.
    “Bismallah,” Dabir whispered.
    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, shifted 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 embarrassed 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 anticipate,” 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