Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice

were taken to the palace, each alone in his own litter, and I lay back trying to figure this out.
    “ ‘Marduk, are you going to help me?’ I whispered.
    “Marduk answered, ‘I don’t know what to tell you, Azriel. I don’t. I can see what is bound to happen. I don’t know! I know this, that when it is over, one way or another, I will still be here. I will be walking the streets of Babylon in search of eyes that can see me, and prayers and incense that can arouse me. But where will you be, Azriel?’
    “ ‘They’re going to kill me. Why?’
    “ ‘They’ll tell you. You’ll see it all. But I can assure you of this much. If you refuse to do what they want, they’ll kill you anyway. And they’ll probably kill your father, because he knows the plot.’
    “ ‘I see. I should have realized that. They need my cooperation and if I don’t give it, well, then it would have been better for me had I never been asked.’
    “There came only silence from him but I could feel his breath and I knew he was close. He wasn’t material, but it didn’t matter; we were even closer in the darkness of this litter, being carried with the curtains drawn through Babylon’s hollow paved streets.
    “ ‘Marduk, can you help me get out of this?’ I asked.
    “ ‘I have been thinking of that for hours and hours, hours since your prophet spewed out all his filth at me. I have been asking myself, “Marduk, what can you do?” But you see, Azriel, without your strength, I cannot do what I want to do. I can’t. I can be the gold god on his throne and that is all. I can be the standing statue carried in procession. Those objects or encasements they already have. And if I were to run with you…if we were to escape, where would we go?’
    “A strange sound filled the little curtained compartment. He was weeping. Then suddenly, ‘Azriel, tell them no! Refuse their filthy designs. Refuse them. Don’t do it, not for Israel, not for Abraham, not for Yahweh. Refuse.’
    “ ‘And die.’
    “He didn’t answer.
    “ ‘Well, either way I shall die, no?’
    “ ‘There’s a third way,’ he said.
    “ ‘You’re speaking of Asenath and the tablet.’
    “ ‘Yes, but it is terrible, Azriel. It’s terrible. And I don’t know if there’s truth in it. It is older than I am. It is older than Marduk and older than Babylon, that tablet; it came from the city of Uruk. Maybe from before. It is very old. What can I tell you? Know your own mind. Take your chance!’
    “ ‘Marduk, don’t leave me,’ I said. ‘Please.’
    “ ‘I won’t, Azriel, you are the dearest friend of my heart that I have ever had. I won’t leave you. Make me appear if you need me to frighten them or stop them. Make me appear and I will try. But I won’t leave you, I am your god, your own god, your god, and I’ll be with you.’
    “We had come to the palace. We were being brought in by a private gate, and now we were welcomed out of our little compartments so that we might walk on the grand stairway of gold and glazed brick, through the magnificent veils that separated one giant room from another, and we did, we walked, in silence, my father and I, we walked, following the priest, and they took us into the royal chamber where Belshazzar, listening to cases, made a farce of justice every day, and where his wise men told him hour after hour what the stars were saying to them, and we went beyond that into small and fine apartments that I had never seen.
    “I saw that a seal had been broken, an ancient seal, as the doors had been opened. But the servants had come. For everywhere was luxury, fine carpets, pillows, the usual veils, and everywhere the lamps hung from the beams of the ceiling and the oil was sweet and the light was bright.
    “A table stood in the middle of the room. Men were seated at it. And behind them stood my uncles, two of them, including the one who was deaf, may he have no name, and the Elders of Israel in Captivity, and Asenath