Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice Page A

and Enoch the prophet as well.
    “Only gradually did I let myself look down at those seatedat the table, though we were being placed opposite, the servants hustling to draw back the golden chairs.
    “I saw our miserable regent, Belshazzar, and he looked stupid with drink and terrified, and was mumbling to himself something about Marduk, and then I realized I was looking at Nabonidus, old Nabonidus, our true King who had been gone almost half my life. Our true King sat there in his full raiment, though not on a throne, merely at a table, and his big watery eyes were dead and empty already, and he merely smiled at me, and he said, ‘Pretty, pretty…you have chosen one that is so pretty…pretty as the god.’
    “ ‘Pretty enough to be a god!’ said a voice, and I looked directly opposite at this fine handsome man, taller than anyone there, thinner in build than any of us, with black curling hair but hair that was cut shorter than ours, and a trimmed mustache and a shorter trimmed beard.
    “This was a Persian! The men beside him were Persians. They were in Persian robes, very like our own, but in royal blue, and they were crusted with jewels and gold embroidery, and their fingers were covered with rings, and the goblets before them were our temple goblets!
    “These were men from the Persian empire which was conquering us, which was killing us. All the strange predictions of Enoch came back to me and I saw him glaring down at me, with a near impish smile, and Asenath seemed filled with wonder.
    “ ‘Sit down, young one,’ said the tall robust man with the big laughing eyes, the handsomest man, the man who gleamed with power. ‘I’m Cyrus, and I want you at your ease.’
    “ ‘Cyrus!’ I said. Cyrus was the conqueror.
    “The full details of the man’s accomplishments were sharpened in my mind. This was Cyrus the Achaemenid King who already ruled half the world. He had united the Medians with the Persians, the man who meant to take Babylon. The man who had scared all the cities around us. This was no longer tavern talk of war. This was Cyrus himself sitting here before us.
    “I should have prostrated myself before him but no one wasdoing anything like that before anyone, and he had said in a clear voice with an excellent command of Aramaic that I was to be at ease.
    “Very well. I looked at him directly. After all, I thought, I’m going to die. So what. Why not?
    “My father took the empty chair beside me.
    “ ‘Azriel, my boy, my beautiful boy,’ said Cyrus. The voice was crisp, full of good humor. ‘I have been in Babylon for days. There are thousands of my soldiers throughout Babylon. They have come in by many gates over a long time. The priests know. Here, your beloved King—and may the gods keep him well always—Nabonidus himself knows.’ He gave a generous nod to the suspicious and dying old King. ‘All your King’s regents and his officials know that I am here. Your Elders, you see. Don’t feel fear. Feel joy. Your tribe will be rich and they will live forever, and they will go home.’
    “ ‘Ah, and this depends then on what I do?’ I asked.
    “I wasn’t sure then and am still not today sure why I was so cold and disdainful of him. He was compelling but he was human, and young. And also, no matter what he’d done so far, he was a heathen to me, and he wasn’t even Babylonian. So, I was cold to him.
    “He gave a silent measuring smile.
    “ ‘So it depends then on what I do?’ I repeated the question. ‘Or your will, Lord, has your will already been decided?’
    “Cyrus laughed, with crinkling cheerful eyes. He had the vigor of kings all right, and not yet the total madness. He was too young and he’d been drinking up the blood of Asia. He was full of strength. Full of victory. ‘You speak boldly,’ he said to me generously. ‘You look with a bold eye. You are your father’s eldest, aren’t you?’
    “ ‘For the three days required,’ said one of the priests, ‘he