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SERVANT OF THE BONES, CHAPTER FOUR
Sep. 13th, 2018 08:39 pmA friend of mine read the Servant of the Bones sporks last night and picked up a lot of things I didn't. For instance, they say the reason that it doesn't feel right when Rice tries to make her supernaturals make scientific sense is because they're so ancient and gothic, so it just doesn't jive with the tone. And that Azriel has a HELL of a set on him to say that scholars are always spared to the son of HOLOCAUST VICTIMS because they came for the scholars first during that.
SERVANT OF THE BONES, CHAPTER FOUR
Waiting at Azriel's house is a couple other prophets and an old woman called Asenath who is a necromancer, which is forbidden though everyone knows it about her. He makes mention of how the Witch of Endor called up the spirit of Samuel before King Saul, and he also made mention of that at rather random in the previous chapter (I failed to mention it because I was out of steam for irrelevant details like that by that point) and a few time in previous chapters too. I guess this is gonna be like Hamlet in Blackwood Farm, where Rice just keeps shoving it in but it likely will have little actual relevance.
By the way, Asenath is carrying a staff with a snake at the end and is wearing scarlet silks like an "Egyptian whore". I wonder if she's evil?
The first thing she says is, "Azriel, you come to me. Or you let me in."
His dad lets her in. Azriel is lying on his bed while people talk. His brothers think Marduk is a demon just tricking Azriel into thinking he's Marduk.
There's an antechamber where the the previous owners of the house "heathens that they were" had buried their dead, so "their bones lay under the floor." Azriel's brothers take him to this room where his dad and Asenath are. A paragraph is spent describing the chairs and how there are three lamp stands burning. Asenath has "a very young voice for such an old hag" and laughs when Azriel orders the ghosts of the previous homeowners to be gone, as they're floating around for a moment since this is where they're buried. She also knows about Marduk. Azriel asks what she wants to say to him, she says "Nothing. It's all said to your father" then tells him that he makes his choice.
...ok but what choice, lady, how is he to know if you won't tell him shit? She says a lot of Big Vague Hints about what's gonna happen that will only make sense in retrospect. I'm not bothering to transcribe them.
She passes him a clay tablet, sealed in a clay envelope, which Azriel can tell has never been opened. He can also tell that it is ancient Sumerian, already two thousand years old at that point in time. She tells him to "hide it with the bones of the Assyrians" buried here and "they will give you Jerusalem for it!" Spoiler, by 'they' she does not mean the dead Assyrians. This same "they" do not, she says, "even know how to mix the gold without me." Again, this is stuff that will only make sense after the fact. It does not make sense to Azriel or the reader right now, and it's not supposed to.
Azriel asks who gave her such a precious tablet. She says it was a priest before "they" put him to death. Az wants to read it outside, she exclaims "No!" and then says that there are "two ways to do this" and that if Azriel were her son, what she would do is give "them" the tablet, give it to "the most ambitious" and "most dissatisfied" and "most eager to be gone from here, and that is the young priest Remath. Be clever. You hold your people in your hands."
Asenath gets up and the doors open for her of their own accord. She tells Azriel that he is "most privileged" because she is giving him "my one chance at immortality" and were she to keep it for herself instead "I might rise above this world and the stumbling dead, with the strength of a great spirit."
Azriel asks why she doesn't, Asenath replies that Azriel can save his people, "can save us all" and "take us back to Jerusalem" and "for that, you deserve something" and that is "to be an angel or a god."
Az gets up to try to stop her and demand more explanation, but she walks out of the house and into the street in "a blaze of red silk" which is a pretty cool line.
Azriel looks at his father, who has eyes full of tears. Azriel asks what Asenath was talking about. His dad's tears are "spilling now freely as they might from a woman." Azriel asks to read the "damned" tablet, but his dad instead asks if he's been telling the truth about Marduk. Azriel says it is, that he's talked to him since he was a child. He asks what's happening, and who this Remath priest is. His dad says Azriel doesn't remember him, but Remath was standing in the corner of the chamber when Marduk smiled at Azriel as a child. He says that Remath is "young, ambitious, full of hatred of Nabodinus, and enough hate of Babylon to want to go away." Azriel wants to know what that has to do with him, his dad doesn't know but "all Israel is begging for you to do what the priests of Marduk want you to do" but he doesn't know what the tablet is.
...okay, but does he know what the priests want Azriel to do? Because we still don't. This is getting ridiculous. I get keeping things vague, but Rice is doing it super awkwardly/unnaturally.
His dad cries for a long time. Azriel snatches the tablet and reads the envelope, which says "To Make the Servant of the Bones" in Sumerian. He asks his dad what it is. His dad, still crying, says to "leave that to my judgement" and then he takes a loose brick from the wall and stuffs the tablet into the little hiding place. Azriel asks again what it means, his dad says they have to go to the temple, that promises have been made and deals have been struck, that the King is waiting for them. He then "kissed me slowly all over my face, he kissed my mouth, my forehead, my eyes."
...well. Okay then.
I know that's more acceptable from culture to culture but it coming from Rice is just. I wonder. You know?
His dad reminds him of when Yahweh asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Azriel yammers for a whole paragraph about this, with only the last line being worth relaying: He asks if he's expected to make some kind of performance for the king--like saying Marduk wishes him well or something--but for his father to please stop grieving as if Azriel is dead.
His dad says it will indeed be a performance, but something only someone "strong" can do, "one with endurance and conviction" and a great heart filled with love for his people and Jerusalem and the Temple that will be built there to honor Yahweh. I must note that it would probably be good at this point if Azriel had shown these things at any point. Or like...any personality, really. In all the past chapters, we learn a lot about Babylon as portrayed by Rice, and how gods/spirits work in her cosmology, but very little about who Azriel actually is. He's not AWFUL like Quinn, there's just...well, nothing there yet. And til now that didn't really occur to me, but now that this Big Plot Point apparently has something to do with his PERSONALITY rather than just this innate ability to see gods and spirits, I realize Az is kind of a blank slate, beyond being pretty religiously flexible I guess.
His dad says that if he could do it, he would. But that the priests of Marduk, and ones even more powerful than they, want Azriel. They know he is stronger than his brothers (so, what, do they have this talent too? otherwise why even mention that?) and, his father says, only Azriel among them could forgive him for condemning him to such a fate.
...which, by the way, we still have no clue what it is, and it's getting more irritating than mysterious.
Azriel is thunderstruck, and says that yes he could forgive his father anything, for he knows his father would never hurt him. His dad says that Azriel is going to be taken from him and his future wife and daughters, Azriel puts his arms around him and says he forgives him. His dad says to never forget that, not for his sake but for Azriel's own.
...I don't like his dad.
Priests arrive. That Remath dude is there and Azriel tells us how he's never spoken with the guy but he's "a real malcontent" and hates everyone and just stands around the temple doing nothing wow what a dick amirite but he's also very clever and smart. In his physical description, Azriel mentions his "white skin"
...
does Rice, like, realize that the Babylonians would not have been white? Does she just want to ignore it really hard? Maybe Remath is super pale because he's a bad guy? You know, like a Sith Lord?
Remath asks about the tablet, Azriel's dad says he won't give it to him. Remath calls him stupid, dad calls him a heathen.
Azriel asks Marduk if he's gonna help him. Marduk says "I don't know what to tell you" WOW THANKS BRO and also that he can see "what's bound to happen" MAYBE TELL AZRIEL THEN?! Azriel says they're gonna kill him and asks why, Marduk says he'll see, and that if he refuses they'll kill him anyway AND his dad.
...fat lotta help you are, Mar.
Az asks if Mar can get him out of here. Mar takes a WHOLE PARAGRAPH to tell him no he can't. Then Marduk cries about it and tells Azriel to refuse to do it, and that there is a "third way" concerning Asenath and the tablet, but that it is "terrible" and older than even he is. He tells Azriel to "Know your own mind. Take your chance!" Azriel begs him not to leave, Marduk says he won't and that Azriel can make him appear to "frighten or stop them"
SO MAYBE DO THAT NOW?!
They go to the palace. There's a lot of luxury. There's men gathered, including two of Az's uncles (one is the deaf one), the prophet Enoch, and Nabodinus, and some Persians, and Cyrus the Persian himself who is very handsome and talks about how "pretty" Azriel is, lest we forget. Asenath the witch is there too. He tells Azriel to be happy because his tribe is going to be rich and live forever and go home. That's the relevant stuff, anyway. He does not, however, tell Azriel ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON!
Blah blah blah
There's so much blah blah and literally nothing relevant to shit being said.
Honestly I just wanna quit this spork.
Azriel asks for another chair at the table for Marduk. The High Priest gets mad, saying that the god isn't coming down off the altar for a Jew like Azriel and Azriel didn't really see him. Remath cuts him off, saying that Azriel is indeed the real deal and that if he asks for Marduk to come, he likely will. Cyrus seems to find this amusing, since he smiles and says he loves Babylon and he wouldn't hurt a stone here. Marduk does indeed arrive and puts a vaporous hand over Azriel's own. Azriel's father, meanwhile, is crying again. He "cried and cried. He cried like a child. He cried."
...brilliant prose right there.
"Cyrus looked on with patience and compassion at my father" while the High Priest says they should "get on with it" to which the High Priest agrees. YES, PLEASE.
Cyrus says they're all in this together. Azriel asks Marduk "Are we?" To which Marduk replies, as they all watch Azriel speak with the invisible god, that he cannot give Azriel an answer because he loves him too much to make a mistake "and I have no right answers."
Azriel asks him to stay, Marduk says he will "throughout".
There's a lot of stuff about stools and chairs being brought for everyone to sit. Only Remath remains standing with Cyrus's soldiers who are "poised to become butchers" and Azriel realizes that Remath is looking at Marduk, that he can see him. He also describes him as having "cold and conniving eyes" as he looks then at Azriel.
WOW, I WONDER IF HE'S THE BAD GUY!
That's it for this chapter. I'm seriously considering just dropping this spork after we get to the process that kills Azriel and turns him into the Servant of the Bones if this book doesn't get more bearable to write about. I hope that wouldn't disappoint anyone too terribly.
SERVANT OF THE BONES, CHAPTER FOUR
Waiting at Azriel's house is a couple other prophets and an old woman called Asenath who is a necromancer, which is forbidden though everyone knows it about her. He makes mention of how the Witch of Endor called up the spirit of Samuel before King Saul, and he also made mention of that at rather random in the previous chapter (I failed to mention it because I was out of steam for irrelevant details like that by that point) and a few time in previous chapters too. I guess this is gonna be like Hamlet in Blackwood Farm, where Rice just keeps shoving it in but it likely will have little actual relevance.
By the way, Asenath is carrying a staff with a snake at the end and is wearing scarlet silks like an "Egyptian whore". I wonder if she's evil?
The first thing she says is, "Azriel, you come to me. Or you let me in."
His dad lets her in. Azriel is lying on his bed while people talk. His brothers think Marduk is a demon just tricking Azriel into thinking he's Marduk.
There's an antechamber where the the previous owners of the house "heathens that they were" had buried their dead, so "their bones lay under the floor." Azriel's brothers take him to this room where his dad and Asenath are. A paragraph is spent describing the chairs and how there are three lamp stands burning. Asenath has "a very young voice for such an old hag" and laughs when Azriel orders the ghosts of the previous homeowners to be gone, as they're floating around for a moment since this is where they're buried. She also knows about Marduk. Azriel asks what she wants to say to him, she says "Nothing. It's all said to your father" then tells him that he makes his choice.
...ok but what choice, lady, how is he to know if you won't tell him shit? She says a lot of Big Vague Hints about what's gonna happen that will only make sense in retrospect. I'm not bothering to transcribe them.
She passes him a clay tablet, sealed in a clay envelope, which Azriel can tell has never been opened. He can also tell that it is ancient Sumerian, already two thousand years old at that point in time. She tells him to "hide it with the bones of the Assyrians" buried here and "they will give you Jerusalem for it!" Spoiler, by 'they' she does not mean the dead Assyrians. This same "they" do not, she says, "even know how to mix the gold without me." Again, this is stuff that will only make sense after the fact. It does not make sense to Azriel or the reader right now, and it's not supposed to.
Azriel asks who gave her such a precious tablet. She says it was a priest before "they" put him to death. Az wants to read it outside, she exclaims "No!" and then says that there are "two ways to do this" and that if Azriel were her son, what she would do is give "them" the tablet, give it to "the most ambitious" and "most dissatisfied" and "most eager to be gone from here, and that is the young priest Remath. Be clever. You hold your people in your hands."
Asenath gets up and the doors open for her of their own accord. She tells Azriel that he is "most privileged" because she is giving him "my one chance at immortality" and were she to keep it for herself instead "I might rise above this world and the stumbling dead, with the strength of a great spirit."
Azriel asks why she doesn't, Asenath replies that Azriel can save his people, "can save us all" and "take us back to Jerusalem" and "for that, you deserve something" and that is "to be an angel or a god."
Az gets up to try to stop her and demand more explanation, but she walks out of the house and into the street in "a blaze of red silk" which is a pretty cool line.
Azriel looks at his father, who has eyes full of tears. Azriel asks what Asenath was talking about. His dad's tears are "spilling now freely as they might from a woman." Azriel asks to read the "damned" tablet, but his dad instead asks if he's been telling the truth about Marduk. Azriel says it is, that he's talked to him since he was a child. He asks what's happening, and who this Remath priest is. His dad says Azriel doesn't remember him, but Remath was standing in the corner of the chamber when Marduk smiled at Azriel as a child. He says that Remath is "young, ambitious, full of hatred of Nabodinus, and enough hate of Babylon to want to go away." Azriel wants to know what that has to do with him, his dad doesn't know but "all Israel is begging for you to do what the priests of Marduk want you to do" but he doesn't know what the tablet is.
...okay, but does he know what the priests want Azriel to do? Because we still don't. This is getting ridiculous. I get keeping things vague, but Rice is doing it super awkwardly/unnaturally.
His dad cries for a long time. Azriel snatches the tablet and reads the envelope, which says "To Make the Servant of the Bones" in Sumerian. He asks his dad what it is. His dad, still crying, says to "leave that to my judgement" and then he takes a loose brick from the wall and stuffs the tablet into the little hiding place. Azriel asks again what it means, his dad says they have to go to the temple, that promises have been made and deals have been struck, that the King is waiting for them. He then "kissed me slowly all over my face, he kissed my mouth, my forehead, my eyes."
...well. Okay then.
I know that's more acceptable from culture to culture but it coming from Rice is just. I wonder. You know?
His dad reminds him of when Yahweh asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Azriel yammers for a whole paragraph about this, with only the last line being worth relaying: He asks if he's expected to make some kind of performance for the king--like saying Marduk wishes him well or something--but for his father to please stop grieving as if Azriel is dead.
His dad says it will indeed be a performance, but something only someone "strong" can do, "one with endurance and conviction" and a great heart filled with love for his people and Jerusalem and the Temple that will be built there to honor Yahweh. I must note that it would probably be good at this point if Azriel had shown these things at any point. Or like...any personality, really. In all the past chapters, we learn a lot about Babylon as portrayed by Rice, and how gods/spirits work in her cosmology, but very little about who Azriel actually is. He's not AWFUL like Quinn, there's just...well, nothing there yet. And til now that didn't really occur to me, but now that this Big Plot Point apparently has something to do with his PERSONALITY rather than just this innate ability to see gods and spirits, I realize Az is kind of a blank slate, beyond being pretty religiously flexible I guess.
His dad says that if he could do it, he would. But that the priests of Marduk, and ones even more powerful than they, want Azriel. They know he is stronger than his brothers (so, what, do they have this talent too? otherwise why even mention that?) and, his father says, only Azriel among them could forgive him for condemning him to such a fate.
...which, by the way, we still have no clue what it is, and it's getting more irritating than mysterious.
Azriel is thunderstruck, and says that yes he could forgive his father anything, for he knows his father would never hurt him. His dad says that Azriel is going to be taken from him and his future wife and daughters, Azriel puts his arms around him and says he forgives him. His dad says to never forget that, not for his sake but for Azriel's own.
...I don't like his dad.
Priests arrive. That Remath dude is there and Azriel tells us how he's never spoken with the guy but he's "a real malcontent" and hates everyone and just stands around the temple doing nothing wow what a dick amirite but he's also very clever and smart. In his physical description, Azriel mentions his "white skin"
...
does Rice, like, realize that the Babylonians would not have been white? Does she just want to ignore it really hard? Maybe Remath is super pale because he's a bad guy? You know, like a Sith Lord?
Remath asks about the tablet, Azriel's dad says he won't give it to him. Remath calls him stupid, dad calls him a heathen.
Azriel asks Marduk if he's gonna help him. Marduk says "I don't know what to tell you" WOW THANKS BRO and also that he can see "what's bound to happen" MAYBE TELL AZRIEL THEN?! Azriel says they're gonna kill him and asks why, Marduk says he'll see, and that if he refuses they'll kill him anyway AND his dad.
...fat lotta help you are, Mar.
Az asks if Mar can get him out of here. Mar takes a WHOLE PARAGRAPH to tell him no he can't. Then Marduk cries about it and tells Azriel to refuse to do it, and that there is a "third way" concerning Asenath and the tablet, but that it is "terrible" and older than even he is. He tells Azriel to "Know your own mind. Take your chance!" Azriel begs him not to leave, Marduk says he won't and that Azriel can make him appear to "frighten or stop them"
SO MAYBE DO THAT NOW?!
They go to the palace. There's a lot of luxury. There's men gathered, including two of Az's uncles (one is the deaf one), the prophet Enoch, and Nabodinus, and some Persians, and Cyrus the Persian himself who is very handsome and talks about how "pretty" Azriel is, lest we forget. Asenath the witch is there too. He tells Azriel to be happy because his tribe is going to be rich and live forever and go home. That's the relevant stuff, anyway. He does not, however, tell Azriel ANYTHING ABOUT WHAT IS GOING ON!
Blah blah blah
There's so much blah blah and literally nothing relevant to shit being said.
Honestly I just wanna quit this spork.
Azriel asks for another chair at the table for Marduk. The High Priest gets mad, saying that the god isn't coming down off the altar for a Jew like Azriel and Azriel didn't really see him. Remath cuts him off, saying that Azriel is indeed the real deal and that if he asks for Marduk to come, he likely will. Cyrus seems to find this amusing, since he smiles and says he loves Babylon and he wouldn't hurt a stone here. Marduk does indeed arrive and puts a vaporous hand over Azriel's own. Azriel's father, meanwhile, is crying again. He "cried and cried. He cried like a child. He cried."
...brilliant prose right there.
"Cyrus looked on with patience and compassion at my father" while the High Priest says they should "get on with it" to which the High Priest agrees. YES, PLEASE.
Cyrus says they're all in this together. Azriel asks Marduk "Are we?" To which Marduk replies, as they all watch Azriel speak with the invisible god, that he cannot give Azriel an answer because he loves him too much to make a mistake "and I have no right answers."
Azriel asks him to stay, Marduk says he will "throughout".
There's a lot of stuff about stools and chairs being brought for everyone to sit. Only Remath remains standing with Cyrus's soldiers who are "poised to become butchers" and Azriel realizes that Remath is looking at Marduk, that he can see him. He also describes him as having "cold and conniving eyes" as he looks then at Azriel.
WOW, I WONDER IF HE'S THE BAD GUY!
That's it for this chapter. I'm seriously considering just dropping this spork after we get to the process that kills Azriel and turns him into the Servant of the Bones if this book doesn't get more bearable to write about. I hope that wouldn't disappoint anyone too terribly.
