Heaven's Bones Read Online Free Page B

and Seraphim that any respectable student of religion might make, he ventured into the foreign, the exotic, and in some cases, the forbidden. It was natural to examine the heavenly creatures described in Mohammedanism, for they closely resembled those of Christianity. From that leaping-off point he discovered the Devas of Buddhism, and the Apsaras of the Hindu. And demons too, for were they not the mirror-side of angels? He learned about the angels that govern every hour, and the demonof Friday, and the hundreds of names that Lilith bore across the centuries in all the secret places that she lived. He traveled to Persia and to places in Asia not marked on any maps, and ventured into temples in India where no white man had ever dreamed of going.
    And he brought back treasures—not the gold or jewels that some men sought to plunder in those exotic climes, but books, scrolls, papyri—some of them new-penned by scribes remembering what their masters taught them, others unimaginably ancient. He filled the library at Bryani House with these tomes and documents, and soon the scholars found him. They came from Oxford, from Cambridge, from the universities of Europe and America. Priests came from the Vatican to clarify some obscure doctrinal matter, and amateur gentlemen scholars wrote to beg an hour in that vault of knowledge.
    One memorable summer a little brown wizened man had come to the door of Bryani House, accompanied by a phalanx of shaven-headed attendants dressed as he was, in yellow robes, some of whom walked before him, brushing at the ground with feather switches. Another shiny-pated brown man, dressed in Saville Row’s best, acted as translator, asking diffidently if the
Arahant
visiting from India might be permitted some time in the honored English gentleman’s library? The sage was immediately permitted entry, where he asked for and was shown a scrap of parchment that Yorick Robarts and all the scholars of England had never been able to translate—an insignificant-looking fragment that consisted of one sinuous symbol written in a queer, grainy-looking, deep green ink.
    The
Arahant
examined this fragment closely, being careful not to touch it, and clapped his hands with a gleeful expression. He then bowed deeply to his bewildered host and took leave, followed by the Saville Row gent and a double line of monks. Yorick Robarts never knew what the little holy man sought, but a month later a parcel was delivered, containing a small but near-flawless emerald of unmatchable color.
    Sebastian Robarts remembered many such incidents in his uncle’s house—now his. They all seemed so long ago—before his medical studies had occupied his whole being—and then there was Margaret, and happiness.
    And then that nightmare in London, and everything precious ripped away.
    The days of his childhood seemed no more than a dream, or a story told another child to quiet him, or to lull him to sleep.
    He wondered if he’d ever sleep again.

    Robarts realized he had been staring at the bookshelf for—how long? He couldn’t remember. Over an hour at least. Or had it been the whole morning? Surely the shadows had moved across the room from their sunrise to afternoon positions.
    But he hadn’t really been staring at the bookshelf so much as one particular book. Its spine, gold letters on age-darkened leather, looked familiar.
    His eyes narrowed and he rose, walking through the dust motes that floated like bits of gold in the afternoon sun. He knew that book.
    His fingers caressed the old leather. Of course—now he remembered. As a child given free rein in his uncle’s house he had been fascinated with this book—Wormius’
Treatise on Angels
. He eased it carefully from his place, as if still conscious of Uncle Yorick’s eye on him, making sure he wasn’t cracking the spine or dog-earing the leather.
    The book seemed a lot lighter nowadays, of course. Twenty years ago