The Stone Light
Authors: Kai Meyer
Praise for
The Water Mirror
Dark Reflections: Book One
A
School Library Journal
Best Book
A
Locus
Magazine Recommended Read
A Book Sense Children’s Pick
A New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age
—
New York Times Book Review
“A refreshing … compelling story.”
—
School Library Journal
, starred review
⋆ “This inventive and original fantasy … is a standout.”
—
Publishers Weekly
, starred review
⋆ “A complex work of high fantasy.”
Praise for
The Stone Light
Dark Reflections: Book Two
—
School Library Journal
“Enthusiasts of the first book will fly through this one and await the conclusion of the trilogy.”
—
Locus
“A catalog of wonders, full of weird marvels.”
Also by Kai Meyer
Dark Reflections, Book One:
The Water Mirror
Dark Reflections, Book Three:
The Glass Word
The Wave Walkers, Book One:
Pirate Curse
The Wave Walkers, Book Two:
Pirate Emperor
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
English langauge translation copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth D. Crawford
Das Steinerne Licht
text copyright © 2001 by Kai Meyer
Original German edition © 2002 by Loewe Verlag GmbH, Bindlach
Originally published in German in 2002 as
Das Steinerne Licht
by Loewe Verlag
Pulished by arrangement with Loewe Verlag
First U.S. edition, 2007
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Also available in a Margaret K. McElderry Books hardcover edition.
Designed by Ann Zeak
The text of this book was set in Stempel Garamond.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Simon Pulse edition October 2007
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Meyer, Kai.
[Steinerne Licht]
The stone light / Kai Meyer ; translated by Elizabeth D. Crawford.
—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.—(Dark Reflections ; bk. 2)
Summary: While Merle and the Flowing Queen travel to Hell to enlist Lord Light’s help in Venice’s fight against the invading Egyptian army, Serafin joins a resistance group that is led by an ancient sphinx.
ISBN 13: 978-0-689-87789-6 (hc)
ISBN 10: 0-689-87789-7 (hc)
[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Sphinxes (Mythology)—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. 4. Mirrors—Fiction. 5. Fantasy.] I. Crawford, Elizabeth D. II. Title.
PZ7.M57171113 Sto
[Fic]—dc22
2006002252
ISBN-13: 978-0-689-87790-2 (pbk)
ISBN-10: 0-689-87790-0 (pbk)
eISBN-13: 978-1-4391-0878-9
ONTENTS
1
SON OF
H
ORUS
F
AR BELOW THE LANDSCAPE, LOOKING LIKE A SEA OF
ashes, steadily passed beneath the wings of the obsidian lion. Vermithrax’s pitch-black stone body glided along under the thick cloud cover, almost weightless. The girl on his back had the feeling that if she simply stretched out her arm, she could touch the puffy undersides of the clouds.
Merle was clutching the flying lion’s mane with both hands. Vermithrax’s long coat was of stone, like his entire body, but for some reason Merle didn’t understand, his fur felt soft and flexible—only one of the countless marvels the stone lion concealed in his mighty obsidian body.
The wind at this height was bitterly cold and cutting. It effortlessly penetrated Merle’s coarse, calf-length dress. The skirt had hiked up and uncovered her knees, so her legs were exposed to the wind. The goose bumps on her legs had come to seem just as matter of course as her growling stomach and the earaches she was having from the height and the cold air. At least her heavy leather shoes protected her feet from the cold, a feeble consolation considering their desperate situation and the empty countryside that was moving along a hundred yards below them.
Two days had passed since Merle had escaped from her native city of Venice on Vermithrax’s back. Together they’d broken through the Empire’s siege ring and were flying north. Since then they’d seen nothing beneath them but ravaged wilderness. Empty, ruined cities of jagged remnants of burned-out walls; abandoned farms, many burned down or ground to dust under the heels of the Egyptian army; villages in which only stray cats and dogs were still alive; and, of course, those places where the soil looked as if it were turned inside out, churned up, and devastated by powers that were a thousand times greater than any ox-drawn plow.
Only Nature resisted the brutal power of the Empire, and so it happened that many fields were sparkling with springtime green, blooming lilac bushes rose over the deserted walls, and trees wore dense, succulent foliage.
The strength and life in all these plants stood in mocking contrast to the abandoned farms and settlements.
“How much farther?” Merle asked glumly.
Vermithrax’s voice was deep as a well shaft. “Before another full day passes.”
She said nothing in reply but waited for the ghostlike voice inside her to make itself known, as it usually did when Merle needed comfort or just a few cheering words.
But the Flowing Queen was silent.
“Queen?” she asked boldly. Vermithrax had long ago gotten used to the fact that Merle occasionally spoke with someone he could neither see nor hear. He could easily tell when her words weren’t addressed to him.
“Did she answer?” he asked after a while.
“She’s thinking,” came out of Merle’s mouth, but it wasn’t she who spoke the words. The Flowing Queen had once again made use of Merle’s voice for herself. For the time being, Merle tolerated this rudeness, even though she was silently angry about it. At the moment she was glad that the Queen was at least showing a sign of life.
“What are you thinking about?” Merle asked.
“About you humans,” the Queen said and then changed into her mind-voice, which only Merle could hear.
“How it could come to this. And what would bring a man like the Pharaoh to … do something like this.”
She didn’t have a hand of her own to gesture toward the wasteland on the ground, but Merle knew very well what she meant.
“Is he one, then? A human being, I mean? After all, he was dead until the priests brought him to life again.”
“The mere fact that a man rises from the dead still need not mean that he engulfs all the countries in a war such as the world has not seen for a long time.”
“For a long time?” Merle mused. “Was there ever a war in which someone succeeded in conquering the entire world?” Except for Venice, whose hours were numbered, only the Czarist kingdom had withstood the attacks of the Empire for three decades. All other countries had long since been overrun by mummy armies and scarab swarms.
“People tried. But that was thousands of years ago, in the time of the suboceanic cultures.”
The suboceanic cultures. The words resounded in Merle’s ears long after the Queen’s voice was silent. After she’d freed the Flowing Queen from the hands of an Egyptian spy, she’d first assumed that the strange being was a survivor of the suboceanic kingdoms, which, according to the stories, had once been inconceivably powerful. But the Queen had denied that, and Merle believed her. It would have been too simple.
No one was able to see through a being like her completely, not even Merle, who was closer to the Queen than anyone else since their joint flight from Venice.
Merle snatched herself from her thoughts. Thinking about Venice meant thinking about Serafin, and right now that simply hurt too much.
She peered out over Vermithrax’s black mane. Before them rose the rocky crags of high mountains. The landscape had been hilly for some time, and now it was rising ever more steeply. Soon they would reach the mountains. Supposedly their destination lay only a little bit beyond them.
“There’s snow down there!”
“What did you expect?” asked the obsidian lion with amusement. “Look how high we are here. It’s going to be quite a bit colder before we get to the other side.”
“I’ve never seen snow,” Merle said thoughtfully. “People say there hasn’t been any real winter for decades. And no summer. Spring and fall just melt into one another somehow.”