The Stone Light (10 page)

Lalapeya nodded slowly, and her smile was as loving as if she were speaking with a young kitten. “That’s why I want you to help us.”

“I should break into the Doge’s Palace?” Serafin rolled his eyes. “While the
Pharaoh
is there?”

The sphinx didn’t have to answer him. He already knew that was exactly what her plan was. But she said something else that touched him more deeply than any slogan or any promise: “For Merle.”

5
IN THE EAR OF THE HERALD

T
HERE WAS NO DAY IN
H
ELL.
A
ND NO NIGHT.

After the long descent, Vermithrax had set down on a rock shaped like a hatbox; a human could have climbed down the steep walls only with appropriate equipment. Of course they all—the obsidian lion as well as Merle and the Flowing Queen—knew that basically it made no difference where they camped if they had to deal with opponents like the Lilim.

“Maybe down here there aren’t creatures like those up there,” said Merle, without great conviction.

“Possibly a few of the most dangerous ones live up
there, as guards of the entrance, so to speak.”
The Queen’s voice was firm, her enthusiasm undampened. Nevertheless, Merle had the feeling that she was only trying to bolster her courage and didn’t completely believe what she said herself.

At least they agreed that there must be a great number of different kinds of Lilim. The messenger Lord Light had sent to the Venetians had had nothing in common with the creatures in the rock wall.

“Which doesn’t mean, however, that the others are less terrible or fast.” The obsidian lion licked his wings with his stone tongue. “On the contrary, perhaps we’ve only met the most harmless so far.”

“Thanks a lot, Vermithrax,” said Merle bitterly, and she had the feeling that the Queen was thinking exactly the same thing. “A joker like you is enormously helpful at the moment.”

The lion didn’t even look up. “I’m only saying what I think.”

Until then Merle had been sitting cross-legged on the rock beside Vermithrax. Now, with a sigh, she let herself sink back until she felt the smooth stone at her back. She crossed her arms behind her head and looked up, there where, in her world, the sky had been.

An expanse of speckled red spread before her eyes, at first still resembling a layer of clouds in the light of the setting sun: a rock ceiling that extended infinitely in all
directions, a few thousand yards over them. The network of glowing red veins that had run through the walls of the rock shaft also appeared in the interior of Hell in dirty orange.

Anyway,
Hell …
the term seemed to Merle to be ever more unsuitable for the place they’d found at the end of the shaft. A desolate rock landscape formed the bottom of this underground kingdom—at least the part where they were—and, like the ceiling, it was shot through in many places with glowing veins, some as fine as hairs, others as broad as Vermithrax’s legs. The stone felt warm, but not really hot anywhere, and the wind blowing down here smelled of tar and the strange sweetness that Merle had noticed at the edge of the abyss.

The ceiling toward which she was gazing likewise consisted of rock, but for the human eye, its great height reduced the structure to spots of light and dark, dipped in the shimmering red of the fire veins.

Merle didn’t really know what to think about all this. On the one hand, the environment was impressive and fear-inspiring because of its immeasurable size; but on the other hand, she told herself that this was nothing but a gigantic cavern in the bowels of the earth, perhaps a whole system of caverns. It had nothing to do with the Hell talked about in the Bible. However, and this was the catch, this might change suddenly as soon as they actually bumped into more Lilim—and they expected to at any time.
Even now, at rest, Vermithrax was alert, his body tense.

However, Merle now realized that Professor Burbridge had called this place Hell only for lack of a better name. He’d pulled the myth over the reality like a mask, to make it more understandable for the general public.

“Vermithrax?”

The obsidian lion turned from his wings and looked over at her. “Hmm?”

“Those creatures, up there on the rock wall, they looked as if they were made of stone.”

The lion growled agreement. “As if the rock wall itself had come to life.”

“Isn’t that a strange coincidence?”

“You mean because
I
am of stone?”

She rolled onto her stomach and supported her chin in both hands to be able to look Vermithrax in the eyes. “Yes, somehow. I mean, I know that you have nothing to do with them. But yet, it is strange, isn’t it?”

The lion sat up so that he could look at Merle but keep his eyes on the area around the rock at the same time. “I’ve already thought about that.”

“And?”

“We simply know too little about the Lilim.”

“How much do you lions know about yourselves? For instance, how come your mane is stone, but all the same it feels soft to the touch? And why does your tongue move although you’re made of obsidian?”

“It’s stone inspirited with a soul,” he said, as if that were answer enough. When he saw that Merle wouldn’t be content with that, he went on, “It’s stone, but it’s also flesh or hair. It has the structure and the strength and the hardness of stone, but there’s also life within it, and that changes everything. That’s the only explanation I can give you. There have never been scientists among us lions who’ve investigated all these things. We’re not like you humans. We can accept things without taking them apart and snatching the last secret out of them.”

Merle thought these words over while she waited for the Queen to express herself. But the voice inside her was silent.

“And the Lilim?” Merle asked finally. “Do you think they’re also made of stone with a soul?”

“To me, those creatures didn’t look as if they possessed a soul. But there are men who say the same thing about us lions. So then, who am I to judge the Lilim?”

“That sounds quite wise.”

Vermithrax laughed. “It isn’t at all difficult to pass uncertainty off as wisdom. Your scholars and philosophers and priests have been doing that since you humans have existed.” After a short pause he added, “The leaders of us lions too, by the way.”

It was the first time Merle had heard him say something disparaging about other lions, and she had the feeling that it had cost him great effort. In fact, the lion folk
differed much more from humans than she’d thought until now. Perhaps, she carried the thought further, the relationship of lions to Lilim was even closer than to humans. She wondered if this idea should frighten her, but she felt nothing but curiosity about it.

It came right down to the fact that
everything
down here frightened her somehow, even the rock on which she lay and the mysterious warmth that rose from inside it. She had the feeling it could explode at any moment, like the volcanoes she’d heard of. But she suppressed this uncomfortable thought too, like so many others.

“What should we do when we’ve found Lord Light?” She put the question to no one in particular. That was what had busied her on the long flight into the abyss, the question of the goal of her mission. Slowly her eyes traveled over the cheerless rock desert extending in all directions. The landscape didn’t look as though anyone could live here voluntarily, certainly no prince or ruler like the mysterious Lord Light.

“The Queen must know that,” said Vermithrax. He was master of the art of letting his voice sound completely indifferent, even if he was presumably as stirred up inside as Merle was herself.

“We will ask him for help,”
said the Flowing Queen.

“I know that.” Merle got to her feet, walked to the edge of the mesa, and let the warm, humid wind waft to her nose. Vermithrax called to her to be careful, but she
had the feeling she had to sense the dangers of this environment with her own body in order to be sure that she wasn’t dreaming it all.

The steep wall fell away at her feet, 175 to 200 feet deep, and Merle grew dizzy. Strangely, she felt that was almost a good feeling. A true, actual feeling.

“I know that we’ve come here to ask him for help,” she said finally. “For Venice and for all the others. But how do we do that? I mean, what will he think when a girl on a flying lion appears before his throne and—”

“Who says he has a throne?”

“I thought he was a king.”

“He rules over Hell,”
said the Queen patiently.
“But here below is rather different from the upper world.”

Merle couldn’t take her eyes off the rough rock land. She saw no great difference from wildernesses she’d seen in drawings and engravings. A desert people like the Egyptians might feel quite comfortable down here.

Then a thought came to her, and it hit her like a blow in the face. “You
know
him!”

“No,”
said the Flowing Queen tonelessly.

“How do you know that he has no throne, then? That he isn’t like other rulers?”

“Only a surmise.”
The Queen was seldom so tight-lipped.

“A surmise, eh?” Her voice now sounded reproachful and angry, so that even Vermithrax looked over at her in
confusion. “That’s why you knew so precisely where to find the entrance,” Merle burst out. “And that down here everything is different from up above…. But there, for once, you were mistaken. It’s not so different at all. For me, anyway, it looks like an ordinary grotto.” She’d never seen a grotto with her own eyes, but that didn’t matter now. She had no better argument.

“This grotto, Merle, has an area that is probably as large as half the planet. Perhaps it is even much larger. And how else would you describe the Lilim if not as ‘different’?”

“But that wasn’t what you meant before,” Merle said with conviction. She’d had enough of being put down in each of her discussions. It was a remarkable feeling to argue with someone you couldn’t look in the eye and whose voice wasn’t real. “I don’t understand why you aren’t honest with me … with us.”

Vermithrax was brushing his whiskers with his paw, but he wasn’t missing a word. He could only guess at the course of the conversation from what Merle said.

Again she thought that it simply wasn’t fair that only she could hear the Queen. And had to argue with her on her own.

“I have heard rumors about Lord Light, things the mermaids have picked up. That is all.”

“What sort of rumors?”

“That he is no ordinary ruler. It is not about power with him.”

“What else?”

“That I cannot tell you. I do not know.”

“But you have a surmise.”

The Queen was silent for a moment. Then she said,
“What can a ruler of an entire kingdom concern himself with, if not with power? And furthermore, how great could his influence over his subjects be then? The Lilim in the rock wall did not look as if they would take any orders out of pure humility.”

“So what does he concern himself with?” Merle asked doggedly.

“With knowledge, I think. He likes ruling this world, but above all, I think, he investigates it.”

“Investigates? But—”

A loud exclamation from the lion interrupted her. “Merle! Over there!”

She whirled around and almost lost her balance. For an instant the edge of the steep cliff was dangerously close, the rocks leaped toward Merle’s feet. Then she caught herself again, turned hastily away from the drop, and followed Vermithrax’s look with her own eyes.

At first she detected nothing at all, only empty red over the breadth of the wasteland. Then she realized that the lion’s predator’s eyes were sharper than her own. Whatever he’d caught sight of must still be beyond her range of sight.

But it wasn’t long until she saw it. And whatever it was, it was coming nearer.

“What is that?” she exclaimed, breathless and suddenly oppressed with a flood of horrible pictures; fantasies of flying Lilim, thousands of them, danced in her mind.

Yet it wasn’t thousands, but only three. And although they were floating high over the rocks, they possessed no wings.

“Are they …”

“Heads,” said Vermithrax. “Gigantic heads.” And after a moment he added, “Of stone.”

She shook her head, not because she doubted his words but because it was the only reaction that seemed appropriate. Heads of stone. High in the air. Of course.

But after a while she could see them for herself. She saw the heads coming nearer, and quite fast—faster than Vermithrax could fly, of that she was sure.

“Come on, mount!” bellowed the lion, and before she could think of a good argument against it, she was already leaping onto his back, curling her hands into his mane, bending over, and pressing her upper body firmly to his obsidian coat.

“What is he going to do?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Look at them. They aren’t alive.” Vermithrax’s paws pushed off the rock, and seconds later they were already hovering three feet above the hatbox mesa.

“They are not alive,” Merle repeated to herself and then added more loudly, “So what? What does that mean?”