The Stone Light (31 page)

Not even for Merle?

He quickly repressed the thought, but it was hard. He still couldn’t imagine what had happened to her. The uncertainty gnawed at him, even when he really wasn’t thinking of Merle at all—or other things were more pressing. Surviving, for instance.

The others were sitting where Serafin and Eft had left them. Only Lalapeya had stood up and removed herself from the boys a little, in the direction of the broad tail fin, which floated on the waves like the sail of a sinking ship. She stood alone down there, her arms crossed, and looked out to sea, out into the emptiness.

Dario got up when he saw Serafin and Eft and came to meet them. He was about to say something, perhaps to ask what they’d done, when suddenly Aristide let out a cry.

All faces turned in his direction.

It had not been a call, only an inarticulate sound, born of fear and sheer helplessness.

“What—” Dario fell silent. He saw it too. Just like all the others.

The water surface on both sides of the tail was no longer empty. Heads had appeared, narrow women’s faces with long hair that floated, shimmering, on the waves.

Eft took a step forward, hesitated only a moment, then called out in the language of the mermaids. Immediately all the faces in the water turned in her direction. A remarkable chatter arose, sounds of surprise when the mermaids looked into Eft’s features, recognized the sharp-toothed mouth, and obviously asked why one of their people walked on legs like a human being.

“I guess those aren’t the ones who brought us here?” Serafin’s statement was expressed as a question, but he expected no answer.

Eft climbed down over the curve of the tail until the water lapped at her feet. One of the mermaids came closer, and then minutes passed while the two of them spoke with each other in the language of the ocean, entirely without gestures, only with words and tones and strange syllables.

Finally Eft came back to Serafin, and together they went to Dario, Tiziano, and Aristide. Lalapeya also joined them.

“To make it short,” said Eft, “there was a fight between two enemy sea witches. The older one lost—we’re standing on her right now. The other, a young witch, although she’s older than we all are—excluding Lalapeya, of course”—Eft gave the sphinx a half-hearted smile—“the younger therefore claims this part of the undersea as hers.”

Undersea.
Serafin was hearing this term for the first time, and it called up pictures of the suboceanic kingdoms, images that no human had ever seen and yet everyone knew in his imagination. Images from legends, from fairy tales, from ancient myths.

“We’ve intruded on her territory.” Eft looked nervous, although she sounded calm. “And now she wants to speak with us. Not with all of us. But she wants two of us to go with the mermaids to speak with her and give an account of ourselves.”

A murmur ran through the group. Only Serafin and Lalapeya were silent.

“To be honest,” said Eft, “I’m really astonished. Sea witches aren’t known for dealing with humans. They eat
them or do far worse things with them. But they don’t talk with them. At least not until today.”

“Eat them,” Tiziano repeated softly, and Aristide turned ashy.

“What do you suggest?” asked Lalapeya.

“We obey,” said Eft. “What else?”

Dario looked out at the good dozen heads dancing on the waves like flotsam. “They couldn’t come up here, could they?”

“No,” said Eft. “But they could pull the cadaver under. Or ask a hungry whale to eat it out from under our feet.”

Dario blanched.

“I’ll go with them.” Eft’s decision was firm. “They have diving helmets with them.”

Lalapeya sighed. “I’ll go with you.”

“No,” said Eft. “Not you.”

And then she looked Serafin firmly in the eye.

He looked down at the water, then back at the friends—Dario, Tiziano, Aristide—who were staring at him, and finally he again met Eft’s gaze.

“I?” He wasn’t even certain if he asked the question aloud or if it was merely echoing in his head.

And again images: a mighty shadow, eighty, a hundred yards long; a white body that gradually separated itself from the night-black darkness; eyes that had seen more than fish in the depths; in them infinite wisdom, infinite guile.

Slowly Serafin nodded.

15
F
RIENDS

W
INDS SMELLING OF TAR SWEPT AROUND THE SIDES OF
the tower and whistled in openings and cracks, singing with the voices of the lost. For the first time, Merle thought that perhaps this
was
the Hell of the Bible and not merely a hollow space in the interior of the earth: the truth of the myths under a crust of rock and sand and dusky light.

The tower had three walls, which gradually tapered toward the top, like a mighty lance point that someone had planted in the wilderness. Its edges were correspondingly sharp. When Merle looked inside through one of the
windows, she could make out steps of stone in the halfdark. She wondered how angular a staircase with a triangular base would have to be and was glad that Vermithrax was taking them up on the outside.

The obsidian lion stayed close to the wall, only a few yards away from the dark stone. Merle saw insects zigzagging over it and other, larger creatures whose skins matched the background like chameleons; they remained motionless, sunbathing reptiles in a land without sun.

“Merle,”
said the Flowing Queen,
“do me a favor and look at the falcon. I want to know exactly where he is flying.”

She dutifully turned her eyes upward. The bird shot up close to the tower wall, much more steeply than Vermithrax could. The lion had to take care not to get too vertical or he ran the danger that Merle and Junipa would fall off his back. Also, Merle’s arms would hurt even more from the burden, because she had to hold Junipa’s additional weight.

For various reasons, the Lilim at their heels were also not flying up the wall any more steeply than Vermithrax. Most of them had broad wings, which bore them forward with great speed; but when it was a matter of climbing upward, they fluttered like the fully fed doves on Venice’s Zattere quay.

Earlier, before they’d reached the tower, Burbridge had called something to Merle and Junipa, but they couldn’t
understand him because of the screaming winds and the noise of many pairs of wings. His smile confused her and frightened her more than she wanted to admit. It wasn’t a smile confident of victory, or of premature triumph—no, she almost had the impression that he was again showing his friendliness and kindliness.

Stay with me, I am your friend. Give up, and everything will be fine.

Never in this life!

She could only vaguely estimate how high they were by now. The rocky wastes had long ago melted to a uniform orange; details were no longer discernible. At this height, the tower walls measured around a hundred yards from one corner to the other, and at that, they were only half as wide as those down at the bottom. Merle estimated that they had about half the ascent behind them, at least a mile and then some. The idea of falling off Vermithrax’s back at this height was anything but uplifting, and she was aware that her hands instinctively dug deeper into his glowing mane. At her back, Junipa was more silent than ever, but at the moment that was all right with Merle. She wasn’t in the mood to talk. Anyway, her breathing was so fast, it was as if she was carrying the others up, not Vermithrax.

“Merle! The falcon!”

The Flowing Queen’s cry cut through her thoughts like an axe. It would have made her wince if her muscles hadn’t cramped into hard knots long since.

She looked up just in time to see the falcon fly outward, away from the tower, in a gentle arc, turning as he flew, and then, exactly horizontal, disappear into one of the window openings.

Vermithrax reacted immediately, if also quite a bit less nimbly. He moved away from the wall of the tower, turned in a broad spiral, and followed the bird inside. His wings were too wide, and he had to land on the windowsill.

“Pull your heads in!”

He squeezed through the opening as Merle and Junipa pressed as close to him as possible in order not to crack their skulls. But finally they were through, and immediately the glowing body of the lion filled the tower with light.

It was the staircase that Merle had correctly discerned from the outside. It was broad enough to offer room for an army and, because of the triangular form of the tower, even more angled than she’d imagined. The steps were of differing heights; some were slanted, others even curved. They weren’t created for humans but for something that had longer and
more
legs. The walls were covered with strange signs, with lines and circles and loops.

“Those are not signs,”
said the Flowing Queen, as Vermithrax took off again and now began flying up over the steps, a dizzying ascent that almost turned Merle’s stomach. Back and forth, in a wide left-hand curve, now
and again interrupted by daredevil maneuvers when a wall appeared unexpectedly behind a curve and Vermithrax only narrowly escaped a collision.

“What do you mean, not signs?” asked Merle.

“They are tracks.”

“Things ran along the walls?” She thought of the barbs on the legs of spiders, remembered the Lilim in the Hall of the Heralds, and shuddered. “How old is this tower?”

“Very old. It comes from a time when the lords of the depths were at war with the suboceanic kingdom.”

“It’s time you told me about that.”

“Now?”

“No.” Merle pulled her head in between her shoulders as Vermithrax came alarmingly close to the ceiling. “Not now,” she said. “But sometime, you won’t be able to get out of it anymore.”

The Queen was quiet again, but Merle realized why a moment later. Behind them the noise had grown loud, as Burbridge and the Lilim followed up the stairs. The humming of insect wings and the slow rushing of leathery wings echoed from the walls and rebounded a hundredfold on the steps and edges; it sounded as though Burbridge’s troops had gained unexpected reinforcements.

“They’re going to catch us.” Junipa’s words were not directed at anyone except herself, but Merle heard them nevertheless.

“No,” she countered, “I don’t think so.” And in fact,
she was suddenly no longer afraid of Lilim. As long as she didn’t have to see Burbridge’s smile, now concealed behind a corner of the stairwell, the Lilim were, in her mind, only a crowd of clumsy monsters, who were no match for either Vermithrax’s strength or his skill. In truth, it was Burbridge alone whom she feared. Burbridge and the Light in him.

The same Light that now also caused Vermithrax to glow, that penetrated him, filled him, that made him bigger, stronger, and more dangerous.

More monstrous?

Perhaps.

Seth—or the falcon he’d become—was no more to be seen, but now there was no further doubt that he was seeking the fastest way up, to an exit used millennia before by those beings the Queen had termed the lords of the depths. The enemies of the suboceanic cultures. The ancestors of the Lilim, whose kingdom had perished when the Stone Light smashed their city.

The farther they got from the floor of Hell, the cooler it became. Perhaps it was because of the shadows inside the tower, Merle thought; perhaps also because of the sweat on her skin and the powerful headwind blowing through her clothing and hair. A look at Junipa’s narrow hands on her waist showed Merle that she had gooseflesh too. Of course, Vermithrax was glowing like a powerful lantern, but the glow gave no warmth at all, just like the
light inside the dome. He’d bathed in the Stone Light, and no one knew yet what consequences that would have for him and for them all.

“Do not think about it,”
said the Queen.
“Not now.”

I’m trying not to.

Another corner, another turn of the stairs. Steps in the most unusual forms, which repeated at certain intervals, as if the higher ones were made for large creatures, the lower ones in between for smaller ones. Before Merle’s eyes arose the picture of a seething mass of beings shoving and squeezing themselves up the steps, while creatures with many bent stilt-legs stalked over them, and other, still stranger creatures ran along the walls and ceiling effortlessly.

She shivered, and this time the cold wasn’t the reason.

“What will he do with us if he catches us?” she asked the Queen, before she realized that she’d spoken the words aloud.

“The same as with me,” said Junipa.

Merle felt the Queen’s amazement, but still the voice inside her said nothing. Waited.

“What do you mean?” she asked, this time turning directly to Junipa.

“I said, he’ll do the same thing to you as he did to me.”

Was the throbbing and whirring of wings behind them closer? Or was it only a trick of the acoustics that made it sound louder, more threatening?

“I understood that,” said Merle. “But what exactly … I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, I could—”

“No.”
The Queen sounded unusually firm.
“She should say it.”

But it wasn’t necessary for Merle to repeat the question.