The Stone Light (34 page)

A shrill howling pierced Merle’s ears as the sunbark came nearer—an arrow point aimed at her by Fate; there was hardly any doubt that it would knock her into kingdom come.

“Junipa,” she gasped out, “you have to help me. …”

But Junipa didn’t move, though behind her closed lids there was twitching and trembling. But for those signs of life, Merle might as well have been dragging a corpse through the snow, for Junipa no longer had a heart to beat. Only stone.

“Merle!” Vermithrax roared again. “Stay where you are!”

She heard him, but she didn’t react and had taken two more steps before the words got through to her.

Stay where she was? What the devil—

She looked back, saw the bark—so close!—saw Vermithrax on the fuselage with outspread wings, which the headwind was trying to blow backward, and recognized what the lion had realized a moment before she did.

The sunbark wobbled even more, swerved from its original trajectory, and was now rushing toward the opposite edge of the pyramid’s side, just where Merle had been trying to get herself and Junipa to safety.

It was pointless to turn around. Instead, Merle let go of Junipa, threw herself over her, buried her face in her arms, and awaited the impact.

It took its time—two seconds, three seconds—but when the crash came, it felt as if someone had struck a gong right beside Merle’s ears. The vibration was so great that she was sure the pyramid was going to collapse.

The stone was shaken a second time when Vermithrax came down beside them, more falling than landing,
snatched up both girls in his paws, and carried them into the air. His body was cool, despite the glow he gave off.

His precaution turned out to be unnecessary. The pyramid was still standing. Occasional clumps of snow broke from the edges and slid one or two steps deeper, to be dispersed in blinding clouds of crystals, momentarily wrapping the incline in a fog of ice. Only after the avalanche had settled could Merle tell what had become of the bark.

The golden sickle lay on one of the upper steps, only a little beyond the place where Merle and Junipa had cowered seconds before. The vehicle had landed sideways, close to the wall of the next step up. From the air, Merle could see only a little damage, a hole in the upper side that Vermithrax had torn in the fuselage.

“Put us down again, please,” said Merle to the lion, breathless certainly, but at the same time so relieved that she felt new strength streaming through her.

“Too dangerous.” The lion’s breath formed white clouds in the ice-cold air.

“Come on. Don’t you want to know what was in the bark?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Mummy soldiers,”
the Flowing Queen interjected in Merle’s mind, inaudible to the two others.
“A whole troop of them. And a priest who held the bark in the air with his magic.”

Merle cast a look over at Junipa, who was dangling in Vermithrax’s second paw. Her lips moved.

“Junipa?”

“What’s up?” asked Vermithrax.

“I think she’s waking up.”

“Once again, just at the right moment,”
the Queen bleated.
“Why do these things always happen just when one does not need them?”

Merle ignored the voice inside her. No matter what it might mean for them all or whether they’d have more trouble because of it, she was glad that Junipa was coming to herself again. After all, she’d been the one who knocked Junipa unconscious, and the thought continued to pain her. But her friend had left her no choice.

“If she still is your friend.”
It wasn’t the first time that the Flowing Queen had read her thoughts; the bad habit had begun way back.

“Of course she is!”

“You saw her. And heard what she said. Friends do not behave that way.”

“That’s the Stone Light. Junipa couldn’t help it.”

“That changes little about the fact that she may try to do you harm.”

Merle didn’t answer. They were floating a good ten yards over the nearest pyramid step. Gradually Vermithrax’s firm grip began to hurt.

“Set us down,” she asked him once more.

“At least the pyramid appears to be stable,” the lion agreed.

“Does that mean we can look at the bark?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But there’s nothing moving down there. If there are really mummies in there, they must be—”

“Dead?”
the Queen asked pointedly.

“Out of action.”

“Maybe. Or maybe not.”

“Those are just exactly the sort of remarks we need,” said Merle caustically.

Vermithrax had made his decision. With gentle wing beats he brought Junipa and Merle back to secure ground—as secure as four-thousand-year-old pyramids situated over an entrance to Hell are.

He first set Merle down on one of the stone steps. After she was able to stand, she carefully took Junipa from Vermithrax’s grasp. Junipa’s lips were still moving. Weren’t her eyes open a crack now? Merle thought she saw the mirror glass under the lids.

Slowly she let her friend down into the snow. She was burning to run over to the bark, but she had to take care of Junipa first.

She gently stroked Junipa’s cheek. When her frozen fingers touched the skin, it was as if ice met ice. She wondered how long it would be before the first frostbite showed.

“Junipa,” she whispered. “Are you awake?”

From the corner of her eye she saw Vermithrax’s glowing body tense, noticed the mighty muscle cords that clenched under the obsidian-like fists. The lion was ready to respond to an attack immediately. And his distrust was directed not toward the sunbark alone. Junipa’s treachery had made him just as mistrustful as the Queen, only he didn’t show it so openly.

The girl’s eyelids fluttered, then opened hesitantly. Merle saw her own face reflected in the mirror shards Junipa had for eyes. She hardly recognized herself. As if someone had shown her a picture of a snowman, with iceencrusted hair and blue-white skin.

We need warmth, she thought with alarm. We’ll die here outside.

“Merle,” came weakly from Junipa’s chapped lips. “I … You have …” Then she fell silent again and clutched the hem of Merle’s dress. “It’s so cold. Where … are we?”

“In Egypt.” Although she said it herself, it seemed as absurd to Merle as if she’d said “On the moon.”

Junipa stared at her with her mirror eyes, but the gleaming glass betrayed none of her thoughts. When the magic mirror maker Arcimboldo had implanted them in her and made the blind girl see, Merle had found the gaze of the mirrors cold; but the feeling had never been as appropriate as it was now, in the middle of this new ice age.

“Egypt …” Junipa sounded hoarse but no longer as indifferent as she had inside the pyramid, when she’d tried to talk Merle into remaining in Hell. A breath of hope rose in Merle. Had the Stone Light lost its power over Junipa up here?

From the direction of the bark came a metallic sound, followed by creaking.

With a threatening growl, Vermithrax whirled around. Again the ground trembled under his feet.

At the side of the bark—in the wall now facing skyward—a section of the metal snapped outward and stood there for a moment, trembling like an upright insect’s wing.

Vermithrax pushed protectively in front of the girls, blocking Merle’s view. She almost put her neck out of joint in order to see between his legs.

Something worked itself out of the opening. Not a mummy soldier. Not a priest.

“A sphinx,”
whispered the Flowing Queen.

The creature had the upper body of a man, whose hips merged into the body of a lion, with sand-colored fur, four muscular legs, and razor-sharp wild animal claws. He appeared not to be aware of Vermithrax and the girls at all, he was so battered by the crash. Blood was flowing into his fur from several contusions; a gouge in his head was particularly deep. After several attempts, he managed to climb feebly out of the hatch, until in the end he lost his
balance, rolled over the edge of the bark’s fuselage, and fell. He crashed onto the next lower step, as hard as a fullgrown buffalo. His blood sprinkled the snow. He lay there, unmoving.

“Is he dead?” asked Merle.

Vermithrax stamped through the snow up to the bark and looked down at the sphinx. “Looks pretty much like it.”

“Do you think there are more inside?”

“I’m going to look.” He approached the bark in stalking position, low to the ground and with mane on end.

“If the bark was only a scout, what was a sphinx doing on board?”
asked the Queen.
“Normally a priest is available for such tasks.”

Merle didn’t know too much about the hierarchy of the Egyptian Empire, but she did know that the sphinxes ordinarily occupied the most important positions. Only the high priests of Horus stood between them and Pharaoh Amenophis.

Vermithrax climbed onto the fuselage as agilely as a young cat. Only the soft scratching of his claws on the metal betrayed him. But if there were actually anyone still alive inside, their voices would have warned him long before.

“Why a sphinx?”
asked the Queen once more.

“How should I know?”

Junipa’s hand felt for Merle’s. Their fingers closed around each other’s. In spite of the tension, Merle was relieved. At least for the moment, it appeared that the
Stone Light had lost its influence over Junipa. Or its interest in her.

Vermithrax, still prowling, covered the last distance to the open hatch. He pushed his gigantic front claws to the edge of the opening, stretched his neck forward, and looked down.

The attack they were all expecting did not come.

Vermithrax walked all around each part of the hatch that was not obscured by the open cover. He looked into the interior from all sides.

“I am so cold!” Junipa’s voice sounded as if she were far away in her thoughts, as if her mind had still not processed what had happened.

Merle pulled her closer, but her eyes remained fixed on Vermithrax.

“He will not go inside there,”
said the Queen.

What do you want to bet? Merle thought.

The obsidian lion made an abrupt leap. His powerful body just fit through the opening, and as he disappeared inside, its outline glowed. From one moment to the next, their surroundings became gray and colorless. For the first time Merle became conscious of how very much his brightness had made the icy surface around them sparkle.

She waited for a noise, the sound of battle, cries and roars and the hollow crashing of bodies banging against the bark’s fuselage. But it remained quiet, so quiet that now she began to really worry about Vermithrax.

“Do you think something’s happened to him?” she asked the Queen, but then she saw Junipa shrug her shoulders wearily because Merle had spoken the question aloud. Of course after all she’d been through, Junipa had probably forgotten what had happened to Merle. Who could really believe that the Flowing Queen—a legend, an incomprehensible power of whom the Venetians whispered reverently—would one day be living in Merle’s mind?

So much had happened since then. Merle wanted nothing more than to tell Junipa of her adventures, of her journey through Hell, where they hoped to find help against the overwhelming Empire. But instead they’d found only sorrow and danger and the Stone Light waiting for them. But Junipa, too. Merle was burning to find out her story. She wanted to rest somewhere and do what she’d done with her friend before, night after night: talk with each other.

A metallic
clang
sounded from inside the bark.

“Vermithrax?”

The lion did not answer.

Merle looked at Junipa. “Can you stand up?”

A dark shadow passed over the mirror eyes. It took a moment for Merle to realize that it was only the reflection of a raptor that was flying over their heads.

“I can try,” said Junipa. She sounded so weak that Merle had serious doubts.

Junipa struggled to her feet; heaven only knew where she got the strength. But then Merle remembered how the
fragment of the Stone Light in Junipa’s chest had healed her wounds in seconds.

Junipa stood up and dragged herself closer to the bark along with Merle.

“Do you mean to climb down there after him?”
the Queen asked in alarm.

Someone has to see about him. Merle thought.

Secretly the Queen was just as worried about Vermithrax as Merle was, and she didn’t conceal this feeling especially well: Merle felt the Queen’s unrest as if it were her own.

Just before she reached the farthest tip of the curving fuselage she looked down at the lifeless sphinx two yards deeper in the snow. He had lost still more blood. It fanned out like an irregular red star, pointing in all directions. The blood was already beginning to freeze.

Merle looked up at the hatch again, but the fuselage of the bark was too high and they’d come too close to be able to see the opening now. It wouldn’t be easy to climb up on the smooth surface.

A loud
crack
made them jump, yet it instantly resolved their fears.

Vermithrax was again perched on the fuselage. He had catapulted out of the hatch in one leap and was looking down at the girls with gentle lion eyes.

“Empty,” he said.

“Empty?”

“No human, no mummy, and no priests.”

“That is impossible,”
said the Queen in Merle’s thoughts.
“The Horus priests would not allow the sphinxes to go on patrol alone. Priests and sphinxes hate each other like poison.”

You know a whole lot about them, Merle thought.

“I have protected Venice from the Empire and its powers as long as I could. Do you really wonder that I learned at least a little about them from experience?”

Vermithrax unfolded one wing and lifted first Merle, then, hesitantly, Junipa beside him on the golden fuselage of the bark. The lion pointed to the hatch. “Climb inside. It’s warmer inside there. At least you won’t freeze to death.”

He had scarcely finished speaking when something gigantic, massive rose up from the emptiness beside the wreck and landed on the fuselage behind the girls with a wet, thumping sound. Before Merle realized it, Junipa’s hand was snatched from her own.