The Stone Light (18 page)

T
HEY WEREN’T THE ONLY ONES IN THE AIR APPROACHING
the gap in the rocks. Merle could now distinguish creatures swarming around the stone colossi like mosquitoes, a multitude of dark dots. They were too far away to make out any details.

Merle and Winter took cover behind the stone bulge. Merle hoped that Vermithrax had also withdrawn deeper into the ear. She worried about him. He was alone and had no one to explain to him what was going on outside.

“He is doing well,”
the Queen said reassuringly.

The first head, which was diagonally in front of them,
sank into the shadows of the gigantic legs. From above, Merle could see the giant feet on the ground, mighty ovals of rock, around which snaked the Lilims’ route of march. Still, she wasn’t able to see the creatures in detail, so tight was the throng, so great the distance.

The heralds raised their flight path considerably, until they were soaring above the stone knees of the colossi. Merle lost sight of the columns deep below them and instead looked up at the gigantic bodies of the fighters. From close up, they could just as well have been bizarre rock formations; their proportions were discernible only from a distance. The stone thighs, between which the heralds were flying, became great walls, too big to measure.

The sight took Merle’s breath away. The thought that these huge things were created artificially, with sweat and blood and endless patience, was beyond her power of imagination.

What did the workers who’d hewn these figures out of stone look like? Like men? Or instead, like the watchers in the abyss, roachlike creatures that had eaten the superfluous rock instead of cutting it away?

Despite the heralds’ speed, it took quite a while until they had the fighters behind them. The gap in the rocks was somewhat deeper than Merle had thought, and it had a slight bend, which made it impossible to see the end of it. The rock walls moved past them on the left and right, and there Merle saw flying Lilim, coming toward them or
flying in the same direction. They all seemed to avoid the heralds in wide arcs, as if they were afraid of the giant stone heads.

No Lilim appeared to be like the other. Some resembled the pictures that men had made of the inhabitants of Hell for thousands of years: horned, scaly beings that sailed on arching wings. Others were similar to oversized insects, clicking and rattling in black shells of horn. But the greater part were like nothing Merle had ever seen. With most, the extremities could be determined, sometimes also something that might be a face, eyes, jaws, teeth.

“They all look completely diffferent,” she said, fascinated.

Winter smiled. “After a while you’ll discover that there are repeating patterns. They’re just not so easy to recognize as with humans or animals. But when you get used to the sight, you see them right away.”

At some point the gap came to an end. Before them opened a grandiose panorama.

Axis Mundi.

The city of Lord Light, the center of Hell.

Merle had received a foretaste of real size when she saw the watchers at the abyss and then the two fighters in the rock gap. But this was pure madness: a view that could be apprehended only if she turned off her reason and simply
looked
—merely observed rather than tried to understand. For this place did not let itself be truly understood.

The city looked like a sea of tortoise shells, shoved
over and under one another, some tilted, others broken. Domes of rock stretched among towers, minarets, and pyramids, under bridges and paths and grillwork. No area was unbuilt, all spaces were inhabited. The rock walls between which Axis Mundi spread out like a coral reef were lined with houses and huts; the towers infested with whole tribes of insectoid Lilim; the ledges, which, like the bones of an elephant graveyard, rose above the buildings, covered with swarming life; and even in the thousands of columns of smoke that disappeared under the ceiling nested dark, fluttering creatures.

Enthroned at the center of this hodgepodge of inconceivable diversity was a dome that was broader and higher than all the others. The heralds headed toward it, and Merle guessed that they were approaching the holy of holies, the triumphal temple of Lord Light, the center of Axis Mundi, of Hell, and perhaps of the whole world, merged into one mighty edifice.

It would be a while yet before they arrived there, so far was the road from the rock gap, over roofs, spires, and gables. Merle used the time to examine the chaos below them more carefully. Once, a few years ago, in the streets of Venice, she’d seen a beggar whose entire face was infected by a proliferating ulcer that looked like the top of a cauliflower. From above, Axis Mundi reminded her of that sight, a grotesque work of tumors, entwined and distorted like melted muscle tissue.

And then there was the smell.

A spice dealer might perhaps have been able to recognize the individual odors in this abominable mixture of scents of all kinds. But in Merle’s nose, the stink worked like a poison that etched itself into her mucous membranes.

The view over the city and the vague idea of what might live down there was enough to cast her into deep despair. Whatever had they been thinking of to come here? That Lord Light resided in a golden tower and would receive them with open arms? How should they find help here for their city, for their friends?

This was Hell, after all—true, at least in some respects, to the horrors that Professor Burbridge had evoked in his reports. And some things, she had no doubt, were certainly even worse.

“Do not let it frighten you,”
said the Flowing Queen.
“We have nothing to do with all that down there. It is Lord Light who interests us, not this scum.”

He is one of them, Merle thought.

“Possibly.”

He will not help us.

“He offered it once, and he will do it again.”

Merle shook her head silently, before she noticed that Winter was again looking at her suspiciously.

“Is that his palace?” she asked.

Winter’s hair was being whirled around in the headwind
like a snowstorm. “I’ve never been here. I don’t know.”

The stone head kept on toward the monstrous dome, and now Merle noticed that the entire building appeared to be shining, from the inside out. In a different way from the subterranean lava strands, which provided light to all Hell, the dome glowed with no tinge of yellow or red, at once much brighter and yet duller.

“Before you ask—I do not know what sort of light that is,”
said the Queen.

Winter’s dark expression had brightened. “That could be she.”

Merle looked at him with wide eyes. “Who? Summer?”

He nodded.

The Queen groaned.

Merle had a suspicion what the light might mean. Until now she hadn’t thought about why Lord Light bore this name at all. What if it was a description rather than a name?

“I am sorry to have to disappoint you,”
said the Flowing Queen quickly.
“In earlier times, the master of Hell was named Lucifer, and in your language that means nothing other than ‘bringer of light.’ Lord Light is a name humans have given him. Furthermore, quite a new one.”

Light bringer, Merle thought. Someone who brings the light—and maybe even imprisons it under a dome?

Winter’s behavior changed. He no longer brooded or
confused Merle with dark hints. Instead, he ran back and forth along the lip, casting excited looks toward the dome and chewing on his lower lip like a nervous boy. Merle grinned stealthily. And
he
claimed not to be human?

A few hundred yards before the giant dome, the heads changed direction. Instead of flying straight toward the vault, they now approached an interconnected construction of rectangles and towers rising at the side of the dome. Merle noticed that everything here, every building, even the giant dome vault, consisted of smooth stone. Nothing was built of masonry and mortar. Every elevation within the city looked as if it had grown, as if someone had worked the rock and stretched it, the way the glass blowers on Murano worked their gatherings of glass; as if someone possessed the power to force the rock to an alien will.

The heralds glided through an opening that reminded Merle of the mouth of a giant fish. In comparison to this door, the stone heads seemed like pebbles. Beyond the opening was a broad hall, where a good dozen stone heralds were resting in several rows on the floor; they looked like remains of ancient statues in an archeologist’s storeroom.

First the front head sank into a free place, then their own. Its bottom struck the ground with a murderous jolt that knocked Merle and Winter off their feet. The noise was deafening. The stone quivered for a while afterward from the force.

Merle fought her way up, still quite dizzy and deaf from the impact. Fearfully she looked down. She’d almost expected that Lilim would hurry toward the head from all directions, like harbor workers to unload a newly arrived ship. But the floor around the herald remained empty. At first.

A powerful shadow appeared before the mouth opening, then Vermithrax shot across them, much too fast and with wing beats that created a real storm. He was just able to decrease his speed enough not to smash against the gums of the mouth cavity. Snorting, he landed on the floor and whirled around, all predator, all fighter from head to paws.

He approached tensely, keeping his eyes on Winter. Without looking at Merle, he asked her, “Are you all right?”

“We’re all fine and dandy.”

A silent duel of gazes between Vermithrax and Winter was under way. Merle was glad not to be standing between them, lest the quantities of mistrust and tension now in the air strike her like lightning.

“Vermithrax,” she said soothingly, “Winter is on our side.” Still, as she spoke, she wasn’t at all sure of that anymore. Perhaps it was pity. Or naive confidence.

“Your name is Winter?” asked Vermithrax.

The white-skinned, white-haired man nodded. “And yours Vermithrax.” He said the lion’s strange name without hesitation or a trace of mispronunciation, as if he’d
already known him for a long time. And in fact, he did add, “I have heard of you.”

The obsidian lion threw Merle a questioning look, but she raised her hands defensively. “Not from me.”

“Your story is an old and well-known one,” said Winter to the lion, “and indeed, all over the world. I have heard of it in many places.”

Vermithrax raised an eyebrow. “Yes?”

Winter nodded. “The most powerful of the stone lions of Venice. You are a legend, Vermithrax.”

Merle automatically wondered why, then, she’d never heard the whole story about Vermithrax’s uprising against the Venetians. The Flowing Queen had been the first to tell her of it.

“You come from above?” asked the lion.

Winter nodded again.

In order to cut short the menacing interrogation, Merle joined in and told Vermithrax everything she’d learned about Winter. The story sounded even more incredible from her mouth. Vermithrax remained hostile, and she could hardly blame him. Perhaps it had been a mistake to tell about Winter’s unhappy love for Summer. With that she’d strained his credulity to the utmost—and beyond.

“Merle,”
said the Flowing Queen suddenly,
“we must get away from here. Quickly.”

Vermithrax was just about to take another threatening step toward Winter, when Merle leaped between them.
“Stop it now! Right this minute, you two!”

Vermithrax stopped, finally turned his eyes from Winter, and looked at Merle. The expression in his eyes became gentler at once. “He could be dangerous.”

“What is most dangerous are the Lilim, who are coming from all sides,” said Merle, but it was the Flowing Queen who spoke out of her.

Are you sure? Merle thought.

“Yes. They will soon be here.”

Vermithrax made a leap and landed on the edge of the stone lower lip. “You’re right.”

Winter also climbed the stone bulge, nimbly followed by Merle. A horrified sound escaped her throat, and she quickly reassured herself with the thought that it must have been the Flowing Queen. Of course she knew better.

Countless Lilim were approaching the herald, absurdly comical figures with too many limbs, sharp-edged horn shells, and eyeless heads. The majority bustled along flat on the floor, while others went upright, if also bent forward, as if by the weight of their horny bodies. Some others ran on long, skinny legs, as if they were on stilts, and their arms stood out at angles like the legs of daddy longlegs. Those were the ones that horrified Merle most, for they moved fast and with agility, and Merle had to think involuntarily of giant spiders, even if that over-simplified the matter—and prettified it.

“They haven’t discovered us yet,” said Winter, as he
leaped back behind the lip. Vermithrax and Merle followed him.

The lion waved Merle over with a scraping of his paws. “Get on!”

She cast a glance at Winter and hesitated. “What about him? There’s room enough on your back for two.”

Vermithrax looked anything but happy. “Do we have to?”

Merle looked over at Winter once more, then she nodded.

“Very well. Hurry up!”

Merle climbed up onto the lion’s black back. Winter followed her after a short hesitation. She felt him take a place behind her and try to find the best position. There was just time enough for him to grab on tight, for Vermithrax unfolded his wings and lifted them into the air with one powerful motion.

They shot out between the herald’s lips just as the first angled leg of a Lilim pushed over the edge.

Vermithrax rushed out into the hall. On the floor below, the Lilim turned their heads, some as ponderously as tortoises, others swiftly and with malicious eyes. Some let out shrill animal sounds, others articulated words in a strange language. Over her shoulder Merle saw a whole flood of creatures climbing to the chin of the herald and streaming into the mouth cavity. But the ones with the long limbs remained behind and stared up at Vermithrax. One gave out a succession of
high, sharp sounds, and at once the direction of the stream of Lilim changed. Like angry ants they swarmed out to all sides.