The Stone Light (16 page)

V
ERMITHRAX PUSHED OFF FROM THE EDGE OF THE
giant ear.

Merle lost her orientation immediately. Right, left, up, down—all blurred into one, a whirling vortex of red light and rocks. The head rushed on over them; they were caught up in its airstream, tumbled, almost overturned—and then for a brief moment they held stable in the air.

Only for a few seconds.

Then Vermithrax let out a roar, threw himself to one side, actually did a sommersault, and came straight back to horizontal again before Merle could lose her grip and fall.

Her heart raced so loudly that it filled her entire mind, thumping painfully in her skull. No room left for clear thoughts.

Then the second head was upon them, and the world turned into chaos. The obsidian lion roared again, then a jolt went through his body, which continued through Merle’s bones, muscles, and joints like the blow of a hammer. It felt as if she’d been seized and thrown headfirst against a stone wall.

When she returned to her senses, she was lying beside Vermithrax behind the external bulge of one ear, bedded in something that at first she took to be ashes. Then she recognized black down. Bird feathers, she would have assumed in the upper world. Here below they might come from Heaven knew what sort of creatures.

With her luck they were probably carnivores that had especially chosen this ear for their hibernation.

There were a strikingly large number of feathers. And they smelled of tar, like the wind that blew across the desert of Hell.

“There is no one here,”
said the Flowing Queen in her head.
“Not here in the ear.”

“Are we there, where we … where we wanted to be?”

“Not we—where you wanted to be!”

Hairsplitting, thought Merle. “Is this the second head?”

“Yes,” answered Vermithrax instead of the Queen. “It worked. Just right.”

Merle picked herself up. Her head was still pounding, as if someone had locked her under a bell tower on Christmas Eve. She staggered, and Vermithrax tried to support her with his lion tail. But she shook her head, waited a moment, then managed to stay on her legs through her own strength.

This was something she had undertaken. And she would carry it through to the end.

“How heroic.”

Merle ignored the comment. She had to climb out of the ear and down the side of the gigantic stone jaw along to the mouth. And all that perhaps to find a dying man whom no one could help anymore.

Nevertheless, she would try.

Vermithrax was breathing hard. He looked exhausted, his eyes glassy. In spite of that, he perceived what Merle had in mind.

“Rest up for a moment.”

“Then I’ll probably come to my senses and think differently about it.” Merle’s voice trembled slightly, but at once she had herself under control again.

The lion tilted his head and scrutinized her piercingly. “Once you get something into your head, you don’t abandon it so easily.”

Merle wasn’t sure if she should feel flattered. She felt the obsidian lion’s good will. He wanted to give her courage. And, to be honest, she needed a whole lot of it.

“Better now than later,” she said, and she began to climb over the parapet, over the first bulge of the ear.

“Are you certain you want to do this?”
asked the Queen.

“You aren’t going to try to talk me out of it, are you?”

“It is your decision alone.”

“Indeed.” She knew that the Queen could force her to stay here, by taking control not only of her tongue but also of her whole body. Yet she did not do that. She respected Merle’s decision, even if she didn’t approve of it.

Without any word of farewell—for she avoided even thinking of the word farewell—she climbed to the outside of the ear. The stone was large-pored, full of scars and cracks. Some of them might have belonged to the structure of the stone by nature, others clearly stemmed from collisions with … yes, with what? Flying stones? Lilim claws? Bird beaks as hard as steel?

You don’t want to know that. Not really. Don’t get distracted.

The fastest way to the corner of the stone head’s mouth was straight across its cheek, a deep hollow under the prominent cheekbones. She wondered if the face might have been modeled on the face of a particular person. If so, he was either old or undernourished. No one she knew had such deep cheeks, not even the hungry children in the orphanage.

“Do not look down,”
said the Flowing Queen.

“I’m trying as hard as I can not to.”

Her hands and feet sought holds and found them amazingly quickly. Actually, it wasn’t half so difficult as she’d thought. She followed the advice of the Queen as well as she could and kept her eyes firmly fastened on the stone wall. Sometimes, when she had to take care to place her feet on a secure projection, she couldn’t avoid seeing a small section of the ground rushing past, infinitely far below her. Her heart beat like crazy and her stomach convulsed into a hard knot that lay like a stone on her intestines.

One of her fingernails broke as she shoved her right hand into the next recess. She might have half the distance behind her already, but she couldn’t be certain. As long as she stared only at the stone, she couldn’t judge proportions. What if she’d only covered a few yards? Much less than she thought?

Onward. Ever onward.

Only a little bit more.

Very slowly she turned her head and looked along the rock wall. The corner of the mouth wasn’t far away. If she could only manage to get over the stone lower lip, she’d be safe for the time being.

Provided the man in the mouth was as well disposed toward her as she was toward him.

And if he wasn’t as weak as he looked?

If he attacked her?

She shook off the thought, concentrated on her hands and feet again.

Yet as hard as she tried to repress it, she couldn’t avoid seeing her situation in her mind’s eyes: She was hanging on the side of a fifty-yard-high stone head, high over the rocky wasteland, and this head was moving forward at such an insane speed that the landscape under her blurred to a single whirl.

And all that for a stranger about whom she knew nothing. He might be dangerous, even a murderer, perhaps a true slave of Lord Light. Nevertheless, she was putting her life on the line for him. And not just her own. For if she believed the Flowing Queen, the fate of Venice depended on her.

The realization struck her unprepared, and she lost her hold. Her left hand slipped off, only her right clung on to a stone outcropping that was so narrow it wouldn’t have held a flowerpot. She panicked and began to kick. Her feet slid over the edge of a recess and then hung free over the abyss for a moment.

“That does it,”
said the Flowing Queen drily.

Merle tensed her muscles—and pulled herself back up a little. She got hold of a projection with her left hand again, found a stop under her feet. And pulled herself on.

“Not bad.”

“Many thanks for your support,” Merle pressed out between her teeth.

A few yards farther, then she reached the corner of the mouth.

“You did it.”

“That sounds as though you didn’t think I would.”

“Do you really believe I would have let you go, then?”

Those words confirmed Merle’s fear: The Queen could take control over Merle’s body if she wanted to. That wasn’t a good thought, but it also wasn’t one she was prepared to worry about at the moment.

She was able to grab a crack in the lower lip and pull herself toward it. Gathering all her strength once more, she sought a hold and heaved herself over the lip into the mouth of the stone head.

With a gasp she rolled over the bulge, suddenly grabbed emptiness, slipped down, fell … and landed on a hard surface.

At least there were no teeth to spear her. Not even a tongue. Only a hollow space, like a grotto. The back part lay in complete darkness. Impossible to make out what was back there. A tunnel deeper into the interior of the head? Or simply a back wall?

Merle raised herself and looked along the inside of the lip.

The man had changed his position. Not on his own, it appeared to her. He had slipped and, like her, fallen on the floor of the mouth cavity. There he lay in the middle of the flood of his white hair, as if he were in a puddle of milk.

But he was breathing. He even groaned softly.

Merle crawled closer to him on her hands and knees. Her heart pounded in her ears. She considered whether to wait a moment. Catch her breath, rest. She could hardly feel her arms from the strain. If he were really to attack, she was hardly in a condition to defend herself.

What was she doing here, anyway?

“Hello?” she asked carefully.

He was lying on his side with the back of his head toward her. His white hair was spread about him like a star, long strands that—if he were standing upright—must reach almost to his hips. His left hand was concealed under his body, but he had the right arm outstretched. The fingers were long and bony. Merle could clearly recognize the veins under the pale skin, blue lines like ink that had run on a white piece of paper.

“Hello?”

The fingers of the right hand twitched, curled to claws, clenched to a fist. Then they slackened again.

Merle took a deep breath, summoned all her courage, and moved slowly around the man. She had to decide which she would rather have at her back, him or the darkness at the back of the mouth cavity. She decided for the darkness and kept her eyes on the stranger.

She was grateful that the Flowing Queen remained silent. Merle didn’t need her taunting remarks to know how absurd her behavior was. How mad.

“Are you injured?”

As she moved forward, she could gradually see more of his face.

His eyes were open and staring at her. His gaze followed her steps.

Merle got goose pimples. “You’re awake,” she stated. “Why don’t you say anything?”

His lips trembled uncontrollably, giving the lie to the clear look of his eyes. Or was he just putting on an act for some reason? Was he waiting for her to bend over him?

Did everyone have Lilim claws?

His movements might be playacting. The skin quivered slightly, as if something were crawling along underneath it. He frowned and at the same time looked quite pitiful.

A trick?

“He cannot do anything to you.”

The Flowing Queen’s words surprised her. Merle had expected a warning from her, at the very least.

“Are you sure?”

“He is debilitated. Just about to die of thirst, it appears.”

Merle remembered her knapsack and the provisions from the expedition’s camp that she’d packed in it. The bundle was so firmly strapped to her back that she’d almost forgotten it. Now she took it off, opened one of the water flasks, smelled it—who knew when it had been filled fresh?—and approached the man with it.

“Should I?”

“That is why you came, after all.”

Merle nodded silently, then she shoved her left hand under the man’s head, lifted it, and dropped water onto his cracked lips. His white hair felt strange, oddly light, although it was thick and full. The eyes, which seemed so disquietingly alert and clear, observed Merle with such intensity that they could have belonged to another man, completely separate from the rest of his weakened body. This blazing, profound look irritated her. Frightened her a little.

Merle pressed the top of the flask closer to his lips, tilted it back again, waited until he’d swallowed, guided the flask to his mouth again. She did the same thing four or five times, and each time she let him drink a little more.

Finally he signaled with a shake of the head. Enough.

She wiped the top of the flask off on her skirt and carefully screwed it closed. She might have to make do with her water supply for much longer. Merle had only two bottles; this was the first—and it was almost empty. They had only the one left.

She put the bottle back in her knapsack.

“Thanks,” came from the man’s lips. She hadn’t seen him speak, as if he’d moved neither tongue nor jaw, but she could hear him clearly.

“I … thank you.” He used her language, with an almost unnoticeable accent.

Merle helped him to sit up. She leaned him with his back against the inside of the stone lip. Again she noticed how light his hair was, almost as if it weren’t even there. It felt like flower petals.

“What’s your name?” she asked him.

“Winter.”

Flower petals—or snowflakes.

“Winter? What else?”

“Just Winter.”

She examined him in irritation, then she grinned. “I’m Merle. Just Merle.”

He was weak, his hands trembled slightly. But Merle needed only to look into his eyes to see that he was wide awake. He saw and heard her clearly, and he was thinking about it. Hard.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

That didn’t sound particularly polite, and he must have noticed that Merle frowned. Despite that, he didn’t ask for pardon but repeated his question several times.

“We should not have bothered about him,”
said the Flowing Queen demurely.

Merle thought for the first time that the Queen was probably right. But she wouldn’t admit it. Probably the Queen had read it in her thoughts anyway.

“We’re just passing through,” she said hastily, which sounded quite silly, in view of the circumstances. But nothing better came to her in a hurry.

Winter smiled. His eyes blazed. But he didn’t question her words.

“Just as I am,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“There’s only one destination here down below.”

Here down below,
he’d said. That must be a sign that he came from above, from her world.

“And what’s that?” she asked innocently.

“Axis Mundi.”

“Axis—what?”

“Axis Mundi,”
said the Flowing Queen.
“The axis of the world.”

“The city of Lord Light,” said Winter. “I take it that you’re both also on the way there.”

So he knew that Merle wasn’t alone. She remembered how he’d stared when she’d still been in the front head.