The Stone Light (6 page)

“But it’s the truth.”

“That it is not. No one wants more war, even more bloodletting. But the Egyptians will not let anyone talk to them. There is no other way. The fruit on the tree is helpless when it rots—but we have a choice. We can make our own decisions. And we can try to defend ourselves.”

“And that means more war. More dead.”

“Yes,”
said the Queen sadly.
“It probably does.”

Merle looked out over Vermithrax’s mane again. To her left and right, the obsidian wings were rising and falling. The soft swishing swelled and receded, gently, almost leisurely, but Merle hardly heard it anymore. The sound had long ago entered into her flesh and blood, just like the lion’s throbbing heartbeat; she felt it beneath her as if she were herself a part of this stone colossus, merged into him the way the Queen was now a part of her. She wondered if things would all come to the point when they, who had once been three, would more and more become one, just like the Egyptians, who numbered in the millions but followed only one brain, one hand, one eye—that of the Pharaoh.

Yes, said a cynical voice that wasn’t the Queen’s, and at the end the shining prince is waiting for you on his white horse and will carry you to his castle of flower petals.

Vermithrax’s voice snatched her back to reality. “That is so … gigantic!”

Merle saw what he meant. The closer they came to the statues, the more titanic they seemed to her, as if they were continuing to grow right out of the soil, until the stone skulls broke through the clouds somewhere and swallowed the stars with their mouths.

“They are watchmen. The Egyptians built them,” said the Queen with Merle’s voice so that Vermithrax could hear too. “Here the Egyptian forces clashed with the armies of the Czarist kingdom for the first time. Look around you—everything is wasted and destroyed and uninhabited. Even the birds and insects have flown away. It is said that the earth itself finally convulsed in pain and distress, a last act of strength, to make an end of the fighting, and it swallowed all that it found on it.”

“It really looks as though the ground fell in!” Vermithrax said. “Simply collapsed on itself. No earthquake could do something like that.”

“There has only twice in history been something comparable. For one, the landslide that swallowed Marrakesh a few years ago—and perhaps the same powers were at work there as here—and then of course the wound that the fall of Lucifer Morningstar made in the earth.”

“Morningstar?” asked Vermithrax.

“Even a stone lion must have heard of him,” said the Queen. “An infinitely long time ago—so the humans tell
it—a burning light from Heaven was supposed to have fallen directly to the earth. Many stories are told of its origins, but most people still believe that it was the angel Lucifer, who turned against his creator and was thrown out of Heaven by him. Lucifer fell burning to the depths, tore a hole in the earth, and thence plunged into Hell. There he rose to become ruler and the most powerful antagonist of his creator. So the angel became the devil—at least the old legends say so.”

“Where is this place where Lucifer hit the earth?” Vermithrax asked.

“No one knows. Perhaps it is somewhere at the bottom of the sea, where no one has looked—except for the inhabitants of the subterranean kingdoms. Who knows?”

Merle felt her tongue loosen, and finally she herself was able to speak again. “I can’t stand it when you do that.”

“Excuse me.”

“You’re only saying that.”

“I am dependent on your voice. We cannot exclude Vermithrax.”

“But you could ask politely. How about that?”

“I will take pains to.”

“Do you believe that story? I mean, about Lucifer Morningstar and all that?”

“It is a legend. A myth. No one knows how much of it corresponds to the truth.”

“Then you have never seen that place in the sea yourself?”

“No.”

“But you know the suboceanic kingdoms.”

“I know no one who has seen the place with his own eyes. And no one who knows for certain whether it ever existed at all.”

She’d never get anything more out of the Queen this way. But what did she care about the suboceanic cultures at the moment, anyway? A much more pressing problem lay directly in front of her, now stretching from one horizon to the other.

They were still some forty feet away from the edge of the Hell hole. In front of them rose one of the ten statues, more impressive than the Basilica of San Marco. It was the figure of a man with naked upper body and legs. According to the manner of ancient Egypt, he had only a loincloth wound around his hips. His skull was hairless, smooth as a polished ball. This head alone must have weighed several tons. The figure had both elbows bent and the palms laid together in front of its chest so that the arms formed a large triangle. The stone fingers were intertwined in a complicated gesture.

Merle suppressed the impulse to imitate it with her own hands; she would have had to let go of Vermithrax’s mane to do it.

“Ask him to fly past two other statues,”
said the Flowing Queen.

Merle passed the request on to the obsidian lion. Vermithrax immediately flew a loop and turned east, where the next stone giant was, a few hundred yards away. Each of these monumental figures stood with its back to the abyss, its pupilless eyes gazing rigidly into the distance.

“And the Egyptians built them?” Merle asked.

“Yes. After the battlefield sank into the ground, the remaining armies of the Czarist kingdom used the opportunity to flee. They retreated many thousand of miles to the northeast and established a new boundary there, which they still hold today. The Egyptians went around the area and continued their advance, while their priests had these statues erected to watch over the entrance to the interior of the earth.”

“Only symbolically, I hope.”

The Queen laughed.
“I do not believe that the statues will suddenly come to life when we fly past them. In case that is what you meant.”

“I was thinking of something like that, yes.”

“Oh, well, I have of course not been here myself before, and—
”

Merle interrupted her by clearing her throat.

“Yes?”

“Please hold your tongue.”

“If I had one, I would not always be needing yours.”

“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a know-it-all?”

“No one.”

“Then now is the best time to do it.”

“What is a know-it-all?”

Merle let out a groan and addressed the lion. “Vermithrax, was she always like this?”

“Like what?” asked the obsidian lion, and she had the feeling that he was smirking, even though from her place on his back she couldn’t see his face.

“So difficult.”

“Difficult, hmm? Yes … yes, I think you could say that.”

Again the Queen laughed inside her, but she dispensed with any remark. Merle could hardly grasp that for once the Queen did
not
have to have the last word.

The second statue was not appreciably different from the first, with the exception that the fingers were intertwined in a different way. The third figure displayed yet another gesture. Otherwise they were all as alike as peas.

“Is that enough?” Vermithrax asked.

“Yes,”
said the Flowing Queen, and Merle passed it on.

Vermithrax flew around the statue without it awakening.

“Did you really expect that all at once it would start moving so as to catch us out of the air with its hand?”

Merle shrugged her shoulders. “I think for a long time I haven’t known what to expect anymore and what not to. I also didn’t think that I would free Vermithrax from his prison. Or fly over the countryside on his back. Aside
from all the other things that have happened in the last few days.”

She tried to catch a glimpse over the edge of the abyss, but she saw only rocks and fine, vapory veils, bathed in a reddish shimmer. She wasn’t sure if that was caused by the sun, which stood high over the wasteland, or if the source of the diffuse glow was inside the earth.

“Do you think that’s really Hell down there? I mean, like in the Bible or the pictures on church altars?” Her skeptical tone surprised her. Hadn’t she just declared that after all their experiences there was nothing left that could astonish her?

Vermithrax didn’t answer, perhaps because he was still thinking, or he had no clear opinion about it. But the Queen answered,
“What do you think?”

“I don’t know.” Merle’s eyes swept over the expressionless face of the nearest statue, and she wondered if the artist who had created these features would actually have made them so utterly emotionless if gravest danger lay in wait there below. “Anyway, Professor Burbridge never wrote of gigantic fires roasting the damned. Or of chains and torture chambers. I guess we should believe him. Besides—,” she broke off.

“What?”

After a short pause Merle took up the thread again. “Besides, a Hell like the one in the Bible wouldn’t make sense. Inflicting pain on someone for all eternity is so …
so unreasonable, isn’t it? After all, we punish a person so he won’t do something bad again. And, of course, to scare off anyone else. But if the good are incapable of sinning, and at the same time the sinners have no chance to do good because, after all, they’re imprisoned forever in Hell … I mean, what sense would there be in it?”

The Queen said nothing to that, but Merle had the feeling that she silently agreed with her, was even a little proud of her. Emboldened, she went on: “If God is in fact infinitely good, the way it says in the Bible, then how come he sentences some people to eternal damnation? How do the two fit together, good and punishment?”

To her surprise, Vermithrax now joined in. “You’re right. Why should we punish a guilty person if the punishment can’t change him anymore?”

“Sounds like quite a waste, I think.”

“We might call that down there Hell,” said the Queen, “but I do not think it has anything to do with what your priests preach. Neither with God nor with the Devil.”

“But?”

“Only with our own selves. We survive, or we die. That depends on us alone.”

“Can anyone like you actually die?”

“But of course,”
said the Queen.
“I live and die with you, Merle. Whether I want to or not.”

Merle grew dizzy at these words—and to her astonishment, she again felt something like pride. But at the same
time she felt the invisible weight on her shoulders grow a little bit heavier.

“What do you think?” cried Vermithrax over his shoulder. “Should we try it?”

“That is what we came here for, after all.”

Merle nodded. “Let’s try it!”

Between her knees she felt the lion draw in a deep breath and once briefly tense all his muscles. Then he turned sharply, flew a narrow arc, and shot out over the edge.

The sweetish odor became even stronger as they found themselves over the abyss, but there was still nothing to see except the steep rock walls and a sea of mist. The reddish glow of the vapors became more intense now, as if there were a sea of lava hidden under the layer of fog, which would evaporate into hot air any minute.

Obviously the same thought was on Vermithrax’s mind. “What’s under the clouds?”

“May I?”
the Queen asked. Merle thought she sounded slightly too ironic, too sure of herself.

“Go ahead.” And before she knew it, the Queen was already speaking with her mouth. “It is only ordinary fog, nothing more. It has to do with the fact that two different levels of air density come together here. You will probably have to get used to breathing under there at first.”

“What are air densities?” asked the lion.

“Just trust me.” Then she withdrew into herself again.

“She says things like that all the time,” Merle said to the lion.

“How do you stand it?”

Merle had a dozen caustic remarks on her tongue, but she suppressed them. Secretly—and she only reluctantly admitted to it—she was even a little glad that she had the Queen in her.

Sometimes it was good to have someone who knew all about you share everything and have an answer to many questions.

And sometimes it was a scourge.

Vermithrax began the descent. He didn’t head down in a straight line but turned in wide circles. As he did so, he tilted dangerously to the side, so that after a short time Merle could feel her stomach rebel once again. She would never get used to this accursed flying.

The obsidian lion stayed close to the southern wall. The stone was dark and appeared to be full of cracks. Once Merle thought she made out a kind of groove leading down from the upper edge; it looked like a makeshift staircase or a road that someone had hewn out of the rock. But at the next turn she lost sight of the narrow ribbon again. Anyway, she had her hands full just holding on tight and keeping her eyes more or less rigidly on the back of Vermithrax’s head in the hope of being able to keep her nausea and dizziness halfway under control.

The fog lay a few yards below them, smooth as a
frozen lake. Only, its center was filled with incessant motion, wafting veils that turned around themselves like lone dancers of water vapor. The red glow was brighter in some places than others. Whatever might await them down there in the depths, it wouldn’t be long before they came face-to-face with it.

It had been cool high up in the air; but now, the farther down they moved, the warmer it became. Not hot, not humid, in spite of the moisture, but warm in a comfortable way. However, Merle was much too tense to be happy about it. Only a few minutes before, when Vermithrax had been circling the statues, the wind had cut through her clothes like a knife through parchment, but the cold wasn’t what was occupying her mind. Other thoughts claimed her attention, concerns and speculations, premonitions, and an appropriate measure of confusion.

Then they broke through the fog.

It was only a short moment, certainly not a minute, until Vermithrax’s descending flight had borne them through the layer of mist and thrust them out on the underside in a star-shaped eruption of steam and gray vapors. Merle had automatically held her breath, and now, when she tried to take in a deep breath, she was overcome with panic: It wouldn’t work! She couldn’t breathe! Her throat closed, her chest burned like fire, and then there was only fear, pure, instinctive fear.