by Kai Meyer
“I explored his mind as he sank into the deep. I saw the boldness of his plan and admired his strong will. A plan like that should not have come to grief before it had ever begun. So I called the merfolk to pull him back to the surface and bring him safely to the shore of an uninhabited island. I also introduced myself, and while he returned to himself again and gathered strength, we had long discussions. I will not say that we became friends—for that he understood too little what I really was, and I believe he feared me because I—”
“Because you are water itself?”
“I am the lagoon. I am the water. I am the source of the merfolk. But Vermithrax was a fighter, a hothead with an indomitable will. He showed me respect, and gratitude, but also fear.”
The Flowing Queen fell silent as Merle, exhausted, stepped onto the highest landing of the stairs. The steel door of the tower room was three times as high as she was and almost twelve feet wide. Two bolts the length of a man were fastened across the outside.
“How shall we—,” she began, but she broke off as the noise on the piazza increased from one moment to the next. She ran to the barred window and looked down.
From here she had a breathtaking view over the front part of the piazza and the fiery fissure opened down its middle, and for the first time she saw that it ended just a few yards before the water. Had the crack continued on into the sea, Merle and the mermaids would have been drawn right into the flames by the suction of the water.
But it wasn’t this realization that froze the blood in her veins. It was the catastrophe that was beginning down below.
Three winged lions zoomed down from the roof of the Doge’s palace, whipped on by the screams of their riders. The City Council had made its decision: No more dealings with the princes of Hell, once and for all.
Before the messenger could react, the three lions were upon him. Two rushed past him on the left and right, missing him by a hairsbreadth, and were through the flames too quickly for their riders to come to any harm. But the third lion, the one in the middle of the formation, seized the messenger in its open jaws, managing to grab him in the middle of his fat body, snatched him away from the flaming fissure, and carried him off. The messenger shrieked, a dreadful succession of sounds, inconceivably high and shrill for human ears. He was hanging horizontally in the lion’s jaws, his bandaged, wormlike lower body twisting like a fat maggot. All over the piazza people cowered; even soldiers let their weapons fall and pressed their hands over their ears.
With the messenger in his mouth, the lion flew a tight curve over the roofs. Then he shot down toward the soldiers gathered in front of the palace. Over their heads, he let the screeching creature drop like a rotten piece of meat.
“Merle!” cried the Flowing Queen in her thoughts. “Merle, the door! . . .”
But Merle could not take her eyes off the spectacle. The soldiers sprang apart, just quickly enough to avoid the messenger’s falling on their heads. Screaming, he hit the ground among them, robbed of all his loftiness, only a monstrous thing whose gigantic chicken claws thrashed ceaselessly in the air while the worm projection of his lower body drummed in panic on the pavement.
“Merle! . . .”
For a few heartbeats, stillness reigned over the entire piazza. The people were silent, forgetting to breathe, unable to grasp what was happening before their eyes.
Then a triumphant shout went up. The mob had tasted blood. No one thought of the consequences any longer. Almost four decades of isolation and fear of the world outside cleared the way.
Words formed from the shouting, then a shriller, more thundering speech-song:
“Kill the beast! Kill the beast!”
“Merle! We have no time!”
“Kill the beast!”
“Please!”
“Kill the beast!”
The gash the messenger’s fall had opened in the formation of soldiers closed in a wave of pressing bodies, flashing blades, and twisted faces. Dozens of arms rose and fell, striking with sabers, rifle butts, and bare fists at the creature on the ground. The messenger’s screaming became a whimper, then was silenced altogether.
“The door, Merle!”
When Merle turned around, in a daze, her eyes fell again on the two powerful bolts. So huge!
“You must open it now,” entreated the Queen.
From the other side of the steel came the roar of a lion.
9
THERE WAS NO POINT IN QUESTIONING THE MATTER ANY longer. Merle had undertaken a task. The decision had been made when she drank the contents of the vial, and perhaps even earlier, when she left the lantern festival with Serafin. An adventure—that was what she’d wanted.
It was surprisingly easy to slide back the lower bolt on the door. At first she applied her whole weight against it, but then the gigantic steel bolt slid to the left as if it had just been oiled the day before.
The second bolt was somewhat more difficult. It was fastened a good handsbreadth above Merle’s head, too high for her to put her whole weight against it. It took a long time before she finally succeeded in moving it a little bit. Sweat was pouring down her face. The Flowing Queen was silent.
There—the bolt slid to the left. Finally!
“You have to push both doors in,” the Queen instructed. She didn’t sound really relieved yet. Soldiers were going to be turning up again soon. They had to have Vermithrax freed by that time.
Merle hesitated only long enough to draw a breath. Then she leaned with both hands against the steel doors. With a metallic grinding, the two sides of the door swung inward.
The Campanile’s tower room was bigger than she’d expected. In the darkness she could make out the outlines of the jumble of beams that supported the high point of the roof. Far, far above her fluttered pigeons. White bird droppings covered the floorboards like fine snow; it was so dry and dusty that Merle’s feet stirred up small clouds with each step. The stale air smelled acrid with the pigeons’ excrement. The inhabitant of this attic prison, on the other hand, possessed no scent of his own, nothing that could be differentiated from the stone all around him.
It was very dark. A single shaft of light fell through a window halfway between the floor and the lower timbers of the tower roof. Outside, the sun was finally rising. Bars as thick as Merle’s thighbone cut the light into slices.
The walls were covered with a network of steel grating too, as if people were afraid that otherwise the prisoner could tear the walls apart. Even the high roof beams were covered over with gratings.
The light that came in through the window moved like a bundle of gleaming ropes through the tower room and pooled in the center of the floor. On each side of the yellow spot of light, the darkness was total; the opposite wall was not discernible.
Merle felt small and lost under the high arch. What should she do now? she wondered.
“You must greet him. He must know that we come in peace.”
“He won’t recognize you if you don’t speak to him yourself,” retorted Merle.
“Oh yes, he will.”
“Umm . . . hello?” she said softly.
Pigeons rustled in the joists.
“Vermithrax?”
Rustling sounded. Beyond the sunbeams. Deep in the darkness.
“Vermithrax? I’m here to—”
She broke off as the shadows gathered into something solid, substantial. There was a swishing sound followed by a strong gust of wind—wings that had been folded together, stretching. Then steps, soft, like the padding of cats’ paws, not so heavy and jarring as those of the other lions. Animal, and yet placed with deliberation. Cautious.
“The Flowing Queen is with me,” she blurted. Probably Vermithrax would laugh at her.
A silhouette, higher than a horse and twice as wide, detached itself from the darkness. In a moment he was standing there in the light, his head bathed in the glow of the morning sun.
“Vermithrax,” Merle exhaled softly.
The Ancient Traitor looked at
her from proud eyes. His right paw extended murderous claws—and immediately withdrew them again. A flash of quick, hundredfold deaths. Each of his paws was as big as Merle’s head, his teeth as long as her finger. His mane, although of stone, rustled and waved at every movement like silky fur.
“Who are you?” His voice was deep and possessed a slight resonance.
“Merle,” she said uncertainly. And then again, “I am called Merle. I’m a student of Arcimboldo.”
“And bearer of the Flowing Queen.”
“Yes.”
Vermithrax took a majestic step toward her. “You have opened the door. Are soldiers waiting outside to kill me?”
“At the moment they’re all down in the piazza. But they’ll be here soon. We have to hurry.”
He remained standing there, and now the light illuminated his entire body.
Merle had never before seen a lion of obsidian. He was raven black, from his nose to his bushy tail. A slight gleam showed on his flanks, the slender back, and his lion’s face. The hair of his enormous mane appeared to be constantly in motion, an imperceptible rippling, even when he was holding his head still. His opened wings soared over him, each almost nine feet long. Now he folded them casually together, completely silently. Only a draft of wind again.
“Hurry.” Lost in thought, he repeated her last word.
Merle felt impatience rising in her. Lion more or lion less, she didn’t want to die just because he couldn’t decide whether to trust her.
“Yes, hurry,” she said firmly.
“Hold out your hand to him.”
“Are you serious?”
The Queen didn’t answer, and so with a heavy heart, Merle moved toward the obsidian lion. He awaited her, motionless. Just as she stretched out her hand to him, he raised his right paw in a gliding movement, high enough for it to rest under Merle’s fingers.
From one heartbeat to the next a change took place in him. His expression became gentler.
“Flowing Queen,” he murmured, scarcely audibly, and inclined his head.
“He can feel you?” Merle asked, without saying it aloud.
“Stone lions are perceptive creatures. He already felt my presence when you opened the door. Otherwise you would have been dead long ago.”
Again the lion spoke, and this time his dark eyes fixed on Merle—for the first time, really on her. “And your name is Merle?”
She nodded.
“A beautiful name.”
There’s no time for that now, she wanted to say. But she only nodded again.
“Do you think you can ride on my back?”
Naturally she’d suspected that it would come to that. But now, when a ride on a real stone lion—and in addition, one who could speak and fly—was immediately before her, she felt her knees as weak and fragile as an air bubble.
“You need have no fear,” said Vermithrax loudly. “Just hold on tight.”
She walked up to him hesitantly and watched as he lay down.
“Get on with it,” urged the Queen gruffly.
Merle gave a soundless sigh and swung onto his back. To her amazement the obsidian felt warm beneath her and appeared to fit the form of her legs. She sat as securely as if in a saddle.
“Where shall I hold on?”
“Grab deep into my mane,” said Vermithrax. “As deep and as firmly as you can.”
“Won’t that hurt you?”
He laughed softly and a little bitterly, but he didn’t answer. Merle took hold. The mane of the lion felt neither like real fur nor like stone. Firm, and yet flexible, like the branches of an underwater plant.
“If it comes to a fight,” said the lion, looking fixedly over at the door, “bend as deep as you can over my neck. On the ground I’ll try to protect you with my wings.”
“All right.” Merle tried to keep her trembling voice under control, but she succeeded only with difficulty.
Vermithrax began to move and glided to the door in a feline motion. In a flash he was out through the gap between the doors, onto the upper landing of the staircase. He carefully evaluated the width of the stairwell, nodded in satisfaction, and spread his wings.
“Couldn’t we run down the steps?” Merle asked worriedly.
“Hurry, you said.” Vermithrax hadn’t finished speaking when he rose gently in the air, glided over the banister, and plunged steeply into the depths.
Merle let out a high scream as the rushing air pressed on her eyelids and she almost catapulted backward off the lion’s body. But then she felt a steady pressure on her back—Vermithrax’s tail tip pressed her into his mane from behind.
Her stomach seemed to turn inside out. They fell and fell and fell. . . . The ground in the center of the stairwell was filling her entire field of vision when, with a shake, the obsidian lion righted himself again, swept just over the bottom of the tower, and with an elementally powerful roar, shot out the door of the Campanile, a black streak of stone, larger, harder, heavier than any cannonball and with the force of a hurricane.
“Frrreeeeeeeeeee!” he screamed triumphantly in the morning air, which was still impregnated with the sulfurous vapors of Hell. “Free at last!”
Everything went so fast that Merle scarcely had time to notice any details, not to mention put them together into a logical succession of experiences, pictures, perceptions.
Men were bellowing and running here and there. Soldiers eddied around. Officers shouted orders. Somewhere a shot cracked, followed by a whole hail of bullets. One glanced off Vermithrax’s stone flank like a marble, but Merle was not hit.
In a low-level flight, barely nine feet off the ground, the black obsidian lion rushed across the piazza with her. Men parted and ran, screaming. Mothers grabbed their children, whom they’d just let go free after the death of the messenger.
Vermithrax let out a deep growl, like a rockfall in the tunnels of a mine; it was a moment before Merle realized that this was his laugh. He moved with astonishing grace, as if he’d never been imprisoned in the Campanile. His wings were not stiff but powerful and elastic; his eyes not blind but sharp as a hawk’s; his legs not lame, his claws not dull, his spirit not dulled.
“He lost the belief in his people,” declared the Queen in Merle’s thoughts, “but not the belief in himself.”
“You said he wanted to die.”
“That was long ago.”
“Live and live and live,” roared the obsidian lion, as if he’d heard the words of the Queen.
“Did he hear you?”
“No,” said the Queen, “but he can feel me. And sometimes perhaps even what I am thinking.”
“What I’m thinking!”
“What we are thinking.”
Vermithrax rushed away over Hell’s fissure. The flames were quenched, but a gray wall of smoke divided the piazza like a curtain. Vaguely Merle could see that stone and rubble were filling the crack from below and gradually closing it. Soon only the ruptured pavement would be a sign of the event.
More bullets whistled around Merle’s ears, but strangely, during this entire flight she had no fear of being hit. Everything went much too fast.
She looked to the left and saw the three traitors standing in the bunch of guardsmen, in the middle a puddle of slimy secretions that flowed from the body of the messenger.
Purple. Gold. And crimson. The councillors had recognized who was sitting on the back of the lion. And they knew that Merle shared their secret.
She looked forward again, saw the piazza drop behind and the waves rushing under her. The water glowed golden in the dawn, a promising highway to freedom. To their right lay the island of Giudecca, but soon they also left its roofs and towers behind them.
Merle let out a shrill cry, of fear no longer, merely a vent for her euphoria and relief. The cool wind sang in her ears, and finally she could breathe deeply again, a boon after the horrible smell of sulfur in the piazza. Wind stroked her hair, flowed across her eyes, her spirit. She melted with the air, melted too with Vermithra
x, who bore her over the sea, forty or fifty feet over waves of liquid fire. Everything was dipped in red and yellow, even she herself. Only Vermithrax’s obsidian body remained black as a piece of night that was rushing forward in flight from the light.
“Where are we flying?” Merle struggled to speak over the noise of the wind but wasn’t sure she was succeeding.
“Away,” cried Vermithrax boisterously. “Away, away, away!”
“The siege ring,” the Flowing Queen reminded them. “Keep in mind the Egyptian heralds and the sunbarks.”
Merle repeated the words for the lion. Then it occurred to her that Vermithrax had been locked up in the Campanile for so long that he could know nothing of the rise of the Empire and the Pharaoh’s war of annihilation.
“There is war,” she explained. “The whole world is at war. Venice is besieged by the armies of the Egyptians.”
“Egyptians?” Vermithrax asked in surprise.
“The kingdom of the Pharaoh. He’s got a circle around the lagoon. Without a plan we won’t get through it.”
Vermithrax laughed at the top of his lungs. “But I can fly, little girl!”
“So can the sunbarks of the Empire,” retorted Merle, her cheeks reddening. Little girl! Bah!
Vermithrax made a slight turn and looked back over his shoulder. “You make your plan! I’ll worry about them back there!”
Merle glanced back and saw that they were being followed by half a dozen flying lions. On their backs sat black figures in leather and steel.
“The Guard! Can you lose them?”
“We’ll see.”
“Now, don’t be reckless!”
Again the lion laughed. “We two will understand each other well, brave Merle.”
She had no time to find out whether he was making fun of her. Sharp whistling sounded in her ear—rifle bullets whizzing past them.
“They’re shooting at us!”
Their pursuers were about a hundred yards behind them. Six lions, six armed men—no doubt in the service of the traitors.
“Bullets can’t hurt me,” cried Vermithrax.
“Well, wonderful! Not you, maybe. But they can me!”
“I know. That’s why we—” He broke off and laughed threateningly. “Here’s a surprise for you.”