The Stone Light

by Kai Meyer

  Feeling melancholy, Serafin crumbled bits of a small loaf of bread into the water, but no fish came to receive the unexpected delicacies. Since the Flowing Queen had been driven from the waters of the lagoon by the poison of the Egyptian high priests, one rarely saw fish swimming through the canals. Instead of them, algae now thrived in the waters, and Serafin wasn’t the only one who had the feeling that it was growing worse with each passing day. Dark green strings, amorphous and twisted, like wet spiderwebs. It could only be hoped that they didn’t really come from one of the great sea spiders, which no one had ever seen but were rumored to be living in the Mediterranean in the ruins of the suboceanic kingdom, there where the water was deepest.

  Serafin felt miserable. He knew that Merle had escaped from Venice on the back of a stone lion, and for all his confusion, he was still grateful for that. At least at the moment, she was in no danger from the Egyptians—provided she’d been able to get past the siege ring of the Empire without being caught by the sunbarks.

  It wasn’t the impending invasion that caused his concern either. The fear of the Egyptians went deep, certainly, but in a peculiar way that frightened him, he’d resigned himself to it. The capture of Venice was inevitable.

  No, something else was gnawing at him, hardly letting him sleep and making him restless all day long. His stomach felt like a hard ball that wouldn’t let him take any nourishment. He had to force himself to take each bite, but even that didn’t always succeed. The crumbs of bread on the water below him were his evening meal.

  He was concerned about Junipa, the girl with the mirror eyes. And of course about Arcimboldo, the magic mirror maker on the Canal of the Expelled. It had been Arcimboldo who’d taken Junipa and Merle from the orphanage and made them apprentices in his workshop. Arcimboldo who—as Serafin had learned shortly before—had entered into an agreement to soon surrender Junipa to Lord Light, the master of Hell.

  Serafin had demanded explanations from Arcimboldo, and the magic mirror maker had answered most of his questions.

  Arcimboldo seemed to be a beaten man. For years he’d secretly supplied Lord Light with his magic mirrors. Time after time, he’d met with Talamar, Lord Light’s courier, to hand over new mirrors. And one day Talamar had made a special proposal, to which, after a long hesitation, Arcimboldo had agreed. He should restore sight to the blind Junipa, of course with the help of his magic mirrors. A noble gesture on his part, and since then, Junipa learned a little faster each day how to manage with her new powers of sight.

  But that wasn’t all.

  Lord Light had not directed Arcimboldo’s attention to Junipa out of altruism. Serafin had had to probe for a while before the mirror maker finally told him everything.

  “Junipa can also see in the dark with her new eyes,” Arcimboldo explained over a glass of tea, while the moon shone through a skylight in the workshop. “Merle has probably told you that already. But it doesn’t end with that.”

  “End?” asked Serafin with irritation.

  “The magic mirror glass with which I replaced her eyeballs will give her the power to look into other worlds at any time. Or better: through the mirrors of other worlds.”

  After a long silence, Serafin finally found words again. “Such as the ones that are reflected in some of the canals around midnight?”

  “You know about those? Yes, into those, and also others. Junipa will look through her mirrors at those who live there, and they’ll never know it. She’ll observe kings and emperors making important decisions in their mirrored halls, and she’ll see when fully laden ships are reflected in the waters of distant oceans. That is the true power that her mirror eyes give her. And it is she whom Lord Light is after.”

  “Control, isn’t it? That’s what he’s all about. Not only does he want to know what’s going on in this world—he’ll only be satisfied when he knows everything. About all worlds.”

  “Lord Light is curious. Perhaps we should say ‘thirsting for knowledge’? Or ‘interested’?”

  “Unscrupulous and vicious,” said Serafin angrily. “He’s exploiting Junipa. She’s so happy that she can see after a life of blindness—and she has no idea what’s behind it.”

  “She does,” contradicted Arcimboldo. “I’ve spoken with her. She now knows what power she will have at her command in time. And I believe she has accepted it.”

  “Did she have a choice?”

  “Lord Light gives none of us a choice. Not me, either. Had I not taken his gold, the workshop would have closed long ago. He’s bought more magic mirrors than anyone else since the Guild expelled me. Without him I’d have had to send all my apprentices back to the orphanages. Merle and Junipa wouldn’t even have come here.” The little old man shook his head sadly. “Serafin, believe me, my own fate is not the issue here at all. But the children … I couldn’t allow that.”

  “Does Junipa know where she’s going to go?”

  “She suspects there’s more behind it. Even that she won’t be staying here with us for long. But she knows nothing of Talamar and Lord Light. Not yet.”

  “But that can’t be allowed to happen!” Serafin exclaimed, almost overturning his tea. “I mean, we simply can’t allow her to … to go to Hell. In the truest sense of the word.”

  To that Arcimboldo had said nothing, and now Serafin was sitting here on the canal and looking for a solution, for some sort of way out.

  If Venice had been a free city and there had been no Egyptians threatening it, perhaps he might have been able to flee with Junipa. He’d once been one of the most skillful master thieves in Venice, of whose existence most of the city’s citizens had no inkling at all. But the Empire’s siege ring enclosed them on all sides, a hangman’s noose of galleys, sunbarks, and umpteen thousand soldiers. There was no way out of the city, and to hide from Hell and the Egyptians somewhere in the alleys was a futile undertaking. Sooner or later they’d find them.

  If Merle were still in Venice, together they might perhaps have found a solution. But with his own eyes he’d seen her fly over the Piazza San Marco on the back of a stone lion—over the lagoon, out of the city. And for reasons he didn’t know himself, he doubted that Merle would be back soon enough—if ever—to save Junipa from her fate.

  Where was Merle? Where had the lion taken her? And what had become of the Flowing Queen?

  The reflection of the other world faded as a clock in a nearby church tower struck one, followed by quite a few others. The hour after midnight was past, and with it the lighted windows on the water vanished abruptly. Now the waves reflected the dark housefronts only very vaguely, unlit, a reflection of the reality.

  Serafin sighed softly, stood up—and suddenly bent forward again. There was something in the water, a movement. He’d seen it clearly. Not a reflection, from this or any other world. Perhaps a mermaid? Or a big fish?

  Serafin saw a second movement, and this time it was easier to follow it with his eyes. A black silhouette glided through the canal, and now he discovered a third. Each was about fifteen feet long. No, fish were certainly not that big, even if these were shaped something like sharks. They came to a point in front, but the width was the same along the rest of their length, like a thick tree trunk. Serafin saw no fins, either, as far as he could make out in the dark water.

  The last silhouette slid along just under the surface, not so deep as the others, and now the moonlight broke over its surface. No doubt about it—metal! With that, there was really no more doubt about where they came from. Only magic could move objects of iron or steel through the water like feathers. Egyptian magic!

  Serafin ran. The surrounding houses came right down to the water, so he couldn’t run directly along the canal. He had to take a roundabout way to follow the three vehicles. He quickly ran back through the blind alley, went around several corners, and finally came to a piazza that he knew only too well. Forty steps away from him, a little bridge led over the canal into which he’d just scattered his supper. In a narrow house on the left, he and Me
rle had met the three traitors from the City Council and the Egyptian spy. Here they’d thwarted the delivery of the Flowing Queen.

  Now the house stood there abandoned and inconspicuous. No one would have supposed that the invasion of the Empire had begun precisely here, behind boarded-up windows and a gray, crumbling façade.

  On the bridge stood a figure in a long, dark cape. Its face was hidden under a deep hood.

  For a moment Serafin had a sense of walking through an invisible door into the past. He’d already seen this same man once, at the same hour of the night, in the same place: the Egyptian envoy, the spy, from whom they had wrested the crystal vial containing the Queen. Merle had burned his hand with the help of her magic mirror, while Serafin had set a horde of angry street cats on his neck.

  But now the man was here once more, and again he was hiding himself under a hooded cape like a street robber.

  Serafin overcame his shock quickly enough not to be discovered. He swiftly pressed himself against a housefront. The moon was illuminating the opposite side and a large portion of the narrow piazza; but the part through which Serafin was moving lay in deep shadow.

  Protected by the darkness, he approached the bridge. The envoy was waiting for something, and after Serafin’s recent discovery, there was little doubt as to what that was. In fact, there now sounded a hollow metallic sound, which was irregularly repeated. Something was striking against the wall of the canal under the bridge.

  Something was coming alongside.

  The envoy hurried to the foot of the bridge and from there looked into the water. Meanwhile, Serafin was still thirty feet away from him. He hid behind a small altar to the Virgin Mary that someone had attached to the house wall a long time ago. Very likely, no offerings had been placed there for a long, long time. In recent years most people had prayed to the Flowing Queen; nobody believed in the power of the Church anymore, even though there were still some holdouts who attended church as a matter of form.

  Serafin watched the envoy move back a few steps, away from the edge of the canal. He was making room for six men climbing up the narrow steps from the water.

  Men? Serafin bit his lower lip. The six figures had been men once. But today they bore no likeness to their former selves.

  Mummies.

  Six mummy soldiers of the Empire with faces dried up and fallen in, so that they resembled each other like twin brothers. Any characteristics that might once have differentiated them had vanished. Their faces were those of skeletons, covered with gray skin.

  All six wore dark outfits that glittered metallically in the moonlight now and then. Each held a sword such as Serafin had never seen before: The long blade was curved, almost half-moon-shaped, but the edge—unlike that of a scimitar—was on the inside of the curve, which led to a completely different way of wielding it. Egyptian sickle swords, the feared blades of the imperial mummy soldiers.

  There must have been room for two of them in each of the strange vehicles in the water. They had sat in them one behind the other, as in a hollow tree, unable to move. But mummies, Serafin thought cynically, probably didn’t have to scratch at all; that would only have peeled the desiccated skin from their bones.

  So that was what the Egyptians made of the dead. Slaves without will or mercy who sowed death and destruction. Presumably there were similar scenes playing out all over Venice at this moment. The invasion had begun.

  But there was a difference between being conquered by flesh-and-blood opponents and by … something like that. You could talk with humans, ask for mercy, or at least hope that they retained a portion of their humanity. But with mummies?

  Serafin could no longer bear the idea of a Venice emptied of all life, in which an inhuman Pharaoh ruled. He knew that it would be best for him to keep still, not move, not even breathe, but that was impossible. At last, when it became clear to him that the Egyptian envoy had command of the six soldiers, he could not creep away. He had to do something, had to act. Even if it was madness.

  He let out a sharp whistle. For a moment nothing happened. But then the envoy whirled around so fast that his dark cloak billowed out. His hood slid back for a moment, long enough so Serafin could see what the cats had done to him. The spy’s face was furrowed with crusted wounds, not harmless scratches but deep gouges, which would soon scab over to an ugly wasteland of scars. And the man knew whom he had to thank. He remembered the sound that had set the cats on him.

  He remembered Serafin.

  The envoy called something in a language that Serafin didn’t understand and pointed toward the altar, as if his eyes could see through the massive stone. Faster than Serafin would have thought possible, the mummies began moving, their sickle swords raised. One of them stayed behind, near the envoy. The man pulled his hood up again, but first he threw Serafin a hate-filled look in which there was a promise—of pain, of misery, of long torture.

  The mummies had covered half the distance. Serafin had just leaped from his hiding place when the cats finally came.

  Thirty, forty, fifty stray cats, from all directions, from all openings, from the roofs and out of the sewers. And with every second there were more, until the piazza swarmed with them.

  The envoy shrieked and retreated backward up the bridge, while he ordered one of the other soldiers back with a shrill command so that he could keep the cats from getting at him. But the other four mummies paid scarcely any attention to the animals, who fell on them from all sides. Claws sank into the paper skin. Teeth bit into clothing and armor, snapped at fingers, and tore dusty scraps from cheeks and arms.

  None of it stopped the mummy soldiers.

  They kept single-mindedly on their way, stamping through a sea of fur and claws, each hung with a dozen cats like living Christmas tree decorations. The sickle swords whistled through the air and in blind rage struck their victims, some on the ground, some in mid-leap. Meowing and shrieking echoed and reechoed from the houses. But the animals learned quickly. More and more often they fastened themselves to the sword arms of the soldiers, until the mummies sagged under the weight.

  Serafin was immobilized with horror. Not for long, only for a few instants. It was enough for him to realize that the cats were sacrificing their lives for him. With all the danger that threatened him, he couldn’t permit that. Cats were the friends of the master thieves, their allies, not their meek slaves. He hesitated a moment, then let out a new succession of whistles. Immediately the wave of cats surged back; only those who were biting and hooked into mummies stayed a few seconds longer. Then they also gave up, let themselves drop, and whisked away.

  Serafin’s command meant that the cats should run away, back to wherever they had come from. But they didn’t obey. They fell back from the mummies for only a few yards, stopped at the edge of the piazza, and watched their opponents with glowing eyes.

  Meanwhile, Serafin had run to the other side of the piazza. From there he looked back and saw the cats clumped in front of the buildings like a wave of fur. He also saw that the mummy soldiers were hard on his heels.

  The cats waited for him to call them to attack again, but he didn’t have the heart to. Nearly a dozen animals lay dead or dying in the lane that the four mummy soldiers had plowed. The grief that overwhelmed Serafin at this sight shook him even more strongly than fear for his life.

  Ten more yards and the four soldiers would reach him. Silently they rushed toward him. In the background, up on the bridge, stood the envoy, his arms crossed, barricaded behind his two guards.

  “The cats!” cried a light voice suddenly out of the shadows behind Serafin. “They should pull farther back!”

  Serafin whirled around. A torch burned in the recess between the houses, but he couldn’t recognize who was holding it. He whistled again, moving toward the source of the light as he did so.

  This time the cats obeyed. In the wink of an eye, they climbed the houses and windowsills, drainpipes and steps, wooden beams and balustrades.

  “Watch out!” bellowed a se
cond voice, this time from the left.

  Serafin turned and ran. The mummy soldiers had almost reached him. He looked back over his shoulder—and saw two garish tongues of flame leap out of the street openings in the direction of the mummies. There was a crackling snarl, then the four mummies were alight. Flames licked over their dried-out bodies, sprang from one limb to the other, ate along under the steel of their armor. One soldier sank to its knees, while the other three still ran on. Two struck wildly about themselves, as if they could drive off the flames with their sickle swords. But the third rushed straight at Serafin without stopping, its weapon raised, ready to deal the deadly blow.

  Serafin was unarmed except for his knife, which he tore from his belt. He knew he hadn’t a chance with it. Nevertheless, he stood there as if his boots had taken root. He’d been a master thief of the Guild, the youngest ever, and had learned that you don’t run away from an opponent. Not if others were ready to risk their lives for you. And as he saw it, not only had the cats done that, but also the mysterious helpers who came to his aid with their fire breath.

  Now he saw three figures leap out of the recesses on both sides of the street. Two flung their torches to the ground, while the third rushed at one of the burning soldiers with his drawn saber. Very briefly the idea flitted through Serafin’s mind that he knew this face, all three faces, but he had no time to make sure.

  The burning mummy threw itself at him like a demon, a towering column of fire, from which the razor-sharp blade of the sickle sword struck at him. Serafin avoided the blow and at the same time tried to put some distance between himself and his opponent. He could perhaps escape the sword, but if the flaming creature fell on him, he would burn miserably.