The Stone Light

by Kai Meyer

  “Serafin?” Tiziano held him back by the arm as he was just about to move forward.

  “What?”

  “If we make it … I mean, in case we survive this business, how do we get out of here again?”

  Serafin took a deep breath, not because of the bad air, but because he’d been afraid somebody would ask this question. At the same time, he was glad to finally get it behind him. He threw a quick look at Lalapeya, but she only nodded encouragingly and left the speaking to him—and with it the reponsibility.

  Serafin sighed. “You all know that it won’t be over when the Pharaoh is dead. His guard will attack us, and it’s also only too possible that within a few seconds it will be swarming with mummy soldiers down there as well. Not to mention the priests of Horus and”—another glance at Lalapeya—“the sphinx commanders.”

  Boro let out a hoarse laugh. It was supposed to sound hard-boiled, but everyone saw through him. “We’re as good as dead.”

  Serafin shrugged. “Perhaps. Also perhaps not. Our speed counts. If we get the chance to retreat, we’ll do it the same way. Up these stairs, through the lead chambers, and down the spiral staircase again to the secret tunnels.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we run.”

  “No,” contradicted Eft. “That won’t be necessary. Down below we’ll have help. You remember the old landing under the Calle dei Fuséri, don’t you? The basin we just saw there?” The boys nodded. “Help is waiting for us there. From there on we can flee.”

  Dario let out a soft whistle between his teeth. “Mermaids?”

  Eft didn’t answer, but they all knew that he was right.

  On the steps they drew their weapons. Each had a revolver with six shots, as well as a pouch full of ammunition. In addition, Serafin, Dario, Boro, and Tiziano carried sabers. Eft had only a small knife, no longer than her thumb, but it was sharper than any blade Serafin had ever seen.

  Lalapeya was unarmed. Serafin was sure that she possessed other means of defending herself. She was a sphinx, a being of pure magic. It was she who’d brought them all together. And she was—he hoped—the key to the downfall of the Pharaoh.

  At the foot of the stairs they came up against another door, higher this time, the rear side of a wall panel. There was no latch, no lock. It was secured by a secret mechanism on the outside.

  Lalapeya stepped back, slipped behind the line of boys. It had been arranged so. She needed time to work her magic against the Pharaoh, time the others were supposed to gain for her.

  Serafin and Dario exchanged looks, nodded to each other, then with their combined strength they kicked against the wood. With a dull thud, the door burst out of the wall and crashed flat on the floor on the other side. Dust welled up, and for a moment the thunder of the impact resounded in Serafin’s ears.

  With a wild yell, Serafin and Dario stormed forward, over the wooden door, out into the room, followed by the others. Eft was beside them, then Tiziano, then the rest behind him.

  Instantly mummy soldiers confronted them, as if they’d only been waiting for the intruders. The mummies were posted to the right and left in front of a closed double door that led into a room beyond. The two doors were ornamented with inlays of gold leaf; they glimmered in the light of several gas lamps. It looked as though the gold vines were moving over the wood like snakes, a confusing play of reflections.

  Tiziano was the first to fire a shot at one of the mummy soldiers. He hit him in the shoulder, but then a second shot in the forehead stopped the soldier.

  The boys now fired out of all barrels. Boro had to avoid the stroke of a sickle sword. The blade grazed his skull and tore a piece of skin from his head. At once there was blood running down his face, but nevertheless he whirled around, took aim, and fired. The bullet went astray and drove into the golden portal with a crack. Dario was immediately beside him and struck the mummified head from the soldier’s shoulders.

  Serafin raced to the next door. The first hurdle was overcome.

  In a flash, Eft was at his side. He was just about to push open the door when a roar sounded. It rang through the main entrance to the room, which led out into a broad corridor. Reinforcements were on the way. Priests of Horus, if they were unlucky. Or, much worse, sphinx commanders.

  Serafin waited no longer, rammed the right door in, and sprang through it, revolver drawn. He had no practice in handling firearms, but he hoped that his talent—or his luck—would be enough not to miss the Pharaoh and his vizier.

  In the center of the second room was a divan of jaguar skins. Serafin could only make out the outlines; the center was blocked by four sphinxes, gazing at him with dark looks. They carried mighty sickle swords, much bigger than those of the mummy soldiers. Their lion bodies did not move, were stiff as statues, but one of them whisked away a few flies with his tail.

  He’s shooing flies, thought Serafin in shock, while for us it’s a matter of our lives. That’s how seriously he takes us: nothing more than a heap of blowflies.

  At that moment Serafin lost all hope.

  It happened very abruptly and without any warning. It had nothing to do with the danger from the sphinxes or that they had obviously expected the rebels—

  (Betrayal!)

  —but only with this one swish of the lion’s tail, this one, tiny, apparently unimportant gesture.

  Blowflies, went through his mind again. Nothing more!

  Behind him a yell rang out, and out of the corner of his eye Serafin saw a dozen or more mummy soldiers pushing through the broken door. Boro and Tiziano were standing against them, splitting the skulls of the foremost soldiers with powerful blows of their sabers. Gray dust boiled up and settled like a veil of fog over the fighters.

  A strange feeling of timelessness, of intolerable sluggishness, came over Serafin. It seemed to him that the battle was taking place underwater. All movements seemed to become slower, more lethargic, and for a moment a cry of jubilation rose in his throat.

  Lalapeya’s magic! Finally it was coming to their aid!

  Right afterward the disappointment could scarcely have struck him harder. It was no spell. No magic guile. It was only himself, his own senses that slowed, as his mind retreated into deepest shock for a few seconds. Shock—and brutal recognition.

  They were fighting for a lost cause. Dario vanquished one mummy soldier after another, with absolutely balletic ease, but he had no chance against the superior strength. Sooner or later he would succumb to the onrush of opponents.

  Serafin warded off the attack of a mummy soldier who suddenly appeared behind him. Nothing of all this had the unpleasant taste of reality now. Everything seemed unreal, artificial, simply wrong, even his own fighting. It seemed to him that he was observing their defeat from the outside, and so he finally recognized the mistake with which they had begun, he himself, and Eft, and also the others.

  They’d been betrayed.

  And Lalapeya was nowhere to be seen.

  Serafin let out a shriek that made even the mummy soldier pause. At the same time he struck in self-defense, first splitting the sickle sword, then the gray skeletal head. Eft brought down a second, and now the four sphinxes began to move. Through the gap between them Serafin saw that the jaguar divan was empty. And there was no trace of the vizier.

  “Lalapeya!” he bellowed in a fury of rage, but no one answered. Dario threw him a look that seemed strangely empty to Serafin, as if an unseen hand had wiped every dream, every spark of hope from his eyes.

  Eft seized Serafin’s arm and pulled him back into the first room. Tiziano stood there, his revolver drawn. He was shooting in blind fury all about him, until Dario knocked the weapon out of his hand with his fist, for fear the bullets would hit one of them.

  No trace of Lalapeya. Anywhere.

  More mummy soldiers streamed into the room through the first door and blocked their escape route. Frantically Serafin looked around him. His eyes fell on Boro, who tore a small bottle from his belt and drank it empty in one pull.
His cheeks stayed full, he didn’t swallow the contents. Then he snatched a matchbox from his pocket, kindled a flame in the palm of his hand, and spit the fluid across it in the direction of the mummy soldiers. His hand turned red first, then black, but he didn’t bother about it; he also paid no attention to Dario and Aristide, who were just able, with a daring leap, to get to safety before the fire licked over them and struck the line of advancing mummy soldiers.

  “Out of here!” bellowed Eft as a wall of flame shot up behind her, a chaos of reeling, flaming bodies, who spread the fire to one another, until the front part of the room had turned into a flaming hell.

  “Back!” cried Serafin, but Boro didn’t obey. He continued to spit his flaming breath at their adversaries. He stopped only when the fire had almost reached him. With a quick glance he evaluated the situation, saw his friends, saw the saving door to flight, and finally started moving.

  Too late. One of the sphinxes bounded through the door to the inner room without coming close to the fire on the other side of the room and reached Boro just as he was about to turn to the secret door. The sickle sword, as long as a small tree, rose up and struck.

  Serafin screamed and was about to plunge into the room as it filled again with attackers. And then he was being pulled along by Dario as together they rushed behind Eft up the narrow stairs, followed by Tiziano and Aristide. Reaching the top, Serafin cast a look back and saw that the sphinxes were standing at the entrance to the stairs and shouting angrily: The passage was too narrow and the ceiling too low, so their sphinx bodies wouldn’t fit through the door. If they’d tried anyway, it would have been an easy matter to strike them from the upper steps.

  But none of the fugitives thought of that. Even Serafin, who’d experienced more daredevil escapes than all the others together, felt only panic, icy horror. He saw himself storming through the lead chambers like a stranger, out into the round stairwell and down the steps. If anyone had been waiting for them there, he would have had fairly easy game: Only Dario and Serafin still carried sabers. Tiziano held his revolver in his hand, without noticing that it was opened and all the bullets had fallen out of the cylinder. Aristide, at the end, was unarmed, and he pressed both palms of his hands over his ears as he ran, as if he could thus shut out the world outside.

  One after the other they leaped through the trapdoor into the deep. No one took the time to pull the cover back over the opening; the Egyptians would find out anyway which path they had taken.

  “To the landing place,” cried Eft, gasping.

  No one asked for Lalapeya. She wasn’t with them, and all guessed why. Now, as they ran behind one another through the darkness of the secret pathway, with their feet splashing in puddles and having to take care not to bang their heads on the low ceiling and support beams, the thought came to Serafin for the first time that he ought to have been able to prevent it. Everything that had happened. It had lain in his hands. If he’d followed his instinct; if he hadn’t let himself be drawn into this suicide mission; and if he hadn’t believed Eft when she said to trust Lalapeya; yes, if he’d followed his feelings in all this only once, one single time, then Boro would still be alive now.

  He had felt wrong. Serafin had known, he had known deep in his heart that this was no game, none of his master thievery. He’d been flattered that the sphinx had chosen him in particular to get her into the palace. And he’d fallen for it, for each one of her lies.

  He looked up and met Eft’s dark eyes. The mermaid was staring at him, enigmatically as always. She pulled the scarf from her face and bared her shark’s mouth. “Wait still, before you pass judgment on her,” she said. Without the scarf or mask, her voice sounded more hissing, each S a little sharper.

  “Not … pass judgment?” he repeated, disbelieving. “You surely aren’t serious.”

  But Eft didn’t answer, only turned and ran on behind the others, who’d taken the lead.

  Serafin went faster until he’d caught up with the mermaid again. How had she meant that? How could she ask that he not judge Lalapeya for her betrayal? Boro lay dead on the upper floor of the Doge’s Palace and they themselves might not survive the next few hours. For all that, he should not pass judgment on her?

  Had he still had the wind and the strength, he would have laughed out loud. And he would much rather have screamed at someone, Eft perhaps, or one of the others, to give vent to his helpless anger, and even to hurt someone, no matter whom, as he himself was hurting.

  “Let go of it,” said Eft as they bent under a low beam. “It doesn’t help anything.”

  It took a moment before it became clear to him that the same thoughts must be going through her head, the same hatred, the same disappointment.

  They’d all been betrayed. Lalapeya had led them to their doom.

  They reached the underground landing with the last of their strength. A broad canal ran parallel to the path for a little way. A boat was floating on the waves, now and again knocking hollowly against the stonework. It was unusually made, larger and rounder than an ordinary rowboat and in no way comparable to the long, slender gondolas.

  “A sea turtle,” said Eft. “Or, rather, its shell. What’s left after it has lain on the sea bottom for a while.”

  The sea turtle shell floated on its back. It was several yards in diameter and was hollowed out like a giant soup dish.

  Beckoning them frantically, Eft urged, “Get in, hurry!”

  Dario hesitated. “Into a sea turtle?”

  “Yes, damn it!” Eft’s eyes were angry. “We haven’t time!”

  The group climbed into the shell among algae and the encrusted remains of earlier sea dwellers, touching them as little as possible.

  Eft was the last to climb into the floating bowl of horn and sit down on the bottom with them. Serafin felt the warty surface of the shell through the thin material of his trousers, but he didn’t care. He felt gutted, his insides frozen to ice.

  All at once, heads rose from the water around their vessel, only just up to the eyes—large, beautiful eyes. Then the mermaids showed the rest of their faces. In the darkness their teeth shone like slivers of moon floating on the water.

  There were eight, enough to drag the heavy sea turtle shell through the labyrinth of canals out into the open water. Aristide was talking to himself and unable to take his eyes off the mermaid who was next to him in the water, although in the dark, hardly more was visible than a wide fan of hair, which now moved slowly forward. The shell began to move along with the mermaids, an unusual but effective raft, on which the survivors now glided through the darkness. A slight odor of dead fish and algae hung in the air.

  Serafin’s eyes sought Eft. The mermaid had turned away and was supporting herself with her lower arms on the edge of the shell. Expressionless, she stared into the dark water. It was clear how very much she longed to be gliding through the cold stream with her sisters with a scaled tail instead of legs.

  The mermaids pulled and pushed them around a multitude of turns and bends, through low tunnels and open waterways that ran between façades without windows, through hidden gardens and, once or twice, even through waterways in the interiors of abandoned buildings. Serafin soon lost his bearings. Not that he wasted too much thought on that.

  He could think only of Lalapeya, of what she’d done to them. He didn’t understand her reasons. Why did she just call a rebellion into life in order to rub it out so thoughtlessly?

  Wait still, Eft had said, before you pass judgment on her.

  He would have liked to ask her what she meant by that, but this wasn’t the time. None of them was in the mood to talk. Perhaps it would have been better, maybe it would have freed them from a part of the burden and grief. But no one cared about that at the moment. They all brooded silently to themselves, with the exception of Aristide, who kept on murmuring soft, disconnected sentences and staring, wide-eyed, into emptiness.

  It was one thing to hear about mummy soldiers and sphinxes and what a sickle sword could do to a h
uman being—but it was something entirely different to see a friend die, in the certainty that he gave his life for yours.

  Serafin wasn’t sure whether they would defend themselves if someone were to attack them now. It wasn’t the way it was in stories, where heroes took on another fight as they were on the run and with a breezy remark on their lips.

  No, it wasn’t like that at all.

  They’d given everything they had, and they’d lost. Boro was dead. It would be a long time before the survivors could get over that. Even Eft, brave, hard, grim Eft, was oozing grief from all her pores like sweat.

  From some of the rooflines, Serafin realized that they were crossing the Cannaregio district toward the north. If the mermaids intended to take them out of Venice, this was the best way—somewhere to the north lay the mainland. But he had no illusions about that: The Egyptians would spot them on the open water. Even if the siege ring no longer existed—after all, the city was taken—there must be enough patrols out to discover them within the shortest possible time.

  But he didn’t voice his objections. He was too exhausted and more than grateful to entrust his life to others; perhaps they’d go about it more responsibly than he had himself.

  Soon he could make out a tunnel opening that led out to the open sea. A velvety night sky still hung over the lagoon, but the stars gave enough light to sprinkle the water’s surface with points of light and to provide an overpowering feeling of breadth. A fresh night wind blew across the water toward them and penetrated the tunnel. It felt easier to breathe now.

  The sea turtle shell pushed unhurriedly out of the tunnel opening. Before them, several hundred yards away, San Michele, Venice’s cemetery island, rose from the dark wilderness of water. The ochre-colored wall that enclosed the angular island seemed gray and dirty in the icy light of the stars, as if it had been erected from the bones of those who lay buried on the island. The dead had been buried here since time immemorial, thousands and more thousands of names engraved on gravestones and urns.

  In the darkness over the island, a collector hovered silently.