by Kai Meyer
Dario let out a hoarse curse. He was the only one who made a sound. Even Aristide stopped talking to himself.
The collector cut a dark triangle in the diadem of the star picture. Colossal and threatening, the mighty pyramid hung a few dozen yards over the island. By day there would certainly have been sunbarks swarming around it, but now darkness ruled, and without light, the barks couldn’t take off.
The mermaids pushed the sea turtle shell eastward, noticeably faster than in the maze of tunnels and canals. The headwind drove into the faces of the five passengers. Eft pulled the pins out of her long hair and shook it out. It fluttered wildly around her like a black flag at her back, a pirate queen on the search for booty.
But although they all had to hold on tight, they couldn’t take their eyes off the collector over the cemetery island. They guessed what it was going to do there.
“Can they really do that?” murmured Tiziano, shocked.
“Yes,” said Dario dazedly. “They certainly can do that.”
Aristide began to mutter softly again, incoherent stuff that robbed Serafin of his last shred of nerve. But he was too tired to lash out at the boy. Not even the sight of the collector could pull him out of his lethargy. They had just been unable to save the living; what did the dead matter to him?
“My parents are buried over there,” said Dario tonelessly.
“So are mine,” whispered Tiziano.
Aristide groaned; perhaps it was words, too.
Eft sent Serafin a look, but he ignored her. To not think. To not look back. I don’t want to know all that.
On the underside of the collector a glowing network of lines and hooks appeared, flamed suddenly in the darkness, and solidified, a storm of lightning bolts that all appeared at the same time and did not die out.
“It’s starting,” Tiziano said.
The first light-hook detached itself from the black and drove down soundlessly, disappearing behind the wall of the cemetery island. None of the five had ever witnessed a collector at work, but they knew the stories. They knew what would happen.
More and more glowing lines were sent down from the underside of the collector, creating a jagged, multi-angled trellis between the flying pyramid and the island of San Michele.
Serafin could no longer bear the horror on the faces of his companions. He turned away. His own father had disappeared before he was born, and his mother had been killed in an accident when he was twelve; her body had never been found. But he felt his friends’ sorrow and horror, and it hurt him almost as much as if he’d had relatives or friends buried on San Michele himself.
His eyes wandered over to the shores of Venice. The coastline of the Cannaregio district moved ever more quickly past them, while the eight mermaids moved the sea turtle shell faster and faster over the dark waves. Now and again one of them appeared over the edge of the shell, but most of the time they stayed underwater, invisible in the dark.
Serafin saw mummy soldiers on the shore walls and patrolling along the Fondamenta, but they paid no attention to the collector in the sky over the cemetery island or to the sea turtle shell.
And there was something else.
The sky over the roofs lit up, a narrow edging of light, like Saint Elmo’s fire over the roofs and gables. It was too early for sunrise, and furthermore, it wasn’t the right part of the sky: In the east the sky was still deep black.
Fire, thought Serafin. The fire in the mirror workshop had probably set the entire district on fire. He wouldn’t allow the idea close enough to him to really be frightened, but nevertheless, he looked over at Eft to see if she’d also noticed the strange glow.
Over her shoulder he saw that the light-net of the collector had enclosed the entire island. Clouds of dust and earth rose behind the walls.
Eft was also no longer looking toward San Michele. She was looking back at the city, and her eyes gleamed, as if someone had lit candles in their cavities. Only a mirror image. The reflection of a new, glittering brightness.
Serafin whirled around. The Saint Elmo’s fire over Cannaregio’s rooftops had spread to a glowing inferno.
And yet—there were no flames! No conflagration! Serafin had never seen anything so beautiful, as if the angels themselves were sinking into the lagoon.
Then he discovered something else.
The mummy soldiers on the shore were no longer patrolling: Some lay motionless on the ground, others drifted in the water. Someone had extinguished them in a moment, quickly, like a deadly wind gust that had strafed the shore.
Only a single figure now stood on the Fondamenta on the bank, not far from the opening of a canal: the outline of a powerful lion with the upper body of a young woman. She had both arms raised to the sky and her head laid back. Her long hair floated on the wind like a billow of smoke.
“It is she,” said Eft. No one except Serafin heard her. The other boys still stared spellbound at the collector and the island.
Serafin felt all the hate and rage in him force their way out. He saw Boro before him as he’d stood in the middle of the sea of flames just before the sphinx reached him. And now Lalapeya, who’d caused all this, was standing there and working some magic to hold up the fugitives.
“Serafin!” cried Eft. But it was too late.
He’d shoved his saber into his belt, and before anyone could stop him, he made a headlong dive into the water. It closed over him, sealing his eyes and ears with oppressive silence and darkness. He wasted no more than a quick thought on the mermaids who floated all around him in the water; also gave no thought to the collector or San Michele or any of his friends.
He thought only of Lalapeya.
He surfaced, gulped some air, and swam away as fast as he could—and that was amazingly fast, considering his exhaustion, which now fell away from him like a bundle of rags. Blurrily, he saw the shore come closer, only a few yards more. He had the feeling he wasn’t alone, that there were bodies to the right and left of him, even under him. But if the mermaids really were following him, they made no attempt to stop him.
His hand struck cold stone, slippery with algae and sewage. The walled bank was almost seven feet high; he would never in his life be able to climb up there without help. Still filled with anger, he looked around him, saw the body of a mummy soldier floating nearby in the water, and then, a little farther to the left, he spotted a boat landing. He swam over with a few strokes and climbed into one of the tethered rowboats. A powerful disturbance arose in the water behind him as one of the mermaids under the surface made a U-turn and returned to the turtle shell.
Once in the boat, Serafin looked around. He’d been driven off course and was now a good two hundred yards away from Lalapeya. The sphinx had entwined both hands over her head, and the light was gathering there, creeping down from the roofs along the façades like something living, a glittering, sparking carpet of brightness, flickering like a fog illuminated from the inside out. A beaming aureole surrounded Lalapeya’s hands, spread along her arms to her body, and finally enveloped her entirely.
Serafin didn’t wait to find out where all this was leading. He couldn’t permit the sphinx to do something to the others with the help of her magic. She’d already caused too much suffering. And this was probably the last opportunity he’d have to pay her back.
He pulled out his saber, sprang from the boat to the pier, and ran to the bank. His steps sounded hollow on the wood, but Lalapeya didn’t notice him. It was as though she was in a trance, entirely concentrated on the annihilating blow. In the supernatural light she looked like a vision of a Madonna with the lower body of a monster, a blasphemous caricature from the pen of a medieval miniature painter, overwhelmingly beautiful and horrible at the same time.
Only once, very briefly, did Serafin look across the water to the sea turtle shell. Eft had gotten up and was standing erect in the shell. She called something over to the bank, perhaps trying to draw Lalapeya’s attention to her. But the sphinx didn’t react.
The othe
r boys had noticed what was happening, and their eyes swung back and forth between the nightmare spectacle on the cemetery island and the occurrence on the shore. Dario waved at Serafin with his saber, perhaps cheering him on, perhaps something else?
Still thirty yards to the sphinx. Now twenty.
The glow intensified.
Serafin had almost reached her when Lalapeya abruptly turned her head and looked at him. Looked at him out of her dark brown, exceedingly beautiful eyes.
Serafin did not slow. He merely let the saber drop—against his will?—then pushed off from the ground with outstretched arms and sprang at Lalapeya.
Her girl’s face contorted. She snapped her eyes wide open. Even in her pupils there flickered a supernatural glow.
Serafin broke through the wreath of brightness, was able to grab her upper body, and swept her off her lion legs. In a heap of arms and legs and predator’s claws they crashed to the ground, rolled over and over, suddenly plunged into emptiness, and splashed into the water. A knife-sharp claw grazed Serafin’s cheek, another tore his clothing and perhaps the skin under it, yes, he was bleeding, there was blood in the water. Then he saw Lalapeya’s face, heard as she let out a piercing scream, now only a young woman with wet, stringy hair, no supernatural appearance anymore, and the light had vanished too.
He saw her thrashing with her arms and fought against the urge to simply press her under the water until it was all over, to pay her back for everything: her betrayal, the death of Boro, the way she’d used him.
But he didn’t. It occurred to him that she couldn’t swim and would go under if he didn’t help her. He was tempted to leave her to herself, but suddenly he searched in vain for the hatred in his heart that had just now driven him from the sea turtle shell and to the shore. It was as if his anger had blown away and left nothing but emptiness.
“Serafin!” she screamed, her voice distorted by the water that pushed across her lips. “Help … me—”
He couldn’t see her lion’s paws under the surface anymore and was afraid her claws would shred him if he came too close to her. But he was indifferent even to that. He launched himself, glided over, and grabbed her from behind. He felt how she struggled under the water, and she hit against him, this time with human legs. She couldn’t swim, either as human or sphinx, but the heavy lion’s body would have pulled her down faster than her light girl’s figure. He laid an arm around her chest from behind and tried to keep them both above water somehow, but he sensed right away that he wouldn’t manage for long. In her panic she was resisting and threatened to pull him under.
Hands seized both of them from underneath and drew them out onto the water, toward the sea turtle shell, which floated in the darkness like half a skull. The mermaids didn’t show themselves, stayed under the surface, but there must have been at least two, perhaps more. Serafin floated on his back, Lalapeya pressed in front of him, still in his arm. She’d stopped kicking, she wasn’t moving at all, and for a moment he thought she was dead, drowned in his embrace—and wasn’t that what he’d wanted when he ran at her like a berserker? Hadn’t he intended for her to die and so discharge a part of her blood guilt?
Such thoughts seemed absurd to him now, and he sighed with relief when she moved and in vain tried to turn her head.
“Why did you … do that?” Her voice was mournful and she sounded as if she were crying. “Why did you … stop me?”
Why?
A dozen answers shot through his head. But suddenly, in a flash, he was aware that it was he who had betrayed—not others, but he himself.
While the mermaids dragged them to the shell of the sea turtle, he discovered finally what Lalapeya had seen before him. And he realized that her magic had never been aimed at them, never at Eft and the boys, but always only at the collector.
The gridwork of fixed light flashes that bound the underside of the collector with San Michele were now a single quivering jumble of straight and crooked beams, hooks, curves, spikes, and loops. But they hadn’t aimed at the dead Venetians who were buried by the umpteen thousands on the cemetery island.
It was something else that they sought and had found. Something altogether different.
The mermaids pushed Serafin and Lalapeya out of the water; Eft, Dario, and Tiziano pulled them in. The shell boat tilted and would probably have capsized if the mermaids hadn’t held it steady in the water. Only Aristide crouched unmoving in his place and stared over at the cemetery island; he talked ceaselessly to himself and his fingers curled into claws; it looked as though he wanted to scratch out his eyes.
The others crowded close together in the center of the turtle shell, and while the mermaids went silently back to their work and drew the shell farther to the east, away from shore and toward the open sea, the six passengers looked at the island.
San Michele’s walls had cracked. In many places wide pieces wobbled and collapsed, followed by uprooted cypress trees, which bent to one side like black lance tips and bored into the water. The entire island seemed to break apart, great cracks opened up, and seawater flowed in, undermining graves and chapels and causing the clock tower of the church to fall.
Something that had lain under the island, under the graves and crypts and the small cloister, was being pulled into the open by the light-hooks of the collector, in a chain of dust explosions and whirls of loose soil. Something that was half as large as the island itself.
The body of a sphinx.
A sphinx larger than any creature Serafin had ever heard of. Larger than a whale, greater than the sea witches in the bottomless depths of the Adriatic, greater even than the legendary giant kraken in the abyss of the oceanic trenches.
Half lion, half human, though both seemed out of order, the arms and legs too long, the face too small, the eyes too far apart. Hands as large as warships, with fingers too many and too long, and lion paws with extended claws of yellow horn and bone. The travesty of a sphinx and yet of an absurd grace, hideously distorted, almost a caricature, and yet with a grotesque elegance.
The gigantic cadaver lay on its side, the face turned toward the city, and floated against the underside of the collector, borne by hundreds of hooks of light. It was a cadaver, although it showed no trace of decay; there was no doubt that it was dead, and had been for perhaps centuries.
What was Lalapeya guarding? Serafin had asked Eft, just a few hours before.
What was she guarding?
Now, finally, he saw it before him, and he realized that her attack on the palace, the assassination attempt on the Pharaoh, had been nothing but a diversion. Something that would give Lalapeya time to destroy the collector and defend the grave of her charge.
Eft looked over at Serafin and placed her hand on his, but he wouldn’t be comforted.
Boro had died for a dead sphinx.
No, he corrected himself: for a dead god.
A god of the sphinxes.
And with this thought, this realization, he collapsed and wept on Eft’s breast. He saw that Lalapeya was also weeping, perhaps for other reasons, and then the sphinx god disappeared inside the collector, and somehow, through a chink in the defenses of Serafin’s mind, crept the certainty that their enemies now had at their disposal a weapon overshadowing all that had existed previously.
Yet at the moment, it didn’t matter. At the moment, all that counted was his despair.
Lalapeya sat down beside him and took his hand, but she felt cold and lifeless, somehow dead.
11 HEART HOUSE
WHEN MERLE AWOKE, SHE WAS ALONE.
Her first movement was to the water mirror in the pocket of her dress. Good. They hadn’t taken it away from her. She had the distinct feeling, as she pressed the oval through her dress, that it had missed the touch of her hand.
She wasn’t certain how long she’d been lying in the dark, in an unsettling silence, with only the pulsing of her heartbeat and the whispering of her own confused thoughts in her ear. The darkness awoke with her, breathed with her. Alone in comp
lete darkness, alone with herself. Thousands of questions, thousands of doubts, and even more fears.
Where was Vermithrax? What had become of Winter?
So alone.
Only then did it dawn on her what was so unusual about this aloneness. She no longer felt the Flowing Queen!
“I am here,” said the voice in her head, and it seemed a hundred times louder than usual. “Do not worry.”
“You didn’t say anything. I thought you were gone.”
“Did that make you happy?”
“Not here.”
“Oh, when it becomes serious, then I am good enough.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, as you very well know.” Merle felt over the ground on which she lay. Cold stone, cut, polished smooth. A prison cell, she guessed. Bring her into the Heart House, the old man in the wheelchair had said. From that, she’d imagined something else. No, to be precise, she hadn’t imagined anything at all.
“You have slept.”
“How long?”
“Hard to say. I have certain abilities, of course, but a built-in clock is not among them.”
Merle sighed. “Since we’ve been down here … in Hell, I mean … since then I’ve lost all sense of time. Because it never gets dark. Have we been here now for a day or two, or perhaps even a week?”
“I do not know.”
“Then tell me where we are. Or don’t you know that, either?”
“In the Heart House, presumably.”
“Oh?” Merle rolled her eyes in the dark.
The Queen was silent for a moment, then she said, “We will find out right now. They are coming to get us.”
Merle was just about to ask how the Queen knew that when she heard thumping steps, then the grating of an iron lock. A column of light suddenly appeared in the darkness, grew broader, opened to a door. Remarkable silhouettes, jagged and full of points, appeared in the door frame, looking like exotic plants, perhaps many-armed cacti, but then they appeared to dissolve and put themselves together anew. Possibly it was only happening in Merle’s head and, yes, the first sight was probably a deception, an image that fear painted for her.