by Kai Meyer
A man sitting cross-legged.
His long hair was snow-white, his skin very light, as if someone had formed the motionless figure of snow. The man had his head thrown back, his closed eyes facing upward. His bony hands were clutched around his knees, the dark blue veins standing out clearly.
“He’s meditating,” said Lalapeya in amazement.
“No,” said Merle softly. “He’s seeking.”
Winter dropped his head and looked over at them wearily.
THE ONLY WAY
IT ALMOST SEEMED AS IF HE’D BEEN WAITING FOR THEM. “Merle,” he said, sounding neither pleased nor annoyed. “She’s here. Summer is here.”
“I know.”
Vermithrax had come within two paces of him.
“Don’t come any closer,” said Winter. “You’ll all freeze to ice if you touch me.”
“You killed the sphinxes,” Merle said.
“Yes.”
“How many are left?”
“I don’t know. Not enough to oppose me.”
“Do you know where they’ve hidden Summer?”
He nodded and pointed down into the chasm.
“Down there?” Merle was irritated to have to pull every word out of him.
Again a nod. Only then did she notice that the thick snow made a detour around him. No ice crystals caught in his hair, no flakes stuck to his white clothes. His breath didn’t even come from his lips in puffs of white. It was as if Winter himself was no part at all of the season he embodied.
“I’ve come this far,” he said, “but now I lack the power to take the last step.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Summer is being held at the bottom of this shaft. There are no other entrances, I’ve searched everywhere.”
“So?”
Winter smiled shyly and very vulnerably. “How am I supposed to get down there? Jump?”
She’d had the idea that of course a being like him would be able to fly if he needed to. But he could not. He’d frosted the Egyptians and the Iron Eye with a new ice age, but he wasn’t able to advance to the bottom of this shaft.
“How long have you been sitting there?”
Winter sighed. “Much too long.”
“He is a whining weakling,” grumbled the Flowing Queen. “And all this uproar he is causing around him does not change that.”
Don’t be so unfair, Merle thought.
“Pah! A weakling.” Had the Queen had a nose, she would probably have wrinkled it. “How long can he have been here? He left Hell shortly before us.”
He’s just … well, sensitive. He’s exaggerating.
“Sensitive? He is a liar! If he succeeded in getting from the pyramid to here in the delta in such a short time and then still managed to breeze through the Eye and freeze hundreds of sphinxes … that is damned fast, is it not?”
Merle glanced back over her shoulder at Serafin and Lalapeya. Both were looking impatient but also uncertain, faced with the strange creature blocking their way.
She turned to Winter again. “You really can’t fly?”
“Not down there. I ride on the icy winds and the snowstorms. But that’s meaningless here.”
“What do you mean?”
Again he sighed from the bottom of his heart while the Queen uttered an exaggerated groan. “I’ll explain it to you, Merle,” he said. “And to your friends if they want to hear it.”
Serafin growled something that sounded like, “What else can we do?”
“Summer is at the bottom of this shaft. Her strength, her sun heat, if you will, normally rises up through the shaft. No man can approach the ground, he’d burn up in an instant.”
Merle shifted her weight nervously and looked down from Vermithrax’s back into the deep. She saw nothing but whitish gray chaos. And she was getting colder and colder, quite terribly now.
“My presence here in the shaft interrupts the flow of heat.” he continued. “Ice and fire meet each other down there, about halfway between me and her. The snow instantly melts in the air, the cold transforms into heat. Sometimes there are thunderstorms when we meet. I could let myself be carried down there by the icy winds, but Summer is captive and doesn’t have her heat under control. She is weakened and not able to cool herself down, as she usually does when we meet. Down there, the wind would turn into a lukewarm puff of air, the ice would melt, and I … well, imagine a snowflake on a hot plate.” He buried his bony face in his hands. “Do you understand now?”
Merle nodded uncomfortably.
“Then you grasp the utter hopelessness of my situation,” he proclaimed, waving his arms.
“That might not even he true,” said the Queen venomously. “This fellow has almost annihilated an entire people, and now he is sitting here crying!”
You could easily show a little more sympathy.
“I cannot bear him.”
You were certainly not everyone’s darling among the gods.
“Ask him if he has ever heard the word dignity.”
That I most certainly will not.
“I could do it for you.”
Don’t you dare!
Serafin interrupted them. “Merle, what now? We can’t just keep standing here forever.”
Of course not, she thought with a shiver.
Then Vermithrax spoke up. “I know a solution.”
In the tense silence, only the Queen murmured sourly, “Whatever it is, it had better be quick. We have no more time. The Son of the Mother is awake.”
“I can fly down there and try to free Summer,” Vermithrax said. “I’m stone, heat and cold can’t affect me … at least I think not. Besides, I’ve survived a bath in the Stone Light, so I’ll probably survive here as well. When Summer is free, I can carry Winter to her. Or her to him.”
Merle’s fingers clutched his mane even more tightly. “That’s out of the question!”
“It’s the only way.”
Merle felt that the Queen was about to take command of her voice, but she pushed her roughly back. For the last time, she snapped at the Queen in her mind, back off!
“He will endanger everything if he does that! Without him we will not get far.”
You mean, if he doesn’t do what you say, don’t you?
“It is not about that.”
Oh, yes, that’s exactly what it’s about, thought Merle. You’ve used him, just as you’ve used me. You knew from the beginning that we were coming here, that we had no other choice. You’ve always brought us exactly where you wanted us. “And now that’s the end of it!” She said the last words out loud, and everyone looked at her in puzzlement. Her face had turned red, and the heat felt almost comfortable in the ice-cold air.
“She doesn’t like the idea,” Vermithrax stated.
Merle shook her head grimly. “At the moment what she thinks doesn’t count.”
The lion turned to Winter. “What will happen when Summer is free?”
The albino made a dramatic gesture with his hands that took in the entire Iron Eye. “What always has happened. All this will lose its power. Exactly as before.”
Merle pricked up her ears. “Like the suboceanic kingdoms?” Her guess was very close to the mark.
Winter nodded. “They weren’t the only ones to have tried it, but their failure was the most spectacular.” He thought for a moment. “How shall I explain it? They tap her strength, the strength of the sun—perhaps that describes it the best. They don’t realize that they are only injuring themselves. They know of the failure of the old ones, but they try it again anyway. They are so terribly weak, and they think they are so infinitely strong.” Winter shook his head. “These fools! They cannot win, one way or the other. They will destroy themselves, sooner or later, even if we do not free Summer.”
“But what do they want?” asked Serafin. “Why are they doing all this?”
Lalapeya answered him. “They are using Summer to drive the barks, the factories, and the machines with her energy. Thus they have helped bring
the Pharaoh to power and conquered the world. But this world was really only a finger exercise for them, only a plaything. What is actually important to them is somewhere else.”
“All the mirrors?” Merle whispered.
“Their plan is to tear down the barriers between the worlds with the Iron Eye. With their fortress they’re going to move from one world to another and carry on an unprecedented campaign of conquest.”
Vermithrax growled. “But that takes magic. More magic than that of an ordinary sphinx.”
“The Son of the Mother,” said Merle. The coming events were unreeling in her mind like the light and shadow play of a magic lantern. “He’s the key to the whole thing, isn’t he? When he awakens, the Stone Light will take control. And the Iron Eye will move through the mirror world in order to smash the gates to the other worlds.” She envisioned the gigantic fortress appearing in the labyrinths of the mirror world and destroying thousands upon thousands of mirror doors. The chaos in the worlds would be indescribable. Under the direction of the Light, the sphinxes would travel through the worlds like a mob of freebooters and sow death and destruction, exactly as they’d done in her own world. In other places too they would not dirty their own fingers but help upstarts like the Horus priests and Amenophis to power. Others would do the work for them, while they sat in their fortress and waited. A people of scholars and poets, Lalapeya had said. The sphinxes were artists, scientists, and philosophers, but the price for their life of literature and debate was a high one. And its cost was supposed to be paid by entire worlds.
“Merle,” said Vermithrax firmly, “go to your mother.”
She still hesitated, even though she felt that he had made his decision. “You must promise to come back.”
Vermithrax purred like a kitten. “But of course.”
“Promise!”
“I promise you.”
That wasn’t much reassurance, maybe nothing but empty words. Nevertheless, she felt a little better.
“Just fool yourself,” said the Queen nastily. “You humans always were the greatest at that.”
Merle wondered why the Queen was being so unbearable. Perhaps because Vermithrax’s plan was better than her own: free Summer, thus rob the last sphinxes of their power, and so hinder the awakening of the Son of the Mother.
And the Queen’s plan? Why didn’t she reveal it? Where was the catch? For there was a plan, Merle had no doubt of that.
“I am worried about him.” The Queen’s tone had changed abruptly. No more sarcasm, no bitter irony. Instead, real concern. “I want to speak with him—if you will allow it.”
“Yes,” Merle said, “of course.” The Queen played with her feelings as if she were a piano, knew exactly which keys she had to press when. Merle saw through her and still could do nothing against it.
“Vermithrax,” said the Queen in Merle’s voice. “It is I.”
Serafin and Lalapeya stared at Merle, and she had to remind herself that the two knew her story, of course, but they were hearing the Queen speak from Merle’s mouth for the first time. Vermithrax had also pricked up his ears.
“I must tell you something.”
Vermithrax cast an uncertain look at Winter, who had raised himself and stood astride the path, without swaying, even without blinking. “Now, Queen? Couldn’t it wait?”
“No. Listen to me.” He did, and all the others did as well. Even Winter tilted his head as if he were concentrating entirely on the words that fell from Merle’s lips and yet were not her own. “I am Sekhmet, the mother of the sphinxes,” the Queen went on, “that you know.”
At least for Lalapeya and Serafin, that was a surprise. Lalapeya was going to say something, but the Queen interrupted her: “Not now. Vermithrax is right, haste is needed. What I have to say concerns only him. After I bore the Son of the Mother and with him generated the sphinx people, I soon recognized what had happened: The Stone Light had deceived me. And it had used me. I placed compliant servants in the world for it. When it became clear to me what that meant, I decided to do something. I could not kill all sphinxes and make everything unhappen—but I could keep the Son of the Mother from being made into the slave of the Light. I fought with him, mother against son, and finally I succeeded in defeating him. I was the only one who had the power to do that. I killed him and the sphinxes buried him in the lagoon.” She paused, hesitated, and then continued: “What happened then, you know. But my story does not end with that, and it is important that you learn it now. You most of all, Vermithrax.”
The lion nodded thoughtfully, as if he already guessed what was coming.
“I knew that I could not watch the lagoon alone, and so from the stone of the image the humans had erected in my honor, I created the first stone lions. I created them of magic and my own heart’s blood, and I think that makes them—like the sphinxes and yet entirely different from them—my children, does it not?”
The lion, unable to look Merle and the Queen in the eye as they sat on his back, lowered his head. “Great Sekhmet,” he whispered humbly.
“No,” the Queen exclaimed, “it is not about honoring me! I intend only that you know the truth about the origins of your people. No one remembers anymore when and how the stone lions came to be in the lagoon, and so I am telling you. The lagoon is the birthplace of the stone lions, for after the Son of the Mother was buried there, I created you as guards: I myself would watch over him, but I needed helpers, my arms and my legs and hands and claws. Thus arose the first of your people, and after I was sure that you were equal to the task, I gave up my own body and became the Flowing Queen. I could not and would not live as a goddess anymore with the shame of what I had done. I became one with the water. On the one hand that was the proper decision, but on the other it was a mistake, for with it I gave up supervision of the stone lions. My servants were strong, but at the same time trusting creatures, who got mixed up with humans.” She hesitated before she went on in a bitter tone, “You know what happened. How the humans betrayed the lions and robbed them of their wings; the flight of those who escaped the treachery; and finally Vermithrax’s unsuccessful attack on Venice to redress the wrong that had been done to his ancestors.”
The obsidian lion was silent. He’d listened with lowered head. He and his companions were the children of Sekhmet. The stone guards of the Son of the Mother.
“Then it is right that I am here today,” he said finally, lifting his head with new determination. “So perhaps I can make up for the mistake of my forefathers. They failed to guard the Son of the Mother.”
“Just as I did,” said Lalapeya.
“And I,” said the Queen from Merle’s mouth.
“But fate has given me a chance,” Vermithrax growled. “Perhaps all of us. We failed then, but today we have another chance to stop the Son of the Mother. And I will be no lion if we do not succeed.” He uttered a pugnacious growl. “Merle, get down now.”
She obeyed, very slowly, very carefully, until Lalapeya enveloped her in her injured arms. But Vermithrax walked up to Winter. The albino touched him on the nose, scratched under his chin. Vermithrax purred. He’d been right: The frost had no effect on his stone body.
“Good luck,” said Merle softly. Serafin bent down from the back of the sphinx and placed a hand on Merle’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” he whispered, “he’ll manage it.”
Winter nodded to Vermithrax one last time; then the lion let out a battle roar and leaped into the deep. After a few yards, his wings stabilized his flight, and a few moments later he was only a glowing phantom behind a curtain of ice and snow. At last he faded entirely, like a candle flame extinguished in white wax.
“He will manage it,” whispered the Queen.
And if he doesn’t, Merle thought. What will become of us then?
Ignoring her bandaged arms, Lalapeya embraced her daughter even more tightly and looked her in the eyes at close range.
And thus they stood for a long time, with no one saying a word.
Vermithrax
felt it, he felt the Stone Light in him and yet knew that it could not harm him. He’d been able to feel it when he’d bathed in the Light, down there under the dome of Axis Mundi—nothing tangible, no clear sensation. But he’d known that there was something in him that protected him from the Light and at the same time united him with it. Now it was clear to him that it was the legacy of Sekhmet, the foremother of all stone lions and sphinxes, the Flowing Queen. She had been touched by a beam of the Stone Light, and a little of this contact had also passed over to the lions. When he’d plunged into the Light, it had recognized itself in Vermithrax and protected him. Even more: It had made him stronger than ever before. Perhaps involuntarily, but that no longer mattered.
He was Vermithrax, the biggest and most powerful among the lions of the lagoon. And he was here to do what he’d been born for. If he were to die doing it, it would only close the circle of his existence. And if Seth had told the truth, he was anyway the last of his people, the last of those lions who could fly and speak. The last free creature of his species.
He propelled himself downward with broad sweeps of his wings, flew down with the snowflakes, overtook them, shot like a comet through the middle of them into the abyss. Soon it seemed to him they were growing smaller and wetter, no longer the fluffy flakes of farther up but slushy dots, then drops. Snow turned to rain. With the onset of heat, the water evaporated too, and he entered a zone of comfortable warmth, then heat, then finally roaring fire. The air around him shimmered and boiled, but he inhaled it the same as the icy air of the high heavens, and his lungs, glowing like everything in him, sucked out the oxygen and kept him alive.
He was proven right. The Light, which had made him strong, at the same time protected him from heat and cold.
Soon it was so hot that even stone would melt to glass, yet his obsidian body withstood it. The distant walls of the shaft had long since become unrecognizable; whatever material they might be made of, it was also not of this world. Of magic mirrors, perhaps, like the rest of the Iron Eye. Or of pure magic. He understood little of these things, and they didn’t interest him. He only wanted to carry out the tasks he had undertaken. Free Summer. Defeat the sphinxes. Stop the Son of the Mother.