The Glass Word (25 page)

Merle gave the mermaid a warm smile over Junipa's shoulder. For a moment the surroundings were overlaid by a scene from the past, a gondola ride at Eft's side through a night-dark tunnel. “You have been touched by the Flowing Queen,” Eft had said that time. “You are something very special.”

Merle shook off the image and turned to Junipa again. “What happened with Seth? I was so worried about you!”

Junipa's face darkened. “We were in Venice, Seth and I. We were with the Pharaoh.”

“With the—”

Junipa nodded. “Amenophis is dead. And the Empire has collapsed.”

“Has Seth—”

“Killed him, yes. After that he killed himself. But he let me go.”

The Queen roused in Merle's mind.
“The sphinxes abandoned Amenophis. That is just like them! They used the Empire to awaken the Son of the Mother. And now they want to move on. They are not content with this one world.”

Junipa grabbed Merle by the shoulder. “You weren't really serious before, were you? What you said … or
she
did. Whoever.”

Merle shook off her hand with a jerk. Her eyes avoided Junipa's mirror gaze, slipped past her to the others. She felt as if she'd been driven into a corner from which there was no escape.

“Without the Son of the Mother, the sphinxes have no power to leave our world,” she said, now turning to Junipa again, but still trying not to meet her eyes. “And if there is only one way to beat him … I have no choice, Junipa. No one here has.”

Junipa shook her head in despair. “That's not you talking!”

“The Queen wanted all of you to know the truth, so that you could make the decision for me. But now I'm the one who is speaking. And I won't allow someone else to decide. This is my affair alone, not yours.”

“No!” Junipa seized her hand. “Let me do it, Merle. Tell her she can change into me.”

“What nonsense!”

“Not nonsense.” Junipa's gaze was firm and full of determination. “It won't be much longer until the Stone
Light gains power over me again. I can feel it. It feels around and pulls on me. I don't have much more time.”

“Then go through the mirror into another world. The Light will have no more power over you there.”

“I will not allow you to die. Look at me. My eyes aren't human. My heart isn't human. I'm a joke, Merle. A mean, bad joke.” She looked over at Serafin, who was listening very carefully to her every word. “Anyway, you have him, Merle. You have something to live for. But I? When you're dead I have no one left.”

“That is not true,” said Eft.

Merle wrapped her arms tightly around Junipa, pressing her friend to her as hard as she could. “Look around you, Junipa. These are your friends. None of them will let you down.”

Serafin stood there, torn. There must be another possibility. There simply
must.

“But you heard her,” Dario chimed in. “The Pharaoh is dead. That's all that matters. The Empire is as good as defeated. And if the sphinxes really want to get out of here, so much the better for us. Why should they make out any better in other worlds than in ours? We survived, didn't we? Others will also survive. That isn't our affair. And not yours either, Merle.”

She sent him a sad smile. She and Dario had never liked each other, but now it touched her that even he was trying to dissuade her from her decision. Serafin had done the
right thing when he'd ended hostilities with Dario: Dario wasn't a bad fellow. Even if he didn't, couldn't, grasp what she had to do.

“We have no more time,”
said the Flowing Queen.
“The Son of the Mother will soon overcome his reluctance and destroy my body. Then it will be too late.”

Merle released Junipa. “I must go now.”

“No!” Junipa's mirror eyes filled with tears. Merle had thought Junipa couldn't cry at all.

Merle reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out the magic water mirror. She turned around and handed it to Lalapeya. “Here, I think this is yours. The phantom in it … promise me to let him go, if you get out of here safely.”

Lalapeya took the mirror in her bandaged hands. Her eyes were fastened on her daughter. “Don't do it, Merle.”

Merle embraced her. “Farewell.” Her voice threatened to choke on her tears, but she had them quickly under control. “I always knew that you were there somewhere.”

Lalapeya's face was pale and tight. She couldn't believe that soon she would again lose the daughter she had just found. “It's your decision, Merle.” She smiled nervously. “That's the mistake all parents make, isn't it? They don't want to accept that their children can make their own decisions. But the way it looks, you leave me no other choice.”

Merle blinked away her tears and hugged her mother
one last time. Then she walked over to Eft and the others, said good-bye to them as well, again avoided Junipa's unhappy eyes, and finally went over to Serafin.

In the background, the Son of the Mother snorted and scraped in the depths of the mirrored temple. His raging sounded ever more furious, ever more impatient.

Serafin took her in his arms and gave her a kiss on the forehead. “I don't want you to do this.”

She smiled. “I know.”

“But that doesn't change anything, does it?”

“No … no, I guess not.”

“We should never have gone into that house that night. Then all this wouldn't have happened.”

Merle felt the warmth that he was giving off. “If we hadn't saved the Queen from the Egyptians … who knows what would have happened. Perhaps then everything would be looking even worse.”

“But we would have had each other.”

“Yes.” She smiled. “That would have been lovely.”

“I don't give a damn about the rest of the world.”

Merle shook her head. “You do so, and you know it. Not even Dario meant what he said before. Maybe now. Maybe even tomorrow morning. But sometime he's going to think differently about it. Just like you. Pain goes away. It always does.”

“Let me go,” he said urgently. “If it's possible for the
Queen to cross over into me, then she can take my life strength to awaken her body.”

“Why should I say yes to you if I said no to Junipa?”

“Because … because then you can be there for Junipa. She's your friend, isn't she?”

She smiled and bumped her nose against his. “Nice try.” Then she kissed him lightly on the lips, just very quickly, and pulled away from him.

“What he says is right, Merle,”
the Queen said dejectedly.
“I could cross over into him and—”

No, thought Merle, turning around to Vermithrax. “It's time to go.”

The lion's huge obsidian eyes were glistening. “I will obey you. To the end. But you should know that this is not my wish.”

“You don't have to obey me, Vermithrax. I'm just some girl. You do agree to it, don't you? You know that I'm right.” Vermithrax, too, had once been ready to sacrifice himself for his people. If anyone at all could understand her, he could.

He lowered his head sadly and said nothing. Merle climbed onto his back and stretched to catch a look over the edge into the chasm. She watched the Son of the Mother walk slowly up to the statue. He neared Sekhmet's laid-out body and scratched his claws more powerfully. Under the water surface the mirror floor had shattered to stars of silver glass.

Merle looked around at the others one last time as
the lion went up to the edge and unfolded his wings.

Junipa was staring up at her, weeping. She looked as if any moment she was going to run to stop Vermithrax. Merle smiled at her friend and gently shook her head. “No,” she whispered.

Eft struggled to straighten up in the grasp of the two boys, disregarding her broken leg. That she, who'd been born without legs, should be put out of action by an injured leg was perhaps the most cruel twist of fate.

The boys, too, were looking sadly at Merle. Dario had his jaws tightly clenched, as if he were grinding iron with his teeth. Tiziano blinked and fought unsuccessfully against a single tear that ran down his cheek.

Lalapeya appeared strangely blurred, as if her body were caught in the transformation between human and sphinx. She did not take her eyes off her daughter, and for the first time Merle really felt that Lalapeya was no longer a stranger, no distant hand inside the water mirror. She was her mother. She had finally found her.

Vermithrax reached the edge of the balcony. His wings rose and fell twice in succession, as if he had to try first to see if they would obey him.

“It is time,”
said the Queen in alarm.
“He is about to destroy my body.”

Vermithrax's front paws left the floor.

Behind them someone screamed Merle's name.

On the bottom, the Son of the Mother noticed the
movement out of the corner of his dark eyes. He turned around and caught sight of the obsidian lion on the edge. A primeval bellow broke from his throat, making the mirrored walls tremble and the water on the floor churn.

Serafin sprinted behind Vermithrax. Just as the lion was about to rise into the air, Serafin also pushed off, landed with both palms on Vermithrax's rear end, and was somehow able to grab hold of his fur and pull himself up. Suddenly he sat swaying behind her. “I'm coming along! No matter where—I'm coming along!”

The Son of the Mother screamed even more loudly as Vermithrax dove steeply at him, despite the second rider on his back. It was too late for him to turn around now that the beast had become aware of them. They could only bring it to an end as quickly as possible. Somehow.

“You're crazy!” Merle yelled over her shoulder while they sped downward in a nosedive.

“That's why we suit each other, isn't it?” Serafin yelled in her ear. He could hardly make himself heard over the rushing air and the roaring of the masses of water. The world sank into noise and attack and flickering silver.

Vermithrax raced toward the Son of the Mother's mighty skull. Compared to it he was as small as an insect and yet an impressive sight, bathed in the lava glow of the Stone Light and roaring with determination and explosive energy.

High over them the others crowded to the edge of the balcony and looked down into the abyss. Their faces had
taken on the color of the ice that was melting around them. It no longer mattered if the Son of the Mother caught sight of them. Whatever might happen, they no longer had any influence over the events.

The gigantic sphinx took a step back from his mother's statue, turned completely around, and stretched his open jaws toward Vermithrax. His screeching made the heart of the Iron Eye quake; the high mirror temple shook to its foundations. The water on the floor boiled and surged like a witch's cauldron. The monster's movements were astonishingly fast, considering his size, and it was clear that he would become even more dangerous when he finally regained his old dexterity. He had lain for millennia in the depths of the lagoon; at the height of his powers he would probably have killed Vermithrax with one blow.

The obsidian lion avoided the many-fingered claws and raced toward one of the walls until Merle could recognize herself and Serafin in the mirror. They grew larger and larger and finally whistled past, a garish spot of color, as Vermithrax swerved sharply in front of the wall and flew back again. The sphinx bellowed and raged. He tried to swat them out of the air like an annoying mosquito, but time after time he grabbed emptiness. Vermithrax's flying maneuvers took Merle's and Serafin's breath away, but they enabled him to outfox the Son of the Mother.

The deeper they flew, the more dangerous it became. Here the beast not only tried to catch them with his fingers
but also with his powerful lion paws. Once Vermithrax was left no choice but to fly between his towering legs. They escaped the monster's long claws by only a hair's breadth. The Son of the Mother struck and kicked at them, fountains of water sprayed up and splashed around them, and the beast's angry screaming hurt their ears.

Vermithrax re-emerged on the other side of his body, near enough to the stone image of Sekhmet to be able to fly down in its shadow and, on the back side of the statue, find safety for himself and his riders from their adversary's overgrown paws and sickle-sharp claws.

“Let me get down,” Merle cried into Vermithrax's ear. “I'll manage it on foot just as well. You draw him away.”

Vermithrax obeyed and sank to the ground in the protection of the statue. Merle slid from his back into the meltwater, and Serafin jumped down behind her. The swirling floods were horribly cold and reached up to their knees. For a moment the chill took their breath away.

There was no time for a farewell—already shattering blows were striking the mighty statue. The Son of the Mother had finally lost any respect and on the other side was doing his best to make the statue fall. Merle wondered if perhaps he guessed what they were up to.

“Of course,”
said the Flowing Queen.
“He can feel me, just as I do him. But he has not been back in the world of the living long enough. His feelings confuse him. He still cannot control them. Yet he feels the danger. And soon he will be his
old self again. Do not let yourself be deceived by the spectacle he has just created. He is no simple-minded colossus, quite the contrary. His intelligence is sharp. When he stops behaving like a newborn, he will become
really
dangerous.”

Vermithrax winked sadly at Merle one last time. Then he shot around the side of the statue and flew toward the Son of the Mother in quick zigzags, even more daringly now, ready to sacrifice himself so that Merle could reach her goal unhindered.

She looked around and saw the altar on which Sekhmet's petrified body lay, about thirty yards away, by the side of the statue. There they would be unprotected and open to the attacks of the Son of the Mother. But if their plan worked, Vermithrax's utterly mad maneuvers would distract him from Sekhmet as well as from her.