The Water Mirror (23 page)

Again they shot over the water's surface, this time toward the south, where the islands of the lagoon were fewer and small in comparison to those up in the north.
Thus they were voluntarily ruling out a whole string of good hiding places, and Merle earnestly hoped that Vermithrax's decision was the right one. He had a plan, she told herself.

“I do not think so,”
said the Queen demurely.

“You don't?” Merle did not put the question aloud.

“No. He does not know his way around.”

“How reassuring.”

“You must tell him what he should do.”

“I?”

“Who else?”

“So you can blame me when we land in Nowhere!”

“Merle, this affair depends on you, not on Vermithrax. Not even on me. This is your journey.”

“Without my knowing what we're planning?”

“You already know that. First: Leave Venice. And then: Find allies against the Empire.”

“Where?”

“What happened in the piazza was at least something like a first spark. Perhaps we can get the fire to kindle.”

Merle made a face. “Could you please express yourself a little more clearly?”

“The princes of Hell, Merle. They have offered to help us.”

Merle had the feeling of losing sight of the ground underneath her again, though Vermithrax was flying in a straight line toward the horizon.

“You really intend to ask Hell for help?”

“There is no other way.”

“What about the Czarist kingdom? People say they've also stopped the Pharaoh's troops there.”

“The Czarist kingdom is under the protection of the Baba Yaga. I do not think it is a good idea to ask a goddess for help.”

“The Baba Yaga is a witch, not a goddess.”

“In her case that is one and the same, unfortunately.”

Before they could get into the subject more deeply, Vermithrax uttered an alarmed shout: “Look out! Now things are going to get unpleasant!”

Merle quickly looked over her shoulder behind them. Between the black feathered wings she saw the open mouth of a lion, and underneath, its outstretched claws. It shot toward them from behind. The target of its attack was not Vermithrax but she herself!

“They wanted it this way,” the obsidian lion growled sadly. He whirled around in midflight, so that Merle once again had to hold on with all her might so as not to be thrown from his back. She saw the eyes of the attacking lion widen, an animal reflection of its rider's—then Vermithrax ducked away under the paws of his opponent, turned half to the side, and slit its belly open with a well-aimed blow of his claws. When Merle looked around again, lion and rider had disappeared. The waters of the lagoon turned red.

“They bleed!”

“Just because they are stone does not mean that their insides are any different from those of other living creatures,”
the Queen said.
“Death is dirty and stinks.”

Quickly Merle turned her eyes away from the red foam on the waves and looked forward, at the outlines of isolated islands approaching. Behind them lay the mainland, a dark stripe on the horizon.

Soon there were two more lions gaining on them. Vermithrax killed the first just as swiftly and mercilessly as his previous opponent. But the other learned from the carelessness of its companion, avoided the slash of the obsidian claws, and tried to reach Vermithrax's underside. Vermithrax cried out as one of the claws grazed him. At the last moment he avoided the deadly blow. Roaring angrily, he flew in an arc, rushed straight at his astonished foe, closer, closer, closer; did not swerve; did not yield; only at the very last second pulled up and swiped the face of the other lion with his rear paws. Stone splintered, then lion and rider disappeared.

Merle felt tears on her cheeks. She didn't want all this death, and still she could not stop it. Vermithrax had urged the lions of the Guard to let them go. Now the only thing left for him was to defend their very lives. He did it with the strength and determination of his people.

“Three left,”
said the Flowing Queen.

“Must they all die, then?”

“Not if they give up.”

“They'll never do that. You know that.”

On one of the three surviving lions rode the captain of the Guard. His white hair was tossed by the wind; the expression on his face betrayed uncertainty. It lay on him to order a retreat, but Merle saw by looking at him that he would not even consider that possibility. Capture. If necessary, kill. Those were his orders. For him there was no alternative.

It went fast. Their opponents had not the shadow of a chance. The captain was the only one left, and again Vermithrax bade him retreat. But the soldier only spurred his lion harder. With a lightning move he shot at Merle and Vermithrax. For a brief moment it looked as though the lion of the Guard had in fact succeeded in landing a hit with its claws. But Vermithrax flew an avoidance maneuver that again brought Merle into a dangerous slanting position. At the same time he began the counterattack. The eyes of his enemy showed comprehension, but not even the recognition of defeat was enough to make him turn back. Vermithrax screamed in torment as he dug his claws into the flank of the other; then he turned quickly so that he needn't look as lion and rider plunged into the water.

For a long time no one said a word. Even the Flowing Queen was silent, stricken.

Below them appeared islands with ruins of old fortifications still standing, defenses that people had erected
against the Empire. Today they were nothing more than ribs of stone and steel. Cannon barrels rusted in the sun, frosted by the salty winds of the Mediterranean. Here and there forgotten tent poles stuck up out of the swampy wilderness, hardly distinguishable from the three-foot-high reeds.

Once they flew over a section where the water looked lighter, as if a formation of wide sandbanks extended below it.

“A sunken island,”
said the Queen.
“The currents carried away its walls long ago.”

“I know it,” said Merle. “Sometimes you can still hear its church bells ringing.”

But today the ghosts themselves were silent. Merle heard nothing but the wind and the soft rushing of the obsidian wings.

T
HE LIGHT OF THE MORNING SUN WASN'T STRONG ENOUGH
to brighten the Canal of the Expelled. Its light flowed golden over the upper stories of the houses but ended abruptly twenty-five feet above the ground. Below that, eternal dusk reigned.

The solitary figure hurrying from doorway to doorway was glad of it. He was on the run, and the half-light suited him perfectly.

Serafin stole along the fronts of the empty buildings, continually casting glances behind him to the entrance of the nearest canal. Anyone following him would appear
there first, or in the sky above, on a flying lion. However, Serafin thought that was improbable. After everything that had happened in the Piazza San Marco, the Guard presumably had more important things to do—following Merle, for instance.

He'd recognized her on the back of the black beast that had charged out of the tower of the Campanile like a thunderstorm. At first he hadn't believed his eyes, but all at once he was entirely certain: It was Merle, without a doubt. But why was she riding on a winged lion, and moreover, the biggest one Serafin had ever seen? The explanation had to be that it was because of the Flowing Queen. He could only hope that nothing happened to Merle. After all, he was the one who'd gotten them into all this. Why did he always have to stick his nose into things that didn't concern him? If they hadn't followed the lions to the house where the traitors were meeting with the envoy . . . yes, what then? Possibly the galleys of the Pharaoh would already be tied up at the Zattere quay and the canals would be reflecting the annihilating fire from the sunbarks.

In the hubbub and panic in the piazza he'd had no trouble ducking into one of the alleyways. However, it wouldn't be long until the Guard had brought in the information that a former master thief of the Guild was living in the house of Umberto. By afternoon, at the latest, soldiers would be looking for him on the Canal of the Expelled.

Yet where else should he go? Umberto would throw him out if he knew what had happened. But Serafin remembered what Merle had told him about Arcimboldo. Contrasted with Umberto, the mirror maker seemed to be a gentler master—even if Arcimboldo, after all the tricks they'd played on him, probably wouldn't be too happy to speak to a weaver boy. It was a risk that Serafin accepted.

The boat Arcimboldo used once a month to take the new mirrors to their buyers lay tied before the door of the mirror workshop. No one knew exactly who his customers were. But who cared about a few magic mirrors? To Serafin, it all suddenly seemed unimportant.

The front door was standing open. Voices sounded from the inside. Serafin hesitated. He couldn't simply walk in there. If Dario or one of the other boys ran across him on the way, it would be the end of all secrecy. Somehow he must manage to catch the mirror maker alone.

He had an idea. He cast a cautious look at the workshop over on the opposite bank. No one was visible behind the windows. Good. There wasn't a soul in front of Arcimboldo's at the moment either.

Serafin detached himself from the shadows of a doorway and ran. Swiftly he approached the boat. The hull was shallow and elongated. More than a dozen mirrors were hanging in a wooden frame construction at the stern. The narrow spaces between them were padded with cotton blankets.

Other blankets lay in a great heap in the bow. Serafin moved a few to one side, crouched down beneath them, and pulled them over his head. With a little luck no one would notice him. He would make himself known to Arcimboldo when they were under way.

It took a few minutes, but then there were voices. Among them, muffled, he recognized that of Dario. The boys brought a last load of mirrors onto the boat, fastened them securely in the support, and then went back on land. Arcimboldo gave a few instructions, then the boat rocked a bit more strongly, and finally it was under way.

Soon afterward Serafin peered out from under his cover. The mirror maker was standing in the other end of the boat and sculling like a gondolier with an oar in the water. The boat slid unhurriedly down the canal, bent away, went farther. Occasionally Serafin heard the traditional warning calls of the gondoliers crying out before they approached crossings. But most of the time it was utterly silent. Nowhere in the city was it so quiet as in the side canals, deeply embedded in the labyrinth of the melancholy district.

Serafin waited. First of all, he wanted to see where Arcimboldo would land. The gentle rocking was so soothing, it made him sleepy. . . .

Serafin awoke with a start. He'd nodded off. No wonder, under the warm covers and after a night in which he'd never closed an eye. The growling of his stomach had awakened him.

When he looked outside through a gap in the covers, he was more than a little astonished. They'd left the city and were gliding over the open water. Venice lay a great distance behind them. They were heading north, toward a maze of tiny swampy islands. Arcimboldo stood unmoving at the oar and looked out, stony-faced, over the sea.

Now would be a good opportunity. Here outside, no one would see them together. But now Serafin's curiosity won the upper hand. Where was Arcimboldo delivering the mirrors? People no longer lived here since the outbreak of the war; the outer islands were abandoned. Umberto suspected that Arcimboldo sold his mirrors to the rich women of society, the way the master weaver sold his garments. But in this wasteland? They'd even left the lion island far behind them. Only the wind whistled over the gray-brown waves; sometimes a fish could be seen.

Another half hour might have passed before a tiny island appeared. The mirror maker headed for its shore. In the far distance, high over the mainland, Serafin thought he saw small strokes against the sky: the Pharaoh's reconnaissance aircraft, sunbarks, powered by the black magic of the high priests. But they were too far away to be dangerous to their boat. No bark dared venture so deeply into the realm of the Flowing Queen.

The island was about 200 yards across. It was overgrown with reeds and scrubby trees. The wind had pressed tree crowns and knotty branches pitilessly toward
the ground. In earlier times such islands had been popular locations for isolated villas erected by noble Venetians. But for more than thirty years no one had come here anymore, never mind lived here. Islands like these were little slivers of no-man's-land, and their mistress was the foaming sea alone.

Ahead of the boat appeared the opening of a small waterway, which wound its way to the interior of the island. On both sides the trees grew densely crowded together, their branches touching the water. Multitudes of birds sat in the branches. Once, when Arcimboldo dipped his oar a bit too forcefully, gulls exploded from the brush and fluttered excitedly over the tips of the trees.