by Kai Meyer
“Too early,” countered the Flowing Queen. She sounded concerned. “Too early for sunrise.”
“But the light!”
“It is shining toward us from the west. The sun comes up in the east.”
“What is it then?”
The Flowing Queen was silent for a moment, while the mermaids stopped uncertainly several yards under the surface.
“Fire,” she said then. “The Piazza San Marco is on fire!”
8
THREE YARDS ABOVE THE GROUND, THE LION OPENED ITS paws and let him drop. Serafin arched his back in the air and landed safely on his hands and feet, thanks to thousands of similar leaps from high windows, roof balustrades, and terraces. He might no longer be a master thief of the Guild, but he hadn’t lost his skills.
In a flash he righted himself, slightly bent forward, ready for battle, when two guardsmen pointed their rifles at him and thus banished any thought of self-defense. Serafin expelled his breath sharply; then he stretched and relaxed his muscles. He was a prisoner; it might be smarter not to act too obstreperous. He would need his powers later, when they brought him before the jailer and his torturers. No need to wear himself out on a few guardsmen.
Resignedly he held out both arms so they could put on the hand irons. Yet the men didn’t do it but kept him in check with their rifles. Only a boy. Not worth the trouble.
Serafin suppressed a smile. He wasn’t afraid of them. So long as he was still outdoors, outside the dungeon, and far from the Bridge of Sighs, that last walk of the condemned, he had no fear. His self-confidence was a protective shield that he held upright in order not to think of Merle—though he wasn’t entirely successful.
Nothing must have happened to her! She was alive and safe! These words became a credo that he repeated in his innermost thoughts.
Concentrate on your surroundings! he said to himself. And ask yourself questions—for instance, why did we land just here and not in the prison courtyard?
This was amazing, in fact. The lion had thrown him down on the edge of the Piazza San Marco, where the two guardsmen were already waiting for him. Now they were joined by two more. All four wore the black leather of the Councillors’ Guard, ornamented with rivets, which gleamed in the light of some fire beacons marking the shore very close by.
The Piazza San Marco—St. Mark’s Square—stretched out in an L-shape in the center of Venice. One end was bounded by the water. The entrance to the Grand Canal was very close by, while on the opposite bank the towers and roofs of the island of Giudecca rose against the night sky.
The piazza was surrounded by splendid buildings. The most impressive was the Basilica of St. Mark, a massive monster of domes and towers. Venetian seafarers had brought together the gold ornaments and the statues from all over the world centuries before. Some called it the house of God, others the pirates’ cathedral.
Beside the basilica stretched the facade of the Doge’s palace, where no prince had reigned for a long time. Today the city councillors determined the policies of the city, with sumptuous feasting and drinking.
Serafin and his guards were situated on the opposite side of the piazza, at the end of a long arcade, not very far from the water. The nearby columns shielded them from the view of the vendors who, careless of the early hour and the darkness, had already begun to set up their meager displays in the piazza. It was a wonder any trade at all was possible after so many years of siege.
Serafin briefly weighed an attempt to run and plunge into the water. But the guardsmen were quick shots. He wouldn’t even make half the distance before their bullets hit him. He must wait for a better opportunity.
Meanwhile, he’d figured out why the lion had brought him here and not to the prison courtyard. His guards were under the command of the three councillors who were working clandestinely for the Empire and had betrayed Venice. The other councillors must not learn of it. But a prisoner who was set down in the prison by a flying lion of the Guard would doubtless attract attention. That was exactly what the traitors must avoid, and so they wanted him to go the last portion of the way on foot. That way he would pass through as an ordinary criminal whom the guardsmen had picked up by chance, and especially since some of them would recognize him as a former master thief of the Guild.
And if he cried the truth aloud? If he told anyone on his path, anyone here on the piazza, what he’d seen? Then he could—
His head was brutally jerked backward. Hands shoved coarse material in his mouth, pulled the edges over his chin and nose, and knotted the ends at the back of his head. The gag was so tight that it hurt. Also, the taste was anything but pleasant.
So much for his—admittedly not very well thought-out—plan.
With their gun barrels the men poked him out from the shadows of the arcade into the piazza. A peculiar smell hung in the air. Possibly it was wafting over from the palace dungeons.
Others also seemed to be aware of the stench. A few vendors looked up in irritation from their work on their stands, sniffing the air and making faces.
Serafin tried to get a look at his guards. But when he turned his head to the side, someone slammed a rifle butt into the small of his back. “Eyes forward!”
The traders’ stands were arranged in two rows to form a shopping street that ran from the water’s edge toward the Basilica of San Marco. Serafin’s path crossed it in the middle of the piazza. Now he could see more clearly some of the men and women who were unloading their goods there in the light of the torches and gas lanterns. There might still be more than an hour left till sunrise; but then they would be all prepared for the buyers.
Serafin observed that increasingly fewer salespeople were busy with their stands. Some had grouped together, gesticulating wildly in the air and wrinkling their noses. “Sulfur,” he heard over and over. “Why sulfur? And why here?”
He must have been mistaken. The stench was not coming from the dungeon.
They now passed the second shopping row and left the stands behind them. There were still about a hundred yards to the narrow side entrance to the Doge’s palace. Other guardsmen were standing watch to the right and left of it. Among them was a captain of the Guard, with the symbol of the flying lion decorating his black uniform. Frowning, he observed the approach of Serafin and his escort.
The talk of the dealers at Serafin’s back grew louder, more excited, more confused. Serafin felt as though there were a sudden trembling in the air. His skin began to prickle.
Someone screamed. A single, sharp cry, not even particularly loud. The captain of the Guard at the gate turned his gaze from Serafin to the center of the piazza. The smell of sulfur was now so strong that it hit Serafin in the stomach. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that his guards were holding their noses; the stench was much stronger for them than it was for him. The gag over his mouth and nose protected him from the worst of it.
One of the men stopped and vomited. Then a second.
“Stop!” commanded one of the soldiers. After a brief hesitation, Serafin turned around.
Two of his guards were doubled over and coughing and spitting vomit on their shining polished boots. A third was holding his hand over his mouth. Only the fourth, the one who’d ordered him to stop, was still holding his weapon pointed at Serafin.
Beyond the guardsmen Serafin saw the groups of dealers spring apart. Some of them were staggering around blindly, stamping through puddles of vomit. Serafin glanced back at the side door of the Doge’s palace. There, too, the guards were battling with their nausea. Only the captain was still standing up straight; he was holding his nose with one hand. Alternately he breathed through his mouth and screamed orders to which no one was paying any attention.
In silence Serafin thanked his guards for the gag. He felt sick too, but the material kept the worst of the sulfurous fog away from him.
While he was considering whether this was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, a deep rumbling began. The ground trembled. The rumbling grew louder and increased to a
thundering.
One of the stands in the center caught fire. Panicked dealers started a wild Saint Vitus’s dance around the flames. A second wall of planking flamed up, then a third. Like the wind, the flames rushed along the shopping street, even where the individual stands stood far away from each other, as if the fire might have reached over to them on its own. There was no wind blowing that could have fanned the flames, yet they kept on spreading. The air was still except for that imperceptible trembling that raised the hairs on Serafin’s forearms.
The captain of the Guard looked over at the seething waters, scanning for enemy gunboats or fire catapults. Nothing, no attacker. Serafin followed his eyes to the sky. There, too, only darkness, no sunbarks of the Empire.
The two rows of booths were now ablaze, a flickering beacon that cast the facade of the palace and the basilica in firelight. The screaming dealers made no attempt at all to save their goods. In their panic they fell back to the left and right to the edges of the piazza.
Serafin drew in a deep breath—sulfur, still more sulfur!—and then he ran. He was ten paces away before one of his guards noticed his disappearance. It was the one who’d vomited first; he was just wiping a hand over his lips. With the other he held his rifle and was waving it wildly in Serafin’s direction. Now his comrades also looked up and saw their prisoner escaping. One of them pulled his rifle around, aimed, and fired. The bullet whistled past Serafin’s ear. Before the man could shoot a second time, a new wave of sickness overwhelmed him. A second man fired, but his bullet came nowhere near Serafin. Way before its target, the shot drilled a scar in the pavement, a golden crater in the flickering light of the fire.
Serafin ran as fast as he could, although he was soon out of breath. Nevertheless, he didn’t pull down the gag. He stormed over to the basilica and only dared to turn around once he was there. No one was following him. His guards were busy with themselves, one supporting himself on his rifle like a crutch. Some vendors were also crouching on the ground, far from the flames, their faces buried in their hands. Others had sought protection behind the columns of the arcade and stared numbly over at the flickering inferno that was consuming their possessions.
But the thundering sounded once more, this time so loud that everyone clapped their hands over their ears. Serafin took cover behind a flower tub, one of the many that flanked the basilica. It would certainly have been more sensible to flee and disappear into one of the alleyways. But he couldn’t run away now. He had to see what happened next.
At first it seemed as if all the burning dealers’ booths collapsed in on themselves at once. Only then could Serafin see the true extent of the catastrophe.
Between the flickering rows of stands, exactly along the lane between them, the ground had opened. The fissure extended for a length of 100 or 120 yards. It was broad enough to swallow the stands along its edges.
Serafin stopped breathing, incapable of thinking of anything else, not even of his flight. The guardsmen had drawn together, just in front of the gate of the palace, and there they stood like an indignant herd of geese, yelling in wild confusion and waving their weapons, while their captain tried in vain to reestablish order.
Serafin crouched lower behind the flower tub until only his eyes peered over the edge.
Flames were flickering within the fissure. At first they seemed to burn evenly, then they moved gradually from both ends toward the middle, and there they pulled themselves together into an unbearably bright ball of flame.
A figure peeled itself out of the firelight.
It floated upright and bore something around its head that at first sight looked like a halo. The appearance was reminiscent of the representations of Christ on altarpieces, images as he ascended to heaven after his death, the hands crossed gracefully. But then Serafin saw that the figure had the face of a newborn, fleshy and swollen. The halo revealed itself to be a sort of circular saw blade, with teeth as long as Serafin’s thumbs; it was attached to the back of the creature’s head and appeared to be fused with skin and bone. The crossed hands were gigantic chicken claws, gray and scaly and segmented. The creature’s plump body ended not in legs but in something long, pointed, that was wound with wet bandages; it looked like a trembling reptile’s tail, which was prevented by the bandaging from thrashing around uncontrollably. The creature’s swollen eyelids slid back like night snails and exposed pitch-black eyeballs. Also, the blubbery lips opened, revealing teeth filed to a point.
“Hell presents its greetings,” intoned the creature. Its voice sounded like a child’s, only louder, more penetrating. It echoed over the whole piazza.
The guardsmen raised their rifles, but the messenger from Hell laughed at them. He was now hovering six feet over the fiery crack, and still its flames bathed him in garish flickering light. Tiny tongues of fire danced up and down along the bandages of his lower body, without burning the material.
“Citizens of this city,” cried the emissary so loudly that his voice even carried over the crackling. “My masters have an offer to make you.” Green spittle poured from the corners of his mouth, spread itself into the folds of his double chin, collected on his crop, and dropped down below. The heat of the flames evaporated the drops as they fell.
“We wish,” he said, and he bowed, with a crooked grin, “to be your friends from now on.”
Something shook the world.
Just a moment before, the swarm of mermaids had been quietly floating in the water several yards under the surface. Then an earsplitting bang had sounded, and a shock wave seized them and whirled them around in confusion, as if an angry god had hit the sea with a fist. Merle saw the gondolas over them being thrown against each other like paper boats; some were wedged together, others broke into pieces. Suddenly an invisible force tore her away from the two mermaids holding her hands. First she was sucked down deeper below, and then spat up again into a dense jumble of gondola pieces. She opened her eyes wide, saw the sharp keels rushing toward her like black sword blades, was about to scream—
The round helmet of hardened water took the blow. A hard jolt went through Merle’s body, but the pain was bearable. The water was as roiled as if a hurricane were storming over the surface. Suddenly a mermaid’s hands grasped her by the waist from behind and swiftly maneuvered her under the gondolas and through to the pilings of a nearby boat landing, only a few yards away. The mermaid’s face was strained. It was costing her all her strength to withstand the alternating play of pressure and suction. Merle reached the pier and before she could react, she was catapulted to the surface, in her head the Flowing Queen’s scream, “Hold on tight!”
She threw open her arms and clung to a slimy pile of the landing stage, slipping down it a little ways until her thrashing feet found a toehold. In no time she clambered up onto the steps, collapsed onto the dock, and coughed up saltwater.
The surface of the water around the landing was still turbulent, but it seemed to be quieting gradually. Merle took off the helmet, saw a hand stretching out to her from the waves in farewell, and threw the sphere into the water. Delicate fingers closed around the edge of the neck opening and pulled the helmet into the depths. Merle watched a swarm of bright bodies shoot away under the water.
“I feel something . . . ,” the Queen began slowly, but then she fell silent again almost immediately.
Merle turned and looked over through dripping strands of hair to the piazza.
At first she saw only the fire.
Then the figure. She saw it as clearly as if every detail, every horrible detail, had burned into her retina within the space of a second.
“. . . be your friends from now on,” she heard the creature saying.
She picked herself up and ran onto the pavement. But there she stood still. She hesitated. Guardsmen were gingerly gathering around the hovering creature, way beyond its reach, yet still close enough to reach it with their bullets.
Hell’s messenger paid no attention to the soldiers but directed his words to his audienc
e behind the columns of the arcade and around the edges of the piazza.
“Common folk of Venice, Hell offers you a pact.” Luxuriating, he allowed the words to reverberate. The echo transformed his child’s voice into a grotesque squeal. “Your masters, the councillors of this city, have rejected our offer. Yet hear it yourselves and come to your own decision.” Again he allowed a pause, punctuated by commands of the captain of the Guard. A second, then a third troop hurried forward as reinforcements, accompanied by a dozen riders on stone lions.
“You fear the wrath of the Pharaoh’s kingdom,” the messenger continued. “And that rightly. More than thirty years long you have warded off the Empire. Yet very soon now the mummy armies of the Pharaoh will launch a great blow and sweep you from the face of the earth. Unless it should happen . . . yes, unless it should happen that you have powerful allies on your side. Allies like my masters!” A pant worked its way through the fleshy lips. “The hosts of our kingdom are a match for those of the Empire. We can protect you. Yes, that we can.”
Merle appeared to be spellbound by the disgusting appearance of the fiery figure. More and more people were streaming to the edges of the piazza from all directions, lured by the flames, the noise, and the prospect of a gigantic spectacle.
“We have no time to waste,” said the Flowing Queen. “Quick, run to the Campanile!”
“But the fire . . .”
“If you run past on the left, you will make it. Please, Merle—this is the best possible moment!”
Merle ran. The tower rose in the inner corner of the L-shaped piazza. She had to run along the entire length of the fiery fissure, behind the messenger from Hell, who was floating over the flames with his face toward the palace. The stench of sulfur was overpowering. The messenger continued, but Merle scarcely heard him. At first, going along with the offer from the princes of Hell might seem appealing—but just looking at the nauseating creature was enough to make it clear that such a pact would take the Venetians from frying pan to fire. True, it might succeed in beating the Empire and keeping it out of the lagoon. But what new governors would seize the palaces of the city instead of the sphinx commanders? And what sacrifices would they require?
