The Stone Light by Kai Meyer Page A

it’s always the same over and over again, as if it had a message. Perhaps it’s a kind of herald.”
    “A message from Lord Light to his people?”
    “Possibly,”
said the Flowing Queen.
“Vermithrax could be right.”
    “What else?” asked the lion.
    Merle rolled her eyes. “How should I know? Down here everything is different. These things could be who knows what!” As she spoke, she looked around the stone cave. It seemed so incredible: They actually had a firm seat in a gigantic ear.
    “These heads are dead objects,” said Vermithrax. “This is an important difference from the Lilim. Someone built them. And he did it for a certain purpose. Since Lord Light just happens to be the ruler of this place, it must have been he.”
    “And why fifty-fifty?”
    “Possibly the head is on the way to its master because it’s fulfilled a mission—or it’s just begun its journey and is going away from Lord Light. One of the two.”
    “That means we can only wait, doesn’t it?”
    The lion nodded, which looked strangely clumsy, since his nose still lay on his paws. “Looks like it.”
    “What do you think?” Merle asked the Queen.
    “I think he is right. We could probably wander through Hell for months without finding a trace of Lord Light. But this way we have at least a chance.”
    Merle gave a sigh, then she edged closer to the lion and stroked his nose. “But next time, you tell me beforehand, okay? I really want to know
why
you’re almost killing us all.”
    The lion growled something—was it a yes?—and nestled his fist-sized nose into Merle’s hand. Then he purred blissfully, thrashed his tail a couple of times, and closed his eyes.
    Merle remained sitting beside him a moment longer, then she levered herself up on wobbly knees and climbed to the outer stone bulge of the giant ear.
    Impressed, she looked down. The mournful landscape was flying along a thousand feet below them, so monotonous that there was nothing, but nothing at all, that she could have fastened her eyes on. Probably they were going too fast anyway. She doubted that Vermithrax could have kept up even half as much speed over a long period.
    “What a desolate place!” she whispered with a groan. “Did Lord Light ever try to plant something here? I mean, to add a little color. A little variety.”
    “Why should he? Nothing lives here. At least nothing that could value such efforts. Or do you think that the Lilim in the camp up there would be happy about a few flowers?”
    “You don’t have to make it sound so ridiculous!”
    “I do not mean to at all. Only, you must use other measures in this world. Other terms, other concepts.”
    Merle was silent and leaned back. But then a thought came to her that made her sit right up again.
    “If these heads are something like flying machines, like the sunbarks of the Empire, then there must be someone in them, mustn’t there? Someone who steers them!”
    “We are alone.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I would feel it. And Vermithrax, too, I think.”
    Merle stretched out on the hard stone, observed the slumbering obsidian lion for a while, then looked out over the landscape of Hell. What a strange place! She tried to remember how Professor Burbridge had traveled through it, but she couldn’t think of anything. After all, she hadn’t really read any of his books; her teacher in the orphanage had talked about a few passages, but most of what she’d heard were synopses at second hand. Some descriptions, that was all. Now she regretted that she hadn’t been more interested in it at the time.
    On the other hand, she remembered quite clearly the dangers of Hell that Burbridge had recounted in his reports. Gruesome creatures, which waited for the unsuspecting behind every stone and every … yes, tree. She was certain that the talk had been of
trees
—trees of iron, with leaves like razor blades. Well, here anyway, in this part of Hell, there appeared to be no plants, either of iron or of