Ages of Wonder Read online

  The spyglass revealed that a steamer had indeed run afoul of the rocks, but it was the great umber creature aboard that made me gasp aloud. Easily twice as tall as a man, the man-faced lion beat its dusty wings as it padded across the deck, its mouth and claws stained dark.

  “Is that blood?” I asked.

  Lebret nodded. “It has killed several men aboard. Why hasn’t it flown?”

  I examined the beast closely. For all its majesty, something seemed false about it, and it took a minute’s scrutiny to determine what. The wind did not ruffle the feathers on its wings. My heart sank. It wasn’t a live sphinx, after all.

  “It may look like an androsphinx, but it isn’t real,” I told the Inspector. “My guess? It’s a creature of clay.”

  “A golem?” asked Lebret.

  “You need an expert in Exodian golemcraft, Inspector, not me,” I said.

  “We haven’t the time, Professor Voss. That monster may seem trapped on the Mermaid Rocks, but the formation is a tidal island. In an hour, low tide will reveal the land bridge currently submerged, allowing it to reach shore. Do you know anything about golemcraft?”

  “The basics, of course, but—”

  “It may be enough. A knife is not a sword, but cuts flesh nonetheless,” Lebret said. “How do we destroy it?”

  “Immersion in water would weaken and ruin its shape, but it intuitively understands that,” I said. “Forget bullets. You need at least a keg of cannondust to blow it apart.”

  Lebret sighed. “I doubt we can ask it to hold still long enough for that.”

  Carmouche interrupted us. “Inspector, we found the man who hired the Black Plume. Our men pulled him and his wife out of the water. Sir, it’s Alain and Katarin Bertho.” He indicated a drenched couple further down the Seawall who had climbed up a rope ladder on the ocean-side. It had been lowered earlier by the police to bring up evacuees from the rowboats.

  I recognized the renowned Chimère director who had consulted me on Aigypt and his starlet wife straight away. I was a great admirer of Katarin Bertho née Villé, seeing all of her flickers at the ciné. In a medium without words, her face alone carried the story. To look at them now, they were but shadows of the prideful man I had met and the haunting beauty who graced the silver screen.

  Alain Bertho was my age, looking grizzled from days at sea. The much younger Madame Bertho stared back at the dot of island, a look of terror marring her perfect face.

  “I know him!” I said to Lebret.

  “As do I,” Lebret said, frowning. Then I remembered Bertho had directed Le Mort de Tarasque.

  “He and a man named Fabius came to see me a few months ago, asking about the Aigyptian Cult of the Sphinx for a new flicker,” I said.

  “The Black Plume’s last port of call was Criopolis,” Lebret said. “Could they have run afoul of an Aigyptian curse?”

  “I sincerely hope not,” I said, remembering my own harrowing encounters with ancient Aigyptian tomb spirits. Archaeology was a deadlier profession than many would think.

  “They better have an explanation,” Lebret said. “Listen while I speak to the Berthos, and ask questions I might not think of. We must find a way to destroy the sphinx, and soon.”

  We approached the Berthos. “Monsieur et Madame, I am Lebret,” the Inspector said. “I believe you know Professor Voss?”

  “Yes, of course,” Bertho said, though he barely registered my presence. Despite his recent ordeal, he seemed fixated on the Inspector. “How can I not know the Great Lebret? It is an honor to meet the Hero of Ys at last!”

  “I am not worthy of such an epithet, Monsieur,” Lebret said, pinching his brow.

  “Please, Inspector, there are men still trapped on the ship,” Katarin pleaded. Her voice sounded nothing like I imagined when I watched her flickers, but dulcet nonetheless. “Find Deniel; he can stop it.”

  “We will do all we can, Madame.” The Inspector took off his cape and draped it around Katarin’s shivering shoulders.

  “Katarin, I told you, Deniel Fabius is dead,” Bertho said. “He let the sphinx go rogue and died for it! Inspector, you must retrieve the film and equipment still on board. My masterpiece—”

  “Monsieur!” Lebret roared. “Men are dead, a monster threatens my city, and you dare to ask for inconsequential things? You are here to answer my questions, not make demands. Understood?”

  “We’ll help, won’t we, Alain?” Katarin said to her husband.

  Bertho growled but nodded.

  “Good. First question: who is Deniel Fabius?” Lebret asked.

  “Our golemist,” Bertho said.

  “And our friend,” Katarin added.

  “We were filming Sphinx, a great and tragic love story between a woman of our times and an androsphinx, the last of his kind,” Bertho explained. “I wanted to shoot on location in the desert and Criopolis with real actors and a life-sized sphinx, not with the homunculi stand-ins that Mandragora Studios use. Their alchemists could never duplicate the nuances real actors bring to the roles. We had achieved previous successes with Fabius’ golems in earlier films. Enkidu in Gilgamesh contre Enkidu. The Gargoyle in Les Carillons d’Ys. The companions of Ankou in Le Mort de Tarasque.”

  Lebret winced at the mention of Tarasque, but I finally understood how they did the monsters in the Chimère flickers. In the film, Ankou, the personification of Death in Graalon mythology, had been accompanied by two very realistic skeletons to collect the souls of the dead. I had wondered how they made them seem so authentic. In contrast, the creatures in the films from Hespereia always seemed clumsy, lacking the subtle detail so convincing to the audience.

  “Was there any trouble with the sphinx during the shoot?” I asked.

  “None at all,” Katarin said. “It followed Deniel’s instructions perfectly.”

  “You mean my direction, my love,” Bertho said.

  Katarin ignored him. “When we finished the film, Deniel returned the sphinx to the ship’s hold, removed the magic parchment from its mouth, and destroyed it. There was no reason for it to have animated!”

  Inspector Lebret looked at me for confirmation.

  I nodded. That much I knew. “An Exodian incantation is written on calfskin parchment and placed in the golem’s mouth. Without it, the golem is nothing but clay.”

  “Then how did it come to kill so many?” Lebret asked.

  “Perhaps it was sabotage,” Bertho said. “I wouldn’t put it past the Hespereians.”

  “Let us consider the evidence first,” Lebret said. “Take us through the series of events that caused the tramp steamer to stray from its course, Bertho.”

  “This morning before dawn, Fabius came to our door, desperate to speak to me in private,” Bertho said. “As Katarin was asleep, I went on deck with him so as not to wake her. He seemed nervous, as though he had done something terrible. But before he could tell me the truth, the sphinx escaped its hold and attacked us. I scrambled for cover, but Fabius stood his ground, commanding the golem to stop. It wouldn’t listen. Fabius took a claw to the chest and tumbled over the rail into the sea.”

  Katarin paled.

  “And then?” Lebret asked.

  “The sphinx went mad, destroying whatever it could reach. It caught a sailor and ripped him apart with teeth and claws. The captain sounded the alarm, and I rushed back to our cabin to wake Katarin. When we made it onto deck, it had already destroyed the pilothouse and killed the captain. It was utter chaos. Those who could escape the sphinx leapt into the water. Those who couldn’t . . .” Bertho closed his eyes. “I don’t know how many live.”

  I furrowed my brow. “Mister Bertho, did you or your crew take anything from the ruins? A jar, an amulet, perhaps a ring? Or, goddesses forbid, mummified remains?”

  “Not to my knowledge, Professor. I took your warnings seriously,” said Bertho, indignant. “Then again, I did not search the crew’s belongings. Given Fabius’ odd behavior, though, I would not put it past him to have done that very thing.�
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  “Deniel wouldn’t think of stealing an Aigyptian artifact!” Katarin protested.

  I agreed with Madame Bertho. During my consultation session, Deniel Fabius’ questions never touched on artifacts or the Criopolis site. He was far more interested in my analysis of sphinx morphology, about how they looked and how they moved. That and several other things about Alain Bertho’s account did not ring true to my ears.

  “Inspector, might I have a word with you in private?” I asked Lebret.

  “Of course. Excuse us, Madame et Monsieur.”

  We walked farther down the Seawall.

  “Bertho’s hiding something,” the Inspector said.

  “I believe he is,” I agreed. “There are contradictions in his story. Magic might not seem to be governed by rules, but it is. Some laws are inviolate. Take the laws of golemcraft, for example. A golem cannot be given a voice. A golem cannot animate without its parchment of power. A golem can never disobey its creator.”

  “And yet Bertho claims it came to life without the parchment, and that it disobeyed and killed Fabius,” Lebret said, mulling over the paradoxes. “A riddle indeed.”

  Riddle? Lebret’s comment sparked a train of thought I should have considered earlier. “Inspector, may I borrow your spyglass again?”

  “Certainly.”

  I sought out the sphinx once more, focusing on its wings and the articulation of its joints. They were perfect. Too perfect. A creature that size, made of clay, would sag under its own weight. The clay could only keep its shape if it had a proper frame.

  Goddesses, the Sphinx used teeth and claws to rend those men apart. Clay couldn’t possibly be strong enough to do that. Bone, perhaps. Stone.

  “I think Fabius used the fossilized skeleton of a sphinx for the golem’s frame,” I said to Lebret. “There’s no other way for a creature of clay to hold its shape. If he did, then we’re in a world of trouble.”

  “How so?”

  “Among the sphinxes, only the androsphinx and his female counterpart, the gynosphinx, have the power of speech,” I explained. “Speech also gives them their riddle magic. The Aigyptian Book of Mysteries tells us that riddles are the key to a sphinx’s magic, controlling even its life and death. A sphinx lives so long as its riddle of blood remains unsolved. Riddle games between sphinxes are not for leisure, but duels to the death.”

  Lebret shrugged. “We aren’t dealing with a living sphinx.”

  “True,” I admitted. “However, a disputed passage in the book seems to imply that a new riddle of blood could return the spirit of a sphinx to its bones.”

  “You believe the sphinx skeleton somehow found a riddle of blood?” asked Lebret.

  “I don’t claim to understand how, but it isn’t beyond the power of Aigyptian magic. What if the death of Deniel Fabius hadn’t happened as Alain Bertho claimed?” I said. “After all, the clay golem would not have animated without its parchment. Neither would it have disobeyed its maker.”

  Lebret stroked his chin. “Bertho killed Fabius and tried to cover it up.”

  “Exactly. Suppose Bertho killed Fabius and tossed his body overboard. The mysterious disappearance of Fabius would indeed constitute a riddle of blood. His traumatic death, combined with his connection to the golem, must have awakened the spirit of the sphinx.”

  “When is an accidental death not accidental? When it’s murder,” said Lebret. “Then we only need to solve the riddle of blood to put the spirit to rest?”

  “That’s the theory.”

  He raised his spyglass and regarded the isle. “It still moves.”

  I sighed. “It must hear the answer to its riddle.”

  “So we make Bertho confess,” Lebret said, his voice troubled. “I’ll take him in the rowboat.”

  “Unless it only understands Ancient Aigyptian,” I said. “According to the Book of Mysteries, a human may challenge a sphinx with the proper incantation. By the rules of the riddle game, the sphinx must give its riddle of blood and wait nine breaths for the answer. If the challenger failed to give the right answer or any answer at all, his life was forfeit.” If I had a choice I would rather avoid facing the sphinx, but I knew my civic duty. “It seems you need me after all, Inspector.”

  “Then we better make damn sure Bertho tells us the whole truth,” said Lebret.

  We returned to the couple and confronted Alain Bertho.

  “Fabius used a real sphinx skeleton, didn’t he?” I asked. “Where did he get it?”

  Bertho shrugged. “I don’t see why it matters, but we acquired the specimen from a trader in Aithiop.”

  “Fossil thief, you mean,” I said.

  “That’s not all we suspect,” the Inspector said. “Did you kill Deniel Fabius, Monsieur Bertho?”

  Bertho was taken aback. “No! Why would I wish my friend harm? Tell them, Katarin!”

  A look of fright seized Katarin’s face, and she backed away from her husband. “You knew?” she whispered.

  “What does your husband know, Madame Bertho?” Lebret asked quietly.

  Tears welled at the corner of her eyes. “I—Deniel and I . . .”

  Alain Bertho reached for his wife’s hand. “Katarin.”

  Katarin pulled away from him and clung to Lebret, sobbing. “Yes, Deniel and I had an affair, Inspector. Alain must have found out. Why, Alain? I already ended it because I couldn’t bear to leave you!”

  Bertho trembled. “Goddesses, I didn’t believe him. . . .”

  Lebret took that as his confession. “Alain Bertho, you are under arrest for the murder of Deniel Fabius. Carmouche!”

  Sergeant Carmouche stepped forward. “Yes, Inspector?”

  “The cannons at the terminus of the land bridge. Are they ready?”

  “Yes, but we may have to trust our luck, sir.”

  “I’d rather rely on intellect, Sergeant. Prepare a boat to take the four of us to the Mermaid Rocks. You, me, the Professor, and Bertho.”

  Carmouche’s mouth dropped open. “Sir?”

  “Now, Sergeant. The tide waits for no man.”

  “Yessir!” Carmouche rushed to the rope ladder and shouted to the people below.

  “You’re taking me back to that thing?” asked Bertho, trembling.

  “Confession is good for the soul, Monsieur Bertho, especially when it saves a city,” Lebret said. “Do this and it may even save you from the gallows.” He waved an officer to us. “Madame, go with Sergeant Royer. He will see you safely home.”

  “Take me away from him,” Katarin said, and turned her back to her husband.

  “Katarin!” Bertho cried, but she would hear him no more.

  “Are you ready, Professor?” Lebret asked.

  “Always,” I said, twisting the silver lion’s-head that capped my walking stick.

  Carmouche and Lebret rowed as Bertho and I watched each other wearily in the rowboat. We were halfway to the Mermaid Rocks when I realized our mistake.

  “We must turn back,” I told Lebret. “It will try to kill all of us.”

  Bertho snorted. “That’s stating the obvious.”

  “I know you are afraid, Professor, but you must have courage,” said Lebret. “The city depends on you. You are the only one who knows the truth and its language.”

  I shook my head. “Fear isn’t the problem. I mean it will try to silence the truth. The spirit knows Bertho is the key to its blood riddle, so if the truth dies with him, it cannot be banished back to the Land of the Dead.”

  “But now you all know,” Bertho said. “You’re all marked for death!”

  I nodded. “Exactly. When it realizes that, it will hunt down anyone and everyone it believes could destroy it.”

  “How could it tell who does and who doesn’t?” Carmouche asked.

  “It won’t,” Inspector Lebret said. “It will massacre all of Ys to bury the truth.”

  “That’s why we have to turn back and telegraph what we can to Aigyptologists in other cities, in case we fail here,” I insisted.
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  “We don’t have time,” Carmouche said. “The land bridge!”

  The natural causeway was emerging from the ebbing tides. At our speed, we would not reach the island before the way to shore opened for the sphinx.

  “To the bridge, then!” Lebret shouted, and rowed doubly hard.

  I kicked off my shoes, balled up my socks, and rolled up my trouser legs.

  We made it to the land bridge before the waves lost their battle to drown it.

  The sphinx saw its opportunity and leapt off the Black Plume onto the rocks, racing for the strip of land to its freedom and feast.

  Lebret stepped out of the boat onto the causeway and helped me out of the boat. Cold water washed over my bare feet.

  “You’re mad, Lebret! There’s no way we can stop that!” Bertho cried.

  “We can try. Carmouche, stay in the boat with Bertho. If the Professor and I fail, it means Bertho did not tell us the whole truth,” Lebret said. “In that case, force it out of him however you can and shout it to the sphinx.”

  “But I don’t speak Aigyptian, Inspector!” Bertho said.

  “Luck with cannonballs or luck with words, either way we need Lady Fortune’s smile,” Lebret said. “One last thing: my confession.”

  “Sir?”

  Lebret drew his sword. “I too have a riddle of blood. It may not be fodder for the sphinx, but nevertheless, I feel it is time for the truth.” He took a deep breath. “When I finally caught Tarasque, he surrendered to me, almost eager to have his day in court. I knew in my heart I could not allow the monster to live. If he ever escaped, he would kill again. I had to protect my city, even at the cost of my soul. There was no heroic struggle as you portrayed in your film, Bertho. I killed the monster in cold blood, and lied about the manner of his death.”

  I did not fully understand why Lebret chose to confess now. “You did a great service, ridding the city of Tarasque. No one would fault you for such a deed,” I told Lebret.

  “No one but Lady Justice and myself,” Lebret replied.

  “It’s coming,” Bertho cried.

  The clay sphinx tested the waters washing over the land bridge and decided the causeway was safe enough to tread. It raced towards us.