Аврам Дэвидсон - Vergil Magus - King Without Country

It was worth a try, anyway.

Ma went into a frenzy of activity, removing dark yerbs from his chest of many drawers, boiling water, preparing a suffusion. At last he proffered a cup of dark liquid to Vergil. “Now. You drink down most way to bottom. Not all way. Stop here. Most important, you stop here. Not later.” Ma drew an imaginary line four-fifths of the way down to the bottom.

Vergil bethought him of the many visionary potions he had imbibed in his researches, and their attendant side-effects. Vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, to begin with, and progressing quickly to bleeding from the nostrils, mucous discharge from the anus, rashes laced with boils, incontinence, simultaneous loss of hair and balance, spontaneous generation of worms within the flesh… The more primitive the culture, it seemed, the greater the discomfort attendant upon discovering so simple a thing as the future. “Wouldn’t it be simpler to just pour it off?” he asked.

“Drink.”

He took a sip. The dark liquid was bitter and astringent. He shuddered and with suppressed loathing drank the rest, down to the prescribed line. Then he handed the cup to Ma.

Holding the cup in his left hand, Ma swirled the liquid three times around and then with a snap of the wrist inverted the cup onto the table. When he removed it, the wet chai leaves had formed a pattern.

Both men leaned low over the leaves.

“What does it say?” Vergil asked.

“What? Hey? Seneschal—what?” The seneschal was a-most as old as his courtly master. “My sire and ser, my dan the Count. A visitor. His Honor the Varlet to the Vavaseur of Idalia.”

A varlet to a vavaseur was so low on the List of Honor as barely to be there at all. But be there he was. Be here he was. Who the devil was he? Who the devil was he?

Duty. Duty. Duty.

“The Varlet to the Vavaseur of Idalia will munch with me.”

A gust of sudden sigh. “I am so unworthy—”

“True,” said the Count Mar. In the air, hanging, Nevertheless, unbespoke. The chamberman set the trestle-table. The visitor got one of the partridges and the Count addressed himself to his nutmeal mush. The chamberman and the other partridge withdrew. (The extra-ancient Mother-thrall might mumble the almondbread dressing with loud Ooos of delight, or she perhaps would spet it out with even louder phoophs. One never knew. Life was full of change and interest even for a serf.) The Count, meanwhile, completely forgot that he even had a visitor; his pale-blue eyes slightly milky, even a thin film upon them like that upon a lightly basted egg, and rimmed with red, veined and weined with red, looked upon an older scene: a Chastel mar filled with noble men-at-arms, the Old Count’s Father, the Older Count, in armor and full prime and pride of life, and—But such scenes with or without the assistance of Delphic earth and burning smoking laurel-leaves, such scenes no longer served. Even as a prisoner will sate and cloy his womanless life with masturbatory fantasies, so for long and long the Count Mar had sated and cloyed his warless life with fantasies of war. After many a winter the prisoner’s fantasies cease to have any individual particularity, merge into one single flattened-out omnifantasy, and cease to be of an avail: so the bellic fantasies of the Old Count Mar.

In his heart he cried War! War! but there was no war.

“The bosom is full of thorns—”

What? What? What strange buffoon was this, ill-shaved, ill-washed, in dusty integuments, hypocrisy overlaying him like a membrane thin: but clearly visible; who? Instantly recognized, the worn-down badges of a varlet… authorized to fly the narrowest of bannerets… and of a vavaseur… the lowest rank of an hereditary honor … the serf of a thrall, a scullion’s vassal, instanta formed the scornful thought… but which vavaseur? which yerb upon that dirt-and sweat-stained broidered badge, which? —second knowledge to the old courtier: Idalia. Produce: Thyme.

“The bosom is full of thorns to observe how this wittold warlock The King Without Country—”

Count Mar was fall awake now, “ ‘The King Without Country,’ what — ? ”

Doggedly the shabbykins repeated his stupid formula, that the bosom was full of thorns, “to observe how this wittold warlock The King Without Country behaves, to the total and intire dishonoring of the lordly Count Mar, Reverenced and Worshipful Master of the Ceremonies—”

The so-pale-blue of the ancient eyes deepened. The yellowed face tightened. Even the untrimmed white hairs in the nostrils bristled. The whole figure of the classical and insulted figure was at once full of life—

—of rage—

—like a hungry wolf who lights upon a scent—upon a spoor—

“And so? the Varlet to the Vavaseur of Idalia? eh? EH?”

The visitor let his eyes roll around the room, proved it empty save for he and host. Eyes a-gleam like a beastling’s in the night; he bent forward, unbrushed brow-hairs, untrimmed cheekbones, ears, unwashed body—reek! sharp! pungent! careless of all—

“There is come from the crypto-court of the unacknowledged heir to Boris King of Africa, of Farther Africa, Count Mar,” he whispered as be leaned; “a one with a singular specialty of craft. He performs sorceries upon sorcerers!” Triumphant, the man sat back. Smacked the table softly with his palms.

Count Mar smacked his own palms upon it, pushed himself up. His mouth dropped open. And, “War!” he cried.

He cried, “War!”

“War! War! War! War!”

Fumbled in his pouchet. Withdrew a whetstone. And next drew forth a knife.

The Black Man stood in the middle of the Street of Mages, waiting for Vergil. Had this been difficult to arrange? It had not. Though the Black Man had abandoned his tenement lair (“Skipped out, and good riddance,” said his landlord, spitting for luck on a floor that had patently endured more than its share of such treatment), Vergil had simply sent criers throughout Rome crying a challenge to the Black Man to meet in the Street of Mages at noon. It was a challenge he knew would not be refused.

A challenge to fight a wizard’s duel.

The Black Man, as had been said, stood waiting. In the crowd to his back, hopping excitedly from foot to foot, waving scrawny fists, shouting deprecations (and yet nobody save Vergil paid him any attention; might’s well be one of the hundreds at a chariot race for all the attention he got; and Vergil paid him little enough) was Mar of House Mar. He was tired of being a spectator. He had come to smell blood.

Not that blood had much of a smell per se. Which fact Count Mar knew. He was a historian of war. It was in a metaphoric sense that he desired the smell.

There were thousands of onlookers, for the criers had gone everywhere. The buildings bulged with spectators. The roofs overflowed. Many had brought with them lunches. In front of the workshop behind Vergil all his faithful workmen, even those whom he had not seen in years, stood shoulder to shoulder in their best smocks, displaying solidarity with their sorcerous Magister. Everyone who could talk his way in was there, Oria and Ma as well.

The two mages strode toward each other until they were close enough to spit upon one another, were either undignified enough (they were not) to do so.

The Black Man raised his arms.

Vergil drew his sword. The sword with no name.

It was no easy thing for a sword to avoid acquisition of a name. The least trait or incident would suffice. Dost whistle when swung in the air? Deathsminstrel. Born in the forges of Caliburnus? Excalibum. Left it leaning on the outside of the tavern on the sunniest day of the year and came out not more than three drinks later to find it all a-rust? Stormbringer.