Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

“You saw me naked and afraid. How you must have despised me.”

Her eyes protested. Her lips denied. “I cherish your friendship and respect,” she said. “I hope I haven’t lost them forever. But I was powerless to prevent what happened.” Her gaze, her thoughts, wandered, she seemed to look upon strange seas and shores. “No man holds me long, save one. I would do anything for him… anything… except the one thing he wants…” Vergil’s mind asked, Tullio? And almost at once answered, No; asked, Who? but had no answer.

A dish clattered. Cornelia’s head snapped up. She looked at him directly. “I am sorry,” she said. “But the mirror must be made.”

The Viceroy had moved to a table farther away and there busied himself. He heaped a basic with choice fruit, filled a goblet with snow-cooled drink, brought them to Vergil, and drew up a seat opposite the small table. From the golden case in the bosom of his robe he took a small, jeweled knife and began to peel and quarter a pear.

“The ignorance, the obduracy, sage, of the provincial ruling class of the present time, is hard for the truly sophisticated mind to grasp. I wince to reflect how many scores of thousands of ducats go into the annual maintenance by this Doge of his hunting preserves, his parks, his forests, his warrens and chases. And yet when it comes to paying the very moderate costs levied for his share of the upkeep of the Imperial roads as they pass through his own realms, why — Jove defend me! — if I’ve ever heard such bellowings and bleatings!”

Vergil said, cautiously, “Roads, Your High Excellency, are the very veins and arteries of the Empire.”

Something flashed in the Viceroy’s eyes, and his face seemed about to open. Then it settled back into its accustomed lines again. And his voice, when he answered, was equally and noncommittably cautious. “Indeed, this is so. You can easily understand, then, Ser Doctor, how important it is to the peace and prosperity of the Empire and its allies and confederates — we can say of the whole Economium, the western civilized world — that our roads remain open.

“Of these the Great High Road is certainly not the least in importance. If so important a traveler as the Lady Laura, the sister of the confederate King of Carsus, cannot travel this road in safety, then who can? Brigandage cannot be tolerated. Somewhere on that road is a place which spells danger to all of us. The Emperor — yes, himself, the August Caesar — wants to know where. And he desires to know soon. Now, sir. We depend upon you, on your art and science, to find this out for us. We would not incite your just contempt with talk of bags of ducats, or the like. It is by no means certain that you lack anything which Caesar can supply. Still…”

He paused. He smiled. He shrugged. “It is by no means certain that you do not.” He passed him the plate of peeled fruit. Vergil took it, put one of the pieces in his mouth. It was cool and sweet and full of juice. The noises of the hunt, of the horn, came dimly to his ear, muted.

Presently he said, “Well, Viceroy, I should be a fool if I did not keep in mind what you say.”

The Viceroy, with a quick, short, expressive breath, dismissed the matter. “Let us see how goes the chase, then,” he said.

Below them and a long ways away, they saw the stag break covert. The horns blew the two long notes, two short, two long and one long, of the forlange as the stag — through the long grass and through the short, beneath the great trees and down the shady glens — trajoined as he crossed and recrossed to confuse the hounds; proffering at the reedy covert of the fens, refusing, then making for the open water, and there descending. The horn sounded the veline. The stag foiled downstream, vanished, doubled back upon the land again and menaced a man on foot. The horn sounded the jeopard, the stag bounded off and away, with the hounds now babbling, now bawling after him, and the grim, gray alaunts still pressing on in silence.

Behind him now the stag left “racks and entries” in the form of bruised branches he no longer took time to avoid, and of imbosh (flecks of foam). More, when now and then his slot was seen in softer soil, it was observed that it was wider spread, a sure sign of fatigue; and by and by, even in hard earth, the print of the oses, the dewclaws, showed that he was grown sarboted or footsore. Now the hounds picked up a good scent and were in full cry and good order, justifying the long, long horn call of the perfect. The stag at last came lurching by the pavilion, his coat now black with sweat, and then swerved aside from the hounds of the vauntlay, now at last loosed upon him.

“He embosses! See how he lurks and tapishes!” The horn sounded the tromp. The stag ran stiff and high. “How, how, ho there, ho!” And then at length the beast “burnished and cast his chaule” — head hung down, mouth blackened and dry, he set his back to a hedgeside and turned to face the dogs, sometimes striking out with feet, sometimes with antlers, sometimes just staring. The horn sounded the weep. “Bay, bay, he burnishes, at bay!” The Sergeant came from behind and cut the stag’s throat. “Ware haunch!” — the chacechiens whipped back the dogs, the horn blew the prise, the deer fell down and rose and fell and kicked and the berners dipped bread in his blood and tossed it to the younger dogs. The stag kicked once more and kicked no more. And the horn sounded the mort.

Somehow, Cornelia was on one side of Vergil and the Viceroy was on the other. “What I did,” she said, urgently, intently, “to you, I did because I was desperate. I never meant to hurt you, I was powerless to prevent doing what I did. But I swear it now, may I die as that deer died if I do not return what I took the instant I see the child’s face in the mirror.” Her eyes beseeched him.

The Doge seized the beast by its great crown of horns and turned it over onto its back. “Say, say!” he cried, grinning widely, “who’s to hold the forelegs and who’s to hold the pizzle and who’s to draw the knife to take say?”

As someone’s younger son carefully “took say” by opening the belly to see how deep the fat was, Vergil took a last look at the stag. He saw in it a symbol of himself and his own predicament. He could run. But he could not escape.

THEY RODE ALONG together, Vergil mounted on a white hackney, and Clemens on a sturdy, dun-colored mule which now and then rolled one wicked-looking eye back at him and snapped a mouthful of yellow teeth. Cypresses lined the road. Here and there was a tomb. They slackened the pace, read the epitaph on one.

Ave Julia Conjux Carissimma

Salve Ad Eternitam

“I would be moved by that,” the Alchemist said, “if such things moved me. In all probability they fought like cats and dogs and he smiled all the way here.… Did you get the letters of state?”

Vergil nodded. Out of sight, a shepherd whistled to his dog. There was an answering bark, a chorus of bleats, and the dull bonk-bonk of the lead-wether’s bell.

The Viceroy’s secretary had been incredulous and far from encouraging. “Really, my sir,” he said, “unless you go with the great convoy these documents are useless. The Sea-Huns will attack first and read letters later… if they bother to read them at all. If they have anyone along who can read. Why not wait till next year’s convoy?”

“There isn’t time,” he had answered.

The Secretary’s worried look had dissolved in a sudden relief. “Of course!” he exclaimed. “Doubtless with my sir’s arts magical he will interpose something between his ship and theirs, and make it invisible. Or take the wind from their sails — or make their oars heavy — or — or something like that.”