Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

“This may not be pleasant,” he warned. The Red Man made an impatient, scorning sound in his chest, watched Vergil as with long fingers he carefully unwrapped layer and layer of costly vine-wool brought from Hither India; soft and white as newly fallen snow; and uncovered something sere and forked and brown, and tied up hand and foot in a series of scarlet, silken knots.

Marveling, the Red Man said that he had never from his younger days till now seen any such a thing as a knot so utterly strange as (he indicated without touching) this, and this, and this, and this. “And I am a sailor,” he said, “and thought that by now all knots were known to me.” His voice grew lower. “These are of another order altogether, I see. Are they the ones that bind the winds? No! You have here a…” His voice ceased entirely. He watched.

The item was perhaps half the length of a pen, and of the thickness of about two fingers. It might have been the tiniest of mummies ever seen; it was thinly covered with a nap of hairs, and the legs were wrapped one around the other as if it had no bones. Certainly, it had no toes. “I have here one of those called al-rune, ” said Vergil. “Also called perenose or perestupe.” He had poured red wine into a shallow basin and earth into a deeper one, and now, quickly, he dipped the thing into the wine and plunged it — feet first — into the earth and tamped it firmly down.

“Also,” he said, standing back and observing it, “called mandrake or mandragon. It has many names. And many powers.” He watered the earth. He found the loose clew of the end of the scarlet silk and gave it the one tug that loosened all the knots. The mandrake moved. A faint shudder went through it. The tiny eyelids fluttered open and it peered here and there dimly and blindly and it grimaced like an idiot thing and the tiny lipless mouth opened and made a thin, dry sucking noise.

Vergil picked up a silver bodkin and pricked the ball of his left index finger and squeezed a drop of blood, which welled and swelled without dripping as he put it to the mandrake’s mouth. The creature sucked and butted at the finger like a lamb at the dug. He pulled the finger away. “Enough, homunculus. See clearly and speak plainly and obey me in all things.”

The homunculus smacked its mouth. Its gaze as it turned its tiny head this way and that was keen and no longer witless. It smirked and chirped and played among its hairs with its hands, which were single, root-like digits, each.

“Speak plainly!”

“The Queen of Candia cuckolds her lord with a stable-boy,” it said, piping, thin, yet surprising strong. “Miso Yanis has a new customer for the red-haired girl. The boatman Carlis bends and strains, but not to his oars. Her name is — ”

“Enough of that,” Vergil interrupted. The mandrake snickered and smirked. “Scan the circle of the seas. Do you see wind? Do you smell wind? Do you feel, hear, or taste wind?”

The mandrake mused, considering. “I see sardine and flounder,” after a moment, it observed. “Also calamary and much sponge and — ”

“Wind. Only wind. Seek wind.”

The tiny nostrils twitched in the bridgeless nose. “I smell it,” the thing said.

“Where?”

“Off the coast of Little Asia, and it reeks of burning towns and rotting blood and the fearful sweat of violated maidens.”

The men exchanged swift glances. “The Sea-Huns,” said the Red Man. “Ottil King is busy there at work.”

“Not that wind, homunculus. Another.”

The mouth paused and pursed. “I taste it,” the thing said.

“Where?”

“Within three leagues as the sun now goes, and it tastes of salt and spray.”

An-Thon shook his head. “Rocks and shoals,” said he.

“Not that wind, homunculus. Another.”

The mandrake fretted and nittered. Then, it leered. “The daughter of the Constable of Athens,” it began. With deliberation and without delay, Vergil thrust at it with a bodkin. The mandrake shrilled its alarm and twisted and tugged. “A wind!” it cried, protestingly. “I see a wind!”

“Where?”

“Two leagues and half again a league,” the thing whined, “to the south and east! Between the south and the east, two leagues and a half again a league — a wind! Oh, warm! Oh, swift and sweet! A wind!”

The Red Man turned and bounded up the steps, crying orders. The feet of the men bounded across the deck and oars thumped at the tholepins. The water bailiff began to call the cadence. The ship leaped forward. “Now,” said Vergil, to the man-dragon, “you may suit yourself while you can.”

The eyes of the tiny creature gleamed like snail slime, and it spewed forth its sightings of centaurs and shepherdesses, fisher-boys ravished by mermaidens, deceived unicorns, dracos cozened of their treasures by non-draconian wiles… it piped and chattered and mewed. Then it paused awhile; then began again, in a tone of infinitely less interest, to talk of other things. Vergil listened, inclining his head on his hand, while, with the other, he occasionally incised a note on the wax of his tablets.

Suddenly the rhythm of the rowers was interrupted. A cry went up, again the running of feet, and now the hasty hoisting of the sail. The sail snapped and cracked loudly — once — twice — a third time. The men shouted in triumph. Vergil arose without haste and with his stylus scratched up a bit of wax, working it between his fingers. The mandrake eyed him with great unease as he approached, then opened its mouth wide. But before that fearful, fatal, maddening cry could issue forth, Vergil had (seemingly at one and the same time) popped the bolus into the tiny mouth, looped the silken scarlet thread around the muted figure, and tore it loose from its fitting in the pot of earth.

The thing collapsed in upon itself with a convulsive motion. Another second it writhed. Then the knots once again bound it safely, physically and metaphysically, and it seemed no more than an ugly, curiously twisted root. With a flick of the bodkin he removed the gagger of wax, wrapped the perestupe in the vine-wool, restored it to the tortoise-shell casket, placed the casket in the horn-beam box, and returned the latter to the great chest of carven ebonwood. And then it seemed as though half the life went out of him, and he half sat, half fell, onto the chair. His face was ashen, and he gagged and retched dryly. Feeling as he had on realizing what his lady had done to him, he raised trembling hands to his face, winced, grunted in sudden pain. He looked at his left hand.

The index finger was angry, swollen, and red — except at the cushiony part of the first joint, where it showed a gray and purulent spot. Long he looked at it, with a wasted expression on his twisted face, before he felt strong enough to wash and dress it.

“I’ll do that no more this year,” he said, at last. “If, indeed, for many a year… or ever again.” For a moment resolution showed on his face. Then, with a wry mouth and a shrug, it went.

“Cyprus!” cried someone on deck. “Cyprus! Cyprus ho!”

CYPRUS WAS ANOTHER world.

The city of Paphos might have been designed and built by a Grecian architect dreamy with the drugs called talaquin or mandragora: in marble yellow as unmixed cream, marble pink as sweetmeats, marble the green of pistuquim nuts, veined marble and grained marble, honey-colored and rose-red, the buildings climbed along the hills and frothed among the hollows. Tier after tier of over-tall pillars, capitals of a profusion of carvings to make Corinthian seem ascetic, pediments lush with bas-reliefs, four-fold arches at every corner and crossing, statues so huge that they loomed over the housetops, statues so small that whole troops of them flocked and frolicked under every building’s eaves, groves and gardens everywhere, fountains playing, water spouting…