Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

He even managed a short laugh. “I don’t know any more. Have I still stones? The woman — you are right, of course. You are very keen. I’m not sure I care for such keenness, some things a man placed as I am now prefers not to have known — the woman beguiled me with talk of certain mysteries. I was weak enough, unwise enough, to yield. And thus came my undoing, priestess.

“Thus I lie next to you and stroke your breasts and your hidden parts and it is no more to me than if I stroke a kitten.… Smite my lying tongue, O Thunderer!” he burst out in anguish, holding her tightly to him. “It isn’t true! It might perhaps not be so bad if it were. But although my flesh does not respond to yours, although that soul of mine which counsels that flesh is gone from me, still, still, enough memory remains, enough is shared in each soul and each part by every soul and every part, that still I do remember! I do, I do…”

Her lips, her hands, her soothing skin, caressed him into silence. Great, indeed, was the power of Aphroditissa, sweet-smelling goddess of love, she whispered. But some things were beyond that power, and this… as he must know… was one of them. “She can’t help you,” the priestess murmured softly, pityingly. “Any more than she can help the Paphos King. For he, too, you know…” Her voice died away at his ear.

No. There was no great amount of rest for him here after all. No one, nothing, but his own efforts could help him. With something more than a breath and less than a sigh, he rose to dress.

“I can’t help you, either,” she said, looking at him with her painted eyes. “Or can I? I will, if I can.”

“Perhaps you can. I need ore of copper. Where can I get it?”

Her painted eyebrows rose in two great arches. Forgetfully, she cupped her breasts to him and rolled her hips. “Ore?” she repeated, puzzled. “Copper?” The absurdity of the question broke through her pose and emerged as a giggle. “Good Mother, man, how should I know? Ore of copper.… I meant, if I could help you with something important…”

Entering the palace of the King of Paphos — who was, like so many Eastern kings, priest as well as potentate — was reminiscent of entering a temple. The air was still and hushed, what little speech there was was done in whispers. But the parallel was not exact in all things. ‘Ditissa’s worshipers had entered her great shrine in awe, true, but it was a pleasurable awe. There was no trace of any similar atmosphere in the palace of Paphos.

Vergil had been in fanes tended by men and in fanes tended by women, priests and priestesses alike were familiar to him. But at no other time in his life had he ever been in one where the attendants were hermaphrodies; indeed, outside of Cyprus, such creatures were scarcely known. And in Cyprus they were more than merely known: they were well-known. The strain ran in entire lineages of families, who tended to marry among themselves and perpetuate it. It was not regarded as a curse, it was not regarded as a blessing — it was a sacred circumstance, taken for granted, thoroughly accepted. How else were the semisacred priest-kings to be served, if not by the equally semisacred hermaphrodies?

They received Vergil with an intent, rather preoccupied calm, naked to the waist, small but full breasts and scanty beards providing a testimony to what they were, more decorous but scarcely less emphatic than complete nakedness would have been. They guided him through the ritual of preparation. Here he must doff his shoes, here wash his feet, here his hands, there perfume with incense both feet and hands, there deposit his gift/tribute/offering. The ceremony was long and intricate, probably none of them could have explained why half of it was done, and the explanations for the other half would probably have been thoroughly incorrect. And the Paphiote courtesies were but the prelude, for the Sacred King of Paphos was this year in addition filling the office of High King of All Cyprus: a special retinue for peripatetic hermaphrodies were charged with the rites appropriate to this higher office, moving from court to court as the office changed from throne to throne.

Preceded by sistra and cymbals and the tinkling and tapping of tambours, rather than by trumpets, the Paphos King at length made his appearance, his manner as bemused as that of a sleepwalker. Hermaphrodies surrounded him, their breasts rouged and their beards curled; they held his elbows and his sleeves and his cuffs, guiding him almost like some man-size puppet. In this manner, he spoke words which were not heard, he anointed, aspersed, spooned incense, fed lamps, touched with his sceptre, seated himself on his throne. It was a long time before Vergil was summoned.

His letters of state were shown to the King, who did not so much as touch them; indeed, he scarcely seemed to see them. At first, Vergil thought the man might be drugged. His eyes were glazed, his mouth was parted. A hermaphrody gave the royal arm the very slightest of touches, and the royal voice responded with the very slightest of sounds. It was indicated to Vergil that he had been asked a question.

“I thank Your Sacred Majesty for his gracious interest. The voyage was both safe and pleasant. We were accompanied by Bayla, King of the Sea-Huns, who, desirous of causing Your Sacred Majesty no inconvenience, is here incognito in the capacity of a pilgrim.”

A polite lie, in part. But Bayla would scarcely prove a figure congruous to the elaborate smoothness of this strange and hieratic court.

A ripple passed across the face of the Paphos King. His eyes seemed to focus on the man who knelt before him. “The Sea-Huns… we have heard of them… when we were young.” A smile trembled, faltered, lapsed. A certain look passed between the hermaphrodies, and they turned their faces to Vergil, encouraging him by winks, by nods, to continue speaking. So might react the parents of a sick, sick child, he thought.

He did his best to interest the King, and to further his own necessities as well, by degrees turned his remarks to the subject of his visit here.… Copper.

“Copper” — the King’s thick voice grew mildly surprised — “we… we do not know why one would come here for copper. Is there no copper in Italy? Is… is there copper here? In Cyprus?”

This was no mere bemusement. So removed from actuality was the numinous King that he really did not know of the rich mines which were the island’s chief resource, which had given the island its very name. Next to copper, the chief reality of Cypriote life was the all but complete blockade which the Sea-Huns had, a generation since, flung around its coasts and seas. Yet the King, who was perhaps no more than thirty (a fair and heavy man), had not even heard of them since his childhood.

Before Vergil could reply to this, a terrible change passed over the King’s face. A sob broke from his chest, and a low cry of unutterable despair. Features writhing, hands clenched on the arms of his throne, gently but no less firmly urged by the clustering hermaphrodies not to rise, the man cried, “I am being bewitched! Bewitched!” Then words failed him, and he slumped down and forward and gazed numbly at the patterned floor.

At a gesture from one of his attendants, music was struck up, strange and alien music, and hermaphrodies came and danced before the throne, twirling their skirts and stamping their shoeless feet so that their anklets clingled and tinkled like tiny, tiny bells. The King watched vacantly, his head nodding a slow, infinitely sad accompaniment to the movements of the half-naked, half-numinous dancers. And the attendants began to sing in their curious, epicene voices, a song whose words were in a language which had probably ceased to be a living speech long before the children of Europa had first set foot upon the soil of Cyprus.