Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

“Still there,” it said. “Still there,” moaned the epicene voice.

Vergil said nothing. He had again been struck by shock, as, when with Angustus the Ephesian, the cloak curiously fallen over the sights seen when he, Vergil, had “gone through the Door,” had suddenly been lifted, and full memory of that one scene returned. Now it had happened again. It seemed that as he approached in reality the things observed in the visions of the night, recollection of them left him in order that free will might be reconciled with predestination; in order that his choice of what he would do be not influenced by his prophetic knowledge of what must be done. He reached back, now, in memory, to strive to recall other details, for surely the work of preparation called “going through the Door” was intended to assist him: else of what use was it?

Rome! It snapped into his mind, almost audibly. The key was Rome.

“You have had this dream before,” he reminded the whimpering figure on the bed, sexless as a doll. “You know you have, and you caused it to be written down and you referred it to the Wise Men and the Chaldeans and you consulted learned Jews and even the women who serve ‘Ditissa. But no one has given you a good interpretation, not one.” It looked at him, consumed with woe and self-pity and a measure of genuine foreboding and horror. It wept a little and it sniveled.

“But now, Sylvian, this time it is no ordinary dream.”

He reached out and touched the soft hand. Sylvian jerked back as if burned. He screamed. He screamed.

“No one can hear you, Sylvian. No one can come to help you. It is now that you must come to terms. And I will tell you why you now must, in one word, Sylvian. Rome !”

The eunuch drew his breath in on a note of long, shuddering fear. His face became waxy and pinched. Vergil recalled to him the might of Rome, made the room echo with the strokes of the oars of the great armadas, with the rhythmic tramping of the feet of many legions. He thrust the forefinger of his right hand toward the bed screen, and instantly it reflected the shadows of a besieged city. On its crenallated walls the outlines of figures waved their arms in defiance, but nearer and nearer crept the great siege-engines, the armored towers, battering rams, catapults, lumbering on relentlessly, crashing and pounding. Then the darkness grew bright with flames, and billows of smoke veiled the scene.

“Shall I tell you what follows, Sylvian? The capture, the degradation and the shame, the fetters, the darkness and the stinking wet at the bottom of the prison ship, the marching in chains through the mocking crowds of Rome, Sylvian! A prize figure in a Roman triumph, Sylvian? How soft the soles of your feet are, Sylvian! How hard and how harsh are the stony streets of Rome, Sylvian!”

Inert, the recumbent figure rolled up its eyes and made little gasping moans like a woman in terror. Relentlessly, Vergil pressed on. “But that is not the end, Sylvian. Common captives, they merely sell into slavery. But the chiefs and the princes, the leaders of rebellion and defiance, Sylvian, them they strip before Caesar, Sylvian — and they flog them, Sylvian — and then they kill them, Sylvian.”

“They fling them from precipices, they behead them, they crucify them, they give them to be torn by wild beasts in the arena, and sometimes… though perhaps not often… they dip them in tar and then they burn them, Sylvian.”

The Chief Priest of Cybele flung his arms over his eyes as if to shut out the sights. “Why?” he cried. “Why? Why?”

“Why? Only thus is mastery and empire maintained. It is not in the nature of any people that it should willingly endure being ruled by another people, whether it is ruled ill or ruled well.”

Sylvian cried, “No.” He rose in his bed and came toward Vergil, crawling and lurching, protesting that this was not what he meant. Why should Rome wish him ill? It was true he feared Rome, this was why he feared Rome, but why should Rome hate him so, why intend him harm? He came, humping and groveling to the foot of the bed, and there he cowered, begged an answer.

Vergil gave him a question.

“Why have you bewitched the King of Paphos?”

The eunuch sat bolt upright, his figure ungainly and unnaturally tall, his face askew, his mouth working.

“Why?”

Sylvian stammered that it was to destroy the King’s resistance.

“He need not in any case resist,” Vergil said. “He shall have nothing to resist. Rome will not countenance the ceremony to which he is intended to submit. How could you presume to think it would? Or did you? What! Rome, city-empire of the Sons of the Wolf! Is Rome to endure an ally king’s consuming the flesh of his own child, slain by his own hand, and then to be changed into a wolf? No, by the wolf that suckled Romulus, the wolf that suckled Remus, it shall not be!”

The eunuch babbled of Zeus-Leucayon, but was cut short. From beneath Vergil’s cloak came the bag of purple silk embroidered with the Imperial monogram; from this he produced the documents of vellum and parchment, lettered in glossy black, vermilion, and purple; here with seals affixed to the page, and there, with seals dangling upon ribbons tied through slits — each page embossed with the Great Imperial Seal of the Eagle and the Wolf.

“These Sylvian, are my letters of state. Do you see these syllables? Himself, the August Caesar. Read these documents if you like, but, read them or not, defy them at your absolute peril. In the name of Rome, Sylvian, and by the power which Rome conveys through me and through these letters, I now place the Royal and Priestly House of Paphos under my protection.

“And that protection, Sylvian, is the protection of Rome .”

The hermaphrodies bowed down and kissed his knees and feet. How much they knew, how they had learned, Vergil did not know, but it was clear that they knew something which was enough. How much the King himself knew was even more debatable. But obviously he knew that a dreadful thing had threatened, that it threatened no more, and that in some way the foreign wizard was responsible.

“My head is not very clear,” he said, dazed yet, but thoroughly happy. “But my faithfuls” — he gestured to the clustering hermaphrodies — “tell me that copper ore is needed for your white wizardry. What this may be, I do not know, but I have ordered one hundred tumbrils to be put at your diposal, Lord Vergil.”

“Sir, my infinite thanks, but not even one hundred palms are needed. Sufficient ore to fill an ordinary bowl will be quite enough.”

The King pondered a moment. Then, with the sometimes wisdom even of fools, he remarked, “But if you take more, lord, then you will not be put to the trouble of coming for it if you should need it another time.”

Vergil blinked. So vexed had he been with the matter of this one major mirror, it had not occurred to him that it might be possible for him ever again to wish to make one under less troublous circumstances. It was, to be sure, not likely. But it was not impossible. He thanked the King for his generous thought, and agreed to accept as much as could be carried by a fast mule without slowing its pace. A pace, as it soon turned out, which was not long in delaying the ore from almost present appearance, from its storage place nearby. Now that circumstances had so quickly, abruptly changed, Vergil found everyone willing to discuss the mining, grading, transporting, and working of copper in all its aspects. Unless he exercised great control, it was clear, nothing would prevent them from telling him much more about copper than he cared to know.

He dined in the King’s atrium on boned quail wrapped in grape leaves and the tender tripes of young beef dressed with nuts and herbs and young onions. Spiced wine was mixed with cool spring water and poured onto roasted figs, the mixture heated again in a closed vessel and poured into goblets of gold engraved with antique scenes. The conversation of the King was neither deep nor wide, but it had the interest of the curious; also it was a pleasure to observe his almost incredulous good feeling, the joy of his relief. And now and then he called a child of his to the table and fed him with his own hands of the choicest morsels.