Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

The rocking gait of the camel was not unlike the way of a ship, but a ship at least offered room to walk about on or to lie down. Vergil rode as long as he could stand it, then he walked until the sand became too hot to bear, then he donned the blue burnoose again and remounted. Now and then a rock stood out above the sands like a twisted chimney, polished by ages of sand until it glistened.

“Would it not be better if we pitched a tent and rested during the day, and then traveled by night?” Vergil had asked. But the Tyrean merely made a curt gesture and shrugged, silent. At night the stars blazed hugely in the blue-black velvet sky, each encircled by its own ring, and sometimes the rings intersected. Each night they drew a circle of their own around the campsite, and removed all stones found inside. One night one stone was overlooked and not discovered until Vergil, lowering his eyes from the stars, observed two tiny glowing circles moving slowly toward them through the darkness. His sudden gesture drew the attention on the instant of the Red Man, who advanced with ember and cudgel. The tiny lights blinked, retreated. A hissing was heard. Ebbed-Saphir blew upon the ember, tossed it, leapt, plied his club. There was the sound of stick hitting something soft and nasty, then it struck upon something hard.

The Red Man returned, tossed the something, with a grunt, at Vergil’s feet; then kindled a torch and went searching. It was one of the hideous and deadly petromorphs, which came alive at night, loving to crunch the glowing coals of fires, but not disdaining to bite with their venomous jaws anything else which they encountered and which gives out warmth. Stony and chill was their bite, and stony and chill their victim soon became.

But there were deadlier things in that desert than the petromorphs.

There is nothing, perhaps, more disturbing than to see things one cannot hear and simultaneously to hear things one cannot see. The fourth Oasis, and its bibulous chieftain, Abèn-Aboubou, now lay well behind them, for all he had urged them to stay — unlike the other chieftains at the other oases, who, though charging gold and silver for water, food, and wood, seemingly begrudged every hour the strangers remained. At first, “It is shadows, it is a strain of the eyes, it is the warping of the air by the heat” Vergil told himself: tiny things flicking and flickering around the corners and edges of his vision. He turned his head, they were gone. Then commenced and followed odd little noises, hissings and mummings and clickings and patterings. But when he drew his camel to a halt, they, too, were gone.

He had grown used to them, blamed them all upon the heat of the sun, looked forward to the night, the rest, the encircled, blazing stars. And then it was, no sooner than Ebbed-Saphir held his hand up and out and urged his grumbling camel to its knees; then, in the blue-red-purple dusk, it happened. Vergil gave a shout of alarm and fear and loathing as the host of figures seemed to swarm, all but silently, up from the sandy earth itself. Tiny, they were, and filthy-ragged, and hairy, and hideous to look upon, with snottled faces and pores like pockmarks; up they swarmed, up from all around, knives in their paws of hands.

The Red Man shouted strange words in a strange language. “Tala’ hon, tala’ hon!” — then, “Hither! Come hither! Come hither to me!” Vergil ran, driving the alarmed camels before him — indeed, they might have bolted and been lost, had not at that moment the finger of Ebbed-Saphir, in an instantly well-remembered gesture, swept about in a circle… and, in a circle, all about them, up sprang a ring of fire.

Now, in alarm and terror, the silence of the hideous Troglodytes was broken. They shrieked, tumbled backward. The few who found themselves inside the circle turned to look — The Red Man produced two swords and tossed one to Vergil. Up rose the encircling fire, too high for any Troglodyte to hurdle. The fiery hoop expanded, driving those beyond it back and ever back. There was no time to watch the fire, no time to watch the Red Man. Vergil, who had caught the thrown sword, unsheathed it and fell to defending himself against the three tiny imps who now rushed upon him with pattering, splay, and filthy feet. They darted around him, knives held in such a wise, stooping, low, that he knew at once their intention. From behind, to sever his Achilles tendon; from in front to pierce his artery at the groin — this was their aim. But those who depend on stealth and surprise as the chiefmost weapons are never at their best in an open fight. One, he laid apart his skull; the second failed to dodge a heavy stroke though much he tried, and, staring amazed at his severed hand, ceased to take part in the combat; the third continued to evade him as the rat evades the dog in the pit. They moved about and eyed each other, weapons poised. Then came Ebbed-Saphir, who had by now slain his two Troglodytes, and he and Vergil advanced upon the survivor. It would have been his death, then, had he not come upon one of his kind’s hidey-holes, and, with a bray of triumph, vanished down it, where they could not follow.

And now once again the Red Man indicated with his finger, and a writhing, undulating serpent of fire sprang into being and slid down into the scape-hole. A dreadful screech of fear and pain grated upon their ears; then it was gone.

Across the darkling plains of sand the ever-widening circle of fire shed its ruddy rays. There was silence. Vergil said, “Indeed, you have studied fire very deeply, Captain.”

Almost contemptuously: “‘Studied fire’? You may say so! I worship fire! I know its secrets, and the secrets of its secrets… Come! Tonight we will do as you begged, and travel. There are worse things to be feared here than the heat of the sun.”

The fifth oasis lay behind them. They had not tarried, nor had the chieftain urged them to, nor would they even if he had, remembering the bibulou Abèn-Aboubou, and not doubting that he had used the time to send out word alerting the murderous Troglodytes, lurking in their cool caverns below the heated sands. Likely he intended himself a share in the loot. And so Vergil was not surprised to find the remains — torn rags and gnawed bones cracked for marrow — of several men along the way.

“They were not lucky enough to have you with them,” he commented, turning the things over with the toe of his shoe. The Tyrean only grunted, waiting impatiently to ride on. Suddenly Vergil exclaimed, fell upon his knees to look closer. “Surely,” he cried, astonished, “it was only from Naples that this striped yellow broadcloth came! And it could have been only in Naples that this shoulder knot was tied!” His fingers pawed and combed the sand, came up with a blackened bauble. In a low and troubled tone he said, “And none but a Neapolitan would wear this, particular charm against Evil Eye… I don’t like this. I’ve heard of none from Naples venturing into Lybya before us. Who could they have been? Who could they have been?”

But An-Thon Ebbed-Saphir from the stork’s nest of his camel saddle cried only, “Ride! Ride! Ride! Ride on!”

The last oasis lay behind them, and none lay ahead; nothing lay ahead but more desert, and then the farfamed Mountains of the Moon, the Antropophagai, with tails, the dwarf-like Pygmies, and the distant, distant shores of the Erythrian Sea.

“I go no farther,” said the Phoenician. The blue burnoose had slipped, showing his face, and it looked haggard.

He had been of little service as companion on the journey, but he had not been hired as companion, after all… only as guide. “You engaged to bring me within sight of the castle,” Vergil pointed out. “And unless you do so, all has gone for nothing.”