Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

Then the heap of ashes fell in upon itself.

Those who remained still stood there, aghast, eyes dazzled and benumbed. A sudden breeze dispelled the last of the heat and stirred the heap of ashes. Vergil’s voice said something which was not a word. A stripling stood among the ashes before him, and even as they looked, struck with awe, he brushed the ashes from his red and naked skin and took a fumbling step… then two… then walked with utter certainty and absolute indifference toward those who gazed and stared amazed at him. It might (was Vergil’s thought) have been An-Thon in the first days of his youngest manhood… but… somehow… not quite. One slight and almost involuntary movement of his head did the new Phoenix make as he passed Vergil and Phyllis. Something nashed at them out of the corner of his pale blue-green eyes which was almost Cornelia — and then was quite gone.

As was he.

The screaming servants had fled, to spread who knows what story abroad. Laura lay upon the couch, her face buried in her arms. Vergil trembled, sighed, and shook his head and Phyllis leaned against him.

But Tullio half-knelt, half-lay upon the floor and sobbed and wept.

Finally he said, broken-voiced, as though to himself. “We wanted a kingdom and we wanted an empire. It wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth it…”

(Later, to Clemens, Vergil said, “What she really wanted was immortality.” “Vain quest… for her,” Clemens answered. “Only alchemy can hope to provide it. You know that.” “I don’t know that I do… What was it which first brought me to her? It wasn’t jewels that I was seeking among the manticores that day. The child they stole — everyone knows the story — and kept a captive for so long — it was a hundred years ago, but he is still alive and looks much less than half his years… She had great gifts, Cornelia. We might have done things together. It is too bad, too bad.…”)

Yes, they might have, helped one another, Vergil and the Lady Cornelia, if things had been far different. They might have loved each other well, instead of ill. But, and meanwhile, there were other things to see to. For example, Laura.

And Laura, free now forever from her scheming, dominating mother, what did she want for herself? Neither the bull-like Doge nor the chronically philandering Emperor. She wanted, first of all, her home in hill-girt, craggy Carsus, confident that there, among her brother’s lairds, she’d find a husband to her taste.

“It’s so flat and bland here,” she summed it up. “Won’t you be glad to get back, Phyllis? It will be quite different now. Brother can have you legitimized — I’ll make him! — and we can fix up the old summer palace and live there together. I’m sorry about all this, but it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know about all this wicked magic and all that. Besides, well you know mother. What could I do? But now we can have all kinds of fun and change clothes as we used to and pretend… well, maybe not. But, anyway, Phyllis…”

There was no doubt that Phyllis made her royal sister-cousin seem rather flat and bland herself. Vergil ganced at her while Laura chatted on, and he knew as he read the glance with which she answered his that Phyllis was not going. Not to Carsus, anyway.

Scorpio, sign of regeneration… of eagle, serpent, phoenix… serpent which casts off its skin as the ore casts off its dross, serpent at the point of death, dull, dazed, struggling; serpent, finally, alive and quick; renewed… Fire consuming phoenix… out of the fire, the phoenix… must be destroyed in order for it to be created… burned in the fire which utterly annuls all manner of form and life, in order for it to be given new form and new life… my lady’s for the fire…

The Fair White Matron had at last wedded the Ruddy Man.

In Vergil’s mind he could see a certain rustic farm he knew well of old; the beehives, the hound-eared sheep, the furrows yielding to the plowman’s pressing tools; in the oak and beechy woods beyond, the tusky boar besought by hunters. Too, he could see a certain village in the Calabrian hills, known to him in later times, the spare lean houses perching like eagles upon their crag, the rushing streams — incredibly cool, wonderously clear — the quiet pools where lurked the cautious fish, the sweet-smelling woods and flowery glades. How much he should love to visit either place, sink gratefully into the quiet, and float there forever… or at least until his weariness was all laved and washed away. To be sure, all the great questions remained unanswered, their problems unresolved, though that of the Phoenix and the Mirror had been. He had, so to speak, been forced to look into the sun; though the image of a great, dark disc no longer hung over and obscured his vision, had this vision been made quite, quite clear? His complete psyche had been restored to him, but in what way was he any more than he had been before?

A slight breath, a slight movement lifted him from revery. She stood by his side, slightly smiling at him.

Phyllis was more.

His soul had been captured again, it seemed. But this time without pain. Clemens might growl and grumble at the presence of a young woman in the strange, high house on the Street of the Horse-Jewelers. But the gift of the two old books of Eastern music he had always coveted would quiet even Clemens’ grumbles.

The Author wishes to express his thanks and appreciation to James Blish, for early encouraging this novel, to Damon Knight and the late Richard McKenna for major suggestions concerning it, to L. Sprague de Camp, Karen Anderson, Walter Breen, the late Hannes Bok and the late Professor Willy Ley for valuable information included in it, Sayre Hamilton for help in preparing the manuscript, to Robert Silverberg and Virginia Kidd and Lawrence P. Ashmead for help in arranging its publication; to Don Denny, for information precognitive of this book; particularly to Grania K. D. Davis for assisting in its construction, and to that magical spirit of prophecy which — far more than corporal hand or conscious mind — actually wrote it.