Avram Davidson - The Phoenix and the Mirror

The congregation murmured a word, evidently in response, which Vergil did not know.

“And as for those lost in heresy,” the old man declared, his face becoming burning-fierce, “worse than those who merely persecute our bodies — as for those who say that our Lord and Savior Daniel Christ did not die in the lion’s den, let them be anathema!” The crowd responded with the same short word as before. “And those who claim that The Christ is yet to come and that he will bear some other name or die some other death, let them be anathema!” Again, the response. “Let them be harried, let them be persecuted, may their flesh be torn and their blood spilt! May they be hanged and nailed upon the limbs of trees! For the Lord Daniel suffered pain and agony for them, and they refuse His sacrifice! Woe! Woe! Woe!”

He took a deep breath and opened his mouth again, but before he could speak a girl screamed. The room was suddenly full of soldiers, seizing and binding all who were there. For just an instant the old man shrank back, his tongue running in and out of his mouth like a snake’s tongue. Then he thrust himself forward, his face almost truculent, and offered his wrists to the cords.

Heart numb and swollen and cold with fear, Vergil waited, but no one touched him. No one noticed him. All were silent, all went dim, all vanished from his sight.

The lulling noise, as of waves lapping against a hull, died away. Light, with reticulations of darkness, shone upon his eyelids, and Vergil awoke. The morning had come, brightening through the thin plates of horn in the window lattice. He was in his own room once again.

THE FRONT PART of the elaboratory and workshop of Vergil occupied all of one floor of the house in the Street of the Horse-Jewelers; the rear part of it rose upwards the height of two more stories. There, in the measured darkness interspersed with broad shafts of light slanting down from the upper windows (there were none on the lowest level), he addressed his few assistants.

“We want to make a speculum majorum,” he said, standing with one foot on a workbench. “You have all heard of such a thing, doubtless some of you at least have read of it as well.” Behind him rose tall engines, their wheels and hafts casting odd and baroque shadows on the floors freshly sanded — as they were at least twice a day — to prevent both slipping and the chance of fire. As he spoke, one of the men, turning his head occasionally and nodding to show he was both hearing and listening, added bits of charcoal to a fire under a closed vessel. He weighed each bit in a scale, and checked the time of adding it to the fire by an hourglass. The fire had been going, maintained with the most scrupulous care by day and night in order to ensure as even a temperature as possible, for four years without cessation. It still had two years to go, after which it would be allowed to die down over the course of a year, and then for six months to cool.

The master recapitulated the matter. “Such a mirror is made of virgin bronze, made carefully and diligently according to the arcane science of such a work, and without anyone’s looking into it during its manufacture. If this is done properly, then whoever is the first to look into it will see whatever he or she desires most to see. But the speculum majorum cannot see into the past, neither can it look into the future.

“Nor is it permitted to attempt to peek into the private realm of Immortal God. The sighting must be of something actually and presently existing on the earth and in the world of mortal man, ‘Who must,’ — says Hesiod — ’till the earth, for bread, or perish.…’”

The attentive silence was emphasized, rather than broken, by a slow clicking of a rachet wheel turning somewhere in the shadows of the great room. One of the men, white-haired and white-bearded old Tynus, made a reflective noise in his throat. “It will be necessary to seek a favorable hour with unusual precision and care,” he observed. “This is a matter of philosophy as well as artisanship.”

Iohan, a squat, long-armed man with a chest like a tun of wine, his voice rumbling and echoing, said, “But it is also a matter of artisanry as well as philosophy. I leave observations of nodes and cusps and houses and hours to others — for my part, I say, let the clay be of the finest quality, the wax of the purest, the ore of the soundest — and let the cooling not be hurried, no, nor the polishing, either.”

But Perrin, an open-faced young man with a smudge of soot across his face where he had wiped it with his hand, said, “Master, I don’t understand. The disciplines involved are rigorous, but beside the point. Such a project is impossible, practically. Iohan says the ore should be of the soundest. I agree. We all agree. But I have to ask, What ore? There has no ore of tin or copper come onto the market in Naples in my life time. Except for small specimens, samples, such as you, sir, keep in your cabinet, I’ve never even seen what these ores look like. Of what use is it to observe the signs and mark the seasons, as Tynus says, this being so?”

Perrin had hit upon the crux of the matter. Copper came from Cyprus — the island of Aphrodite was so rich in it that it had given its name to the metal — but the route to and from Cyprus was cut off by the ships of the fierce Sea-Huns, and had been for well over a decade. The Sea-Huns allowed, by agreement and for tribute (euphemistically termed guard money ), one great fleet a year in each direction — from the Empire to Cyprus, from Cyprus to the Empire. There were, to be sure, blockade runners of a sort: small, swift vessels plying between the eastern shore of the island and the nearer coast of Little Asia. But these risked only cargo light in weight and precious in every ounce — gold, perfume, pretty girls.

Copper was too bulky, and not nearly so valuable as to justify the risk. Three swift trips in a smuggling craft and the captain could retire for life. Load his ship with heavy ingots of copper and he might well wallow in the narrow seas — and retire onto an impaling stake, having first been flayed (slowly) of every inch of skin. Or as near as made no great matter — a man in such an acutely uncomfortable position was not likely to quibble over an inch or two here or there. One did not in any event quibble with the Sea-Huns.

Once a year, then, the great heavy galleys and galleons came and went in their convoys, laden down and lumbering slowly over the tideless sea as far as the eye could reach. Vast as was the supply thus obtained, it was not yet equal to the demand. The trade was in the hands of a guild of merchants who charged what the rich traffic would bear; orders had to be placed years in advance. There were warehouses in Naples piled from tile roofs to stone foundations with copper — but it was copper smelted down into ingots for the most part — a small part of it still came in bullock hide-shaped sheets for the old-fashioned, country trade — and, in either event, it was not copper ore.

It was copper changed by the acts of man. It was not virgin copper.

The agreement to “guard” the convoy (i.e. to allow it through) had been wrested only with great difficulty from the three rulers of the Sea-Huns — or, at any rate, from two of them. Osmet was said to be the brains and cunning of the lot; Ottil, to be the fighting heart of the far-flung, restless, and water-borne hordes; Bayla, the third royal brother, was reputed a sot or an idiot — in any event, a cipher. The chances of getting them to make any change in an arrangement to which their greed and recklessness made them at best but luke-warm were nil. And the uncivilized crews of the black and blood-red boats of the water hordes would have no mercy on any independent craft at all.