Avram Davidson - The Scarlet Fig - Or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone, Book Three of the Vergil Magus Series

A man might be too old to plow, and yet know the best day to start the plowing.

It was a while before he made a resolve to see Old Numa in his house-and-cave.

And a while longer before actually he went to see him.

The creature glared at him.

Why was he, Mariu, here? What was he, Mariu, here to find? How was he to do it? Some stray memory, stray but yet purposeful, entered his mind … of a milestone set by a path in a hollow, in a small wasteland of thicket and thistle and rubble and rock … perhaps memorable only because it was otherwise so unmemorable? No. If he wanted the best view of the bay, to contemplate the galleys crawling over the seas … sometimes they did not crawl but with oars put up and sails full of wind they skimmed along the main … from Greece … to Greece, or farther … much, much farther … perhaps as far as ancient Carthage, much loved by Juno, stained with purple and heavy with gold … perhaps (not merely unlikely, but almost impossible … still … still … that which was almost impossible was possible) perhaps, via the canal which joined the sweet fresh waters of the Nile to the salt waves of the Arabian Recess and past the Gate of Tears and thence into the vast fetches of the Erythraean Ocean and the Indoo Sea and entire way to the Golden Chersonese and its far-distant City of Lions and thus to many-fabled Cipangu (risks, hazards, horrids, stinking shallows, shoals, and depths without bottom) — Merely to contemplate: one had to walk even that mile, at least that mile, and to encounter that milepost. And then to pass it.

And, now, Numa was that milepost.

The boy stepped forward.

The creature glared at him swiftly thrust out a palm as black as an apeling’s. Its hung-agape mouth had a long spittle on the dropping-forward lower lip, this lip it folded back over some browned and crooked numbs of teeth, and in a harsh voice of curious tone, “ Money ,” it said. “Wisdom and wonder is not to be had for nought.”

Not, without thought , for think on the words he did, but as quick as any reflex, he handed over the peeled oaken wand, as some tale or other round about the chestnut-scented nightfire had indicated that he should (chestnuts in the fire, chestnut-wood with its ruddy heart … or was it carob? memory of, earlier, chestnut flowers scenting all the world). Scorn, and hateful scorn upon the creatures’ face. “Where is the wee white bit of silver for my master?” the harsh, high voice demanded, “What, no’ even a copper piece, such as the hostler-thrall may have at stables? Why cam ye here, saucy boy, saunce coin?”

Another voice now the boy heard, from the murkiest region of the room behind the door; at hearing this (to him) wordless grumble, Mariu at once understood that it was a voice of power, and that the grumble was not directed to him. The creature must have realized it, too, for it flinched, withdrew into itself a bit, yet gan a-whining for all that. “A peeled oaken-switch, lord warlock, shall I seeth it for thy supper? Or roast it by the coals like a fatling-kid?” Still its sarcasm, yes, hate, was strong and live, like the strong, thrang odor of some loathesome beast (and it lacked not that, either, the boy thought). He made a half-step back.

The other voice spoke again. “Belike we’ll lay it along thy humps and haunches, Caca, mayhap twill be this rotten head of thine we’ll seeth in pot, Caca, or thy runny rump, dern scabs and all. What! Caca, still stand thee there? Boy! Push it aside, come over the threshold, enter, enter, pleased to be coming in.”

It came not to push; the strange thrawn doorkeeper drew aside, and, sending the boy one last evil look, gat it gone — presumably to the cave which common talk agreed lay behind the heavy dark curtain at the rear of the house proper. But — as to the warlock’s voice! — for the warlock himself he could see nought of, save some large shape amidst the shadow and the smoke — to be sure the voice had begun with all the power of a king — and then of sudden, turned sweet. So that long later he was reminded of the famous play upon words which turned Ptolemaios , the name of Ægypt’s king, who had sent an hundred thousand only slightly suspected subjects to toil in his silver mines; turned Ptolemaios into Apo Melitos : Made-of-Honey. Aye, but they were subtle folk, there in Grecian Æ gypt — and, aye! they had need to be. Haply it had amused them there, moiling by torchlight at the black ore — but, well! Claude was Ptolemy now, a philosopher for a king, a cosmographer, and … well … one must hope — no abuser of power. And as the boy was pleased to be coming in (and pleased he may have been, but he was not delighted), the warlock spoke again in his made-of-honey voice, “When the novice approaches the adyt, all clothing and other possessions should be cast off, charm, chest-cloth, ring and ringlet; there should be no retained objects.” To be sure the boy had heard a muckle tales of sacred washings, immersions, lustrations, ablutions, and so his fingers began working at fibula, belt, knot, and pouch — scarcely knowing where to begin, his fingers roved and roamed; but something stirred within him which demanded precedence, a mighty great caveat was growing, and a strong and cool caution alongside of it: they pushed his fingers away and they made smooth his face and voice.

“I am not to do this now, my lord bridge-builder.”

A gust of air made the smoke billow up, but it made it billow in such a manner as to clear away the reek and fume where the warlock sate. Of nothing was the boy so much reminded as of the sight he had seen once in the market on a festal-day, an artist had for sale a pair of tablets made with colors of heated wax on slabs of wood. “This shows Mount Somma as she was before, as tall and strong as Mount Vesuviu. And this other shows she as she be now.” In the figure of the warlock Mariu instantly felt he could discern the shape and features of a fine, great man; but concealed, as it were collapsed, inside the slumped and sunken figure sitting in the chimney-corner chair-seat, clutching his requisite sword in ane great twisted, spotted fist; and to be sure, to be sure, a wolfskin kirtel hung loosely slung about him, and it still smelled so, one might think it freshly cut, or not so freshly staled upon: or was that but the lingering scent of the thrall Caca?

“Wolfskin,” but what did wolves smell like, really? A something which he later on came to think of as common sense, told the boy that, smell like what they may, live wolves and cured wolves’ hides (well-cured or ill —) were not likely to be found together. This thought was like a streak of cool in the midst of a feeling perhaps not really hot , and yet why did his heart swell so? and why did his breath labor?

This place was no flowerbed of spices. And —

What bleary eyes the old man had! It was not sure that he blinked now for a show of seeing you, or —

At once, the invitation to shed garb and gear now having been declined, at once the old wizard’s manner changed; his very tone, too. Gone was the royal We , and gone, also the made-of-honey voice. “Marius, hail,” Numa mumbled, in an eldritch toothless voice, as though lost in the palate.