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

“This is either the Worm Ouroborus,” Vergil said, referring to the device of a serpent swallowing its own tail, the symbol of eternal wisdom; “or the Gordian Knot…. Anent which,” his mind was not contented to stay even with the marvel before him but hurried swiftly aside to another one. “… anent which I have ever questioned that Magnus Alexander in truth fulfilled the prophecy told of ‘whoso would untie that great knotted cable of cormel-bark would rule Asia’; he did but take his sword and slash it!”

“Yet he did rule Asia,” murmured Sparga.

“‘He did rule Asia,’ but he ruled Asia by virtue of some other marvel, that marvel which was Magnus Alexander,” insisted Vergil.

Still murmuring, Sparga, “Even so. Oft one reads and one hears that the Philosopher’s Egg may be sliced open with a single stroke of a sword, its wonders to expose. But never does one hear or read an explanation which is satisfactory, as to what .” Sparga used more vessels of crystal and glass than Vergil was accustomed to seeing in an elaboratory: how they all sparkled there in the summer sunshine of Verona! “… as to what is the Philosopher’s Egg and as to which sword or what sword.”

The subject was fascinating, but Vergil with a sigh unvoiced set that one ring adown and took up the other. And this was ornamented and enchased with a design of many small flowers; his eyes were keen enough to make out, to his great enchantment and pleasure that every petal of every flower was itself a smaller flower; and he felt certain that, were his eyes keen enough, he might find that these tiny flowers were composed of flowers tinier yet. “Each ring, Master Sparga,” he said, murmuring low, “is a marvel. Why have I never heard of them?”

“Why be so sure that you have never heard of them?”

Of a sudden Vergil felt a shock as they lay in his palm or was it in his mind? he ne’er knew. “What, ser? Messer Sparga! Can it be that one is the ring called Senex , which makes young men old? and that this other is the ring called Juvens which makes old men young?”

The occamyst slightly oppressed his lips, edges so fine and sharp that might they have been carven by a crisping-tool. “A marvel it would be indeed, were a young man to wish to be old! To wisdom, a hard road!”

Vergil, with a slight gesture and a questioning look, requested that he might have water from the nearby jug; Sparga did not allow him leave by speech or motion, but he poured him water with his own hand. The jug was very curiously wrought, with sylvan scenes drawn upon it, such as a spring emptying into a rocky pool overhung with trees. The water was as cool and fresh as though it had just now run purling from such a source indeed. “Thank you. — perhaps old in wisdom is the proper meaning of it. Eh?”

“And is the other geste to become young in wisdom? Eh, indeed.” To this Vergil had no answer. “Unless,” Sparga, “that herewith Natura hath prepared an almighty jest of the other sort: that the rings be tried on unwittingly, a gamble very great, and the outcome not surely known; be not tempted, ser. Swiftly I forfend such temptation!” In an instant Sparga had taken up the two rings and twisted them with a motion for which deft was insufficient, lo! one ring was fixed curled inside the other. And … hold: “ Curled inside the other?” there was something almost shockingly odd about the angle there … “Pentalepto of Scythia,” Vergil said, slowly (and the chymist soft said Ahhh ), “accounted how he slipped, one day as he was walking the walk of the mazes and calculating his steps as he stepped, miscalculated, and slipped sideways and downways, as the Magna Homero has it, ananta katanta paranta , upalong, sidealong, downalong; and so fell he into that otherworld and universe in which even the geometry is clean different. There were the dragons feeding Anthony in the fattening pen. Anthony cried to him for help, but Pentalepto suffered so much as he stood there sickened by the strangest strangeness of it all in the harsh prismatic light, that it was with an almighty effort he broke back amongst us. And as for Anthony —”

Vergil threw a sharp glance at Sparga, who merely took out from anywhere a small box carved in great detail showing the lyngworme coiled about the legs of Frotho Dragonslayer the suitor of that Thora (so the Northish annals told), and he with his sword couched high and ready to slash down; there was no egg present; and from the box the Sparga plucked a patch of some gloriously yellow sheepfell, and wrapped the twined twain rings up in it, and, opening his guest’s clenched fingers, slipped the tiny pacquet inside onto his palm. “This and these be thine,” he said. “These and this be thine.” It was, the guest Vergil felt, perhaps almost a formula as from a rescript. Of one thing and alone one thing was Vergil sure. To make a great matter of this great matter would be a mistake: “Thank you, Master Sparga,” said Vergil.

“Sadly do I note that the day wanes shorter and that you will never tarry, nor I press you never so much.”

And as he was saying this, he was moving along, Vergil perforce moving that pace ahead of him, and almost it seemed that guest was escorting host to the hole of the door; so deftly did Sparga give the congée. And the posts by the sides and the lintel up above were carven in strange carvings of designs, and one was that of an incoiling coiling without end, and the other was a continual wreath of flowers of whose petals were other flowers made, and so on so. “When next we meet, Ser Juvens,” Sparga ( Sparga illa ) said, “you are to riddle Ser Senex the riddle of this riddling,” and as he was so saying he was closing him the door. Vergil went alone to the inn with his head full of many thoughts. Always he kept with him in his pouchet or poke that scrap-piece of the (he was sure, quite sure) the Golden Fleece which contained the twain two rings so strangely flexed together. The sun was going down, down over Verona, as it was downgoing everywhere in that Zone of the Climates, but he saw it as it were going down upon the great Voe of Naples in an immense crowd of clouds of rosy-colored flame. And within it was a cloud of gold. To the Southwest lay the Isle of Inarime or Isehia and to the Southwest the Isle of Goats, or Capria. And within his heart lay much wonder at the wonders endless of the world.

He said nothing as he went.

Vergil was not used to the house-high waves of the Great Green Sea of Atlantis (what sensible man ever was?) … and no ordinary house of a man’s height plus half of a man’s height, but of those towering tenements called islands … might not waves so high sweep clear over actual islands? With such thoughts one ought not to entertain oneself in such rough weather on such rough sea; the Romans had a saying, Only Greeks and fools go much to sea. Odd that to the Romans, Greece was the epitome of sea-faring, while the Greeks themselves said Ship-shape as a Punicman: what said the Punes? perhaps they praised the ships of Tartis. Although the Carthagans, still rough-mannered colonials compared to the mellow Punic folk of Tyre and Sidon, the Carthagans were not at all likely to praise any place but Carthage … though, as any schoolboy knew, Carthage had been destroyed.

Destroyed, too: Vergil’s hope that he might in unvexed security return from Tingitayne.

Groping his hand into his budget for a clean cloth to wipe his mouth, he encountered a small bouguin, what was it but that Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne which Nephew-to-Sergius had given him to boot in Corsica. Seldom could Vergil resist the seduction of a new book and however old chronologically or corporally this one was, twas new to him: he read in it till the seas seemed monstrous rough, then slipped it back away. Every atom in his body seemed now at war with every other atom, he covered his body from the spume and spray and fell into a dull state in which he half-dreamed he was in the bough of a tree, the while drinking an infusion of sage and ginger for his stomach: there seemed a conversation going on between two men whose voices he could not then identify, familiar though they seemed. Ginger is cheap this season , one was saying; ginger is cheap, a pound of ginger now costs no more than a sheep . Cheerful and jocular was his voice. And another, graver and somedel pettish: Why should any wise man sicken or die who has sage growing in his garden-herbs?