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

But in the language of metaphor she was not a locked city, no mere city was she: hints, flashes of wit, here a question, there a geste; now and then their eyes met and much passed in such moments, though he was not at all sure of all which passed. Her love was not that of youth, to pass away like the sands in the swift winds …

He had been shown to his room that first night by someone who understood no language which he did, but pointed out very civilly the jar of plain cool water for drinking and the jar of warmed and lightly scented water for washing; and who left two lamps, both alight, and a vessel of oil. Vergil took off his tunic and took up the book called Periplus of the Coasts of Mauretayne ; how had she known his name? his names , well two to them … This book opened at a touch, almost. Would there be anything in it which would shed any light, more than the two lamps? Evidently a page, at least, was missing. Abruptly the succedant one began:

gion called Huldah. Below this Region is a haven of sufficient depth for most ships, and also sufficient water to sustain till the next. In this haven, called Maldacos, is procured for its own weight in Steel of Toledo or of Damasheque, the substance called Cake of Maldacos, translucent as wax, yielding an unction with the bitter and fragrant female scent simil to Mother-of Myrrh in its season, which so enciteth the Stallions. Tis well-known, and to the just and great discomfort of captains in cavalry: nought will suffice but to convey it by camel, packed in rhinoceros scrotum, the natural olor of quich doth render the fragrance of the other neutral and null, if it be not opened; and when it yer be opened, swiftly smear it where thou wishest: on tress, on rocks, or thorny pricket-shrubs, having behind you the right quarter of the wind: then wae! ye captains of horse! farewell to the good order of your ranks! But one must have the mastery of this Art; a mere prentice may be trampled, and or worse. But now weigh anchor and enough of this and take the tide at spring of day

Various thoughts molested his mind, then one thought said, enough of this ; he blew out one of the lamps and washed his hands and face and feet and got into bed. And then he blew out the other lamp.

He woke but once in the night; very distantly he heard the hunting cry of the yænas, Flesh -flesh! Flesh -flesh! Merely to hear that frightful cry was to make attempt to flee: attempt usually more fatal than to stay. But it was far off and by soft sounds he perceived it was the hour when the ox lows in its stall: if the oxen were not sore afraid, no more, then, was he. He gave a slight tug to his sheet and let his limbs go loose.

“Ah,” she said, by and by, “you note the armils. Silver and gold are fairly cheap, but craftsmanship is costlier … unless, of course, one is a Barbar chieftess,” her hands made gesture of immense and rolling fat, and for a moment her face assumed a look of cowlike imbecility mingled with a haughtiness not learned in any school of high manners; he laughed. “… and who counts wealth only by weight and mass, and to whom the niceness of work well-done is nothing. Shall you see my armils more closely?” He made as if to lean over and examine them; for a second she pulled her hands away, she hid one behind her back, one she rested on her chest just below the collar-bone as though it might relieve some silly feigned insult. And in another second, Vergil almost helpless with laughter, she brought them both forth and down. “To get them off there requires a certain trick of moving my wrists and hands,” she moved them, not with instant effect —

“Do not bother,” he said: impulsively.

Lightly, “Tut,” she said: in another second had them off, held them in her palms, the armils, then forth to him.

“These are very curious and odd,” he murmured, for indeed they made any polite sham and perfunctory praise out of the question … if, indeed, it had ever been in the question.

“Yes, very curious …”

“They are very old, I think.”

“Yes, very old, I think …”

“And not made from entirely pure silver.”

Almost eagerly she moved even closer to him and nodded her head entirely eagerly. “I think so, too. But I don’t know what else for sure may have been molten in with the silver … or even if it came from the dark matrix already mixed with, well, whatever it is mixed with: if only one single other metal, and perhaps there are several. It doesn’t tarnish quickly, as other silvers do …”

He lay his fingers here and there upon them. “And perhaps if we learned how to refine and part them, it might be that we would find them to be not just impurities to be discarded, but purities to be discovered; not alone different names, but different uses as well …” His fingers ceased to move. “The signs,” he said.

“Yes, the signs.” She chuckled. “I gave them all names, you see, when I was young, still so young that these would slip off my wrists unless they were padded — and of course I didn’t want them to be padded, so I walked around like this —” then Vergil laughed — “as though my hands had been painted with henna and were still wet, and —”

“And what did you name the signs, then?”

In a beam of silvered sunlight he observed the motes dancing.

“Oh, childish nonsense!”

“A boon! Tell me!”

She made no more demur. “I think that this one is the white ewe for the sun and this one the black ram for the earth, see with what pains it is stippled there? — and these others, I am not sure what they are, or even if they were made at the same time or by the same artist; sometimes one sees strange creatures pictured, are they real creatures from so far ago far that one does not know them? or did someone dream them, perhaps after gluttoning too much thick food too soon before sleep? These others, they are odd. As though one might picture a crayfish or a scorpion who had never really seen a —”

The fragrance as of some fragrant wood fairly freshly sawn, was most pervasive; did he know that wood? he did: what was its name or nature? he did not know. He feigned a scowl. “Their names! The Court insists to know their names!”

She feigned fright. “Mercy, the Court! Oh, well, if I must (I Must!), well, the ewe, I suppose it is a ewe, I called ‘ Pony-lamb ’ and the ram, if it’s not meant to be a black ram, what then, O Court? But these , these others … I don’t really think that I entirely … what? oh, I called the ram, simply, ‘ Spots’ … I hadn’t yet reasoned that it was meant to be black …”

He lifted his eyes and looked at her. “And the others? whom you are not entirely sure you like?”

She gave him a swift look, not astonished, but indeed surprised, for she had not finished that phrase, and he had guessed how she meant to, and he was right. “Well … there is no simply to these others. This one I called Arristamurrista . And this one I called Arretagoretta . And this one I called Arrantoparanto. But I never told their names to anyone after the first time, when they laughed at me. My Father said, ‘This is neither Punic nor Latin.’ And my Mother said, ‘Nor Berbar nor Etruscan.’ They were laughing fondly, of course, but I — So now you know all, O Court.”

Musingly, he said, “That is certainly a singular sort of ‘childish nonsense’. Where —”