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

At length Benninaly brought him to a large cave not yet occupied, in fact never occupied but prepared for occupancy, with rugs upon the rock floor and tappetties of broider-work upon the rock walls, and furniture-backs of embossed leather: all of the quality as used by the well-to-do. Even, in niches and on shelves, there were books as well, and images of animals. The main several rooms were built about and ventilated by an air-shaft fashioned by largening a natural and deep fissure. Even there was a kitchen with its own air “pipe”: and behind them all, rooms of larder. The caffile had brought stores of dried foodstuffs, with oil and wine and charcoal… “It seems a good place to live,” Vergil said, reluctantly, “— if one must live here, that is. If this is life.”

“Ah, the vanity and uselessness!” cried Benninaly, laying aside his silence as a garment for the nonce not needed. “And besides,” in a lower and unemotional tone, “they soon enough tires of it and ventually they finds an old and greasy hole to slink into and be snug enough … usually.” And added that somewhere in this rocky warren was the dwelling place of one who had been a paramount prince, said still to keep a kind of court and was waited on by some whose kin-family had all died out and no one to send them victuals or ought, or not enough. “But he never show himself … at anyway, never to us. There!” He finished setting up a bronze stand holding many lamps. “Tis fit for — for him who’ll come here. By the caffila in ane year’s time, I ‘xpect … if not before. When his woe can be no more concealed. Eh? Nay. No wives allowed here, unless they be also leprous stricken by such a fate as strikes without the twinly curse, absit omen.” Spet a thrice time, beckoned, left. Vergil followed after.

One day more unlading, then they mounted each man his animal and left that rusty hell.

The congregants had made but not much sound, the travel-company being there, but as the caffila turned long-around to go, there rose from behind them at the foot of the Rough Place, thin at first and scarce to be told from the scree and cry of some haunting bird, then louder and more deep, such a sound and wail of despair and lamentace as he had never heard at any funeral nor any place of pestilence or death judicial. Perhaps some dim thought from his brief day as an advocate at law came now into his mind, that it was the sentence of death which was executed — the man himself was killed.

And it was to this place, life-in-death or death-in-life, that one day must come one nephew of Bodmi the cooper.

One … depending on which loved the other more … or, if not such love?

Both.

Lamentace.

For a long while the horror of the Rough Place stayed with them all, and all were silent, from Benninaly the capitane of the caravan to the mangiest camels which might have been excused for braying out of mere relief that their loads had been lightened, and that the men had not been obliged to tap the stinking water stored in the humps. The land of stone appeared as stoney as ever: but now and then and always just in time they came either to an oasis or a deep, deep well, whither men descended great depths, never the water being near the surface. It beseemed that all the waters of Afric had sunk beneath that stoney carapace: thank the god that evidently another such below the water kept it from sinking quite away into sands subterranean. By and by the taste of that frightful and accursed place ebbed off, it would be wrong to say that they became all cheerful; but one might say that although the weather remained fearful hot by day and frightful cold by night, merely they endured it with a calm endurance.

Yet one day, Vergil, having fallen a bit behind and to aside, was all at once joined by Caniacus and two other of his masked confraternitude. Idly Vergil asked, in the old manner of Italic boatsmen as they raised another, “What thing?”

Quite a thing indeed, they indicated with a many gestures. But only Caniacus spoke, saying, “ ‘The Nephew of the Cockatrisk’, we call it.” And as to, what was it, and why did they call it so, why there followed only sundry shrugs. Also, more gesticulations. Something, it was clear, was presently to be a-seen; and a great wonder it was. By and by Vergil saw what appeared to be an odd-shaped stone, like so many odd-shaped stones in this stony land. As the Masked Men got them down from their beasts, why, so did he. They had begun to shovel at the sands with their hands, and to scoop it up and throw it aside; indeed, they had not quite finished their tasks when he came along, holding his horse’s bridle with his right hand as if he were any page or quire leading his knight’s destrier. And almost he thought he saw just that: a knight upon a destrier, covered with that eternal dust which covered all things, here. The image was one of the best things of the sort that he had ever seen: a statue of a mounted man-at-arms imperial, in exquisite detail: even the rings of the mail upon the man’s baldric seemed to have been chiseled with an eye to an expectation of an inspection far keener than Vergil’s. He asked the men just now clearing way the clinging crowding sands from the horses hooves, “How came that statue here?”

Had it been done to mark a battle? A cairn of stones would have done as well, besides he had hearn never tale nor story of any great battle in the Terrapetra: and in any case would not the victor have sooner arranged for his own (or an Imperial) likeness to have been brought thither from some town where flourished the arts lapidary, or — likelier — arranged for the sculptor to have crossed the desert to carve the monument (he looked for inscription: none could he see: indeed, there was no base nor pedestal … unless they lay under the sands)… “How came that statue here?” asked Vergil.

“Ah, that is the very Nephew of the Cockatrisk, you see. How came he here? Why as to that I do not know, but see you how once he encountered that deadly look, that evil eye” here the men all made apotropaic gestures; it being dry to spit “and in a twinkle it petterfied him into stone —”

Just so; every statue found in desolate places and cities which no longer man inhabiteth, though once populous and green trees grown about, each such image was said by the Masked Men to have been once creatures quick with life, but turned to stone by the cockatrisk or the basilisk (their memories did not go as far back, evidently, to Medusa, her hair full of snakes … evidently some primitive ascription rich with awe, by perhaps the first of the peoples of the Sea Between the Lands ever to have seen the otherwise inexplicable tightly-coiled hair of “dusky Nemon’s swarthy race;” whom the later and wiser would call “the pious and fleecey-haired Æthiopians”). Well … then … “How long has he been here, then?”

Sighs, hums, more shrugs, more gesticulations. “‘How long’? Ah … how long shine the stars by which we navigate this stony sea? … Ah … ‘How long?’ Why my sire he often y-spoke of’t to me, ensaying, ‘Turn to the right a half-turn as you hold your arm out straight to catch the shadow when the Seven Sisters rise, and thence past the Nephew of the Cockatrisk will bring you to sweet pastures inlands …’ Ah … ‘how long?’ Why my grandsire a-spoke of it before my infant ears, ‘how long,’…. And my grandsire hoary —” and this , Vergil had learned, meant the great -grandfather. To attempt to accompt years by such tales was a task most futile … and … eh …?