The Phoenix and the Mirror

CHAPTER NINE

THE PHOENICIAN WAS engaged in telling tales from his lost home’s voluminous history once again.

“Our chief demigod was named Melcarth,” he said. “In other words, Melec-Cartha, or King Arthur, the one who…”

Vergil sat placidly, certain that no response was expected of him and that as long as he sat in a posture of listening, An-Thon would be content. Having many thoughts of his own, he remained quiet, not moving enough to have tinkled a hawk’s bell. The ship rode well, the sea was clean, the sun warm. He had left Clemens in nominal, titular charge of the preparations for casting a speculum majorum — without ever stating or even implying that the charge was not intended to be actual. Left to do all by themselves, the chief artisans, though intrinsically capable, might well have become divided and resentful among themselves. This way, they would combine as one against the basically harmless vagaries and idiosyncrasies of the alchemist.

If Clemens had any notion of this, Vergil did not know. But some mild stirrings of reproach kept him from refusing the one favor on which his friend insisted.

“I am sending my gargoyle with you,” the great-bearded, shag-pate savant had said. “It is a sacrifice, I must admit that, but I will be safer here without him than you would be. Up, Kiss the Magus’ hand. Guard him in all things, obey him in everything. Vergil, may the Fair White Matron and her consort, the Ruddy Man, both shine favorably upon you. If you meet any in Cyprus who are skilled in the Spagyritic Art, inquire concerning antimony. I, in return, will oversee the work of preparation for the making of the maiden mirror. Since there will thus be no time for me to engage in any major work of my own, I will pass the few hours available to me, lightly — my editing of Catullus, my Galenical studies; and my transposition into current modes of music of the ancients.… Up, Gunther! Up!

The gargoyle had lumbered onto his hind legs and, with a slaver and a slobber, kissed Vergil’s hand, then sank with a grunt to his common posture, and mumbled the ruins of a blood orange — his favorite tid-bit. It was long since that Clemens, returning from a consultation with the Druids of Transalpine Gaul, had come upon a rachitic mountain hamlet where he was obliged to spend the night. The place was in some degree of excitement — a party of hunters, out after wild goat, had met with a horde of gargoyles on a windswept plateau. The creatures fled incontinently, leaving behind one sickly whelp, which was captured without difficulty. The horde father, following at a distance, growling and lowing and making fierce gestures, was at length dissuaded by a shower of stones from further pursuit. Clemens had gotten the whelp for half a ducat and a flitch of bacon; and, by means of infusion prepared from the humors of bullocks, effected a cure.

Gargoyles proverbially seldom lived long in captivity, but Gunther was now in his second decade with Clemens. Great tongue lolling far out, bat ears either a-prick or a-flap, tushes sharp and given to clashing noisily, as near to no neck as made no matter, back covered with broad shoulders and forepaws (on the back of which he walked), short hind legs bowed, the talons on their spatulate feet clicking and clacking as he sloped along, casting suspicious glances from side to side, Gunther was worth a cohort in protection by his looks alone.

Vergil made the voyage on the Messina carrack without molestation, arriving there a day before the rendezvous. He had acquaintance and other claims to hospitality there, to say nothing of what he might demand by reason of his letters of state. It seemed, however, easier all around to stay at the Great Serail, widely known as the finest inn in Sicily. The table was excellent, the gardens beautiful, the chamber well appointed and comfortably furnished and clean. He had had a curious dream that night, of a marble slab sinking back into the wall, and a hand coming out, of Gunther rising ponderously from beside the foot of the bed, shutting out his view. Everything was, of course, in perfect order the next morning when, first warm water, then breakfast, was brought in. Aware of some minor annoyance, however, Vergil, frowning, had looked all about before realizing what it was: a noise which Gunther had been making.

The gargoyle sat on the floor contentedly enough, chewing and sucking something. He glowered when his surrogate master demanded it, but finally and reluctantly spat it into his hand that Vergil held out.

It was a human finger.

Vergil finished his own breakfast rather thoughtfully. All in all, Gunther, though certainly useful on occasion, had better go; and go he did, on the Naples carrack, supplied with a hamper of blood oranges, which he crunched and swallowed, skins, pips, and all.

As agreed, Vergil had taken to water from Messina’s Tartis Port, a small boat carrying him and his gear so far to sea that the City of the straits became a mere blur. The scent of oranges grew fainter, and a touch of a hot, dry wind passed over his face.

“The Saracen wind,” the Tartisman coxswain said, observing the effect on his passenger. “It blows from Lybya. It blows no good.” And would say no more, but only shrugged.

Presently a dark patch showed against the sea. Vergil thought it was An-Thon’s ship, but it was merely his boat — a tiny thing, no bigger than a scull, with scarcely room for two; the other being, to his surprise, the black man, Boncar. The Tartismen turned about with no word of parting, Boncar smiled his welcome, and the little craft skimmed along the sea. like a fish in search of sprats. The Red Man’s vessel waited on them in the lee side of a tiny island which was all rock and offered only concealment.

“Greetings, patron,” said the Phoenician, directing, with a gesture, the lading aboard of the scant baggage. “You left your lion ashore, I see.”

“My lion?”

“Rumor credits you with having embarked from Neapolis with a creature variously described as a lion, a gryphon, or a mandrilla.”

“Rumor, I fear, is scarcely as accurate as he is rapid. No, Captain, the creature was my friend Clemens’ tamed gargoyle. I sent him back to his master, thinking that the longer sea trip might not agree with him. You have a new bosun, Captain.”

“Yes. The old one unwisely chose to dispute possession of a wench with someone younger, stronger, and more agile. Boncar, meanwhile, had become bored with ferrying sacks of wheat. Thus do the workings of the Major Principles arrange all things in ultimate order. You may have my cabin, I prefer to sleep on deck. In good weather it is pleasant and in bad I dare not stay long below anyway.”

The bird prow lifted oars, dipped its nose into the sea, and was off. The Straits were unusually quiet, for which all were thankful, and a loaf of bread was thrown over for the Prince of the Sea — one of his emissaries, a dolphin, appearing at once to claim it. A small sea monster broke water some leagues off, once, but made no attempt to break the sacred peace, merely staring at them with its great moon eyes before diving again. The waters were the color of lapis lazuli; in the distance rose mountains of a smoky blue-gray; the nigh shore was a dim green, and the off shore — far, far across the white wave seas — lay dun and gaunt. Clouds paced across the Heavens like giants’ sheep, newly washed and fleeces combed; their dark twins and double-goers grazed upon the seas beneath. Here and there from time to time a flash of lime-whitened houses and thin plumes or clouds of smoke marked the settlements of mortal men

who must till the soil for bread, or perish.

Once the Tyrian lifted his red hand and pointed toward the crag shore. “In that cave, patron, do you see… ?” Vergil, carefully following the long finger, saw on the drab escarpment a black speck which might have been the mouth of a cave; he nodded. “In that cave dwells a puissant guardian, the Cherub Dys, upon my life! When voyagers over the sea, being of good intent, such as lawful trade and traffic, are beset by that cruel fey which haunts the shores of that sharp rock — do you see, patron? there — so Dys, with his flaming sword, sallies forth and saves them. But if they are of bad intent, bent on war or plunder, or fleeing from the just wrath of the All-Maker, the Cherub does not help them. No, if any are able to escape the shade or djinn or daemon which dwells on Sekilla — meaning, in my language, the Rock — then Cherub Dys assails them, too, and serve them right, say I.”

Vergil listened, vaguely aware that the Red Man’s tones and words now seemed, as he half-said, half-sang, these legends of his kith, far different from the manner in which not long ago he had spoken crisply enough of cargoes and charters, of fees, and demurrages. He realized, rather less vaguely, how little he knew about the man, his wishes, his concerns, and his brooding desires.

Presently the sun in his fiery ship (to use the figure of the Phoenician) descended along the equinoctial wheel (to use the tongue of science). The bird prow put into shore, the natives of the region assisted the rowers and the other sailing men to pull her up upon the sands for the night, received their customary dues, brought wood and water and some handfuls of capers — all they could spare in the way of victuals. The voyagers gave thanks to the Giver of all Things, blessed their ship’s hard bread, dipped it in the salt, and ate their meal of oil and tunny, capers, wine, and cakes of figs. One of their number was picked by cast of die to stand first watch, the others hollowed out in the sand spaces for hips and shoulders, scattered herbs against fleas, rolled themselves in their cloaks, and sank peacefully beneath the weight of that grateful weariness welcomed by men who have taxed but not overtaxed their own abundant strength.

The dark came, the moon rose and set, the Ram trampled the black soil of the sky of night.

So simply and sweetly passed the first days of the voyage.

They had reached the wide waters of the Ionian Sea. Captain Ebbed-Saphir appeared upon deck with his astrolabe, as usual, and had returned to his cabin to consult his charts, when Vergil joined him. He indicated the chart just unrolled upon its ivory finials and said, “A present from the Doge of Sparta. Where he got it I do not know, but certainly such a prime specimen of cartography never had its birth in that rude province.… I intend, patron, to make for Zanto, or Sacynthius, for water and supplies. There we can decide upon a course for Candia… and in Candia, concerning Cyprus.”

Vergil shook his head, and, while the Red Man looked at him in surprise, placed his finger on the map.

“Corpho?” cried the Captain. “It is leagues and leagues out of our way.”

“We cannot continue as we are doing,” Vergil said, “hugging a shore like a bait fisherman. At such a rate we might be months reaching Cyprus. I had not informed you, but inform you now, that my purpose is to demand of the Delegate of the Sea-Huns — who has his office in Corpho — a safe-conduct to his Kings, and to obtain from them a safe-conduct to Cyprus. That way we can travel on the open seas. The time required for these two side voyages will thus be more than made up.”

The Phoenician hesitated, considered. It was a bold venture, and a dangerous one, he said. He compared it to asking a riddle of the Sphynx. “Nevertheless… there is danger in any case, and if we succeed we will indeed save time. Very well, we set our course to Corpho.”

And he gave orders to the man at the helm.

Ernas, or Ernalphas, the Delegate in question, was a half-Hun, his mother having been a woman of the Goths or some other tribe of the sort. His residence was in a shore-front villa half surrounded by the groves of that fragrant citron tree for which the island was famous, but Ernas himself lived in a tent in the courtyard, surrounded by unshipped masts, old and new sails, grappling hooks, and other gear. He wore a silk robe and a cap made from the mask of a wolf, and as they entered he was standing an oar.

“Well, Pune,” he greeted the Red Man, in a tone contemptuously affectionate or affectionately contemptuous, “what are you peddling today?” Then, turning to Vergil, he said, “Shaman-i-Rume, can you don the bear’s skin? If so, I will have the drum beaten for you.”

Soberly, Vergil replied, “There are things, my lord Ernas, which a man might do which he would be a fool to do.”

Ernas squinted at this, pursing out his lips, then nodded. “True for you, Rumi Shaman. Time I was a boy, it’s recalled, Tildas Shaman, wise man of the Hun-folk in Atrian Sea, donned the bear’s skin at Old King’s funeral feast. They beat the drum for him, I tell thee, and the spirit of the bear took him hard and held him hard. Grew shaggy and shambled, did Tildas Shaman, nails came out as ‘twere claws. The drum beat, tum-tum! tum-tum! a-tum! a-tum!”

Ernas, as he imitated the sound of the Hunnish tom-tom, rose to his feet, half sank into a slump, and took on the exact stance and posture of a dancing bear. His eyes rolled up till only the whites were visible, his hands drooped from their wrists like the paws of the bear, and his feet, one by one, came up, came down, stamped upon the ground. Deep, harsh growls disturbed his chest; he coughed like a bear. Vergil felt his flesh shaken by a chill of fear. It seemed as though what pranced and snarled before him now was less a man imitating a bear than a bear wearing a silk robe. At length the man-bear slowed, sank to the ground, slept like a bear. Still Vergil stared, jumped back as the “bear” leaped to its feet, once again a man enacting a story (so had history been, swift the thought came, before first drama and then writing had sundered the unity).

“By and by Huns grew tired. Time to get on with it! ‘Ahoy, Tildas, Shaman! Avast! Weigh anchor and make the neap tide!’” He kicked at the ribs of an invisible man on the ground. “‘Awake, awake! Arise, Tildas Shaman, and prophesy for us! What said to you our Old King’s ghost, and what said the ghosts of our fathers and our Sept-mothers?’”

Suddenly the man was a bear again, it rolled over onto all fours, snapping and clawing; it was a bear. It was a bear… .

Skimming the sweat of his endeavors from his face, Ernas took his seat again. “Not another word spoke Tildas Shaman, ever. The spirit of the bear took him hard and held him hard and holds him yet. He put on the bear’s skin and he cannot take it off. So! Shaman-i-Rume! It is a good thing that you said no, but it is also a good thing you did not say no as no, into my face, for a Sea-Hun does not care for that. Letters of state, why and wherefore?”

The abrupt transition did not catch the Magus off balance.

“To show you that I am on the Emperor’s business as well as my own, and to obtain from you a pass to visit your Kings in order to obtain from them, friends by treaty of the August House, a safe-conduct to Cyprus and back.”

Ernas shrugged, picked up the oar on which he had been working. “At this time there are no Kings for you to see. Ottil King is off somewhere, harrying the coasts of Little Asia. Osmet King is in Axand-i-Rume — how do you call it? Al-Axandria — dickering for more tribute. So, no Kings, no pass, no safe-conduct. Go.” His arm was half raised to point the way of their departure, when some recollection of his official role seemed honestly to settle down upon the man. Slowly and ponderously he dropped his arm, ponderously and slowly he said, “If I can in any way, as Delegate of the Sea-Huns, assist the bearers of letters of state from the August House, of course I will do so.” But his eye was on the oar.

Promptly, Vergil said, “You can. A pass to your King.”

Angrily: “Haven’t I told you? There are no Kings about!”

“There is one King about, as I assume from your not having told us he was away.”

Genuine amazement spread over the man’s face, he frowned a second, puzzled. Then his face dissolved into a mass of moving muscles and he cried, “Bayla King?” And he burst out laughing into their faces.

Afterward he had said, amusement still breaking his voice, “So — you have heard of our famous monarch, eh? In all your great cities — Rume, Axand-i-Rume, Byzant-i-Rume, and Jerus-i-Rume — resounds, eh? the fame of Bayla King? Be so. I will give you your safe-conduct. May it be of much profit to the August House.”

And so he had… two of them, in fact. A white horsetail to tie to the Red Man’s mast, and a man of his own household to shout particulars to any Hunnish vessel which approached to find out what a Punic vessel did in those waters with the heralds’ emblem at its mast. This man had the weazened, ageless look of all his folk, and refused (with a look too contemptuous to be scornful) to go below decks at any time. He passed the voyage squatting on the quarter-deck wrapped in a half-hairless old wolfskin. No one knew what he drank, if at all; for food he had in a leathern pouch with him some dark lumps of dried dolphin’s flesh — a diet which horrified the Red Man’s crew. “The dolphin,” they said to Vergil, “is the friend of man, and what man eats his friend? The Huns are no men at all,” they argued, “but daemons, and this proves it.”

The shore camp of the Sea-Huns on the island of Marissus lay in a state of semi-somnolence. The guide indicated, with a grunt and a gesture, where they were to moor. It was deep water there, the broken crater of some drowned mountain, and the figurehead of their ship cast its shadow on the rough shingle of the beach, over the weed-slimed stones and the broken gray pillars of long past days. The hawser was passed through the eye of a stone post, the guide leaped ashore, a small crowd of pot-bellied children and old women gathered; and no further attention was paid to them. On the whole they thought it best to follow their former voyage mate.

Tents were pitched seemingly at hazard along the shore and into the pine and cypress woods, but there were few of them in comparison to the ships. Some of these had been beached for so long and were so unfit for sea that doors had been hacked in them and grass grew on their slanting decks. Here and there a man of fighting age sat, knees up, against a hulk or doorpost, honing a spearhead or a grappling hook or engaged in some other passtime work. But always, they noticed, he bore a wound which prevented his being out with the fighting fleets. There were few old men. Hunmen tended not to live until very old, preferring to perish in battle. But there were old women, and the old women were hideous. Withered, toothless, half-hairless, half-naked, their dried old dugs flapping as they nosed, bent over, about the camp, filthy and shrill, they epitomized the other side of the life of a race which despised what little they dimly understood of such concepts as love or grace or beauty.

Here and there captives of some other nation paused in the work of fetching wood or water and gazed dumbly at the visitors from the half-forgotten world which had not thought them worth the price of redemption; then went again about their labors. A stench of night-soil and stale urine and rotten fish, of ill-cured hides, dried sweat, old dogs, unwashed clothes, sour mares’ milk, and other elements defying analysis hung over the camp. The Sea-Huns were said to bathe but once a year… and on that day, it was told, the fish in all the circumjacent seas died in great multitudes.

Vergil felt he could believe it.

Like sea-wrack long after some great storm, the decayed fruits of their pillage and plunder lay strewn about the camp. Gilded furniture crouched broken and peeling, bolts of fine dyed linen served as casual close-stools, unstoppered jugs of vintage wine sat turning into vinegar, against a torn codex illuminated in glowing colors a scabby dog lifted its leg… so it went.

The guide mounted the steps of a ruined temple and vanished. The Phoenician and his patron followed. The roof was totally gone, and in the interior was the largest tent either of them had ever seen. An avenue of horsetails, dyed red, dyed purple, black, and gray, led up to it. Through an opening in the top which let in a stream of sunlight, the two visitors, their eyes adjusting, observed the guide prostrating himself, rising before he was fully down, going through the motions of gathering dust and casting it on his head without ever actually doing so, advancing a few steps, repeating the process. And all the while he mumbled and muttered, yawning as if ineffably bored; and presently, raising his voice a trifle impatiently, but never ceasing his chant, he squatted on the great, and gorgeous, and filthy Bactrian carpet with which the pavilion was floored. He held his arm out horizontally as if to bar their further progress.

They halted, peered, squinted. Before them on a pallet of greasy sheepskins, clad in a doublet of filthy samite, mouth open to show a set (incomplete) of brown stumps which had once been teeth, a man lay snoring. They realized, after a moment, from the golden circlet topping the pole from which hung the last horsetail, and from the muted but still patently purple color of the doublet, that they were in the real presence of Bayla, King of the Huns.

Shabby as it was, the Presence was not altogether without its train of state or some notions of hospitality. Three scarred and limping men of his nation arose from the shadows at his bark (or snarl) when he awoke to find the strangers standing before his bed; these warriors-in-waiting, as it were, had been sharing the afternoon siesta with their King, and now added their own yips and yelps. Slaves and other members of the court came, though they did not come soon, and by the time Bayla King had cleared his nose and throat and laved his eyes in a little water and performed the other brute details of his scant and nasty toilet, something resembling a reception or audience had begun to be in progress.

Vergil and Ebbed-Saphir sat on sheepskins piled ten deep and covered with robes of fur-lined silk (doubtless once the property of some plundered Scythian magate). Wine had been brought, and splendid goblets, which did not match, fresh water, kymyss, ships biscuit, and pastries of colored sugar-flour which had once been soft. In one corner a woman sat cross-legged and sang something through her nose as she banged discordantly upon a timbrel, the while suckling a great child in her lap.

The warriors-in-waiting approached, introduced themselves, held out their hands. Baron Murdas had but one eye, Baron Bruda lacked most of his left arm, and Baron Gabron leaned heavily upon his spear to compensate for the severed Achilles tendon of his right foot: all three of them growled, “Give. Give. Give.”

The bag of purple silk embroidered with the Imperial monogram and containing the letters of state was produced. Gabron seized it, gave it to Bruda, who handed it to Murdas, who opened it and dropped the documents in Bayla’s lap. The latter stroked them with his grimy fingers, held them upside down, flipped through them as if looking for filthy pictures, then allowed them to slide from his hands. In a hoarse voice, which seemed faintly disappointed, he said, “Emperor books, very beauty, very sweet. Great honor. Rume, Hun, big friend. Drink, eat. Meat, fish, soon. What name you got?”

His Thallasic Majesty Bayla, son of Bayla, son of Ottil, son of Ernas, of the Sea-Huns King, Great King, King of Kings, co-lord of the Seas and the Isles, was a flabby, pudgy little man with tiny and rufous eyes, a scant and drooping mustache. The left side of his face had been much worried by a knife, but not recently.

The Phoenician introduced himself (“Punic man good sailor, but all time peddle, peddle,” said the King, mildly amused. “No peddle here. Hun not need buy, just take.”) and his patron. Scarcely was he done when Barons Murdas, Bruda, and Gabron commenced again with their hands outstretched to growl, “Give. Give. Give.” The guests produced their presents for the monarch. The Red Man gave a long knife, in the Sharkskin scabbard of which were fitted a small knife and a whetstone; Vergil’s gift was a pair of garters done of golden thread and adorned with Baroque black pearls.

Having donned the garters as bracelets or armills, and having picked his teeth awhile, meditatively, with the smaller knife, Bayla scrambled to his feet, beckoned them to follow. His warriors-in-waiting promptly sank down to resume their rest, and the woman (she was, they learned later, Sept-Mother of the Fox Sept and the hereditary Court Singer, and had incidentally — very incidentally — presented Bayla with his youngest child) the woman instantly ceased banging and shrilling, and adjusted her left dug to the babe’s slippery mouth.

The sun seemed brighter. Back of the tent, following the King’s gestures, they came upon an enclosure in which something was chained to a pillar.

“Vergil Shaman,” the King said, “I give you good word. Take care. Not be like bad shaman. Louse’s bastard!” he shrieked, suddenly, his scarred face going red with rage. “Eater of swine’s turds!”

The thing in chains raised its head and then its body. It was the oldest, mangiest, shabbiest bear Vergil had ever seen. It grimaced and blinked and champed its almost toothless jaws and made little, feeble noises, then covered its face with its paws as Bayla, in a hysteria of fury, pelted it with sticks and stones. At that moment it seemed like a very old man clad in a very old bearskin, and despite the hot sun Vergil once again felt the cold sick touch of uncommon fear.

“Tildas Shaman? This?” The words were jerked from his mouth.

“Tildas Shaman yes! Tildas whoreson! Hangman Tildas! Tildas pox!”

Here it was, the bear which the whole Sea-Hun nation believed had once been a man. “Why do you hate him so?” he asked.

“Why?” the voice of the King rose to a squeal. “Why? Why hate? Why?” His mouth spittled and his filthy small hands clenched and unclenched in fury. Rage deprived him, almost, of his little Latin, and it was a while before he could make clear his meaning. Which was, seemingly, to the effect that Tildas the Shaman, by failing to assume his human and articulate form — and thus being unable to convey from the Old King’s ghost and the ghosts of the puissant Sept-Mothers a message favorable to the pre-eminence of Bayla — had allowed Bayla’s brothers Ottil and Osmet to usurp the royal power and reduce Bayla to his present impotent position.

“King!” he howled, beating his pigeon breast. “Bayla, King, too! Ottil, King, and Osmet, King, but Bayla — Bayla, King, too!”

And so he was — King of the stinking shore camp, King of the old women and the potbellied children, King of invalids and cripples; of rubbish, flies, and scabby dogs — King. Bayla King.

There had been a sacred well used by the Greeks before the Sea-Huns had come crawling up over the horizon and squatted on the island like thick clots of locusts. The sides had fallen in through neglect, and moss was grown upon the rocks. Here, in the green and the cool, alone and unbothered, too solitary to be chafed by the comparison of what he was to what he might have been, Bayla sat and talked (calmer, now, after his outburst) to his visitors.

Would he give them a safe-conduct to Cyprus?

He would if he could — but he did not dare. His brothers — (“May they both have boils, piles, scurvy, saddle, galls, seasickness and black pox!”) — his brothers would be furious. No… no… he did not dare.

A pity, Vergil observed. They had been looking forward to seeing the famous Cyprian city of Paphos. Bayla, at this, pricked up his dirty little ears. Paphos, eh. Where the great Temple of Aphrodite was, eh. Paphos — so they were going there. Ah-mmmm. Paphos.

“Yes, King Bayla. To Paphos, where the Great Temple of Aphrodite is — and the seven hundreds of beautiful priestesses — or is it seventeen hundreds? — all skilled in the divine arts of love and ready to make each devoutly amorous pilgrim a lover by proxy of the great goddess herself. It would be a meritorious deed to worship the goddess, would it not?”

“Worship goddess, eh. Mmm-ah…”

Vergil’s eye met that of An-Thon; the latter at once declared how proud he would be to carry King Bayla to Paphos on pilgrimage. The little monarch refreshed his drooping lips with his tongue. His mind was working, at a slow and ponderous, but highly visible, rate. “. . . worship goddess…”

A scowl crept, draggingly, over his face. “Ottil,” he growled, “mmm… Osmet. Rrr…”

On the point of asking, rhetorically, he hoped, why the other co-Kings should object to such a pious journey, Vergil abruptly changed his plans. “Unless, of course, King Bayla is not allowed to leave the camp without permission.… If he is a prisoner, in effect, of his brothers — ”

So quickly did the regius tertius leap to his feet, so furiously raise one fist, so swiftly reach for his knife, that the Magus had no time to say more than, “I die for truth!”

Out flew the knife. “Up, up!” cried Bayla. “Vergil Shaman, Ebbed Captain, up! To ship, to ship — now! We go Cyprus.” Rage a bit abated, determination not one whit, a corner of his mouth lifted the ruined side of his face in something which was not quite a smile and less than a leer. “Paphos ho!” cried Bayla the King. “Worship! We worship goddess!”

He drove them before him, as a dog drives sheep.

The three battle-battered barons were so dumfoundered by the decision that they had not a word to say to their excited liege-lord. The situation, however, obviously required that they say something to someone; and they turned, therefore, upon the two visitors, hands outstretched again, palms up, fingers slightly curled in:

“Give, give, give.”

It was no time to hold off giving. They gave Vergil’s writing case, Ebbed-Saphir’s pocket astrolabe, they gave belt buckles and buskin clasps, knives, purses, amulets, combs, caps, cloaks. Vergil later commented that he had given everything but his virtue.

Supplies were swiftly laden aboard by the crew, and the horse’s skull with black ribband through the nostrils fastened to the bowsprit — no Hun would ever presume putting to sea sans this potent talisman. They found the sea as slack and windless as a pool in the bottom of a cave, but the oarsmen rowed with their hearts and their bended backs, and scarcely let up the driving pace till the stench of the Huns’ camp lay far behind with the smudge on the horizon that was Isle Melissos.

Free of the decaying influence of his court, such a court it was! — Bayla seemed another man. He proved himself a good sailor and even a brave though clumsy fighter, helping them through a gale off Farther Greece by his prompt seizure and careful handling of the tiller when the duty helmsman lost his grip and went tumbling arse over ale mug, and was the life and soul of the crippling and beating-off of a Sard freebooter south of the Cyclades. Time and time again Hunnish vessels approached, wet and pitchy-black sides gleaming with malice, sails the rusty color of old blood; but the royal standard of the white horsetail surmounted by crown, plus Bayla’s stumpy figure on the quarter-deck, got the ship through every time.

But when the winds failed, Bayla could do nothing. Indeed, he went to sleep.

“Of course we can row, we can always row,” the Red Man said, more than a trifle impatiently. “But my men are not slaves, to be used up, cast aside, and replaced. Hence, the amount of sea that we can cover by rowing quickly is limited. And there is the question of time. Always there is the question of time.”

It seemed almost as though he had taken Vergil’s problems for his own.

“If it is the question of being back in Naples to pick up a charter,” Vergil said, stroking his short and pointed beard, “I can only assure you again that, should you miss your customary cargoes by a late return, you will not be the loser by it.”

But the Red Man denied that time, though it must always be paid for, could always be paid for in money. “And, sometimes, Ser Vergil, it has no price that we would willingly pay. Can you not raise the wind?” he demanded, abruptly.

No price that we would willingly pay. So well had his hired captain summed up his, Vergil’s, own feelings. Caught up full, for a moment, in the never-for-long subdued anguish caused by the missing portion of his psyche, by the betrayal of the woman he loved most among women, he shook his head. Then, quickly regaining control, said, “The influences are not favorable. But — ”

Swiftly, An-Thon: “But then there is… something else? Then, do it, man. Do it!”

It was dim, down there in the cedar-scented cabin. From within a great chest of ebonwood Vergil lifted out a smaller one made of the puissant horn-beam tree, and out of this he took one of several caskets cleverly worked from tortoise shell. He placed it on the cabin table.

“This may not be pleasant,” he warned. The Red Man made an impatient, scorning sound in his chest, watched Vergil as with long fingers he carefully unwrapped layer and layer of costly vine-wool brought from Hither India; soft and white as newly fallen snow; and uncovered something sere and forked and brown, and tied up hand and foot in a series of scarlet, silken knots.

Marveling, the Red Man said that he had never from his younger days till now seen any such a thing as a knot so utterly strange as (he indicated without touching) this, and this, and this, and this. “And I am a sailor,” he said, “and thought that by now all knots were known to me.” His voice grew lower. “These are of another order altogether, I see. Are they the ones that bind the winds? No! You have here a…” His voice ceased entirely. He watched.

The item was perhaps half the length of a pen, and of the thickness of about two fingers. It might have been the tiniest of mummies ever seen; it was thinly covered with a nap of hairs, and the legs were wrapped one around the other as if it had no bones. Certainly, it had no toes. “I have here one of those called al-rune,” said Vergil. “Also called perenose or perestupe.” He had poured red wine into a shallow basin and earth into a deeper one, and now, quickly, he dipped the thing into the wine and plunged it — feet first — into the earth and tamped it firmly down.

“Also,” he said, standing back and observing it, “called mandrake or mandragon. It has many names. And many powers.” He watered the earth. He found the loose clew of the end of the scarlet silk and gave it the one tug that loosened all the knots. The mandrake moved. A faint shudder went through it. The tiny eyelids fluttered open and it peered here and there dimly and blindly and it grimaced like an idiot thing and the tiny lipless mouth opened and made a thin, dry sucking noise.

Vergil picked up a silver bodkin and pricked the ball of his left index finger and squeezed a drop of blood, which welled and swelled without dripping as he put it to the mandrake’s mouth. The creature sucked and butted at the finger like a lamb at the dug. He pulled the finger away. “Enough, homunculus. See clearly and speak plainly and obey me in all things.”

The homunculus smacked its mouth. Its gaze as it turned its tiny head this way and that was keen and no longer witless. It smirked and chirped and played among its hairs with its hands, which were single, root-like digits, each.

“Speak plainly!”

“The Queen of Candia cuckolds her lord with a stable-boy,” it said, piping, thin, yet surprising strong. “Miso Yanis has a new customer for the red-haired girl. The boatman Carlis bends and strains, but not to his oars. Her name is — ”

“Enough of that,” Vergil interrupted. The mandrake snickered and smirked. “Scan the circle of the seas. Do you see wind? Do you smell wind? Do you feel, hear, or taste wind?”

The mandrake mused, considering. “I see sardine and flounder,” after a moment, it observed. “Also calamary and much sponge and — ”

“Wind. Only wind. Seek wind.”

The tiny nostrils twitched in the bridgeless nose. “I smell it,” the thing said.

“Where?”

“Off the coast of Little Asia, and it reeks of burning towns and rotting blood and the fearful sweat of violated maidens.”

The men exchanged swift glances. “The Sea-Huns,” said the Red Man. “Ottil King is busy there at work.”

“Not that wind, homunculus. Another.”

The mouth paused and pursed. “I taste it,” the thing said.

“Where?”

“Within three leagues as the sun now goes, and it tastes of salt and spray.”

An-Thon shook his head. “Rocks and shoals,” said he.

“Not that wind, homunculus. Another.”

The mandrake fretted and nittered. Then, it leered. “The daughter of the Constable of Athens,” it began. With deliberation and without delay, Vergil thrust at it with a bodkin. The mandrake shrilled its alarm and twisted and tugged. “A wind!” it cried, protestingly. “I see a wind!”

“Where?”

“Two leagues and half again a league,” the thing whined, “to the south and east! Between the south and the east, two leagues and a half again a league — a wind! Oh, warm! Oh, swift and sweet! A wind!”

The Red Man turned and bounded up the steps, crying orders. The feet of the men bounded across the deck and oars thumped at the tholepins. The water bailiff began to call the cadence. The ship leaped forward. “Now,” said Vergil, to the man-dragon, “you may suit yourself while you can.”

The eyes of the tiny creature gleamed like snail slime, and it spewed forth its sightings of centaurs and shepherdesses, fisher-boys ravished by mermaidens, deceived unicorns, dracos cozened of their treasures by non-draconian wiles… it piped and chattered and mewed. Then it paused awhile; then began again, in a tone of infinitely less interest, to talk of other things. Vergil listened, inclining his head on his hand, while, with the other, he occasionally incised a note on the wax of his tablets.

Suddenly the rhythm of the rowers was interrupted. A cry went up, again the running of feet, and now the hasty hoisting of the sail. The sail snapped and cracked loudly — once — twice — a third time. The men shouted in triumph. Vergil arose without haste and with his stylus scratched up a bit of wax, working it between his fingers. The mandrake eyed him with great unease as he approached, then opened its mouth wide. But before that fearful, fatal, maddening cry could issue forth, Vergil had (seemingly at one and the same time) popped the bolus into the tiny mouth, looped the silken scarlet thread around the muted figure, and tore it loose from its fitting in the pot of earth.

The thing collapsed in upon itself with a convulsive motion. Another second it writhed. Then the knots once again bound it safely, physically and metaphysically, and it seemed no more than an ugly, curiously twisted root. With a flick of the bodkin he removed the gagger of wax, wrapped the perestupe in the vine-wool, restored it to the tortoise-shell casket, placed the casket in the horn-beam box, and returned the latter to the great chest of carven ebonwood. And then it seemed as though half the life went out of him, and he half sat, half fell, onto the chair. His face was ashen, and he gagged and retched dryly. Feeling as he had on realizing what his lady had done to him, he raised trembling hands to his face, winced, grunted in sudden pain. He looked at his left hand.

The index finger was angry, swollen, and red — except at the cushiony part of the first joint, where it showed a gray and purulent spot. Long he looked at it, with a wasted expression on his twisted face, before he felt strong enough to wash and dress it.

“I’ll do that no more this year,” he said, at last. “If, indeed, for many a year… or ever again.” For a moment resolution showed on his face. Then, with a wry mouth and a shrug, it went.

“Cyprus!” cried someone on deck. “Cyprus! Cyprus ho!”