The Phoenix and the Mirror

CHAPTER TEN

CYPRUS WAS ANOTHER world.

The city of Paphos might have been designed and built by a Grecian architect dreamy with the drugs called talaquin or mandragora: in marble yellow as unmixed cream, marble pink as sweetmeats, marble the green of pistuquim nuts, veined marble and grained marble, honey-colored and rose-red, the buildings climbed along the hills and frothed among the hollows. Tier after tier of over-tall pillars, capitals of a profusion of carvings to make Corinthian seem ascetic, pediments lush with bas-reliefs, four-fold arches at every corner and crossing, statues so huge that they loomed over the housetops, statues so small that whole troops of them flocked and frolicked under every building’s eaves, groves and gardens everywhere, fountains playing, water spouting…

Paphos.

The air lay scented and heavy over this lush, sub-tropical scene, scarcely did a breeze vex the waxy red blossoms of the pomegranates, and Vergil, observing a slight frown upon the Hun King’s open-mouthed countenance as he placed his grubby hand upon his chest, was suddenly made aware that he, too, seemed to experience a slight — just the slightest — difficulty in breathing. And wondered if it was really the grossness of the perfumed air…

There was a man on the jetty, surveying with a languid interest the newly come ship and people. Vergil addressed him in his best Cumaean Greek, asking where the port officials were, and if porters might be obtained to unload. The man answered in the slightly archaic dialect of the island, “Surely, lord, anon… tomorrow…”

“Why not today?”

“Today, good my lord? Today is an high festival.”

Everywhere were evident the signs of neglect occasioned by the de facto blockage of the Sea-Huns. A fig tree heavy with ripe purple fruit grew in the middle of a roadway, a flock of long-tailed sheep grazed upon the docks, a wagon had overturned and smashed its wheel and lay where it had fallen, and moss softened its sides with velvet green.

“Aye, today, gentles, today is the natal day of Our Wee Lord Ichthys, own son to Sea-Born ‘Ditissa, and folks have gone to feed the sacred spratlings in the Temple pools in his honor. Go you, too, get you bits of sweety-cake in the stalls, join the worship — ” He gestured toward the great Temple, looming over the dreamy town. His speech put Vergil in mind of old Dame Allegra, and made him reflect that he knew nothing of her origin.

The problem of porters and port officials was settled after a while and after a fashion by the arrival of one Basilianos, the Smyrniote director of Paphos’ far-famed Golden Hospital, that grand serail where pilgrims of rank resorted to be lodged in grace and comfort during the period of their devoirs. Secular visitors of sufficient wealth or status might of course be accommodated too — merchants, officials, young men on the grand tour, tax farmers, and so on. But the Golden Hospital, like everything else in Cyprus, felt severely the lack of traffic occasioned by the advent of the Sea-Huns over a generation before.

“Times were, Doctor and Captain,” Basilianos said, his litter borne between theirs by bearers who walked as languidly as lovers, “when the Golden Hospital had an hundred guests of an average or common night — perhaps twice that amount at festival times. But today? Today, sirs, guests do not average more than one or two a night, and they mostly from Chitium, Amacosa, and other Island towns. Guests from off-Island we rarely have of more than that number per month, save, of course, what time the Great Fleet comes. We keep the Golden Hospital in first-rate condition, of a surety, we don’t need to depend upon our guests for income, having our own ancient endowments. But,” he said with a sigh, and a wave of his hands, “it is hard not to be restive when I recall our old great days of glory.”

They left behind the streets and their present scanty supply of people, most of whom were of an uncommon comeliness, an uncommon languor, and a most curious cast of countenance which impressed the Magus rather uneasily, the more so that he was unable to interpret it. They were about to turn onto a lane which led through the greenest sward imaginable to a dark wood of golden-fruited trees amidst and partly above which something seemed to float and shimmer and glister in the sparkling sunlight. A howl of such intense rage, of such horror and grief, as made his nape go chill and stiff, arrested not only his attention but the bearers in their tracks, and stumbled them to a halt.

An old man with unclad arms all bone and suntanned skin over rope-thin muscle had raised his fists to the level of his ears and now howled forth again from in his great gray beard. “Wolves!” he cried, moan dying in his scrannel throat with visible shake and audible catch. “Wolves and men! Men and wolves! Wolves like men, lord! Lord! And men like wolves!”

The bearers had recovered themselves and now started forward once more, with muttered comments and shaken heads. Vergil turned to Basilianos, who said at once, “Do not, I pray, distress yourselves. Tis but that poor half-mad sectary, Angustus the Ephesian. I fear me for him and his little flock, their meeting-place is known to the Soldiery and cannot long remain unvexed by it.”

“Woe!” Angustus howled as they passed by. “Ah, sinful city and oh, Island of sin!” His voice died away behind them. “How beautiful! And how corrupt!” he was crying. Basilianos began to speak of the cool grove through which they had now begun to pass, telling of its origins, how it was of golden quince trees, descended from the very fruit which Hercules Lion-Slayer had obtained of the Daughters of the Hesperides, having killed their dragon sire in the beauteous and distant Garden. The voice of Angustus the Ephesian sank faintly into the scented air behind them, “Oh, men! Oh, wolves! Oh wolves like men! And men like wolves…”

And then they were out of the grove and then the lineaments of the great Golden Hospital itself burst upon their sight. “I have assigned to each of you a suite of rooms,” Basilianos said. “Baths are being drawn and the servants will take your sizes and supply you with clean clothes from our wardrobes. Food will be waiting for you in your chambers. Our porters will go presently to fetch your gear and baggage from the ship.”

“Our interview with the King of Cyprus?” Vergil asked.

“His Sacred Majesty the King of Paphos is, by the rota, the present High King of Cyprus. I will arrange an interview with the hallowed Crown.”

“When?”

“Anon, Dr. Vergil,” Basilianos said, urging him gently forward to the servant woman waiting to conduct him to his rooms. “Perhaps soon. Perhaps tomorrow.”

Copper? It had taken the host some little while to consider if he had ever heard of copper. To be sure, it was possibly the chief industry of Cyprus — but what had the director of the Golden Hospital to do with industry? Copper magnates, ah yes, copper magnates had stayed at his premises often, when the Great Fleet was in. So… copper? Ah yes. Copper. What did Dr. Vergil have in mind concerning copper? Dr. Vergil had in mind to obtain ore of copper? Indeed. Most interesting; one had not known that copper came from an ore. As to where copper might be obtained, Basilianos had no idea at all. One presumed that it was obtained at copper mines. And where were they?

Basilianos had no idea at all.

So, putting aside for the moment all thoughts of copper, as he had been obliged this while to put aside all thoughts of tin — and of the bird of gold and her message, and the two guardian falcon-eagles, and, indeed, the whole matter of the mirror and those royal ladies Cornelia and Laura — Vergil decided to join in worship at the great Temple of She Who Was Born of the Sea at Paphos. And immediately recollected that one of the signs and symbols of Aphrodite — and not one of the least — was a mirror.

“Do you not regret the waste of time, woman?” he asked, stiffly.

In the dimness of her cell-like chamber she shook her head, continued to pass her hands along his naked skin.

“After all,” he said, “I did warn you.” Her touch aroused no more trace of passion than if he were an infant, but, just as an infant might, he found it comforting. He began to relax. For the first time since the horrid scene with Cornelia, he thought it might be possible for him to obtain complete rest… despite everything.

“You are built like a greyhound,” she murmured. “Slender legs and hips, huge chest.… Warned me? Of what? Oh, of that. Greyhound, I didn’t need your warning. Do you think I’ve been priestess of Our Holy Mother Aphroditissa all this time and can’t recognize a man ensorcelled when I see him? Who is she? — the woman who has stolen that one of your souls? It has to be a woman. I can’t imagine a man doing that, even thinking of that. And if a man did think of it, he’d shudder away from it, his stones would crawl. Wouldn’t they, Greyhound?”

He even managed a short laugh. “I don’t know any more. Have I still stones? The woman — you are right, of course. You are very keen. I’m not sure I care for such keenness, some things a man placed as I am now prefers not to have known — the woman beguiled me with talk of certain mysteries. I was weak enough, unwise enough, to yield. And thus came my undoing, priestess.

“Thus I lie next to you and stroke your breasts and your hidden parts and it is no more to me than if I stroke a kitten.… Smite my lying tongue, O Thunderer!” he burst out in anguish, holding her tightly to him. “It isn’t true! It might perhaps not be so bad if it were. But although my flesh does not respond to yours, although that soul of mine which counsels that flesh is gone from me, still, still, enough memory remains, enough is shared in each soul and each part by every soul and every part, that still I do remember! I do, I do…”

Her lips, her hands, her soothing skin, caressed him into silence. Great, indeed, was the power of Aphroditissa, sweet-smelling goddess of love, she whispered. But some things were beyond that power, and this… as he must know… was one of them. “She can’t help you,” the priestess murmured softly, pityingly. “Any more than she can help the Paphos King. For he, too, you know…” Her voice died away at his ear.

No. There was no great amount of rest for him here after all. No one, nothing, but his own efforts could help him. With something more than a breath and less than a sigh, he rose to dress.

“I can’t help you, either,” she said, looking at him with her painted eyes. “Or can I? I will, if I can.”

“Perhaps you can. I need ore of copper. Where can I get it?”

Her painted eyebrows rose in two great arches. Forgetfully, she cupped her breasts to him and rolled her hips. “Ore?” she repeated, puzzled. “Copper?” The absurdity of the question broke through her pose and emerged as a giggle. “Good Mother, man, how should I know? Ore of copper.… I meant, if I could help you with something important…”

Entering the palace of the King of Paphos — who was, like so many Eastern kings, priest as well as potentate — was reminiscent of entering a temple. The air was still and hushed, what little speech there was was done in whispers. But the parallel was not exact in all things. ‘Ditissa’s worshipers had entered her great shrine in awe, true, but it was a pleasurable awe. There was no trace of any similar atmosphere in the palace of Paphos.

Vergil had been in fanes tended by men and in fanes tended by women, priests and priestesses alike were familiar to him. But at no other time in his life had he ever been in one where the attendants were hermaphrodies; indeed, outside of Cyprus, such creatures were scarcely known. And in Cyprus they were more than merely known: they were well-known. The strain ran in entire lineages of families, who tended to marry among themselves and perpetuate it. It was not regarded as a curse, it was not regarded as a blessing — it was a sacred circumstance, taken for granted, thoroughly accepted. How else were the semisacred priest-kings to be served, if not by the equally semisacred hermaphrodies?

They received Vergil with an intent, rather preoccupied calm, naked to the waist, small but full breasts and scanty beards providing a testimony to what they were, more decorous but scarcely less emphatic than complete nakedness would have been. They guided him through the ritual of preparation. Here he must doff his shoes, here wash his feet, here his hands, there perfume with incense both feet and hands, there deposit his gift/tribute/offering. The ceremony was long and intricate, probably none of them could have explained why half of it was done, and the explanations for the other half would probably have been thoroughly incorrect. And the Paphiote courtesies were but the prelude, for the Sacred King of Paphos was this year in addition filling the office of High King of All Cyprus: a special retinue for peripatetic hermaphrodies were charged with the rites appropriate to this higher office, moving from court to court as the office changed from throne to throne.

Preceded by sistra and cymbals and the tinkling and tapping of tambours, rather than by trumpets, the Paphos King at length made his appearance, his manner as bemused as that of a sleepwalker. Hermaphrodies surrounded him, their breasts rouged and their beards curled; they held his elbows and his sleeves and his cuffs, guiding him almost like some man-size puppet. In this manner, he spoke words which were not heard, he anointed, aspersed, spooned incense, fed lamps, touched with his sceptre, seated himself on his throne. It was a long time before Vergil was summoned.

His letters of state were shown to the King, who did not so much as touch them; indeed, he scarcely seemed to see them. At first, Vergil thought the man might be drugged. His eyes were glazed, his mouth was parted. A hermaphrody gave the royal arm the very slightest of touches, and the royal voice responded with the very slightest of sounds. It was indicated to Vergil that he had been asked a question.

“I thank Your Sacred Majesty for his gracious interest. The voyage was both safe and pleasant. We were accompanied by Bayla, King of the Sea-Huns, who, desirous of causing Your Sacred Majesty no inconvenience, is here incognito in the capacity of a pilgrim.”

A polite lie, in part. But Bayla would scarcely prove a figure congruous to the elaborate smoothness of this strange and hieratic court.

A ripple passed across the face of the Paphos King. His eyes seemed to focus on the man who knelt before him. “The Sea-Huns… we have heard of them… when we were young.” A smile trembled, faltered, lapsed. A certain look passed between the hermaphrodies, and they turned their faces to Vergil, encouraging him by winks, by nods, to continue speaking. So might react the parents of a sick, sick child, he thought.

He did his best to interest the King, and to further his own necessities as well, by degrees turned his remarks to the subject of his visit here.… Copper.

“Copper” — the King’s thick voice grew mildly surprised — “we… we do not know why one would come here for copper. Is there no copper in Italy? Is… is there copper here? In Cyprus?”

This was no mere bemusement. So removed from actuality was the numinous King that he really did not know of the rich mines which were the island’s chief resource, which had given the island its very name. Next to copper, the chief reality of Cypriote life was the all but complete blockade which the Sea-Huns had, a generation since, flung around its coasts and seas. Yet the King, who was perhaps no more than thirty (a fair and heavy man), had not even heard of them since his childhood.

Before Vergil could reply to this, a terrible change passed over the King’s face. A sob broke from his chest, and a low cry of unutterable despair. Features writhing, hands clenched on the arms of his throne, gently but no less firmly urged by the clustering hermaphrodies not to rise, the man cried, “I am being bewitched! Bewitched!” Then words failed him, and he slumped down and forward and gazed numbly at the patterned floor.

At a gesture from one of his attendants, music was struck up, strange and alien music, and hermaphrodies came and danced before the throne, twirling their skirts and stamping their shoeless feet so that their anklets clingled and tinkled like tiny, tiny bells. The King watched vacantly, his head nodding a slow, infinitely sad accompaniment to the movements of the half-naked, half-numinous dancers. And the attendants began to sing in their curious, epicene voices, a song whose words were in a language which had probably ceased to be a living speech long before the children of Europa had first set foot upon the soil of Cyprus.

Presently the King rose, unhindered now, and, clapping his jeweled hands, went down the steps of the throne and joined in the quickening steps of the dance. Faster now, and faster, faster, faster whirled the King, flinging his head and rolling his eyes up till only a thin rim of color showed in the staring whites. The music stamped into a quicker, frenzied beat. The King leaped like a stag set upon by dogs. There was a hand laid gently on Vergil’s arm. The hermaphrody gestured toward the chamber’s door. There was a gray hair in the thin, whorled beard, and the breasts were fleshless and limp. The expression of his face was sad, patient, resigned. Hermaphrodies never lived to be old.

Moving down the long corridor, Vergil heard behind him a series of quick, sharp, rhythmic screams. He was sure that the voice was that of the Paphos King.

And so the time went on and continued to go. For a while An-Thon the Red Man made daily, fretful visits from the harbor, then he ceased to appear. Bayla was totaly absorbed in his devotions. Basilianos answered Vergil’s urgent treaties with invariable politeness and assurances that he was prosecuting inquiries about copper with (he said, languidly) the utmost vigor. And the representatives of the copper cartel informed him that messengers had been sent upcountry on swift mules to make inquiries about the very small amount of ore required.

But nothing actually came of any of this.

It was not to be expected that he would be long content merely to sit still and wait on others. He hired mules himself, and set off alone. The palms gave way to pines and cedars. Roses burned in great crimson clusters by the roadside. Here and there were the crude little shrines of the country people and their old, original religion — shapeless cairns usually set up alongside some low tree or large bush bearing fewer leaves than shreds of knotted rags, blossoming with the prayers and petitions of those who tied them there. Off in the fields the peasants, with long thin staves, urged the red oxen to bend to the yokes and pull the wooden plows. Chestnut and carob trees fed the black swine and brindled sheep. It seemed that nothing could really go much wrong in this Arcady-like landscape, stone bridges over brooks of bark-dark waters, cobs and pens and cygnets arching their necks like lily stems as they glided along the streams.

Nothing really much did go wrong, except that his mules cast a shoe each, it required a day to find the smith, find charcoal, heat the forge, find iron, heat the forge again, and shoe the beasts. He passed an impatient night, scrupulously followed the directions to the mines given him at the inn… and, after another day’s journey, found himself back in Paphos again. When this happened in similar wise a second time, he was bound to pause and wonder if he himself might not be bewitched.

Likelier — almost certainly — the copper agents simply did not believe him and his story of wanting no more than the small quanitity of ore for a scientific and philosophical experiment. Why should they? No one had ever come to them with such a story before. They might even have had word by a swift, many-oared blockade-runner, before Vergil arrived, from Thuraus Rufus; warning them that some plot to overturn the copper monopoly was under way; that Vergil, the prime mover, was not to be openly flouted, but subventuresomely to be thwarted in every way.

There was no consolation to be had from this logic, of course. The agony of his condition was not abated. Impatient, here, he — what must be Cornelia’s state of mind in far-off Naples? by nature yielding, by way of life imperious, unused to anything but immediate gratification, unaware of the difficulties in the way here at the scene. There was no assurance but that at any moment she might, either in a sudden rage, or by a deliberate calculation, or by direction of someone else, commence to torment that part of him which she held captive.

He remembered Tullio’s words with a shudder. Do her work, and I return it to you. Refuse — fail — I destroy it. Tarry — I punish it. Dally — but I do not think that you will dally.…

Yet now, in effect, despite himself, that was what he was doing.

Angustus the Ephesian received him half propped up on the narrow trestle board which evidently served him as bed. The old man did not bother with conventional apologies or greetings, merely looked at him with his burning gaze and invited him by a curt gesture to speak.

“I have been informed that the meeting place of your group is known to the Soldiery. It might be wise for you to arrange to meet elsewhere.”

The old man at first said nothing. Then he said, “Can it be that you have made it known?”

His visitor showed his genuine surprise. “I, sir? No, sir. Not only would I have no inclination to do so, I could not do so, for I do not know where it is.”

Still the eyes would not relinquish their gaze. “That is strange… seeing that you have been there with us.”

“No, I assure you,” Vergil said, more astonished than before.

There was a pause. “I do not feel that you are lying,” the old man said. “Either you are mistaken, or a veil has been placed over your memory, or — or I may myself be mistaken. Wait, wait…” He ran a thin hand over his long gray beard, reflected. “Either you have been with us,” he said after a moment, “or else it is the future I see, and not the past. In which case, you will have been with us.”

The room was small and bare. Vergil was faintly aware of something that confused him… perhaps only because he could not identify it. “I do not understand,” he murmured.

“Nor do I. But I will. And so will you.”

It had not been the easiest thing in the world finding this strange old man. It was, however, obvious that no help was to be expected from anyone in established authority anywhere in Paphos. Therefore it became equally obvious that help must be sought from someone not in established authority… and the more distant therefrom, the likelier the success. Vergil had thought of attempting to contact the criminal level of Cypriote society, but — supposing such to exist in this easygoing island — it would be more sensible for those in it to take his money and then reveal the matter to the overlords, than not to. Who, then, was in such irreconcilable hostility in regard to the establishment that betrayal need not be feared and assistance might be hoped for?

The answer was Angustus the Ephesian.

Who now said, “You came here like a trader, with intelligence in one hand and the other hand outstretched to receive intelligence in return. But that day has come when no trademen are seen in the Temple. Nevertheless, I shall give you the knowledge which you desire — give it you as freely as our Lord and Savior Daniel Christ gave His flesh to be torn by the lions in order that we might be saved and have everlasting — ”

He broke off and gazed at the suddenly speechless man in front of him. “Ah,” he said. “Now you remember.”

“Yes. Now I remember, It was in a dream.”

The old man nodded. “Then it has not yet come to pass.”

“No, sage. Nor need it.”

Softly, gently, “Yes, it need. It need,… Now I see it all, I know it all now. Captivity, chains, torture, the arena, the mocking crowds, the lions. The lions! Think you-of-the-paynim that I or any of us would have it another way? We are not worthy only” — he lifted his clasped hands and tears filled his sunken eyes and broke his voice — “if our blessed Lord Daniel desires nonetheless to grant us, freely, of His grace, the same death — oh, blessed gift and charity! — the holy privilege of dying as He died, the sweet and sacred bounty of the lions.…” His face seemed radiant and transfigured by joy. He bowed his head and moved his lips in prayer.

After a while he said, almost briskly, almost cheerfully, “So now I will tell you that which you must know, though why you must know if I know not, nor is that among the things which I must know. All knowledge now is but imperfect. We see but the dim and dark reflection in the bronze mirror. Such is the life of this world of illusion.

“You wish to know why you have not been permitted to pursue a journey into the interior, is it not so?”

Vergil nodded, dumbly. The countenance of the aged Ephesian settled into an expression of mingled sorrow and wrath. “Because, my unsought guest, because the road to the interior leads past the terrible, terrible shrine of the daemon whom the paynim denominate Zeus-Leucayon. Know you that name? And what it means? Wolf-Zeus! Wolf-Zeus! Fearful enough is his form in that shape of humankind which he counterfeits in order the better to deceive humankind, but, O! how infinitely more fearful is he in his lycanthropous form! Woe! Woe! Woe! O sinful city, and, O island of sin! Men like wolves and wolves like men!” And again he raised his eyes, his head, his hands and arms, cried aloud.

But his cry was brief. Vergil interrupted. “Why is it considered so important that I be not allowed to pass this shrine?”

“Because, my guest unsought, in that grim, gray fane erected of uncut rock and dark with the stains of centuries of evil sacrifice, preparations are underway for the horrid rite wherein the celebrant offers his own son as sacrifice and as sacrificial meal… and, for his pains, his punishment, and — as they would have it — his reward… is changed into a wolf! A wolf! Is changed into a wolf! He eats human flesh like a wolf! Such are the paynim’s ways, and their own records describe what happened when this was first done by King Lycaon, who killed a man and set the cooked flesh upon the table. Have you forgotten?”

The aged prophet began to chant the fearful lines. “The King himself flies in terror and, gaining the silent fields, howls aloud, attempting in vain to speak. His mouth of itself gathers foam, and with his accustomed greed for blood he turns against the sheep, delighting still in slaughter.

“His garments change to shaggy hairs! His arms to legs! In villos abeunt vestes, in crure lacerti-fit lupus et veteris servat vestigea formae. He turns into a wolf, and yet retains some traces of his former shape. There is still the same gray hair, the same fierce face, the same gleaming eyes… the same picture of beastly savagery.…”

“They say that this metamorphosis was ordained by their daemon Zeus, or Jove, or Jupiter — accursed by the evil names, all of them, he bears! — to punish that beastly and evil deed. And yet that daemon so delighteth in it that again and again throughout the years he requires it be repeated. Thus, the filth the paynim worship! O sinful city and O…”

No moral hesitations were involved in the urgent desire that Vergil neither see nor learn of this ceremony. It belonged to the realms of the oldest payanism, where concepts such as good and evil did not pertain, where magic had no division into black or white. The deed was neither fair no foul; it was potent; it was at the same time both fair and foul. Forbidden — abhorred — detested in any other time at any other place, in the time set and at the place set it became necessary and desirable and infinitely potent. The greater the sin, the greater (in this case) the blessing.

“And he,” said the aged Ephesian, shaking his gray head, “he who became a eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom of Satan, he is so blind as to think that this will benefit him.”

Vergil, for the moment confused, could only show his bewilderment by his face, and murmur, “He?”

He, Sylvian, Chief Priest and (by definition) Chief Eunuch of Cybele, and head of the third side of the triangle which was Paphain religio-politics. Cybele, whose worshipers called her Magna Mater, the Great Mother, denying that title to Aphroditissa. Cybele, whose cult had come, shrieking and dancing, out of the darkest depths of Little Asia.

‘Ditissa, indeed, was not the oldest of the Cypriote deities. These had long ago lost their names, perhaps had never had any; nyads, dryads, faint and fleeting little spirits of the woods and of the streams. But ‘Ditissa’s advent was both local and historical, she had been born of the foam gathered between the offshore rocks and the coast of Paphos, and had been worshiped long and contentedly. Pilgrims had come in entire fleets, passing o’er the white-waved seas, to offer to her great Temple and to embrace the Mother in the persons of her priestess-daughters. Throughout the changeless years the processions had passed slowly, chanting, through the Paphiote streets, group after group bearing palanquins surmounted by “trees,” each leaf of which was made of a pastille of incense, smoking fragrantly in the languid air.

‘Ditissa had been the Mother of all the land of Paphos; he who was both king and priest had been the Father; she, all goddess; he, partly god. The Greek and Roman pantheon had come to be represented, too, but in lesser wise. And then the Sea-Huns had swooped down, burning Chitium and ravishing Machosa, as they did a hundred cities and a thousand towns elsewhere than Cyprus. They were at last bought off, but the price was paid in more than tribute; it was paid in semi-isolation, in gathering silence, in slow decay. In such a time the old religions seemed to flourish, but familiarity and tradition could not forever satisfy the need for excitement and stimulation, now no longer met by foreign intercourse. And in the stagnant pond, strange things came to grow.

Critics claimed (though not often openly, and never loudly) that Cybele’s cult had been implanted in Cyprus by small groups of merchants trading in from Little Asia at a time before the Great Blockade had fallen across the horizon, and that in those happier days it had met with no encouragement from the peoples of the land. But the orthodox doctrine had it that “Mother saw the children of the Island languishing in loneliness and grief, Mother spoke to her Sisters and her Brothers, saying, ‘Will none arise and go and succor the sorrowful children of the Island?’, but none would speak and none would go. Therefore Mother herself arose and, gathering around her priests and galli, dervishes and devotees, took ship at Tarsus. The Sea-Huns clamored, the Sea-Huns threatened, the blood-red sails and death-black hulls of the Sea-Huns gathered around the Mother’s ship like flies, like lions, and like dragons. But none dared approach, none dared attack. Silent and abashed and wholly stricken with awe were the corsairs and the pirates, overwhelmed by the heavenly beauty and the fear and dread of Mother Cybele.…”

And so on and on. What needed neither faith nor dissent to believe was that for years, from time to time, the peace and quiet of the opulent Island had been rent apart by the Cybelean theopomps — pouring down some startled street like a maddened torrent, the image of their goddess surrounded by screaming and ecstatic religious, tambour, horn and shaking systrum; and, drawing to them each fascinated eye, the galli — the priests! the priests! painted faces and thick falsetto voices, prancing, dancing, jiggling and jigging, ranting, chanting, gesturing, cavorting, prophesying and giving tongue in the unknown speech of the sacred madness: the priests of Cybele.

The gelded galli, the eunuch priests.

All this was quite enough in itself, but there was more. For these castrati did not hesitate by every conceivable (any by many almost inconceivable) means to inflame others with their own mania. It was chiefly of the women that they sought and received alms, but their main appeals were ever directed to men and to boys. And seldom had it failed that at least once in each hysterical, ecstatic session some deluded youth would be caught up out of himself and, yielding to the frenzied cries of “Cast off the flesh! Cast off the flesh!” would seize the sacred knife and geld himself… forever and forever after by this hideous consecration a priest of Great Cybele.

In its very horror, in its monstrous denial of nature, in its utter irrevocability lay much of its appeal. Men and women alike, to be sure shrank from the thought, but still they came to watch, to wonder, to worship. The thought that all this was for nothing was too much for the average mind to grasp. So great and terrible a sacrifice must surely signify something, something great, something marvelous. And so, meanwhile, the cult and mythos grew and grew and grew. ‘Ditissa was still worshiped, and from her clergy little hope or adherence could be expected, they being women, all. Therefore the greed and guile of Sylvian was perforce turned in another direction.

He had never known what it was to be a man, his discarding of the flesh which makes men had been done before the first hair grew upon his flesh. His body had never developed, nor his mind, in the fashion of a man’s. His desires therefore remained in many ways those of a child — but magnified and amplified and aggrandized by adulthood and the increased power of distorted maturity. It was not altogether strange, then, that it was not ‘Ditissa and her women who aroused his envy and his hatred. The desire to increase his power, to place the cult of which he was the head on a higher footing, fell instead in enmity and implacable malevolence upon the figure of the sacred king — a man — and the figures of his servants the semisacred hermaphrodies who were his servants — and who were both man and woman in the same person, unlike Sylvian, who was neither.

“He is undoubtedly one of the heads of the great dragon which is called Harlot, Babylon, and Beast,” said Angustus the Ephesian, waggling his beard, his eyes now shining with a joyous hatred. “Rome makes one head, Hun makes two heads, two and one maketh three, sacred by the eschatological numeration. Sylvian is one head, Paphos is two…” He counted on his fingers and he smacked his lips.

“Your pardon, sage,” said Vergil, with infinite civility. “I do not willingly interrupt your sacred mensurations, but I should like to know what connection you imply between the Royal and Sacred Paphiote Court and the shrine of Wolf-Zeus.”

Angustus looked at him with astonishment. “Why, is it not clear? Sylvian wishes to crush the King and to destroy his influence. He also desires to entreat the assistance of the abominable older gods — they be but daemons — in assisting him with some privy matter that I know not, any more than I know yours. Who then do you think it is that is to perform the abominable rite of offering his own son as sacrifice and sacrificial meal? Who then is then to be translated from the world of men and changed therefor into a wolf?

“It is himself the King of Paphos. It is he.”

The moon had risen, a great yellow moon, riding the clouds over the yellow marble of the villa; the moon had set and the great stars burned and melted in the velvet blackness of the sky. The dog had barked in his hutch, the babe wailed in his bedlet, the ox had lowered in his stall. The ass had yet to bray in his yard or the cock crow on his roost, otherwise the audible watches of the night had been told as the Heavens wheeled around the earth.

Vergil had slowed his breath and lessened the beatings of his heart. For hours he remained immovable… but not altogether motionless… Vergil was being a shadow in a doorway… and, as the moon moved, so the shadow moved… slowly… slowly… slowly. One could no more observe the actual motion in motion than that of the hand on the dial of an hour horlogue. It was long, long before he restored breath and heartbeat to their normal rates of speed. Then he waited for his body to restore itself to its wonted tone. Having thus passed the hours in something close to stasis, he felt no fatigue. Some distance more or less directly opposite him the guard lounged and yawned at his post, leaning now and again upon his halberd.

Behind the guard at yet another distance burned a torch, smokily.

Underneath Vergil’s long cloak, spun and woven and cut and sewn in Herborean Cymmeria and there dyed into that nameless color which is darker than black, was the device called a pembert, of which only Vergil himself and one other had the art. It consisted in a tiny lens-lamp and a tinier mirror set upon gymbals and a swivel. The parts responded to the slightest touch and tremor of a finger.

The lamp, a minute version of those globes of light which — never needing oil nor wick — illuminated the House of the Brazen Head, now answered to the finger’s touch. A shutter slid away. A beam of light emerged, passed though a lens, was greatly magnified. At the same instant the tiny mirror, shifting on its movements, sped into place at a calculated angle. The man in the shadows made a practiced movement with his throat. His lips did not move. The guard looked up sharply… looked straight into the eye of the lamp. Vergil’s throat moved again… his finger, too. The tiny eye of light vanished. The guard shook his head, puzzled.

But the shadows had moved forward.

Once again the voice which was less than a voice and other than a voice came from Vergil’s throat. His finger shifted slightly on the pembert. The light appeared again, was not reflected in the tiny mirror, moved… right… left… up… down… around, slowly, slowly, around.

And the guard’s eyes followed It… right… left… up… down… around, slowly, slowly, around.

He watched the moving light, his face slack, and did not seem to see at all the shadow slowly moving forward. The light presently vanished, the shadow moved past him, the torch guttered in its socket; the guard remained unmoving, staring. Staring. Staring.

Vergil expected to find obstacles, impediments, and delays standing between him and an audience with Sylvian; he was surprised to be told that no audience at all could be granted. There was no attempt at procrastination masked by oblique consent, no honeyed words urging postponement — the information was stated flatly, devoid of visible malice, but firmly:

“Lord, Sylvian sees no citizens of Rome.”

Basilianos was of no help. And when Vergil, with some half-formed notion of going by sea to another Cypriote port and trying to accomplish his purpose there, began to speak out his thoughts to Ebbed-Saphir, he found the Red Man, from some unknown cause, too tense and preoccupied to listen.

There seemed no other way open than the dark and mystic way he was now pursuing, although of course to him it was based not on mysticism at all, but plain philosophy and science.

Through the grounds, first, then the corridors of the Chief Priest’s great villa he proceeded, leaving behind him a train of bemused guards in a state between wakefulness and sleep, partaking somewhat of each, but in its entirety neither; and came at last to his destination.

There was a painted room, brightly, almost garishly painted, as it might have been by a somewhat talented child, with the figures of people whose faces — eyes round as circles rimmed all about with long lashes, red spheres for cheeks, double cupid’s-bow mouths — were turned full frontward but whose bodies stood sideways underneath trees almost their own size and alongside flowers even taller; with the pictures of striped and dotted birds, blue dogs, red cats, green marmosets… an almost insane panorama which yet arrested rather than repelled.

In the midst of the painted room was a vast bed and in it lay a figure with waved hair and full lips, a figure which was human-like, but as a great doll might be human-like. This figure, which was neither man nor woman, made an agonized face and turned the face away from him. But when the creature groaned and opened its eyes a moment later — hopefully, fearfully — Vergil was there again in front of it.

“Still there,” it said. “Still there,” moaned the epicene voice.

Vergil said nothing. He had again been struck by shock, as, when with Angustus the Ephesian, the cloak curiously fallen over the sights seen when he, Vergil, had “gone through the Door,” had suddenly been lifted, and full memory of that one scene returned. Now it had happened again. It seemed that as he approached in reality the things observed in the visions of the night, recollection of them left him in order that free will might be reconciled with predestination; in order that his choice of what he would do be not influenced by his prophetic knowledge of what must be done. He reached back, now, in memory, to strive to recall other details, for surely the work of preparation called “going through the Door” was intended to assist him: else of what use was it?

Rome! It snapped into his mind, almost audibly. The key was Rome.

“You have had this dream before,” he reminded the whimpering figure on the bed, sexless as a doll. “You know you have, and you caused it to be written down and you referred it to the Wise Men and the Chaldeans and you consulted learned Jews and even the women who serve ‘Ditissa. But no one has given you a good interpretation, not one.” It looked at him, consumed with woe and self-pity and a measure of genuine foreboding and horror. It wept a little and it sniveled.

“But now, Sylvian, this time it is no ordinary dream.”

He reached out and touched the soft hand. Sylvian jerked back as if burned. He screamed. He screamed.

“No one can hear you, Sylvian. No one can come to help you. It is now that you must come to terms. And I will tell you why you now must, in one word, Sylvian. Rome!”

The eunuch drew his breath in on a note of long, shuddering fear. His face became waxy and pinched. Vergil recalled to him the might of Rome, made the room echo with the strokes of the oars of the great armadas, with the rhythmic tramping of the feet of many legions. He thrust the forefinger of his right hand toward the bed screen, and instantly it reflected the shadows of a besieged city. On its crenallated walls the outlines of figures waved their arms in defiance, but nearer and nearer crept the great siege-engines, the armored towers, battering rams, catapults, lumbering on relentlessly, crashing and pounding. Then the darkness grew bright with flames, and billows of smoke veiled the scene.

“Shall I tell you what follows, Sylvian? The capture, the degradation and the shame, the fetters, the darkness and the stinking wet at the bottom of the prison ship, the marching in chains through the mocking crowds of Rome, Sylvian! A prize figure in a Roman triumph, Sylvian? How soft the soles of your feet are, Sylvian! How hard and how harsh are the stony streets of Rome, Sylvian!”

Inert, the recumbent figure rolled up its eyes and made little gasping moans like a woman in terror. Relentlessly, Vergil pressed on. “But that is not the end, Sylvian. Common captives, they merely sell into slavery. But the chiefs and the princes, the leaders of rebellion and defiance, Sylvian, them they strip before Caesar, Sylvian — and they flog them, Sylvian — and then they kill them, Sylvian.”

“They fling them from precipices, they behead them, they crucify them, they give them to be torn by wild beasts in the arena, and sometimes… though perhaps not often… they dip them in tar and then they burn them, Sylvian.”

The Chief Priest of Cybele flung his arms over his eyes as if to shut out the sights. “Why?” he cried. “Why? Why?”

“Why? Only thus is mastery and empire maintained. It is not in the nature of any people that it should willingly endure being ruled by another people, whether it is ruled ill or ruled well.”

Sylvian cried, “No.” He rose in his bed and came toward Vergil, crawling and lurching, protesting that this was not what he meant. Why should Rome wish him ill? It was true he feared Rome, this was why he feared Rome, but why should Rome hate him so, why intend him harm? He came, humping and groveling to the foot of the bed, and there he cowered, begged an answer.

Vergil gave him a question.

“Why have you bewitched the King of Paphos?”

The eunuch sat bolt upright, his figure ungainly and unnaturally tall, his face askew, his mouth working.

“Why?”

Sylvian stammered that it was to destroy the King’s resistance.

“He need not in any case resist,” Vergil said. “He shall have nothing to resist. Rome will not countenance the ceremony to which he is intended to submit. How could you presume to think it would? Or did you? What! Rome, city-empire of the Sons of the Wolf! Is Rome to endure an ally king’s consuming the flesh of his own child, slain by his own hand, and then to be changed into a wolf? No, by the wolf that suckled Romulus, the wolf that suckled Remus, it shall not be!”

The eunuch babbled of Zeus-Leucayon, but was cut short. From beneath Vergil’s cloak came the bag of purple silk embroidered with the Imperial monogram; from this he produced the documents of vellum and parchment, lettered in glossy black, vermilion, and purple; here with seals affixed to the page, and there, with seals dangling upon ribbons tied through slits — each page embossed with the Great Imperial Seal of the Eagle and the Wolf.

“These Sylvian, are my letters of state. Do you see these syllables? Himself, the August Caesar. Read these documents if you like, but, read them or not, defy them at your absolute peril. In the name of Rome, Sylvian, and by the power which Rome conveys through me and through these letters, I now place the Royal and Priestly House of Paphos under my protection.

“And that protection, Sylvian, is the protection of Rome.”

The hermaphrodies bowed down and kissed his knees and feet. How much they knew, how they had learned, Vergil did not know, but it was clear that they knew something which was enough. How much the King himself knew was even more debatable. But obviously he knew that a dreadful thing had threatened, that it threatened no more, and that in some way the foreign wizard was responsible.

“My head is not very clear,” he said, dazed yet, but thoroughly happy. “But my faithfuls” — he gestured to the clustering hermaphrodies — “tell me that copper ore is needed for your white wizardry. What this may be, I do not know, but I have ordered one hundred tumbrils to be put at your diposal, Lord Vergil.”

“Sir, my infinite thanks, but not even one hundred palms are needed. Sufficient ore to fill an ordinary bowl will be quite enough.”

The King pondered a moment. Then, with the sometimes wisdom even of fools, he remarked, “But if you take more, lord, then you will not be put to the trouble of coming for it if you should need it another time.”

Vergil blinked. So vexed had he been with the matter of this one major mirror, it had not occurred to him that it might be possible for him ever again to wish to make one under less troublous circumstances. It was, to be sure, not likely. But it was not impossible. He thanked the King for his generous thought, and agreed to accept as much as could be carried by a fast mule without slowing its pace. A pace, as it soon turned out, which was not long in delaying the ore from almost present appearance, from its storage place nearby. Now that circumstances had so quickly, abruptly changed, Vergil found everyone willing to discuss the mining, grading, transporting, and working of copper in all its aspects. Unless he exercised great control, it was clear, nothing would prevent them from telling him much more about copper than he cared to know.

He dined in the King’s atrium on boned quail wrapped in grape leaves and the tender tripes of young beef dressed with nuts and herbs and young onions. Spiced wine was mixed with cool spring water and poured onto roasted figs, the mixture heated again in a closed vessel and poured into goblets of gold engraved with antique scenes. The conversation of the King was neither deep nor wide, but it had the interest of the curious; also it was a pleasure to observe his almost incredulous good feeling, the joy of his relief. And now and then he called a child of his to the table and fed him with his own hands of the choicest morsels.

It was while host was making polite discourse of local scenery, in particular of certain grovy hills on the road to Larnaca, that a thought which had been rolling about in Vergil’s mind came to the surface. “There is a hill, sir,” he said, “not on the road to Larnaca, but on the road to Chirinea, at the foot of which there is a thriple arch. Can you tell me anything about it?”

The reply was brief, politely disinterested, provoking. “The phoenix sometimes honors it,” said the High King of Cyprus. But it was then that the copper arrived, in chests of carven olivewood, and there was no time for further discourse.

Messengers had already been sent for Bayla, and he was there, enjoying the rare pleasure of a hot bath, in the Golden House, comely serving maids rubbing the soles of his feet with perfumed pumice stone as he grunted delightedly. He had evidently worshiped the goddess to his heart’s content, and put forth no objection to an immediate return. Now the company lacked only its third member, and word was brought that An-Thon was not at his ship in Paphos port. Where was he? Certainly not still at that hill concerning which Vergil had asked of the King — that hill, marked at its roadside base by the thriple arch, on which Vergil (going to Sylvian’s villa) had observed the previous night a great fire, and heard a cry of ecstasy; that hill from near where he might have seen the Red Man coming on his own return… but so far was the distance and figure, so dim the now dying fire, that he could not be sure. And perhaps never would be.

But even as he used, pacing the tessellated pavement of the Golden House with growing impatience, growing — once again — the familiar ache and pain of loss within him, the Red Man appeared on the scene. He was quiet now, subdued, rather different from the tense figure he had been before.

“Ready to leave?” was all he asked. “Right.”

The rich, drowsy city was apparently prepared to see them depart as placidly as it had seen them enter. But, just as there had been a disturbance of one sort only at their arrival, just so there was destined to be a disturbance at their leaving; and of a similar sort. Out from a narrow lane in the poorest part of the lower town poured a group of the Soldiery, pressing around on all sides and pushing on a smaller group of captives, who, far from seeming cast down at their situation, were braving the blows and curses of their captors by singing a hymn.

Yom shel chamath, yom hazeh

Hoshanna, Oseh felleh —

And there in the midst of them Vergil recognized Angustus the Ephesian. At his sharp cry the Soldiery halted, scowling at first, then merely sullen. The hymn broke off.

“Sage, I will speak immediately to the High King and have you and your conventicle released. Meanwhile, have no fear,” said Vergil.

But the old man, his eyes wide and his lips moving in protest even before Vergil had finished, broke immediately into a spate of earnest disagreement, the burden of which was, “I forbid you!”

“I am not to be forbidden, sage, and I — ”

“I! I! Accursed payan, is it not always I with you? You think to gratify your greed for power by interfering with the work of that dragon serpent which is called Harlot, Beast, and Babylon — but we will not have it! We will not be released, cheated of our promised reward in the arena. As much as we are for the lions, the lions are for us. I adjure you, in the name of Daniel Christ, not to interfere!”

Vergil took out his book of wax tablets, quickly and firmly incised a message with his stylus, handed it to the captain of the Soldiery. “Take this to the King,” he ordered.

The old man broke into a cry of dismay. “Do not do so, do not do so! Is this the reward for the good usage I have shown you? I desire this death, and no other. I have desired nothing else since that day when, seized by the spirit as I neared Allepo, I — ”

“Sage,” said Vergil, a trifle coolly, “it seems to me that in your own speech as well, there is overmuch of I. Farewell, then, and if one is not mistaken, you will contrive one way or another, sooner or later, to engross the cruelty you both condemn and court — if not on this occasion, then on another.”

The voyage back was neither marred nor marked by any untoward incidents. The winds were fair, the weather well. The only thing of especial note was the growing uneasiness of Bayla. Evidently the thought of his brothers’ displeasure was now coming home to roost, ousting even the complacent satisfaction with which he looked back on his exceedingly vigorous pilgrimage in Paphos among the priestesses of Venus. And when the home island came into view, like a cloud at sunrise pink upon the horizon, he began to utter soft and plaintive little moans which grew increasingly anguished. At the approach of the first Hunnish ship, he made as if to bolt for the cabin, then bravely drew himself up and stood in full view at the bow.

There he was seen by the ship’s occupants, and a great shout went up. “Bayla!” the Sea-Huns cried. “Bayla King! Bayla King!” No trace of either wrath or ridicule was in their voices. He stood in surprise, and, as the men on the ship were seen to bow down and to strike their heads repeatedly and resoundingly upon the dirty deck, his mouth sank open and his round red tongue popped out and licked his dry lips in bewilderment.

“What do you make of this, Captain An-Thon?” Vergil asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve never seen them behave this way except for Osmet and Ottil.”

“Osmet and Ottil…” The stumpy little king muttered his brothers’ names, muttered something else, shifted uneasily from foot to foot. Signals flew between Hun ship and Hun shore, a triumphal dance of welcome broke out on the deck of the former, and now it seemed as though every vessel of the corsair fleet was making for the incoming ship which bore Bayla. Who cast questioning glances all around, continued his continuous questioning mutter, and seemed much relieved when Vergil and the Red Man took stands beside him.

Great was the multitude awaiting them onshore, where a platform of sorts had been hastily improvised. Some of those thereon were immediately recognized by mage and master as Bayla’s chamberlains: one-eyed Baron Murdas, one-armed Baron Bruda, limping Baron Gabron. Plucking up courage from their presence, Bayla pointed to two other figures, a huge and hairy, rather ape-like person — “Ottil, Ottil King” — and the thin one next to him, gaps between his long and yellow teeth, his bald head rising almost to a point — “Osmet brother, Osmet King.” Bayla’s finger moved, rested in the direction of an old and somewhat mangy, somewhat bearish man… and there the finger remained, while Bayla’s mouth again fell open with utter shock. The one he pointed to observed the gesture and gave voice to an absolute howl, began to move his legs up and down in a shambling and curiously familiar way.

Bayla found his tongue. “Tildas!” he cried. “Tildas Shaman!”

The black boatswain tossed a line, Osmet ran to catch it, the oars backed water, the ship slowed, floated, Ottil hastened to tie it to the canting old pillar which served as mooring.

They walked ashore.

Suddenly, it seemed, no one was willing to meet them, everyone avoided their eyes. Then stepped forward the squat figure of the Fox Sept-Mother, the sometime quasi-morganatic-concubine of Bayla and ex-officio Hereditary Court Singer. She gave three claps to her timbrel, all fell silent, she began to sing. Bayla at first regarded her much ascantly, as if comparing her to the priestesses of Aphrodite, but then the burden of her song — evidently composed for the occasion — began to come through to him. Vergil, afterward, was inclined to give the little, squinting, red-eyed King considerable credit that in this infinitely important moment he bothered to try to translate for his hosts something of what it was all about.

Tildas Shaman, wise man of the Hunfolk of the Atrian Sea, had “donned the bearskin” at the funeral feast of Old King, father of Ottil, Osmet, and Bayla. The purpose of his doing so was to obtain the final message from the Old King’s ghost, and any message going from the ghosts of the puissant Sept-Mothers. But Tildas had not “taken off the bearskin,” Tildas had remained a bear, Tildas had conveyed no messages, as a result of which the kingship had become a triumvirate — a triumvirate, however, in name only, with Osmet and Ottil sharing the power and Bayla receiving only titular honors. Honors which did not prevent his being despised, mocked, abused. So it had gone, this much they already knew.

But while they were off to Cyprus, something had happened. The Fox-Mother was awakened one morning by the slave whose daily chore it was to bring food and drink to the long-chained Tildas-bear, and, following the frightened servitor, found chained to the pillar no bear at all, but the bewildered and angry figure of Tildas-man himself. Why the metamorphosis had been so long delayed, neither he nor anyone else knew… or cared. It had occurred; that was sufficient. And the message so long delayed was more than sufficient.

Videlicet, that it was and had been all along the pleasure of the defunct Old King and the ghosts of the puissant Sept-Mothers that Bayla alone be King, and that Osmet and Ottil serve him in all things.

The shrilling of the song and the banging of the timbrel came to an abrupt end. The silence was shattered by a great cry of “Bayla! Bayla! Bayla King!” And Bayla drew in his breath and drew himself up and looked at his usurpatous brothers and they cringed, they groveled before him.

“It would seem,” said the Red Man thoughtfully, as Bayla proceeded to give them each a hasty, hearty kick and a sidelong look and snarl, which promised more close attention at a later date, “it would seem, Ser Vergil, that you now have a powerful friend at court indeed.”