The Phoenix and the Mirror

CHAPTER FIVE

DECLINING WITH THANKS the offer of a torchman to light him home, Vergil took his leave of Tartis Castle. Scarcely noting the strong, familiar smells of the Main Port, he let his mind run freely.… What a journey lay before the bird of gold and its pair of protectors! Seas and storms, crags and forests — how far? No one knew. Over farmland and marshland and woodland and barren moors, beyond the distant border marches of the Empire, past the remote boundaries of the Great Economium itself… perhaps all the way to Ultima Thule, farthest land of rock and freezing seas. Who knew where Tinland was?

They would see sights, as they veered and circled, that no man ever saw: the sun rising from the sea beneath them, like a disc of burnished brass; beneath them, too, the icy alps; the Great Forest, stretching farther than the knowledge of man; and, at length, after many days and many perils, the storm-buffeted air and water of the cold, gray Northern Sea, where the shape shifters turned seal instead of wolf.

A blind beggar, alerted by the approaching footsteps, began his singsong chant, broke off in mid-note as he heard the coin clatter in his bowl, mumbled a thanks. Gobbets of meat sizzled and smoked, beans bubbled, spiced wine simmered in an open-front cookshop lit chiefly by its own cheerful fires. Porters and dockers squatted on the step, dipping chunks of bread into their suppers, reminding Vergil that he had not yet had his. A woman with a painted face and no bosom to her dress leaned over a lamp-lit window sill and called an invitation. A ragged child and a scabby dog slept belly to belly in an alley.

Presently the busier part of the port, busy even at night, began to give way to the warehouse district, busy only in the daytime. He walked through pools of black shadow. The lights were dim and few. Up ahead, past the archway where the street began to climb the hill, came the noise of a brawl. Vergil turned aside to avoid a heap of sand and gravel, which the builders had left when they stopped work for the day, and found himself in the middle of the fight.

Clubs thudded against each other, shouts of warning, obscenities. Men circling for position, crouching and darting. A broken jug lay in a splatter of cheap, sour wine — perhaps a result of the brawl, perhaps its cause. Vergil began to pass by, staggered as one of the men — there may have been five or six of them — fell heavily against him. A protest would be wasted breath. He caught his balance and had started on his way again when the man who had fallen against him whirled around and came after him. Shouting. Cudgel raised.

It was no time for explanations. His long knife was in his belt. He drew it. “Keep off,” he warned. And began to move away.

The gesture did not bring him unopposed right of passage. The men dropped their private quarrels, began to close up, to move in toward him. “Drew a knife on us,” one muttered, with the sullen rage of the bully who feels wronged when resisted. Another stopped, swung at an angle, his hand whipping up and out. Sensing rather than seeing the stone, Vergil ducked. It was the wrong thing to do.

He thought the arc of light he saw appear on the paving was from the sharp, sickening pain of the blow. In an instant, as the men stopped short, staring down, he knew it was not. The curving line expanded like a slow ripple, licked up into a circle of fire. His flesh prickled, he sensed a pressure which he did not feel. His knife hand still out-thrust, the blade pointing up, he turned his head. There was a man behind him whose hand also was thrust out, but it held no knife. The index finger indicated, almost negligently, the circle of fire. The finger rose. The level of the fire rose.

The attackers — dirty fellows in patched jerkins — breathed noisily through open mouths. The stranger moved to Vergil’s side, made a sweeping and violent gesture. In an instant the circle was sucked into one flaming heap, which went roaring down upon the thugs, spreading out, fan-wise, as it did so. They fled, whooping in terror. Now the fire was a great serpent, undulating in pursuit, nipping at the heels of each of them. The shadows danced madly on the grimy bricks of the buildings. The fire moved more slowly, but the fleeing brutes did not slacken, nor look behind. And the fire sank down, drew in upon itself, its heat seeming to leave it, its color changing from yellow-orange-red to the blue-white of phosphorescence. At last there was but a spot, a speck, like the glow of a firefly. Vergil turned to see the Red Man beside him.

And then even the reflection vanished from Vergil’s eyes.

“I should like to know how it is done,” Clemens said, speculatively. “The proper control of fire — or, more exactly, of heat — is a perpetual problem in alchemical work. As I am sure that you, Captain An-thon, know. Hmm. Hmm. There is an account of a man named Eliah or Elio or something like that, who lived in Samaria or Philistia, and who could bring fire down from Heaven. It’s said that he finally ascended in fire and was seen no more.… Hmm.”

The Red Man said, “Yes. Right. As to how it is done — everything is a pattern, a configuration, of the atoms, as Lucretius teaches. Some patterns are stable, some static, others are in flux. The figures of fire are always flux. They bend to the wind, they yield to the water. It is a matter of knowing how to begin. Once that is learned…” He smiled, but the smile did little to dispel the waiting tautness of his face. The air of watching from within something distant.

Clemens leaned forward, nodding, his fists buried in his beard, his elbows on the table. He, too, waited. But the Red Man said nothing more. Clemens sighed, sat back. “Someday, perhaps,” he murmured.

“Someday.” Vergil reclined at comparative ease, his dinner digesting leisurely, his muscles relaxing from the long climb of the afternoon, the dull ache and fear for the moment stilled. “Someday I must learn not to become involved in altercations. Two in one day, well — although neither one turned out badly for me. Perhaps that is because you, sir” — he turned to the Phoenician — “were near at hand on both occasions.”

Ebbed-Saphir looked up from a model of a new astrolabe (a project of Vergil’s which had been put aside a while back), thrust out his lower lip doubtfully. The two cases were coincidental and dissimilar; he would accept no compliments. One was that of a single man gone mad from brooding on his wrongs. The other was most probably — almost certainly — a put-up job.

“You still think so? You really do?”

The Phoenician was not to be swayed. “It was no brawl,” he said. “It was an ambush. The biggest of the lot — and the worst — the one with the slashed chin, is in the pay of Thurnus Rufus.” Clemens snorted. Half Naples, and the worse half, was in the pay of Thurmus Rufus. But the Phoenician continued his argument. Throughout the day, he went on, the rumor had swept through maritime Naples that trade with Cyprus was going to be opened up completely. The copper factors were in dismay — their profitable monopoly would be destroyed; the stocks in their warehouses reduced to a fraction of present value. Who was the chief of the merchants sharing in the monopoly? Thuraus Rufus. False though the rumor undoubtedly was, Thurnus must have believed it. It was not necessary that he be entirely convinced, it would be sufficient if he thought there might be even a grain of truth in it.

“If you are right,” Clemens said, “there will be more trouble. Our friend Vergil has never learned to leave well enough alone.”

Their friend Vergil did not seem deeply concerned. He began to talk of his visit to Tartis Castle, and of the Tartismen themselves.

The Red Man took up the thread. “I visit them whenever I am in a port that has a Tartis ward,” he said. “I’ve carried cargo for them upon occasion, and I’ve always found them honest — though not always easy. Besides, I feel a certain affinity with them. I, too, am of a race of exiles. I have said that I am a Phoenician. This is true. But I am more specifically a Tyrean. You have heard of the Tyrean War?”

Vergil and Clemens encouraged him to tell them about it. Wine was poured, and some of the fifth essence of wine, distilled by Clemens, added to the goblets. A glow came over Ebbed-Saphir’s wind-red face as he described the grandeur and the glories of seagirt Tyre. Her palaces. Her navies. Her great halls of scented cedarwood. The cloth of that imcomparable purple, the secret of which Tyre first learned, and the trade in which first made her rich.

“Oh, there was great wisdom among us,” he said, his eyes shining. “Our astromancers studied the skies, learning from the heavenly configurations and profigurations how to sail out of sight of land by night, and what nights were auspicious and what ones were best spent at anchor or ashore. Our philosophers conned the secrets of man and matter and the tri-part psyche, our priests and prophets communed with the Supernal Figures. Wisest of all was Perez, son of P’er-Hiram, King of Tyre. But his wisdom was not without flaw.…

“One day there came to him the Great Elim — Mikha-El, Gavri-El, Raphoy-El and Ori-El.

“These, Princes of the Four Quarters of Earth and Heaven, asked Perez to decide which among them was the wisest. And, in an ill-starred moment, he agreed to make the choice, and his choice fell upon Ori-El. Then he demanded his reward.

“He demanded the love of the most beautiful woman in the world — Eleana, the promised-in-marriage of Alexander Magnus, who, wroth at his loss, and with all the tribes of Greece for his allies, crossed into Asia and besieged Tyre for seven years.

“Every day his men sank huge stones into the water to build a causeway connecting Isle Tyre with the mainland. Every night our swimmers dived down and tied grapnels to them so they could be pulled up. Seven years the Greeks besieged us. Then we were betrayed. Well, Good Fortune upon your venture, Dr. Vergil. If you need a boat — ” He did not finish.

For a moment the two, not having yet grasped the abrupt termination of the narrative, gaped at him. Nodding curtly, the Red Man wrapped his cloak about him and departed.

“What do you suppose…?” Clemens, on his feet, was amazed. “Emotional reaction at the memory of that old tribal legend?”

Vergil shook his head. “There’s more to the matter than that. Much more.”

“But…”

“This has been a tiring day for me. Will you spend the night?… No? Then I will excuse myself. There is much to do tomorrow.”

He had not realized that he was so tired. Almost numbed with fatigue, he climbed into his bed. Before the singing darkness overwhelmed him there came one thought — but it came not clearly. Wishing only to lose himself in the black, soft cloak of slumber, he yet strained for the thought. It came, at last, briefly but vividly. The ring. The Red Man’s ring.… The picture faded, was succeeded by a faint, failing wonder as to why it had appeared in his thought at all. He had caught only a glimpse of it… could not remember it… could not collect it… could not Cornelia… rings. Who goes? he demanded, voicelessly. The brazen head moved brazen lips.

But all was silent.