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

Greece … to Greece, or farther … much, much farther … perhaps as far as ancient Carthage, much loved by Juno, stained with purple and heavy with gold … perhaps (not merely unlikely, but almost impossible … still … still … that which was almost impossible was possible) perhaps, via the canal which joined the sweet fresh waters of the Nile to the salt waves of the Arabian Recess and past the Gate of Tears and thence into the vast fetches of the Erythraean Ocean and the Indoo Sea and entire way to the Golden Chersonese and its far-distant City of Lions and thus to many-fabled Cipangu (risks, hazards, horrids, stinking shallows, shoals, and depths without bottom) — Merely to contemplate: one had to walk even that mile, at least that mile, and to encounter that milepost. And then to pass it.
    And, now, Numa was that milepost.
    The boy stepped forward.

    The creature glared at him swiftly thrust out a palm as black as an apeling’s. Its hung-agape mouth had a long spittle on the dropping-forward lower lip, this lip it folded back over some browned and crooked numbs of teeth, and in a harsh voice of curious tone, “
Money
,” it said. “Wisdom and wonder is not to be had for nought.”
    Not,
without thought
, for think on the words he did, but as quick as any reflex, he handed over the peeled oaken wand, as some tale or other round about the chestnut-scented nightfire had indicated that he should (chestnuts in the fire, chestnut-wood with its ruddy heart … or was it carob? memory of, earlier, chestnut flowers scenting all the world). Scorn, and hateful scorn upon the creatures’ face. “Where is the wee white bit of silver for my master?” the harsh, high voice demanded, “What, no’ even a copper piece, such as the hostler-thrall may have at stables? Why cam ye here, saucy boy, saunce coin?”
    Another voice now the boy heard, from the murkiest region of the room behind the door; at hearing this (to him) wordless grumble, Mariu at once understood that it was a voice of power, and that the grumble was not directed to him. The creature must have realized it, too, for it flinched, withdrew into itself a bit, yet gan a-whining for all that. “A peeled oaken-switch, lord warlock, shall I seeth it for thy supper? Or roast it by the coals like a fatling-kid?” Still its sarcasm, yes, hate, was strong and live, like the strong, thrang odor of some loathesome beast (and it lacked not that, either, the boy thought). He made a half-step back.
    The other voice spoke again. “Belike we’ll lay it along thy humps and haunches, Caca, mayhap twill be this rotten head of thine we’ll seeth in pot, Caca, or thy runny rump, dern scabs and all. What! Caca, still stand thee there? Boy! Push it aside, come over the threshold, enter, enter, pleased to be coming in.”
    It came not to push; the strange thrawn doorkeeper drew aside, and, sending the boy one last evil look, gat it gone — presumably to the cave which common talk agreed lay behind the heavy dark curtain at the rear of the house proper. But — as to the warlock’s voice! — for the warlock himself he could see nought of, save some large shape amidst the shadow and the smoke — to be sure the voice had begun with all the power of a king — and then of sudden, turned sweet. So that long later he was reminded of the famous play upon words which turned
Ptolemaios
, the name of Ægypt’s king, who had sent an hundred thousand only slightly suspected subjects to toil in his silver mines; turned
Ptolemaios
into
Apo Melitos
: Made-of-Honey. Aye, but they were subtle folk, there in Grecian
Æ
gypt — and, aye! they had need to be. Haply it had amused them there, moiling by torchlight at the black ore — but, well! Claude was Ptolemy now, a philosopher for a king, a cosmographer, and … well … one must hope — no abuser of power. And as the boy was pleased to be coming in (and pleased he may have been, but he was not delighted), the warlock spoke again in his