Vergil in Averno

“Strike!”

And the striker seized his hammer and with all full-measured strength he struck.

“Done,” said the smith. And drew the bar back once more.

Then he turned, sweeping his arm across his brow, to Vergil, who, with a movement too calculated to be called haste, had replaced the hollow rod. The smith asked, “Fellow, where you learned fire?”

“In Sidon, me ser.” Only after having said it did he bethink him he had answered in the tongue of Sidon. And from this place to that place …

“You be the mage we —?”

“Yes, Magnate.”

Boso cupped his huge hands around his huge mouth, shouted something. Waited. One would not have said that any voice could have carried over the noise and clamor of those forges; and this one needed not, for its burden was taken up and passed along. Very soon indeed a figure appeared through the murk and haze. “Go thither, Wise One,” said Boso, still in Sidonian. “To him, to him, to that one; he will prepare for you, and I shall come. . I shall come …” He gazed around and all about his works, his words fallen, stopped. Almost Vergil felt that the man would have wished to have been at every single forge at once. The face returned to look at him. Quite gone that freezing, contained scorn of short moments before. “I shall come presently.” He strode away to another forge, where even then the smith had taken one short step backward and seemed, though slightly, to totter. The magnate seized from him the tongs and turned the iron. . not much did he turn the iron, almost plastic in the smolder, but then he would know, as any master smith must know, just how much to turn it; and “Strike!” he cried.

As Vergil followed the one figure designated to “prepare” for him, ever behind him he heard that voice, heard indeed other voices from and at all other forges: “Strike!. . Strike!. . Strike! …”

And, after all, presently he did come, both “bibs” flapping. To Vergil he gestured an obeisance, omitted at their first meeting, one which the guest had seen before, though not locally: Brosa stooped, but did not stoop low, he dropped his hand, but did not drop it far; he brought it up toward the top of his head, but he did not bring it up to the top of his head — and all this very fast. He had, in effect, bowed to the ground and gathered up its dust and strewn it upon his poll. In fact, of course, he had done nothing of the sort. And whilst doing (and not doing) all this, he growled something that was clearly intended to be a respectful greeting, though certainly not intended to be a prolix one.

And the while he stole a glance at Vergil’s pouch.

But of what he thought might be in it, and of what he knew was certainly in it, of this he said no word.

Then he addressed himself to the meats upon the table. By and by, his mouth only partly filled, he said, “This a very rich city.”

“Indeed, Magnate.”

“It been richer.”

“Indeed, Master?”

“Could be richer, could richer be, than ever was. But how?”

“Indeed. Magnate.”

Magnate Boso poured into his goblet a draft of something thick and dark, poured on top of that something thin and light, swirled the goblet, once, twice, raised, and in an instant drained it, set it down. “Rich. Richer. Very rich. Riches.” Barely he paused, he looked at Vergil from beneath his hedge-thick eyebrows. “Interested?”

The possibility of gaining, and gaining swift and soon, the means of supplying all he ever had desired to supply for that place, as yet set no place, which his dreams termed home, lit up Vergil’s mind. And in the light, like the brief and fitful shimmer of a sheet of heat-lighting, something else he saw there illuminated as well.

At the Secret Sacred School, filing past Putto, the obscenely fat, who stood with a large and sagging sack in each swollen paw. Every student, by instruction (and one did not dally in obeying instruction; this was already the eighteenth lesson. . or. . it might prove to be; one did not always know. . till after) and without looking, peering, peeping, groping, fumbling, was to place one hand into each sack and withdraw one, only one. . whatever. The student ahead of Vergil was an Illyrian named Lustus, one with a clever way of seeming not the least clever, of lurching into one of his fellows, if not always (though often) to his own profit, then to the other’s loss, and similar tricks of which one could hardly or not decently complain. Lustus had taken hold of. . whatever. . with each hand; perhaps Lustus did not like the feel of what he had hold of by his left hand, clearly Vergil saw the wrist-tendons move, knew that Lustus was — Lustus, slightly, feigned a stagger, murmured apology — was letting go of. . whatever. . and taking hold of another. Lustus gave a short, sick, and sickening grunt. Lustus drew up his hand as though it was afire. Vergil could not clearly (thank the gods!) make out what it was that clung to the left hand of Lustus, it was too large for an insect and had too many limbs for an animal or reptile, and it writhed, writhed, and Lustus screamed, screamed -

— two of the proctors swiftly seized him, one from each side -

— if Lustus was still screaming or if what rang in Vergil’s ears was an echo, Vergil did not know; he knew that Lustus was no longer in front of him -

“In with them. Draw.” Said Putto, the obscenely fat.

Vergil without hesitation obeyed. The things did not feel, really, pleasant, but nothing seemed about to bite or burn or writhe; sweating, not looking, Vergil passed along. By and by they stood, the students, in front of the elaboratory tables. “Set ‘em down. Down.” Another voice, but no strange one; whence? Not moving his head and only slightly rolling up his eyes, Vergil got a glimpse of Calimicho, the gaunt, the gray, the grim, looking down from a gallery; it was not that Vergil would have sworn there had been no gallery there a moment before, he would have sworn — although he saw it — that no gallery was there now.

But that was not the lesson.

“Look at ‘em.” All looked. Before each was a fungus from the two bags. Two. Slightly cool, one; slightly warm, one; slightly moist. . or dry. . here or there upon it. . them…. Having not been forbidden to do so, swiftly Vergil raked his eyes from left to right; mostly all the students were doing the same. No two fungi, he was sure, were quite alike. What — “Looked at ‘em? You’ve studied Theophrastus, you’ve studied Dioscorides, Hippocrates, Galen, you’ve talked with the simples-women and you’ve walked with the witches of the woods. You may — when I give you leave — look some more, you may poke and pare and peer and smell and taste. Don’t touch!. . yet …” He held between thumb and forefinger the smallest of sandglasses, such as the frugal housewife uses to time the boiling of a pigeon’s egg. “When you’ve made up your mind. If it’s medicine, throw it before you, off the table. If it’s poison, throw it well behind you. If it is neither, but just fit for the pot, leave it where it is. Prepare.” He turned the tiny glass, set it down on the railing (who failed to hear that tiny click?). “Now.”

Seldom had Vergil passed oh-so-short a moment, yet ah such a busied one before there came that second slight click: “Stop.” The last word was not emphasized, but no hand moved more.

“That one which now remains in front of you. Pick it up. Eat.”

Later he heard that same Northishman, he whose father was an earl, ask, “Ser Proctor, was it needful that those who erred did die?”

Said the proctor, “Their clients will not die.”

Even as the vision of what this intimated share of richnesses might secure for him was fading quite away, Vergil heard himself reply, “I have no doubt, Magnate, that the Very Rich City will deal with me generously. In wares and merchandise, I myself do not deal.”

Boso’s brows, like unpruned shrubbery, came together, paused, parted. “Wise one, we shall meet again. Aysh. Aysh.” Fire. Fire.

G. Rufus Rano was, clearly, nervous. He had a singular lack of any personal charm, but his clear and evident