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“Most certainly!”
Ysra looked hungrily at me. “We want that. We have heard that men visit Pentexore-Beyond-the-Wall, but you are our first foreigner. We want your country and our country to meet and court and kiss. We want to merge, to see what is extraordinary in England, what marvelous inventions and natural resources Byzantium commands, to observe the daily works of Flemish knights. We want to sniff at them, and see what they are made of, and what we could make of their world. If you think a book could accomplish this we welcome you to write it. Write it beautifully, write it so beautifully they have to come, and pay tribute to us, and build roads from Spain to Simurgh. Build ships to cross from Sweden to Summikto. We find these words so bright and alien: Sweden, England, Flanders. They sound rich enough to eat.”
I confess I was taken aback by their enthusiasm. I had not thought much on trade between our nations. My heart unfolded like a map: a picture of a town I knew in Scotland, in which a seam of silver was discovered, rich and deep. Several dukes and princes swarmed their vassals over that town, digging out the silver and taking the women to wife and carousing until nothing remained of the village except a hollow mountain and a few burnt houses. That is how it often goes in Scotland. That is how it often goes everywhere, I suppose.
“As for Pentexoran books,” Ymra said sweetly. “We have heard that on the other side of the Wall they are enamored of such things, but here, we find they… inflict a distressing order on the world. Surely you have noticed that once you write a thing down, it is as good as real. People aren’t strong enough to resist the spell of authority ink casts. It is a kind of magic, and we don’t generally approve. You must be so careful with that sort of thing, or else all sorts of things you never intended start becoming real, and soon you’ve no control at all anymore. I suppose, if we could enforce that folk only wrote about what was real, and virtuous, and only told good tales about their monarchs and their compatriots, it might be all right.”
“I believe Plato would agree with you.”
“Is she a relation of yours?”
I laughed. “No, but he proposed just such safeguards.”
“Perhaps then, when you write your book, Plato will come and visit us and advise us on the dangerous questions of literature.” Ymra said in a way that made me quite aware the issue had closed.
“But you must understand,” I insisted, though I could see it annoyed them both to continue the discussion past the polite placing of the queen’s napkin on the table, “there are weak books and strong books. Yes, certainly, sometimes a man writes things not strictly true and folk have no way of knowing otherwise, or perhaps the things he wrote seemed so much bigger and brighter than anything they knew that they wanted it to be real, or perhaps a king wrote it, and could pass a law requiring people to behave as though it was true—you know, that sort of thing happened with the Bible and Constantine, though I would be struck down for saying so at home. But I told tales of Carthage Triumphant for years, and it did not unmake old Rome, it did not rewrite the history of the world, it did not do anything but sink a black-haired prince of a dead kingdom further in despair and bitterness.”
Ysra considered. “But in that prince’s court, did everyone behave as though the tales were true? As though the kingdom were not dead and the prince puissant, Rome a meager, trollopy sort of place?”
I answered slowly. “The prince held a ball once, where he compelled half his courtiers to dress as Romans, and the other half as old Carthaginian nobles. After the dancing and rich eating, the Carthaginians threw goblets of wine at the Romans, and beat them, at first with mock strength and much laughter, but soon with vigor and anger, and at the end of it the Romans were made to stand naked before the ‘conquerors’ and parceled out as slaves. The next day they were emancipated, but that night was pleasant for no one.”
“There you have it,” said Ymra smugly, folding her six hands over one another. “The world is too fragile to bear the weight of books.”
6. On the Phoenix
I had much freedom in Simurgh, the city of the phoenix, over which the Mount looms like a great black mother bird. The phoenix do not hold Simurgh alone, but rather it is a haven for all fiery creatures, and a large population of salamanders call it home as well. It is a most pleasant city, full of green domes half-blackened with smoke and beautiful birds strutting through the streets with their tails heavy and golden behind them, for it is considered gauche to fly unless one is coming of age (and soon to conflagrate), of a rank lower than margrave, or an appointed sheriff. The salamanders, who range in size from that of a hunting dog to that of a long and undulate pony, and in color from deep beryl-green to iridescent coppery verdigris, carry crystal globes of living fire around their necks on thick chains, and when they are exhausted, they sip from the sloshing fire, and are refreshed.
In Simurgh, two activities consumed most of her inhabitants’ energies: The making of young, and preparations for the Bonfire, a great ball held in honor of all Simurgh’s most premier folk, as well as Ymra and Ysra, who are certainly monarchs as they claimed to be, for I had yet to see any other soul move in the Mount, and whenever I mentioned their name to an incandescent bird or portly salamander, I was treated to much in the way of imprecations for their health and favor. The phoenix asked me if I have been to the Wall yet. They say: The land on the other side of the Wall is rich and beautiful, and they have a hole which is full of everlasting life, and we have none of those things, and they will not share. They are decadent and weak. In all the world there is only the land on one side of the Wall and the land on the other side, and we are in one place, and they are in the other place, and we cannot get there, and they cannot get here.
They sang with such bitterness of the Wall. They sang for Ysra and Ymra to give them what that other land has.
The rearing and breeding of young, however, comprised most of the economy of Simurgh. Both phoenix and salamander required a great deal of fire to effect their peculiar processes. The lizards possessed great silver urns of flame in which their worms, very like silkworms, writhed and grew until they were ready spin their cocoons. The cocoons shimmered blue, gold, amber, and deft handmaidens appeared as if out of nowhere, the only other humans I had seen, their eyes hollow and their limbs thin. They plunged their hands into the molten creche and spun out a wondrous thread from the cocoons. Their fingers were in no way scorched, so I may have to reconsider whether they are human. They certainly kept their own counsel and company, for I could not get a word from them. (Though I found in my rooms a most extraordinary suit of clothes the day after I observed this rite, with hose of fiery red and the rest golden, amber, brassy and bold.)
The phoenix, of course, give birth to themselves every five hundred years or so. However, this is not quite sufficient for population growth, and I gathered that at some point in their past they suffered a great reduction in their numbers. Their eggs, when they lay them (a rather difficult proposition, I gather, as the hen must ingest a monstrous amount of cinnamon in order to achieve fertility—the woods surrounding Simurgh crowded thick with cassia) must be roasted for one hundred days on a bed of embers. One might imagine such a blaze would cook the egg, but I am assured the chick cannot survive without it.
I was trea
ted as a minor celebrity and given a goodly number of ales and cakes. The streets of Simurgh glowed with red leaves shed from stately trees which never seemed to grow new green shoots nor run out of their scarlet foliage. Anything red is beloved. To date I have not seen a conflagration of phoenix, but I gather it is quite the to-do, and the main purpose of the Bonfire, to celebrate the old phoenix and the new, and to glimpse the sacred dance of the salamanders on their round and gleaming feet.
When will this great event occur? I asked every phoenix and green salamander I met.
Soon, they all said. If not tomorrow, surely the day after.
I have been here for some time now. The answer is always tomorrow. Surely the next day. No longer than the day after that.
THE BOOK
OF THE RUBY
You don’t have to say how they sent us off. It’s embarrassing to think about now. Even my mother came—Kukyk, waving her wings in the air. How they cheered. How they blew kisses. How the wind sounded on the golden waves. How they cut the hedge apart to let us through, with axes and beaks. You can skip that part. The part where we were so happy to be going to save John’s world we pretended not to hear the heads crunching and crying under blade after blade. The part where we thought our own king would love us if only we killed a whole heap of people we had no quarrel with.
But the sharks? I should still make that scene?
Yes, the sharks.
We learned from John that whichever ship bore the king was most important, the flagship. I rode upon that ship, too, along with Anglitora and Qaspiel and Hadulph and Sukut the bull-headed astronomer and many others. I could not say why then but I felt it important that we stay together. The whole business had been timed so that the road through the sand would form when we had nearly completed the crossing, so that we could sail as long as possible, so we could make good time. John seemed to have little enough idea how far it would be from the opposite shore of the Rimal to Jerusalem.
“I am not a cartographer, no matter how much I might wish it. Hopefully I shall be able to orient myself when we arrive. I will do my best, wife, that is all I can do.”
