The Phoenix and the Mirror
Virgil the Roman poet was remembered as Vergil the Mage, a powerful and benevolent sorceror who used his powers to protect the city of Naples. From this beginning Davidson created a world surpassingly rich and strange. Vergil Magus is trapped by the spells of the exiled Queen Cornelia. To free himself he must undertake for her one of the greatest works of alchemy: the making of a Virgin Speculum, a bronze mirror so forged that whoever first looks into it will see whatever they most desired to see. To do this will take Vergil to the very limit of his powers. He must undertake the arcane discplines of alchemy and magic. He must thread his way through intrigues both political and occult. Along the way he will encounter manticores, mandrakes, a madwoman, a gargoyle, a Cyclops, Sea Huns, eunuch priests, sacred hermaphrodites and the two thousand beautiful priestesses of Aphrodite. And, more perilous than any of these, the enigmatic being known as the Phoenix.