Pox: vernacular name used for a number of diseases characterised by eruptive sores, but in particular for syphilis.
Pox doctor: one who heals or purports to heal venereal diseases such as syphilis, gonorrhoea etc. etc.
In Castle Vaunting, night brought sleep to the warrior Morgan Hearst, who was due to face his doom on the morrow.
In the hamlet of Delve, night brought sleep also to the wizards Phyphor and Garash, who ensconced themselves in a loft. But Miphon stayed awake, for he was needed for doctor work.
Even here in Delve, the people had heard the legends of the Alliance of wizards and heroes four thousand years and more before, the Alliance which had fought so long and hard against the Swarms. However, whatever legend, song or rumour might say, most folk credited wizards with no magic. Their standing was low, for they were best known as pox doctors. Most people had no chance to unlearn their ignorance, for wizards came seldom to Estar, and, though Delve knew of Heenmor, it was only by hearsay.
The last wizard to visit Delve had been a young apprentice discarded by his tutor because of his poor scholarship and his inability to build and control power through the Meditations. He had been scraping a living as a healer, though his studies of the healing arts were far from complete.
Such incompetent failures were the wizards most frequently seen by men, and, encountering such a novice, a young man blinking behind wire-rimmed spectacles, shuffling his feet, stuttering, travelling burdened with herbs, leeches, divining rods, poultices, eye of newt and ear of bat, it was hard to credit the seventh oldest profession with any importance.
Phyphor, however, was powerful, dangerous, and, of course, very old; the ages of wizards, though measured in fewer years than the ages of rock, outshadow the mayfly lives of common men. Garash was younger, but still very dangerous.
These two did not lance boils, perform abortions, repair hymens or draw teeth. They had not devoted themselves to the High Arts in order to labour over ingrowing toenails. Their hands held the powers of thunder; they had mastered the Names and the Words; they had learnt the Four Secrets and the Nine Mysteries; they had the harsh pride of those who follow the most rigorous of intellectual disciplines. They were meant for greatness: but wherever they went, young men would come slinking up to them to beg cures for oozing chancres, and furtive young women would bring them their tears and fears. They would never shake the appellation of pox doctor, even though they had done nothing to earn it.
Of the three, only Miphon had really studied the gentle skills of healing; only he was humble enough to put himself at the service of the common people.
That night, there was a birth. As the local midwife had lately died of septicaemia, Miphon served as accoucheur, delivering the child with aplomb. It was the easiest birth he had ever attended – and he had seen many in the families of the Landguard of the Far South. As always, he felt joy at this most common yet most profound of all miracles. As it has been Written (in Kalob IV, quilt 9, section 3b, line xxii): 'The greatest Heights yield to those who stoop the Lowest'. Miphon. reaching those Heights, was amply rewarded.
The people credited him with the easy birth, though in fact he had done little except be there to catch the baby. He was honoured by being asked to name the perfect girl-child who had just joined humanity.
T name her Smeralda,' said Miphon, giving her the nicest name he knew.
'May we know who she is named after?'
'A good person,' said Miphon, thinking quickly. Who'd choose to be named after a deceased donkey? He improvised: 'A princess of Selzirk, pride of the Harvest Plains.'
This satisfied everyone.
Miphon got little sleep, for Phyphor woke in the early-early, and forced them to set off down the road by darkness. Proper food and a proper bed had rejuvenated him; he was eager to close with Castle Vaunting and finish their business with the wizard Heenmor.
And so it was that three Forces left Delve by night, all Powers in the World of Events, Lights in the Unseen Realm, Graduates of the Trials of Strength, Motivators of History, masters of lore versed in the logic of the Cause and the nature of the Beginning. And the peasants of Delve, despite their gratitude for the successful birth, told rude pox doctor jokes when the wizards were gone, then returned to the pleasures of seducing their sisters and scratching the boils on their backsides and the lice in their hair.