The Sleeping Prince

by Melinda Salisbury

  “Let’s go,” he says, and his voice is firm.

  I look up at him as we move, but he keeps his eyes fixed ahead, his mouth a line of concentration. From the corner of my eye I see Dimia walking next to him, looking down at me, and I smile, faintly, but it’s enough for her to do the same. My gaze slides to the buildings on either side of us; we’re back in the merchant quarter. We pause outside one of the houses, and I look up to see the crossed circle again, realizing we’re outside the salt merchant’s house. Again that niggling feeling comes. I recognize it and I try to remember where I know it from. A book? My lessons?

  Then we begin to move again, passing through a doorway and the air instantly becomes cooler, as though we’ve stepped into a dairy or cool room. Except it’s dark, the way lit by torches, and I can feel Silas’s gait change as he shortens his stride. We’re moving downward.

  “Where are we?” I whisper.

  “Hush. Just rest,” he murmurs back; I feel the rumbling in his chest as he speaks. I want to tell him not to dismiss me, but I’m suddenly exhausted. I hear doors being unlocked, then locked again, so many I lose count. I let my eyes drift closed, let the numbness wash over me.

  * * *

  I think I must have lost consciousness, because the next time I see anything, I’m not in Silas’s arms anymore, I’m on my back, staring up at a rock ceiling. I can’t feel what I’m lying on, but from the height of it I guess I’m on some kind of table. The room is lit by candles, sconces mounted on the walls. There are stalactites hanging from the ceiling, thousands of them like needles, white and glinting. We’re underground.

  Of course, you could travel the whole kingdom and never, ever find it. No wonder they drugged guests before bringing them here.

  We’re in the Conclave. Beneath Tremayne. It was here. That’s what the symbol means. Alchemists. On the doorway and on the gravestones. It’s part of Silas’s moon tattoos; a circle crossed with a line at the center. It’s an alchemic symbol. It was right under my nose all along.

  “Out.” Silas orders unknown people from the room and I hear them leaving. The woman who protested earlier is at the back; I can see her if I look to the side, her shoulders high and rigid. Only Dimia remains, looking nervous, her eyes focused on something behind me.

  “You need the Elixir,” she says softly. “Without it you’ll—” She stops and presses her lips together.

  I look at her. “But you said you weren’t an alchemist.”

  “She’s not,” Silas says from my left, and I look toward his voice.

  There is another table, next to the one I’m on, and he’s behind it, placing a tripod on a piece of slate. My heart starts to speed up as he places a small metal bowl under it, balancing a second one, ceramic, thin, almost iridescent in the candlelight, atop it. I watch him arrange tongs, glass jars with powders and leaves in them, two earthenware jars, twists of paper that hiss against the scarred wood of the table when he puts them down, pipettes and spoons, and ceramic stirrers. My mouth falls open and I stare at him.

  “It’s you?” I say. “You’re the philtersmith?”

  He nods, but doesn’t look at me, continuing to set up his laboratory. None of it looks especially alchemical, it’s the same equipment I know from my apothecary work, but there is something about seeing it in this place that makes it strange to me and a thrill of something like fear prickles along my scalp.

  “It was you all along?” I ask, and again he nods. “But the girl—”

  Then his amber-gold eyes find mine and silence me instantly. It feels as though he’s seeing into me, reading me, and though my skin burns, I don’t flinch or look away.

  He breaks the contact first. “What can you feel?”

  I close my eyes, trying to work through my body. “Nothing,” I say, my eyes flying open, my answer coming out as a sob.

  He takes a deep breath. “Can you try moving your toes?” he asks.

  I focus on it, on making them wiggle, and he looks at me fiercely, then shakes his head. “Fingers?”

  I try and he exhales, looking at Dimia, who nods.

  “Did they move?” I ask, hope rising in me.

  “Your little one did,” Dimia says.

  “Again,” says Silas, and I do it. When he nods the relief is dizzying.

  “Good. This is good,” Silas says, but his gloved hands rise to cover his face, contradicting his words.

  When he pulls them away he looks down at them, then takes a deep breath, and it seems that with that breath the room grows smaller, closer, as though he’s drawn it inside him. The air becomes charged and expectant and it settles over me like a veil, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand up beneath the scratchy wool of my tunic. I can feel that.

  “Are you ready?” he asks. “It might not work. I’ve never … Not with something this big. But it’s worth a try.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  He nods and begins to work, uncorking bottles and opening twists of paper, examining the scales. When he looks down at me again I smile and he clears his throat.

  “Let’s begin, then.” He opens a square of wax paper marked with a circle, a line bisecting it, and I gasp.

  “What?” he asks, alarm striking through his usual rasp as he looks at me, spilling white grains from the packet onto the table.

  “Is that salt?”

  “Yes.” He scrapes the fallen salt into his hands. “Why?”

  “It was bothering me; I kept seeing it. I realized when we came here it was alchemic. But I didn’t know until just now that it meant salt. The great purifier.”

  He huffs, then tips the white crystals into his scales, balancing them against expensive-looking bronze weights before he nods in satisfaction. “It comes from here, the salt. Crystals that form when water drips through the rock. That’s what glitters up there.” He points toward the sparkling ceiling, before tipping the salt into the pestle and beginning to grind it. “Sal salis. It’s different from sea salt. You wouldn’t want to use it to season your food. Trust me, I learned the hard way.” He’s pushed the sleeves of his tunic right up, bunching them around the tops of his arms. I can see the muscles there flexing and tensing as he works and, despite everything, I find it strangely hypnotic to watch them bulge and then ebb as he turns the salt to powder before adding it to the bowl.

  “Start the fire, please,” he says, shaking me from my trance.

  Dimia appears by his side at the bench, smiling at me as she strikes the flint. I feel the sting of envy when I see her working by his side. I want to be part of this.

  I stay silent as he tells her what to add to the bowl, trying to keep up as he points out herbs, plants, powders, things I know, things I’ve never seen before, things I didn’t know existed. Marigold, morning glory, angel wax, spagyric tonic, bay leaves, mandrake, convolulus, yew bark, wheat. The names whirl around in my mind as I try to remember them all.

  As the mixture heats, a strange herbal smell starts to spiral out from it, and I wrinkle my nose.

  “It’s going to get a lot worse.” Silas leans away from the table and walks out of my sight. When he returns, carrying two earthenware jars, he peers into the bowl as he places them beside it. “Almost,” he says, as much to himself as to Dimia and me. He pulls the jars toward him, and I see both have symbols baked into their side.

  The first has a triangle with an upside-down cross stretching from the base, and from this he pulls a bright yellow rock. From the second, marked with a crowned circle, he pulls a red rock. He stands each in a tiny, shallow copper plate marked with the same symbol as was on the jar and places them in front of the tripod.

  “You need to go now.” He looks at Dimia and she nods reluctantly, shooting a glance at me. “I’ll see you soon,” she says, walking over and touching my hand. I think I feel it. I smile at her, and then she’s gone. I turn back to Silas.

  He pulls a taper, a small dull knife, a glass pipe-shaped instrument, and a crystal vial with a flat metal base toward him and arrange
s them in front of him. The way he does it is so precise, so deliberate, that I’m furious I can’t sit up, can’t see it properly. All at once it hits me that what I’m seeing is real alchemy. From start to finish. Not the end product following a drugged sleep, but possibly the last philtersmith in the world, making the Elixir from scratch, before my eyes.

  Silas exhales loudly, breaking into my wonder. With lightning speed, he plunges the taper into the flames beneath the white bowl and uses it to set both the red and yellow rocks alight. Instantly the room fills with a metallic, sulfuric reek, and I wish I could cover my nose. He lifts the white bowl in his gloved hands and strains it into the crystal vial. He puts the thin end of the pipe instrument into the neck of the vial and holds it over the smoke from the red rock, and I watch as it flows in through the wide bowl, along the thin stem, and into the vial, where it crystallizes and sinks to the bottom, forming a layer of deep bloodred liquid. When the red reaches the halfway point he stops, and repeats the process over the yellow rock. The yellow layer is heavier than the red, sinking to the bottom of the vial. When there is barely room for a single other drop he pulls the vial away, removing the pipe and stoppering it. Ignoring my gasp, with his left, gloved hand he smothers both rocks, yellow then red, until the rocks and his glove smolder gently.

  He shakes the bottle, seemingly oblivious to the pain, and I watch as the liquid inside it turns pale pink.

  His mouth becomes a resigned line, his forehead puckering, before he opens his eyes and looks right at me. Keeping his gaze locked on mine he peels his gloves away and lays them on the table. Eyes blazing, he looks down at his hands and I do the same. Then I gasp, forgetting about my back, forgetting everything else.

  Every finger on his left hand is black. His thumb is still pale pink, as is the whole of his right hand, but his left palm is the same color as an abyss.

  I can’t take my eyes from it, from the wrongness of it.

  He makes a soft sound in his throat and I see him looking at me, as I stare at his hand. I try to find words—any words—to ask what it is, but they’ve all gone. Instead my mouth is open, my brow furrowed in something like horror.

  He sees it and something snaps shut in his own expression. He drops his gaze and turns back to his work, opening the vial and carefully tilting it, until a single drop of the potion sits on the tip of his left thumb. Then he puts the vial down on its iron base.

  He lifts the small knife and cuts into the flesh of his left thumb at exactly the place where the drop of Elixir sits. For a fleeting instant the blood that oozes from it is red, before it pales to bright, pearlescent white when it touches the Elixir. He tips his thumb and the white drop falls into the vial, settling as a delicate ivory sheen on top of the pale liquid.

  I look back at his thumb in time to see it turn black. I watch the skin change; I watch the darkness spread across the remaining unmarked skin on his hand. It feathers down onto his wrist, stopping in time to become a horrifying mimic of the glove he’s removed, and my stomach turns.

  He walks over to me, the vial of Elixir in his healthy hand, but it’s the other one I fix upon. He places it, bare, blackened, behind my head, the coldness of the cursed skin a shock against mine, and lifts my head, pouring the contents of the vial into my mouth, every drop. It tastes faintly of metal and I look up at him, both repulsed and full of pity.

  His eyes when he looks back at me seem ages-old and fathomless. “Swallow,” he says, and I do.

  He lowers my head and moves away, returning with a second vial, and when he brings that to my lips I smell poppy.

  I drink that one down without hesitating, suddenly wanting oblivion.

  The last thing I remember is him scooping me up again. His gloves are back on, tattered and burned, covering the damaged flesh beneath.

  * * *

  I dream, but once again I know I’m dreaming, for beyond it I can feel aches in my body; somewhere in my lower back it feels as though the bones are grinding together. Knowing it’s not real doesn’t feel important, though; the knowledge slipping away from me as soon as I’ve realized it. I find myself standing at the edge of a room, high-ceilinged, with large glass windows and a flagstone floor. It’s nowhere I’ve been before, of that I’m certain; it’s a place of privilege and opulence. But the most remarkable thing about the room is the man made of silver, on a throne carved from gold.

  The man is the Sleeping Prince.

  I wait for terror to grip me, to shake me and tell me to run, but it doesn’t. I can’t make out his features properly, other than his golden eyes; they are indistinct, shifting. He looks up and seems to see me. He smiles softly, his expression approving. I’m wearing a long red dress—a gown, really—velvet and soft to the touch, like the skin of a peach when my fingers rub it. He holds out a hand toward me and I go to him, still unafraid. He takes my face in his hands, tucking my hair behind my ears.

  “You’re here,” he says and his voice is like sunshine, like honey, it’s warm and rich and moreish. “I’m so very glad.”

  Where Silas’s voice is spikes and edges, every word a warning, this man’s voice is smooth, velvety, and beckoning. He has golden eyes, like Silas, and the same white-blond hair, though his is long and shining. He has the same high cheekbones, the same unnatural pallor. He even has the same playful lilt to his lips.

  “I thought you were Silas,” I say. “All this time, I thought you were him.”

  “Who’s Silas?”

  “My friend. He’s … He saved me.”

  “Did he? How?”

  “Your monsters broke my back.”

  “Ah, that was you. I had no idea. How terrible of them. I’ll punish them for it.”

  “He made the Elixir. It mended my spine.”

  “How interesting,” the Sleeping Prince says. “So the philtersmith is male? How very interesting. Tell me, sweetling. Are you still in Tremayne? You and your friend.”

  “We’re hiding. From you.”

  “You can’t hide from me, my love.”

  He lowers his lips to my brow, kissing my forehead. I can feel them curving against my skin as he smiles and it sends a jolt of warmth through my body.

  He leans back, looking at me with hungry eyes, and mine begin to close in anticipation of his kiss.

  Instead he thrusts his hand into my chest, tearing the dress, shattering my rib cage until my heart is in his fist, still beating. I begin to lose consciousness as he brings it to his smiling mouth, licking it experimentally.

  “Needs more salt.” He smiles.

  I scream as I wake, hands rising to my chest, clawing at it, convinced it’s gaping and open.

  Then I roll over and heave, my stomach cramping as I retch, though nothing comes up. I lean back against the pillow when it’s passed, enjoying the stiff, scratchy feeling of cool fabric on my too-warm skin, waiting for my heart to slow.

  A soft, gloved hand rests on my forehead, and I open my eyes to see Silas standing over me.

  “Salt,” I say in a strained voice. Already the dream is fading, though it leaves a nasty flavor in my mind. And as it does I remember the golem, the crack of my spine. The alchemy.

  I sit up.

  I can sit up.

  Elation floods me and I glance briefly at him, before I test my feet, wriggling my toes. I laugh without meaning to as I move my knees, tilt my hips, wave my hands. The bandage has been removed from my right hand and the skin on my knuckles is as good as new. It worked. I’m as I was.

  “I’m healed. You did it. You healed me.”

  He looks at me, his face empty of any expression. “I did.”

  Then the rest of the night comes back to me and in my mind’s eye I see again the blackness spreading across his hand, the skin consumed by it, and I shudder.

  Immediately he draws away. “I’ll leave you to rest.”

  “No, please. I’m sorry,” I say.

  He cuts across me, his eyes flashing, his lip curling. “I don’t want to upset you.” His expression is wit
hering, his voice like a knife.

  “You’re not. I just …” I try to push the image away, softening my tone. “Silas—”

  “Don’t. I don’t want your pity, either.”

  “No. No, of course not.” I swallow, composing myself. “At least tell me if it hurts?”

  He exhales slowly, taking two steps back across the room to slump into a wooden chair. “It doesn’t hurt,” he says eventually, the words full of broken glass scratching inside my chest.

  His head is bowed, and I watch him as he picks at the tattered gloves, catching occasional glimpses of the darkened skin beneath. “What is it?”

  He doesn’t speak for a long time, staring down at his hands, and I wait, wiggling my toes subtly, feeling both elated and guilty by turn. “It’s not contagious, if that’s your worry.”

  “It isn’t,” I say, my voice rising, and I take a breath before I speak again, carefully. “Silas, please. I’m an apothecary. I’ve seen … illness before.”

  “It’s not an illness.”

  “Then what—”

  “It’s a curse,” he snaps, looking at me. “It’s the curse of the philtersmith. All alchemists have a curse. That’s mine. The name for it is Nigredo.”

  “Is it … Will it go away? Will it heal?” I try to keep my voice even, shoving down the feeling that someone is walking over my grave.

  “If I had some Elixir, yes. Then it would go back to being normal skin again.”

  “Can’t you make more?” I ask.

  “I can. But it won’t work on me. It never does. If there were another philtersmith, then I could use theirs. Of course, they’d have their own Nigredo to deal with then. Unless I made them some of my Elixir … Do you see the problem?”

  I nod, falling silent. He bends his head and begins to toy with his gloves again, his shoulders hunched over, and I want to go to him, hold him. But I know he won’t allow it, so I stay still, allowing the silence to build a wall between us until I can’t bear it anymore.