by Earl
“Master, forgive me! I——”
For answer the alchemist reached a bony hand to a cupboard of chemicals, taking from it a bottle of vitriolic liquid. In his fury at the ruination of three days’ work, it was his purpose to pour the burning add over the young man’s face and disfigure him for life.
There was a knock at the outer door of the cave-laboratory.
Already prepared to throw the corrosive fluid upon his cringing assistant, Master Ichnor hesitated. Anger and surprize fought for supremacy within him. What visitor could this be, after midnight? To the sobbing relief of the young helper, the alchemist finally replaced the bottle of add.
“I will punish you later, Margo. At present, go open die door. But first be sure it is a lone visitor; I am not to be waylaid by thieves or evil-doers in my own laboratory. Then see also that you clear up the mess you made in your wooden-headedness.”
With thankful alacrity the assistant, a mere boy, ran to the far end of the long, low rock chamber. Stooping low he traversed a short corridor like a tunnel and came before a weighty oaken door. Cautiously peering out from a tiny sliding panel, and assured that there was but one person outside, he shoved aside the heavy iron cross-beam.
Shaking snow from his cloak, a tall muffled figure strode in from the winter’s bitterness outside, dressed in heavy woolen clothing, and with a thick scarf about his face so that only his eyes were visible.
“Your master is in, lad?”
“Yes, sire. You will follow me.”
THE stranger followed silently, straightening up from the tunnel hallway to face Master Ichnor. The latter’s keen dark eyes darted over his person searchingly; he had many enemies and it was not wise to be careless.
The newcomer bowed. “Master Ichnor, I believe?”
The alchemist bowed slightly in return. “At your service, sir,” he said, but his voice held a note of inquiry.
“Perhaps I will be at your service,” responded the stranger in a muffled voice through his tightly wrapped scarf.
The alchemist stared uncomprehending Then he motioned for the visitor to step forward, pointing to a chair opposite his own across the writing-table.
As the stranger strode forward, Master Ichnor watched him closely. The crude table was in one corner of the laboratory, some twenty feet from the chamber’s sole means of entrance and egress. During the interval when Margo had admitted the stranger into the rock-bound laboratory, the alchemist had been engaged in a curious rite. Muttering a strange invocation, he had traced with a long thin wand of ivory, tipped with amber-imbedded dragon scales, a straight line between the doorway and table.
It was an invisible thread of magical potency, having the power to reveal unvoiced thoughts of hate. Should the person crossing it bear malice to the alchemist, it would cause him to shudder and tremble and thus reveal evil intent; and should the hatred be great, it would cast the bearer to the floor in agony. This precaution against bodily harm Master Ichnor rigidly applied to all and sundry of the many people who came to visit him for one purpose or another.
The alchemist watched hawk-like as the newcomer crossed the necromantic hate-line. Without hesitation, apparently unaffected, the visitor passed over and calmly seated himself in the proffered chair. Master Ichnor was satisfied. Whatever the man wanted, it could be nothing harmful to the well-being of the laboratory’s master. The huge ugly toad not far from the stranger’s elbow blinked solemnly at him, then resumed its almost continuous sleep.
“Now, good sir,” said the alchemist, “if you will remove that stifling scarf, and give me your name, we shall speak as friends.”
The stranger shook his head. “My scarf remains, Master Ichnor. I have made a vow never to show my face in this region. Necessity brings me here to seek your presence, but I cannot break the vow, sworn in the name of certain gods whom I revere.”
The alchemist frowned in displeasure, then shrugged.
“By name you can know me. as Lordeaux.”
“Then, Lordeaux, what is your pleasure in my poor rock hovel?” queried Master Ichnor, suspecting the visitor to be some wealthy nobleman unwilling to reveal his identity. Oftentimes before, such personages had come to him for a purpose more nefarious and sinister than they would care to admit.
“Do you seek a charm to call down the moon for unrequited love? Has your wife become faithless? Is there some person you would bring to harm in subtle ways? Do you wish to increase sharpness of mind, strength of limb, serenity of spirit? Do you seek fame, fortune, power, knowledge? All these things I can accomplish for you with my alembic-wrought sublimations and distillations. Of course, at a price, for we must all gain a livelihood.”
“Nay, none of those,” answered the muffled stranger. “I have come instead for an elixir which can take the stiffness of oncoming age from my limbs, and the scourge of senility from my many years. I would be young again. Have you such an—elixir of life?”
“An elixir of life! But my good Lordeaux——”
“I will pay you handsomely,” interrupted the stranger eagerly. “Give me a phialful, even a few drops, enough to bring the flush of youth for a day, and I will pour gold in your lap!”
Master Ichnor’s gimlet eyes flashed avariciously, and he cursed inwardly at the empty space his eyes involuntarily searched out on his shelves.
“You do not have it!” said the stranger, reading the alchemist’s disappointment “Ah, then I must swallow hope, for no lesser physician in this land could have it.”
“One of the ingredients,” explained Master Ichnor dispiritedly, “is a material so rare and priceless that it would beggar a king to procure it. It can be found only in a far-distant, barbaric land, infested with dragons and cruel people. I had some once, from the hands of a man whom the gods had protected in a hazardous journey in its quest. But since then none has dared the task, though I offered a casket of precious stones for its delivery to me.”
THE stranger’s body seemed to convulse suddenly in some cloaked emotion. “Would you offer that same chest of jewels now, were I to show you a goodly quantity of that rare ingredient for the elixir of life?”
Master Ichnor’s chair scraped on the rock as he started violently. “What sport of yours is this, Lordeaux? Can you mean——”
“The ingredient,” continued the stranger, “is a rectification of the leaves of a mandrake-like flower which grows in an easterly land nigh the shores of the sea called Lethe-mare. Between this land and that lie the Hunnish hordes, unconquerable nomads whose greatest pleasure is the spilling of blood. The shores of Lethe-mare itself are dank jungle, infested with violent dragons, gargoyles, and nameless creatures, and the waters of the sea writhe in the contortions of sea serpents and ancient water demons of mountainous bulk.
“The mandrake-plant which takes root in the heart of this slithering chaos is a delicate, sun-loving vegetation, bearing spine-edged leaves of vivid green, and flowers whose broad petals shine with uncanny crimson light, even at night, and exude a maddeningly exquisite aroma. If the petals are gathered in the light of the full moon, severed from the stem with a silver knife consecrated to Belial, sponsor of the Black Arts, while in full bloom, they are the crude compound from which the elixir of life may be distilled.
“By this knowledge I have, you may judge that I speak not idly about this matter.”
Master Ichnor’s lips moved soundlessly in amazement. This man knew things that were hushed secrets in necromantic circles. Then he found his tongue. “Give me the leaves, a mere dozen of them, and you shall have the chest of jewels.”
The stranger reached with mittened hand inside his cloak and brought to light a packet no bigger than his palm, wrapped carefully in doeskin and tied with rawhide thongs. The alchemist reached out a trembling hand.
“The jewels,” reminded Lordeaux, holding the packet close.
Master Ichnor remained with hand outstretched, and there grew in his eyes an evil glint. It was worth the price, worth ten times the price, but why pay at all
?
The stranger’s voice, harsh, broke the silence: “There await me outside—not a hundred feet away behind a big rock so that your assistant did not see them when he let me in—three armed men. If they see me not come out of this place in an hour——”
Master Ichnor waved an ingratiating hand. “The jewels, of course!”
He left the presence of Lordeaux and disappeared in the chambers at the outer end of the laboratory. The stranger sighed audibly through his scarf, watched the boy Margo industriously scrubbing chemical stains from the floor, and then turned ill at ease toward the great toad perched beside an inkwell. For the creature was gazing at him solemnly, steadily, with one of its bulging eyes, the other enigmatically closed.
Master Ichnor returned not a minute later and set on the table a small iron-bound casket of seasoned teakwood. Its opening with a silver key let forth a blaze of sparkling iridescence, as though light had somehow been imprisoned in the crystalline mass within.
The stranger gasped at the beauty and wealth before his eyes. He looked up strangely; robbery and murder had been done for far less. Yet despite the knowledge of three armed men outside, the alchemist had no fear of robbery at the hands of the visitor, for the hate-line would have revealed such dishonest intentions from the first.
The alchemist closed the casket and shoved it across the table to the other man, taking the packet in return. As Lordeaux made as if to rise and leave with his treasure, Master Ichnor gestured for him to remain seated.
“We must consummate the deal in writing, good sir. And before that, although I do not doubt your honest intentions, I must test the packet’s contents.”
“Agreed,” responded the stranger without hesitation.
“Margo!” cried the alchemist, turning to his assistant. “Set up the golden crucible on a low tripod, and get me a china-stone mortar and pestle. Then set up the Balneum Mariae and apply yourself to the bellows. Sharply now; we must not keep the gentleman overlong.”
THE young assistant jumped to obey, and Master Ichnor opened the packet reverently, nervous in excitement. The folds of doeskin and underlying dampened cloths parted to reveal a few dozen compressed flower petals of searing crimson color. One of these the alchemist ground gently in the mortar till it was a blood-like paste.
The stranger watched in apparent indifference. Now and then he looked at the monstrous toad sitting motionless at the end of the table; the creature’s eyes, both now open in a gruesome unblinking stare, were glued on his as though it sought to read his mind. Lordeaux stirred in his chair and turned away in irritation.
Having mixed the ruddy paste with several colored liquids and filtered it through fine gravel, Master Ichnor placed the resultant fluid in one vessel of the steam distillery. It was now of an orange hue, and its vapor, a brilliant golden in color, circled gently in the long-necked retort as Margo diligently pumped the bellows, fanning the flames beneath the huge Balneum Marias.
The alchemist caught the distillate in a high narrow flask, no more than a thimbleful in all. He held it up to the lamplight gloatingly. In color it was perfect. He tested its aroma to be further reassured by its unmistakable pleasantness.
“The final test,” said Master Ichnor for the enlightenment of the stranger, “will be to incinerate it with vitriol in a golden crucible. If it has the true strength and quality of the elixir, its delicious odor will not be destroyed, but will permeate this entire chamber. It will even bring us pleasant thoughts, and will stir the fire of youth momentarily in our veins.”
The stranger, his face still carefully swathed, leaned forward in interest. Master Ichnor set the golden crucible and its corrosive charge of acid over an alcohol flame, pouring in the golden yellow liquid when the oily vitriol had begun to steam slightly. As though in nervousness, the stranger fumbled with his cloak. The alchemist did not notice that he retrieved from it a small sprig of cedary needles, which he raised surreptitiously to his face.
Master Ichnor stared at the now bubbling mixture rapturously, content that he would soon be able to fill that empty space in his shelves and once more accumulate wealth which it was his failing to distill away in less remunerative pursuits, seeking not riches but an arcanum of inestimable power and knowledge. It was every alchemist’s dream to discover the ultimate essence, the Stone of Wisdom, possession of which would bring god-like power and wisdom.
The bubbling solution, at first clear amber in color, began to turn murky, darkening with streaks of charred blackness. Master Ichnor frowned at this and peered closer. The stranger, too, seemed to be vastly alert. And the fat body of the toad near him began to twitch as though needles were pricking its skin.
Scowling in apprehension, the alchemist sniffed continuously above the tumultuous liquid in the golden crucible, waiting for its delicate aroma to arise that would assure him he had the right substance. Suddenly the frothing mixture became turbulent and shot from its surface a steamy cloud of black vapor whose hideous stench quickly saturated every nook of the laboratory.
Master Ichnor snatched away the alcohol flame in great alarm. His nostrils pinched involuntarily at the odor, and his throat became raw, for he had unwittingiy inhaled a great breath of the evil black steam.
“What deviltry is this?” he shouted, whirling upon the stranger.
Even as he spoke he recoiled in surprize, for the stranger was now erect and the scarf had fallen away from his face. Before his nostrils he held the sprig of evergreen, breathing in its spicy sharpness. The face revealed was thin and drawn, saturnine in the flickering lamplight, and most of the skin was covered by a repulsive purple blotching, the result of burning.
“TOUSSAINT!” screamed Master Ichnor. “It is you!”
“Yes, it is I,” returned the other with an evil grin. “Your former assistant, who one day inadvertently fell asleep at the bellows, for which misdemeanor you threw vitriol at my face, scarring me for life.”
“Toussaint, you devil! What have you done to me?” cried the alchemist, for it seemed the sooty vapor he had absorbed was burning out his vitals. “My lungs burn—my heart——”
A cacchination of vengeful laughter rang through the laboratory. “You are doomed, Master Ichnor, and by the hand of one who vowed and planned for ten years a suitable vengeance. I learned much as your assistant, master, and today I stand your equal, if not your better, as alchemist. And as necromancer I stand above you; did I not pass your soul-searching hate-line and refrain from showing the mighty hatred I bear you? I shall replace you, Master Ichnor, take your laboratory and your treasure; the two of us cannot live in the same land.”
“Replace me!” gurgled the alchemist, almost strangling as his lungs retched violently. “You must kill me first. Look, I wave my wand; you are paralyzed!
Break that spell with your boasted magic! In another minute I shall weave a dread enchantment and drive your black soul to the lowermost nadir.”
Toussaint had suddenly frozen, unable to move hand or foot. The sprig, which Master Ichnor failed to take account of, remained before his nose.
“You have me there, Master Ichnor,” said the former assistant with effort. “I cannot reach my wand to break this paralysis. But gloat in despair, for the black vapor you have inhaled will accomplish for me my freedom. Know, great master, that it is the Breath of Asmodeus, avenger of evil, conjured into those crimson petals which seemed so like the mandrakes of Lethe-mare, by my most skilful art. The vitriol released that horrific black breath from hidden hells; it is now in your lungs, eating into your vitals. It will dissolve your soul and extract from it every evil thing you have ever thought or done. Your sins will become an entity, an evil genie, and carry you off to some awful hell, body and soul!”
Master Ichnor coughed wretchedly. He raised his wand in the direction of the toad on the table, muttering a word of adjuration. The ugly creature, in response, strained to release the familiar within its bloated bulk, but instead a sudden violent tremor threw it on its back, lifeless.
Toussaint laughed. “Your servant-genie has deserted you.”
Master Ichnor’s eyes went dim at this ominous sign of the presence of alien demon powers. “You are right; I can feel that hideous disintegration of my very soul! So be it, since there is no escape, but I console myself that you will go with me to whatever vile hell awaits me, for your evil can be no less than mine.”
“But I won’t,” grinned Toussaint triumphantly. “I have before my nose a sprig of evergreen. Beyond it the blade vapor cannot pass. I will not go with you, nor will Margo there, for in his extreme youth lies his salvation; his life has not yet been sated with evil as yours and mine. You go alone!”
The alchemist stiffened suddenly, and with a convulsive shudder cast from his lungs the black vapor in one huge cloud, steamy with his breath. But there was something more in its tenuousness, a peculiar gray mist that was neither breath nor vapor. The clammy, repulsive cloud, quivering as though alive, did not disperse, but instead gathered above the golden crucible from which streamers of black yet emerged, and seemed to absorb the foul exudate.
Then the globe of vapor became almost opaque and expanded until it stretched from floor to ceiling. In its abhorrently quivering substance could be seen a nameless writhing of tiny whorls of evil blackness. It was a personification of the essence of evil that had reposed in the alchemist’s soul. It took various shapes in frightful rapidity, and in die stark eyes of Master Ichnor it was a reflection of every sin, small Mid large, of his past life.
Toussaint, grinning sardonically all the while, suddenly went ashen in fear, and, released of the paralytic spell, turned away from the blasphemy before his eyes. Holding the evergreen sprig frantically to his nose, he stumbled blindly toward the doorway and ran from the abomination which he had brought about for his revenge.
There were no eyes to see the final obscene event, for little Margo had fainted dead away from fright. The awful pulsating shape of evil, bloated with the black Breath of Asmodeus, pounced upon the rigidly staring alchemist, and enveloped him in a cloak of utter evil. Some strange transformation took place and with a clap of thunder that shattered every glass vessel in the laboratory, the hideous vision disappeared.
