The Iron Witch

by Karen Mahoney

  “So, what is this thing? I mean, it’s obviously some kind of furnace, but what does it do?”

  Donna grinned. “Let me introduce you to Slow Henry.” She swept her arm in a mock-formal arc, as if presenting the athanor to him.

  “‘Slow Henry’?” Xan’s lips were curving into a smile. Her excitement was obviously infectious.

  “It’s sort of a nickname, because of the steady and reliable service it provides. The athanor burns slowly through all seasons, rarely letting its owner down. Without fire, there’d be no alchemy. Everything starts here.”

  Who knew alchemy could be interesting? Because this was interesting. Maybe if Alma had actually let her see this, she would’ve paid more attention to her studies

  Her eyes were already sweeping the rest of the room. On one wall, a myriad of glass vessels hung from wooden pegs, all different shapes and sizes forming a stunning collection. Donna recognized some of them from her books, but others were completely mysterious. She could see a spirit holder, ran her fingers over an angel tube, and admired a particularly beautiful moon vessel.

  At the farthest end of the room, a small shadowed alcove was set back into the stone wall. Donna walked over and saw that it actually opened into another chamber—this one tiny compared to the main room, with only enough space for a slate-gray curtain that fell from the ceiling all the way to the floor. The heavy curtain was attached to a length of rail, which was bent at angles to form a square; it was rather like a giant shower curtain. It reminded her of something a conjuror would have onstage, so that if you stepped inside the space beyond, you might be in danger of disappearing.

  Her mouth went suddenly dry as she realized what this was. This was the most sacred area of an alchemist’s laboratory, the oratorium—an area for meditation and quiet contemplation. Donna’s hand reached out, almost of its own accord, to touch the rough material of the curtain—

  “What’s this?” Xan called out.

  She jumped guiltily, strangely glad of the distraction, and popped her head back into the main chamber to see what he’d found.

  Copper tubing zigzagged crazily along the wall. Donna followed it to its source on the floor: a thick, pear-shaped vessel made of an indefinable material. Simon had a serpent condenser—that was crazy. An ancient piece of apparatus, the serpent condenser was used to isolate the living essences of any substance. If she remembered correctly, the condenser was an important part of the process used to create homunculi—tiny artificial beings infused with the life force of a variety of chemical compounds.

  “Xan, this is it!” Donna clapped a hand over her mouth, realizing she’d practically shouted. Not that it really mattered down here, but still … it didn’t hurt to be careful.

  Xan stared at the condenser as though it might start producing the elixir at any moment. “This thing creates the elixir of life?”

  “No, no—I don’t mean that.” Donna waved her hands, stumbling over her words in her enthusiasm. “This is a serpent condenser. Okay, it’s a totally long and boring explanation, but trust me when I say that this is used in a process that supposedly creates miniature life forms. But I don’t think it works without the elixir.”

  Xan didn’t look impressed. “So?”

  “So? So why would Simon have a freaking condenser down here if he wasn’t actually using it? There’d be no point—it’s useless without a drop of the elixir added to a mixture of other compounds. You’d need to do that every time you operated it.” Donna never realized how grateful she’d be for the endless hours spent studying historical treatises about alchemical practice.

  “This thing’s pretty rare, then?” Xan asked, beginning to catch on.

  “Right!” she agreed, nodding her head so vigorously that her neck began to ache. “I honestly don’t think it would be installed here ‘just in case.’ ”

  Which meant that there had to be some of the elixir of life down here. Donna walked to the center of the lab and began scanning everything around them, trying to decide where a magus would hide something so important. How had the Order kept such an incredible secret? Nations fought wars for knowledge and power like this. People had died in the quest for eternal life. Yet here, in an old house on the outskirts of Ironbridge, she was on the verge of uncovering possibly the greatest discovery of all time.

  Her brain hurt just thinking about it.

  Then she noticed a workbench in a shadowed corner, covered with a variety of interesting-looking objects. She practically ran over to it and started sifting through pieces of metal, gold coins, containers of herbs and mineral compounds, and all kinds of other mystical paraphernalia.

  “Don’t just stand there,” she said, frowning over her shoulder. “Help me look.”

  Xan wandered over and started searching at the opposite end. “So what exactly are we looking for?”

  “A glass vial of liquid.”

  He stopped sorting and raised an eyebrow, leaning his hip against the bench. “And what color is this liquid supposed to be?”

  Donna bit her lip. Oh please, memory, she implored, don’t fail me now. “Um … red?”

  “You don’t sound too sure of that.”

  “It’s red.” She nodded once, for emphasis.

  “Okay, good.”

  “red … ish.”

  Xan rolled his eyes and went back to work.

  There were shelves above the bench—shelves piled with yet more intriguing artifacts, as well as files and folders filled with paperwork. Considering that Simon was in charge of organizing all of the Order’s business, he certainly wasn’t very tidy down here, Donna thought.

  She reached up on tiptoe, her fingers coming into contact with something solid on one of the higher shelves. It reminded her of a smooth rock—maybe some kind of carving. She extended her arm as far as she could, stretching tall in order to grab whatever was tucked away. The cool outer shell of the object felt like it might be marble; or perhaps some kind of metal? As her hand closed around a heavy base and she carefully lifted the object down, Donna heard an ominous click.

  The bronze statue in her hand started to scream.

  Donna shrieked and dropped it.

  It fell to the stone floor with a heavy thud, but the bronze carving of a man’s head continued to scream. Its lips were twisted into a grotesque expression of pain, its mouth wide open and an honest-to-god actual human scream coming from it.

  “Shut it up!” Xan yelled, his green eyes wide and desperate.

  “I don’t know how!” Donna stared in horror at the thing as it rocked back and forth on the ground. The blank eyes and hooked nose gave it a kind of gargoyle-like appearance, but it was definitely supposed to look like a man. A man with curly hair—also molded from bronze—and a thin mouth that was still screaming.

  Xan pushed her out of the way and lifted his heavily-booted foot.

  “No, wait,” Donna cried, trying to grab hold of his coat and pull him back.

  But either he couldn’t hear her over the noise or he chose not to hear her, because the next moment Xan had stamped down on the screeching face.

  “Ungh!” said the statue, then fell silent.

  For a moment, the only sound in the lab was the quiet rumbling of Slow Henry. Donna took a shuddering breath and looked at the bronze head, which was now just an inanimate statue—an old-fashioned bust molded to portray a guy who might once have been an alchemist. Its eyes seemed dead and hollow, and there was something undeniably … evil about the thing.

  Screaming statues were a whole new level of crazy. As far as Donna’s knowledge of alchemy went, this was something unheard of—it was a kind of magic that made her flesh crawl and all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. It was clearly a warning system; she’d triggered some sort of magical alarm by lifting the bronze head from the shelves. What was Simon Gaunt doing down here? This wasn’t just a regular prop in alchemical transformative work, she’d bet her life on it.

  Rubbing her hand across her mouth, Donna continued to s
tare at the silent lump of carved metal. “What do you think we should do with it?”

  Xan looked as grossed out as she was. “I have no idea. This is your area of expertise, not mine.”

  She shivered. “I don’t know anything about this.”

  “Maybe we should put it back where you found it—”

  The words had only just left his mouth when the sound of muffled footsteps from beyond the door reached them.

  “Crap!” Donna took a deep breath to steel herself and grabbed the head off the floor, practically flinging it back into position and scanning the laboratory for a decent hiding place. If someone found them in here, they were so dead. Donna would be hauled in front of Quentin, and her aunt would be horrified and disappointed—not to mention what they’d make of a half-fey guy learning about alchemical secrets. She tried not to imagine what Simon’s reaction would be; invading an alchemist’s private space and touching his magical tools would have been considered a major offence in earlier centuries. The penalties for such crimes were severe.

  Her eyes focused on the alcove that housed the oratorium. It was bad enough just being inside the lab, so what she was considering doing now was the worst kind of sacrilege—but what choice did they have?

  The footsteps came closer and then stopped.

  “In here,” Donna hissed, pushing Xan toward the small chamber.

  There was no time for second thoughts. They ducked inside the curtain, Donna arranging the heavy folds behind them as carefully as her shaking hands would allow.

  “What is this place?” Xan whispered.

  “Oratorium. That must be Simon’s altar.” Donna nodded at the solid wooden table, the only thing in the cramped space apart from themselves. She tried to swallow the guilt that made her stomach hurt.

  The laboratory door opened, then banged shut. Donna jumped, grabbing onto Xan’s coat as though she could maybe hide inside it. She realized that his arms had closed around her, and despite the fear of discovery it felt so good … safe and warm, even though she hated to admit it because it made her feel like she needed that safety. She didn’t want to be that pathetic girl always running to the guy for help. But sometimes, she was slowly beginning to learn, it was okay to admit you needed help and support. And it was nice to feel she could lean on someone other than Navin for a change.

  As that thought struck her, and a picture of an exhausted Navin filled her already anxious mind, Donna backed away from Xan and looked around. Whoever was in the main room was muttering under his breath and moving things around on the workbenches. She couldn’t be sure whether it was Simon or not, but it was a pretty good bet. Had he come running after hearing the screaming statue? But surely he’d been too far away … Perhaps the Order’s secretary couldn’t sleep and was just doing some late-night work.

  “We need to get out of here,” hissed Xan.

  Way to state the obvious, Donna thought. She ignored him and began checking out the sacred objects on the altar. Apart from some medallions with alchemical symbols for various compounds and a container of what looked like salt, the main feature on the altar was a copper-clad box the size of her mother’s jewelry box.

  But she knew it wasn’t a jewelry box. Catching her breath as she reached toward it, Donna wondered if she dared to look inside. This was an incubator, a container traditionally used to hold the prima materia—the first matter. Weird to think that Alma had been droning on about this just this week during one of their lessons. Was it only yesterday? She frowned as she tried to remember. It might as well have been last year.

  If the incubator really did hold some of the prima materia, then she was in big trouble. Nobody but the alchemist who found it could touch it or even look at it. Which always seemed a bit silly to Donna. After all, you couldn’t create first matter; as one of the building blocks of reality it just … existed. So how could it really belong to any one person?

  Oh well, she thought. Too late for regrets.

  The box was entirely sealed, with no visible way of opening it, but Donna knew that underneath the copper it was made of roughly hewn wood, the more natural the better. She wouldn’t be surprised if it was fashioned out of cuttings from the Ironwood. Pausing to listen to what was happening in the other room, she heard the sounds of clinking glass and a louder thrum from the furnace—Slow Henry’s door must have been opened.

  She picked up the incubator and wondered what on earth Simon Gaunt was doing, keeping a tiny piece of the universe in his lab.

  As Xan watched, Donna crushed the box between her gloved hands as though balling up a piece of paper. The wood beneath the copper coating split with a sharp crack, making her heart beat so loudly she thought for sure it would be heard, even above the sound of coal being heaped into the furnace.

  She held her breath for a moment, staring into Xan’s green eyes, but nothing happened. Then she began to pull the broken pieces of the incubator’s lid away from the cracked base.

  Donna wasn’t surprised to see the handful of black earth that spilled onto the altar. What made her eyes almost bug out of her head was the shining glass vial, half buried in the dark and earthy substance.

  Heart in her mouth, she carefully extracted it from the half-ruined box.

  The vial was all in one piece. It was the length and width of her little finger, and held what could barely be two or three drops of blood-red liquid, right at the very end.

  Xan met her eyes and they both breathed a sigh of relief. He shook his head, a nervous smile playing on his lips. “That was close,” he whispered. “You could’ve broken it.”

  Donna felt sick. She had almost destroyed her one chance of saving Navin.

  But she hadn’t, and now she held something that could supposedly create new life, heal all kinds of illness, and even bestow immortality. She gazed at the warm ruby glow as she swirled those precious few drops around the vial.

  The elixir of freaking life, right here in Simon’s lab. Maybe the earth in the incubator wasn’t even the real deal; there was every chance it was just regular dirt from the gardens, used to hide the true contents of the box. Sucking in a breath, Donna dug in her pocket and pulled out the little pouch that her mother’s charm bracelet had been in. She dropped the vial inside it and pushed the tiny package as deeply into her coat pocket as she could.

  She couldn’t quite believe she’d done it. But getting her hands on the prize was one thing; now, they had to get it out of here in one piece. Navin and Maker’s safety depended on her delivering the elixir to the wood elves.

  But could she really give up something so valuable?

  She heard the door to the athanor slam shut with a clang that echoed all the way into their small room. Simon must have finished restocking Slow Henry. Donna nudged Xan and pulled his head down so she could whisper in his ear. “Maybe that’s all he was doing.”

  Their faces were almost touching.

  Xan nodded. “Right. I guess someone has to keep it going, especially if it runs for most of the year.”

  Footsteps slowly moved away. Donna guessed they were heading toward the door. Oh, please, she prayed, please let him be leaving.

  The heavy door banged shut.

  “Now!” Donna whisper-shouted. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Wait, let him get farther along the corridor,” Xan said, frowning and trying to resist as she tugged him toward the curtain she was already lifting aside.

  “I don’t want to stay trapped in here,” she replied. “Come on, Xan, please. We have to leave!”

  They ran back into the main chamber. Donna licked her lips and scanned the area. Grabbing Xan’s hand, she dashed across the length of the laboratory, gritting her teeth as they passed the shelf holding the statue.

  The bronze head woke up.

  It seemed to have recovered from being stomped on, and began screaming and yelling as though someone was trying to melt it for scrap. Which sounds like a pretty good idea, Donna thought savagely.

  Footsteps clattered back t
oward the lab.

  Xan made as if to go back into the oratorium.

  She shook her head. “No, he’ll look in there!”

  Xan frowned for a moment, then nodded toward the floor. Donna could see where Xan thought they should hide, but she wasn’t entirely convinced it would work.

  But as the handle on the door turned, she decided it was the best plan they had.

  They dove beneath the workbench, cramming themselves into the space between the legs. It was a tight squeeze, but they made it just as the door opened and someone strode into the chamber.

  The bronze statue continued to yell—directly above them.

  Donna wondered if the thing could actually see. Is that how it worked? Or did it simply make that awful noise whenever somebody disturbed it; somebody particularly dumb like her. She grimaced at the racket and tried not to think about the fact that she was half-sitting on Xan’s lap. There wasn’t space to move—hardly room to breathe. She wondered how he was handling it, considering how much taller he was.

  Xan’s arms went around her and he pulled her hard against him. Donna had been trying to keep a few of her body parts from being plastered against his, but it was pretty much impossible and her legs ached from the effort. At least now she could relax against him and it didn’t feel as though every muscle in her body was going to explode. He was so warm … she’d noticed that about him before, like on the night that he’d kissed her.

  As soon as that thought entered her head, she couldn’t help looking up into his face. Their noses almost touched. Donna could just about make out the laughter lines crinkled around his eyes in the half light. He must be smiling, but she was too close to be able to see his mouth. How could he be smiling at a time like this? The boy definitely had a reckless streak, and she couldn’t help being drawn to it. She’d always been so careful in her life, and now here was somebody who took risks and flirted with her when they were seconds from potential discovery.

  It was totally sexy.