by Amy Alward
‘Seriously?’ I stop and look up at the summit of the volcano, where a steady stream of smoke puffs into the sky. Seeing a phoenix would blow my mind: they’re by far my favourite magical creature. It makes the volcano seem even more mysterious and intriguing.
‘She’s more active again,’ Mei says to the Waidan, referencing the volcano.
‘We’ll check the seismic monitors when we get back.’
‘Are you able to predict if the volcano is going to erupt?’ Katrina asks, unable to hide the alarm from her voice.
Mei nods. ‘We have sensors buried deep into the ground and we monitor seismic activity in a wide radius around Yanhuo. But a volcano is never fully predictable.’
I shiver despite the heat, and stare up one more time at the ominous smoke. Then I put it to the back of my mind. We’re currently walking on the best evidence of a volcano’s incredible destructive power. If we were in any imminent danger, the Waidan and his team wouldn’t let us come here.
We walk past more ruins, which Mei explains were once the living quarters of the alchemist-monks, tiny cells just large enough for a bed and sink. Part of me wants to stop and examine and ask questions, but it can wait for another time. The Waidan leads us through a maze of narrow side streets, until we reach a doorway framed on either side by two misshapen lumps of stone. ‘These would have represented a dragon and a phoenix,’ says the Waidan. If I squint, I can just about see what he means – I can make out the curved, sinewy body of a dragon and the long, pointed beak of a phoenix. They would have been impressive statues in their time. A similar sign to the one I saw out front is posted across this doorway: BEWARE OF HIDDEN CAVITIES BENEATH THE FLOOR.
Once we pass through the doorway, I notice that this room has a large window that perfectly frames the summit of the volcano. ‘Wow, that’s some view,’ I say.
‘This is Tao Kemi’s former residence,’ says Mei. ‘He was the last Waidan to live here. If you look through this window, you can see a part of the monastery that hasn’t been excavated yet. Those would have been the living quarters of the Waidan’s servants.’
I peer through the window and all I can see is a great swathe of hardened lava. ‘You mean . . . there were houses underneath that once?’ I ask her.
‘Indeed. When we found this house, we knew it was special, which is why we began our excavations immediately. Look over here, and tread carefully. There is a cavern underneath this floor and though we have made every effort to make the floor safe, there is a risk that it may collapse.’
Picking my way gently around the outside of the living room, I follow Mei and the Waidan into the former bedroom of Tao Kemi – there’s a raised stone platform that would have acted as a bed. A warm breeze wraps its way around my ankles – there’s a huge hole in the floor of the bedroom and the warm air is rising up from underneath it.
‘We . . . have to go down there?’ I ask.
‘There is a small room underneath the floor of this bedroom – it’s where we found Tao Kemi’s diary. There is only room for two of us.’ He looks pointedly at Katrina and Mei.
‘We’ll stay here and guard the entrance,’ Mei says.
Katrina frowns. ‘Are there any other exits I should know about?’
Mei shakes her head. ‘This is the only one.’
‘Got it. Sam – I’ll be right here if you need anything.’
I nod back. It does make me feel more relaxed knowing that Katrina is watching out for me.
The Waidan turns to me. ‘Tell me, Samantha Kemi, have you ever thought why this place is the birthplace of alchemy? Zhonguo is a big country. But for some reason this area drew the interest of the men and women who would become the very first mixers.’
I pause for a moment, thinking about all the reasons I would be interested in a place like this. It’s far from the most hospitable land . . . but maybe that would form part of the appeal. ‘The fire,’ I blurt out, before I can think about it much harder.
The Waidan appraises me with one eyebrow raised. ‘Well done. Why the fire?’
‘Alchemists are interested in balance – but to create balance you sometimes have to force change. Forcing change requires a lot of energy – intense heat or cold, most of the time. I imagine you can’t get fires hotter than the ones in a volcano. It provides access to the centre of the planet. The heat of the planet itself . . . if there’s anywhere that could “fuel” alchemy, this would be it.’
The Waidan nods. ‘This earth has many unique properties. But the most unique aspect of this volcano lies far beneath our feet. In the flow of lava that disappears into the centre of the earth. The alchemists of old believed that the lava could transport magic all around the world, that it, in fact, was a physical embodiment of the streams of magic in the air.’
‘Wow. But it’s just molten rocks and crystals and gas, right?’ I say with a laugh.
The Waidan doesn’t answer, but fixes me with a stern look. ‘Some of the world’s greatest potions were created here. Long before the Visir School or even Kemi’s Potion Shop,’ he says. ‘Some of the recipes have been lost to the sands of time. But others survived . . . even underneath the weight of one of the worst natural disasters in history. Even though a thousand years have passed.’
‘You mean to say . . . you discovered a potion here?’
‘This is what we cannot yet show to the world because we do not understand it. And yet you are a descendant of the man who created it, and also a Master Alchemist yourself. It won’t respond to me or my team, but maybe you will have more luck.’
The floor rocks beneath me. It’s not just the effect of the Waidan’s words – it’s the volcano rumbling.
But rather than look alarmed, the Waidan closes his eyes. ‘The volcano knows something. She has been dormant for hundreds of years but now is more active than ever. This way.’
I follow him down into the chamber beneath Tao Kemi’s old sleeping quarters. It’s almost pitch-black dark until he lights a sconce on the wall with a match. ‘Once we realised this chamber was here, we didn’t have to excavate,’ he says. ‘It was still perfectly intact when we discovered it.’
I can hardly believe my eyes. The room itself is sparsely decorated, with just a couple of iron hooks on the wall for additional sconces, but right in the centre is what looks like a shallow pool of water. A pond, a millennium old, still shimmering and crystal clear as if it had been filled only yesterday.
‘What is it?’ I ask, almost breathless with awe. My eyes are wide open, drinking in the entire scene. I kneel down by the pond’s edge, my hand reaching out to touch it. I draw back at just the last moment. It goes against my alchemist instincts to dive straight into an unknown liquid. Yet something about the pond calls to me.
My hand rests on one of the stone tiles at the edge of the pool, which is decorated with Zhonguoan characters. My fingers trace the shape of the carvings, and I wish I knew what they said.
‘It reads “Kemi”,’ says the Waidan, answering my unasked question. ‘We initially thought it was carved to identify the builder of this chamber, but now we think it could mean something more. Go ahead and touch the water. We have tested it thoroughly and as far as we can see, it is safe.’
I nod and take a deep breath, reaching down to the pond’s surface. My fingertip breaks the shimmering surface, and I gasp at the cold. Stranger still, rather than ripple out away from me the water gathers towards my fingertip. The liquid lifts as I pull away until it’s standing before my eyes, a waterfall in reverse. I’m simultaneously entranced and terrified.
‘My god . . .’ says the Waidan. He drops to his knees beside me, his white robes pooling around him. ‘I’ve heard of such a thing, but never thought I would witness it. Liquid magic. Your touch must have awoken it. He must have charmed it to respond to Kemi blood.’
My eyes widen. If this is really magic . . . then everything I’ve been taught is wrong. It’s not invisible – it can be made tangible. What I thought were limits to possibility were only l
imits to my imagination.
I snatch my hand away, but the water remains standing, like a screen. It reflects the image of the volcano behind me. No – wait – it can’t be reflecting the image – we’re under the ground. It’s showing us something.
‘That is Yanhuo! What is this magic?’ asks the Waidan, his eyes darting across the watery screen. The image shifts to focus in on a sprawling complex of curved-wall buildings with gilded copper roofs, designed in a series of concentric circles on the side the volcano. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this . . . And that must be the Jing monastery! But as it once was.’
So not wooden roofs at all, but copper.
As the image zooms in closer, we see monks wandering the narrow laneways between the buildings, all dressed the same way as the Waidan is today – with the long white robes edged in blue silk. The scene shifts to the house we are in now, closing in on one of the rooms the archaeologists thought was a bedroom. But it turned out it was more like a laboratory – and the raised platform wasn’t a bed at all. It’s a table. There’s a man in the room, back bent over a mixing bowl, his thin black moustache so long it drips off the edge of his chin like a line of ink.
‘Is that . . . Tao Kemi?’
‘It must be,’ says the Waidan, but his mouth snaps shut as Zhonguoan characters appear on the top edge of the watery screen. The Waidan rushes to translate as the characters fade in and out. ‘I am about to finish the greatest potion I will ever make. The culmination of years of single-minded effort. Everything is abandoned. All is focused on the mixing.’
I bite my lip. I have so many questions, but I can also sense the tension in the Waidan’s voice. Could the words be referring to the aqua vitae again? It was the potion that ruined my great-grandmother’s career – and almost ruined mine. I wonder if it’s the Kemi family curse to search for it.
The scene shifts and is replaced by the image of a woman, her pale round face glowing as brightly as the moon as she lifts her dark eyes towards us and smiles. ‘This is the woman I love,’ translates the Waidan. ‘Her name is Xi Shi. A woman so beautiful she could topple entire nations – with a wit to match. For her, I will move every star in the heavens until they align according to her wishes.
‘But she has only one wish. She is an ordinary woman and her dream is to manipulate the element of magic, as the rest of her family are able to do.
‘It is an impossible task.’
The woman’s face dissolves in the water, replaced once again by the scene of Tao at his station, mixing. Failing. Throwing his hands up in exasperation. I see the passage of time fly by in the window outside his room, and Yanhuo begins to smoke.
Beside me, the Waidan shivers as he reads the next sentence. ‘But I succeeded.’
The writing disappears, and instead we watch Tao as he descends into the village. He meets with the beautiful Xi Shi, who at first seems angry with him. She shakes her head, walks away. But then Tao pulls out a small wooden box. He kneels at Xi Shi’s feet and opens the box to reveal a delicate blown-glass vial, the glass the same pale pink of a fresh cherry blossom. She takes it from the box with her long, elegant fingers, releases the stopper, and drinks the potion. In the next moment, she whips a slim twig of wood – a wand – from her sleeve and points it at a flower growing in a bed a few feet away. With a swish of her object, she plucks the flower and it drifts through the air towards her. Once the flower is grasped within her fingers, she throws her arms around Tao Kemi.
‘No . . .’ My eyes are tricking me. This must be a story. A legend. It cannot be showing something true. The potion Tao was creating was not an aqua vitae then.
If anything, it was something more unimaginable than a potion that could cure all illness.
It was a potion to give an ordinary person magic.
‘It can’t be.’ The Waidan’s voice quavers with as much disbelief as mine. Characters flicker up on the screen again and the Waidan shakes himself to read them. ‘I succeeded. But at a price.’
The scene shifts to show Xi Shi and Tao standing over the bed of an old woman. The woman leans forward and coughs violently, leaving a tell-tale white residue on her hands and sheets. Then she falls back on the bed and the light steadily leaves her eyes. Xi Shi presses her face into Tao’s shoulder, sobbing. ‘A sickness descended on the village. A terrible disease that spread like dragonfire. At the monastery, we were helpless. There was no cure.’
There are scenes of great sadness playing out on the watery screen in front of me, families being torn apart with grief. But then the next phase comes. I can see it building in front of me like clouds gathering for a storm. Anger. Everyone wanted someone to blame.
‘It soon became clear that this illness had a particular target. The Talented. Every Talented that met Xi Shi found their power drained away from them, and then they passed on the sickness to every Talented they met. And so it went that the magic drain spread around the village. The Talented blamed me. They weren’t wrong. For with every Talented who weakened, Xi Shi grew stronger. I had upset the natural balance.’
The action returns to the monastery, to the very chamber that we are in. Xi Shi and Tao are sitting almost in the place that I am now, kneeling at the edge of the pond. ‘We fled to the monastery. Xi Shi begged me to reverse the potion. This was power she did not ask for. She wanted only to make flowers bloom and lights appear in the sky. She wanted only to be the same as the rest of her family.’
There’s a pause as Tao Kemi appears to collect his thoughts.
‘As for a cure? I may have a recipe, but I have no hope of acquiring the necessary ingredients in time and no writing implement to set the recipe down in my diary. All I can do is speak these words in hope that a future Kemi will hear this in their time of need. The key ingredient is phoenix flame. Enough flame would restore Xi Shi to her original state and return the magic she has taken. But getting enough is almost impossible, so there are other ingredients that can help amplify the properties of even a small amount of flame.’
As soon as the Waidan translates those words for me, I drag my bag towards me, shaking it so my diary falls out. I grab a pen, biting the cap off between my teeth, scrambling to write down each ingredient as he speaks.
‘Nature prepares to take her revenge. We sit here now, leaving this story written in magic, a warning to be heard by my descendants. Do not upset the balance – for you will bring destruction down on your own heads.
‘Tonight, Xi Shi and I will say farewell to the mortal world.’
Abruptly, the water screen tumbles back into the pool, coming to rest again as flat as a mirror. It feels like there had been more to the story, but that Tao had been cut off.
‘Yanhuo must have erupted . . .’ the Waidan finishes. ‘Burying Tao and Xi Shi and the secret of what they did.’
My throat closes up as I think of the two of them trapped in the monastery as fire and lava and ash descended on them from the volcano. Xi Shi may have been the source of the drain of magic from the Talented villagers, but the cost of stopping her was terrible. Part of me wishes Tao had destroyed his diary, and the recipe for the potion to make an ordinary person Talented with it. But another part of me – the proud alchemist inside – knows that Tao Kemi never would have made that choice. Despite the consequences, the potion was the culmination of years of hard work and determination that he would have found impossible to throw away. The only saving grace now? I stare down at my scrawls on the page of my diary. The recipe for a cure to a potion I had no idea could exist.
My brain races to process what I’ve just seen, turning over the pieces of the puzzle. As the conclusion dawns on me, a chill settles in my bones, shaking me to the core. A sense of wrongness. Of something impossible being true.
The Waidan stares at me. ‘You understand what this means?’
I force myself to nod, although my mind feels separated from my body, floating above reality. ‘It means the Gergon virus isn’t a virus at all. It’s a person.’
CHAPTER NINETE
EN
Samantha
‘I’VE GOT TO GET BACK TO NOVA.’ I JUMP TO my feet. What am I doing sitting around here? I’ve got to warn the Palace that someone is draining all the Talented power. My mind races as I try to think how I can get into Palace Great and demand an audience. Will they even listen to you? Will Prince Stefan let you in? But it doesn’t matter – if I go with Zain, with Daphne – the Palace will have to listen to us.
‘Wait!’ says the Waidan. ‘Stop. Think.’
‘There’s no time for that!’
But the Waidan fixes me with a fierce gaze. ‘Samantha Kemi, you are a Master Alchemist. You do not rush to conclusions. You think things through. You examine every possibility. Then you find the solution. If it is true that a person – an ordinary person now made Talented – is the source of the Talented drain in Gergon, who could it be?’
The Waidan is right. I need to breathe and think about this. I force myself to delve deep into my memories of my time in Gergon. The Prince did have the symptoms – so he couldn’t be the source. Besides, he’s been Talented his whole life – I remember at least that much from the history books. It has to be someone ordinary.
Every thought is whizzing through my brain at a million miles an hour. I think I can even hear them as they pass by, buzzing in my ear. Buzzing.
That noise isn’t my thoughts after all. I scan the room frantically, checking in every corner. Finally I spot it, hovering in the doorway, darting away from the room. A FollowMe cam.
‘Zain?’ I cry out, chasing after the drone-camera. It spins away from me, and I’m slowed by the fact that I have to climb the steep ladder up from out of the basement. ‘Trina!’ I shout, hoping she’s stayed close by. ‘Get the camera!’
I catch a glimpse of her flaming red hair as she races to catch it. I’m up the ladder as quickly as I can manage, my feet pounding the stone floor. ‘Careful!’ shouts the Waidan from behind me. Just as he says it, I stumble as one of my feet drops through the floor. Then, I’m yanked backwards, pulled away from the hole that’s quickly opening up by a pair of strong hands. Trina.
