Star Winds
Page 21
“I can hardly believe it,” Wolo intoned emptily. “Years of work—all for nothing!”
“Oh, an alchemist thrives on lost labor!” Matello retorted jovially. He strode from the chamber, Rachad and Wolo trailing reluctantly after him.
Rachad’s heart was heavy as they retraced their steps through the maze. He had not expected this outcome, and it made him feel somber and shaken. In a way it seemed to dash any last vestige of hope—for the Hermetic goal, for the future of mankind, or indeed for his own future.
He no longer believed in the Stone, he told himself. It was all fantasy, and Amschel’s exaggerated claims for it were the dodderings of an old fool. Matello had the right idea: he was a rude realist, unswayed by fanciful notions.
Back in his headquarters, news was waiting for Baron Matello that something unusual was happening outside on the plain. He hurried to the observation post and peered through the eyepiece that, by means of lenses and mirrors, brought a view seen from a narrow slit high in the adamant wall of the Aegis.
On the sloping ground before the Aegis, the Kerek were encamped in force. But now something was astir in the riotous sprawl of tall tents and grounded galleys.
The bombards and catapult guns were abandoned. Men and Kerek rushed to and fro in apparent panic, jostling together. Galleys were hastily taking off, both human and alien forms clinging to their sides and sometimes falling away as they ascended raggedly into the sky.
A ruddy, wavering light illuminated the scene. This in itself was not so unusual—the planet’s sun burned sometimes white, sometimes red, sometimes both together in a fiery, whirling manner. The light was, however, much brighter than normally.
Was this what had caused the Kerek to take fright? Intrigued and excited, Matello continued to watch, until the glare increased so much that he snatched himself away from the eyepiece with a cry, holding his streaming eye.
A visible cone of light came from the lens. Curtly Matello gave the order for the observation slit to be closed up.
They all sat huddled blindly in the adamant shell, waiting and wondering.
***
The star which the Aegis circled had never been particularly stable, though human memory could not, of course, know that. Ever since mining had begun on the planet, the sun’s temperature had never varied by more than a degree, and its unsteady appearance, the disk writhing and whirling like a flame, had generally been taken to betoken no more than an unusually mobile photosphere.
With the violent etheric storm that was now sweeping through the southern part of Maralia, however, the depths of the star became disturbed. The photosphere began to flash and boil, blasting out in fantastic storms as extra energy poured from the core. The amount of radiation it sent winging through the ether increased, erratically but substantially.
The effect on the small mining planet, the only one of three to be inhabited, was to scorch and bake it unmercifully. The atmosphere expanded, became unbreathably hot and thin. The landscape was pounded by furious red and white light, by great waves of searing heat The mining towns burned like paper in a furnace, the Kerek camps burned, their ships burned as they vainly tried to claw through the sky. Only a few survived, those who were quick enough to seek refuge in the deepest mines.
For a week the solar storm continued. On the whole planet, one place was safe—the Aegis. Slits and flues tightly closed, the fortress remained cool, unaffected by the drenching energy that poured futilely onto its adamant exterior, for fire and ether could not penetrate those walls of pure earth. For several months the denizens skulked within, not daring even to open an observation slit for fear of what might come pouring through it.
Outside, meanwhile, the sun quieted and the planet gradually cooled, like a ball of clay that was taken out of an oven. Eventually those within the Aegis peered out. More cautiously, they ventured out, finding a world even deader than it had been before.
Further empty months passed. And then a military starship bearing a Maralian standard sailed over the mountain range and set down before the Aegis. At first Matello and the king were suspicious. It had puzzled them when no Kerek arrived to replace their brothers annihilated by the wild sun, and they suspected trickery. But at length a party from the ship was admitted, led by the young Baron Rodrigeur, whom Matello had met briefly once and thought he recognized.
Rodrigeur, though barely above twenty years of age, was capable and self-confident, and already hardened by war. In the king’s own quarters he told an incredible but heartening tale of a series of ether storms more violent and widespread than anything previously known, dashing the Kerek fleets to pieces before they could effect a proper occupation of their latest conquest. In the respite, Maralia had rallied. And though the struggle still went on, the cause was no longer regarded as completely hopeless.
Those present listened in amazement “A miraculous delivery!” King Lutheron breathed.
Rodrigeur turned to him apologetically. “Your brother Murdon currently reigns in your place, Your Majesty,” he said. “Everyone had thought you dead, until it was remembered that the Duke of Koss’s Aegis lies close to where the first battle took place and it was suggested you might have token refuge here. I was dispatched to investigate, as soon as could be managed.”
“And where is the seat of government?” Lutheron asked sternly.
“At Myrmidia, liege-lord. All the western part of the kingdom lies in Kerek hands.”
“But not for long!” Matello blazed. “We have half a chance of victory, you say? A quarter of a chance is good enough for me! Let’s be away from here, liege-lord, and into the fray!”
“Steady, Sir Goth,” King Lutheron murmured. “First, we travel to Myrmidia. It will be interesting to see how my brother takes the news of my continuing good health …”
Chapter SIXTEEN
Captain Zebandar Zhorga, his armor clinking, scrambled down into the shallow dugout where the field surgeon had just finished stitching up the wounded trooper. The injured man lay on the bare dirt, heavily dosed with laudanum. His leather jerkin had been cut away and his tunic ripped open; bloodstained bandages were about his middle.
“How is he?” Zhorga demanded.
The surgeon shrugged as he packed away his instruments. He did not speak until he was able to turn away from the barely conscious soldier.
“What do you expect?” he muttered. “He’ll be dead before sunrise.”
Zhorga nodded, feeling very, very sad. The injured trooper was Rachad Caban.
He looked up over the rim of the dugout, at the drooping violet trees that perpetually dripped moisture into the marshes. It was this accursed world that did it. Elsewhere Rachad might have stood a good chance of recovering from his injuries. Here wounds turned septic almost immediately, producing a rotting gangrene and death within hours.
Previously the planet had been uninhabited, but the Kerek appreciated its strategic value and had moved in to begin converting its atmosphere. That could not be allowed, with the war swaying back and forth across Maralia the way it was, and King Murdon had sent in Baron Matello at the head of a large force—as punishment, perhaps, for his formerly stubborn allegiance to the disgraced and imprisoned Lutheron—to prevent it.
“Ah, Rachad, you’ve come a long way with me,” Zhorga muttered, staring down at the pale, blank face with its enlarged pupils. “What a pity you have to turn in your ticket now.”
It was one of those flying sickles that had sliced the young man open. Zhorga wondered if it might be kinder if he were to finish the job now. But instead he turned and clambered up the walls of soft red earth and made his way back to what he had been doing when he heard of the incident—supervising the placing of a great bombard to assail Kerek positions.
For about an hour Rachad drifted into a dreamless sleep. When he awoke, his whole body seemed to be burning.
Blurrily he saw someone come softly down into the dugout and lean over him. His vision cleared somewhat, and he gasped as he recognized a small, sli
ghtly monkey-like face, with quiet brown eyes and silky hair.
For a moment he could not speak. He stuttered.
“Master Amschel!”
The alchemist wore light leather armor and a brief, almost superfluous iron helmet. He ran his eyes over Rachad, as if inspecting him, then reached inside his leather hauberk, producing a small phial.
“You’re supposed to be dead!” Rachad protested. “How did you escape from the laboratory—the explosion?”
Amschel ignored the question. “You are dying, my friend,” he said in a dry tone. “Drink this excellent medicine, the true elixir. It will vivify your body, throwing off disease, hastening the healing of even the deepest wounds.”
He must have fled the laboratory in advance of the explosion, Rachad reasoned hazily. He must have hidden somewhere, eventually contriving to leave the Aegis along with the rest of them. But what was he doing in Matello’s army?
Amschel put the neck of the phial to his lips. A thick liquid poured out.
Rachad became immediately absorbed by a taste that was like a golden glow, so vivid he seemed almost to see it. The medicine trickled down his throat with a gentle burning, like the finest liqueur, and as it reached his stomach he felt golden drops of liquid radiance spreading through his body, giving him a feeling of lightness and vigor.
“That’s … wonderful,” he whispered.
Amschel smiled. “It has even been known to revive men thought dead. But I see you have changed your occupation from that of laboratory assistant to that of soldier. Are you no longer seeking the Stone? What did you do with the book I gave you?”
“I left it in the Aegis, Master Amschel. After what happened I decided its information was too dangerous.”
“I see.” Amschel seemed to reflect. “The Stone can make you proof against the Kerek Power—have you not considered that? It could be important, in the times that lie ahead.”
“But we are already holding our own against the Kerek!” Rachad boasted. “The tide has turned—Zhorga says we will have driven them out of Maralia altogether in a few years.”
Amschel smiled. “Perhaps—but for how long? This is only one of the Kerek’s present theaters of conquest. If they fail with Maralia they will simply, in a few years, transfer even greater forces from elsewhere.”
“Perhaps we will have greater forces by then,” Rachad said defiantly.
Amschel nodded. “Well, I must be on my way. Rest now. I think you may feel much better in a day or two.”
“Wait!” called Rachad as he saw Amschel disappearing over the lip of the dugout. He struggled up and, holding his middle with one arm, crawled up after him—an exercise that only minutes before he would have found impossible.
Ahead, he saw the dismal landscape that covered most of the planet: great flat mist-covered marshes, interspersed with hillocks and ridges of firmer ground, out of which grew drooping violet trees.
Amschel’s stooped figure was picking its way along one of these ridges. It was then that the Kerek sally came, as it did every hour or so. This time it was not a flock of flying sickles or disks, but a brief barrage of bombard shot. Rachad uttered a loud cry, the exertion tearing painfully at his stitches, as a ball exploded near the alchemist.
Even from where he lay, he could see that Amschel was practically ripped apart. Like a rag doll the alchemist’s body, whether living or dead, was flung off the causeway-like ridge. Rachad crawled toward the spot, careless of any hurt to himself now, but already Amschel’s remains were sinking into the wet bog, disappearing with a slurping, gurgling sound while Rachad looked on with horror.
He closed his eyes, overcome with nausea. War, he thought. This was what war meant.
Eventually he opened his eyes again and began to crawl back to his only shelter, the dugout. He had to admit that considering his injuries it was amazing how well he felt. The medicine Amschel had given him seemed to be glowing in every vein.
Was it really the true elixir, as Amschel had called it, or was that by way of being an apothecary’s exaggeration?
Seeing Amschel again had put a different complexion on everything. Had what had seemed a dreadful accident in the infusoratory laboratory been misinterpreted? Had Amschel, in spite of such destruction—perhaps by means of such destruction—actually produced the Stone?
The question was already academic. The Stone, if indeed Amschel had possessed it, was at this moment accompanying him to the bottom of the marsh.
With a grunt and a sigh Rachad rolled into the dugout, where he fell once again into a deep sleep.
***
Olam was a quiet place these days. With the sea trade taking so much of commerce, with flying ships being grounded one by one for lack of silk, the time had come when the whine of ether whistle, or the billowing of blue sail over the rooftops, was unusual enough to make the townspeople stand and gaze nostalgically, knowing that before long such visions would be gone forever.
The Street of the Alchemists had also sunk into quietude as the town’s fortunes declined, and fewer and fewer feet trod its sand-covered way. Master Gebeth was therefore surprised, late one winter evening, to hear a knock on his door. He opened it to see a small man, wearing a brown woolen cloak, and who addressed him by name in an accent he could not place.
The stranger introduced himself as a fellow practitioner, adding that he had been given Gebeth’s address while living in foreign parts, and said that he would be glad to discuss the Spagyric art with one who had also sought the universal medicine. Gebeth, who had come to accept his loneliness along with his failure, nevertheless invited the fellow into his living room, and for an hour or so they conversed.
The visitor spoke with a strange confidence, as though the Hermetic goal were attained fact rather than something much sought after, and Gebeth, who knew all too well the difficulties involved, grew irritated with what he took to be a pretended knowledge. He asked his guest if he could tell him what was the menstruum, or solvent by which the mineral spirit could be extracted from metals. The other replied, with a smile, that it was a heavenly salt known only to the wise, an answer that Gebeth could as well have given himself.
Suddenly the despondency he had felt for so long surfaced, and he threw up his hands. “What’s the use of talking?” he declared. “You are wasting your time here. I no longer believe in the transmutation of metals.”
He lowered his head while the other stared at him with some seriousness. In a low voice he unburdened himself further. “A year ago I ceased all alchemical strivings. The Philosopher’s Stone is but a figment. Only fools and charlatans speak of it.”
There was silence for a while. Gebeth stared at the floor. It was not just the disappointment, the never-ended failure, that had brought on his despair. There was also guilt. He could not forget young Rachad Caban, whom years ago he had allowed to embark on a mad adventure. The Wandering Queen had not been heard of to this day. It was certain that she had come to grief in the trackless wastes of space.
The stranger’s expression grew stern, and he spoke insistently, but softly. “You do not believe in the Stone of the Philosophers? In the Tincture that perfects metals, and that transforms man? Your experiences must have been disheartening indeed.”
With careful movements he reached into his jerkin and pulled out a small box of carved ivory about the size of a snuffbox. From this he took out a yet smaller box folded from waxed paper, which he opened out and laid on the flat of his hand.
Gebeth bent to inspect its contents: a sparkling red powder. For long moments he stared at this powder, which was not like any substance he had seen before. It scintillated with a life of its own, as if light were ceaselessly emerging and dissolving within it. It defied the eyes; one seemed to be looking at the jostling lights of a distant gorgeous city.
“All I require,” his guest said firmly, “is a crucible, a fire, and half a pound of lead.”
Gebeth looked up into the face, with its steady brown eyes and frame of silky hair, of his mysteri
ous visitor. He blinked, not knowing what to say.
Then he nodded, rose, and led the way into his back room. It took but a little time to kindle a fire. Gebeth worked the bellows until the furnace roared, then set a crucible over the heat, putting a slab of lead into it as he was directed. Silently they waited, while the lead slowly melted, and at last was a gleaming pool.
His visitor produced a knife, and took up but a pinch of the powder on its tip, then scattered it over the molten mass.
The lead seethed and flashed with indescribable colors as the powder sank into it, while Amschel stirred it with an iron rod. “See now the victory of True Philosophy …” he murmured. He ceased to stir. Gebeth gasped, and his heart leaped. In the crucible the metal had stilled. Before his eyes it had all been converted into resplendent shining gold …
If you've enjoyed this book and would like to read more great SF, you'll find literally thousands of classic Science Fiction & Fantasy titles through the SF Gateway.
For the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy …
For the most comprehensive collection of classic SF on the internet …
Visit the SF Gateway.
www.sfgateway.com
Also by Barrington J. Bayley
Age of Adventure
Annihilation Factor
Collision with Chronos
Empire of Two Worlds
Sinners of Erspia
Star Winds
The Fall of Chronopolis
The Forest of Peldain
The Garment of Caean
The Grand Wheel
The Great Hydration
The Pillars of Eternity
The Rod of Light
The Soul of the Robot
The Star Virus
The Zen Gun
The Knight of the Limits
The Seed of Evil