“The furnace worries me not,” Bael claimed, critiquing the device. “I feel that with a little elbow grease it may yet blaze to life. But we lack the last essential ingredient. Would you do the honors?”
“Laen metal.” Lakif mentally rehearsed the nursery rhyme in her mind. Part of her wanted to further vet the device. She felt that by sifting through the accumulated chaff within, she might glean some insight into its dark past. She would have loved to have pieced together a morbid narrative based on the vestigial elements rescued from the dust. But it promised to be a filthy chore. Therefore, she happily accepted her friend’s offer. As Bael began the unenviable task of clearing debris from the behemoth’s gullet, Lakif set about searching for the last necessary element for the ritual.
To that end, the Acaanan lit a candle and probed the rest of the cellar with a careful eye. She began searching at the wall that led perpendicularly off the foot of the stairs. It housed numerous shelves from floor to ceiling, each loaded with stacked tomes and bundled scrolls.
Innumerable spiders congested the tiered texts like damp clumps of earth. Some were larger than her fist, while others were the size of a thimble. The arachnids crawled over each other in an orgy of hairy legs. Many of the larger ones were slothful as her hand swatted them away. Others, more skittish, scurried into the recesses at her touch. Contact with the critters didn’t bother her in the least.
Curiosity raging, the Acaanan lost no time sweeping away the webbing and spidery inhabitants to retrieve a random text. It was a thick tome whose vellum was caked with excrement and untold other unguents. It was titled The Alchemist’s Codex.
Lakif greedily leafed through the fetid pages. There were over a score of chapters, each dedicated to covering the basic alchemical procedures. Pages were devoted to the mechanics of weighing, powdering, heating, smelting, casting, calcining, distilling, fermenting, dousing, and numerous other procedures. The text was inked in sloppy handwriting. She wondered if the priest had personally penned this tome as his own workbook. Lakif would have liked to examine it in greater detail, but the rotted pages tore at her handling. Furthermore, it smelled of hard science, and she quickly dismissed the text for another.
This second book was a bound collection of sketches. Each page highlighted an aspect of Human anatomy, with an emphasis on surgical techniques useful for exploration. Lakif stalled when she reached a page illustrating a method of surgically dissecting an eyeball in layers like peeling an onion. She slammed the text shut in revulsion.
Had the Acaanan more time, she would have been inclined to clear out the arachnids to see if anything was squirreled away in the back of the shelves. But as there were other places to search, she moved on.
The wall underneath the stairs held far more appeal. Like its neighbor, it too was lined with shelves. Broken glass peppered the floor before them. The glass slivers popped underfoot as she perused the area.
The crates within were storage bins for diverse alchemical equipment, filled to the brim with glass blow tubes, lenses, funnels, vials, test tubes, beakers, tongs, and yellowed litmus paper. Several cases were devoted to common apparatuses. There was a cracked alembic whose interior was smoky gray from countless distillations. Another box was crammed with crusty retorts, some still with residual crud caking their bellies. She even found a few carboys, the encasing wood dried and cracked, yet the glass tubes within preserved intact.
Other bins contained strange looking gizmos of unknown function. The assortment of hootenannies stumped the Acaanan.
One crate in particular captured her eye. It contained numerous talismans, each with a hole in the center, apparently looking to house some precious stone. The Acaanan fancied taking one in hopes of some day fashioning a regal medallion. Also in the box was a spy glass, a few cheap wands, and a key. She had no reason to believe the items were anything other than useless baubles.
Another shelf housed a squadron of bins full of jars and vials. She began methodically examining each in turn. Some vials were opened, their contents reduced to a crusty powder or a solid mass. Others were sealed tightly, their contents miraculously intact. She ogled viscous oozes, colored gels, and watery fluids that suspended multicolored crystals or fleshy membranes. Virtually all the vials were labeled with a white tape, although in most cases the tape was peeling off or curling up from age. Sometimes it was legible; other times it was so moldy as to be unreadable. But legible labels were scribbled with undecipherable symbols.
Lakif assumed the jargon to be alchemical shorthand for the substance in question. Initially, she was intimidated by the archaic labels and worried she wouldn’t be able to identify the substances. Fortunately, beneath the symbol was written the substance’s name in the Common Tongue. Some also contained additional information, such as the approximate mass or source of the material, written with such small lettering that the Acaanan had to draw the jar right up to her eyes to read. A plethora of common words of mass were scribbled down, such as grains, scruples, drams, and ounces, along with other words that were alien to her.
Some were peculiarly labeled earth metal essences, of which she identified sulfur, lead, iron, mercury, copper, silver, and tin. Still other jars contained slivers of precious stones. Specks labeled agate, amethyst, jade, onyx, pearl, ruby, sapphire, and turquoise all twinkled in their respective containers before her candle. Some wedges were smoothly cut with polygonal facets for engraving. Others were cabochons, with one face flat and the other domed, like a cut orange. Unfortunately, all were studded with obvious impurities. Some had outright bizarre inclusions, such as small insects trapped within. She swore one gem looked like it housed a tooth.
Some of the vials had bizarre names: goblin’s blood, salamander scales, snake venom, spider hair, froth of rabid dog, imp’s tongue, and wyvern’s barb. Beside those of creature origin, there were many more derived from fungi, herbs, or plants. Common varieties included absinthe, belladonna, elder, jasmine, mandrake, monkshood, thyme, mugwort, wolfsbane, and nightshade. Some of these she knew as poisons from Erebus. There were even vials of quite rare specimens, such as cleric’s cowl, black lotus, shrinking violet, and spirit bane. Unfortunately, all of these organic ingredients had long since decomposed to a useless goo.
Throughout her exploration, Lakif marveled at the eclectic mixture of ingredients. Some were as common as kitchen spices while others were exceedingly rare—the stuff of myth. She could only hazard a guess as to how the alchemist came by such rarities. It seemed to her that the mere acquisition of such unique substances would dominate any alchemist’s time and surely tax his resources.
One box contained larger jars sealed with tape. Within were various degenerating organs suspended in fixative liquid. Lakif choked with revulsion at the sight, almost dropping the box on the floor in shock. She quickly placed the odious crate aside in an effort to expunge the images from her mind.
At one point, the Acaanan turned to assess her companion’s progress. Bael was leaning into the furnace and shoveling the interior with a small brazier. As he cast out debris, it looked like he was excavating a grave. The soot swirled around him, and from Lakif’s vantage point it looked like Bael was swarmed with a plague of germs. He grabbed a poker and began spearing the flue.
“What do we have here?” The Kulthean dislodged something from the flue.
“What?” Lakif wondered if he had discovered something perverse.
“It was stuck up in there.” Bael flicked out a dried ball of fur and bones. It was only the mummified carcass of a rodent. But Lakif placed a vivid spin on the find. Perhaps the furnace had become too esurient for life. It devoured a rodent and swallowed it whole before it could be cremated by fire. As a result the creature had lodged in the flue, the very throat of the oven, and the furnace had choked to death.
Lakif returned her attention to the wall, which seemed much longer than before. She had rummaged through a few boxes, but an army more still waited. In addition, she was sampling only the boxes on the outer edge
of the shelf. It was clear that the majority of the bizarre concoctions were lost back in the nether reaches where the Acaanan was loath to peer, let alone blindly reach in a vulnerable arm.
The more she found, the more she wanted to tamper with. In addition to raw ingredients, she ran across substances seemingly made by the alchemist himself and stored there. There were elixirs and solvents, which were sadly dried up, along with dusts and powders, which had hardened and discolored. Lakif felt that even if she could divine their use, it was very unlikely they would still function. Two especially were intriguing. One vial was labeled simply desire. It was empty. Whether it actually contained a special gas, or its contents had diffused out long ago, was anyone’s guess. Another was stamped universal solvent-inorganic. This latter container was a simple wooden vial. She hesitated about opening it but was intrigued enough by its billing. Before she knew it, she found herself tucking it away in a pouch for future inspection.
Lakif was pleasantly surprised by the condition of the alchemical laboratory. The place clearly had languished under the weight of time but not of man. Fortunate to their purposes, the cellar had been spared the grievous pummeling that had effaced the church above. She wondered why the so-abhorred laboratory had not been sacked with the same zeal. Was it owing to a secret respect for the heinous concoctions? Or a deep-seated fear to meddle with the alchemist’s work? Or perhaps it was simply that there was nothing of such obvious value here in comparison to the loot promised above. Whatever the reason, the laboratory had simply been sealed up and consigned to oblivion. Such was a boon; having the goods in reasonable order was a benediction for her search.
But even with this advantage, Lakif faced a daunting task of wading through the ocean of glassware. As interesting as the galaxy of ingredients was, she was frustrated at not being able to find the requisite item. To find laen amid this array was akin to a diver producing a specific stone from the bottom of a bay. In addition, they weren’t even sure if laen was present among the inventory. Such a mythical metal was certainly within the province of an alchemist, but there was no guarantee. To compound matters, reading the ink on the labels guaranteed a headache.
She was about to throw up her hands in despair when her foot nudged something. She found the corner of a book peeking out from under the lowest shelf. The edge had been thoroughly gnawed up. Lakif imagined that the text had either been hidden under the shelf or kicked there by accident. Some rodent had decided to feast on its binding and by its chewing had tugged the book from its hiding spot. As she bent low, she noted that a ring lay near the book.
She speared the ring first, hopeful that it was valuable. But it was nothing much to look at. After careful examination, she discovered a hairpin latch on the edge. She was able to swivel open the face and found a hollow compartment inside. She imagined the device was constructed to store poisons. Its contents could be readily poured into a glass of wine. Understandably, she kept it as a token.
Lakif turned her attention to the book. It measured much longer in height than width and was thin, so she sized it up as a ledger. Sudden curiosity overpowered any interest in searching for the laen, and she tackled the item.
The first page was titled Rare Herbs and Plants. The collection of entries began with black mushroom. She found the date of acquisition recorded in an obsolete system that the Acaanan had heard of from time to time. A quick mental calculation revealed that the entry was penned about two hundred years prior, in striking agreement with the Bard’s account. Lakif imagined that the ledger contained the alchemist’s acquisitions on the eve of his untimely flight. The mushroom was registered as a fungus, and a comment added that it was “found on grave of madman.”
Needless to say, the Acaanan was instantly enthralled by the ledger. In his last months, the alchemist had managed to collect, beside the black mushroom, a sprig of belladonna, peony, and hemlock. Lakif was most intrigued by the diverse haunts of such plants. The belladonna plant had been discovered in a place called the ruins of Icor. Peony was secured from a farm in western Mordakai, whereas hemlock was found growing along the banks of the river Cocytus.
The next page contained the heading Gemstones, but it was disappointingly blank. The third page was labeled Organic Ingredients. She paled before the few entries and quickly turned the page.
This next page was labeled Elements. The first entry was red mercury. According to the alchemist, it was billed as a potent reversal factor. She had no idea what this meant but found it seductive. Lakif’s heart soared on finding that the second entry was crushed laen! She was astonished to read of its source. According to the ledger, the alchemist had been invited to a local widow’s home for dinner. Over the candlelight he noted the metal. It was serving as the clasp of her necklace. The entry didn’t elaborate on how he had specifically landed the necklace. Had he asked the widow for the jewelry or somehow duped it from her, or had he taken more heavy-handed measures to secure it?
This finding fueled the Acaanan with renewed hope. The metal must be within the storeroom! She discarded the inventory text and continued her search at double speed. During her culling, she indeed ran across a vial dubbed red mercury. She pocketed it without much thought.
It was with jubilation that she ultimately succeeded. Triumphantly, she held up a vial labeled white laen. This substance would, in the outside world, be virtually unobtainable due to its fantastic rarity. But here, among the wonders of an alchemical laboratory, the bizarre and unique were the order of the day.
XXXV
The Ritual
“IT’S BREATHING!” THE HIGH-MAN’S VOICE BOOMED.
Turning, Lakif saw Bael standing proudly beside the furnace. He had cleared out the teeming debris and with a push he leveled the bellows; a gust of air howled through the furnace. When the furnace coughed out air she held her breath, fearing that the smoke was an exhaust of evils.
Bael had accomplished much. Lakif wondered how long had they been at work. Although the hour was impossible to determine in the timeless cellar, she had the feeling the sun was setting. Sifting through the sea of oddities had been an odyssey that had consumed hours. She turned back to continue the search but realized that she had the missing factor in hand. She double-checked the label and, satisfied, returned to the company of her friend.
Bael, armed with a crowbar, was occupied leveraging open a stuck vent along the inner gum line. He apparently had a mechanical bend, an attribute that kept its distance from the Acaanan.
The sight of the furnace awakening stirred something in the Acaanan’s stomach. Presumably, this particular forge hadn’t been used in a score of decades. Who knew for what gruesome purposes it had been kindled in the distant past? If its fires could speak, what atrocities would they impart? One thing probably rang true. No matter what the maligned past of this voracious beast was, it had never tasted the meal that it would consume this day.
As Bael toiled, the Acaanan’s mind continued to wander. She wondered about the other children of Rhoan Oak, those faceless ghosts from her own past. She wondered who among them had found a Stone for themselves, and if so, had also found an alchemical forge. Considering their efforts to find this particular one, she imagined that said forges were perhaps even rarer than the Stones themselves. There couldn’t be more than a handful in even a city as sprawling as Maldiveria.
Something suddenly occurred to her.
“Bael. You never mentioned it, but where did you find your Stone?”
“A quirky tale.” The Kulthean’s voice rang out from within the furnace. It had a brassy, hollow quality from resonating through the cavity. “I was in the Kalkadrian Floats. At that time, I had just retired from my apprenticeship—with a smithy no less.”
Lakif reflected on the revelation. As she had learned the trade of the printer, Bael had studied the art of the smith. This explained his working familiarity with the furnace.
“I was interested in stories of the Stones, of course, but only as a fanciful curiosity.” Bael stopped
momentarily to utter a curse as he banged his knuckle on something.
“Damn oven has already tasted my blood!” he cursed.
“Go on!” Lakif coaxed him to elaborate.
“I had accepted a stint doing security. I was guarding a merchant’s warehouse on the Dank Well. You see, I was more interested in supporting myself and securing my next meal than tilting at the windmill of adventure. The Stones were just a distant figment of my dreams. Then one evening, I was strolling along a perilous stretch of beach littered with broken vessels. It was late and the sun was setting beyond EarthDoom, casting long, eerie shadows around the ship graveyard. It was then I met this old wreck on the shore…there!”
Lakif immediately snapped to attention and looked keenly at her friend. The High-man backed out of the furnace, dusting off his powerful hands. His right knuckle was matted with ash-covered blood. In fact, he was so speckled with soot that his flesh seemed to fester with boils. A distant, vacant look clouded his eyes.
“Old wreck?” Lakif echoed.
“Well, she told me where…”
“She?” Lakif shouted.
Bael nodded. “At least I assumed it was a woman. As I said, she told me where I could find the Stone. Or I should say, she predicted, using a bag of seashells and clams that summoned a water spirit. Her predictions were vague, but the short of it was that the Stone could be found in a watery grotto along the Dank Well.”
“What did she look like?” Lakif hallooed.
“Such a miserable sight she was! I was first attracted by her crying, which sounded like the waves cracking on the shoal. She sat at the bow of a ship that was dashed on the rocks. She was draped in seaweed as others wear robes, and barnacles adorned her like jewelry. Leeches clung to her chest hairs, forming a slimy necklace. Her face was blue-bloated like a water-logged corpse. And I can’t forget those eyes! She had no pupils! Instead, her eyes were peppered with black specks like sediment floating in the tide. Foam ran from those eyes like seawater from a hatch. Her rump was as fat as a ship’s bilge! I momentarily thought that the sea monster Cetus herself had been belched up from the deep and marooned on the shore. The stink was atrocious; fetid gas seeped out of her flesh like a gangrenous corpse! She even had a pet eel that wiggled through the folds of her fat. The vessel graveyard truly suited her. She was verily akin to an old barge that crashed on the beach and was slowly decaying. But she enjoyed a bracing insight into the spirit realm, I gathered.” He suddenly seemed to snap out of his recall.
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