Secrets and Spellcraft

by Michael G. Manning

  His eyes were drawn to a wooden post that held up the awning of a building ahead. Will moved closer and adjusted his vision, increasing its sensitivity to turyn. There was a handprint on the wood. No, not a handprint, a paw print, he realized. Faint scratches marred the wood where the tips of the claws would have rested. His newly sensitized eyes could just barely make out the shape, which was composed of traces of black turyn. A demon? “How can that be?” Will muttered.

  He was in the middle of Cerria, the capital city of Terabinia. Warlockry was outlawed, and Priests of Madrok were even less welcome, if that was possible. Who would dare bring a demon into the city?

  “Are you looking to buy rushlights, sir?”

  The man addressing him was looking out from the door beneath the awning. He wore an ordinary cloth cap over his head and had a round, friendly face. Since learning the light spell Will had no need of cheap lighting, but he was curious about the mark he had found. “Not today, but if you don’t mind, I’ll see the quality of them. I may need some in the near future,” Will answered. He followed the man through the door.

  Inside he saw what he’d expected, bundles of dried rushes that had been soaked in fat. They were commonly used in place of candles, due to their cheap price. Will pretended to examine them while he used his turyn-sensitive vision to search for more traces of demonic essence. He found none.

  “Thanks for letting me look,” he told the stranger, staring at the man’s shoulder. He wondered if there might be a dark tattoo on the skin underneath the man’s doublet.

  Resuming his journey to the armorer’s shop, he reminded himself that he had no reason to suspect the trader, aside from the claw print outside, and that might have come from a demon that had merely passed by the man’s shop. Will kept his eyes open the rest of the way, alert to any further signs.

  Byron Waters was happy to see him when he stepped into the shop. “I thought perhaps you’d decided not to pay,” said the heavily bearded man.

  Will shook his head. “I apologize for worrying you. I was injured and forced to stay abed for quite a while.”

  “You’re still alive, so I presume it was somewhere other than where the brigandine would have covered.”

  Will patted his thigh with one hand. “I got a saber point through the meat and into the bone.”

  “You’re the duelist from Wurthaven!” exclaimed Byron. “The story’s been all over the city.”

  Will grimaced, then gave a weak smile, holding up both hands. “That’s me.”

  “You came to order that armor far too late for your duel I, think,” said Byron.

  He shrugged. “Actually, I really wanted it for now.”

  The armorer nodded in understanding. “You expect Count Spry will send men after you in an alleyway one of these days.” He walked toward the other room. “It’s in here.”

  The brigandine vest was smaller than most of the others in the room, since it was made to go under his clothes. The exterior was covered in navy blue linen with silvery metal rivets showing through every inch or so. Turning it inside out, Will saw that the linen padding beneath was slightly thinner than his gambeson, but it would probably be enough to prevent the small plates from being driven into his skin.

  “Again, I want to warn you,” said Byron. “This isn’t proper armor. If you really want to be safe, you’ll get a proper brigandine and wear it over a full gambeson, or better yet, a gambeson and a mail shirt. And you’d have to have another made, because this one will fit too closely to go over anything else.”

  “That’s fine,” said Will. “This is exactly what I wanted.” He took off his tunic and tried his new piece of armor on, testing the fit. “I have a gambeson and mail shirt, but I can’t wear them at Wurthaven. Plus, I want something hidden. If I’m attacked it will probably be by surprise. If they don’t know I’m wearing it, they’re more likely to aim for a vital spot, which is what this covers.”

  “As long as they’re stabbing you with a dagger or something light. If someone hits you with an axe or something big, you’re going to regret it,” replied Byron.

  “If they’re sneaking up on me it’s almost certain to be something small,” replied Will.

  “Fair enough,” said Byron. “Have you heard the news today?”

  “What news?”

  “The Patriarch is suing for peace. Apparently, what we did to his army in Barrowden has left them in a terrible position. Lognion’s moved more soldiers there and they’re afraid we’ll invade them next.”

  Of course, Will knew what had happened, but he hadn’t heard much about the aftermath, so he decided to fish for details. “I heard we pushed them out of Barrowden, but it wasn’t that bad, was it?”

  The shopkeeper whistled. “What rock have you been hiding under? Our army sacked their main camp in Barrowden and set fire to the entire thing. Thousands died trying to get out, and then Lognion kept them bottled up for weeks there while the survivors starved. By the time they tried to break out, they were too weak to fight. We slaughtered them. Not many made it back to Darrow. It will be years before they can field an army like that again.”

  Things hadn’t happened exactly like that, and Will was sure the Terabinian army hadn’t reached Barrowden for days if not weeks after he had set fire to the camp, but if even half of what Byron had said about the death toll was true, it was big news. But I did the right thing, he told himself silently. Didn’t I?

  No, he was sure he hadn’t been wrong. If he hadn’t done it the Patriarch’s army would have pushed past Branscombe and the war would be raging on Terabinian soil. But would more people have died, or fewer? Was the highest good defined by what path led to the lowest cost in human lives, or was it more important that they were enemy lives, rather than Terabinians?

  But they started it, he reminded himself. They attacked us. It would have been easy if he knew for certain that were true, but his recent study of history, even the skewed history taught at Wurthaven, had shown him that every event had deep roots. Every war led to more wars later on, and it was inevitably the soldiers and civilians who paid the price in blood, while those who instigated the conflict hid behind stone walls.

  Will handed over the ten crowns he owed the man and put his tunic back on, over his new armor. Twisting and turning, he took note of the noise it made, but he left the shop and found a place out of view before casting the silence spell on himself. He was pleased with the result. Other than being slightly thicker around the chest, it would be nearly impossible for someone to know what he had on beneath his clothing without touching him.

  He supposed that a particularly acute observer might notice the fact that his clothing didn’t rustle or make any noise, but he figured that was unlikely. Satisfied, he began his return journey to Wurthaven.

  Once again, he waited until there was a clear space on the road before casting the climb spell and ascending the wall. He immediately noticed a difference in his movement. While walking, the armor hadn’t affected him, but it made his torso noticeably stiffer as he climbed. Not enough to be a problem, but it was something to consider in the future. His mail and gambeson wouldn’t have interfered at all, aside from their weight; both items were extremely flexible.

  At the top of the wall he noticed a couple below him, kissing. Sitting on top of the wall was conspicuous, so he climbed back down to the street and waited half an hour, feeling foolish. Thankfully the lovers were gone when he made his second attempt, and he was able to return to his dorm room without incident.

  He only had a few minutes left before his Math class, so he summoned some bread from his limnthal and ate half of a large bun before storing the rest once more. Then he went to class.

  When his classes were finally over, he returned to the dorm, but Dianne stopped him as he was heading for the stairs. She had a package for him. He was afraid it might be a notice from Count Spry, but when she handed it to him, he knew that couldn’t be it. It was a heavy parcel wrapped in brown paper.

  He took it to h
is room before opening it, whereupon he found a study journal inside. He pulled back the cover and saw the pages were covered in neat, delicate handwriting. Scanning the lines, he realized it was the notes for his Composition class. He thumbed through the journal and found that farther on, it reached the current point in their lectures. Past that was a similar copy of the notes from his History class.

  There was no note from the giver, but he thought he recognized the handwriting as that of Janice Edelman. Maybe she doesn’t hate me. It must have taken days to make a copy. The journal hadn’t been cheap either.

  Chapter 19

  The rest of the week went about as expected. Janice’s notes helped, but Will’s Composition class was still brutal. Even when he managed to turn in a decent essay, Professor Conrad refused to consider its merit because his penmanship was so terrible. He felt like he was improving, but it seemed impossible he’d ever manage to meet her expectations.

  His other classes were all right, though. Even his History professor treated him fairly, although she clearly didn’t like him. Professor Karlovic released him from his duties as an assistant temporarily, in order to give him more time for his private projects.

  When Will had asked about his class credit, Professor Karlovic had given him an interesting answer, “If you can make these potions and pay off a thousand-crown debt, then you’ve more than exceeded my expectations. Let me know when you can come back to work.”

  It was the end of the week and Will was currently staring at the glassware he’d set up for the first step of his personal salvation. On the left were two vessels stacked one on top of the other. The bottom one held water while the one above it contained crushed borage leaves. From the top of that vessel a glass column emerged and then connected to a condenser—a double-walled glass tube—that descended at a forty-five-degree angle to the right. The outer layer of the condenser connected to tubes that fed water in and out, keeping the inner wall of the condenser cool.

  The bottom of the condenser connected to a separator, a short glass column that had a valve at the bottom that opened into the final receiving vessel. Once the water in the first vessel began to boil, steam would rise through the borage leaves, releasing and vaporizing the oils and carrying them along to the condenser, where both would condense and drip into the separator. The oils would form one layer and the water, or hydrosol, would form a second layer. The valve on the separator could open to allow the layers to drain into the receiving vessel separately.

  The entire process would take him several hours, especially once he factored in cleaning all the glassware afterward. He’d also have to repeat the process several times, since he needed extracts from not just borage, but also garlic, nasturtium, and verbena. In each case, once the oil was collected, he would have to reinforce the turyn naturally present until it was sufficiently potent.

  The recipe that Professor Karlovic gave him included descriptions of simple spell constructs that would essentially filter and constrain the turyn he produced to match that of the essential oil, but when he’d asked his ring about it, he had received a different answer.

  “They’re idiots,” said the ring. “Although I’m amazed that they’ve found methods for overcoming their handicaps.”

  “Handicaps?”

  “They’re using transducers in their artifice, and spell constructs in their alchemy, all to get around the fact that they haven’t been trained to convert turyn properly. You don’t need to bother with that silliness. You just need to pay attention and match your turyn to the resonance of the turyn in the extract. It’s a hell of a lot easier than going through the rest of that rigmarole. You’ll get better results too. An artificial method like a transducer or a spell construct is unlikely to perfectly match the turyn in the extract.”

  “How will I know when it’s enough?”

  “A substrate can only contain so much turyn before it either starts to bleed away or the substrate explodes,” said the ring. “You just keep pushing until it stops absorbing turyn.”

  “Explodes?” exclaimed Will.

  “Don’t worry, most oils don’t react violently if you go too far, but be careful with the metal salts.”

  The final step of producing the blood-cleansing potion did involve one salt, silver bromide, but Will would just have to take his chances and hope he didn’t damage any glassware.

  That evening he finished his first extraction and then began infusing the borage oil with turyn. It took most of an hour, as he repeatedly exhausted himself and then waited on his body to recover by absorbing more turyn from the environment. He went through the process eleven times before the borage oil stopped accepting more turyn, then he stored it inside the limnthal.

  Storing it there had also been the ring’s suggestion. Karlovic’s recipe had called for using an airtight brown bottle to prevent the oil’s potency from degrading, but even then, it would only stay good for a few days. The time constraint made the procedure difficult, because the other oils had similar stability problems.

  A single alchemist had to limit the amount of each ingredient they produced, because they were limited by the time they needed to produce the other ingredients, infuse them, and then combine them all for the final potion.

  “The limnthal solves that problem neatly,” said the ring. “That’s one of the reasons it was prized and considered the mark of a true wizard in my day.”

  “Does it stop time?” asked Will.

  The ring laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing can stop time, not completely. The limnthal serves as a type of congruence point between you and a different plane, one where time moves a thousand times slower than it does here. The knowledge was a gift from the elves.”

  Will gaped. “Elves are real?”

  “You’ve met Arrogan’s daughter, you’ve had to pour troll piss around Arrogan’s garden, and you have to ask if elves are real?” The ring laughed at his ignorance. “They live on a different plane, just like trolls do.”

  “Can I go there?” asked Will. “Are there congruence points to travel there?”

  “Yes and no,” said the ring. “There’s only one known congruence, and they keep it a closely guarded secret. In my day it was thought that the congruence must be at sea somewhere, because the elves always arrive on ships.”

  “Why haven’t I ever heard of them?”

  “They don’t come often. Time moves more slowly where they live, probably at about half the speed of time here. In my day their ships would show up only rarely, perhaps once every four or five years. But they don’t dock in Terabinia or Darrow anymore. If you want to see one of them, you’d have to go to Trendham. They still trade at the port of Bondgren every few years.”

  “But not here. What happened?” asked Will.

  “Guess.”

  “How should I know?”

  “I’ll give you a hint, lackwit, it’s the same reason the fae hate us these days.”

  “Sorcery?” Will should have known. “When are you going to explain that to me?”

  “When you’re dead.”

  “That’s not much help,” said Will.

  “It’s not meant to be. The knowledge of how elementals are created would do you no good and might potentially do the world a great deal of harm. Arrogan worked hard to destroy that knowledge.”

  “He kept telling me it was evil, but it would be easier to understand if I knew why it was so evil.”

  “And it would also make you a target of anyone with power. Not that I care if you get tortured for being stupid. I won’t tell you because then there’d be the possibility that you or some other idiot would use the information. As long as no one knows I don’t have to worry. Anyway, we’ve gotten off topic. Lythia is one of the few planes that connects to ours with a slower rate of time.”

  “Lythia, as in the Lythial Sea?” asked Will.

  “Why do you think it was named that?” replied the ring. “They called it the Lythial Sea because that’s where they thought the elves came from. The el
ven kingdom is named Lythia.”

  “Oh.”

  “Incidentally, it’s also one of the roots in the name ‘limnthal.’ Personally, I think it was a poor choice, though, since the limnthal connects to a more distant plane, one we’d never have discovered if it weren’t for the elves. There are probably congruences from their world to the one that the limnthal uses.”

  In any case, the limnthal was incredibly useful for alchemy. Since time moved much slower there, Will could produce as much as he needed of each ingredient without having to do them in small batches and continually repeat the process. He finished the borage oil that evening and then used the weekend to do the rest.

  Monday, once his classes were done, he completed the final step. Each potion had to be done individually and imbued with one last bit of turyn to activate it before it was stoppered and stored. Although he had produced enough of the oils and silver bromide to create nearly two hundred doses, the final activation process took him an hour for each potion, so he only had enough time to finish four blood-cleansing potions. He felt confident, however, since he could produce two to four each day from that point on, depending on his available time.

  On Tuesday he finished lunch and went to the Healing and Psyche building to see if he could sell them. A young man behind a desk just inside the front entry greeted him. “Back so soon? Are you hurt again?”

  Will didn’t know the man’s name, so he didn’t attempt pleasantries. “Is Doctor Morris here? I’d like to see if he’s interested in some potions.”

  The receptionist gave him a look of resignation. “Desperate for coin?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Everyone knows you’ve got an axe over your head. It was only a matter of time before you came here. Doctor Morris doesn’t take care of this sort of thing. You need to talk to Ilona Fretz. She handles supplies and logistics for the Healing department.”