Star Winds

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, slightly 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 mysterious 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…