Star Winds

“Then I will bid you good day, and I wish you success,” the duke said distantly. Without another word he strolled off the way he had come, leaving Rachad alone with Amschel.

The alchemist beckoned to him. Together they walked through the silent wood, between gnarled, twisted trees, until an adamant wall loomed up ahead of them.

A square portal slid open. Amschel led Rachad through it. Behind his back the door closed with a loud, decisive clang.

“This,” said Amschel, “is my laboratory.”

***

The air was charged with pungent, penetrating smells. Rachad recognized the bite of acids, the stink of heated metals, and the acerbic odor of the energy known as infusoration.

He could not immediately see how extensive the laboratory was. It resembled a crypt, consisting of vault-ceilinged chambers connected by arched openings, and these seemed to go on and on. But already the variety and scope of the apparatus bewildered him, used as he was to Gebeth’s back room. He could see not only the usual array of furnaces, descensories, sublimatories, crucibles and flasks, but also devices whose purpose he could not remotely guess at, tended by up to a dozen white-smocked workers.

Amschel, however, directed Rachad to a chair, and sat opposite him, knee to knee, The Root of Transformations on his lap.

“So, let’s find out about you. Ask me a question.”

“What?”

“It’s to discover your level of knowledge. Ask me something you, or your master, would like to know but haven’t been able to find out. Something specific.”

Rachad thought for a moment or two, then nodded. “There is something,” he said. “What is the correct sulphur-mercury ratio for gold? We know that all metals are composed of sulphur and mercury, and can be converted into one another by altering the ratio between the two. But Gebeth could never discover what the various ratios are.”

“Well, that tells me roughly your level of competence,” Amschel said wryly. “The sulphur-mercury theory of metals is wrong, and any efforts made in that direction are a waste of time. Never mind. Tell me more about your master.”

Nonplussed to learn that his ignorance was even deeper than he had believed, Rachad began, haltingly at first, to speak of Gebeth, describing what he could of his methods. But he dissembled when it came to relating how he had left Earth, implying that Gebeth himself had given him his part of the book, and making no mention of Baron Matello. Amschel, however, gave no sign that he suspected duplicity and only asked where Gebeth had obtained the book. Rachad said that it had come from the last surviving priest of an ancient temple, at which he seemed satisfied.

Finally Amschel leaned back with a sigh, eyeing Rachad. “It strikes me you are a rash and impulsive young man,” he said. “Such qualities can be useful, even in the Work, in which caution is a handicap. Of greater use, however, are patience and the capacity for long, careful thought—these I believe you lack. Nevertheless you may join my staff and I will teach you what I can. Does that suit you?”

Rachad nodded. “I have one further question, Master Amschel,” he said.

“What is that?”

Rachad hesitated. “On Earth, where I come from, gold is precious. But here in Maralia it is common. Why, then, do men such as yourself still wish to manufacture it? It seems to me that the aim of the art is redundant.”

Amschel smiled. He, too, hesitated. Then he seemed to make up his mind to speak.

“We are in a secret place,” he said. “The Aegis is secret, and this, the center of the inner maze, is a secret within a secret. So now I will tell you a secret within a secret within a secret—the making of gold is not the object of the Hermetic Art. That was a screen, erected for the gullible in the distant past—though to be sure, it has often happened that men who in the beginning were motivated by greed for gold have found in the end that the Art has worked an inner alchemy upon them, and their greed is transmuted into desire for knowledge, for its own sake.”

“I don’t understand, Master Amschel,” Rachad said, bewildered. “If not gold—then what?”

“The goal is the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone, also known as the Tincture, or the Elixir, an ultimate state of matter which can accomplish much more than the mere transmuting of lead into gold—though if need be, it can achieve that too. For that reason the making of gold is a symbol, or by-product, of the alchemical goal. But we will speak of the Stone later.”

Amschel rose. “For today I will show you some of our simpler apparatus. The more difficult equipment can wait until you have a better appreciation of our work.”

Laying aside the book, he stepped through the nearest opening. In the adjoining chamber Rachad saw a huge brick structure that reached almost from floor to ceiling.

“This furnace can deliver three hundred and eighty different temperatures at one and the same time,” Amschel said. “I designed it myself. It greatly reduces the time that need be spent on routine operations.”