In Which an Alchemical Difficulty Is Compounded
Never heard of the Magick Court?” asked Kit. “Really?”
“I’m not much into tennis. Or basketball,” replied Cassandra. “Professional sports leave me cold.”
“Fair enough,” allowed Kit, grinning. “Actually, it’s nothing to do with tennis.”
“I’m really not all that much into magic either.”
Wilhelmina and Gianni, sitting opposite them in the carriage, were deep in a conversation of their own. Kit was happy to play tour guide. “How about Mad Rudolf—ever heard of him?”
Cass shook her head.
“We need to improve your education, American girl.”
“Yeah, right,” she scoffed. “So what’s so important about this magic court, Professor Livingstone?”
“For starters,” replied Kit, adopting the smug manner of a junior lecturer, “the Magick Court is not really about magic at all. It’s all to do with Emperor Rudolf ’s search for the Philosopher’s Stone—”
“Got this one,” said Cass. “Alchemy, right? Changing lead into gold.”
“Partly,” allowed Kit. “It is alchemy, but they’re not trying to change lead into gold, they’re searching for the formula for immortality. Emperor Rudolf has brought the best and brightest scientific minds of the age here to help crack it.” At Cass’ expression he laughed, enjoying the all-too-rare occasion when he actually knew something useful. “I’m serious. They’re all up here beavering away like mad things, and Emperor Rudolf pays the bills.”
“Real, live alchemists,” Cass mused, shaking her head lightly. “I am living a fairy tale.”
“No kidding,” agreed Kit. “But then, this is the age of fairy tales, remember. The Brothers Grimm live just around the corner.”
“Really?” Cass said—before catching herself. Kit nodded in mock sincerity and she gave him a gentle push. “Liar.”
The red carriage jounced over the bridge separating the imperial precinct from the lower town, and Cass caught a glimpse of a structure that appeared, in her view, almost defiantly dull. Where she might have anticipated a grand, castellated edifice with towers and parapets and arches, what she saw was a blockish bulwark that prefigured post-war brutalist architecture by a good three hundred years. Emperor Rudolf ’s palace was, it had to be said, an extremely depressing barn of a building, devoid even of a barn’s prosaic appeal.
Sharing the plaza-sized courtyard was a cathedral of such inspired grandeur of vision that it seemed to have been dropped onto the square from another, altogether more refined planet for the sole purpose of showing up the deficiencies of its ugly sister opposite. Where the palace hulked and brooded, breathing an air of drear despond, the cathedral soared and scintillated, its delicate, graceful spires and the swelling copper dome catching light from every available angle and giving it back as golden fire—transmuting earthly matter into substance fitted for heaven.
Before Cass had time to dwell on the meaning of this visual parable, the carriage jounced through the gates and swayed to a halt; the door was opened by a servant in royal red livery. She followed Mina and Gianni as they disembarked and found herself standing before an entrance dominated by a great pediment featuring what could only be the most realistic statue of Saint George and his dragon that she had ever seen. The heroic knight stood with one foot firmly planted on the thrashing creature’s sinuous neck, his broadsword sweeping down for the coup de grâce as the odious thing raked the air with its scimitar claws and gnashed its rapier teeth before Saint George’s resolute righteousness.
“Gosh,” she murmured.
“I know,” said Mina. “I felt the same way first time I saw it.”
“Will we meet the emperor?” wondered Cass. “Or any of the royal family?”
“I don’t think so,” Mina told her. “But you never know. Rudolf is always around—kind of like a ghost drifting through the corridors. But he doesn’t mingle much.”
“Have you met him?”
“Once. He seems a nice chap—a bit eccentric, but not half as mad as people make out. It’s possible we might meet Docktor Bazalgette, though. He’s the Lord High Alchemist and, just so you know, he takes his position very seriously. If we see him, a bow and curtsey are in order. And whatever you do, do not mention the Turks. Oh, and be sure to call him Herr Docktor. He insists.”
Cass gave Kit a look that said, Pinch me, I’m in a dream, and Kit returned it with a glance that said, You cannot make this stuff up.
From the palace emerged a man in a coat and knee breeches of green satin, white stockings, and shiny black shoes. “Ich heisse Sie alle willkommen zu Ihnen alle,” he said with a perfunctory bow. “Kann ich Ihre Vorladung sehen?”
Wilhelmina produced the summons she had received, and they were conducted straightaway through the enormous vestibule and into Grand Ludovic Hall. They crossed a space that could have served as a municipal skating rink and were met at the far end by another servant. At a word from his superior, the footman led them up a wide staircase and then another, down a succession of corridors and long connecting hallways to a dusty back wing of the palace.
“Here is where the alchemists hang out,” Mina told the others.
They stopped at a brass-studded, leather-bound door. The footman gave a quick, officious rap on the doorframe, and there issued a muffled voice from within. “Einen Moment, bitte!”
As the footman disappeared back down the corridor, the leather-lined door opened to reveal a slender young fellow dressed as if he were attending a costume party as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice—complete with a fur-trimmed cloak of dark purple and a pancake-shaped velvet hat that lopped over his ears. “Och! Here you are.” He opened the door wide. “Kommen Sie herein.”
“I hope you don’t mind,” said Mina in English. “I brought some people along.” She made short work of introducing the others.
“Willkommen to my laboratory, meine Freunde,” he said. “Forgive my poor English, I am begging you. Gustavus Rosenkreuz is at your service.”
Wilhelmina explained, “Herr Rosenkreuz is the chief assistant to the Lord High Alchemist.” She gave his shoulder a friendly pat. “He is second to Docktor Bazalgette in the palace, but a first-class genius in his own right.”
The fair-haired young man inclined his head modestly but smiled with pride at Mina’s effusive recognition. “You are too kind.”
He smiled and removed his floppy hat. “Begrüssen Sie, alle.”
He then shepherded his guests into the lab. Cass entered first and was met by a sight and a stench that stole her breath away. In the massive fireplace at the far end of the room stood a huge black cauldron; the massive horned head of an ox was bubbling merrily away in a steaming bath, the noxious sulphurous vapours of which stung the nostrils with the aggressive rancour of rotten eggs.
The chamber itself resembled a storeroom for the Museum of the Weird. There were shelves everywhere and all of them stuffed, so far as she could tell, with jars, boxes, crocks, and cages, veritably groaning with all variety of curious objects—everything from ostrich eggs to silk worm cocoons to desiccated lizards and lumps of coal. There were tools of exceedingly arcane construction whose uses could not be guessed, as well as beakers and pots, mortars and pestles, tongs, pinchers, knives, and spoons of every size.
“Please, come this way,” said Gustavus. “We can speak more privately.”
He led his little troop of visitors through the lab towards a book-lined chamber beyond. If the laboratory was a branch of Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe, Cass decided, then the study was its rare book room. Not at all a large space, it was made even smaller by the floor-to-ceiling shelves lining every wall, each shelf crammed to groaning capacity with leather-bound tomes of all sizes; a table stood in the centre of the room, and it was heaped with books, papers, and scrolls. There were three chairs at the table and a bench on one side. Gustavus offered Wilhelmina and Gianni each a seat; he took the third, and Kit and Cass shared the bench.
“Thank you, Gustavus, for agreeing to see us. We’ll try not to take up too much of your time,” began Mina.
“Please, Fräulein Wilhelmina, my time is yours.”
“I will come to the point,” she replied. “You know those instruments you have made for me? The shadow lamps?”
“Of course, yes,” replied the young alchemist. He leaned close and with a sly smile whispered, “It remains our secret—of that you can be certain.”
“I fear I must presume upon your discretion further,” Mina told him. “We want you to make some more of them.”
“Six of them,” added Kit. “To be precise.”
Gustavus peered at them doubtfully and sucked his teeth. “So many?”
“We experienced something unexpected,” offered Mina. “Something extraordinary.” She went on to describe what had happened when she, Kit, and Gianni encountered an extremely powerful field of telluric energy—a region of such force that it destroyed the devices. “The lamps grew so hot they almost melted in our hands.”
Impressed by this information, the alchemist nodded appreciatively. “That would be extremely hot, as you say.”
“Stranger still,” Kit put in, “the energy was not confined to a line—it seemed to be contained in an absolutely enormous tree. And it was so powerful it completely destroyed the lamps. Burned them out. Phhtt!”
“The device is kaput?” wondered the alchemist.
“Stone-cold dead,” replied Kit. He pulled his defunct ley lamp from his pocket and passed it to the alchemist.
“Both of them,” said Mina. “Kaput.”
Gustavus examined the device, its bright brass carapace now dull and distorted, warped by the heat of the power surge that had destroyed it. “That must have been very exciting,” he observed.
Cass suppressed a smile at his heavily accented English: wary eggs hiding.
“It was astonishing,” granted Mina. “I had no idea they would do that.”
“Do you have your lamp with you?”
“Mine was the newer version, you remember,” she said, handing him her shadow lamp. “But it burned out too, just like the other one.”
Gustavus turned the ruined gizmo over in his hand, sniffed it, shook it, and listened as it gave off a faint rattle as if it had a few grains of sand trapped inside its hollow shell. “So now you wish me to make more such devices.” He glanced up to inquire, “Six, you say?”
“Six,” confirmed Kit. “I know it is a lot to ask, but we could really . . .” He trailed off because the alchemist was frowning.
“Is something wrong?” asked Wilhelmina.
“Es tut mir leid,” replied Gustavus, placing the ruined instrument on the table before him. “I cannot. I am lacking the materials.”
“We will happily pay for the materials,” suggested Mina quickly. “Whatever you need—”
“I have everything required to make these little devices,” said Gustavus, “all the materials except that which is the most important, ja? The substance that animates the mechanism.”
“What is the substance?” asked Gianni. “Perhaps we can get it for you.”
“I do not know what is the substance,” the alchemist replied, shaking his head. “This is the problem.”
The four questors looked at one another. Kit spoke up. “So you’re saying we don’t have enough of whatever it takes, and we don’t know what that is or where to get more,” said Kit. “Yeah, I guess that’s a problem, all right.”
“A classic compound problem, I’d say,” echoed Cass.
“Always Herr Burleigh brings me the special material,” explained Gustavus. “I use what he brings to make his devices, and then I make the copies mit what I have saved.” He blushed slightly as he confided, “So, maybe I do not tell him exactly how much is required to make a lamp like this.”
“Do you have any of this material left over from the last shadow lamps you made?” said Mina.
“A very little.” Gustavus rose and started for the door. “Come, I will show you.”
He led them back into the main laboratory where, from behind some jars labelled in Latin, he withdrew a wooden container about the size of a cigar box, which he placed on the nearby table. Opening the box, he took out a small glass bottle containing a grainy grey substance like dull, metallic sand. “This is the animating matter after preparation,” he explained. Producing a second, slightly larger bottle, he said, “This is how it comes to me.” Inside were small blobs that looked like dirty brown chalk. “It must be heated and treated with chemicals to refine it. Only then can it be used.”
“May I?” Kit took the jar containing the pale-grey powder, pulled out the stopper, and raised it to his nose. He took an exploratory sniff. “It smells like . . . I don’t know—rocks?”
He offered the bottle to Cass, who gave the glass a shake and sniffed. “I get traces of talc and maybe oxidised aluminium.” She passed the vial to Gianni, who took an exploratory sniff.
“Definitely metallic,” he said, passing the jar to Mina.
Wilhelmina put her nose to the opening and then shrugged. “To me it just smells like minerals.” Handing the jar back to Gustavus, she said, “What do you think it could be?”
“I have no idea,” he confessed. “The material is like nothing I have ever seen and, as I said, it is always supplied by the earl himself—the same with the basic plans for the device. They are from Herr Burleigh, although I make very good copies for myself.”
“Okay,” said Kit. “So first off we need to find out what the special ingredient is—that will tell us where to get more.” He looked to the others. “Any ideas?”
Cass said, “I know a few basic chemical analysis techniques. I could do some tests and see what turns up.” She tapped the jar lightly. “Who knows? We might get lucky.”
“I can help you with this, if you like,” offered Gianni.
“Or we could ask Burleigh,” suggested Wilhelmina.
Kit gave her a look that expressed his opinion that she was wildly and woefully mistaken if she imagined that to be in any way a reasonable idea. “Maybe you could ask him,” he suggested tartly. “Last time I met him, his earldom did his talking with a pistol.”
“I’m not saying it would be easy,” Mina muttered.
Kit gave her another look and turned to the alchemist, as if seeking a more rational ally. “How much of this stuff do we need, anyway, Gus? How much of the special powder does one lamp contain?”
“Twenty drachms,” replied the alchemist after a moment’s thought. He made a calculation in his head. “Jah, twenty drachms is correct.”
“That’s about thirty grams,” said Mina, translating for the others. “So that’s 180 grams altogether.”
“More would be better, I’m guessing,” said Kit. Turning to Cass and Gianni, he asked, “So what do you two need to test it?”
“Give us some time to think about it,” replied Cass.
Gianni added, “We’ll make a list of tools and equipment.”
“Then it is settled,” concluded Wilhelmina. “Gustavus, if you will allow us to take a sample of the stuff, we will test it. And if we can determine what it is, then we can probably find out where to get it.”
“How about it, Gus?” said Kit.
The alchemist quickly agreed. “I will personally aid you in any way I can.” He made a small bow of deference, then added, “However, I make one . . . ah, Bedingung . . .”
“Condition,” translated Wilhelmina.
Gustavus nodded. “I make one condition—that I should be allowed to accompany you on one of your astral expeditions.”
“You want to make a ley jump with us?”
“Please.” The alchemist gazed at the group hopefully. “It is my most sincere wish.”
“Well,” said Mina, “in light of your past service and present involvement, that seems reasonable.” She glanced to Kit for support. “I don’t see how we can refuse you, Gustavus.”
“Then we have a deal,” said Kit. “Where do we start?”