He turned the book over again and opened it to the frontispiece, where he read:
THE ROOT OF TRANSFORMATIONS
Including Also
The Art Of The Fulmination Of Metals.
“The title is the correct one,” he informed the baron. He turned more pages, but immediately observed that a sizable proportion of the leaves had been removed and that the spine gaped bare where they had been.
“My lord,” he said quickly, “half the book is missing!”
Matello grinned in triumph. “Then we have found what we were seeking! The other half already lies in the Aegis.”
Taking the volume from Rachad’s hands, he rose to his feet. “Let’s get aloft. It will be a pleasure never to have to set foot on this miserable planet again.”
Perplexed, Rachad followed the baron as, cloak flying behind him in the light breeze, he went striding away through the ocherous city. Soon all the others followed too, pouring from the destroyed temple, raising a cloud of orange dust as the procession made for the lighters that stood ready to convey them to the giant sailship orbiting overhead.
Tearing the meat from a chicken leg with his teeth and throwing the bone across the banqueting hall, Baron Matello leaned toward Rachad. “Well, young man,” he teased, “do you think you could make gold now?”
Rachad, who had been poring over the alchemical book, pursed his lips. “After sufficient study,” he said brazenly, hoping that Matello was too ignorant to gainsay him. “Provided I were supplied with the missing pages.”
In fact, he found the book almost impenetrable. For one thing, it was written in so many different languages—even different alphabets! And although supposed to be an explicit commentary, it was couched in the same cryptic style that characterized alchemists throughout the ages, replete with poetic expressions and arcane symbology.
Some passages were more or less intelligible. Such as: “When the artifex depicts colored flowers, surrounded by griffins and dragons, he indicates the sublimation of sulphur accomplished by means of an athanor of infusoration, or in other words by fulmination; for if this operation is carried out with sufficient intensity and duration the flowers will be seen. Likewise, when the reverse of the fifth page shows the blood of young children gathered together and giving forth serpents, the artifex indicates the intensive fulmination of quicksilver…”
To impress the baron with his alchemical training, Rachad had been explaining the terms in this passage. “Chiefly, of course, the book speaks of the primus agens, the materials with which one must start,” he said airily, parroting Gebeth. “Ordinarily alchemical treatises never clearly reveal that. It is the essential secret.”
“Little would it avail you to know this secret, locked away on Earth,” the baron retorted. “Your Earth metals are of no use for transformation, even I know that. It’s celestial metals that are needed—metals with special properties found only among the stars.”
He drained a goblet and stuffed more bread and chicken into his mouth. Taken aback, Rachad pondered this revelation. It was an aspect he had never thought of before—though of course the baron’s words could not be relied on. It was likely that he was simply repeating something he had heard.
Rachad’s sudden discomfiture must have shown, for the baron laughed. Rachad allowed his gaze to wander down the long table, where there sat a comely young girl who for some time had been drawing his glances. Her name, he had heard, was Elissea; she was Matello’s niece.
She smiled. He smiled. Shyly, he closed the book and resumed eating.
The baron had given him a favored place at the table, being curious—though it seemed to Rachad in a halfhearted way—to know what he could tell him of the book. The Bucentaur remained in orbit; but Rachad could not help but marvel at how well the comforts of the dining table were adapted to the state of free-fall. Cling-slippers, together with garments that clung almost as effectively to the special plush of the chairs, made the lack of gravity close to irrelevant. The diners drank from closed goblets punctured with tiny holes as in a pepperbox. The food, all solid—bread, meat, cheeses, confections and fruit, pastries and pies—was wrapped in paper napkins and, so that it did not float away, was spitted with skewers which were stuck into cork boards. Apparently the cooks were not discommoded by this restriction, for the repast was delicious.
Belching with satisfaction, the baron rose to his feet. “In two hours we depart for Maralia,” he announced. “But first, I honor my pledge. Bring them on!”
At these words Matello’s private secretary seized the alchemical book from under Rachad’s nose and made off with it. All those at table—mostly the baron’s senior officers—hurriedly rose also, whether or not they had finished their meal. Serving girls and footmen unfastened the clasps that locked chairs and tables to the floor, steering the now floating furniture to the sides of the hall.
Baron Matello seated himself on a throne-like chair farther back in the banqueting hall. The main doors opened. Through them came Captain Zhorga and his crewmen, looking about themselves nervously.
Mingling with the others, Rachad sidled toward the door. He knew what was coming; perhaps if he could slip away, he thought, his defection from the proceedings would pass unnoticed.
It was not to be. Near the door he came face to face with Elissea, and stopped, entranced by her pert face and smiling eyes. “You came on that ship from Earth, didn’t you?” she said. “Uncle says it was very brave of you.”
He laughed jauntily, and could not resist lingering. Soon he found himself boasting of his experiences, while in the background he heard, like a continuous murmuring, the voices first of Zhorga and then of the others as one by one they took the fealty oath. Eventually he reminded himself that he should leave; but suddenly Matello’s voice rang out.
“And where is the lad who was apprenticed to the alchemist? We mustn’t leave him out; I need him on my staff.”
Rachad felt himself pushed forward, reluctantly.
Then he realized he would never have got away with it, and resignedly approached the baron to kneel before him, offering his hands in the attitude of prayer as had been shown to him earlier. Nearby stood Matello’s secretary, ready to prompt him.
The baron clasped Rachad’s hands in his. Slowly, though the words stuck in his throat, Rachad repeated the oath the secretary read out to him, swearing obedience, loyalty and truthfulness. With what seemed a measured perfunctoriness, the baron responded, accepting him into his household and promising protection and fair treatment.
When his hands were released Rachad stood up and walked away. It was done. He was under oath to Baron Goth Matello, Margrave of the Marsh Worlds, Protector of the Castarpos Moons, and liege to his Majesty King Lutheron the Third of Maralia.
Chapter EIGHT
Elegantly the Bucentaur raised sail and receded from Mars, curving round the Girdle of Demeter and then hurtling outward on the plane of the ecliptic.
In little over a week the orbit of Pluto had fallen far behind, even though the starship had extended but a few of her sails. Then, in interstellar space, the journey proper began.
For now she had moved into conditions of incomparably greater power than was available within the solar family; conditions from which the sun, like a mother, protected her planets with her own etheric atmosphere. Out here were ether winds on a stupendous scale, amassed from the outputs of billions of suns, creating processes affecting the entire galaxy.