The Lady smiled her thanks. "I still am thinking of the use of intelligence overcoming brawn. Have we no wisdom left in Walling, besides the fair, faint dreams of a weak woman?”
“I will send for the Homonculus,” her father answered. “He may know the answer to that question.”
The little man came in. A man not born of women, but grown for seven years in a glass bottle, during all of which time he read books held before him by wise men, and was nourished with drops of wine and tiny balls of Asphodel paste. He listened to the problem gravely, though at times he seemed asleep. At last he said one word,
“Synthesis.”
Cecil reached over and, picking him up, placed him on one knee.
“Have pity on us, Wise Man. We are but simple folk and know but simple words. What is the meaning of this sage word?”
“I know not,” was the peculiar answer. “This but a word that came to me out of the past. It has a sweet sound and me thinks may have a meaning. Let me think. I recall now! It was when I was in the glass bottle that a wise man came and held before my eyes an illuminated parchment and on it was written in words of gold this word and its meaning.
“Synthesis. All things are one and one thing is all.”
“Which makes it all the harder for me,” sighed the Overlord of Walling.
The Lady Angelica left her seat and came over to her father. She sank upon the bearskin at his feet and took the little hand of the dwarf in hers.
“Tell me, my dear Homonculus, what wise man twas who thus gave you the message on the illuminated parchment?”
“It was a very wise man and a very old man who lives by himself in a cave by the babbling brook, and yearly the simple folk take him bread and meat and wine, but for years no one has seen him. And perhaps he lives and perhaps he is dead, for all I know is that the food disappears, but perhaps the birds think that it is for them now that he lies sightless and thoughtless on his stone bed these many years.”
“This is something we will find out for ourselves. Lord Gustro, order horses and the four of us will go to this man’s cave. Three horses for us, my Lord, and an ambling pad for our little friend so naught of harm will befall him.”
The four came to the cave and the four entered it. A light burned at the far end and there was the wise man, very old and with naught but his eyes telling of the intelligence that never ages. On the table before him in a tangled confusion were glass and earthenware and crucibles and one each of astrolabe, alembic and hourglass through which silver sands ran, and this was fixed with cunning machinery so that every day it tilted around and once more let the sand tell the passing of the twenty-and-four hours. There were books covered with mildewed leather and locked with iron padlocks and spider webs. Hung from the wet ceiling was a representation of the sun with the planets revolving eternally around that fair orb, but the pitted moon alternated with light and shadows.
And the wise man read from a book written in letters made by those long dead, and now and then he ate a crust of bread or sipped wine from a ram’s horn, but never did he stop reading and when they touched him on the shoulder to attract his attention he shook them off murmuring, “By the Seven Sacred Caterpillars! let me finish this page, for what a pity were I to die without knowing what this man wrote some thousand years ago in Ankor.”
But at last he finished the page and sat blinking at them with his wise eyes sunk deep into a mummy face while his body shook with the decrepitude of age. And Cecil asked him,
“What is the meaning of the word ‘synthesis?’”
“This a dream of mine which only now I find the waking meaning of.”
“Tell the dream,” the Overlord commanded.
“This but a dream. Suppose there were thirty wise men learned in all wisdom obtained from the reading of ancient books on alchemy and magic and histories and philosophy. These men knew of animals and jewels such as margarites and chrysoberyls and of all plants such as Dittany which cures wounds and Mandragora which compelleth sleep (though why men should want to sleep when there is so much to read and profit by the reading I do not know). But these men-are old and some day will die. So I would take these thirty old men and one young man and have them drink a wine that I have distilled these many years and by synthesis there would only be one body — that of the young man — but in that man’s brain would be all the subtle and ancient wisdom of the thirty savants, and thus we would do century after century so no wisdom would be lost to the world.”
The Lady Angelica leaned over his shoulder. “And have you made this wine?” she asked.
“Yes, and now I am working on its opposite, for why place thirty bodies into one unless you know the art of once again separating this one body into the original thirty. But that is hard. For any fool can pour the wine from thirty bottles into a single jar, but who is wise enough to separate them and restore them to their original bottles?”
“Have you tried this wine of synthetic magic?” asked the Overlord.
“Partly. I took a crow and a canary-bird and had them drink of it and now in yonder wicker cage a yellow crow sits and nightly fills my cave with song as though it came from the lutes and citherns of fairie-land.”
“Now that is my thought,” cried the Lady Angelica. “We wall take the best and bravest fighters of our land and the sweetest singer of songs and the best juggler of golden balls and thirty of them, and I myself will drink of this synthetic wine and thus the thirty will pass into my body and I will go and visit the Giant and in his hall I will drink of the other wine and there will be thirty to fight against the one and they will overcome him and slay him and then I will drink again of the vital wine and in my body I will carry the thirty conquerers back to Walling and then again drink and in my body carry the thirty heroes of this battle back to the dark forest, there to be liberated by your wonder wine. Have you enough of it, of both kinds?”
The old man looked puzzled.
“I have a flagon of the synthetic wine. Of the other to change the synthesized back into their original bodies only enough for one experiment and mayhaps a few drops more.”
“Try those drops on that yellow bird,” commanded Cecil.
The old man poured from a bottle of pure gold, graven with a worm that eternally renewed his youth by swallowing his tail, a few drops of a colorless liquid and offered it to the yellow bird in the wicker cage. This bird drank greedily and of a sudden there were two birds, a black crow and a yellow canary and ere the canary could pipe a song the crow pounced on it and killed it.
“It works,” croaked the old man. “It works.”
“Can you make more of the second elixir?” asked Lord Gustro.
“What I do once I can do twice,” proudly said the ancient.
“Then start and make more, and while you are doing it we will take the golden bottle and the flagon and see what can be done to save the simple folk of our dark forests, though this is an adventure that I think little of for this fraught with danger for a woman I love.” Thus spake the Overlord.
And with the elixirs in a safe place they rode away from the cave of the old man. But Lord Gustro took the Over-Lord aside and said,
“I ask a favor. Allow me to be one of these thirty men.”
Cecil shook his head. ‘‘No. And once again and forever NO! In the doing of this I stand to lose the apple of my eye, and if she comes not back to me I shall die of grief, and then you and you alone will be left to care for my simple folk. If a man has but two arrows and shoots one in the air, then he were wise to keep the other in his quiver against the day of need.”