Two silver donahri slipped out of the folded paper and dropped ringing onto the countertop.
For you, our poorest brother. May this small sum keep your body and soul together. The note was signed, with an artistic flourish: Wellhyrn.
Duran cursed and flung the packet down on the floor. Damn Wellhyrn! Can't he leave me alone? He still goes out of his way to torment me. Why should he bother?
Dog came back and stood in the doorway, his tail wagging. Duran glanced up from the paper, noting that the butcher must have left bones on his doorstep: Dog held one in his mouth.
"Come on, Dog . . . in, in!" Duran shut the door behind Dog, locked it, and then contemplating the two silver coins glittering in the lamplight, thought that if he had more pride, he would have sent those donahri back to Wellhyrn with a terse note suggesting how to apply his charity. But pride had long ago found its proper place in Old Town: these two silver coins could keep him and Dog in food and drink for days upon days. Adding the coins to what he had seen Wellhyrn and Ladirno toss about at the inn, he suspected the Duke had given both men another grant to pursue their research.
I could use that. I could do more good with it.
But I don't play the game. I don't cater to the desires of the nobles at court.
Besides, the nobles dislike me. They remember . . . at least those of them old enough to remember my father.
Duran sighed heavily, swept the two silver coins up into his fist, and dropped them into his pouch. So be it. If the gods chose to gift him with this silver—though the method of that gift was less than palatable—who was he to turn it down?
Duran gave Dog a goodnight pat on the head, and, lamp in hand, walked to the back of his shop, and to the steps that led upstairs.
It is the nature of all things, Duran read, that they belong to one class or another. There is the prime matter which is the basis for all substances found in the world. It is the interaction of form with matter that gives rise to the elements: earth, air, fire, and water. They, in turn, through various combinations, produce all the objects that surround us. Therefore, if an object has a preponderance of earth, it is solid in form. The presence of water in an object gives us the ability to produce liquids, or to melt what seems solid. Fire allows us to unlock other forms of matter through combustion. And air, the material of ideas, of the very soul, gives us the intelligence to see all these things.
Granting the above as undeniably true, then it is easy to see that changes in the proportion of the elements may result in a change of the form of prime matter. It then follows that, if this is true, any substance may be changed into any other substance if the right conditions can be found. . . .
Duran sighed and set his notes aside. All this was basic, first-year study, but it was one of his dreams to turn the language of alchemy into something any learned person could understand. He longed for a return to the old days, when alchemists labored in their laboratories, dabbling less with mysticism and more with metals he could not, in his present estate, afford. . . .
And he would be damned if he was going to go back, hat in hand, apply to the duke and the guild, pay his fees to strut around court, mouthing nonsense that sounded learned, blithering about the mystical union of all things in the great aether beyond the stars. That he left to the other alchemists, the astrologers . . . them with their ducal grants and their rich patrons, that they kept duly astonished or alarmed by sleights of hand and dire predictions.
Not that he discounted astrology: he believed in the macrocosm, the wonderful world of the sun, stars, and planets reflected in the microcosm, the tiny world where man lived. Man grew and changed, so it was natural to believe that other things did the same. It stood to reason that under the proper astrological influences, certain metals might be changed to others. Even lead might turn to gold . . . Theoretically. Not, the gods knew, that he or anyone else had ever seen.
Time and again, when he was younger, he had gone to his small furnace and "killed" metals, melted them down over and over, trying to stumble across a purer form. Gold, his teachers had taught him, should lie at the end of numerous "killings." If the conditions were right. If the moon was in the proper quarter, the planets in the most advantageous houses, and the wind was blowing just right. If, if, if.
Small chance he would ever find the solution. He had received no grants from the Old Duke, though the present Duke honored his late father's invitation for Duran to attend court. What he needed was access to the great furnaces, the fires hotter than he could produce, the help of assistants nearly as knowledgeable as he. And that, he knew, was held from him because he did not—could not—play the game Ladirno and Wellhyrn played.
And years back, he had given up practicing all but the medical side to alchemy. Maybe one day, if the gods smiled on him, he would take the study up again.
Maybe.
He leaned forward in his chair again and shoved his notes aside. Another pile of papers rested on the desk: his writings also, but not devoted to alchemy—pages full of his small, neat handwriting, back and front, with hardly any margin to them. What he had written here concerned the Sabirn, herbs, and Old Man's stories.
He held to the notion that somewhere in their legends and the stories they told, lurked a kernel of truth . . . the learning that had once made the Sabirn a world power. So, when he took Sabirn helpers with him into the countryside to gather herbs, he always asked them to tell him stories of their people—fanciful tales, gods and heroes; some of the stories he sensed truer than others, but he did not know enough yet to separate fact from fiction. Or to know if there were deeper secrets.
One asked the sweepers of streets, the pickers of garbage, the carriers of slops—one disturbed one's neighbors with such inquiries; and aware of that disturbance, Duran tried to keep such journeys to a minimum, talked lately with Old Man, whom none of the neighbors considered a particular threat: Old Man had lived in the neighborhood so long, had become so ordinary. . . .
But Old Man, the consummate storyteller—his stories were of events that had taken place far in the past . . . great heroes, quests, the intervention of gods whose worshippers had died long ago, fables all, tales for children and the curious. But when Duran questioned him closely about what the Sabirn empire had really been, the old fellow had gone silent on him, shaken his head, refused to answer.
Duran flipped through the pages of his notes. He saw in his mind's eye the way life might have been in the Sabirn empire. Gods. If he could only journey back through time—
He rubbed his eyes. Tonight he was plagued by the "ifs." He could only deal with what he had at hand, instead of what he did not have, or could never possess. And the alchemy he practiced had more to do with the pot bubbling away over the small flame, that filled the air with the stench of sulfur and herbs and lard—hence the window braced slightly open: more of Anha's salve, an improvement, if his notion was right, to keep a wound supple and yet healing—
Dog barked downstairs, and barked again. Duran sat up straighter: he recognized that bark, a noise Dog made only when strangers came near.
"Damn!" Duran stood, and took up his lamp, blew out the fire beneath the lard—the front door was locked, he was sure he had locked it. He heard the sudden hammering of a fist, Dog's deep barking. "Who in Dandro's hells could be after physic at this hour?"