adventure into the Fumus Mountains does qualify certainly as an undertaking of high peril. Your labor is no longer sufficient bond, Saxton. What can you offer in its place?'
'Why nothing else, as you well know,' Saxton said, rising uncertainly to his feet. 'And I have never heard of such a condition binding an alchemist so.'
'The clause is there,' Basil snapped. 'Before, I have not had cause to use it. But if you have no assurance for your loan, then by right I can call it due immediately.'
He stopped and twisted his face into a forced smile. 'You are wrong when you think you have five days more, alchemist,' he said. 'It is in fact less than one. Have three hundred brandels in my hand by the next dawn or prepare to be measured instead for the restraints of the factory. I think I will put you next to Eldan's stall, so that each day you can watch and know full well what you will become.'
'Your investment is well protected, Basil.' Cedric broke his silence and reached into his cape. 'Here is a pouch with ten brandels. In two days time I will arrange to have the rest. Take it as token and follow your hireling out into the street. I shall be the guarantee that the obligation is met.'
Basil turned and looked up into Cedric's stern face. His smile vanished. For a moment he was silent as he studied the unblinking eyes and felt the gold in his hand. 'You have a reputation as a warrior, Cedric,' he said at last, 'not as a merchant. I can not be sure that your promise is any better than the rest.' With a flourish, he tossed back the pouch. 'I need not accept this,' he said. 'Dawn is within my rights, and even the queen herself would have to agree to it.'
Cedric took a step forward, but Saxton moved between him and the apothecary. The alchemist glanced out of the shop into the moonlit sky. 'Your offer is well appreciated, cousin,' he said. 'But Basil's twisting of words does no more than to force us to hasten our work. The moon is not quite full, but enough so that probably it will little matter. Be gone, Basil. If it is by the first rays of the sun that we must stuff your purse, then so it will be. Return to your factory and await there your disappointment.'
'Yes I will go,' Basil snarled, 'but to the first rays of dawn, and then no longer. Mark you, Saxton, even six hundred brandels a minute late would not be enough. You pay in the dark or cough on honeysuckle for a full score of years to follow.'
The apothecary turned abruptly and stomped out of the shop with Rendrac close on his heel. Saxton steadied himself against the door frame as he watched them disappear down the street. Finally he ran his hand over his head and looked back into the ulterior.
'And good night to you, Cedric,' he said. 'Alodar and I will not need your help further and we have much we must do.'
Cedric grunted and stepped to the doorway. As he left, he turned and looked back into the store. 'Next time, hold your shieldhand yet higher,' he said, 'and prepare to thrust under rather than around the side.'
Alodar started to reply, but Saxton waved his arm towards the workroom, 'Find me the pills which will clear my head,' he said. 'The next eight hours will decide it all.'
Alodar looked up at the moon well into the sky, and then down to the square opening at his feet. Saxton's bald head popped through, and he extended his hand to help the alchemist up the last few rungs. Saxton stopped his climb and waved away the aid.
'In a moment, Alodar,' he panted. 'It may be easy enough for you to climb to the roof of the shop a dozen times, but for one of my dignity, it is a different matter.'
'The moon is almost to its zenith,' Alodar said. 'If we do not begin soon, there will be no time for the mountains before the sun follows it into the sky.'
'As I already have taught,' Saxton replied, 'the purity of the ingredients materially affects the chance of success. The more the moon rises, the less the air pollutes the passage of its cool light. We must make haste, but not so much that what chances we have are thereby compromised.'
He stopped and looked upward. 'But a few degrees more should be satisfactory,' he said. 'Make ready the lens and the filter.'
Alodar turned back to the apparatus at his feet and lifted the large lens from its case. He placed it in the semicircular base for the support stand and snapped the confining ring shut. He sighted through the thick glass at the two closely set panes placed some two feet behind and rotated the optical axis into line. Stepping over the gear they had hurriedly brought up from the workroom, he found the bulbous flask and pulled the cork. The odor of baneberry tickled his nose, and he carefully decanted the deep blue liquid into the narrow space between the two vertical sheets of glass.
Alodar walked back behind the lens and dragged the huge mirror into place. He sighted into the sky where the moon would be in the next few minutes and tilted the reflector to catch the light and bounce it horizontally. A parallel beam, he thought, converged by the lens, filtered by the baneberry and finally focused on the flask at the end of the line. How much more complex than the simple spells of thaumaturgy.
He pushed the gear into final adjustment and stood back to watch Saxton finish his preparations. 'I am ready,' he said as the alchemist pulled a long flexible hose from an earthen jar and inserted it into the mouth of the flask.
'As am I,' Saxton replied. 'When the moon's light strikes the mirror squarely, I will invert the jar and the limestone will fall into the oil of vitriol. The gas from the reaction, the blue moonlight and the granules we have placed in solution will interact and if we are lucky form the ointment.'
Alodar nodded and stooped to sight the moon through a small hole in the back of the mirror. The bright edge crept into view and then the whole disk dazzled his eye with brightness.
'It aligns perfectly now,' he shouted suddenly as he turned to watch the light streak through the apparatus and hit the flask with a dull blue glow.
Saxton inverted the jar and the first cautious bubbles burbled to the surface of the solution. The alchemist snatched a pad of parchment, activated the ingredients and scratched out the formula. As the final glyph formed. Alodar caught his breath, awaiting the reaction. He looked at the flask, hoping to see the clear liquid instantly haze into a tracslucent gel.
Several minutes passed but nothing happened. Saxton rocked nervously back and forth on his heels and ran his hand over his head. Alodar squinted at the glassware trying to see some change in the solution, a slowing of the bubbles' rush to the surface indicating a transformation.
'Have you placed the flask at the precise focus?' Saxton asked. 'With the moon not full we need all of the intensity we can muster.'
'It is the lens, Saxton,' Alodar replied. 'With such a size you cannot expect it to bend the rays that strike the edge with the same precision as those near the axis. I have placed the flask so that the circle of confusion is smallest. Any better is beyond the grinder's art.'
'Then it is the brew which is bad,' Saxton said. 'Toss it aside and we will try another. Three chances will be as good as four since I have only enough salamander skin left for the two success we expect. The rest I already have used in barter.'
He looked at the solution bubbling as if no formula had been activated. 'Yes, let us dispose of it,' he said. 'Who can say what perversion of the desired result will occur if we let it interact any longer. Or if nothing is to happen, then it will surely spoil.'
Alodar stared down the line from the mirror which first caught the moonlight to the flask which finally received its filtered rays. He passed his hand in front of the solution and saw the pale blue spot on his palm the size of a brandel. He frowned and thought of his training as a journeyman.
'Yes, that will work,' he exclaimed as the idea struck him. 'Saxton, do not yet disturb the brew. There is more that can be done. Quickly now, help me find the small glass we used to aid in removing the eyes of the spiders.'
Alodar ran to the ladder and descended into the workroom below. He began rummaging through the tools of the trade, tossing the gear aside like an excited dog digging after a small rodent.
Saxton shuffled to the opening and peered inside. 'Not more thaumaturgy,' he said. 'Remember what happened the last time you mixed the two crafts together.'
'Here it is,' Alodar said, ignoring the command. 'Now with another small mirror and a sample from the flask, it will be done.' He quickly scooped up an armful of stands and clamps, and staggered back up the ladder to the bubbling flask. Pinching the gas tube with his fingers he decanted some of the fluid into a vial and then fastened it to the stand he positioned nearby. He ran back to the first mirror, adjusted it slightly and then inserted the edge of
