Аврам Дэвидсон: Vergil Magus: King Without Country

“It’s going to explode!” the bellows-boy screamed.

The apparatus was a combination of pelican and sublimatory. Which is to say that the furnace had an iron bar running transversely through it just below the thick glass pelican (thus regulating temperature) and a perforated disk above that that held the glass vessel in place and vented the hot gases from the furnace. The pelican had two looping necks that returned the distillate to its residue for redistillation. Which process—called cohobation—might recur some five hundred times before a state of absolute purification was achieved.

Cohobation. An unlovely word. And yet…

An emerald through cohobation might improve its water threefold, though it were cheaper to simply buy a finer stone.

A base metal such as lead could, through cohobation, be improved into gold at a cost not many times greater than the value of the gold.

A certain Tincture through cohobation could be so clarified as to extend life—and in perfect health! no sibylline ironies here !—for so long as to be… well, indefinite. And no price was too great for that.

If one succeeded.

If the apparatus did not explode and kill everyone in the laboratory first.

The prevention of which catastrophe lay not in spells, talismans, and the employment of minor demons, but in regulation, constancy, a discerning eye. Watchfulness! While his laboratorians labored in silence, Vergil stood unblinking (those who mistook the sorcerer’s stare for aught other than simple and absolute attentiveness, who indeed found it downright spooky, were simply misinformed) and motionless. He held in his mind and at the tip of his tongue a cantrip for the regulation of the heat. Apprentice smiths extended long spoons (called “devil-suppers”) into the flames, each spoon containing a liquid that would bubble, steam, or sublime at a different known temperature. So that when a gust of wind coming through the laboratory door caused the flames to rise and hotten, Vergil was ready.

He spoke a certain Word.

With a whoosh, the flames leaped toward the ceiling beams. White-hot they were, far hotter than could be explained by any natural process. Hot almost as that Red Man whom Vergil had confronted (and fought; and defeated) in the deserts of Lybya. Insanely hot. Magically hot.

“It’s going to explode!” the bellows-boy screamed.

All stood frozen with horror.

Save Ma, who stepped forward and calmly poured a sack of salt over the flames.

With appropriate sputterings and smokings and belchings of stinks, the flames subsided. “What a mess!” exclaimed Petronius, his blacksmith-general. “What a damnable mess.”

Vergil, though outwardly composed, was disposed to agree. His contrivances, to say nothing of his cantrips, had been of the best—he was sure of that—and the auspices had been perfect. Yet it was his application of a spell to regulate the heat which had caused the flames to flare up so alarmingly. Which spell he had successfully applied an hundred times. Why had this happened?

What could possibly have gone wrong?

How?

The Emperor had given no thought to what he would do with the escheats of House Mar, as, well, why should he? Grizzled sheep, shrunken meadows, stone-cankered chastel, pah!, more trouble to rid oneself of than worth the getting (at least if one were as rich as—but who was?—his most August and Imperial self). But he had given a somedel thought as to what he would do with the Count Mar.

There was indeed an Empress, she came not to Court. Never? Indeed, never. She had been a camp-follower when the Sovereign, then a soldier of the line, took it into his head to marry her. She made a good-enough wife for those days, but those days were far off; the ways of court were not the ways of Petronella, Empress of all the Roman World, known generally as Aunt Pet to the hordes of nephews, nieces, ancient uncles, aged aunts, scraggy sisters, be-bent-over brothers, scrannel cousins, and all the rest of them over whom she was Empress; giving orders, handing out favors, throwing largesses of cheap coins and cheaper sweets: it pleased them, it delighted her, there she stayed, in her town of origin, received she allowances, came she never up to Rome.

Or any else where the Emperor might be encamped.

Save that once a year or so they did meet, both incognito, at a small farmhouse in the Libertiex of Etruscany. Conversation might go rather like this:

“Hast everything tha needs, Petsy?”

“Yes, Festus. Mother has tooken it into her head, she must have a closed litter, such a nonsense; ‘What’s thee wants ith such a thing,’ I have asked her. ‘Wants to crawl into it to scratch me tits, it’s not befitten for the Emprey’s mamm-in-law to do it fore the world!’ ” The Empress guffawed, showing missing teeth and present stumps.

“I’ll have it sent. Does any bother thee?”

“Nay. They dasn’t. Do they feed Us well at Court?”

“Too well. But there. Such is the nature of the camp. Hast any petitions or positions wanted or pointments made?”

The Empress stretched toward a basket, failed, quite, to reach it. Was the Empress… fat… ? Foolish question. Members of the August House are never fat. But sometimes they are large and comely. The Emperor fetched the basket up himself. “I’ve made some lists.” Had some made, I being ignorant of book, went without saying.

“I’ll bineby have a look. What’s this, thy puppy dog?”

“I must always have one such. Going away, is thee, Festy?”

“Aye. Here’s some Roman sauce and sausage for thee. If tha but somedel needs, send a word. If any durst vex thee, squat and cuck upon them. Vale, then.” A brief embrace. Nothing more. Would be false.

Oria emerged from the lesser workshop, glass mask yet in her be-gloved hand. The mask was a protection against the caustics and mordants employed in alchemy, such as might threaten her perfect and most valuable complexion.

Setting the mask carelessly aside, she rushed into the workshop major, past the bellows-boy cursing and slapping at spark burns on his arms, to clutch Vergil’s hands and peer anxiously up into his eyes.

“Countess,” he said.

She dimpled with pleasure, as she always did when someone of quality had the courtesy to employ her proper and supposed title. Her face aglow with excitement, eyes large. A beautiful, beautiful woman was Oria.

Vacuous as three days in Gaul, but beauteous nonetheless.

What wanted she with Vergil? What did any attractive young woman with political entanglements—a dozen such he turned away from his door in a week—desire?

Aphrodisiacs.

Aphrodisiacs and fertility drugs.

Yet here was the curious fact that those who most required a love philtre were they who could least afford that knowledge be made public. It was the potion that dared not speak its name. As well ask for extract of pennyroyal to undo an unseemly swelling in the stomach! ’Twould get out.

No more did a mage of serious aspirations desire a reputation of being willing to provide such potions. There were spirits to conjure up and demons to put down. Discoveries to be made and most dire secrets to be kept. Who had the time? Life was short, alas. Life was short.

All of which led to the fastidious young Oria, with such connections as would compel cooperation from anybody, even a King Without Country, prenticing herself three mornings of the week as a pharmecary-in-training. Solely for the love of learning, to be sure. Oh, la! How she did swoon to distill and compound.

And Vergil, who was a compassionate man, had set her to learn the basics of distilling perfumes from the liqueurs of flowers and compounding ochres and vermilion for the ornamentation of the skin. She would tire of the sport, soon enough. ’Twere cruelty not to let her get from it something she’d value.