The Gorgon's Blood Solution Read online

  “Where are you from?” Kreewhite asked Marco, attempting to distract him.

  “I’m from the Lion City,” Marco explained. “The Corsairs tried to raid the city, but they didn’t do as well as they expected.

  “I hurt their sorcerer,” he confided. “And they had to get away in a hurry without his magic to protect them.”

  “Their sorcerer is hurt?” Kreewhite asked with interest. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a while.”

  “Why?” Marco wanted to know.

  “The sorcerer,” Kreewhite paused, “had a special interest in me. Whatever happens to me won’t be good, but it will be less bad if the sorcerer isn’t involved.”

  Marco could hear the fear and hatred in his companion’s voice.

  “If I can help you, I will,” Marco solemnly promised. “But first I’ll have to heal enough to help myself,” he said ruefully.

  He slept again for several hours, and when he awoke, the motion of the ship was different, and the sounds were ominous.

  “This is what a storm sounds like on the surface of the sea,” Kreewhite explained. “It just started getting rough a couple of hours ago.”

  “Is it day or night outside?” Marco asked.

  “I don’t know any more,” Kreewhite said wearily.

  Marco felt his stomach churning from the motion of the ship, as the storm rocked and bucked it violently over the next several hours. His stomach was too empty though to do more than heave emptily, as he forced himself to suck drops of the stagnant bilge water from his fingers from time to time.

  A sudden freak gust of wind managed to catch the hatch that covered the opening to the bilge, and the two boys heard a sudden sharp rendering sound. There were a brisk breeze suddenly blowing through their quarters, and fresh rainwater began to spray voluminously down upon them. There was dim gray light, punctuated by flashes of lightning, and after the third flash, Marco turned his aching body around to try to see what his companion looked like.

  When the next flash of light arrived, he screamed.

  Alchemy’s Apprentice Series

  1. The Gorgon’s Blood Solution

  The Inner Seas Kingdoms Series

  1. The Healing Spring

  2. The Yellow Palace

  3. Road of Shadows

  4. A Foreign Heart

  5. Journey to Uniontown

  The Ingenairii Series

  1. Visions of Power

  2. At the Seat of Power: Goldenfields and the Dominion

  3. The Loss of Power: Goldenfields and Bondell

  4. The Lifesaving Power: Goldenfields and Stronghold

  5. Against the Empire

  6. Preserving the Ingenairii

  7. Rescuing the Captive

  8. Ajacii and Demons

  9. The Caravan Road

  10. The Journey Home

  Also by Jeffrey Quyle

  The Green Plague

  For more information, visit the Ingenairii Series on Facebook, www.facebook.com/ingenairiiseries

  The Gorgon’s Blood Solution

  Alchemy’s Apprentice Series

  Book 1

  Jeffrey Quyle

  Index

  Chapter 1 –The Lady’s Coin Page 1

  Chapter 2 – The First Love Philter Page 10

  Chapter 3 –A Model of Decorum Page 26

  Chapter 4 –Corsair Raid Page 32

  Chapter 5 –The Sorcerer Page 46

  Chapter 6 – Kreewhite Page 51

  Chapter 7 –The Shipwreck Page 54

  Chapter 8 – Isle of Ophiuchus Page 62

  Chapter 9 –Temple of Healing Page 64

  Chapter 10 –Porenn Page 73

  Chapter 11 –The Shepherdess’s Cottage Page 94

  Chapter 12 –The Escape from the Escape Page 107

  Chapter 13 –Marches’ Shop Page 116

  Chapter 14 – Kieweeooee Page 129

  Chapter 15 –The Plague Begins Page 154

  Chapter 16 –The Plague Breaks Page 163

  Chapter 17 –Battling Corsairs Page 169

  Chapter 18 –Folence of Ophiuchus Page 181

  Chapter 19 –Alchemy Gone Astray Page 193

  Chapter 20 –Deadly Dance at the Palace Page 201

  Chapter 21 –Aboard Iasco’s Ship Page 218

  Chapter 22 – The Lady’s Origins Story Page 227

  Chapter 23 – In the Apex Temple Page 236

  Chapter 24 – The Descent to Return Page 239

  Chapter 25 – Kieweeooee’s Example Page 244

  List of Characters

  Marco, alchemy apprentice from the Lion City

  Mirra, Barcelon daughter of Coosie, mother of Sybele

  Gabrielle, Barcelon widow of alchemist Marches

  Algornia, alchemist of the Lion City

  Iasco, high priestess of the Order of Ophiuchus

  Porenn, acolyte on the Isle of Ophiuchus

  Albany, guard on the Isle of Ophiuchus

  Mitment, guard on the Isle of Ophiuchus

  Kieweeooee, dolphin of the western waters

  Glaze, Mirra’s brother

  Folence, Barcelon priestess of Ophiuchus

  Iago, sorcerer of the Corsairs

  Kilson, captain of the palace guard in Barcelon

  Constance, dress model in the Lion City

  Siplin, duke of Barcelon

  Sybele, infant daughter of Mirra

  Greystone, violent resident of Barcelon

  Allied, alchemist of Barcelon

  Chapter 1 – The Lady’s Coin

  Marco stood on the bridge and looked at the placid dark water that flowed in the narrow canal. There was nothing about the water that was striking; it was the bridge that secretly held his interest, but on this afternoon he posed as though he was ignoring the bridge with a studiousness that was commendable.

  The bridge was The Bridge of Kisses, where tradition held that many happy couples had their first kiss, and presumably, additional kisses as well. For the past several months Marco’s feet had managed to lead him to the bridge, and his heart had led him to daydream about some girl who might happen upon him and come to the realization that he was the boy she was destined to kiss upon the bridge. And while there were a few girls who he would have been particularly pleased to see come strolling along and discover him on the bridge, he was not so delicate that his heart was reserved for only one of those; he could be persuaded to find love in virtually any alluring figure, sweet smile, or sparkling eyes that showed interest in him. Yet despite his readiness, no female seemed to perceive the passion that awaited them within his heart, he thought mournfully.

  The shadows cast by the crumbling buildings along the canal were slowly moving across the stretch of dark water, and Marco suddenly realized that the shadows had moved a fair distance across the water, and that he was due back at Master Algornia’s shop within the moment.

  He turned and bumped into a girl, then scrambled around her without looking and ran down the slope of the bridge, and through the streets of the city towards Chemists Square, where all the best alchemists’ shops were located.

  As Marco turned a corner, he saw an elderly lady across the street from him, wearing all black, as if in mourning. She slipped as he watched her step down off a curb, and she tumbled to the ground. Despite his hurry, Marco veered across the street to help her. He lifted her gently back to her feet.

  “Are you okay?” he asked with real concern.

  “Oh son, I’m fine; I’m more embarrassed than anything else,” she told him, as he looked into her surprisingly sharp green eyes.

  “Thank you so much for helping me! You’re a kind-hearted boy to have assisted a careless old woman. Here, take this,” she told him, as she pressed somethi
ng into his hand.

  Marco started to protest, as he looked down at his open palm. She had given him a dark coin, one that appeared weathered and aged.

  “You don’t have to give me anything,” he said abstractedly, studying the strange coin. It wasn’t a coin minted in the Lion City, nor in any of the other kingdoms or republics whose coins circulated among the populace. He looked closely at the profile of a man’s head, and saw letters that circled around the perimeter of the coin. The letters spelled HERMES TRISMEG. He turned the coin over and saw an image of a caduceus on the back.

  “I can’t accept a coin, my lady,” he said raising the odd coin to return it to the woman. He looked around, and she was nowhere in sight. His head swiveled, and he took three steps backwards to see around the corner, but there was no evidence of her passage at all.

  “I’ll take that,” a man’s voice was so close that it startled Marco, and he jumped back a step, as the new man who had appeared out of nowhere snatched at the coin Marco held.

  The man was very fair-skinned, with eyes that were as surprisingly green at the old lady’s had been. His skin was wrinkled, though he didn’t appear old. His clothes were of a style that Marco could not describe, they were so different from the typical outfit worn by the residents of the city.

  “You said you didn’t want it, so I’ll take it from you,” the man told Marco, stepping in close, so that Marco could smell his fetid breath.

  “No,” Marco said simply, seeing no reason to give the coin to the man, and then, driven by some impulse he couldn’t explain, he put the coin in his mouth and swallowed it, then started sprinting away from the man, heading towards the hoped-for safety of Algornia’s shop.

  “Now you’ve done it!” the man shouted from behind him. Marco heard no footsteps behind him as he ran hard, and he risked turning once to look.

  The man was nowhere in sight; like the old woman, the strange man had vanished.

  Marco made a turn, then another, and saw the narrow street ahead open up onto Chemists Square; he was almost back to where he was supposed to be.

  He ran across the square, lightly populated as it was in the early afternoon, scattered a flock of pigeons, and reached the heavy wooden door of the shop.

  As he reached his hand towards the dark handle, the door flew open outwards, and he felt his knuckles sharply knocked backwards as he tried to step out of the way of the swinging door, only to tangle his feet and trip and fall, so that he landed in a sitting position, his legs sprawled apart before him, one hand on the ground behind his back belatedly propping him up, while his injured knuckles added to the ignominy of his public stumble, as they had lifted themselves into his mouth to have the scrapped skin and brand new smear of blood sucked away after the door had done its damage.

  Marco’s mind focused on the injured hand, and then on the fact that he was sitting on the paving blocks in front of Algornia’s shop, and then he focused on the fact that through the shop’s open door he could see that three sets of skirts were directly in front of him. Two of the skirts were of rich damask material, while one was a simple gray wool. Marco’s eyes traveled upwards, following the pleats of the damask and the plain front of the wool, to where the skirts met wide belts, which were in turn topped by a pair of elegant blouses and a simple white blouse. Above all the clean clothing there sat a trio of feminine faces, all of which were turned downward to look at Marco with disdain and amusement.

  The Countessa Maurin Houbertine, along with her daughter Angelica, were in the front of their accompanying maid, looking down upon Marco as though he were a pile of horse dung they particularly wished to avoid stepping upon, while the unknown maid had a barely concealed smile as she observed Marco’s predicament.

  The countessa was a fading beauty, one who had benefited from her own youthful elegant visage to secure an upwardly mobile marriage, rising above the class of the prosperous merchant her father had been. It was a class she had willingly abandoned as she settled into the elaborate town home her older, new husband had provided for her, and from which she had hosted enough balls and parties to secure her own place in the middle ranks of the nobility of the duchy.

  Her daughter was fortunate enough to inherit her mother’s beauty, and was accustomed to receiving the homage which her beauty and rank granted her in the society of the city, including the apparent potential opportunity to move up another step in the social hierarchy of the city if her mother could successfully arrange a prosperous marriage for her. It seemed, from all that Marco had heard, that Angelica had every expectation that she would receive the nuptial success that she felt entitled to, and she had no qualms about treating others as though she had already achieved the inevitable higher status; the girl was known to walk right past acquaintances without acknowledging them, and to occasionally choose to refuse to speak to her peers when attending social functions – such as balls and dances and church days of prayer.

  Marco’s examination of the trio did not extend to consideration of the maid, for two reasons. For one thing, she was only a maid, no one that Marco needed to aspire to know, since she was only a small step above him in the social hierarchy in his eyes, though she might think differently. More importantly, Marco had no time to look at her calm gray eyes as he heard his own name bellowed loudly by Master Algornia, who stood behind the women leaving his shop.

  “Get off your lazy seat and get out of the way of these high ladies!” Algornia’s voice nearly rose to a shriek as he looked over the shoulder of the fine customers who were leaving his shop, who were in fact momentarily prevented from leaving because Marco was sprawled across the front step. “Move Marco! Move!” his master ordered him loudly, causing the boy to scrabble across the cobblestones of the plaza and quickly stand up and stand aside, so that after their momentary delay, the ladies gracefully left the shop doorway, leaving Algornia standing and waving.

  “We’ll have what you need very soon, your grace!” he promised loudly as the women walked away without looking.

  “Get in here; get in here. It’s my time you’re wasting by harassing our paying clients,” Algornia turned to Marco. “There’s work waiting at your bench, so get in there and get to it,” the master alchemist ordered his apprentice. He spoke without rancor, but without humor either. Algornia was fair, as far as masters of apprentices went, Marco knew, but the master nonetheless expected to get his money’s worth in labor out of each of his apprentices.

  “Yes, master Algornia,” Marco obediently replied, and ducked into the open door quickly, before his master could think to comment on the boy’s helter-skelter approach to the shop door that had been the cause of the momentary drama at the doorstep.

  The interior of the alchemist’s shop was dim, as always, adding to the mystery and magical allure that the creator of enchantments and potions considered good merchandising for his business. Marco blinked as he entered the shop, but didn’t slow down, as his feet followed the familiar path among the counters of ingredients and displays of exotic items. He reached the door in the back of the shop and slipped through without incident, so that he passed the staircase to the family precincts up above the shop and then entered the work room where his table awaited his labor.

  Marco thought of Angelica, the most beautiful young lady that he and his fellow apprentices and street urchins saw and worshipped. She was the shining beacon that all his friends dreamed about and aspired to; Marco himself let some of his wilder flights of fancy and daydreams imagine improbable circumstances in which he somehow was called to Angelica’s attention, and received her immediate passionate embrace and declaration of love.

  He sat at his chair and opened the window shade in front of his table to let in light while he considered the loveliness that he had almost enjoyed during his fleeting exposure to Angelica, then looked down and saw what his assignment for the afternoon was to be. He sighed. A bowl of dead centipedes sat in front of him, and he knew that for the next hour he was going to be separating and counting out the leg
s of the insects so that they could be added to future alchemical formulas for the invocation of favorable, speedy winds for merchant ships.

  Next to him he saw that the older apprentice, Phillippe, was slowly and methodically mixing together the complex series of items needed to create a love philter. The love philters were glamorous – and profitable – items to create, the type of product that Master Algornia always waited to create only after an order was received from a customer. Making the customer believe that the formula was created specifically for him or her always added to the allure of the sale, Algornia told his two apprentices; and in the case of his shop, they were in fact made uniquely. Each formulated philter contained exactly the same ingredients as all the others, except for containing a single strand of hair, finely chopped, of the buyer, if the buyer wanted to be loved, or of an intended subject – a much rarer situation – if the buyer wanted themselves or someone else to fall in love with the owner of the specific hair.

  The love philters were made exactly the same whether they were made a week in advance or a week after the deposit was received, whether they were made for men to take for themselves, or for men to try to secretly slip to women, whether they were for desperate elderly husbands of blushing new brides, or young virgin women ready to find love. But although they were all made exactly the same – except for the single, unique strand of hair, Algornia sold them only upon receiving a deposit, and always with the condition that the potion would be suited and suitable only for the single, unique purposes of that one customer. Some of Algornia’s competitors were suspected of making the philters in advance, and then just mixing in the hair as a finishing touch, but Master Algornia refused to stoop to such practices, convinced that they reduced the effectiveness of the philter. And so Phillippe was involved in painstakingly creating a unique concoction that was requested for use the following day.