"—and by replacing the contaminated humor with its purified counterpart," the lecturer was saying in a resonant but nasal baritone that belied his frail appearance, "any ailment may be effectively cured. Of course one must consider—"
He broke off as one of the Emperor's valets de chambre entered and gestured at him. "I do beg my colleagues' pardon," the lecturer said, and his listeners shifted in their seats and murmured as he hobbled to the back of the hall. "What is it, Herr Lang?" he asked the valet, who answered by whispering in his ear. "Very well," the older man answered.
Side by side Hieronymus von Gersdorff and Philip Lang wound a crooked way through the castle toward the Imperial apartments. The former was dressed in a gray frock and red skullcap that gave him the appearance of a priest rather than a physician; he walked with a cane, and a monocle dangled from his neck. The latter wore a plain black tunic and hose; only the chain of silver on his breast bespoke the special esteem the Emperor held him in.
If the old alchemist had hoped this summons was merely a request for entertainment, rather than the demand for a miracle (as increasingly seemed the Emperor's wont), his heart must have sunk when he saw the two figures waiting in the antechamber, one of them clutching to his chest a folio bound between wooden plaques.
"Magister Johannes!" He greeted the first of the pair with a mild warmth. "Meister Edouardus," he addressed the other more cooly. "So what are we here for?"
As if in answer, the inner door swung open, and the valet gestured them inside.
"Ah, Herr Doktor." The Emperor had turned from the window at the sound of the door. "And gentlemen."
Von Gersdorff bowed stiffly. "In what may I be of assistance, Majesty?"
"Our English guest presents me with a rarity. I want your opinion of it."
From the hands of the one called Johannes an Imperial attendant took the folio he grasped, and held it out for von Gersdorff's inspection. After recovering his poise, the latter lifted his monocle to peer at it, then beckoned the attendant to turn back the cover. In his surprise at the intricate symbols inked on the page within, he screwed the monocle into his eye and bent almost double to examine them more closely.
Then he seemed suddenly aware of his position, and of the company. "At a cursory glance, Majesty," he said as he straightened and let the monocle fall, "I would say it is ... not devoid of possible interest."
"Is that all you would say, Herr Doktor?" exclaimed Edouardus. He stepped forward and turned a handful of pages. "What would you say of these?" The page he had turned to showed two nude women suspended in the sky as though bound to a wheeling constellation. Von Gersdorff again lifted his monocle.
"A jest," he sneered after a moment's perusal. "Though not without a kind of interest of its own." He made a great show of screwing the monocle back into his eye, and bent very close to peer at the breasts of one of the women. Then he grasped the edge of the page between two fingertips, and gently folded it over, first this way then that. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "As one would suspect. Our ladies are a distraction for the unwary. The true meaning leaps out when they are modestly cloaked in such a wise, so that the real message may be read! Still," he added with a condescending smile, "it is the work of a puerile mind."
"I would know your opinion of its botanical illustrations," said Johannes, "before you gave his Majesty your considered opinion."
"Certainly," replied the other. "I in no way demean this offering. I only indicate that a closer study is wanted. Have I your Majesty's leave to study it more carefully at my leisure?"
"You may," said the Emperor. With a wave of the hand he seemed to dismiss both the Doktor and the book.
"And may I take Herr Lang as an escort? One of your Majesty's pet panthers has taken to prowling near my quarters." His grin was brittle. "I could hardly make a study of this offering from inside its stomach."
--
"Don't hang back, man." Von Gersdorff beckoned to Lang. "Come in." But the valet only proffered him the folio with a crooked smile.
They were standing in the doorway of a cottage, one in a tightly clustered row that faced a crooked lane between the castle's outer wall and the gardens beyond. Night was falling, and a faint fog rising.
Von Gersdorff sighed. "The fact is, Herr Lang, I required neither a guard nor a pack horse. I have been wanting to speak with you alone for some time, and the panther was an excuse."
Lang hesitated, then entered. His host shut the door behind him with a smile.
"His Majesty holds you in high regard," the alchemist said as he tottered over to a fireplace where a low flame crackled. "You have his ear," he added as he touched a taper to the flame.
"I am his Majesty's devoted servant," the valet replied. Von Gersdorff, still bent, looked up at him with a keen and gleaming eye. The other returned the stare with a smirk.
"Some say you hold more than his ear. He listens to your counsel—the counsel of a valet!" Von Gersdorff straightened. "And to those whose counsels you pass on to him."
The valet's smirk turned still plumper. "Is there some ... counsel, Herr Doktor, you wish me to impart to His Majesty?"
"Oh, put that book down, I beg you," von Gersdorff replied. "The table is good enough. No, I have no 'counsel' for His Majesty. I rather wish he troubled me less for it. And I doubt I could meet your price if I did."
"You have yet to spin gold from lead?" the other asked with an airy sneer.
"Child's play," the other retorted, "which I laid aside when I ceased to be a child. But come, I will show you something far greater than the rubbish those two are peddling your master."
With taper in hand, he led Lang through a doorway and down a short flight of stone stairs into a sunken chamber. "Mind your step until I get the candles lit," he warned the valet.
In the warm glow that rose, one saw a space that was more like a lumber room than a study. Crooked shelves hung from the walls, groaning beneath the weight of disordered papers and books and copper instruments. A desk was wedged against one wall; opposite rose a kind of waist-high dais; and in the corner stood something like a deeply eroded statue. Lang's eyes darted about the disorder as his host lit more candles, and two braziers.
"Here," he said, beckoning Lang to the desk. An immense scroll had been unfurled there, its corners held down by inkpots and paperweights. "What do you think of that?"
Lang frowned at the intricate, wheel-like design that encompassed most of the scroll. Arcane symbols wound about its circumference, and within it, centered on the same axis, were smaller wheels, each smaller than one it nested within. For a vertiginous moment, Lang felt he was looking into the receding distances of a smooth, round pit that bored infinitely deep.
"I do not understand these things," he said, and swayed again on his feet.
"Of course not. But if you would just examine this spot here, very closely." Von Gersdorff pointed to a black dot at the center of the design. It seemed to flicker and swim.
Lang bent low over it. As he did, his host struck him on the back of the neck with his cane.
--
It was the stench and chill of an oily liquid spattering onto his bare skin that woke Philip Lang. His head ached. He groaned and twisted, and found himself lying flat on his face with his ankles bound and his wrists tied behind him. "Hmm," a familiar voice said behind him as powder, like damp earth, fell onto his back. "I should have struck a heavier blow. I thought of the ropes only as a precaution."
Lang twisted to lay his head on his ear. A robe fluttered across his line of sight, then withdrew. "Gersdorff?" he mumbled. "What—?" He pulled at his restraints, and suddenly seemed to realize his position. "The devil!" He struggled, but he was fastened down so that he couldn't even turn onto his back.
"Don't wriggle, Herr Lang," von Gersdorff chided. "It does you no good, and it annoys me." More powders fell onto the valet's back.
"Whatever you mean by this," the valet hissed, "it shall be repaid a thousand-fold upon your head! Gersdorff!" he shouted when he got no answer.
"Finish up for me," the alchemist said. There were footsteps, and then von Gersdorff was peering into Lang's face even as more powders and liquids were dropped onto him by unseen hands.
"My dear Philip," the alchemist said, "no threat you can make will alter my intentions. Nor can you bear me any greater malice than you already do. Think I saw not your fine hand behind the coming of that fool and the charlatan?" He snorted, then glanced up at his unseen apprentice. "The torches."
"Gersdorff!" Lang shrieked as the old man hobbled away. "Slay me, and the Emperor's vengeance will fall upon you like a hundred-weight!"
"Why Philip," von Gersdorff mused. "His Majesty will never even miss you."
Before the valet could reply, a second figure bent down to stare into his face. Its lips plumped into a smug smile, and a silver chain—sign of the Imperial affection—hung about its neck.
Philip Lang only had time to recognize as his own the face that stared back coolly at him before a blazing torch was thrust into the fuel soaking on his back.
--
You shut your eyes, but the vision still burns behind your lids: a living man consumed by flames and transformed, as though by a Gorgon, into stone; and overlaying that horror, an intricate sigil that spins about more than one axis. John waits for you to recover before gently pressing you to speak.
He looks grim when you finish relating the story. "It can only mean," he says, "that Sulva wanted you to see him."
"Who?"
"Von Gersdorff."
"Who was he?"
John sighs. "A retrograde Stellae. One who vanished, though not without leaving a black legacy behind. Perhaps you have heard of the Compendio Summa Personae...?"
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