The Flaw in the Stone

by Cynthea Masson

  Melia turned to her, worried by Ravenea’s expression as much as by her words. The sadness Melia had sensed earlier was now clearly manifest.

  “I noticed something in a manuscript a few days ago,” continued Ravenea. “And my inquiries on the matter led to a swift flurry of activity among the Readers. Their discoveries and interpretations were sent last night to the Azoths for validation. Elder Council will likely convene later today. I was, of course, advised by the Azoth Magen not to say anything to anyone — least of all you. You were to learn of the news at Elder Council. But sitting here with you now, having this particular conversation, I have concluded I cannot keep both our friendship and my silence.”

  “Ravenea, you’re frightening me. What is the problem? Am I to be erased?”

  “Erased? Of course not! Why would you even suggest such a possibility?”

  “As I said, you are frightening me. Exile to the outside world inevitably comes to mind.”

  “You are not about to be erased.” Ravenea paused. “You are about to be conjoined.”

  Melia understood in that moment what it meant for one’s heart to sink. Utter dread moved through her in a rush of sensation that she had not experienced in all her years. Only minutes ago, she had been revelling in her good fortune, and now the wheel had turned. She should have known better than to tempt fate. Quercus would reprimand her for indulging in such worldly considerations as an Elder of the Alchemists’ Council, but Melia had read too much outside world literature not to question the timing of this news.

  “If I am not the victorious one, Ilex will lose me,” she said. Not until she heard her own words did she realize that she feared as much for Ilex’s future as she did for her own. She could no longer hold back her tears.

  “Conjunction is a sacrament,” said Ravenea. She sounded authoritarian, as if she were already an Azoth. “You must remember this primary truth of alchemy. You must believe that by fulfilling the sacrament, you will strengthen the Council in maintaining both Lapis and Quintessence.”

  Melia fell to her knees, purposely allowing her tears to fall into the pond. “Accept my tears in place of the coins I have removed from your waters,” she whispered. “Grant me one wish and one wish only: May I never be separated from my beloved Ilex.”

  “No!”

  But Ravenea was too late. The wish had been made — salted tears to fresh water, spoken with true intention. And, though Melia knew the pond could not grant wishes in exchange for either coins or tears and that her wish could hold no influence over the conjunctive pairing determined by the Council Scribes and Readers, she could tell from the intensity of Ravenea’s interjection that she would soon regret speaking aloud her desire.

  “Melia, you do not understand.”

  Melia looked up at Ravenea, waiting.

  “Your partner for the conjunction has already been determined,” said Ravenea gently.

  “Please tell me I have been paired with someone from a lower order. Please tell me I have a chance to be victorious.”

  “Yes. On both counts. But those details make little difference in this particular case.”

  “Who is it? Tell me, Ravenea. Please.”

  “You are to conjoin with Ilex.”

  And Melia pounded her fists on the ground so fiercely that Ravenea could feel the vibration under her feet.

  Ilex and Melia sat together at the cliff face — one of the few places they presumed privacy could be attained, even if only briefly.

  “They will come looking for us,” Ilex said.

  “Stop being like this,” replied Melia, annoyed with him in this moment yet still wiping tears from her cheeks.

  “Being like what?”

  “Stop worrying about the most trivial of matters!”

  “Perhaps I simply cannot bear to think of the most distressing matter.”

  “Nor can I,” said Melia softly. She laid her head against his shoulder.

  Ilex repositioned himself to hold her as she cried. For the next few minutes, they remained still and silent in each other’s arms.

  “We can’t continue in this manner,” Melia finally said, pulling herself up. “We cannot spend our remaining time together wallowing in despair. The Readers made the discovery only a few days ago. The official Announcement of Concurrence is unlikely to occur for a few more weeks, and the Sealing several weeks thereafter. The Sacrament of Conjunction itself could be a few months away.”

  “Let us hope for several months.”

  “Let us think during these months, Ilex. Let us not waste even a day. We cannot resign ourselves to the apparently inevitable. Surely we can together find a feasible solution.”

  Ilex paused before responding. “We could leave. We could leave Council dimension, live together in the outside world, refuse to conjoin.”

  “For how long, Ilex? How long would we survive without an influx of Elixir?”

  “We are powerful alchemists, Melia. Our Elixir would run strong in our blood for decades, centuries even. And we have powerful allies.”

  “If you’re referring to our friends here in Council dimension, you must wonder who would remain allied with us when we are no longer Council Scribes, when we are instead two deserters — two defectors who fled Council dimension rather than following our prescribed destiny and observing the Sacrament of Conjunction.”

  “I refuse to believe no one would help us — if not with a supply of Elixir, at least with a few jars of Lapidarian honey each month.”

  “Ilex! Even if someone — and I cannot imagine who — offered to take such a risk for us, that person would then be in jeopardy of erasure. We could not possibly ask or accept such assistance. As strong as is our love for one another, it can’t take priority over another alchemist’s life.”

  “Then we will carry with us as many jars of Lapidarian honey as possible — the entire store cupboard in our satchels!”

  “Be sensible, Ilex. At most, we could escape with a half-dozen jars each.”

  “Melia, you suggested we spend our time seeking a solution. To find one, we will need to be much more than sensible.”

  She remembered something then. Years ago — a hundred years ago or more — back when they had first become intimate, first sworn their love to each other, they had fantasized about the possibility of their conjunction. Someday we will conjoin as one body for eternity, Ilex had said with glee. Even then she had reprimanded him for his naïveté. If we were to conjoin with one another, one of us would achieve victory over the other. Is that what you want, Ilex? Victory over me? She could still picture his face, crestfallen. No — no, of course not. We would be like the Rebis of the outside world manuscripts: mutually conjoined. They had laughed then, picturing themselves as one body that diverged at the torso into two. And they had joked of all the possibilities such a state could afford them. But ultimately, they had agreed that the physical challenges of living as one would likely prove overwhelming. Conjunction as they had witnessed it in Council dimension certainly had its advantages over the sort illustrated in manuscript depictions of the Rebis. Still, there must be some truth to the matter, Ilex had insisted. Illuminations of the Rebis are far too frequent not to be grounded in some fragment of truth. She now grasped onto this fragment.

  “Mutual conjunction,” she said aloud.

  “What?” asked Ilex.

  “What if it truly were possible? What if we could conjoin mutually as two into one?”

  “Physically, you mean — like the Rebis? Did we not decide decades ago how impractical such a conjunction would be?”

  “Not like the Rebis in its literal illustration on the page but in its figurative representation: two bodies mutually conjoined into one. One body housing both of us — neither of us victorious. What if together we could find a means of re-enacting the primordial myth?”

  “Are you suggesting we become the next Ara
lia and Osmanthus?”

  “So to speak.”

  “This plan is one you see as more sensible than my plan to escape from Council dimension with a few jars of Lapidarian honey?”

  “Yes. As members of the Alchemists’ Council, we’re connected to the Aralians. What if we were to seek the aid of the Osmanthians?”

  Ilex stared at Melia, clearly uncertain whether she intended her remarks to be taken seriously. “Surely, you’re not suggesting we ask for assistance from the Rebel Branch?”

  “Do you remember what I told you of that conversation with the High Azoth — when I first met with him to attain a seal of erasure?”

  “You mean when he tricked you into confession?”

  “He didn’t trick me. He merely asked if I were pleased that, as a Novillian Scribe, I would no longer be subject to forgetting the ones erased.”

  Ilex nodded. “Yes. And then — inexplicably — you confessed to him that you had always maintained certain memories of the ones erased.”

  “My admission wasn’t coerced, Ilex. I offered it willingly, intuiting he could provide an explanation. And he did: You have the fire of Dragonblood in your veins.”

  “And what does that mean to us now, Melia? What does Dragonblood mean for the conjunction?”

  “I do not yet know. But I sense that the High Azoth might.”

  Santa Fe, Rebel Branch Stronghold — 1800

  When High Azoth Dracaen first set the nondescript manuscript in front of her and opened it to a folio housing an equally unremarkable image, Melia had shrugged. Folio 8 recto depicted a pendant-bearing young man with black hair and brown skin. He wore turquoise robes and wielded a gilded sceptre. Certainly, the gilding was pristinely crafted; indeed, the sceptre sparkled brightly despite the age of the manuscript — one of the oldest in Rebel Branch archives, she assumed from its physical characteristics. But she had worked with numerous manuscripts with similar features, and she had seen all too many images of sceptre-wielding young men, so she could not understand why Dracaen had requested she make the journey today from Council dimension to meet him and Ilex in a Rebel Branch stronghold near the Santa Fe protectorate. Given her growing anxiety about the approaching conjunction, the last thing Melia wanted was to waste time travelling, and she told Dracaen as much without glossing her point to spare his feelings.

  “As much as I’ve missed Ilex during his Santa Fe tenure, I do believe my time would be better spent researching in the North Library. At most, we have only one month remaining. Today, I had been planning to continue my work on Aralia and Osmanthus.”

  “You will not regret your choice to journey here once you comprehend the significance of this manuscript,” Dracaen responded. Ilex had his back turned to her, standing at a sideboard where he was busy fitting a Lapidarian candle into a silver holder.

  “We do not need the Lapidarian light, Ilex.” Her tone hinted at sarcasm. “The regular candlelight is ample — look how the man’s sceptre shines!”

  Ilex ignored her. He brought a luminescence lantern and the candle to the table, lighting both before extinguishing the flames of the regular beeswax candles.

  “Look again with new light,” Dracaen suggested as Ilex moved the Lapidarian candle closer to the manuscript. “You will soon appreciate the brilliance not only of this particular folio but of the manuscript itself.”

  Melia looked again at the image of the man and his sceptre. When she returned her gaze to Ilex, he gestured back towards the manuscript. She sighed and told herself, as she had repeatedly on the journey to the Santa Fe stronghold, that Dracaen and Ilex must have their reasons for their behaviour. But no matter how often or at what angle she regarded the image, no matter how much light she directed upon the manuscript, she could see nothing of the brilliance they praised.

  “Turn the page,” Dracaen instructed.

  Melia turned the page. Unlike folio 8 recto, folio 8 verso was completely blank, leaving her momentarily mystified. What ancient Scribe of either Council or Flaw dimension would dare waste sacred manuscript space? Use every available segment, her Novillian tutors had instructed repeatedly when she had first ascended to Lapidarian status. She shook her head and sighed again before turning the folio back to the image of the young man.

  And in that instant, she began to understand. In fact, she was so startled that she froze, speechless, staring at the image on folio 8 recto. She no longer saw a young man with dark hair and skin and a golden sceptre. Where he had stood appeared instead a young woman with golden hair and pale skin. She wore bright green robes and carried an open book in her right hand. Though Melia knew for certain she had turned back only the one folio, she second-guessed herself and turned to another folio and then another. Nowhere could Melia find the man with the sceptre whose image she had seen.

  “Where did he go?” she asked. Dracaen and Ilex simply stood watching her, smiling broadly.

  Saying nothing, Ilex reached forward and turned folio 8 to the blank page on its reverse side and then back once again to the illuminated page on its front side. There he was — the young man holding the sceptre. Ilex then moved from folio 8 recto to folio 8 verso to folio 8 recto again. There she was — the young woman.

  “What? How?” Melia was dumbfounded.

  She herself began to turn the pages. Recto, verso. Recto, verso. Recto, verso. Man, woman. Man, woman. Man, woman.

  “What sort of magic is this?” she asked.

  “Not magic. Alchemy,” Ilex responded.

  “This cannot be mere alchemy,” she insisted.

  “Mere alchemy? My dear Melia, how can you — how can any member of the Alchemists’ Council — utter such a phrase?” asked Dracaen.

  “What I mean is that I have never in my hundreds of years with the Council witnessed such a spectacle within an alchemical manuscript, Lapidarian or not. How did the Scribe of this manuscript accomplish such a feat?”

  “I cannot answer that question, as I have not yet even determined the name of the Scribe, let alone the techniques involved,” explained Dracaen.

  “You said I’d come to understand the brilliance of both the image and the manuscript. Do all the folios function similarly to the eighth?” Melia asked, proceeding carefully and repeatedly to turn folio 7 back and forth. She was not disappointed.

  “All but one,” Dracaen said. “Turn to the final folio.”

  Her doubt about the importance of this visit to Santa Fe extinguished, Melia did as Dracaen requested.

  The final folio contained a single image of a woman in a beautiful Azadirian shawl, the multicoloured intricacies of which were dazzling. Of the various images she had noted thus far in the manuscript, this one was by far the most exquisite. She turned the folio back and forth twice, but the image remained the same.

  “Strange,” she said, “that the most elaborate figure in the manuscript is the one that remains constant.”

  “You are mistaken, Melia, as was I initially,” said Ilex. “I can assure you, the image does not remain constant. Its method for transmutation is simply different than for the other images.”

  Curious now, Melia changed her perspective. At first, she tried tilting her head to look at the manuscript from a different angle. Then she slowly turned the manuscript upside down.

  “Subtlety,” said Ilex.

  “What?”

  “The method for transmutation requires more subtlety.”

  Melia adjusted the manuscript back to its upright position. She then held it in two hands, lifting it slightly off the table and closer to the luminescence lantern. She then began to move it gently from side to side as she watched the figure. Finally, she witnessed the transmutation of the image. Held at one angle, in a certain slant of light, the image of the woman in the Azadirian shawl shifted to a second woman with different hair, skin, and clothing. As Melia continued to move the manuscript from side to side in the brightness
and shadows cast by the light of both the luminescence lantern and Lapidarian candle, the image shifted from one woman to the other.

  “I see what you wanted me to see, Dracaen. I see the most remarkable manuscript I have ever beheld. But I do not understand. I do not understand how the image — how any of the images — were created. And, more importantly, I do not understand why they were created. What was the intention of this Scribe? What is the purpose of this alchemical magic?”

  “The purpose?” echoed Dracaen. “Melia, its purpose is the most obvious, factor — the most pressing reason I have brought you here. Do you truly not understand what this manuscript means for you? For Ilex? For the future of both the Rebel Branch and the Alchemists’ Council?”

  “I truly do not.”

  “Have you neglected the title inscribed on the front piece?”

  Cautiously Melia manoeuvred the manuscript and turned to the first inscribed folio. “Chimera Veritas,” she pronounced. And in that moment — a moment she would never forget for the rest of her existence — she shuddered.

  “It is possible,” she said. “The chimera is real.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if the chimera is real, then we can succeed. We can learn. This remarkable Scribe has shown us that the seemingly impossible is indeed possible. In the manuscript images, this Scribe has shown us what we can replicate in human form.”

  “Yes, my love,” said Ilex. “I do believe human replication of this transmutation is indeed the intention of the Scribe.”

  Over the hour that remained before she was scheduled to return to Council dimension, Melia stared from various angles at the shifting image on the final folio. The physicality of it, the literal ink on the page of it, fascinated her. How had the Scribe, whether Lapidarian or Novillian — whether from the Rebel Branch or the Alchemists’ Council — rendered such a perplexing figure onto parchment? As a Novillian Scribe herself, Melia could not fathom the technique involved. Beyond measure, the image in and of itself illustrated a new level of complexity and possibility for the wonders of Lapidarian ink, let alone the transmutation it represented theoretically. Why had she not been introduced to such revolutionary concepts years ago in an Initiate lesson? Perhaps only the Rebel Branch manuscripts held such knowledge. Regardless, had she known of this particular manuscript’s existence, she would have been saved from decades of apprehension about the Sacrament. Melia now held in her hands a visual embodiment of the truth its Scribe intended to share: mutual conjunction existed.