The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice)

by Quyle, Jeffrey

  The minotaur looked closely at each of them, looking to see any hint they might reveal of duplicity regarding the potion. Seeing none, the monster took the vial and poured its contents into his mouth, then casually threw the small stone jar over its shoulder with a cavalier toss.

  He stood expectantly, looking around at all of them. He waited ten seconds, then displayed his suspicion with narrowed eyes, and he slowly drew his sword. “So you thought you could fool me,” he said, turning towards Pesino.

  And at that moment he shuddered throughout his body. He dropped his sword as his fingers spasmed, and then he began to undergo the metamorphosis. His back began to arch and he bent over low, as his arms became legs with hooves. “Traitors!” he halfway moaned, halfway lowed, while his torso lengthened and a tail sprouted.

  He stood in the center of the cavern, and then fell to the ground, stunned by the wracking change to his body while a flash of light glowed from him. He lay on his side, his tongue hanging from his snout, and then his body shuddered again. He gave another low of pain, and his body went through the second stage of the extraordinary change. His legs began to shrink, his coat of hair melted away, and his snout receded into his face, along with his polished ivory horns, as he made the rapid transformation into a human man.

  Pesino stepped over to him and cradled his head in her lap as he lay dazed once again. “Asterion, breathe easy,” she cuddled him. “I know how you feel right now. Just rest and catch your breath,” she advised in a gentle voice.

  His eyes looked up at her, then rolled in his head for a moment. He closed his eyes and kept them closed, as his hand reached up in the air and came to rest on Pesino’s shoulder. He gripped it tightly, while keeping his eyes closed. “Thank you,” he whispered. “You were true to your word.

  “Thank you,” he repeated.

  Marco stepped back a pair of steps, back in the direction they had come from, trying to take in all that he had seen, and the additional occurrences he had sensed. The extraordinary conversion of the minotaur into a man was the beginning of a whole new chapter in their adventure, he sensed, and the ending of one as well.

  As he stood he thought he detected a motion out of the corner of his eye, and he looked at the nearby wall, then gaped in astonishment at what he witnessed occurring. The walls and the ceiling of the chamber were beginning to pulse. Waves of activity passed through the variegated stripes that surrounded the chamber, making each stripe expand and contract, expand and contract, producing an almost hypnotic effect that mesmerized him.

  “Marco, what’s happening?” Kate shrieked, coming over to grab his arm, arousing him from the trance the movements had induced in him.

  As she asked, all the stripes began to glow, and began to turn the atmosphere in the chamber warm.

  “It is the mother!” Gawail shouted, glowing brightly. “She is aware of us within her heart, and she does not take kindly to us being here. The magical transformation of the minotaur aroused her, blessed one!” Gawail flew over to Marco to speak to him.

  “Can you tell her to leave us alone?” Marco asked. “Cassius, help Pesino get Asterion to his feet,” he said as he became alert, and realized the danger they might be in.

  “Great mother!” Gawail called out as loudly as his small size allowed. He flew up to the top of the domed ceiling and addressed the volcano above them from there. “I am one of your children, great mother! Do not harm these friends of mine, please!”

  The ceiling of the dome glowed even more brightly, and then a profoundly low voice seemed to reach them from all directions at once. “Because you are one of my own children, I hear your voice.

  “These beings have profaned my chambers with magic. I should destroy them at once, but on your behalf, I will give them two minutes to escape before I lower my weight upon them.”

  “Cassius!” Marco called. “Kate, go help him,” Marco urged, as he saw Cassius struggle to raise the large form of Asterion from the ground.

  The former minotaur was still groggy from the transformation he went through, and he struggled against the efforts to help him.

  “My lord,” Pesino said after several seconds, using the alluring siren voice she possess, “what struggle is this my lord? Great pleasures await you, but you must cooperate. We must leave this place immediately to go to a place more suitable,” she told Asterion, moving past him and towards the exit of the chamber, attempting to lure him out.

  Asterion rose to his feet, but knocked Cassius and Kate to the ground in the process.

  And at that point, the ceiling gave a great cracking sound, as it began to drop towards them.

  “We must go!” Gawail shrieked.

  Marco raised his hand by instinct, and closed his eyes, and tried to imagine the magical power of his ensorcelled hand reaching up to hold the ceiling in place. He could do it, he knew, and he needed to – badly needed to – for the sake of his friends and for the sake of the scale he had captured and was determined to deliver to the Isle of Ophiuchus.

  He felt his hand expand, or he imagined it expanded, and reached up with enormous strength to hold the ceiling up. He opened his eyes and saw that a field of sparkling light was being emitted from his hand and was spreading out to form a barrier against the ceiling’s deadly fall.

  “Go!” he shouted. “I can hold it for only a few seconds! Run out! Go!” he repeated.

  Cassius and Kate scrambled and rolled and crawled toward the opening that was the exit, when Pesino was grabbing Asterion and pulling him to safety.

  “Come on Marco!” Pesino called, as Kate and Cassius rolled past her legs into safety. “We’re all here now!”

  “I feel the great mother’s anger at your obstruction, blessed one! Come to us!” Gawail called from Pesino’s shoulder, and as the last words of his cry were uttered, there was a tremendous booming noise, then a cracking, and Marco felt his energy field being overwhelmed and shut down.

  There was an explosion, and a gust of searing hot air knocked him off his feet, blowing him backwards into the tunnel that the party had used to reach the chamber.

  “Marco! No!” he heard Pesino scream, and he looked across the distance of the chamber to see her anguished face staring at him.

  For just a second their eyes locked upon each other. “I love you!” Marco shouted. “Take care of Asterion!” and then the ceiling crashed down to the floor, obliterating the empty space that had formerly existed there.

  Chapter 26 – Alone With a Ghost

  Marco lay in the dust of the darkened cavern, stunned by the incredible turn of events. His ribs hurt worse than before, their pain aggravated by the force of the volcano’s reaction to his battle with it.

  He was completely separated from his friends; he hoped that they were on their way to freedom, on their way back to the surface and back to life among the living, while he had been knocked backwards and cut off from all that, knocked backwards and thrown back among the spirits of the dead.

  “No! Oh no!” he shouted, and he pounded his fists against the floor in frustration.

  There were tears falling down his cheeks he realized. He was alone now, separated from his friends, still carrying the all-important scales of the Echidna that he had worked so hard to acquire, sacrificed so much to possess, and now he was at a complete loss as to how to deliver them to the surface, let alone how to stay alive and travel through the underworld on a further journey.

  He sat up and groaned in pain, then rubbed the back of his hand across his cheek and wiped the tears away. Marco rose to his feet in the darkness, and raised his hand over his head, then produced the glowing energy that lit up the cavern he was in.

  And he shouted in surprise and fear.

  Standing directly in front of him was a spirit, a filmy figure of a warrior woman.

  “Do you recognize me, blasphemer?” the spirit asked.

  “I do not know you,” he answered, drawing his sword.

  The spirit laughed. “Go ahead, swing a sword at a spirit. See ho
w safe that makes you feel.”

  Marco did so, goaded by the pain and the fear and the confusion and despair that filled his heart and soul. The sword swung through the air with a slight whistle, and the spirit made no motion to avoid it or block it. The blade passed through the spirit, experiencing no resistance, and Marco snapped it to a stop, then swept back through the spirit on the back swing, and the entity laughed again.

  “Would you like to feel my sword?” she asked, and casually pulled her own sword free from the insubstantial scabbard that held the filmy blade, then swung it slowly at Marco, who was paralyzed with fear.

  He felt extreme cold as the blade touched his body, and the cold became piercing pain that traveled through his body along the route of the wispy blade. It left no mark on him, drew no blood, but the pain he felt made Marco drop to his knees and howl with pain.

  The guard looked at him with a satisfied expression on her face, then thrust the sword back into the scabbard she carried, and stood in front of him, watching him writhe in agony.

  “I owed you that,” she said. “We’re not even, but it’ll do.”

  “You owed me what? What did I ever do to you?” Marco cried, looking up as he continued to kneel in front of her.

  “You killed me, for one thing,” the spirit answered.

  Marco stared in astonishment.

  “My name was Mitment, one of the lady’s guards on Ophiuchus. One night on the beach you killed me,” the spirit explained.

  “You tried to kill me! I defended myself,” Marco shouted back. He struggled to his feet, then bent over in pain.

  “Maybe I wouldn’t have killed you all the way – who knows?” the spirit said with a shrug. “I was there for a purpose, to carry out my duty to protect the lady, and it turned out to cost me my life.”

  “I was no threat to Lady Iasco!” Marco said hotly. “I respect her. And she has been good to me. She has saved my life a time or two, if truth be known.”

  “She has to now. But you are also the reason she has to. You triggered the prophecy, and now her days are numbered,” the spirit answered. “Get up, and let’s get going.”

  “Going? Going where? What did I have to do with a prophecy?” Marco asked. He reached out to grab the spirit’s shoulder, to force answers from her, but his hand passed through the filmy nothingness that she possessed, making her laugh.

  “Come follow me for a while, and we’ll talk. You’ve got a long journey ahead of you,” Mitment answered, and she started walking down the sloping tunnel, back down towards the vast cavern of the dead.

  Chapter 27 – The Memories Lost

  “Come on, mighty warrior. Can’t you go any faster?” Mitment asked minutes later as Marco lagged behind her rapid pace.

  “I’ve fought the Echidna and a volcano, and I’m lucky to be alive,” he gasped with annoyance, more annoyed at his own prolonged state of injury than at the unpleasant spirit that was apparently guiding him. “I can’t go any faster.”

  The spirit slowed and then stopped to wait for him. They were in one of the portions of the cave that sloped steeply, and Marco slid down to her more than walked.

  “Fought the Echidna? And you’re alive? That’s an impressive claim,” the guard said.

  “What did I have to do with a prophecy?” Marco asked as he stopped next to her.

  “There are many prophecies about the island, but the oldest, and the most feared, told about what would happen if a man ever set foot on the island,” Mitment told him. She started walking again as soon as he reached her. “The prophecy said that the island would be invaded, and the lady’s heart would cease beating once a man walked on the island.”

  “The lady’s heart? Lady Iasco’s heart would stop beating? She’d die in an invasion?” Marco asked, both fearfully and dismissively. “I’ve seen her several times since I first stepped on the island – which wasn’t my idea in the first place, mind you, we went there after being kidnapped – and she was fine.”

  “Nothing said it had to be immediate,” Mitment said as she reached the bottom of the tunnel and emerged into the vast cavern.

  “Is there any water nearby?” Marco asked, feeling his throat grow parched. It had been hours since he’d last had a drink, at the stream in the cave so long ago.

  “We’ll pass a river eventually, but you can’t drink that water,” Mitment answered. “There is a fountain, but,” she left the point unfinished.

  “But what?” Marco asked.

  “There are consequences for a living person to drinking its water,” the spirit said. “Can you wait?”

  “Wait how long?” Marco answered her question with a question. “I haven’t had anything to drink in hours, maybe a day or more. I need to stay alive; I need water.

  “I have the scale of the Echidna, and it was the spirit of the island of Ophiuchus itself that commanded me to acquire it. Is that part of your prophecy?” he returned to the other topic.

  The spirit gave him a backhanded slap, a painful chill that passed through his cheek and his mouth and his jaw, making him scream in pain and fall to his knees again.

  “Don’t you speak of the prophecy in that way,” Mitment hissed. “You respect it!

  “I was told to be your guide; the light sent me. I was told you need to return to the surface for an important mission. I wasn’t told why,” the guard told Marco. “Are you saying that the island itself spoke to you? How is that possible?”

  I was in the caves within the island,” Marco answered, “just like I was when I first arrived there. And a voice spoke from nothingness in the cave, and it told me to bring a scale of the Echidna. That’s all I’ve been doing for months now is trying to get to the Echidna, get the scale, and then return to the island.”

  “If the isle wants the scale, we have to make sure you take it there. You don’t think you could make the journey to the surface, the world of the living without a drink? It will take three days of your time to make the journey,” Mitment told him.

  “No,” Marco gasped. “I can’t go three more days without water. I’ve got a little food,” some of his dried food supplies had not been scattered when his back pack had been shredded, so that he retained a few scraps of food still.

  Mitment stood indecisively. “If it was up to me, I’d let you die here, so that you spirit could just rise up and already be in the underworld.”

  “I’ll go to heaven,” Marco asserted, while wondering if he would.

  “Yeah, sure, we all say that,” Mitment retorted. “That’s what I thought. But this underworld is a step on the journey.”

  “Why would you go to heaven? You tried to kill me!” Marco laughed. “You? In heaven?”

  The spirit pulled its hand back, prepared to strike Marco again, and he shrank back in fear, but the blow didn’t fall. “And you did kill me. You’ve probably killed a great many, haven’t you? And every one of them was justified? There’s no guilty blood on your hands?” she asked.

  “Mortal!” She turned and took two steps away, then turned and walked back to him.

  “If the island needs you, and if you need water, then we’ll go to the fountain of Lethe to get some water for you,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Marco asked.

  “There are consequences to the water of the Lethe,” the spirit said. “You will lose your memories. You will only be able to remember one thing, and until you do that one thing, you will not be able to recover any of your other memories. The task you remember must be trying; it can’t be something stupid, easy, or pleasurable,” she explained. “And it must be meaningful.”

  She started forward across the vast cavern floor, and Marco followed, as she seemed to slow her pace slightly to allow him to keep up. He puzzled over the odd circumstances that Mitment attached to the fountain of Lethe, wondering whether the spirit was making some type of insane joke about the fountain.

  In the meantime, he focused on his journey, and made himself keep moving, step by step, t
hinking about the island and the Lady Iasco. She had been extraordinarily good to him, saving his life and rescuing him, healing him beyond imagination; she hadn’t acted as though she felt any threat from his presence in the island. Had he been in her shoes, knowing the prophecy as she did, he wouldn’t have been nearly as considerate of him as she had been. And the island itself had treated him well. It had invited him to climb up to the temple on his first visit. It had healed him multiple times, and it had been good to him.

  Did the lady and the island know something more about the prophecy, something that made them treat him kindly, or were they simply incredibly gracious?

  “Mitment,” he called as they continued their journey, after puzzling through all those facts, “is there more to the prophecy? Does it say anything else about what happens when a man steps on the island? The island and the lady were both nice to me, nicer that I think would have been expected from such a prophecy.”

  “She was kind to you,” Mitment agreed. “We didn’t understand why; that’s part of what made us so mad, that she was being kind while you were there to kill her. At least that’s what we thought at the time.

  “There may be more to the prophecy; I don’t know,” the spirit said. “Now just keep walking.”

  They continued on in silence, as Marco’s humanity was noticed, and spirits starting coming to him asking him to take messages back to the surface, until Mitment stopped their trip and shouted at the spirits to leave them alone.

  After that they walked on in solitude for some time longer, Marco’s mouth and throat growing drier and more uncomfortable minute by minute. They began to climb a small hill, and Mitment turned to him. “We’re almost there. Have you thought of what your one memory will be?” she asked.

  “I have,” Marco answered. He had been thinking long and hard, trying to fashion the one memory that he could be sure would direct his feet towards the appropriate place. He couldn’t simply remind himself to go to the island he knew, for without special dispensation, no man would be allowed on board any vessel that could reach Ophiuchus. And delivery of the scale was the most important task he had. Then once that was done, he would be able to return to Mirra at Sant Jeroni, after more months than he was afraid to imagine.