cast iron cauldrons and marble bowls filled with kindling and small round coals. Then he lifted one of the cauldrons and pulled at a label attached to its handle.
“Instructions explaining how to use the equipment are attached to the equipment itself” he explained, “they are to be accessed using Cognito. Just use it as you learned this morning and make sure that you read all the instructions before using any of the equipment.”
He glared at a young mud, Rowan, who was fiddling with the sparking flints.
“Do not….” He said, his voice hardening, “ Do not, light your fyre bowls until I tell you to.”
Rowan grinned brazenly before placing the flints back down on the bench in front of him.
“Thank you,” said De Lille, a note of irritation in his voice. “When your cell’s Alchemist has brewed your charm, it should be decanted into a glass phial. The charms will then be presented to the loris. The cell whose charm is chosen will become the animal’s guardian. No one ever truly owns a loris. I will now pass the animal amongst you. Do not remove it from his cage. When you have had your turn and have decided on your ingredients, you may begin brewing your charm. Remember, read the instructions on the equipment first.”
Picking up the loris, De Lille strode over to the Mud’s bench and handed the cage to Tamarix, the Mud’s Alchemist. Glancing from her to Rowan he said “You have five minutes, do not waste it.”
Ash turned to the rest of his cell and thumping his fist down on the bench dramatically said “We’re going to ace this.”
Rose was still feeling as if she was about to throw up, she fought hard to show some enthusiasm.
“Lord De Lille made point of saying that to do well we would have to work as a team,” she said. “I have a feeling that this was the most important piece of advice he gave us, and I think that we, more than any of the other cells need to learn how to do that.”
“Surely this is mainly a job for the Alchemy major? Ergo - me,” said Lee pointing to his Ouroboros pin. “Being the Alchemist surely I am likely to have the best chance of success in this, comparatively speaking of course. That is logical is it not?”
“Yes, of course,” said Rose, “but I don’t think Lord De Lille’s advice to work as a team was a throwaway remark Lee. I think he meant us to take it seriously. He said that we should use what we have learned so far, which means what we’ve learned today in Morphology and Cognito. So Ash, who aced Morphology, should be the one to commune with the loris, and Auriel you were able to read much further than the rest of us. How many books did you manage to finish?”
“I finished ten altogether and read up to chapter thirty-two in ‘Medicinal herbs of Ferrum’ by Fern Lindsey.”
She said this almost apologetically, being sensitive to the fact that Rose had not even managed to finish the first chapter of the first book.
“It does make sense if we each use our major potentia doesn’t it?” Said Rose “Ash communes with the Pharmacon loris, Auriel searches her memory for anything she can remember about the loris and then Lee, our Alchemist, brews the charm. In fact, the only person who is quite useless in this task is me.”
Disheartened and feeling rather faint, she sat down on her stool.
“No, that’s not true at all!” said Auriel “It is obvious what your role is. You are the only one of us who is seeing the whole picture, the way we have to go. Rose, it is obvious that your role is to lead us.”
Lee shook his head and frowned, “like the blind, leading the blind…”
A few minutes later, when Lord De Lille finally deposited the loris on their bench, Ash took possession of the cage. Holding it at eye level, he regarded the loris with an air of intense concentration. He half expected it to speak to him, in the same way that the fyre hawk had, but a little disappointingly, it just gazed vacantly back at him with those two enormous liquid black eyes.
Ash began to worry that he was a bit out of his depth, thinking that he would let them all down. Then all at once, and quite unexpectedly, a peculiar feeling of enlightenment spread through him, like warm soup on a cold day and he knew what he had to do.
Intuitively he closed his eyes and at that moment his senses burst open like a giant puffball. He could hear the sound of water splashing, dripping and gurgling; he felt its misty spray on his skin. Then the songs and calls of a myriad of exotic birds and insects filled his head and in his mind’s eye he could see a beautiful forest, star shaped fruits and orange cone shaped flowers. He smelled the aroma of woody spices and tasted the sticky, sweet, smoky flavour of tree sap,
When he opened his eyes, they were met by the unblinking, soulful stare of the loris. ‘Thanks Sloley’ Ash found that he was able to communicate with the animal without speaking a word out loud, ‘I am very pleased to make your acquaintance.’
The loris heard his thoughts and responded by raising both its arms leisurely above his head. Through the bars, Ash tickled the loris under each arm with one outstretched finger and it replied to this by smacking its lips together and producing a beautifully musical clicking, chirping sound.
Then Lord De Lille wandered over and lifted the cage away from him.
“Lord Ash, it looks as if you have made a good impression on our little friend.” He said with a brief smile of approval.
Lee was instantly at his side. “Did it speak to you?” he said, anxiously “What did the loris tell you? Have you got any idea what we need for the charm?”
“He said that his name was Sloley,” said Ash, “and…. if I can get a look at the ingredients that we have…”
He picked up each of the Jars, reading the labels he peered inside and sniffed their contents. Sorting the ingredients into two groups, he placed them down on the bench in front of them. A smile of satisfaction lit his face as he pointed to the group of containers on his left.
“Lee,” he said assuredly, “those are the seven that you’ll need to brew the charm.”
With a look of scepticism, Lee turned the jars around to read their labels. The jars apparently contained Starfruit juice, Saraca flower nectar, Cinnamon tree bark, Green Cricket oil, Maidenhair tree gum, Morning dew and Golden peacock feathers.
“Wait just one minute,” said Auriel. In deep concentration, she picked up one of the jars Ash had discounted. “I think you may have missed something. I remember from reading the ‘Wildlife of the Forests of Ferrum.’ The author wrote about it being the habit of the Pharmacon loris to leave the forests and descend into the halite caves on the borders between Ferrum and Hydrargyrum. Apparently lorises are extremely partial to halite salts. Confidently Auriel picked up the jar marked Halite crystals and handed it to Lee. I’ve a hunch that you’ll need to include this.”
“Strangely,” said Lee, with a look of surprised admiration, “that does make sense. It would be logical for the charm to include a salt. I would need it to grind together some of the solid ingredients.”
Lee regarded the assortment of jars that Ash had set out in front of him. He closed his eyes in an attempt to reach into the black hole which should have held his memories, but instead contained only a vacant, impenetrable, fog. All of them now knew that he had the potentia of a great alchemist. Lee reasoned that if he were to only relax and begin the process, then his unconscious mind should instinctively take over and enable him to brew the charm.
“Ok,” he said at last “let’s do this.”
First he lit the kindling in the fyre bowl. Then taking a golden peacock feather he charred it in the flames, adding salt and cinnamon to the ashes and grinding them into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle. He used the maidenhair gum to bind the powder into a small round pellet. Hesitating for a second, Lee studied the remaining ingredients, before adding the star fruit juice, saraca nectar and morning dew to the cauldron and bringing the mixture to a gentle simmer over the fyre bowl.
The others gathered around him, watching with fascination as he worked. Finally, he stood, tentatively holding the small red coloure
d pellet between his fingers over the cauldron of simmering liquid.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Ash impatiently.
“I don’t know I just feel like I have missed…”
“Magica!” Said Rose breathlessly, “we need to use Magica, think about it. We’ve used the other three potentia. Remember what De Lille said; that we had to work as a team, I‘m sure that means that we need to use magic in the charm.”
“I do not see how we can do that,” said Lee “We have not had our Magica class yet….”
“Lord De Lille told us to listen,” said Rose, “ he was very specific about that. He said that it was crucial that we listened if we wanted to be successful. Well, I did; I listened, and I remember what he called the charm. The charm he asked us to brew is known as a singularis charm.”
Rose spoke in an excited whisper. She had noticed that the bloods on the next bench, though trying very hard to appear focused on their own task, were following their progress intently.
“So we must need to use a singularis command for this charm and cast it together using our potens rings.”
“Yes that’s right!” said Auriel “I remember now, in ‘Introduction to Alchemy’ it said that all charms needed a magical command. Lord De Lille also said something about us needing to make the charm unique to this loris. So the command would probably be something like ‘Singularis
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