The Gorgon's Blood Solution

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Marco went back underwater and began to swim again for several seconds, then came to the surface again to breath, then went back beneath the water again and emitted his cry for help. When he came up again for air his arms were starting to burn with exhaustion, and the rowboat was closing in upon him in pursuit. He gulped the damp air, and started to plunge back under the water when he suddenly felt himself jostled from beneath.

  Each hand instinctively grasped a dorsal fin for a different dolphin, and he saw other fins in the water around him, as he was suddenly accelerated away from his pursuers. The dolphins carried him under the surface of the water, and he felt their speed increase, as a cacophony of their noisy chatter suddenly filled his ears.

  Seconds later they rose to the surface, allowing him to take a breath as he saw the larger ships receding from his view, then they plunged into the sea again for another short burst of speed.

  After several more repetitions of the breath-and-dive routine, the dolphins came to the surface and slowed their progress significantly. Marco raised his head to look around, but could no longer even see the ships from the isle of Ophiuchus from his low vantage point.

  He dipped his face into the water. “Thank you, friends. Thank you,” he told them. “I do not speak your words well,” he added one more of the handful of phrases he had learned, and listened to a burst of what seemed to him must be laughter.

  There were several dolphins nearby, perhaps eight or nine, he thought he counted. He listened carefully as one of them spoke, but only could understand the words “where” and “dry” among all that his escort said.

  “Dry land, close, me,” was all he could string together to try to express to them what he wanted, but after only moments of exchange among themselves, the pod began to move, staying on the surface with occasional dips below the water. They took turns carrying Marco, he realized, as one dolphin on one side dropped away to be replaced, and then the same thing happened for his other hand.

  He was in the water for hours, but as nightfall cast red rays across the sea, a dark shadow suddenly loomed overhead, and he realized that he had been delivered to land. He heard the sound of breakers, as waves rolled onto a shoreline, and he felt his face break into a teary smile.

  “Thank you, thank you. Me thank you,” he repeated his gratitude, as he released his grasp on their dorsal fins and felt his feet touch a sandy bottom.

  “Kieweeooee glad to help,” one of the dolphins told him, making Marco laugh at the polite exchange he had with the members of the pod. The animals turned and began to swim away, and in a moment of synchronized motion, they all leapt out of the water together, then disappeared from view.

  Marco waded up onto the shore in the growing darkness, joyous with the notion that for the first time since he had been on the pier in the Lion City, he was on land and free and healthy; healthy but hungry he corrected himself. There was a dim glow in the sky to his right, a sign, he hoped, of the lights of a city, so he began trudging along the beach.

  A half-moon was in the eastern sky, and the waves that reached the shore carried a faint phosphorescence that provided him with sufficient light to pick out a path along the beach. Within half an hour he rounded a point, and saw the faint twinkling lights of a city spread along a harbor front not a great distance away. He looked up to his left at the bank that rose above him, and realized that there were fisherman’s cottages spread along the way.

  He walked on the beach for several more minutes, then climbed up and over a grassy dune to find his way to a road that led towards the city. After just a few more minutes he spotted a pair of other travelers also walking towards the city, and he laughed out loud, as he saw by their figures and their strides that they were men, proof positive that he had escaped from the isle of women.

  The city had walls, and he passed through the gate that was watched by several casual guards. Marco felt a second wave of relief to be within the city, safer – he was sure – from the grasping reach of Lady Iasco. But it was night, he had no money, no food, and he had no idea what city he was even in. He walked through the streets and then walked into the alleys behind the taverns, risking confrontation with anyone who happened to skulk within the darkness there, and waited at the back door of each tavern he discovered. He accepted several scraps – something that he had learned was possible in the Lion City, though he’s never done it himself before.

  One tavern cook was even kindly about it, letting him have a chop of mutton that would have been palatable even if he’d been a paying customer sitting in the front room of the establishment. Marco told himself that someday he’d visit the tavern as a paying customer if he could, to thank the kindly, toothless woman who showed him such generosity.

  That night he slept in a dark side chapel in the city’s cathedral. He felt safe there, away from the more dangerous elements that lived on the streets, and in the morning, when he woke up stiff and sore on the hard cold floor, he said a long prayer of thanksgiving for the new opportunity to begin his life once more.

  “You there, stop loitering,” a man’s voice called as Marco knelt at the railing. The voice was close by, and Marco looked up quickly to see a friar standing behind him.

  “Pardon me, father,” Marco said meekly, as he stood to leave.

  “Were you truly praying, son?” the man asked.

  “I was, but my prayers are done. I’ll leave now,” Marco answered.

  The friar studied him closely. “Do you have someplace to go?” he asked.

  Marco hesitated. He had tried to plan what he would do; he knew he wanted to get back to the Lion City, to the life there that was the only life he knew.

  “I was going to go find the alchemist shops, to see if I could earn some money,” Marco said. “I’m an apprentice, and I’d like to go back home.”

  “No apprentice should be here right now; you should be in your shop serving your master!” the friar exclaimed.

  “My master and his shop are in the Lion City,” Marco answered, “and I’ll need to work my way back there.

  “Can you tell me where the alchemist shops are in this city? What city is this, by the way?” he asked.

  The brown-robed friar looked at him strangely. “You’re in the great cathedral of Barcelon, of course, a very long way from the Lion City. If you go to the right once you leave the front gate of the cathedral grounds, you’ll come to a square where there are three reputable alchemist establishments,” he advised, and then gave a hasty blessing to Marco before he walked away.

  Chapter 13 – Marches’ Shop

  Marco followed the directions the priest had given to walk through Barcelona to the nearest cluster of alchemy shops. He had heard of Barcelona, in Iberia, before. Ships sailed there from the Lion City, he knew, but he knew nothing else about the city, except that he was now walking its streets.

  Foot traffic was increasing in the streets of the city, and when he got to the square where the alchemists were, he discovered that a food market was already active, providing the ambitious shoppers and sellers of the morning goods with a place to make their exchanges. Marco skirted around the perimeter of the market, hungrily eyeing the fruits for sale, and headed towards the first alchemy shop he saw.

  Two of the shops were nearly side-by-side near one corner of the square, while the third shop was along a different portion of the perimeter. Of the two that were close to one another, separated only by a bakery whose products Marco worried might be contaminated by its neighbors, one looked prosperous and the other did not.

  The prosperous-looking shop was not yet open. Nor was its nearby neighbor, but there was an open door at the third shop across the way. Marco shifted his direction and approached the shop that was open. He paused in the open doorway, and looked in upon a bright and cheery interior, one lit by beams of light coming in through the open windows. It was substantially different from the dark interior of Algornia’s shop, he noted, as he looked at the shelves behind the counter, filled with tidy and orderly jars and va
ses that were labeled.

  “May I help you?” a man asked in a neutral voice, asking from the corner of the shop where he was wielding a broom to sweep the floor clean.

  Marco looked at the man, the very portrait of a successful small businessman. He was tall and thin, wearing spectacles, neatly dressed.

  “I’ve been an apprentice to an alchemist in the Lion City,” Marco said. “I’m looking for work so I can earn enough money to sail back home.” He had thought about what to say, and had decided that he needed to reveal both his experience and his motivation in one quick, simple statement.

  “I have an apprentice, I keep him busy, but I don’t need another,” the shopkeeper quickly answered. “Good luck,” he said, and he resumed sweeping his broom back and forth.

  “Is there a shop you think I can find work at?” Marco ventured to ask.

  “Well,” the man paused his labor once again, “across the square there’s Applied, and Marches. Applied has all the help it wants, and Marches needs help, but can’t afford to pay you anything. It’s your choice,” he gave his brief assessment, and started sweeping again.

  With a wave of thanks, Marco crossed the square to look at the other two shops. The prosperous shop’s sign identified it as Applied, and its door opened as Macro approached, signaling that it too had started its business day. The other shop, Marches, remained dark and closed. And between them sat the bakery, open and smelling both sweet and savory as its open door and open window allowed its aroma to waft out into the square, making every passerby hungry.

  He watched two large women behind the bakery counter, visible inside the shop, passing baked goods across the counter to customers who entered and left on a regular basis. Marco felt his own mouth watering from the delightful odors that came from the shop, then shifted his attention as he saw an elderly woman open the door of the other alchemist shop, Marches.

  The young apprentice walked determinedly over to the door, and walked inside the shop, and caught up with the lady just as she reached the counter.

  “Goodness!” she said in startlement as she turned and found Marco behind her. “I just opened that door. You must be in quite a need for something.”

  “Actually, I’m a trained apprentice alchemist, and I was coming in to find out if you have any work I could carry out for you. I’m trying to earn money to go back to the Lion City,” he blurted out his story.

  “I had an apprentice, but he left just six months ago to go work for Applied,” the woman told him. “This was my husband’s shop, but he passed a year ago. I don’t know the trade, and about all I do now is sell supplies. I open the shop each morning mostly because I don’t have anything else to do,” she told him. “I’m afraid I don’t have enough business to offer you a job. But I wish you good luck,” she said.

  “Maybe I could mix up some potions for you to sell,” Marco suggested. He had an inkling that Applied must have lured the apprentice away from Marches in order to close the shop down, and wasn’t likely to hire anyone else, he guessed. “If you’ve already got the supplies in stock, I could mix some simple formulae for you to sell,” Marco proposed.

  “I couldn’t pay you,” the grandmotherly woman objected.

  “If you could give me a place to sleep and a couple of meals a day, I’ll only take a part of the price of anything I make that gets sold,” he bargained. He felt that this place was the only place he could hope to get a position, and at the very least, he wanted to have a roof over his head.

  “Are you that desperate?” the woman shrewdly asked, looking at him with a much more perceptive glance than he had expected from her grandmotherly appearance.

  “I am,” he admitted, blushing slightly.

  “Then you can stay here for a fortnight, and we’ll see how that works. There’s a room in the back garret where you can stay, and I’ll give you a hearty breakfast every morning,” she told him. “Go get your things and bring them in here, and we’ll go look at the room.”

  “I don’t have any things, other than what I’m wearing,” Marco admitted in a low voice.

  She cocked her head and looked at him. “Who or what are you running away from? Are you in trouble?” she asked.

  “I was running away from a woman, after I left my master,” he hung his head. “But I’m not a criminal, not going to hurt anyone or steal anything,” he quickly added.

  “You don’t look like you would,” the woman affirmed. “Come along and take a look at the garret room and see if you want to stay there,” she turned and led him behind the counter, then through a doorway, and down a long hall with many doorways, and eventually to the back of the building, where they found a narrow, dark, twisting staircase.

  They climbed high, until they finally stopped in pitch darkness as the woman fumbled with a latch and opened a door, letting dim light into an expansive attic space, filled with trunks and furniture. “Over there’s the pallet,” the woman pointed towards a gable with a window.

  “I live on the floor below this one. It has a separate staircase. Do you want to look things over?” she asked.

  “No,” Marco replied. “I’ll take this. It’s kind of you to offer. If you’ll take me to your husband’s supplies, I’ll start looking to see what I can prepare.”

  “In a hurry to work? That’s good. Let’s go downstairs. You can look around, and I’ll fix you a bite of breakfast; I wager you haven’t had anything yet, have you?” she asked.

  They went back down the stairs and along the hallway to where the woman opened a door, revealing a sunny room where sunshine entered through high windows. “Here’s my husband’s workshop. Make yourself at home. I’ll be in the back in the kitchen,” she said.

  “Wait,” Marco said. “What’s your name?”

  “I am Gabrielle, formerly wife to Marches,” she said with a smile. “And what is your name, my boarder?”

  “Marco,” he answered simply.

  “Welcome home, Marco,” she smiled, then left him alone to look at his new workplace.

  The alchemy shop had once been a busy, well-provisioned place, Marco saw, as he looked at jars and crates and vases and bags of items that were scattered around the room. Several were sitting open, evident that they had been improperly used, and improperly put away by someone who didn’t respect the value within. There were more ingredients available than Algornia had ever stocked in his Lion City shop, he saw. He began to walk around the room, putting away items that were sloppily laid about, and pausing to close up containers and tidy up spilled material.

  As he saw and touched various items, he experienced unusual flashes of memory. It happened once when he smelled a pungent spice, once when he felt the slippery texture of quicksilver, and once again when he saw the bright orange color of crystals of wulfenite. The memories eluded him when they first occurred, but the fourth time he had such a flash he realized he was recalling details of formulae that he had read in the Book of Hermes on the island of Ophiuchus.

  He noticed a small, dark black box, one that appeared to be sealed with wax, set high on a shelf. He stood upon his toetips to reach the box and pulled it down, curious about what was inside, for the symbols on the outside were unlike anything he had ever seen. He awkwardly used the tip of his sword to cut the wax seal open, then he opened the box, and found an even smaller glass vial within, no taller than his small finger. He pulled the stopper from the vial, and looked straight down into the container, where he saw dark crystalline flakes filling a quarter of the vial.

  Marco delicately lowered the tip of his finger into the vial to touch the flakes. As soon as his skin came in contact with the material he felt an intense burning sensation, and he whipped his finger free from the container. Quickly placing the vial on the surface of the workbench, Marco ran to the kitchen where Gabrielle was cooking, and he plunged his hand into a bucket of water.

  “What’s this all about?” she asked in surprise, looking at him.

  Marco rubbed his thumb over the burned spot on his finger
tip while still in the bucket, then pulled his hand from the water and looked at the bloody red spot, which he showed to his landlord.

  “Just a slight burn,” he said, unwilling to tell her what he thought had happened. He had touched dried gorgon’s blood! Old Marches had possessed a vial of one of the rarest elements in the alchemical apothecary – one that was impossible to find, priceless to purchase, and to be used only in the most extraordinary of formulae. It had to be gorgon’s blood! He would have to consider which impossible recipe to concoct to find out if the fabled material was truly residing in the simple glass container.

  “You be careful in there. I don’t want you getting hurt on your first morning. I don’t want you getting hurt at all,” she warned him.

  “I’ll be careful, thanks,” Marco said, as he left the kitchen to return to the work room.

  When he reached the work room he was shocked to find two men going through the supplies he had just started to organize. They each held several small leather pouches of material.

  “Can I help you?” Marco asked, causing them both to whirl in surprise and look at him.

  “Who are you?” the stouter of the two asked.

  “I’m the new apprentice here, helping Gabrielle,” Marco answered. “Who are you, what are you doing in her supply room, and what do you have?”

  “We’re her neighbors from Applied. She lets us borrow items when we need something in a pinch,” the other man said. He was older, more than old enough to be Marco’s father.

  “That looks like a pretty big pinch,” Marco heard himself say, surprised at his own willingness to stand up to the men. “And it looks like you’re slobs too. You left this room in a mess the last time you were here apparently. Let’s weigh everything you’re taking right now so we know exactly what you owe Gabrielle.”