Heartbeat

We all rushed to the king’s side as the king continued to convulse. Gwyn turned him on his back. “Feed him the other potion!” he ordered. Kyn handed him the other potion which Gwyn poured down the king’s throat.

After a moment of bated breath, the king relaxed, going limp. After placing his ear to his chest, Gwyn said “he’s alive. A faint but steady heartbeat.”

“When will my grandfather regain consciousness?” Arnya asked the alchemists in the room.

I shrugged. Carina looked blank. Kyn said “well…I don’t know. A failed potion this complicated can do anything. I don’t know how to fix this. I’m sorry.” He was on the verge of tears.

I placed my hand on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Kyn.” Looking around the room, I continued “the only one who might know how to cure him is the real court alchemist. So nothing’s really changed; we still need to bring him back.”

“Except now we’re on a deadline,” Carina said grimly.

I nodded. “Kyn, now that we know for sure which is the correct potion, we need you to keep brewing it. His symptoms went down when he drank the real potion. Maybe if we keep giving it to him, he’ll recover?” I was a long shot, we both knew, but he seemed happy to be told what to do at this point.

Arnya gracefully rose to her feet. “In that case, my friends, we ought to bed. It has grown late, and we shall have a busy time ahead of us.” She made orders to bring the king’s unconscious body into the infirmary before speaking to us again. “I need not tell you the upmost importance of keeping this secret. My grandfather’s faction is already precarious enough as is; if our enemies discovered he is incapacitated, they shall no doubt strike.” She took a deep breath. “In the meantime, I shall act as his representative before the Council of Lords.”

We all nodded. Gwyn and Carina returned to their shared room and Kyn went back to the laboratory. I stepped outside of the hall but lingered near the entrance, suspecting I’d be needed inside again. Sure enough, after a minute or two, the sounds of heavy breathing and gentile sobs filtered out of the dining hall. I reentered to see Arnya at the table, her head in her hands, crying softly.

Quietly, I sat next to her. “It’s going to be all right,” I told her.

A deeper sob. “He is all the family I have left.”

“He’ll be all right.” I thought of the story he had told. “He is a true hero; he won’t die to something like this.”

Arnya now looked me in the eye, candlelight glinting off her tears and making her green hair an ethereal glow. “Be that as it may, I fear that when he awakens, he will find the kingdom ruined.”

“Why?”

She smiled sadly. “Because I cannot keep this fragile kingdom together. I am not my grandfather.”

“No. You’re not.” I placed my hand on her shoulder. “You are you. Princess Arnya of the kingdom. I know you can do it. And if you can’t, you’re not alone. You’ve got Gaz, and Carina, and Gwyn, and Kyn…and me. Working together there’s no way we can lose.” These comforts were platitudes at best, I knew, but judging from the look on her face, they had the desired effect.

I stood up. “Now, get to bed. Like you said, we have a busy time in front of us, and that includes you.” She agreed.

The next morning, I awoke early and walked to the castle smithy I had spotted in previous wanderings of the castle. It mostly dealt with armor and weapons, but I had caught a glimpse of the muscled dogman making other tools. The smith was also awake, the sound of his hammer blows ringing through the misty morning air inside the castle walls. When I stopped in front of his smithy he stopped hammering and woofed a question I thought meant “what is it.”

I described what I wanted. It wasn’t too hard, but it was unusual: just a hollow cylinder of metal as long as my arm, with a simple mechanism at one end. The smith was clearly puzzled at the request but he barked affirmation.

Satisfied, I returned to the lab, where I immediately began mixing some of the ingredients together. I only used charcoal, sulfur, and a bit of saltpeter, making this recipe far easier than alchemy. It didn’t take long to finish this, either.

Next I checked on the king. He was still unconscious in the infirmary. The matronly woman I recognized from my stay here was dribbling soup into the mouth of another patient, but she chased me out as soon as she saw me, stating that the sick needed their rest.

That left me with one last thing I could think of doing to help with this situation, but I couldn’t do it alone. I went in search of Arnya, but I didn’t have to look far. The sound of yelling made her hard to miss.

She was in the training grounds, sparring Gwyn. As I approached, she let out a battle cry and charged him.

In my brief attempts at learning swordplay, I was always so much weaker than Arnya that we had never sparred. I had glimpsed some of her training with the dogmen guards, but those had been closer to drills than a real fight. So for the first time, I got to see Arnya really in action.

She was, in a word, breathtaking. In just the moments I watched, she performed feats of athleticism that would put a trained acrobat to shame. Despite her thin frame, the deafening ring of blade on blade emphasized her raw strength, yet not a finger was out of control. It seemed inhuman.

Gwyn, clearly, was highly skilled too; he seemed at least as good as Olympic-level fencers. It perhaps took Arnya longer than it should have to end the round—I guessed that Gwyn, with more actual combat experience, could outmaneuver her for a little while—but the end was never in question. Within a few seconds, Gwyn was overwhelmed, his sword was kicked out of his hands, and he was knocked down by a body blow.

Carina, standing on the sidelines, applauded. I joined in but jogged closer to them. “Hey, Arnya? Can I ask you a few questions?”

She wiped the sweat from her brow. “Of course, Rei.”

“You too, Carina.” I looked down at the winded Gwyn. “I could use your help too if you’re up to it.”

“But of course,” Gwyn wheezed, his golden eyes watering.

I said “I think I know, but I have to confirm. Can anybody be a sorcerer and an alchemist at the same time?”

All three shook their heads. Carina answered “the two arts are fundamentally incompatible. Sorcerers are descended from the elves and have a natural gift for sorcery. Alchemists are ordinary humans who train to use their art.”

I nodded; so far, so good. “Arnya. You’re one-quarter elf, right? One of the first ones in a long time to have so much elf heritage?”

“That is correct. Of course, my father was half-elf, making his blood purer than mine, but as you know, he is no longer in the human realms.”

“Right. From what I’ve heard, your dad was a strong sorcerer, so why aren’t you one?”

Gwyn looked troubled, or at least as troubled as one can be when flat on one’s back gasping for air. “That is a sensitive—” he began, but Arnya cut him off.

“It is all right. Yes, Rei, by all rights I should be a sorcerer. However, when I was a child, just before my father left, he used his power to seal my own.”

“Seal it?”

“Yes. As I was brand-new to the art at the time, and as he possessed a close bond to me as my father, he locked away my sorcery within me and threw away the key, so to speak. I can never again use sorcery.” She kept her face stoic, but a faint tremble in her voice betrayed a pain in the words.

“What if I could get you that key?”

“Rei, you are not a sorcerer.”

“But I'm an alchemist (kind of). Hear me out: to do alchemy, you have to be awakened, right? And one way to be awakened is a sorcerer unlocking your power!” Judging by their expressions, Gwyn and Arnya still didn’t get it but Carina was catching on. “This proves the two systems are connected somehow. So if a sorcerer can unlock an alchemist’s power, why couldn't an alchemist unlock a sorcerer?”

Carina slowly said “It could work, in theory. But, no offense, you’re not a good enough alchemist to invent something like that. None of us are. Besides, we must focus our attention on getting back the original Rei.” She had a point.

Gwyn pulled himself to his feet. “As my wife says, time is not our ally. We ought to return to our tasks.” He raised his sword again toward Arnya.

Carina jerked her head at me. I nodded and the two of us returned to the laboratory to rejoin Kyn and continue looking for a way to switch us back. After all, Arnya didn’t need me right now; she needed the Court Alchemist.