Chapter 47

Beneath the dim firelight, a dark-haired youth stood at the Alchemical Table, hands moving with a practiced grace between sacks of herbs, the scale, the pestle, the black cauldron and the bellows rope. Two ounces of air-dried celandine, one ounce of nettle; each into the mortar. Use half your strength, grind while stirring, two strikes a second, count to a thousand. A quarter pot of water into the iron cauldron ... Add the crushed herbs in order ... Simmer...

The steps were not complex, yet every motion measured as if with a ruler: precise, economical, the pressure exactly right. A quarter hour later, he put out the fire. The boy gripped the pot handle, gave his wrist a practiced shake to even the liquid, then, steady and swift, poured the still-unboiled brew into a necked vial. Not a drop spilled.

He lifted the pale yellow potion to his nose. The scent of chrysanthemum rose clean and quiet. Then, with hands careful and a little reverent, he offered it to the bald man watching with arms folded, Letho. “Letho, take a look, how’s this one?”

Letho sniffed, then dabbed a fingertip in the liquid, popped it into his mouth and closed his eyes to feel it.

Roy wiped the sweat beading across his forehead. His hands were clenched as if awaiting a judge’s verdict. He looked like a man bracing for punishment. Tension ran through him.

“Kid, congratulations.”

Roy exhaled a long breath as if a weight had been lifted. He spread his arms and spun once on the spot, almost in tears from relief. No one could know what these three days had been for him. Beyond the routine drills, he began each dawn with alchemy and ended each night with meditation.

To him, potioncraft had been far more tedious and exacting than crossbow training. Whether in his old life or this one, Roy had never cared much for fine apparatus. But the Viper Witcher Letho prized alchemy; his standards were merciless. Roy wished, some nights, for a skill that ignited in an instant.

“Hmm. This celandine potion is not as refined as most rural apothecaries’ work,” the Witcher said, “but it works. You just need repetition. Make hundreds, keep making them, the quality will rise.”

“Right,” Roy said, the question bubbling up, “Letho, if this is better than plain herb treatment, could we sell it? Would it move, make coin?”

Letho shook his head. He explained patiently, “Anyone who thinks of that has to understand the market. Peasants think potions too dear; they’ll buy cheap raw herbs instead. The wealthy don’t need celandine potions; they have renowned physicians who visit them. Medicine in any city is tied up with tangled interests, open and secret. If you hawk potions on the street and get lucky enough to sell a few, someone will report you and you’ll spend a month in a cell with nothing but rats.”