Previous | First

I held on to the kelvin tightly, even though its heat burned my paw.  I had the allcure, after all, and the poor gryphon, now in tears, seemed to need help.

I wouldn’t let him go.  “Here,” I said, offering him the panacea with my free paw.  “You’ll be all right.”

The gryphon looked up at me, still lost, still miserable.  Of course.

“The translation doesn’t work down here, does it…? You don’t understand me at all.”

Kelvins didn’t talk, but surely they listened… what did they understand? “Weĉjo ijen?” No reaction. “Samskrtam?” No reaction.

My paw was surely blistering from the kelvin’s heat, but on the bright side it didn’t have much feeling left.

“Munk,” I said, addressing the golem, “Is there anything nearby I can use to communicate with him?”

Munk came near and put on big clay hand on my head and another on the kelvin’s.

And there was a thought in my head—it wasn’t spoken, just the memory of words I understood, though not in any language I knew: “He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.”

You’ve seen the city of jasper, I thought.

The kelvin did not appear to have heard the thought.

“But this was promised to us,” I said, and this time the kelvin noticed.  “Weren’t we told… ‘Never again will there be an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years—he who dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth—he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed?’”

It pays to keep a local copy of some things.

“It’s not the promise of the city, where there’ll be no death, but it is a promise that we can fight it a good long time, barring the sudden accident…”

I was rambling. I was fairly sure the kelvin’s heat was travelling up my arm; I was getting sweaty.

“Please, let me help you.” I offered the panacea again.

The kelvin disappeared.

All right.

I took the bowl—awkwardly, as my burned paw wouldn’t cooperate with holding it—and drank the liquid light till I felt the pain fully dissolve.

Previous | First

It didn’t even take me long to put the formula together—it would have been difficult or impossible for the ancient alchemists, but that was only because of collecting the ingredients; both lunar and terrestrial components were required.

The golem’s locating ability helped me find everything easily in the giant’s laboratory.  From what I could see, most of the supplies were quite stale; whoever had worked here had not been here in a very long time.  Fortunately nothing organic was needed.

The final product glowed with the pearlescence of mixed moonlight and earthlight—slowly growing brighter as the last reaction took place.

I noticed one of the kelvins had appeared and was watching me.  “Does this place belong to you all?” I said.  “I’m sorry I didn’t ask first—my foot got crushed and my golem brought me here to fix it.”

The kelvin’s initial look of sadness deepened to outright desperation.

“Do you need this too?” I said.  “There’s enough to share here…”

I went up to the kelvin, limping carefully, and moved to put my paw on his shoulder—and felt a powerful disinclination as I got closer.

“Let me touch you,” I said.  “I won’t hurt you.  C’mon…”

The kelvin didn’t respond.  I pushed through the resistance till finally my paw closed on his shoulder.  I tried to make it a reassuring touch, but the kelvin’s body was very hot—almost burning to the touch.