A Measure of Luck

Luck’s such a strange and fickle thing. Stranger still when distilled into liquid form.

One night, while experimenting with potions, the alchemists Nico and Perri got superlatively drunk and fell unconscious, leaving their alembic over the campfire embers and a simple pewter chalice to receive the distillation. When they awoke it was still night, and a raven was peering into the chalice.

The raven had cataract eyes. And human feet.

It spat in the brew, then flew off into the dark.

Nico was a logical and ambitious fellow. Witnessing the raven chilled him to his core. He wondered aloud what it could mean.

Perri had an impeccable mind for ingredients, but was not the sharpest sword in the weaponry. He contributed that he was almost completely sure he’d never before seen a raven with human feet.

They tried to replicate the potion. They failed. Neither alchemist remembered the recipe and their notes from that night were a mess — in the corner of one diagram Nico had written the disjointed instruction, “without breeches,” and shuddered to imagine what they’d done. But further research convinced them that the raven had been Wendra, the god of fortune and caprice.

As for the distillation itself, it would tolerate no vessel other than that pewter chalice. All the alchemists knew was that pouring a drop or two out brought good fortune. Deals would shortly close in their favor, weather would clear, essential supplies would appear on roadsides as though tumbled from wagons mere minutes past. The chalice’s contents were nothing less than liquid luck.

Nico kept a leather cover tied over the chalice so it wouldn’t spill, and the chalice within his coat next to his heart. Its contents were finite; they poured only sparingly. But in this way they forged a trail to success and security, leading them years later to that company of thirty-some mercenaries passing through the forest beneath a fog that scratched the dark canopy, heading for a mountain lake.

‘Twas wet and surprisingly cool up here — the ferns shook with water when brushed by their horses’ legs. Their path had diminished to hardly a deertrail and the company dismounted and led their animals when Tenchoz, the mercenary leader, ordered his threescore to halt. “Nico!” he called down the line.

Nico and Perri hurried to the front with their mule. In their packs they carried squares of linen for straining, jars of tallow, powdered herbs twisted into simples, a foldable hand-balance, vessels of mentrua — oil, vinegar, wine, grain alcohol — and a padded cedar chest of glass phials. Dark bottles of infusing ingredients dangled from strings on either side of their mule like crude decorations. “Aye, sir!” answered Nico. “Your official company alchemists are at your service!”

Despite the small size of their company, Tenchoz had made a roaring profit as a mercenary — he and his men wore flamboyant colors and fine armor, and just six months ago he’d purchased expensive destriers for everyone except the alchemists. But as his fortune had grown, so had his ego. When he smiled at Nico, ‘twasn’t kindly. “My official alchemists?”

Nico tried to laugh, but instead squeaked. “Well… nigh two years we’ve accompanied you, and we’ve made potions, Sir—”

“Yet not the one I’ve requested, the ‘rage draught.’”

“No, sir. Not yet. But perhaps soon! Aye, Perri?”

Perri frowned at his partner. “Nico, just last night you said we can’t complete it. And then you called Sir Tenchoz an a—”

“Aye, Sir!” Nico whipped back to the mercenary. “‘Twill be done!”

Tenchoz still smiled. He seemed to enjoy these alchemists as pets. “Mark this slope. For it will be part of my kingdom.” He looked around. “Observe how one side runs downhill, the other up?”

“Aye, we see,” answered Nico.

“And on the downslope… see those stone ruins.”

As they looked, they observed among the bracken and umbrage the broken walls, the stone footprints, and the terraces.

“The folk of this region still tell the stories: centuries ago, everyone in that village died, all at once. They say a ghost claimed them. And that ghost…” Tenchoz turned around, “dwells at a cursed lake up yonder.”

He pointed uphill now, where the forest grew even thicker and the clouds mingled with the trees.

“Witches gathered there too, before the Creed. The lake has a promontory to one side where come nightfall they would hurl sacrifices to keep the lake ghost satiated: slaves, goats, infants. Then the Creed came, and ‘twas the witches’ turn to be thrown. You’ll see it once we’re up there.”

Nico started. “‘Up there,’ Sir?”

“Aye, we’ll make camp at the lake.”

“But… but why there? Why not hide here among these ruins.”

“Because,” and here the mercenary leader darkened, “that is what Varla would expect.”

Varla was his nemesis, the rival mercenary leader with whom he’d feuded for years. At the mention of Varla, Tenchoz mood would turn to thunderheads.

“Scout ahead for me, my alchemists.”

“We? Scout?”

“Aye. Scout.”

“W-we are not scouts, Sir! We know naught of such—”

“What say you, Sir Uldricus?”

Tenchoz’s second-in-command, a mountainous warrior with thick red beard named Uldricus, stood nearby, and answered Tenchoz’s query with a low growl. Nico had never heard him speak.

Tenchoz listened to this animal utterance, nodded pensively, then exploded into laughter. “You are wise, Sir Uldricus! You are wise!” He turned his jollity toward the alchemists. “Isn’t he wise? Far wiser than you pair. You see, alchemists, men of strength do not wait for fortune to befall them. They forge it with their swordarm. Now up the hill, and be not bashful. They even say the lake’s steady clime helped the witches cultivate their herbs. You like herbs, aye?”

“Ooh! Grand!” shouted Perri. He set off like a badger and disappeared among the undergrowth, and Nico followed shortly behind.

***

Moss furred every branch and carpeted the floor among the fronds. Dark leaves obstructed the sky. The sound of birds and creeks unseen. Footsteps noiseless.

“Perri?” Nico called, his voice muffled by the overgrowth and hand unconsciously on the chalice.

“Up here! Come on!”

The incline rose. The roots grew tighter, the air colder and thicker. Spruces and firs prevailed, their roots tangling the ground. Boughs bent and ferns grew atop them. Fallen trees sprouted more trees. The profuse and virid life all around only made the forest darker, more menacing. And the land was still rising. “Perri, if you don’t slow down…”

“Just yonder!” called Perri. “I see it!”

The slope decreased, and they came to the lake, cloudcapped and nestled in a mountain cradle.

The lake’s waters were still. Its banks were steep, barren, rimmed with ferrous-brown silt. Almost perfectly round. Clouds clung to its surface and linked like cobwebs to the lowlying clouds. To the alchemists’ right at the lake’s edge jutted a high rock a hundred feet high like an ambo for an unholy church. Asteep slope on one side permitted ascent.

The alchemists stood side-by-side, staring, trapped by the water’s spell.

The air was cold. So cold.

“Three nights,” said a woman standing right next to them.

Both alchemists screamed and fell, but the woman did not move. Young face, old hair. A simple kirtle with linen tied over her eyes. Without turning her head she pointed at the sacrificial high rock and repeated:

“Three nights. In three nights, death returns.”

Then she stepped forth and down the embankment, leaving her footprints in the silt. The lake’s bottom was steep — she sank in moments and did not emerge.

***

As children, Nico and Perri had grown up in the same rural village. Then famine struck and starvation killed family after family. Nico and Perri took to the road without money or food. At the height of desperation they ate raw grass. Nico still remembered the bitter taste, the fresh smell, the green foam dribbling down their hollow faces, the look in Perri’s eyes…

He was never letting them eat grass again. Never.

“We’re not leaving,” he told Perri as they sat around a lantern in Tenchoz’s camp that night. Getting the equipment and horses up the hill had taken the rest of the day, and now they camped in a boulder field near the lake’s edge just below the stone promontory.

“I don’t like this place, Nico. I tell you I don’t like it.”

“This time next year, Tenchoz will have saved enough to purchase his own castle… sooner if he quells Sir Varla and receives extra work! A castle, Perri! Do you realize what that means for us? And if we can help him in that quelling he’ll be indebted to us!”

“But you heard the lass…” He glanced toward the lake. “‘In three nights, death comes!’”

“Mayhap ‘twas Varla’s death she spoke of.”

“Or ours! And how was that lass able to swim so well?”

“We can… wait, what do you mean, ‘swim well?’”

“Well, we saw her go under and she never emerged! She must have mighty lungs!”

Nico stared. “Perri. That was a ghost.”

Perri paused. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Oh. Oh! Oh! Then we should certainly leave!”

“We’re not leaving! Lo, we’ve the antidote.”

“To what?”

“Everything.” Nico produced the chalice. In spite of their conservative usage it had grown strangely heavier over the years. Mysteries among mysteries.

Perri grew quiet. “That chalice is our gold, though. Maybe we should save it.”

“Nay, we’ve enough.”

Three drops shed, landing in a row of perfect beads. They quivered momentarily on the ground, then began rolling uphill as if in reverse. They expected the strangeness — every time they had ever poured, the luck had behaved differently.

“Now,” said Nico, visibly relaxing, “let’s rest. The future holds no fears for us.”

***

Dawn broke foggy and never improved. Drizzly rain obscured the lake’s face. Tenchoz woke with a splitting headache which soured his whole mood.

“We should have scouts everywhere by now! Thirty of you, yet none have yet located Varla? Alchemists!”

“Aye, Sir! Your offic…” he caught himself and cleared his throat. “We’re here.”

“There may be bloodshed today. I require that which was promised.”

“What, the rage draught?” Nico scratched his scalp.

“Three weeks ago you said you’d have it.”

“Three weeks ago we were in Regenhange and could trade for the missing ingredients! We’ve been traveling since!”

“Are we traveling today?”

“No.”

“Then forage! Surely an ancient witches’ forest should have what you need.”

“‘Tisn’t any simple herbs we need, Sir. We’ve the nightshade, the belladonna, the mandrake…”

Perri took out the bottle and waved it proudly.

“But we need more,” Nico explained. “And even if we’ve the means to excite the choleric humours, we still require aught to calm the choleric humour.”

“Explain it to me like you’re explaining it to him.” Tenchoz pointed a thumb at Uldricus, who leaned on his ax nearby.

Perri turned toward Uldricus and yelled as though the big man were hard of hearing: “Need one more ingredient! Drink now, die!”

Uldricus snorted, but Tenchoz waved his hand. “Then make do. I give you the day to deliver.”

***

And what a day it was: tripped by treeroots, scratched by undergrowth, wetted by unending rain that pattered on leaves and fled between the tangles. The lake was deep, dark, and still. Biding its time.

By early afternoon the rain had stopped, but they’d found little of use. “If we don’t find what we need soon, the distillation will take all night!”

“Wait… Perri, do you hear something?”

A telltale drone. Honeybees.

Another hour and they located the hive: fifty feet up in a tree, heavy combs suspended above a depression in the forest floor overrun with virid mosses.

“But Nico… we’ve already got mead.”

“Nay, not the honey. The venom.”

“Oh! For the rage! Of course! But… how do we kill them?”

Five minutes later, Nico had a fire lit and a bit of ground brimstone. High above, Perri was creeping out onto the treebranch on his belly with a smoking stick in one hand. A few feet ahead of him hung the combs positively rippling with bees.

“Ready, Perri?” Nico called from below.

“Aye!”

“Remember: we need the colony dead! Strike the hive, make it fall. When it lands in this hollow I’ll throw down the brimstone. The sulfuric vapors will kill them.”

Perri pulled his sleeves over his hands and his hood over his face. He wafted the stick below and around the hive a few times to distribute the smoke, then brought it back and swung.

The hive broke loose and the air roared with buzzing. Perri hunkered down in his cloth armor and waited for the storm to pass.

It did. But far too quickly.

Perri peeked out.

There lay the hive in the depression, its chunks bleeding thick honey. Nico stood over it but had not yet thrown the sulfur. “Perri! Come down and look, quick!”

Perri descended, and soon stood over Nico who was squatted in the depression scooping handfuls of dead bees.

The whole colony. Snuffed out as though by an invisible hand.

“Look! They’re quelled already!” Nico lifted one by a wing, giddy with light-headed excitement. “And look how intact!”

“But why are they dead?”

“It cost no brimstone… and not a single sting… when did we last collect venom — or honey! — without a single sting? Ha, luck prevails!”

“But why are they dead?”

“Why does it matter? Look, there must be thousands! We could make a dozen draughts from this!”

“But why are they dead, Nico?”

“I don’t care, Perri! I don’t care! Now, help me gather these!”

They made their way back to camp. The lake was speaking, but quietly.

***

The mercenaries hadn’t located Varla. Everyone was on edge. Uldricus sat up late, ax in his lap, and the only sounds in the camp were the hiss of his whetstone and the alchemists’ endless struggles and arguments.

“Come on, Perri! I’ve already ground two pastes of bees! Is the alembic boiling?”

“Nay! ‘Twon’t stay lit!”

“It will, your fuel’s just damp.”

“‘Tisn’t the damp, Nico! The fire, it just… dies!” Perri looked toward the promontory high above.

“Well, get it stoked and dry the rest by its heat!”

“Will you two have leave!” Tenchoz roared from within his tent. His headache had only worsened. “Those scents cleave my skull! Take them elsewhere!”

They carried their luggage uphill past the glaring Uldricus and nearer the lake. The flames burned healthier here.

“See? That’s better!”

“But the night’s nearly spent! We’ve run out of time to make the counteragent, Nico. Maybe… we could go searching tonight, we could find a purer ingredient…?”

They looked at the black and looming treeline.

“Nay. We’ll begin again tomorrow.”

“But… but Tenchoz said he wanted it in the morn!”

“Aye, but I’ve got an idea. Here… Tenchoz has complained of a headache, aye? We’re alchemists!”

He took a clay cup of distilled water and set it by the embers, then dropped in a simple.

“An infusion!” exclaimed Perri.

“Aye! An infusion of willowbark! The perfect remedy for megrim!” Nico grinned. “Once Tenchoz drinks this, he’ll be healthy as a horse!”

***

“All the horses are dead.”

They stood over the lot of them in the predawn light. Bodies limp upon the ground, flies buzzing and landing on viscous eyes, black lips, and wet muzzles.

“Now we can’t flee,” a mercenary muttered.

“How did this happen?” asked another.

Someone hypothesized poisoning. Everyone turned and glared at the pair who’d been playing alchemy all night upstream of the beasts’ water source.

Perri was holding the willowbark infusion. “I gather this is perhaps a bad time to offer some soothing tea?”

Tenchoz grabbed a rock the size of his head and hurled it at Perri. It missed and cracked and the sound reported across the lake.

“Hold!” Nico begged. “Don’t hurt him, please! We weren’t even using any ingredients that could kill a h—!”

“Those destriers cost more than your lives!”

The camp was silent. Such outbursts were not in Tenchoz’s character. He touched his agonized head and regained his poise.

“Varla still doesn’t know our location. I can still beat him… Scouts! I want every man searching for the enemy! Flood the woods!” He turned on the alchemists. “Uldricus, restrain those two. No wandering off.”

***

For hours they sat tied up back-to-back outside of camp. “I don’t think the tea worked, Nico.”

Nico looked at the promontory. “If he’d just given us the day to work… we could have made his draught! Why would luck permit this?!”

“Bah, we’ve seen worse than this! Remember Ganth?”

“Swimming through the sewers?”

“Aye!”

“You got sick afterward and almost died!”

“Aye, but I didn’t!”

Birds sang in the trees. Someone in the forest called out.

“Oh hang it! Perri, shift your weight this way!”

“Why? What are you doing?”

Nico got the chalice free. Unpeeling the cap with one finger, he let two drops fall. They evaporated into mist before they’d even hit the ground.

“There. Now we can wait.”

“For what?”

“Luck will decide.”

Nary a half-hour later, the mercenaries were dragging someone into camp.

“Perri, did you see that?”

“Who was that?”

“One of Varla’s scouts! If Tenchoz clears up the conflict, we’ll be restored as his alchemists!”

They listened for ten minutes to the scout’s tortured screams. Then a mercenary emerged from the mist and wordlessly untied them.

“Nico! Perri! This way!” Tenchoz hailed them. That should have been their warning — for the first time since they’d arrived, Tenchoz sounded calm.

They found him at the camp’s center, his front spattered with blood like a butcher, standing over a pallid, throat-cut corpse.

“Aid me, my official alchemists,” Tenchoz gestured with a bloody dirk. “He said… something about smoke. And flags.”

Perri tapped his lips. “Flags… he must mean the blazes!”

“Blazes?”

“Aye, blazes! We put them in the ground to mark our path and find our way back to herbs!” He took one from the bib of his coat and waved it like a celebrant at a rally. “I’ve been using them since we got—”

Nico was ready to throttle his friend. “Perri, you imbecile! That’s what led Varla’s scouts here!”

“No,” said Tenchoz. “That’s not all that led them here.” He paused to touch his forehead — clearly still in pain. “‘Twas also the smoke. From your fires. That’s why you keep letting them gutter… to produce more smoke for your signals.”

The other mercenaries surrounded them. Uldricus stood behind the alchemists, ax in hand.

“First I thought you fools,” said Tenchoz. “Then I thought you unlucky. But now I see what I should have sooner: you are Varla’s spies, and always have been.”

Nico panicked. “But look, Sir! We just needed a few more hours to make the rage draught!”

“I am surfeited with your poisons!”

“There’s an explanation! Please! Just let me speak!”

For an instant, Tenchoz appeared to recover some sanity. “One chance. I give you one chance. Do not lie to me.”

The camp grew quiet. Uldricus lowered his ax. The corpse in their midst bled, dark blood rilling downhill.

Nico swallowed several times. Perceiving a silvery tongue his only path forward, he spoke with conviction: “Hark, prithee, and search this evidence! The horses, the smoke, the blazes… aye, ‘tis damning, but too damning I say! Consider: your humble alchemists endeavor to assist, but fortune thwarts us at every turn! Could two men ever be counted so unlucky? Nay, and not without conspiracy! Will someone say divinity has no thumb on the scales of the alchemists Nico and Perri?”

“This is fallacious,” Uldricus suddenly intoned. “You aver the weight of evidence to be in fact evidence to the contrary, that this case marshalled against you proves some cosmic conspiracy. But your syllogism cumbers its own conclusion. First, you erroneously conflate the unlikely with the impossible, which any fool knows to be different species. Second, you appeal to a spurious hap — for fate’s wheel to ledger names and fortunes would forfeit its title. Tell us who corrects the flying arrow, robs vitality from the grainhead, or doctors the swinging arm of death. Your every breath is naught more than an accident pending correction, yet with it you wager false odds, ply untoward rhetoric, and pray we will not mark your errors? Do you think us oxen, little merchant?”

The assembly stood silent. Perri, of course, spoke first: “Incredible! This whole time I thought you were just stupid!”

“Kill them,” said Tenchoz.

“Wait!” screamed Nico. “Another chance! I beg of you!”

Tenchoz was walking away. Uldricus raised his ax.

“We can have the draught within the hour!”

Tenchoz stopped.

“Nico…” Perri whispered, but Nico soldiered on:

“We… we just need a final ingredient! A counteragent! We’ll get it right now! And… and I’ll demonstrate its efficacy by being the first to drink.”

The mercenary leader looked around the camp, closed his eyes, touched his head. “Very well. I suppose if you poison yourselves then that would also solve my problem. Go. Take only your incomplete draught — the rest is our collateral. Return empty-handed and…” Another bout of pain assailed him and he simply pointed at the promontory.

***

Somewhere behind the overcast the sun was drowning. Dusk approached. Perri clutched the lethal rage draught and pushed through the ferns. “Come on, Nico! We can be miles downhill before...”

But like a drunkard for his drink Nico was already reaching for the chalice.

“Y-you mean to stay.”

“Aye.”

“N-no! No, Nico! We tried your way! It’s time to leave!”

“Leave,” Nico listlessly echoed. “Leave behind everything. Everything we’ve fought for.”

“Aye! But take with us our lives, and the chalice! The chalice is our—!”

“Our gold? You always say that… but this! This is our gold, Perri: to be official alchemists, beyond the reach of famine and strife! This is wherefore we have luck at all!”

Without another word he shed a drop. They watched it fall, hit the floor, and sizzle and burn like acid.

“Look! What do you call that, Nico?”

“It doesn’t matter.” But Nico looked past him and locked eyes with something.

“Nico, please! Please, for once, listen to me!”

“N-no no… look. Look! Look!” Nico rushed past toward a tree supporting a thick, lush vine that ran fifty feet up the treetrunk and bore large, purple flowers. Among the clusters of oval leaves hung brown bean pods. Nico plucked a pod, split it, removed a shiny black bean. His hand trembled and voice shook. “C-c-calabar. Aye? Perri, tell me it’s calabar.”

Perri approached, scrutinized, and slowly cracked a smile. “Calabar?”

“So close to camp this whole time… how did we not see this?” He looked up the trunk. “This! This will counteract the choleric humour! We can make the rage draught… right now! Without any equipment at all!”

“But… but how could calabar be growing here?”

“The witches! The witches must have cultivated it!” Nico was laughing. “This is our luck at work, Perri! At last, this is it!”

Perri caught Nico’s excitement and hopped with glee. “Sooth! It’s here! We can have the draught by…”

They stopped. Forty feet away stood a familiar mercenary.

“Uldricus…” Nico addressed. “We have what we need! We can…”

Uldricus stepped forth. His ax swung from one arm like a stick carried by a child.

“Wait! Sir Tenchoz gave us another chance!”

“He changed his mind,” Uldricus said solemnly, then without another word, charged.

“Perri, run! Perri—”

A hiss and thunk and Uldricus took a blow from nowhere. He staggered, gasped, and touched an arrowshaft protruding from his side.

“Varla!” cried Nico. “It’s an ambush!”

Another arrow sighed by and the alchemists dropped behind the treeroots. Voices echoed through the forest.

“Perri, did you see how many?”

“I don’t know! Four? Five?”

A scouting party. But the alchemists were weaponless and Uldricus was unable to stand.

“Perri…” said Nico, “give Uldricus the rage draught.”

“It’s not finished! ‘Twill kill him!”

“We have the calabar bean! Can you roll a calabar lozenge?”

The enemy scouts were nearly upon them. Perri was pounding beans and working them into honey. Nico crawled to Uldricus and forced a bottle between his lips. “Come on, man! Drink it…”

The enemy drew nearer.

“There! Down to the dregs. Perri, hand me—”

Uldricus suddenly shoved Nico aside. Ignoring his wound he leaped to his feet with his skin bright red and teeth gritted and bellowing like a bull.

“Wait!” cried Nico but it was too late.

The mercenary roared and charged the enemy with the arrowshaft still in his gut, crossing the thirty feet between him and the enemy in great strides and separating the first one’s leg in a single hew.

“You let him go!” cried Perri.

“What was I to do?! Ask him politely to wait?”

“That would not have worked, Nico.”

“I’m being sardonic, you idiot! You didn’t finish the lozenge!”

“It’s almost finished!”

Uldricus slew a second, then a third. His eyes were wroth and his veins and tendons stood like treeroots.

“Done!” Perri held up the lozenge. “Now. All we have to do is get this under his tongue before his heart stops.” He stood and looked around. “Ah, good! He’s coming back!”

The scouts were slain. Uldricus had lost his ax and now weaponless was charging the alchemists at a murderous sprint.

“No!” cried Nico, stepping in the way.

But before Uldricus could reach them he stumbled and slid to a stop at Nico’s feet.

“Quick! The lozenge!” Nico grabbed it from Perri and worked the roll beneath the mercenary’s tongue as Perri pulled the bloody arrow free.

Uldricus wasn’t moving. His mouth kept falling slack so Nico gripped it shut. “Come on! Take it!” He slapped the man. “Take it, you bastard! Take the whole—!”

“Nico…”

Nico looked up.

Having heard the noise, six of Tenchoz’s men had just arrived and were standing at a distance, watching. They did not see the enemy scouts, but they did see Uldricus on his back, clearly poisoned, with a stab wound in his side. Perri held the bloody arrow. Nico was clamping Uldricus’ mouth shut with something inside, calling him a bastard, and ordering him to ‘take it.’

“No no,” Perri helpfully corrected. “You misunderstand, gentlemen. ‘Twasn’t the lozenge killed Uldricus… he was poisoned by the toxic draught we forced him to drink moments earlier and…”

The alchemists were seized.

***

Clouds were dispersing. Last light burned red. A gentle breeze touched the promontory’s peak. Perri wouldn’t stop chafing against his restraints.

“Stop fidgeting,” said Nico. “You’ll knock us both down.”

Tenchoz watched them from below. He’d determined to wait until nightfall to push them off into the lake. More fitting that way, he’d said.

“Nico?”

“Aye?”

“Remember that knight we saw in Zaltesdal?”

“The one who was burned at the stake?”

“Aye.”

“Aye. I remember that.”

“Remember how, when they were trying to light the fire, he shouted for them to hurry?”

“Aye. I remember.”

“I don’t feel like yelling that.”

Nico looked at the gray sky. “Nor do I.”

A sniff.

“Ah, Perri. Quit crying.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just… I’m sorry I led you here.”

“You? You think you led me?... Nay, this is my fault. I…” Nico closed his eyes against the tears. “I just wanted us to be secure. I never wanted to see you eat grass again.”

“You… you did it for me?”

“Aye.”

Perri turned away, but his restraints allowed him to reach far enough to take his friend’s hand. His shoulders bounced but he was smiling. “You ate grass too.”

“Sooth.” Nico raised his chin. “But that wasn’t so bad. I ate with dignity.”

“You ate like a goat.”

Nico thought of the goats the witches of yore used to throw and looked out on the lake.

In the exact center, just above the still water, hovered the blind ghost.

As the sunlight faded she raised a finger at Nico, then fell as through a trapdoor and splashed underwater.

The lake burst.

A brew with too much yeast, a kettle boiling over. The whole bowl frothed and the waters turned over and roiled and raced upon the embankments and overtook the trees.

Its wrath subsided. The waters fell. But the vapors spilled on. The invisible, undetectable vapors that had been building in the lake’s deep gullet for centuries, waiting to be released. Death’s true agent.

The torches guttered, their smoketrails bending downhill. The mercenaries looked at one another and drew another breath but the air was filled with nothing and they could not breathe and they grabbed their collars and one another and could not scream and kicked and drowned on land and died.

Nico and Perri watched from the promontory still holding hands and they could not understand, but the scentless vapor was piling higher and now they felt it, too. “Nico…”

Nico felt suffocation coming for him and gripped his friend’s hand. “I’m sorry, Perri! I’m sorry!”

“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe, Nico! I…”

Perri sputtered. His hand went limp.

“Perri! Perri!” Nico cried, but his vision dissolved and oblivion came for him, too.

***

A cruel pain echoed through his head. Faint light through his lids. His eyes opened slowly and he looked down.

There was the lake. There was the forest. The lake’s banks were stained and disturbed all around where the waters had risen and receded. Thin clouds and a sun fighting to be seen above the mountains. And all about the ground far below lay Tenchoz and his company exactly where death had left them.

The sound of snoring. Nico looked at his partner, head drooped and a tendril of spittle quivering at his lip.

“Perri,” he called. “Perri!”

Perri snorted awake. “Oh. Hullo, Nico. I had the strangest… good God, what’s happened?!”

“Settle down! Stop thrashing!”

“Where… how… wait, we were bound up here!”

“Aye, we were.”

“We… we were going to die!”

“Aye.”

Perri settled. They looked without speaking, but something else was wrong. It took nigh two full minutes to sense what. “Nico… do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Perri paused again. “Nothing.”

Nico listened.

Nothing.

No birds.

No squirrels.

No drone of flies among the corpses.

Silent as a graveyard. Death had come and gone and left only plants.

“Nico… what happened?”

“Vapor, methinks. The same that killed the bees. And the horses.”

“Then… did we only survive… because we were tied up all the way up here?”

“That would be…” he teetered on the word.

“Lucky?”

Terrible silence. The lake had spoken.

“Is this why the chalice kept bringing us bad luck? Because it was leading us up here?”

Nico’s head hurt.

“Wait… now I hear something!”

Men and horses. A company was entering the camp.

“Oh… oh, thank God!” Nico cried. “Here! Up here! Help us!”

But their leader looked in no hurry to. He marched into the clearing, appraised the corpses, nudged a few with his boot, then called to the prisoners. “My name is Sir Varla. I came hunting for the brigand, Tenchoz. But I see he’s already dead. What happened here?”

“‘Twas the lake! The lake… it… oh, my head…”

“Who are you?”

Nico opened his mouth, but Perri proudly proclaimed, “We are the official alchemists of Tenchoz’s company!”

“Oh my God!” Nico cried. “Perri, what is wrong with you?!”

“What? It’s what you’ve always called us! Over a year we’ve traveled with Tenchoz and—”

“Sir Varla, please!” Nico begged. “Please! Tenchoz lost his mind and intended to hurl us from here! Only providence spared us! Mercy, Sir! Mercy!”

Sir Varla did not kill them, but nor did he free them. He looted the camp and was gone in twenty minutes.

The alchemists were still on the rock.

“I have to make water.”

“Me too, Perri.”

The world was quiet again.

“Look, Nico! They left our alembic!”

“Huzzah. Small good if we can’t get down.”

“Wait… methinks I can slip my hand out this knot…”

“I doubt it. These were tied by—”

“Got it!” Perri held his liberated hand out triumphantly. “You know, Nico, you really ought to trust me more.”

***

Besides their purses and the alcohol-based solvents, most of their effects were still intact.

“Nico, look!”

The pewter chalice lay in the mud. Varla had left it behind.

“There’s still luck inside.”

Nico held the chalice, turned it over in his hands, and thought on his life. Then he brought his arm back and hurled the vessel toward the lake where they heard it splash.

“What are you doing?!” Perri exclaimed.

Nico sighed. “Ever since Wendra blessed that, we’ve been depending on it for our futures. But look around, Perri: the future’s too slippery, too faithless.” He looked for somewhere to put his hands, then gave up and put them nowhere. “I’m done depending on luck. I’m ready to face fortune on its own terms, whatever it holds for us.”

Perri was still slack-jawed. “But… but what about the gold?”

“What gold?”

“The gold! The gold nuggets that I’ve been hiding in the stem of that chalice!”

“You’ve been hiding gold nuggets in the chalice?”

“Aye!”

Nico blinked. “Where have… you didn’t tell me you’d—”

“‘We’ve got gold, Nico, and it’s in that chalice!’ How many times have I said it, Nico?”

“I-I thought you were speaking metaphorically!”

“What about its weight, then?! You work the scales, yet you didn’t feel the chalice growing heavier?”

“I thought… I thought that was just… the magic!” He twiddled his fingers for effect.

Perri stared. “You absolute ass!”

“Oh, you call me an ass? You almost got us killed when—”

As though surfeited with their arguing, the lake made another belch that splashed up from its center and sent the alchemists hieing downhill with what meager effects they’d collected. And one another.

***

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