The Alchemical Method of Terraforming by Jules Bly
On a secluded planet, Ral studies alchemical spells with his mentor Som, who has largely eschewed her Imperial training for local techniques and traditions.
The escape pod fell two days before high summer.
It happened when Ral was in the close, stuffy warehouse sorting the thick leaves of the dinra plant from its thin seeds. The leaves were easy, but the seeds stuck to everything - his fingers, the table, his forehead when he wiped his brow. He did not enjoy the warehouse, but it was important to do this work inside. Sunlight ruined the seeds. They were a much more powerful alchemical reagent when they were harvested in the dark.
Even though the warehouse was uncomfortably hot, Ral was grateful to be standing still. He had spent this morning as he did all summer mornings, hiking in the hills above the village with his teacher. Now, his muscles ached. The dinra flowers grew up there, protected by a thick scrubland of ulex. The dinra had grown with the ulex for millennia, and its seeds were best picked in the hot, dry summers.
Ral had begun his learning as an alchemist's student at nine years old. He was a large boy, with the ponderous carefulness of one who is used to knocking things over and has practiced not doing so. Now, after two years, he knew the basics of alchemical work. He knew the spells that were cast on the rivers in the rainy season to protect the village from flooding, and cast on the granaries and storehouses to repel vermin.
He knew how to pick the right proportion of dinra flowers: one in ten. Enough for the village's uses, and enough to ensure it would grow back thick the next summer, and continue to grow with the ulex for millennia more.
He learned these things from his teacher, an acerbic woman named Som. Her lessons were concealed in long wandering anecdotes; stories of other alchemists who had walked these hills in times past - their failed ideas, their miscalculations, their clever improvements to the cycles of growing and harvesting that became, over time, the way things had always been done. Ral did not know what parts of these stories were important and what parts were just Som talking, so he remembered everything just in case.
Som had grown up in these hills but traveled off-planet in her youth; she had studied alchemy on Arval-13, one of the core worlds of the Imperium. She returned home soon afterwards, quieter than she was before she left. In her lessons to Ral, she never spoke of her time in the Imperium, never taught him the imperial methods of alchemy. She spoke only of the traditions here on the planet Herapeth. Yet sometimes, Ral could discern in her actions an approach to alchemy that differed from the stories she told. Her skill was still influenced by her imperial training. Ral, who loved alchemy deeply, was fascinated by these unexplained techniques.
When the escape pod fell, it passed over the warehouse in which Ral was working. The glass jar half-filled with seeds rattled on the wooden countertop, and a cascade of dinra leaves fell to the warehouse floor.
Ral was torn between curiosity about the sound and his precious responsibility for the seeds. Curiosity won. The seeds wouldn't go anywhere. He brushed the few that were still stuck to his hands into the jar and sprinted outside.
2. Ulex
Ral was not the only one running. Above the village hung a trail of cloudy vapor, the distinctive purple burn of a reentry rocket. In the hills above the village, smoke rose from a crater. Noa, the tailor, occupied one of the taller buildings and was a hobbyist astronomer. They were at their telescope, searching the upper atmosphere for more escape pods. There were none. Smoke from a spaceship's explosion was visible at this distance, but it appeared to be a single-pilot craft. The shrapnel from the disaster was likely to burn up before it hit the ground, but it was above the village so there was some danger. The warning bell in the square began to sound, although it was hardly necessary - no one could have missed the roar of the escape pod passing overhead.
Already, one of the village's hovering trucks was driving up the hill. Villagers piled into it and hung onto the sides as it moved. Curiosity and the urge to help galvanized them towards the escape pod. Ral did not yet know much about galactic geography, but he knew that Herapeth, this beautiful little planet, was close to several of the major space-travel routes though not close enough for this sort of emergency to be commonplace. Herapeth was easy to get to, but not a place anyone went unless they had reason to.
Any unexpected visitor was rare, and an emergency crash was even rarer.
For a moment, Ral's mind flashed to Captain Ir'Sham, the kindly man whose freighter stopped every month to deliver the mail and buy bales of the ulex that grew thick alongside the dinra. Ral hoped this escape pod wasn't his.
The first to reach the escape pod were Daro and Teo, sisters and machinists. They were already using a torch to cut away the scorched armor on the escape pod and get the access hatch open. Several of the villagers kept the heavy hatch open while Daro, the elder sister, clambered inside. As Ral and the assembled crowd looked on, Daro emerged with another figure slung over her shoulders. This was not Captain Ir'Sham. In fact, his appearance was unlike anyone Ral had ever seen before.
He was a lightly built old man with a short, well-kept beard. He wore a colorless fitted coat that buttoned over a collar set with precious blue stones. In the sunlight, they glittered like hunting weapons. Tucked into his belt were gloves of thin lambskin, their fingers stained a kaleidoscope of colors from herbs and powders of all kinds. Som had a pair just like them. He was a scholar, an alchemist of the Imperium. He breathed, but he wasn't moving.
Daro went back into the smoking escape pod and returned with an elegant traveling trunk. It had burst open in the crash, and Daro held its splintered sides together with both hands as Teo and another villager helped her climb out.
The clothes that the imperial alchemist packed were suitable for the temperate climate on Herapeth. Among the old man's effects was a burnished leather bag. Into its front was set a medallion emblazoned with a blue sigil. Alchemical supplies.
Som had been alerted and would arrive shortly, but in her absence Ral was the only alchemist present. Although he was young, none of the villagers would obstruct him if he opened the bag.
He wondered what an imperial alchemist's supplies contained. If they would be similar to his own supplies, or if they would hold reagents whose uses Ral could barely guess. If the old man's methods of alchemy bore any resemblance to Ral's own. If he could learn about the skills, imperial skills, that Som did not seem inclined to speak about.
He opened the bag.
Within lay dozens of neatly organized glass vials with cork stoppers. Some were still sealed with wax, while others had been opened often and bore only cracked hints of flaky red. Ral chose one at random and lifted it out of its snug pouch.
Lavender buds, their original bright purple long dried to a dull mauve gray. Ral knew it was useful for navigation spells. Another village many miles away was rich in lavender, and they would frequently trade it for dinra at the market held every year at the end of summer.
The next vial held arctic rosemary. It didn't grow on Herapeth, and Som placed a special order with Captain Ir'Sham every few months.
After that, little flakes of pure gold. Useful only in rare cases, but when it was required nothing else would suffice. Som had a small collection of pure gold, and used it sparingly. She had brought it back with her from her time in the Imperium, and did not know when she would be able to get more. The scholars of the Imperium guarded it jealously.
"What are you doing?" Som stood between Ral and the sun, casting a shadow on the burnished leather bag.
"Looking at the alchemist's bag, teacher!" Ral straightened up. He knew that he was within his rights as an alchemist's student to do so, just as he knew Som would disapprove. Usually, Som's disapproval was mild and any recrimination came with an appreciation that he was curious enough to explore past the edges of her teachings. This was different.
"Put it away. Our guest is going to stay in the old widow's house until he feels better, and we're going to help get him settled there. It's only been empty for a few months, so it just needs airing out." Belatedly, Som appeared to remember that she ought to incorporate some sort of lesson into this strange experience. "It's important to make a fellow member of our profession feel welcome, when one arrives from far away. If you travel far away, I hope you'll be received with the same courtesy."
As she turned to where to where several villagers were lifting the imperial alchemist into the hovering truck, Ral saw that Som was angry. What he did not see was that she was frightened too.
3. Umbric Root
The next morning, Som and Ral went together to the old widow's house. It lay just outside the village proper, constructed of stone covered by plasterwork as most of the buildings in the village were. Ral carried a cloth bag filled with food and a few staple ingredients. The kitchen in the square served everyone, but it would be a long walk for an injured man.
The healer, Elio, and her student were making their way down the path to the house - just departing. Som stopped to greet Elio and inquire about the imperial alchemist's condition.
"He's awake, and he knows who he is. But be careful," said Elio, with a look at the bag of food. "He's not out of bed yet, and he shouldn't eat anything that might upset him."
The alchemist and her student continued up the path, and found the old man sitting up in bed with a fine blue shawl around his shoulders. The cloth was so smooth that it initially did not appear to be woven at all, and although it was elegant and composed it did not offer much warmth or comfort. The village did not make things like this. It must have been in his traveler's trunk, which lay open and splintered on the floor near the bed.
The widow's house was simple and plain. While she lived there, it simply felt empty. Now, with the traveler's presence, the house's spareness took on an elegance that had not been there before.
From the bed, the scholar greeted them with a formal gesture that Ral did not recognize. When he spoke, he directed his words only to Som. "Good morning! I understand you are the alchemist of this village. It's a pleasure to meet you - now that I'm conscious, that is. I suppose you've already met me. My name is Shirwall."
"Scholar Shirwall, it's a pleasure to meet you as well." Som repeated the formal gesture easily. "I'm glad to see you're recovering from the crash. Were you intending to land in the hills? They're treacherous sometimes, the freighter that comes every month usually picks the flatlands outside the village."
Shirwall, the scholar, spoke with a courtly affability that Som did not reciprocate. He did not reply to her question about the landing; his attention was on her reply to his gesture. "Ah, you are a trained alchemist! What a wonderful surprise. Ashe? Wilvale?"
The words meant nothing to Ral, but Som grew even more tense, and hesitated before she spoke. "Ashe, for five years. But I was already trained, as you say, by my teacher here."
"I've taught at Ashe! I have very fond memories of it, I'm glad you liked it too. You have a skilled healer, another surprise. You must allow me to compensate her for the time and supplies she used to treat me." With some effort, Shirwall leaned over to reach into his traveler's trunk. He extended a hand containing three perfectly square chips of metal. Each was inscribed with a sprig of thyme.
"That won't be necessary," Som said. "Where did you say you intended to land?"
"I insist," Shirwall replied, still holding the coins.
"We don't do that here. We have a different system." Som hid her look of disgust well, but Ral saw through it. It was the same expression she made when she had to retrieve the green roe from the bellies of the silvery fish that the fishers only rarely caught. It was useful for spells that prevented crop blight, but it was an unpleasant task.
"Sir," Som continued. "We don't use Imperial currency. We don't use any currency, as a matter of fact. You're welcome to contribute to the wellbeing of the village, but the nature of that contribution will be based on what we need, not what you can pay for. Now, I'd like to ask you directly. We are not within the territory of the Imperium. Why did you come here?"
"I meant no offense. And as to my destination, it actually wasn't here at all. It was your moon, Zyden. And, since Zyden is uninhabited, it is in no one's territory at all. There is a very interesting type of bacterium in the permafrost there, and I wished to collect some samples. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?" Shirwall smiled placidly, and tossed the coins back into his traveling trunk as if it did not matter at all to him.
As he did, Ral noticed a deep purple stain on his fingers. Just last week, his own fingers had been stained the same color when he was practicing a spell involving umbric root. At this unexpected connection between the unknown imperial methods and his own, he began to tell Shirwall about it. Som was just too slow to forestall him.
When Ral finished, Shirwall smiled at him. "You are an alchemist's student, I see?" That's wonderful. I should be up and about in a few days. Please do stop by, if you wish to study alchemy. Perhaps I could be helpful."
"Yes, Ral is an alchemist's student," Som said sharply. "My student."
Outside, as they walked back to the village, Som spoke at greater length on the Imperium than she ever had before.
"I know he seems nice," she said. "He is offering you a good opportunity to learn a different method of alchemy, a method that is known across the stars for its refinement and precision. You think it will be useful, and broaden your understanding of our craft. Maybe it will.
But his way is not better than our way. While we are told his way is useful, he does not believe the same thing about us. He knows nothing of our methods, and he will never learn because he does not care. That means he is blind to the failures of the Imperium's methods, and those methods have very significant failures indeed. Nice isn't the same as truthful, and he's not being honest with us."
Ral was taken aback. "How do we know he's not being honest?"
Som gave a grim laugh. "Zyden is snowbound throughout the year. He didn't bring any clothes for cold weather."
4. Red River Clay
Shirwall's wounds did not heal quickly, but with the help of a walking-stick he was soon able to get to the village proper and back to the old widow's house. It was clear to everyone that he was in no condition to travel, and would remain so for some time. He also struggled to adjust to life in the village. He tried twice more to give his metal chips in exchange for things, and twice he was gently refused. First was the cook at the kitchen in the village square. Next was the cobbler, when he tried to exchange them for some blue shoes embroidered with yellow thread.
His bandages needed to be changed twice a day, and with some reluctance Som allowed Ral to be the one to do it. The first time Ral arrived at the old widow's house - the scholar's house - he found it changed.
The sparse furniture was pushed against the walls, leaving the center of the room empty. On the floor was a large circle in chalk. A series of complicated lines were drawn through the edges of the circle. At the places where two lines met sat metal bowls, each filled with a different alchemical reagent. Dinra seeds, ulex twigs, umbric root, red river clay, and pure gold.
The scholar was casting a spell.
Ral waited at the threshold of the house until Shirwall was done. Then, as he administered the scholar's medicine, their talk turned to alchemy. Ral asked what the spell on the floor did, but the scholar did not tell him. Instead, Shirwall changed the subject too quickly for Ral to notice. He asked about the dinra that grew in the hills above the village.
Ral, excited to share his expertise with a fellow member of his field, told Shirwall that his escape pod had carved a gash in the hillside large enough that they could harvest less of the seeds than usual this year.
Shirwall reacted with surprise. "But," he said, "I walked in those hills yesterday. There are plenty of dinra flowers there, more than enough for a village of this size."
"We only harvest one in ten," Ral said. "Otherwise, the ulex will suffer and in a few decades the dinra flowers might not grow as well. Then where would we be?"
"That's absurd. And it's inefficient," Shirwall said. "If you actually used all you had, you could get so much more done, and so much faster."
Som had spoken many times of the dangers that came from using too much too quickly. Ral cast around for anything in his training that connected to the scholar's words. "You're thinking of eucalyptus, perhaps? It doesn't grow on Herapeth, but I've read about it. If you burn the ground, it grows back twice as thick the next season. But not dinra. It would die if we did that."
"I'm not talking about burning," Shirwall said, showing the first signs of some annoyance. "I'm talking about the lack of attention you all pay to harvesting. The villagers have told me that the work is nearly done, but dinra is merely sitting there in the hills, no good to anyone!"
The scholar came from the Imperium; had studied methods were known for refinement and precision. Even Som, who loved the methods of Herapeth more than anyone, did some things the Imperial way. Ral could not understand what good could come of hurting the dinra in the way the scholar described, but he was young and knew how much he still had to learn. It was far more likely he was making a mistake than that the scholar was.
"Is that what you do when you harvest your dinra seeds?" Ral asked. "Do they still grow well?"
Shirwall, comfortable in the role of magnanimous teacher, smiled down at Ral. "Oh dear boy, I don't grow anything personally, I'm far too busy. I simply write down what I need, and then receive a package from the Imperial Naval Company a week later."
"Where do the packages come from?"
Shirwall moved gingerly to the bed, and sat down. After even the minor exertion of the spell he had drawn on the floor, he needed to rest. "Well, it depends on what I need. Let us take arctic rosemary as an example. I get it from Azin-5, because it's close to where I live, on Ashe. It's a crop world, and like all our crop worlds the entire planet is flatlands. No oceans, no mountains, no valleys. Just endless, neat rows of arctic rosemary shrubs. The atmosphere is perpetually cloudy, keeping the temperature just right for arctic rosemary to grow all year round. It is batch-planted, and grows to maturity over the course of about a year. Once it is grown, we harvest it all and replant. Everything is used. Nothing is wasted, like it is in your hills here."
Ral was entranced. "How do you find them? These planets, the right climate, all flatlands. They must be very rare."
"Find them?" Here, the scholar laughed. Pure amusement at Ral's naïveté. "We don't find them, dear boy. We make them. We terraform them. Azin-5 used to be a scorchingly hot world filled with craggy mountains, not suitable for growing at all. But it was in the right place. Right along one of the Imperium's major shipping lines, and another source of arctic rosemary was what we needed.
So we changed it to suit our needs. Terraforming is transmutation, and it is shortsighted to learn how to transmute inhospitable planets only into places fit for human life. There are so many things to make a planet into. Our finest alchemists - and I am not too humble to count myself among them - thought bigger, refined the necessary spells even more. From an icebound planet we can make a world that is humid and tropical from the equator to the poles, fit for heliconia. From a gas giant, we can make a hothouse perfect for the production of rosehips. From a planet of lead, a planet of pure gold.
Here, Shirwall paused to catch his breath. In the afternoon light, his face took on a rapturous cast. He spoke of alchemical wonders that Ral could scarcely imagine, spells far bigger than he had ever thought possible.
"The dinra seeds that I use," Shirwall continued, "come from Florian-3. There are no hills there, no ulex. They would get in the way of the harvesters."
Now, Ral had no trouble imagining it. A planet, barren and empty and featureless except for endless perfect rows of dinra. If he stood there, the air would feel just like it did here. Dry and hot, an endless high summer. But it would be nothing like his home at all.
5. Pure Gold
In the weeks that followed, Ral went every day to Shirwall's house. Each morning, the scholar performed his usual spell. Ral did not try to ask again about its purpose. If he arrived while Shirwall was casting it, it was his habit to linger in the doorway until the work was complete. Sometimes, the exertion proved too much for him and he slept the rest of the day. Sometimes, he was fine. Even on days that his injuries so tormented him he could barely get out of bed, he completed the spell every morning without fail.
Though Som still did not quite like it, Ral's visits to administer the medicine had become part of their routine. And she was gratified to see that Ral's growing understanding of the methods of the Imperium did not cause him to lose interest in the methods of his home. In fact, the opposite was true - after each perturbing conversation with Shirwall, Ral redoubled his efforts to understand the intricacies of how things had always been done on Herapeth. He paid, if it was possible, even closer attention to Som's teachings and wandering anecdotes.
He was not the only one interested. On his few good days, Shirwall began to join teacher and student on their walks in the hills above the village. He professed that it was only out of boredom, and at the beginning he shared his own observations freely and talked over Som. When she threatened to bar him from accompanying them, he quieted down.
Then, near the end of summer, he died.
In the preceding weeks, his injuries bothered him more and he rose from his bed less and less. One morning when Ral went to administer his medicine he simply could not be woken. At his cry, Som arrived first, followed by Elio and her apprentice. There was nothing to be done, of course.
The villagers reacted with the vague sadness elicited by any death, but they did not know him well and he had taken no steps to endear himself to them.
Som reacted with relief. Shirwall's presence in the village, on the walks, and in her apprentice's head had bothered her. She had not trusted the man while he was alive, and did not fully trust his abrupt departure from their lives. She had not discovered the reason for his lie about his true destination. He had some purpose on Herapeth, some purpose that he apparently never fulfilled. This continued to bother her.
Ral was the only one who truly grieved him.
Som sat on the floor with her student and they sat together in silence for some time. Then she spoke.
"I'm sorry he's dead. I know he meant a lot to you. My first year in the Imperium, I was entranced. They were doing things with alchemy that I could not even dream of. But it scared me too. They did not understand some of the most basic things, and they did not care to learn. Many spells call for dinra seeds and ulex twigs to be used together, just like woodworm powder and alder bark, or sea salt and mother-of-pearl. It is because they grow together. They have a relationship in their ecosystem, so they have a relationship in alchemy. I tried to tell my teachers in the Imperium this. I was excited, and believed I could share something of value with these learned men who had taught me so much.
"They thought I should be embarrassed to keep to the methods I learned here. In the Imperium, dinra seeds and ulex are grown planets apart. They do not harvest woodworm and alder bark from the same trees - instead, they have a sterile orchard world and they grow the woodworms in jars. They use dinra seeds and ulex together, but they don't know the reason it works is because the ulex protects the power of the dinra seeds just like it does in our hills. Their methods have brought them power, but not any understanding. They have no wish to change this, and that makes them dangerous. Now you've seen this. Now you know why I didn't trust him."
Ral threw himself into his teacher's arms. "What if they want our dinra seeds? What if they flatten our hills and kill the ulex?"
"They won't," Som said. Her tone was flat and quiet. "They have planets and planets of dinra. There is nothing they want from us, so we'll be safe."
She spoke as if she was trying to believe her own words.
After Elio and her apprentice left, the only thing Ral could notice was that the spell had not been completed. Shirwall, who even on his worst days had performed the spell properly every morning, had not done so on his final day. The five metal bowls on the lines of chalk lay empty.
That night, Ral returned to the house and performed the spell. He did not know what its purpose was, but he watched the scholar perform it every day. Ral was an alchemist's student, which made him an alchemist. Though Shirwall's stories of the methods of the Imperium had frightened him, they made up an important part of his education. He, like his teacher, now understood the methods of home and something of the vaunted methods of the Imperium. This would improve his skill as an alchemist.
Shirwall was a fellow member of his field. This spell was the work of a fellow member of his field, and that work should continue. If Ral died, he knew he would want someone to complete his work. So, every day, he filled the five metal bowls and cast Shirwall's spell.
Two days before high autumn, there was something in the sky again.
This time, he and Som were in the hills above the village checking the flood-paths and alchemical wards against the winter storms.
Three ships, their alchemical engines burning. This too was not Captain Ir'Sham. Instead, they bore along their flanks a blue sigil that Ral recognized from Shirwall's pack of alchemical supplies. The symbol of the Imperium.
"Ral," Som said, forcing herself to keep her voice steady. "Ral, go back to the village. Let me talk to them. Do you understand?"
But the Imperium ships did not land. Talk, it seemed, was not what they had in mind. Instead, from large doors along the hulls of their ships, they cast thousands of shimmering glass vials into the air. For a moment, they hung in the air and caused the sky to glow. Then they fell and shattered on the ground, their contents mixing with the soil of the hills.
Dinra seeds.
Ulex.
Umbric root.
Red river clay.
Pure gold.
A spell was cast on Herapeth.
Som stood rooted to the spot in the hills. Ral could hear her crying out, a wordless scream of rage and grief.
The Imperium did not need dinra seeds. They did not need hills and ulex and a small village and the traditions Som had passed down with such care to her student. They did not needed a beautiful little planet. They needed a place that was close to several of the major space-travel routes. They needed something else, some other alchemical reagent that Ral had never seen and would never know. They needed a planet full of it.
Ral turned to face the village, but it was already gone. The air grew cold, a thick morning mist, a facsimile of an ecosystem he had never seen. Before his eyes, the hills crumbled and flattened into unfamiliar loamy soil, ready to grow something else.
It was nothing like his home at all.
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
1. Dinra
The escape pod fell two days before high summer.
It happened when Ral was in the close, stuffy warehouse sorting the thick leaves of the dinra plant from its thin seeds. The leaves were easy, but the seeds stuck to everything - his fingers, the table, his forehead when he wiped his brow. He did not enjoy the warehouse, but it was important to do this work inside. Sunlight ruined the seeds. They were a much more powerful alchemical reagent when they were harvested in the dark.
Even though the warehouse was uncomfortably hot, Ral was grateful to be standing still. He had spent this morning as he did all summer mornings, hiking in the hills above the village with his teacher. Now, his muscles ached. The dinra flowers grew up there, protected by a thick scrubland of ulex. The dinra had grown with the ulex for millennia, and its seeds were best picked in the hot, dry summers.
Ral had begun his learning as an alchemist's student at nine years old. He was a large boy, with the ponderous carefulness of one who is used to knocking things over and has practiced not doing so. Now, after two years, he knew the basics of alchemical work. He knew the spells that were cast on the rivers in the rainy season to protect the village from flooding, and cast on the granaries and storehouses to repel vermin.
He knew how to pick the right proportion of dinra flowers: one in ten. Enough for the village's uses, and enough to ensure it would grow back thick the next summer, and continue to grow with the ulex for millennia more.
He learned these things from his teacher, an acerbic woman named Som. Her lessons were concealed in long wandering anecdotes; stories of other alchemists who had walked these hills in times past - their failed ideas, their miscalculations, their clever improvements to the cycles of growing and harvesting that became, over time, the way things had always been done. Ral did not know what parts of these stories were important and what parts were just Som talking, so he remembered everything just in case.
Som had grown up in these hills but traveled off-planet in her youth; she had studied alchemy on Arval-13, one of the core worlds of the Imperium. She returned home soon afterwards, quieter than she was before she left. In her lessons to Ral, she never spoke of her time in the Imperium, never taught him the imperial methods of alchemy. She spoke only of the traditions here on the planet Herapeth. Yet sometimes, Ral could discern in her actions an approach to alchemy that differed from the stories she told. Her skill was still influenced by her imperial training. Ral, who loved alchemy deeply, was fascinated by these unexplained techniques.
When the escape pod fell, it passed over the warehouse in which Ral was working. The glass jar half-filled with seeds rattled on the wooden countertop, and a cascade of dinra leaves fell to the warehouse floor.
Ral was torn between curiosity about the sound and his precious responsibility for the seeds. Curiosity won. The seeds wouldn't go anywhere. He brushed the few that were still stuck to his hands into the jar and sprinted outside.
2. Ulex
Ral was not the only one running. Above the village hung a trail of cloudy vapor, the distinctive purple burn of a reentry rocket. In the hills above the village, smoke rose from a crater. Noa, the tailor, occupied one of the taller buildings and was a hobbyist astronomer. They were at their telescope, searching the upper atmosphere for more escape pods. There were none. Smoke from a spaceship's explosion was visible at this distance, but it appeared to be a single-pilot craft. The shrapnel from the disaster was likely to burn up before it hit the ground, but it was above the village so there was some danger. The warning bell in the square began to sound, although it was hardly necessary - no one could have missed the roar of the escape pod passing overhead.
Already, one of the village's hovering trucks was driving up the hill. Villagers piled into it and hung onto the sides as it moved. Curiosity and the urge to help galvanized them towards the escape pod. Ral did not yet know much about galactic geography, but he knew that Herapeth, this beautiful little planet, was close to several of the major space-travel routes though not close enough for this sort of emergency to be commonplace. Herapeth was easy to get to, but not a place anyone went unless they had reason to.
Any unexpected visitor was rare, and an emergency crash was even rarer.
For a moment, Ral's mind flashed to Captain Ir'Sham, the kindly man whose freighter stopped every month to deliver the mail and buy bales of the ulex that grew thick alongside the dinra. Ral hoped this escape pod wasn't his.
The first to reach the escape pod were Daro and Teo, sisters and machinists. They were already using a torch to cut away the scorched armor on the escape pod and get the access hatch open. Several of the villagers kept the heavy hatch open while Daro, the elder sister, clambered inside. As Ral and the assembled crowd looked on, Daro emerged with another figure slung over her shoulders. This was not Captain Ir'Sham. In fact, his appearance was unlike anyone Ral had ever seen before.
He was a lightly built old man with a short, well-kept beard. He wore a colorless fitted coat that buttoned over a collar set with precious blue stones. In the sunlight, they glittered like hunting weapons. Tucked into his belt were gloves of thin lambskin, their fingers stained a kaleidoscope of colors from herbs and powders of all kinds. Som had a pair just like them. He was a scholar, an alchemist of the Imperium. He breathed, but he wasn't moving.
Daro went back into the smoking escape pod and returned with an elegant traveling trunk. It had burst open in the crash, and Daro held its splintered sides together with both hands as Teo and another villager helped her climb out.
The clothes that the imperial alchemist packed were suitable for the temperate climate on Herapeth. Among the old man's effects was a burnished leather bag. Into its front was set a medallion emblazoned with a blue sigil. Alchemical supplies.
Som had been alerted and would arrive shortly, but in her absence Ral was the only alchemist present. Although he was young, none of the villagers would obstruct him if he opened the bag.
He wondered what an imperial alchemist's supplies contained. If they would be similar to his own supplies, or if they would hold reagents whose uses Ral could barely guess. If the old man's methods of alchemy bore any resemblance to Ral's own. If he could learn about the skills, imperial skills, that Som did not seem inclined to speak about.
He opened the bag.
Within lay dozens of neatly organized glass vials with cork stoppers. Some were still sealed with wax, while others had been opened often and bore only cracked hints of flaky red. Ral chose one at random and lifted it out of its snug pouch.
Lavender buds, their original bright purple long dried to a dull mauve gray. Ral knew it was useful for navigation spells. Another village many miles away was rich in lavender, and they would frequently trade it for dinra at the market held every year at the end of summer.
The next vial held arctic rosemary. It didn't grow on Herapeth, and Som placed a special order with Captain Ir'Sham every few months.
After that, little flakes of pure gold. Useful only in rare cases, but when it was required nothing else would suffice. Som had a small collection of pure gold, and used it sparingly. She had brought it back with her from her time in the Imperium, and did not know when she would be able to get more. The scholars of the Imperium guarded it jealously.
"What are you doing?" Som stood between Ral and the sun, casting a shadow on the burnished leather bag.
"Looking at the alchemist's bag, teacher!" Ral straightened up. He knew that he was within his rights as an alchemist's student to do so, just as he knew Som would disapprove. Usually, Som's disapproval was mild and any recrimination came with an appreciation that he was curious enough to explore past the edges of her teachings. This was different.
"Put it away. Our guest is going to stay in the old widow's house until he feels better, and we're going to help get him settled there. It's only been empty for a few months, so it just needs airing out." Belatedly, Som appeared to remember that she ought to incorporate some sort of lesson into this strange experience. "It's important to make a fellow member of our profession feel welcome, when one arrives from far away. If you travel far away, I hope you'll be received with the same courtesy."
As she turned to where to where several villagers were lifting the imperial alchemist into the hovering truck, Ral saw that Som was angry. What he did not see was that she was frightened too.
3. Umbric Root
The next morning, Som and Ral went together to the old widow's house. It lay just outside the village proper, constructed of stone covered by plasterwork as most of the buildings in the village were. Ral carried a cloth bag filled with food and a few staple ingredients. The kitchen in the square served everyone, but it would be a long walk for an injured man.
The healer, Elio, and her student were making their way down the path to the house - just departing. Som stopped to greet Elio and inquire about the imperial alchemist's condition.
"He's awake, and he knows who he is. But be careful," said Elio, with a look at the bag of food. "He's not out of bed yet, and he shouldn't eat anything that might upset him."
The alchemist and her student continued up the path, and found the old man sitting up in bed with a fine blue shawl around his shoulders. The cloth was so smooth that it initially did not appear to be woven at all, and although it was elegant and composed it did not offer much warmth or comfort. The village did not make things like this. It must have been in his traveler's trunk, which lay open and splintered on the floor near the bed.
The widow's house was simple and plain. While she lived there, it simply felt empty. Now, with the traveler's presence, the house's spareness took on an elegance that had not been there before.
From the bed, the scholar greeted them with a formal gesture that Ral did not recognize. When he spoke, he directed his words only to Som. "Good morning! I understand you are the alchemist of this village. It's a pleasure to meet you - now that I'm conscious, that is. I suppose you've already met me. My name is Shirwall."
"Scholar Shirwall, it's a pleasure to meet you as well." Som repeated the formal gesture easily. "I'm glad to see you're recovering from the crash. Were you intending to land in the hills? They're treacherous sometimes, the freighter that comes every month usually picks the flatlands outside the village."
Shirwall, the scholar, spoke with a courtly affability that Som did not reciprocate. He did not reply to her question about the landing; his attention was on her reply to his gesture. "Ah, you are a trained alchemist! What a wonderful surprise. Ashe? Wilvale?"
The words meant nothing to Ral, but Som grew even more tense, and hesitated before she spoke. "Ashe, for five years. But I was already trained, as you say, by my teacher here."
"I've taught at Ashe! I have very fond memories of it, I'm glad you liked it too. You have a skilled healer, another surprise. You must allow me to compensate her for the time and supplies she used to treat me." With some effort, Shirwall leaned over to reach into his traveler's trunk. He extended a hand containing three perfectly square chips of metal. Each was inscribed with a sprig of thyme.
"That won't be necessary," Som said. "Where did you say you intended to land?"
"I insist," Shirwall replied, still holding the coins.
"We don't do that here. We have a different system." Som hid her look of disgust well, but Ral saw through it. It was the same expression she made when she had to retrieve the green roe from the bellies of the silvery fish that the fishers only rarely caught. It was useful for spells that prevented crop blight, but it was an unpleasant task.
"Sir," Som continued. "We don't use Imperial currency. We don't use any currency, as a matter of fact. You're welcome to contribute to the wellbeing of the village, but the nature of that contribution will be based on what we need, not what you can pay for. Now, I'd like to ask you directly. We are not within the territory of the Imperium. Why did you come here?"
"I meant no offense. And as to my destination, it actually wasn't here at all. It was your moon, Zyden. And, since Zyden is uninhabited, it is in no one's territory at all. There is a very interesting type of bacterium in the permafrost there, and I wished to collect some samples. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?" Shirwall smiled placidly, and tossed the coins back into his traveling trunk as if it did not matter at all to him.
As he did, Ral noticed a deep purple stain on his fingers. Just last week, his own fingers had been stained the same color when he was practicing a spell involving umbric root. At this unexpected connection between the unknown imperial methods and his own, he began to tell Shirwall about it. Som was just too slow to forestall him.
When Ral finished, Shirwall smiled at him. "You are an alchemist's student, I see?" That's wonderful. I should be up and about in a few days. Please do stop by, if you wish to study alchemy. Perhaps I could be helpful."
"Yes, Ral is an alchemist's student," Som said sharply. "My student."
Outside, as they walked back to the village, Som spoke at greater length on the Imperium than she ever had before.
"I know he seems nice," she said. "He is offering you a good opportunity to learn a different method of alchemy, a method that is known across the stars for its refinement and precision. You think it will be useful, and broaden your understanding of our craft. Maybe it will.
But his way is not better than our way. While we are told his way is useful, he does not believe the same thing about us. He knows nothing of our methods, and he will never learn because he does not care. That means he is blind to the failures of the Imperium's methods, and those methods have very significant failures indeed. Nice isn't the same as truthful, and he's not being honest with us."
Ral was taken aback. "How do we know he's not being honest?"
Som gave a grim laugh. "Zyden is snowbound throughout the year. He didn't bring any clothes for cold weather."
4. Red River Clay
Shirwall's wounds did not heal quickly, but with the help of a walking-stick he was soon able to get to the village proper and back to the old widow's house. It was clear to everyone that he was in no condition to travel, and would remain so for some time. He also struggled to adjust to life in the village. He tried twice more to give his metal chips in exchange for things, and twice he was gently refused. First was the cook at the kitchen in the village square. Next was the cobbler, when he tried to exchange them for some blue shoes embroidered with yellow thread.
His bandages needed to be changed twice a day, and with some reluctance Som allowed Ral to be the one to do it. The first time Ral arrived at the old widow's house - the scholar's house - he found it changed.
The sparse furniture was pushed against the walls, leaving the center of the room empty. On the floor was a large circle in chalk. A series of complicated lines were drawn through the edges of the circle. At the places where two lines met sat metal bowls, each filled with a different alchemical reagent. Dinra seeds, ulex twigs, umbric root, red river clay, and pure gold.
The scholar was casting a spell.
Ral waited at the threshold of the house until Shirwall was done. Then, as he administered the scholar's medicine, their talk turned to alchemy. Ral asked what the spell on the floor did, but the scholar did not tell him. Instead, Shirwall changed the subject too quickly for Ral to notice. He asked about the dinra that grew in the hills above the village.
Ral, excited to share his expertise with a fellow member of his field, told Shirwall that his escape pod had carved a gash in the hillside large enough that they could harvest less of the seeds than usual this year.
Shirwall reacted with surprise. "But," he said, "I walked in those hills yesterday. There are plenty of dinra flowers there, more than enough for a village of this size."
"We only harvest one in ten," Ral said. "Otherwise, the ulex will suffer and in a few decades the dinra flowers might not grow as well. Then where would we be?"
"That's absurd. And it's inefficient," Shirwall said. "If you actually used all you had, you could get so much more done, and so much faster."
Som had spoken many times of the dangers that came from using too much too quickly. Ral cast around for anything in his training that connected to the scholar's words. "You're thinking of eucalyptus, perhaps? It doesn't grow on Herapeth, but I've read about it. If you burn the ground, it grows back twice as thick the next season. But not dinra. It would die if we did that."
"I'm not talking about burning," Shirwall said, showing the first signs of some annoyance. "I'm talking about the lack of attention you all pay to harvesting. The villagers have told me that the work is nearly done, but dinra is merely sitting there in the hills, no good to anyone!"
The scholar came from the Imperium; had studied methods were known for refinement and precision. Even Som, who loved the methods of Herapeth more than anyone, did some things the Imperial way. Ral could not understand what good could come of hurting the dinra in the way the scholar described, but he was young and knew how much he still had to learn. It was far more likely he was making a mistake than that the scholar was.
"Is that what you do when you harvest your dinra seeds?" Ral asked. "Do they still grow well?"
Shirwall, comfortable in the role of magnanimous teacher, smiled down at Ral. "Oh dear boy, I don't grow anything personally, I'm far too busy. I simply write down what I need, and then receive a package from the Imperial Naval Company a week later."
"Where do the packages come from?"
Shirwall moved gingerly to the bed, and sat down. After even the minor exertion of the spell he had drawn on the floor, he needed to rest. "Well, it depends on what I need. Let us take arctic rosemary as an example. I get it from Azin-5, because it's close to where I live, on Ashe. It's a crop world, and like all our crop worlds the entire planet is flatlands. No oceans, no mountains, no valleys. Just endless, neat rows of arctic rosemary shrubs. The atmosphere is perpetually cloudy, keeping the temperature just right for arctic rosemary to grow all year round. It is batch-planted, and grows to maturity over the course of about a year. Once it is grown, we harvest it all and replant. Everything is used. Nothing is wasted, like it is in your hills here."
Ral was entranced. "How do you find them? These planets, the right climate, all flatlands. They must be very rare."
"Find them?" Here, the scholar laughed. Pure amusement at Ral's naïveté. "We don't find them, dear boy. We make them. We terraform them. Azin-5 used to be a scorchingly hot world filled with craggy mountains, not suitable for growing at all. But it was in the right place. Right along one of the Imperium's major shipping lines, and another source of arctic rosemary was what we needed.
So we changed it to suit our needs. Terraforming is transmutation, and it is shortsighted to learn how to transmute inhospitable planets only into places fit for human life. There are so many things to make a planet into. Our finest alchemists - and I am not too humble to count myself among them - thought bigger, refined the necessary spells even more. From an icebound planet we can make a world that is humid and tropical from the equator to the poles, fit for heliconia. From a gas giant, we can make a hothouse perfect for the production of rosehips. From a planet of lead, a planet of pure gold.
Here, Shirwall paused to catch his breath. In the afternoon light, his face took on a rapturous cast. He spoke of alchemical wonders that Ral could scarcely imagine, spells far bigger than he had ever thought possible.
"The dinra seeds that I use," Shirwall continued, "come from Florian-3. There are no hills there, no ulex. They would get in the way of the harvesters."
Now, Ral had no trouble imagining it. A planet, barren and empty and featureless except for endless perfect rows of dinra. If he stood there, the air would feel just like it did here. Dry and hot, an endless high summer. But it would be nothing like his home at all.
5. Pure Gold
In the weeks that followed, Ral went every day to Shirwall's house. Each morning, the scholar performed his usual spell. Ral did not try to ask again about its purpose. If he arrived while Shirwall was casting it, it was his habit to linger in the doorway until the work was complete. Sometimes, the exertion proved too much for him and he slept the rest of the day. Sometimes, he was fine. Even on days that his injuries so tormented him he could barely get out of bed, he completed the spell every morning without fail.
Though Som still did not quite like it, Ral's visits to administer the medicine had become part of their routine. And she was gratified to see that Ral's growing understanding of the methods of the Imperium did not cause him to lose interest in the methods of his home. In fact, the opposite was true - after each perturbing conversation with Shirwall, Ral redoubled his efforts to understand the intricacies of how things had always been done on Herapeth. He paid, if it was possible, even closer attention to Som's teachings and wandering anecdotes.
He was not the only one interested. On his few good days, Shirwall began to join teacher and student on their walks in the hills above the village. He professed that it was only out of boredom, and at the beginning he shared his own observations freely and talked over Som. When she threatened to bar him from accompanying them, he quieted down.
Then, near the end of summer, he died.
In the preceding weeks, his injuries bothered him more and he rose from his bed less and less. One morning when Ral went to administer his medicine he simply could not be woken. At his cry, Som arrived first, followed by Elio and her apprentice. There was nothing to be done, of course.
The villagers reacted with the vague sadness elicited by any death, but they did not know him well and he had taken no steps to endear himself to them.
Som reacted with relief. Shirwall's presence in the village, on the walks, and in her apprentice's head had bothered her. She had not trusted the man while he was alive, and did not fully trust his abrupt departure from their lives. She had not discovered the reason for his lie about his true destination. He had some purpose on Herapeth, some purpose that he apparently never fulfilled. This continued to bother her.
Ral was the only one who truly grieved him.
Som sat on the floor with her student and they sat together in silence for some time. Then she spoke.
"I'm sorry he's dead. I know he meant a lot to you. My first year in the Imperium, I was entranced. They were doing things with alchemy that I could not even dream of. But it scared me too. They did not understand some of the most basic things, and they did not care to learn. Many spells call for dinra seeds and ulex twigs to be used together, just like woodworm powder and alder bark, or sea salt and mother-of-pearl. It is because they grow together. They have a relationship in their ecosystem, so they have a relationship in alchemy. I tried to tell my teachers in the Imperium this. I was excited, and believed I could share something of value with these learned men who had taught me so much.
"They thought I should be embarrassed to keep to the methods I learned here. In the Imperium, dinra seeds and ulex are grown planets apart. They do not harvest woodworm and alder bark from the same trees - instead, they have a sterile orchard world and they grow the woodworms in jars. They use dinra seeds and ulex together, but they don't know the reason it works is because the ulex protects the power of the dinra seeds just like it does in our hills. Their methods have brought them power, but not any understanding. They have no wish to change this, and that makes them dangerous. Now you've seen this. Now you know why I didn't trust him."
Ral threw himself into his teacher's arms. "What if they want our dinra seeds? What if they flatten our hills and kill the ulex?"
"They won't," Som said. Her tone was flat and quiet. "They have planets and planets of dinra. There is nothing they want from us, so we'll be safe."
She spoke as if she was trying to believe her own words.
After Elio and her apprentice left, the only thing Ral could notice was that the spell had not been completed. Shirwall, who even on his worst days had performed the spell properly every morning, had not done so on his final day. The five metal bowls on the lines of chalk lay empty.
That night, Ral returned to the house and performed the spell. He did not know what its purpose was, but he watched the scholar perform it every day. Ral was an alchemist's student, which made him an alchemist. Though Shirwall's stories of the methods of the Imperium had frightened him, they made up an important part of his education. He, like his teacher, now understood the methods of home and something of the vaunted methods of the Imperium. This would improve his skill as an alchemist.
Shirwall was a fellow member of his field. This spell was the work of a fellow member of his field, and that work should continue. If Ral died, he knew he would want someone to complete his work. So, every day, he filled the five metal bowls and cast Shirwall's spell.
Two days before high autumn, there was something in the sky again.
This time, he and Som were in the hills above the village checking the flood-paths and alchemical wards against the winter storms.
Three ships, their alchemical engines burning. This too was not Captain Ir'Sham. Instead, they bore along their flanks a blue sigil that Ral recognized from Shirwall's pack of alchemical supplies. The symbol of the Imperium.
"Ral," Som said, forcing herself to keep her voice steady. "Ral, go back to the village. Let me talk to them. Do you understand?"
But the Imperium ships did not land. Talk, it seemed, was not what they had in mind. Instead, from large doors along the hulls of their ships, they cast thousands of shimmering glass vials into the air. For a moment, they hung in the air and caused the sky to glow. Then they fell and shattered on the ground, their contents mixing with the soil of the hills.
Dinra seeds.
Ulex.
Umbric root.
Red river clay.
Pure gold.
A spell was cast on Herapeth.
Som stood rooted to the spot in the hills. Ral could hear her crying out, a wordless scream of rage and grief.
The Imperium did not need dinra seeds. They did not need hills and ulex and a small village and the traditions Som had passed down with such care to her student. They did not needed a beautiful little planet. They needed a place that was close to several of the major space-travel routes. They needed something else, some other alchemical reagent that Ral had never seen and would never know. They needed a planet full of it.
Ral turned to face the village, but it was already gone. The air grew cold, a thick morning mist, a facsimile of an ecosystem he had never seen. Before his eyes, the hills crumbled and flattened into unfamiliar loamy soil, ready to grow something else.
It was nothing like his home at all.
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