The Echidna's Scale (Alchemy's Apprentice) (33 page)

“The
Echidna came to our village one morning before dawn, on a spring morning, and it broke in to a house, through the roof.  It grabbed a girl, one who was young – and pretty and full of life – it plucked her right from where she slept, and it bit her in two as it sat in the middle of the village.  The whole village heard her screams, but they were brief, and then the monster was gone, leaving her remains there where everyone saw them.

“The girl,” Tuck continued, “had been full of life.  She had been kind and funny and always ready to laugh.  She made everyone who was around her feel better.  And she was engaged to be married, just a week later, on mid-spring eve.

“The young man she had been engaged to went crazy.  He shouted and screamed in grief for three straight days, never sleeping, never eating, never doing anything but mourning the death of the girl he loved.  And at the end of his three days spell, he announced that he was going to go get revenge on the Echidna.”

The man looked around at his audience, who all sat looking at him with interest in his story.  “My grandfather said that everyone tried to talk him out of such a crazy idea, but the man had nothing left to live for, and he had lost his will to live.  So the next night the man left the village and started hunting for the
Echidna.

“He came back five days later, and the whole village gathered around to hear what had happened.  He looked terrible; his hair was singed off and he had blisters all over his body.  He told them he had found the entrance to the lair of the
Echidna.  It was a vast cave opening that was littered with bones all around.  It was set about a quarter of the way up the mountain on a volcano, one that was covered by ash, with noxious fumes that nearly made him pass out a time or two.  He had gone searching for another way into the cave, trying to find a way to sneak in and confront the monster without being caught.

“He told the villagers he found a different cave entrance, one down below, at the base of the mountain, a way that went behind a waterfall of red-hot molten rock, a stream of lava that fell from up higher.  There was a cave behind the falling stream, and it went into the heart of the mountain.  So he came back to get extra weapons, and then he was going to go back and go in through the hidden cave and find the monster and slay it.

“He slept in the village that night, and then he left the next morning, and we never saw him again,” the man stopped talking in the dim room, and silence filled the air for several seconds.

“Do you think his way into the mountain was a true way to get in there, to sneak up on the monster in its lair?” Cassius asked.

“I think that perhaps it was, that perhaps he truly did have his chance to get to the Echidna, but that he fell in battle against the monster,” the old greybeard stood up.  “Thank you for sharing the warmth of your home and your stew with us tonight,” he told the host couple.   “Please let me return the favor someday.”  He let himself out into the cold outdoors without comment.

“Do you plan to spend the night in our village?” their host asked, the man who had led them from the tavern.  “If so, you are welcome to stay in our home and share our warmth,” he said graciously.

“And if, in the morning, you realize how foolish your mission is, and you decide to turn around and return to your safe lands elsewhere, we will think you are wiser than you sound tonight.”

There were no further words spoken, and they all turned in for the night, only to awaken two hours later to the sound of the housewife screaming in fear.

“Where is it?” Marco shouted, pulling his sword off the ground and looking up at the roof as he leapt to his feet.  He expected to see the Echidna tearing through the roof,

“There, by the fireplace,” the woman shouted and pointed.

Next to the fire, flittering wildly to and fro, was Gawail.

The others were awakening as well, looking about in confusion and alarm.

“Gawail, come to me,” Marco called, as he slid his sword back into his scabbard.

The pixie floated up to Marco and settled in on his shoulder.  “My apologies, blessed one.  I thought I could enjoy the heat of the fireplace quietly,” the small figure told Marco.

“This is our friend and companion, Gawail,” Marco told the astonished couple.  “He was only trying to stay warm by the fire.  He is no threat; he is our ally, and a useful one.  Please do not be alarmed.”

“You have a familiar with you?  Did he help you cause the magic you showed us in the tavern?  The glowing hand?  Are you a sorcerer or a warlock?” the man from the tavern asked.

“You brought a sorcerer into our house?  We’re going to die!” his wife began to scream and sob again.

“I’m not a sorcerer,” Marco reassured the woman.  “I am just a traveler who is on a quest to take a scale from the
Echidna.”  He looked at Pesino, who gave a discreet nod to reassure him that the situation was safe.

“I’m married to this man, and I tell you he is good,” she spoke up.  “He will not harm you, nor anyone in this village.  We’re simply grateful for your hospitality, but if you are uncomfortable with us here, we will leave now,” she offered.

“No, oh no, you shouldn’t have to go out in the cold!” the wife immediately felt contrite and sought to be hospitable, satisfied by the offer to leave that she was safe with the visitors.

Marco and Pesino cuddled back together in their corner of the room, as Kate and Cassius returned to another, and the residents climbed back into their bed, after throwing another log on the fireplace coals.  “They live with so much fear,” Pesino said sadly as she and Marco tried to return to their slumbers.  “They miss so much of the joy in life because they are always afraid.  I never knew life could be so empty of joy and so full of dread.  When I was a mermaid life was so pleasant.  If the humans or the great sharks weren’t around, I never thought there was anything to do but sleep and play and eat.  Life isn’t that easy, is it?”

“Maybe,” Marco said carefully, “maybe we can make their lives better.  Maybe we can beat the Echidna and make their world a little safer.”

“Oh, I hope so Marco,” Pesino leaned over and kissed his cheek, then rolled over and fell asleep, and Marco began to hope that he could not only steal a scale, but truly defeat the mother of all monsters.

Chapter 23 – The Echidna’s Cave

When they all awoke in the morning the travelers politely said their farewells, then left the house and started north.  Residents of the village poked their heads out of their doorways to watch the inexplicable quartet walk by, leaving a story that the village residents would be certain to talk about over and over again for years to come – the strangers who wanted to find the Echidna, who had a glowing hand and a pixie to boot!

For Marco’s group, the journey north proceeded for another two days.  The direction to follow was easy, as mountains appeared on the horizon, and one large mountain released a steady plume of smoke that visibly rose during the slowly lengthening winter days, while a sullen red glow was visible at night.

They reached the foothills of the mountains, and found that the footing grew trickier as loose cinders and ashes rolled beneath their feet, hidden underneath the slushy snow they walked over.  Along the course of their walk they debated their best course.

“That old man believed the story he told, about the man who found a tunnel behind a waterfall of fire,” Pesino told Marco.

“But whether his grandfather told him the truth is a different matter,” Marco stated.

They started to climb up the side of the tallest volcano, one of a handful of mountains that had no snowy head.

“Marco, there’s a big cave up there!” Cassius pointed out as they began to ascend the lower slopes without great difficulty.  He pointed upward to where a darkness was evident partway above them.

“It’s getting to be nightfall,” Kate pointed out.  “Why don’t we take shelter for the night and take the next step starting tomorrow morning?”

“That seems like a good idea,” Marco agreed readily, and they all traipsed towards the left, where a large copse of trees offered cover and protection.  They made no fire, but sat close to one another and ate their evening meal quietly, until they heard a hair-raising sound out on the mountain.  It was a rasping, slithering, moaning symphony of noises that blended together to strike fear in their hearts.

“No one make a move,” Cassius whispered, as they all sat still and watched an enormous dark shape pass by their woody patch, moving rapidly downhill.  The sound faded into the distance as the monster left the volcano’s slopes, on its way out into the world to hunt for prey.

“Was that it?” Kate asked when the sound had faded away.

“I think it was our quarry,” Marco answered.

“Will it be gone all night?” the girl asked.  “Should we stay here, or try to find some place further from its return path?”

“Let’s try to move away from this area,” Marco agreed with Kate’s fear; he didn’t want to be too close to the
Echidna’s path.  He wasn’t sure how he was going to fight the creature, and he didn’t want to confront it without some plan.  He’d thought on and off during much of the trip about the need to have a strategy, and had never developed one, beyond hoping that his enchanted sword and his magical right hand could help him somehow.

Yet the sound of the monster’s passing had put into perspective just how large the creature was, how pitifully small Marco would be by comparison to the monster when it came time for a confrontation.

He picked up his pack and then led the group slowly to the left through the trees, moving carefully in the darkness.  “Gawail!” he suddenly called as he stopped in place.

The pixie flew out of the front of Kate’s cape.  “Yes, blessed one?”

“Is it warm enough for you to survive outdoors around here?” Marco asked.  “Could you go scout ahead for us and make sure there’s another safe place for us to hide in this direction?”

“I can do this.  The air is not so painful for me here.  I will return quickly.” The pixie said, glowing with only a faint light, and then he whizzed away from them all, leaving them standing at the western edge of the small patch of trees they had taken shelter in.

“This is getting real now, isn’t it?” Pesino asked in the middle of the silence.  “It’s not just a journey anymore.”

“It’s been a tough journey, but a good one,” Kate said softly, giving Cassius’s hand a squeeze.

“It’s not over yet,” Marco answered.  “We still have the whole journey home to think about.  Hopefully we’ll be down south on a nice warm, sunny beach in a few weeks!”

“Oh, that’s such a dream!” Cassius said.

“I haven’t thought about actually having my tail back in a long, long time,” Pesino added.

They all turned then, as they saw Gawail’s light appear nearby.

“There’s a different patch of woods, down in the cradle of a small valley, not too far away,” the pixie reported.

They left immediately, passing through a patch of air that stunk of rotten eggs, then safely arrived minutes later among the trees Gawail had found.  The four humans reached the new forest, then stopped and looked together towards the side of the mountain that hung over them.  A thin line of glowing lava hung in the air above them, a waterfall of fire it appeared.

“That’s it,” Kate said softly.  “That’s the way in that the man in the village talked about.”

They all settled into a nest among a jumble of rocks in the midst of the wintery forest, and all of them slept uneasily through the rest of the night’s darkness.  Marco dreamed of facing the monster, of being dwarfed by the huge figure, and fighting fear as much as dodging the creature’s efforts to capture him.  He dreamed that he started throwing things at it – and suddenly his dream was in an alchemy lab, and the
Echidna was a Corsair, and he was throwing elements from his workbench at the monster, using the ingredients of a formula as his weapon instead of a sword.

“Marco,” Pesino said softly, shaking his shoulder.  “Wake up!  You’re having a dream,” she told him, bringing him back to the reality of the dark woods and the stream of fire that continued to fall nearby.  The dream had seemed so real, and he thought back to the fight against the Corsairs in Barcelon, when he’d fought in the alchemy workroom.

Pesino gripped his shoulder just then, as a faint sound drifted across the mountainside, the noise of the Echidna returning to its lair.

“Something’s going to happen today,” Marco told her softly.  “We’re going to do something remarkable today.”

“I think that you will.  We’ll just be there to help you any way we can,” Pesino answered.

The sky began to lighten, letting the vast form of the mountain begin to take visible shape as the eastern sky behind it turned rosy red, a color that for long moments perfectly matched the red of the lava fall they were so close to.

“Let’s get ready to go,” Marco told Kate and Cassius as he shook their shoulders to awaken them.  He felt tension and energy growing within him and all around him; they were on the cusp of the action that had been their goal throughout the course of the long, arduous journey, and the realization that the impossible goal was about to come within sight was rattling his soul.

They left the grove of trees and climbed up the mountainside, following a narrow game path that zigged and zagged back and forth as it rose via switchbacks.  The ground and air around them grew noticeably warmer in the short time it took them to climb up the hillside and approach the lava stream, and the sky overhead grew lighter as the sunlight evolved from red to orange to yellow, though they remained on the side of the mountain that was deep in shadows.

“Look,” Marco told the group softly as they reached the level where the lava flow reached the bottom of its fall.  It pooled up, then a stream of it oozed north into a valley, growing cooler and darker as it moved away from the falls.   He pointed at an apparent ledge that hugged the mountainside behind the gathered pool of lava and ran out of sight behind the lava fall.

“Let me go scout the site for you,” Gawail spoke up, catching Marco by surprise as the pixie emerged.  “It feels so warm here there’s no good reason to stay bundled up inside,” he testified to the change in temperature.  The tiny being flickered his wings momentarily, and then he was gone, flying off towards the wall of granite that was the mountainside.

Minutes later he returned.  “There is a cave back there, in the darkness of the shadows where the mountainside is hidden behind the fiery fall.  If you travel carefully along the pathway, I believe you can reach it.”

“Let’s keep our cloaks on,” Marco suggested.   Even though he was feeling warm inside his, he sensed that they would actually help protect the travelers from the short exposure to the intense heat of the firefall they would pass behind.  He looked around, to make sure that there were no watchers, though he didn’t know what difference it would have made, then he led them around the curving banks of the pond that was filled with molten rock instead of water, and they clamored up to the rocky shelf that would be their trail to the cave entrance.

Marco was sweating profusely, and he knew the others were too.  It was very, very warm, and as he started walking along the trail, on the narrow ledge between the lava on one side and the hot granite cliff face on the other side, he knew that the clothing that protected him from immediately starting to blister would only protect him for a few seconds more, before the heat grew too intense.

“We have to run.  Move carefully,” he turned and called back, then he looked forward and down, and began to pick his steps carefully as he doubled his speed to cross the distance before him.

He reached the space behind the firefall, a red, sparkling column on one side that felt like an open oven door, ten times hotter than any oven, and just as he reached that unbearable heat, the granite cliffside curved steeply inward, into darkness, into shelter from the heat, into a bearable atmosphere where he felt he could take in a breath and not scald his throat or his lungs.

He went deeper into the horizontal crevasse that was narrowing to become a cave, and when the air around him felt merely warm, he stopped.  His skin felt raw, as though it had been cooked.

“Gawail,” he called softly, as he turned to see that his companions were reaching his spot and joining him.  “Gawail, will you provide us with light?” he asked.

The pixie hovered over them, unfazed by the heat, enjoying it apparently, and the little personage immediately increase the intensity of the light he emanated, bathing them all in a glow.

“Is this sufficient, blessed one?” the pixie asked.

“That’s just right,” Marco assured him, as he looked at the faces of his friends.  They all looked puffy, red, glowing with heat, undoubtedly feeling as painful as his own exposed flesh felt.  He put his backpack down, knelt over it, and looked up at the others.  “Let’s stop here to rest for a few minutes; I’ll see if I have enough alchemy material to make something to heal our skin,” he told them all.

“That would be wonderful Marco,” Kate said thankfully, as she squatted down on the floor of the cavern entrance.

Marco pulled out his supplies and looked at what he had; there were all the right ingredients because somehow Algornia had miraculously selected the perfect collection of items to give to Marco months earlier in the Lion City.  He used the small mortar and pestle included in Algornia’s useful gift, and mixed up a paste of ingredients that would sooth away pain and heal the heated skin by drawing away the impurities and damage the flesh contained.  It was always about removing impurities, Marco thought; that was the mantra, the guiding principle that the master alchemist believed was needed to success – purification in order to achieve perfection. 

The concept seemed so logical to Marco, yet it was in opposition to the transformation that the alchemist Sty had believed was the greatest tool for alchemists to exercise.  And transformation had done so much for Marco on this adventure, he idly thought as he daubed spots of his creation on the faces of his friends and began to rub the paste into their flesh.

“Here, let me serve you,” Pesino said, poking her own finger into his bowl and gently spreading it across his own face.  He felt immediate relief everywhere the paste covered his skin, and he smiled in appreciation at his friend, his mate and companion in such a true sense over the course of the long journey.

“Thank you dear,” he told her as she spread the last of the mixture on his forehead.

“You sound just like an old husband,” she teased him as he put the bowl away in his pack.  “Gawail is very happy with this warmth and these surroundings,” she told him.

“Gawail,” Marco called, “please go forward and find out what’s ahead.  Where does this cave go?  Then come back and tell us,” he directed.

The pixie circled once above his head, then sped away quickly, his light disappearing in the distance.  Marco looked at his own hand, and carefully managed to produce a moderate amount of light from it.  He held the hand over his head, then started walking forward, and waved to the others to follow as he set off on the journey into the depths of the mountain.

“Do we have to go through a cave?” Pesino asked, a worried expression on her face.

“We have to,” Marco answered, knowing that there was no alternative in any way.

The cave they were in continued to rapidly constrict in size, until in dropped to a round passage with a diameter of about ten feet, and it steadily held that size thereafter.  It was a smooth-walled tunnel, and the floor at times felt slippery as they walked along, so that they took mincing steps whenever the angle of the passage climbed or dropped.