Fragments of Alchemy: The Code Keeper

The Arch Alchemist’s Son

Thea and her family followed the Keeper’s Chimaera through the halls of Blackthorn and Burtree. For such a large and awkward looking animal, he was remarkably fast, and Thea had to jog to keep up.

They quickly reached the end of the long wide antechamber with the white-robed Alchemists standing guard. The giant chamber ended with an archway that led into a large corridor. Along the side of the antechamber a staircase led up to a second floor where Thea glimpsed an identical hall above.

They entered the lower hall, where students and instructors moved about in a hurry. They all wore robes and vests of all colors, over white tunics and slacks. It made Thea feel so very different from them as she stood there in her denim overall shorts. Would she feel like she belonged here one day? As people walked by, she became aware of how many Components all of them had tucked away in their pockets. All the scents made Thea’s head spin a little. Everyone was hustling about in a hurry to get to their next lesson or to have a bit of free time.

Thea couldn’t help but stare at all the magnificent sights. Glowing balls of colorful lights lit the hallway, white marble statues adorned the walkways, and floating colored lights matched each hallway they passed. Several Alchemists floated around on small gray clouds, and many had Chimaeras by their sides. A black German Shepherd with hawk wings, a falcon with the hind half of a horse, a chameleon with butterfly wings, and even a cheetah with long rabbit ears. There were so many strange combinations that Thea was unable to decipher them all.

Then Thea saw a sight so wondrous, she forgot that she was following the Keeper’s Chimaera. There, walking toward her down the hall, was a boy with cat ears and a tail. Thea’s eyes went wide at the sight, and she stared rudely at the kid, who gave Thea a toothy smile as he passed. “Daddy!” Thea exclaimed, turning to look at her father. “Did you see that?” She pointed at the boy, who continued to walk down the hall.

“Allie!” he chided. “It’s rude to point and stare.”

“What was that?” Thea asked, lowering her voice as she continued to follow Sampson down the hallway.

“A human, just like you and me. He is studying the Imitation Conversion, which allows Alchemists to take on the traits and appearances of any living thing. In his case, a feline. Pretty neat, huh Allie?”

“Wow, that’s amazing!” Thea answered.

After they had passed several hallways, each one tiled in a different color, Sampson finally turned down a hallway covered with the same pale tiles, but down this corridor, they were all blue. Here, there were many doors lining the walls. Thea noticed then that many people were starting to notice the Keeper’s Chimaera, and in turn, they were beginning to stare at Thea.

The attention made Thea turn to look for her parents, who were still following her with Aunt Fanella close behind. She wanted to hold their hands, but it made her feel silly. She’d never felt this way before about holding her parents’ hands. But she was fourteen now. And a Hopeful. In front of all these people watching her, she couldn’t stand the idea of them all judging her for being childish. So she looked back at the Chimaera leading them to her Mentor and jogged on after him, doing her best to ignore all the looks that the complete strangers gave her.

Sampson stopped at a door and knocked with his antlers. The golden nameplate on the door read Todd Alder in simple engraved letters. The door opened to reveal a young man in a blue vest with white-blond hair. While Thea had the golden complexion of someone who spent every waking minute outside, this boy looked as though he’d never seen the light of the sun. His jaw dropped when he recognized the Keeper’s Chimaera, and he barely glanced at Thea as he reached out to take the note from Sampson’s antlers.

The boy broke the seal and read the short note, while Sampson hopped away with the distinct double-clop of his front hooves. Finally, the blond boy looked up. “You must be Althea?” he asked in a proper-sounding accent.

“Um … call me Thea. You’re Todd?”

Todd nodded and then noticed Thea’s parents and aunt. “You can come in,” Todd said politely, even though his room was barely big enough to hold two chairs around a small table across from a bed. Beside a wardrobe stood an alcove, with a water basin built into the corner of the strangely shaped room. The shape reminded Thea of a maple tree leaf with five corners, with the door as the fifth corner. The floor tiles matched the hallway, though the walls and ceiling were made of a smooth white stone.

“Go ahead, Thea,” Fanella said with a gentle nudge. She tugged on her rucksack, and Thea let her take it. “We’re going to go set up your family’s domicile and come back to get you later.”

Thea nodded and stepped into the room. Todd shut the door and motioned to the chairs at the table. The two sat down together, and Thea couldn’t ignore the fact that Todd was probably only fourteen like Thea.

Todd furrowed his eyebrows at Thea and folded the Keeper’s note shut. “So, you had your Chakras Read today?”

Thea nodded, shifting uncomfortably.

Todd made a face and shook his head. “I was at the Readings, and I don’t remember you.”

Thea looked down, her face hot. She shrugged lamely.

“How many Nodes do you have unlocked?” Todd asked.

Thea blinked. The Keeper hadn’t mentioned this.

“I have twenty-one,” Todd said, not missing a beat. “That makes exactly three for each Chakra. You can’t get any higher than that. If he Paired you with me, you must have a lot too.” Todd smiled encouragingly.

Thea shook her head. “I …” She trailed off as she spotted a green lizard poised on the bedpost. The miniature creature jumped into the air and spread leathery wings to glide from the corner of the room to alight on Todd’s shoulder.

“Is that a dragon?” Thea asked excitedly.

“You’re new to this, aren’t you?” Todd asked with a gentle smile. “Good; that’ll make this easier. All my friends’ Protégés grew up with Alchemy. They didn’t take their Trial seriously enough, and it was a pain to get them to listen.” Todd turned in his chair to give Thea the perfect view of the Chimaera on his shoulder. “This is Emerald. I made her from an emerald swift lizard and a bat. She does look like Dragon, but only a Recreant would call her that. Alchemists know that she’s really a vesperta.”

This gave Thea a very strange idea. “Is that the reason why we have mythical creatures like dragons and griffins and unicorns and stuff?”

“They, not we,” Todd corrected. “Recreants used to try to explain Alchemy after accidentally stumbling across Alchemists. But they really had no idea, so they used their imagination to fill in the missing pieces. Now, most of them don’t believe any of it, so it’s all just a bunch of fairy tales and myths and legends to them.”

Thea was jumping out of her skin with excitement. For the first time, she wanted to write a true story, instead of a story that was the product of her own imagination. And here she was, caught without a notebook!

Emerald cocked her head at Thea and hopped from Todd’s shoulder to Thea’s; she froze and held her breath as the Chimaera snuffled at her long curly hair. Todd watched with laughter in his eyes as Emerald scurried down Thea’s arm and tried to stick her nose into Thea’s jacket pocket. “No!” Thea said, but she was still frozen in place, too scared to make a move for fear of hurting the tiny vesperta.

“What have you got in your pocket?” Todd asked.

Thea found that even though she knew she was breaking the rules, she was actually excited to finally show the noctos to someone. Gently, she pulled her hand out of her pocket and showed Todd the sleeping Chimaera.

“A Pegasus, right?” Todd asked with a lighthearted wink as Emerald slowly skulked up to Thea’s Chimaera. The tiny green Chimaera stuck her tongue out at the noctos.

Thea tried to smile, overly aware that Todd was giving her a strange look. “My dad made it for me this morning,” Thea lied. “To protect me.”

Todd gave Thea a skeptical smile. “Protect you from what?”

“Uh.” Thea shrugged.

“How many Nodes did you say you have unlocked?” Todd asked again, leaning in with interest. Thea wished she could read his mind, to know if he believed her lie. It was the right thing to do, to lie, wasn’t it? Her father had told her to keep her abilities a secret, and Hopefuls weren’t supposed to have Chimaeras yet. All her thoughts made her cheeks flush with heat and she suddenly couldn’t ignore her thudding heart.

“No one told me.” Thea tried to keep her voice steady. “Am I supposed to know?”

“Yeah, the Keeper tells you right after the Reading. Come to think of it, this is all rather odd.” Todd stood up and started pacing his room. “You should have had your Reading with all of the new Hopefuls today at three o’clock.”

“Really?” Thea said. “I just got here, about half an hour ago.”

“Then you should have had to wait for the next Reading. Every three days the Keeper Reads the Chakras of all the new Hopefuls who just turned fourteen. He announces your Mentor in front of everybody there, and then there’s a party and all the new Hopefuls have their first lessons with their Mentors. All the available Chandlers always go to see if they’ll finally get a Protégé. I thought I missed my chance again.”

Thea’s head spun. The Keeper had performed her Reading in secret. Why had he done that? Now her heart was thudding quickly, and she had to concentrate on breathing to keep her emotions in check. “Chandler?” she asked finally, trying to change the subject.

“Yeah, Chemists who have Advanced once and are experienced enough to become Mentors, like me.” Todd paused to gather his thoughts. “When you pass your Trial, you’ll become an Initium, an apprentice Alchemist. Chandlers are like journeymen. Then a Bursar is above that, and—oh right! Your Trial! When is it?”

“Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock!” Thea said, her stomach sinking with the sudden reminder.

“That’s really soon!” Todd exclaimed. “We’d best get started straight away. Tell me everything you know about Alchemy.”

Thea stared at him. She hadn’t expected a quiz. “Uh, well there are symbols and words—”

“Sigils and Code Words,” Todd interjected.

“Yeah, and it’s called a Conversion, right? So, an Alchemist does a Conversion to change something, like light a match, make a seed grow, or shrink an animal.”

“You’ve got the right idea,” Todd said with a smile. “The most important thing to remember is that you can’t change the Focus object without putting Energy into it. Conversions are like equations that must balance out, and Energy can’t be created, only changed. That’s where Kundalini comes in. You can feel your Kundalini going through you when you perform the Conversion.”

Thea nodded, remembering that strangely pleasant feeling as the Energy rushed around her body.

“Then the Components make it possible for the forty-two different Conversions to have an infinite number of different effects, depending on the object you pull from your pocket.” Todd took out a vial of water.

“So when … my dad made the noctos today …” Thea started. “The blood was the Component. Without it, there’s nothing to link the Chimaera to the Alchemist. Then the animals must have been the Focus, because they got changed by the Conversion. And the Kundalini provided the Energy,” she finished with a hesitant smile.

Todd stared silently at Thea. He seemed to be in deep thought for a moment with his head tilted to the side. “I thought you were new to this,” he said finally.

“I am … but I have an exceptionally accurate memory,” Thea explained. “My dad calls it an eidetic memory, which means that I can remember anything by replaying it in my mind like it’s happening again.”

“Wow,” Todd said with a skeptical half-smile. “So, your dad made the Chimaera right in front of you, then?”

Thea nodded.

“Don’t tell anybody else that,” he warned her. He leaned toward her and whispered, “You’re not supposed to know how to make a Chimaera until I teach you while we’re out on our Joint Trial.”

Thea tried to act shocked, even though she already knew that. Then she realized that she should have used a different example and she felt her cheeks flush with warmth. “Please don’t tell anyone,” Thea pleaded.

Todd grinned. “I won’t.”

“Thanks,” Thea mumbled as she mentally chastised herself for being so impulsive. Hadn’t her father warned her to think things through? She had been too eager to impress her Mentor; she made a mental note to slow down and think.

“Let’s try a simple one.” Todd pulled out a glass vial of water from his pocket and opened a small drawing notebook. He used a pencil to draw a rather simple looking Script—a square inside a circle, touching at all four corners, with an inverted triangle inside that touched the square at all three points. “This is the Insignia for the Cardinal Fragment. You can use it to freeze or melt or evaporate, and so on.”

Thea nodded, carefully studying the Symbol. In the very center of the Symbol, Todd drew an upside-down triangle with a line under it. “Freeze,” Todd explained. Then he grinned and held up the vial of water. “The water is the Focus—because you’re trying to freeze it. The Energy comes from you, from your Kundalini, and the Component is the carbon dioxide in your breath. Say the Word, and you’ll make ice.”

Thea took the vial of water and swallowed. “What’s the Word?”

“Duratus,” Todd said.

“Duratus,” Thea repeated firmly, and her Kundalini shivered up her body. Thea tried to let the power flow, but her Kundalini went still and the cold power melted away.

Todd reached out and touched the vial in Thea’s hand. His eyes went wide, looking incredibly impressed. “You’ve made it cold. That’s really something. It’s easier if you make the Script yourself. Try it and see.” He held out the pencil.

Thea turned the page of the notebook and drew the same Conversion Circle from memory. Again, Todd looked rather impressed. “Duratus!” Thea said, and a chill wind swirled around her. Nothing was happening to the water, however, and Thea remembered the lesson Aunt Fanella taught her about the Ostium—the point where her Kundalini would enter the Insignia. She silently chanted the Word as she stared at the Ostium of her Conversion Circle.

The cold Energy traveled up her body to the crown of her head, and the air was drawn from her lungs in a puff of red. The red stream of Kundalini flowed through the Insignia and back up to the vial of water in Thea’s hand. The vial shattered. Thea gasped as she jumped to her feet. “I’m sorry!”

Todd laughed. “Well done! And don’t worry about the vial. Ice expands! That was bound to happen.” He lifted the edges of his notebook until the glass and ice gathered in the center, and then he tilted the notebook, so the shards fell into his hand. He turned the page, quickly drew another Symbol, and set the broken vial over his new Sigil. Then he pulled something from his pocket. “Unesco!” Todd said, and the glass shards on his notebook shivered and danced and turned back into a glass vial filled with ice.

“Wow,” Thea said. She studied the Script on the page and recognized the Insignia she had used to create her Chimaera. It was the same Conversion Circle, but with a completely different result, just because the Focus and Component were different. “Does that fix anything?”

“Just about, but the bigger it is, the more Energy you’ll need. And you need to make sure you have all the pieces.”

Thea nodded. “The broken vial was the Focus.”

“You’re proper quick!” Todd said. “The Component was a pinch of resin.” He held out a small bag, and Thea took the Component and smiled. “Okay, so try this one.” Todd quickly drew the same outer Circle for the Cardinal Fragment and inside he drew an upside-down triangle with a line over it. “Melt.”

“Dissoluendo!” Thea said, and her Kundalini responded with a subtle flutter of warmth.

“How’d you know?” Todd’s eyes opened wide.

“I heard an Alchemist say it, when he melted a ball of wax.”

Todd grinned and held out the frozen vial. “Go on then.”

Thea took the vial of ice and held it over the notebook. Knowing that she hadn’t drawn the Script, Thea looked for the Ostium and tried to open herself up for the Alchemy before she said the Code Word for melt. “Dissoluendo.”

Her Kundalini fluttered with a nice warmth. Thea kept concentrating, and slowly she coaxed her Energy to gather above her head, and the air was drawn from her lungs, leaving her breathless again. The power transferred to the Insignia in a surge of rippling red heat that began to melt the ice. Thea gasped for air. “Carbon dioxide is the Component for that one too?”

“That one uses the nitrogen in your breath, but blimey, you’re brilliant,” Todd said. “You’re going to ace your Trial tomorrow.”

“Do you know what I’ll have to do?” Thea asked.

Todd frowned. “I can’t tell you. Alchemist Oath.”

“What’s an Alchemist Oath?” Thea asked.

“It’s a promise that can’t be broken, because you use your Kundalini to swear to it,” Todd explained. Thea’s eyebrows went up in surprise, and Todd nodded. “Yeah, it’s really serious stuff.”

Thea tilted her head. “So how do we study all Seven Fragments in one night?”

“We can’t.” Todd was lost in thought for a moment. “The best I can do in one night is a basic overview of each Fragment. Don’t worry though. Alchemy involves trial and error just as much as memorization and skill. One of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned about Alchemy is how to explore and keep trying until I stumble upon the answer. As long as you know the Insignias and Code Words, and you can use your Kundalini Energy, you can experiment with a Conversion until you get the results you want.”

Thea nodded. “What kind of experiment do you have for me, then?”

Todd stared up and away for a moment and then searched his pockets, pulling out a seed, a pebble, a seashell, and a leaf. Then on the next page in his notebook he drew an incomplete Conversion Circle with a missing symbol in the center.

“Okay, try this,” Todd said. “One of these items is the Component and another is the Focus for a Conversion that will make a plant grow. You need to figure out how to complete the Insignia and get the result you want.” Todd set a Beginner’s Guide to Alchemy on the table.