As Zephyrin stepped through the apothecary’s entrance behind Abbé Beauvran, he was immediately conscious of various factors fighting for his attention. First there was the very atmosphere of the shop—dimly lit, musky, the air heavy with unidentifiable odors that tickled one’s nostrils. Secondly he noticed the macabre products stacked on the counters—an assortment of (hopefully) animal body parts and organs floating in translucent jars, as well as over-sized, ominous looking plants, many from the Far West. Finally, there was the dark-haired, swarthy figure standing at the counter, wearing a golden robe embroidered with green herons. He was a veritable bear of a man, whose size accorded well with the dimensions of his shop.

Indeed, everything pertaining to the shop seemed to be on a grand scale, whether the animal skulls mounted on its walls, the long, ingredient and oddity-laden shelves, or its smiling proprietor. Apolinary—for Zephyrin concluded the middle-aged, barrel-chested man at the counter could be none other than he—wore a broad grin, his yellow teeth showing through his thick mustache. His arms were extended before him, his thick fingers splayed out on the mahogany counter.

“Well, well. Father, it’s been a while,” the man said easily, his Gaulyrian excellent but tinged by an unmistakable accent.

“Yes, I’ve managed to tear myself away from blessing calves and babes long enough to pay you a visit, old friend,” said the priest breezily. “And, as you may remark, I’ve brought company.”

“I remember the letter. Your young ward...”

“Indeed, indeed. But don’t let those golden locks and cherubic looks fool you; he’s a schemer, this one. Be that as it may, I’ve somehow scrounged up enough of my latent goodness to extricate the lad from the pastoral scenes in which he was otherwise condemned to languish. There’s just a minor hiccup: if nothing’s done, he’s sure to be eaten alive at the capital, baseblood that he is.”

With a start, Zephyrin realized that Abbé Beauvran had never even bothered to test his mana, thinking him as weak as any peasant. It wasn’t an unfair assumption, given his origins, but it might now incur some unnecessary expenses.

“So you’re looking for a mana boost,” the apothecarist said, readily adopting the same presumption of weakness as the priest.

“Nothing too expensive, mind; just enough to help him limp through his lessons—and from the beatings of blueblood upperclassmen if it comes to that, I suppose.”

You ‘suppose’? thought Zephyrin; but before he could settle on an acceptable retort, his thought process was interrupted by Apolinary moving from the counter to his side. Despite his frame, he moved lithely, like a large cat.

No, like a tiger, Zephyrin corrected himself, the image solidifying in his mind the more he saw of the man. Apolinary’s lips curved as he looked down at Zephyrin. “Is there anything in particular you have in mind, dear customer?”

“Well—”

“Don’t be daft, Pollo,” interjected the priest. “The lad doesn’t know a megalektorinarii from a chicken. How do you expect him to choose?”

Apolinary held up his hands apologetically. “Very well. I’ll just have to give him the grand tour, then. Do you have a particular price range?”

“Elixirs are off-limits, but most everything else is fair game,” said the priest. Apolinary nodded, then turned to Zephyrin. “Then, let’s begin.”

What followed was the presentation of a bewildering array of ingredients and concoctions, accompanied by a whirlwind of descriptives. The shopkeeper pointed this way and that, scarcely taking a breath as he handled on item, then another, often moving on before Zephyrin could even voice his disapproval, interpreting an absence of immediate enthusiasm as a categorical denial. When his auctioneer-like delivery failed to make a dent in Zephyrin’s resistance, he merely increased his pace, offering as a stronger salvo:

“Dried snap-dragons, green all-heal, sparrow-glass, tripolion… no? You’re quite sure you’ll pass? Most impressive. The young sir has an eye. Now now, come closer, no need to be shy! Newt eye, spotted tail of salamander, fly amanita and polyander… top-notch products these, young sir can’t go wrong: see the price tags? They’re all yours for a song. What? Not these, either? Then, this carcanet?… Still no? Well, I do pray you won’t regret… How about these pale eggs of cockatrice? You’re sure? My, in your shoes, I’d not think twice!…”

Apolinary stopped for a moment, stroking his chin. Then, in a quiet, self-confident tone: “Ah, in high society this you can’t lack: bane of your enemies, a theriac…”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” said Zephyrin.

“Excellent,” replied Apolinary, as if he had already agreed to buy it. “Now, right over here you’ll find…”

Zephyrin accompanied the apothecarist from one end of the shop to the other, inserting a comment whenever the rare opportunity was presented to him, but mostly weathering the adjectival storm.

“For your health needs, a vial of mercury; so cheap, I could slap on the label ‘free’… Ah, this powder. Crushed peridexion leaf at a price that truly beggars belief. Care you to write with a griffith’s pinion? Tsk. You’re missing out—just my opinion. No matter. See this chest: pure sandalwood. No mess. Everything stays right where it should. That pitch-black runic cover? A grimoire—don’t hold back, feel that ribbon—finest moire, wrought from salamander’s rosy dewlap—comes with a solid wyvern-leather strap… What? The young sir’s imperial index… was pointing out that battered old codex? Pardon me… Ah, ‘tis but a dusty Life of some obscure soul, with which shelves are rife… A peasant girl, not yet to altars raised. You’d rather read of one whose glories blazed…”

“No, I’ll take it,” said Zephyrin, surprising both priest and apothecarist. Apolinary’s flowing exposition stopped, as if a faucet had been abruptly wrenched shut. “Eh? On that plain tome you let your eye arrest?…” The apothecarist visibly struggled with a spasm of irritation for a moment, then mastered himself. His full lips curved into a smile once more. “Of course. The customer always knows best.” He slipped the slim volume into the billowing depths of his sleeves without further protest, but it wasn't long before he returned to the assault:

“Surely you won’t leave with just that in hand? Apolinary’s still at your command. Now, you must feast your eyes on this, my boy… Behold, part of a set, my pride and joy… A baby hydra’s head!… Oh, make no fuss! There’s no danger; it’s…”

“Opistoglyphous?” put in Abbé Beauvran wryly.

“Quite so! Run your finger along the jaw… ‘The finest specimen he ever saw,’ is what the cathedral’s rector said; to him I sold six for nine crowns a head.”

Zephyrin offered no comment, not knowing what he would do with a hydra head even if he were to buy one (grind it into powder? drink it as a bone broth?), and nonwithstanding his long-standing friendship with the apothecarist, even Abbé Beauvran began to weary of the unrelenting sales pitch.

“Yes, yes, this is all well and good, Pollo,” he said, with a touch of impatience, “but what of our business? We don’t have all day, I’m sorry to own. The boy’s train departs at three. You'll tell me about your progress with ‘you-know-what’ before our time’s up, I hope!”

Apolinary inclined his head. “Of course. Right this way,” he smiled. Gesturing with his hand, he ushered the pair of them through a hanging curtain Zephyrin had seen as he had entered the shop, behind the main counter. Ducking under it revealed the rest of the shop… and an explanation for its discreet, out of the way location in the city.

Here Apolinary kept his exclusive, more ‘sensitive’ wares.

Most of his stock was admittedly standard enough, for this sort of establishment. There were love potions for maidens desperate to capture the hearts of their beloved, and should they prove successful, poisons to deal with love’s undesirable byproducts (the clever Apolinary’s motto being, Zephyrin later learned, that only a returning customer is a customer fully satisfied); there were beauty creams of varying toxicity, peach colored unguents and dark green vials full of unidentifiable liquids; there were hair powders, lice removing oils, herbal infusions and tonics, bottles of mercury, vivid dyes and exotic perfumes; in short, everything to anticipate the needs of the delicate nobility, and those of the ascendant and increasingly neurotic baseblood mercantile class.

But all that was but a front for a more lucrative trade, that of supplying his wealthy patrons with extraordinary treasures obtained not by delving into the earth for mother nature’s most jealously guarded treasures, but rather by plumbing the depths of esoteric knowledge, of which Apolinary’s patrons believed him to be the enigmatic, oracular possessor. They believed he had the secrets of the elements at his fingertips, and paid good money for him to conjure up gold and jewels, and mix life-rejuvenating draughts. The peculiar odor permeating the shop was primarily due not to Apolinary’s herbal products and outlandish ingredients, but rather his alchemical—and possibly illegal—experiments. An occupation with which, Zephyrin realized belatedly, Abbé Beauvran was more than familiar, given the breadth of his learning.

As the priest and shopkeeper fell into talking, Zephyrin heard Apolinary wind up another rapid-fire sales pitch.

“With the exception of an alkahest, be sure I can fulfill every request. Right here we have a good, stout brass cauldron—no, perhaps to this alembic your eye is drawn? Pure pewter; lid included free of charge—soon you’ll pull tidy profits from litharge… here, see this Illyrian athanor—superb craftsmanship, one can’t ask for more—brass basins, iron tongs, copper retorts, you’ll soon be aswim in oil of rose quartz…”

“How many times do I have to tell you, Pollo? Canon law expressly prohibits clerics from dabbling in alchemy.”

“Oh, what piffle! How so very myopic to ban endeavors chrysopoietic…”

Zephyrin watched as the shopkeeper and priest entered a small room—the apothecarist’s laboratory, he supposed—completely forgetting his presence for the moment. He returned his attention to the store’s myriad goods. Would he be able to find anything of use to him, he wondered.

His first few minutes of browsing didn’t turn up much. There were some books of moderate interest, but few of them pertained directly to magic, and those that did weren’t relevant to him. The spells were of intermediate difficulty, passably powerful, certainly, but requiring lengthy casting times. Zephyrin then moved on to the ingredients and potions he had not yet examined: however, the fact that a good half of Apolinary’s products were supposedly derived from long-extinct species did not inspire much confidence in him.

He found it hard to believe that so many rare specimens could somehow find their way to this man, however good his connections might be; and, of course, there was no means of verifying the genuineness of any given article. Who was to say whether there had really been a set of baby hydra heads, or the skulls of eight adult garden variety snakes? Zephyrin certainly wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. That feather he had been shown, was it really plucked from a hercinian—or, as he thought more likely—from an eagle, and then later covered with gold dust for a scintillating effect? One thing was certain, he had no intentions of burning his modest stipend in this establishment, which probably wouldn’t even exist ten years from now, after the Empire’s crackdown on alchemy.

Now that Zephyrin looked more closely, he saw that the rear of the shop was replete with miscellaneous objects—even with weapons, no doubt picked up by Apolinary on his travels. As he gazed upon a display filled with suchlike objects, Zephyrin toyed with the idea of purchasing a sword, only to dismiss it as he considered how quickly he would outgrow it. Next he wandered over to a display case containing an assortment of gemstones. Rubies, sapphires, chalcedonies, diamonds… clearly the showy spectacle was meant to convey the impression that Apolinary had succeeded in transmuting these glittering gems from baser substances.

And then, in the midst of them, one stone stood out by virtue of its nondescript appearance.

An opaque, milky-white gemstone.

Is that…?

Zephyrin kept himself very still. He waited for Apolinary to reemerge from the back room. When the man reappeared, calmly, almost indifferently he called out, “Sir, what’s this one called?”

Apolinary came over and leaned down, scrutinizing the plain white gem Zephyrin pointed out. “Scolecite, I believe.” The rare brevity of his answer spoke to his disinterest.

That was all Zephyrin needed to know that Apolinary, like the majority of men in this era, still did not grasp the properties of asterite—for that was what he strongly suspected the stone to be. “How much does it cost, sir?”

“This one…” Apolinary picked it up, examining it in the dim lighting. He frowned, and opened his mouth to say…

“One crown, six escuts and three lyardes? Though you didn’t break the bank, I certainly hope you know what you’re doing!” Abbé Beauvran chided Zephyrin, as they stepped back out into the strong sunlight.

Zephyrin glanced at the modest haul in his satchel. Reading material for the train ride, a small elixir (there had been a cheap one after all), the small chest (he had changed his mind, in the end) and the theriac, generously included free of charge by a winking Apolinary (‘my gift for a first time customer,’ he had said).

The asterite hung around his neck in a pendant. He wanted it on his person at all times. The rest of his purchases meant very little to him; this alone justified the detour… As for Abbé Beauvran, he had departed with only a badasson salve for his rheumatism, making him even more frugal than Zephyrin. It seemed his interest in alchemy extended only so far; the priest didn’t intend on investing more than his curiosity in Apolinary’s hunt after the philosopher’s stone.

As Abbé Beauvran asked passers-by for directions, Zephyrin mused that, if anything, the true ‘philosopher’s stone’ was the phenomenon of which he was the beneficiary, the one offering him this second life. He had obtained what alchemists had sought after for centuries in vain. What he had done to provoke that reaction, however, he hadn’t the faintest idea, and it was in a thoughtful mood that he pulled along his luggage bag to the train-station.