Modern Magick

Alchemy and Argent: 17

I hesitated. 'I'm speculating,' I cautioned.

'What else is new.'

'Fair. Look, Cicily mentioned her grandfather. She thought she might be talking to him, too.'

'Her grandfather, the Yllanfalen?'

'Right. The one that came from Everynden, where the Moonsilver Mines were.'

A pause. 'You think Argentein might refer to those mines?'

'Total guess,' I said. 'But yes. Yes, I do.'

'But they were emptied by Cicily's time, no?'

'Exactly.'

'Not following.'

'Cicily mentioned the "source", with a weird emphasis, like it should mean something to Mary. Well, the mines were the age-old source of moonsilver, or argent. What better place to put your secret moonsilver lab than an abandoned mineshaft that was once bristling with the stuff? Maybe there are traces of it still there. Maybe there's an atmosphere, a memory — something. I don't know, I may be talking rubbish, but it...'

'Makes a weird kind of sense,' Val finished. 'I've another thought.'

'Hit me with it.'

'What if...' she hesitated. 'We have no idea what process they might have gone through to produce their argent, right? Except that Crystobel thinks it wasn't alchemy.'

'Right.'

'Nothing in Cicily's journal. Nothing in any of Mary's letters that might hint at it, even allowing for deliberate obfuscation and bizarre code. In other words, we have no evidence that such a process exists.'

It was my turn to say, 'Not following.'

'Maybe it doesn't exist. Crystobel told the truth. You can't manufacture argent.'

'But Cicily said—'

'Cicily didn't deny the existence of a source of argent. That doesn't mean it has anything to do with alchemy.'

'She— I did ask her if she'd discovered the secret of argent, or if her son had, and she said no. That there was no need, because it was Mary's own work...'

'But she never said there was an alchemical secret?'

'She... no, she didn't.'

'Maybe because there wasn't. Whatever they did, it wasn't alchemy, or not in the way we've been thinking. They weren't reciting mumbo-jumbo over blocks of silver, or immersing them in chemical solutions. They weren't waving magick wands over them or drowning them in charms. They weren't transmuting anything, in short.' Val was talking faster and faster, working herself up to one of her genius crescendos. 'Ves, what if you're right?'

'I like being right,' I said — doubtfully, being still far behind wherever Val's scintillating intellect had taken her. 'What am I right about this time?'

'The mines. Maybe they weren't transmuting some base substance into argent. Maybe they found a way to — to restart the mines.'

'Restart the—' I stopped, because she was right. I'd spoken just a moment ago about a lingering atmosphere, or a memory. Entrenched magick. An entire network of mineshafts bristling with argent must have held an entire ocean of magick, so to speak, before we'd finally chipped away the last block. But what of the rock that remained? What if it could be... encouraged? Enchanted?

'Moon-bathing,' I said, apropos of nothing. 'The portrait activated under moonlight, with a bit of magickal fizz to help it along.'

'Okay. Maybe Mary's moon-bathing wasn't about restoring her own youth. Maybe she was talking about the mines.'