Crucible: The Order of the White Raven, #2

By A.K. Adler

What happens when you save a dragon's life?

 

Three years ago, Aiden Bran saved the young dragon Zilarra. Now, marked by that blood-debt, his dreams are filled with the growing dragon's life.

 

When his comfortable world is torn apart, Aiden is set adrift and finds himself searching for the meaning of this strange bond. How can he free himself from the dragon's debt and make his life his own again?

 

Aiden's quest for answers leads him across frozen wastelands into the ravages of a budding war, where his unwanted connection with dragons may be the only thing that can prevent bloodshed, and even the very extinction of their race.

 

His journey is one of discovery, friendship, and trust; an alchemical journey into the heart of the self, into the crucible that can either consume, or transform lead into gold.

• Language: English
• Publisher: UpLit Press
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201701970

A.K. Adler

I am interested in reading – and writing – books that have some meaning, some impact; that do not just entertain, but make us into better people. Fiction has great power to change us: we take the hero’s journey with them, and so stories can lead us deeper into the truth of who we are. I have always loved fantasy, but as a born cynic I would ask myself, ‘Isn’t this unrealistic? Why does good always triumph over evil?’ But I have learnt to find this truth in fantasy: good always triumphs over evil because this is an inevitability. The story follows our inner journey, the one each of us must take over our lifetime: a journey from darkness and struggle that always holds the potential for light. Each one of us has that potential to conquer our inner demons and find our own enlightenment; that potential is indestructible, and the darkness within our mind is only a temporary obstruction. So, good will always triumph over evil, in the end. The novels I write will, I hope, be one little spark to illuminate and encourage that inner journey. I live in a Buddhist community in the middle of nowhere. I walk in the woods every day, and would probably be happy never to go into a city again (as long as I have access to online shopping). There is a lot of insight I have gained through meditation in my writing – but my books aren’t Buddhist books. I just try to inspire everyone to be good and kind and happy.

Book preview

Crucible

The Order of the White Raven Book 2

A.K. Adler

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Copyright © [Year of First Publication] by [Author or Pen Name]

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

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Map

1.Quicksilver

2.Black rain

3.Desolation

4.The raven’s head

5.Healer’s heart

6.The road to Avalon

7.A house that has never known death

8.The White Horse Tribe

9.Storehouse of yesterdays

10.Even the stars have changed

11.Funeral pyre

12.Lightstone

13.The crystal cave

14.Trust

15.Between two worlds

16.Black powder

17.Fulcrum

18.Dignity

19.Reciprocity

20.A new dawn

21.A dragon’s debt

22.Epilogue

Acknowledgements

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Books by A.K. Adler

The Order of the White Raven

The Music of the Mind

Crucible

Legacy

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Dreamwalker

Mazeweaver

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Chapter one

Quicksilver

The fool clings tight, so much to miss;

The wise man steps from the precipice.

(Collected sayings of the White Raven)

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The hot ceramic edge of the crucible scorched his finger and he cursed.

Aiden’s concentration had been broken as the mercury droplets danced across the rim of the crucible, and his dimly-lit workshop had been replaced for a moment by a flash of jewel-bright wings against a sheer blue sky. The scar on his left hand prickled, and he rubbed absently at the burn mark that stretched across the meat of his palm. The skin was long since healed, three years in the past; the pain he felt now was not really a physical ache.

Aiden carefully finished transferring the contents of the crucible into an aludel, but the atmosphere of focused calm had already been shattered by his swearing, so this experiment would not be likely to yield results.

One single drop of mercury had fallen to the table top. He watched it coil and roll like a living thing seeking some unknowable destination. This was why the element was so revered in alchemy: a poison filled with the essence of life. He knew some apothecaries used it in medicines, but he would never do that: the metal itself would damage the body. Aiden believed it might also lift his spirit free of its bodily confines. If only it did not hold such memories…

With a sigh, Aiden captured the errant quicksilver and caged it in a stoppered flask. It joined a line of other vials in a rack against the wall, its aura of mystery lost in the clutter of the workshop. The room was large but low and dark, lit only by candle-light. Aiden kept his laboratory in the cellar underneath his apothecary shop, his alchemical equipment mixed in with the tools for preparing the tinctures and ointments of his trade. Although alchemy was no longer outlawed in the realm of Valeria, he still kept his experiments hidden, not just in case of prejudice but also because, by its very nature, the alchemical process was a deeply personal and secret one.

The aludel into which he had poured his latest experiment was steaming gently in the chill air of the workshop, and he hurried to cap it. It worked as a subliming pot, catching the condensing vapour in a spiral of tubes and leaving him with the purified essence. With the cap in place and all the mysterious innards hidden from view, the aludel looked like an egg, although it would be an enormous bird who laid an egg this size. Using thick leather gloves, Aiden lifted the egg with both hands and placed it tenderly into the cradle of the athanor, the miniature furnace that was stoked to burn through the night. With his pointed chin resting on his folded arms, he watched as the haze of heat made the egg shimmer as if it vibrated with a hidden life.

What would emerge? He had placed inside all the elements that made up a man - salt and sulphur and mercury; he had mixed his dreams into the crucible and consigned them to the fire. Would the elements of his body be purified as was the sulphur within its earthen womb? Would his spirit rise like the vapours now rising within his aludel? He blinked sleepily. A true alchemist, he knew, would spend all night beside the athanor, deep in meditation as his mind followed the alchemical process of purification. As without, so within. He yawned. Clearly, that alchemist didn’t have to get up for work in the morning.

Aiden felt a twinge, once again, of that old jealousy towards his twin brother. Finn Bran seemed able to cut right to the heart of a mystery, to reveal the inner workings of the mind in a flash of insight while Aiden was left blinking in the dark. Why could it not be that easy for him, too? To him, all Finn’s explanations were just abstract ideas on which his imagination found no purchase. He was confined to the slower path, a twisting meander through the obscure symbolism of alchemy which mirrored the complexity of the human mind and led him gradually closer to his own heart.

He cleared away the detritus of his latest work, wondering how late it was; when he became involved in his work, this room seemed to exist outside time. The candle guttered, burning low. The taper was beeswax, an expensive extravagance, but business had been good and he had few expenses. He owned the shop and the house above it outright since his friend and teacher, Easa, had left it to him in her will six years ago.

Grabbing the stub of candle, he gave one last glance at the softly glowing furnace and made his way up the steep steps, pushing open the trapdoor with his forearm and emerging behind the counter of his apothecary shop. The shutters were closed, and his flickering candle cast shadows more than light, but the shop was as familiar to him as the back of his hand: he had lived and worked here since he began his apprenticeship at sixteen, and he was now approaching his thirty-third birthday. Leaving the shadowy shop behind, Aiden padded up the stairs and slipped into his bedroom. He stopped for a moment, leaning on the doorframe, to admire the sleeping form of his lover, his long limbs spread out over three-quarters of the bed. Although he had had three years to get used to seeing Kiaran in his bed, Aiden still felt a slight frisson of delighted shock each time he saw the familiar sight. Grinning, he silently undressed and slid under the covers, blowing out the guttering candle before burrowing into Kiaran’s side.

He drifted into sleep and she was swooping through the air, wings spread wide to catch an updraft that sent her soaring in dizzying spirals, the land spread out like a tapestry below, the human lands where she was not welcome…

He awoke with a stifled cry, shooting bolt upright in bed, one flailing hand catching Kiaran a glancing blow across the shoulder. The man gave a sleepy grumble and then pushed himself up to sit beside Aiden, swinging an arm around him comfortingly.

‘What is it, love – dragons again?’

Aiden nodded dumbly. Kiaran stroked his along his spine, pulling him back down onto the mattress. ‘It’s nothing to be ashamed about,’ he continued softly, his voice still raspy with sleep, ‘if I had spoken to dragons and ridden on their backs, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to stop dreaming of them either. They must have been very intimidating.’

Aiden didn’t know why he had never wanted to explain the recurring dreams to his partner. He let Kiaran think they were nightmares, but what really terrified him about them was that he knew in his heart that they were far more than just dreams.

He rested his head on Kiaran’s shoulder, letting his warmth and solidity bring him back fully to himself. He concentrated on being human, feeling the shape of his body as his own: the long lanky frame, the thin face with high cheekbones and a nose slightly too sharp to be considered handsome. The bright blue eyes set off by the mop of jet-black hair. The scar on his hand was aching again; the mark of where he had been burned by a dragon’s blood.

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By morning, Aiden had managed to push the dream – or vision, or memory, whatever it was – to the back of his mind. Before opening the shop, he went down to his workroom to check on the progress within his aludel. The fire in the athanor was almost out, and the egg had cooled from a cherry glow to a sooty black. Lifting it from the embers onto a tripod, he carefully removed the cap into which the flower of the condensed material would have collected.

Fluttering movement, a flash of mercury. Aiden gave a startled yell and dropped the earthenware container as a perfect miniature silver dragon, no larger than a butterfly, crawled onto the lip. He stared in shock, and mouthed her name: ‘Zilarra?’

The little creature lurched across the tabletop, bumping into objects on the cluttered surface. Upon reaching the edge, it spread its tiny wings and fluttered like a hummingbird, flying in a straight line until it bumped into the far wall. This was no living creature at all, nothing with any intelligence; just an automaton, animated in some strange way by his own life force… or that of a distant dragon.

Aiden remembered to breathe again. Not Zilarra, no. Not the mercurial silver dragon he had befriended, the one that haunted his dreams. The simulacra flapped across the room again, bizarre and beautiful. Not an actual dragon, just a strange phenomenon that alchemy had pulled out of his dreams. He remembered Zilarra’s birth, how he had watched in awe as she was formed from inanimate stone and given life by the miracle of a dragon’s fire. He had felt the mystery of it down to his core; felt that dragons were the true embodiment of alchemy, the living philosopher’s stone. What he had created here was, at best, a parody of that; a mystery he had no way to unravel.

By the evening, the tiny creature was dead, if it could ever be said to have been alive. Its animus had deserted it in mid-flight, with its wings outstretched and neck straining forward to some unknowable destination. Stilled, it fitted into the palm of his hand. He stroked its smooth silver back, wondering what this strange phenomenon was trying to tell him. He had never seen this question answered in any alchemy book.

But then, no book had ever addressed the strange bond he had formed with Zilarra, either. He rubbed unconsciously over the burn mark on his hand again, remembering the night it was formed: the night when the young silver dragonet, trying only to help humanity against a greater threat, had been greeted with panic and fear by the people of Caer Cill. She could have died that day so soon after her birth: she had taken an arrow in her shoulder and could no longer fly; the mob was closing in with spears and knives… Aiden shuddered to think of it now, although at the time he had left no pause for thought – he had thrown himself straight into the path of the lynch-mob to proclaim Zilarra’s innocence and guard her life. The scar on his hand came from trying to staunch the dragon’s wound; the blood had flowed from her like quicksilver, scorching his skin, searing her into his heart…

As he was getting undressed for bed that night, Kiaran saw the miniature dragon which now swung from a cord around Aiden’s neck. Cradling it in one of his large hands, he examined it with admiration: ‘This workmanship is outstanding; where did you get it?’

‘I made it.’

Kiaran looked up at him in surprise, and Aiden shrugged self-consciously. ‘I practice alchemy; I don’t often understand it.’

Kiaran’s eyes widened and Aiden understood in that moment that his partner had never really believed before in the virtue of what he did. He felt a stab of betrayal, even though he was not truly surprised.

Settling into his lover’s arms, he courted sleep, wondering with both longing and trepidation if tonight he would once again take wing.

Chapter two

Black rain

...and in the heart of stone, a voice

That speaks of change as the only choice.

(Songs of the White Raven, Volume II)

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Aiden fell back onto the mattress, breathless and blissful. He reached out a hand and rested it on