The Alchemist in the Shadows

4

It was not the most well-known of the sixteen gates of Paris. It was not the most frequented, or the best defended. And once night fell, and the thick doors between the two massive towers were closed, it became a dark, silent edifice whose sinister calm would — ordinarily — go undisturbed until the following morning.

The dracs arrived shortly after midnight, their mounts walking in the black ground-hugging mist that accompanied them.

There were eight in all.



Seven vigorous black dracs and one other drac with pale scales, the colour of dirty bone. The black dracs were riding calm, powerful warhorses. Wearing gloves and boots, they were dressed like hired swordsmen. Wide leather belts were cinched around their waists and they had solid rapiers at their sides.

The other drac was unarmed. But he carried a large carved staff hung with various small fetishes: tiny bones, teeth, feathers, old scales. Dressed in stinking, filthy rags encrusted with what looked like dried blood, he rode bareback on a giant salamander whose belly grazed the black mist and whose slow, steady step set the pace for the whole group. The drac was very old. He was missing some teeth and his back was bent. His yellow eyes, however, gleamed with a lively spark. And a particularly virulent and baleful aura emanated from him.

The dracs drew to a halt on the narrow stone bridge that crossed over the fetid ditch before the gates. They waited, as the mist beneath them stretched out dark tendrils that snaked their way beneath the city gate in order to accomplish their task on the far side. The task did not take long. The tendrils immediately withdrew.

The old drac raised his staff in one gnarly hand, tipped with jagged yellow claws, and pointed it at the door.

He mumbled a few words in the drakish tongue.

The sound of scraping and several dull thuds could be heard inside.

And then the heavy doors opened, while the portcullis lifted with a clanking noise.

The archway, long and empty, was only lit by two sputtering torches. The dracs passed through it slowly, without sparing a glance for the dying pikeman who staggered out of the guards' lodge and stretched out an arm, trying to cry for help before he collapsed. He died, his body convulsing, retching up a black bile that ran from his mouth, nostrils and eyelids.

The dracs emerged from the gate and melted, one by one, into the shadowy streets of Paris.