Page 119 - Folio Only

sulphurs, mercury and several crucibles and cucurbits and some bottles of
things which made his nose jump when he smelled them.

The chant which he had heard in his dream was a mere list of
ingredients; it didn’t reveal what to do with them. Was there an order to
mixing them? There must be heat involved, yes?, but how much and at what
point, and for how long? Oh, if only I had their recipe book, but it's secret,
secret, secret! Which of course gives them all the power they want, but at the
expense of keeping the Vapor locked up from the world. Well, he would change
that. He kept trying various combinations of Sal armoniac, Arinat, distillation;
no, Arinat, distillation, Sal armoniac, and so on, but he also wrote down which
he had tried and which he hadn't, so he could scientifically narrow down the
possibilities until one day, if it took all his life, he would summon the Vapor
again (well, or allow Her to come to him).

The apothecary must have grown suspicious, and told the Council of
Healers that Ernozio was purchasing crucibles and cucurbits and Alumen
crudum, for they started following him, and watching him.

But Ernozio ignored them and locked his door, drew curtains over all the
windows. Never mind them. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He hadn't
broken the law. Actually, technically, he had done something wrong: spying on
the Healers. And very well, yes, he had broken the law...was still breaking the
law, trying himself to practice the Art of Healing. Punishable by death, as we
have seen at the beginning of this tale, to remind you of where Ernozio is
headed.

The Vapor returned one day.

Ernozio would have said it was an accident, but it hadn't been. It had
been a systematic trial and error system of ingredients, proportions, length of
incubation, and more importantly, trying various things with the lid, because

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