The Year of Rice and Salt

He jumped off the dais, thumped down on the bare boards of the cosmos. The rest of his jati crashed down beside him, crying out in pain at the impact. 'You got us in trouble,' Shen whined.

'It doesn't work like that,' Butterfly informed him as they panted off together into the mists. 'I've seen a lot of people try. They lash out in fury and cut the hideous gods down, and how they deserve it – and yet the gods spring back up, redoubled in other people. A karmic law of this universe, my friend. Like conservation of yin and yang, or gravity. We live in a universe ruled by very few laws, but the redoubling of violence by violence is one of the main ones.'

'I don't believe it,' Kheim said, and stopped to fend off the two Kalis now pursuing them. He took a hard swing and decapitated one of the new Kalis. Swiftly another head grew back, swelling on top of the gusher on the neck of the black body, and the new white teeth of her new head laughed at him, while her bloody red eyes blazed. He was in trouble, he saw; he was going to be backed to pieces. For resisting these evil unjust absurd and horrible deities he was going to be hacked to pieces and returned to the world as a mule or a monkey or a maimed old geezer.

Transmutation

Now it so happened that as the time approached for the great alchemist's red work to reach its culmination, in the final multiplication, the projection of the sophic hydrolith into the ferment, causing tincture – that is to say, the transmuting of base metals into gold – the son in law of the alchemist, one Bahram al Bokhara, ran and jostled through the bazaar of Samarqand on last minute errands, ignoring the calls of his various friends and creditors. 'I can't stop,' he called to them, 'I'm late!'

'Late paying your debts!' said Divendi, whose coffee stall was wedged into a slot next to Iwang's workshop.

'True,' Bahram said, but stopped for a coffee. 'Always late but never bored.'

'Khalid keeps you hopping.'

'Literally so, yesterday. The big pelican cracked during a descension, and it all spilled right next to me – vitriol of Cyprus mixed with sal ammoniac.'

'Dangerous?'

'Oh my God. Where it splashed on my trousers the cloth was eaten away, and the smoke was worse. I had to run for my life!'

'As always.'

'So true. I coughed my guts out, my eyes ran all night. It was like drinking your coffee.'

'I always make yours from the dregs.'

'I know,' tossing down the last gritty shot. 'So are you coming tomorrow?'

'To see lead turned into gold? I'll be there.'

Iwang's workshop was dominated by its brick furnace. Familiar sizzle and smell of bellowed fire, tink of hammer, glowing molten glass, Iwang twirling the rod attentively: Bahram greeted the glassblower and silversmith, 'Khalid wants more of the wolf.'

'Khalid always wants more of the wolf.' Iwang continued turning his blob of hot glass. Tall and broad and big faced, a Tibetan by birth, but long a resident of Samarqand, he was one of Khalid's closest associates. 'Did he send payment this time?'

'Of course not. He said to put it on his tab.'

Iwang pursed his lips. 'He's got too many tabs these days.'

'All paid after tomorrow. He finished the seven hundred and seventyseventh distillation.'

Iwang put down his work and went to a wall stacked with boxes. He handed Bahram a small leather pouch, heavy with small beads of lead. 'Gold grows in the earth,' he said. 'Al Razi himself couldn't grow it in a crucible.'

'Khalid would debate that. And Al Razi lived a long time ago. He couldn't get the heat we can now.'

'Maybe.' Iwang was sceptical. 'Tell him to be careful.'

'Of burning himself?'

'Of the Khan burning him.'

'You'll be there to see it?'

Iwang nodded reluctantly.

The day of the demonstration came, and for a wonder the great Khalid Ali Abu al Samarqandi seemed nervous; and Bahram could understand why. If Sayyed Abdul Aziz Khan, ruler of the khanate of Bokhara, immensely rich and powerful, chose to support Khalid's enterprises, all would be well; but he was not a man you wanted to disappoint. Even his closest adviser, his treasury secretary Nadir Devanbegi, avoided distressing him at all costs. Recently, for instance, Nadir had caused a new caravanserai to be built on the east side of Bokhara, and the Khan had been brought out for its opening ceremony, and being a bit inattentive by nature, he had congratulated them for building such a fine madressa; and rather than correct him on the point, Nadir had ordered the complex turned into a madressa. That was the kind of khan Sayyed Abdul Aziz was, and he was the khan to whom Khalid was going to demonstrate the tincture. It was enough to make Bahram's stomach tight and his pulse fast, and while Khalid sounded like he always did, sharp and impatient and sure of himself, Bahram could see that his face was unusually pale.