He had not recognized her for the woman who strode so easily into a brothel full of men, some of them dangerous, and did so alone with a confidence that belied some secret strength.
Only the scent of lilacs and apples had disappeared at some point and the air had turned cool.
Upon the bed, he made out the dim features of Harnei, the barmaid from earlier, her sweaty face tilted back with her eyes closed.
The Marechal jumped off the bed and shouted, "Where is she? The woman whose place you took...where did she go?"
The woman merely shook her head and the Marechal rushed to dress himself.
His shirt still unbuttoned, he flew to the corridor and was momentarily blinded by lantern light, but at the end of the narrow passage a window stood open with lace curtains shifting gently in the evening breeze.
The Marechal belted his sword at his waist, dashing to the window beneath which there was a roofed porch at ground level. But, more than this, in the distance he caught a glimpse of shadow disappearing around a corner in a narrow alleyway. A shadow that moved as though panicked.
The next instant saw the scarred man rising from the ground, baked earthenware tiles tumbled around him. Instead of serving as a convenient stepping stone from the upstairs window to the ground below, the little porch roof had ceded under the Marechal's weight, its structure in ruins as he burst forward to chase after a shadow.
His long legs carried him down deserted streets, too narrow for any but those on foot, and at each turning, in the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a flap of a cloak, or dark hair billowing then disappearing just as quickly.
He loped forward, confident. The glimpses grew more frequent as he gained upon the fleeing woman. He guessed that while she did not seem to tire, her panic was forcing her to turn in every direction but the one that would let her escape him.
They ran down closer to the small river that divided the quarter. The Marechal could smell it and under that odor there was the scent of blood and bone.
Finally, he turned a last corner and saw her. She had stopped, appearing to look back in his direction and as he came into view, she fled once again, this time across a small footbridge spanning the water.
Her feet made no sound upon the wooden bridge, and the Marechal followed suit. In front of them both loomed a large building that appeared to be built directly into the stony embankment and he watched her slip behind a door to disappear within.
He did not hesitate to follow, fearing no ambush, and as he did the odors of animals and fear assaulted him. He stood still, listening. The air was noticeably cooler here and the Marechal believed he knew what the building was.
He smiled. The woman he had hunted all this time had run out of choices. There would be no back door through which she could escape.
The Marechal walked calmly forward, taking his time, and then he had it. There was the faintest trace of apples and lilacs in the gloom, there where all else reeked of bloodletting and death.
He followed his nose into the darkness only to have the feeling that the space around him had suddenly grown larger. The quality of sound had changed and he could hear water dripping somewhere nearby.
There was a flash that put spots before his eyes, then he saw her as she placed a lit torch back in its socket on the wall.
They were in an abattoir. The windowed building front gave way to cold rooms carved into the hillside running along the riverfront. Here men had found a means of cooling meat quickly before salting, with all the water necessary to wash away the stink of their work.
The walls on three sides were of solid rock, what appeared to be limestone, only instead of creamy white, much of it was stained a horrid brown or black and large hooks hung suspended from an iron track that ran along the stone ceiling.
And, there was the woman named Melisse looking down at the floor. Her arms were crossed across her chest and when she looked up at the Marechal, her eyebrows were knitted angrily together.
"Why can't you leave me alone?" she asked, then continued, "I simply don't have the time for this. I am being hunted and I can hardly stay ahead."
The Marechal smiled as he said, "Yes, I admit that I have been on your trail for quite a while, Melisse. But, please, there is no more need for panic. My only wish is to find out the truth of what you know concerning the death of Olivier Perene, among other things. However, I don't accuse you. I have never believed you responsible, for that matter, but I think you can help me in more ways than one."
The relief he expected to see on her worried face did not appear, however. If anything it looked as though she grew angrier.
"No, you stubborn, ridiculous man. I made a mistake and thought to rest a moment among other people, just for a brief time. And there you were. I had to be sure. But there is danger following me. I can feel it."
Her voice softened as she said, "I ran from you to protect you, Marechal."
He opened his mouth, then closed it again, trying to decide what to think of her words when the sound of thunder hammered through the abattoir, shaking the stone beneath their feet.
~~~
A day's journey to the north, along an old, little used track, there was a small cottage with a small vegetable garden just out front.
The soil had been partially turned not long before and where it had not, a few weeds stubbornly held fast.
Inside the cottage, an elderly man held his elderly wife in his arms and together they weeped silent tears.
His were for the morrow that they would yet live to see.
Hers were for those whom there would be no next day, not if the doom that had just passed by turned its many eyed gaze upon them.
~~~
Melisse heard the sound that was not thunder rolling through the cavernous space of the abattoir. And, with it there was the sound, somehow musical, of hundreds of windows shattering to tinkle down in thousands upon thousands of shards.
Silence followed for the space of an instant, then the mournful notes of flutes playing in a dirge drifted to her ears. It was delicate in its way, only a half step from being true music and she thought that if it had been just slightly closer to real melody it would have been enough to break the living heart beating within her chest.
There came the muffled wingbeats of hundreds of birds and as she turned to look beyond the Marechal, she saw pure, blinding white snow that moved in near silence.
She watched as everything slowed to a crystalline scale. The handsome man before her, with his jagged scar that only made his appearance more rugged in its beauty, this magnificent man spun round, his sword appearing in his hands as if by magic while the pure white of hundreds of downy wings bore down upon him.
There were eyes, as well. Rainbow colors that danced and flashed like summer dragonflies, hundreds of them in amongst the wings and she could hear mourning in the thing's breath, singing its dirge as it swept forward.
The Marechal struck first, his blade flashing like a lightning bolt and the winged beast simply divided itself, flowing around the edge of his weapon as it passed.
Sparks flew, like those at a smith's anvil, and then the swordsman was turning, coming round to strike again.
Melisse saw feathers wafting into the air and she was struck once more by their resemblance to snow. Like the thick, cottony flakes that float upon winter's winds, when the cold shows some little mercy for the sake of beauty.
As they fell, some of them struck the man wielding his sword from side to side, and where they touched him, they sank in as if he were made of butter.
Thick red blood pattered to the floor as he struck out with his blade over and over again.
A feather brushed Melisse's arm as it fell and she watched, frozen, as her skin slipped open along a line almost too thin to see. When she jerked her arm back from the plume's touch, red welled up in a wound that was as clean as if a razor had sunk into her flesh.
She could hear a woman screaming as she watched the Marechal battle. He was losing ground and the fl
oor beneath his feet was slick with his own blood.
His shirt had fallen to blood splotched tatters and his skin was riddled in long slices that weeped in burgundy.
The creature seethed and shifted around the sword thrusts that came faster and faster. Sweeping arcs that no man could sustain for long, not while bleeding his life's blood out onto the abattoir's floor.
She watched as the monster drew itself back, seeming to gather itself. The Marechal hesitated, his notched blade held before him as his torso and thighs streamed rivulets of blood.
The feathered creature retreated and seemed to condense in some way that Melisse could feel. The air was being drawn palpably back. With no warning, her head was in a vise. Her ears popped as she clapped both hands to her head, a pain like an ice pick sinking between her eyes.
Then, the air around the monster rolled in a visible wave and there was a sound that rode its crest toward the man doing what he could to protect her.
The heavy, rolling sound of thunder was bound in that wave and behind that a high pitched tone of woodwinds that arced into the Marechal's body.
An explosion enveloped the man and then propelled him like a child's doll to crash into a cold stone wall.
The air stank of sulfur and blood. Melisse saw that the floor was cracked where the Marechal had stood. He lay, unmoving, across from her, crumpled and broken.
She had seen the force that had thrown him there. Enough to have shattered every bone in his beautiful body and her thought was that she was grateful she had known the touch of his lips before it was too late.
The white monstrosity turned to her, its feathers seething in a mass that shone like gemstones. It eyed her with its hundreds of glittering eyes, reflecting colors in prisms that belonged to another realm.
She felt the floor under her feet shake for the third time, accompanied by a hollow thump, and a second monster appeared to join the first.
It had a lizard's body, mottled in dull browns and greens. Six legs supported it as it whirled to face the feathered demon. Nearly as long as two men it moved with a fluid grace that reminded Melisse of a hunting cat. And, around its long torso, there was a thin metal chain that wrapped it in shining silver.
The demon on six legs turned to look at her before its lips peeled back in what Melisse thought was a smile. Only that infernal grin was lined in dozens of needlelike fangs with bits of leather or skin hanging from between them.
With a squeal like a frightened pig, the feathered demon retreated before the other as it reared up on two legs, while the other four clawed talons dropped to the silver chain working at some hidden clasp.
There was a slithering sound and the metal binding drifted to the floor in loose, shining loops and with an awkward sort of hop, the lizard like beast freed itself from the loops only to reach down and take a length of the chain in its claws.
It remained standing on two legs, counterbalanced by its long tail lying flat behind it and it began to undulate its body while the chain began to spin in its four clawed grip.
Melisse was reminded of the jongleurs she had seen that traveled through the region, able to do amazing things with bottles and knives, tossing them into the air in complicated patterns in ways that seemed to defy all possibility.
The grinning beast was just like that. Its four claws had the chain in its grip and turned it around, almost delicately, until it began to spin. And soon the chain was spinning in time with the rippling torsions of its body, paying out in a shiny circle that whistled as it cut the air.
The feathered demon shrank down as it watched and Melisse believed she could see fear in its many eyed gaze. The white feathers of its body trembled as it hesitated before the other beast and the chain it wielded.
It shrank down, smaller, tighter, and then with a violent shudder, the feathered demon exploded into hundreds of separate wings, each crowned in a single rainbow eye that gleamed as they flew forward.
At first, the whirling chain was terrible in its efficiency. When the small white wings flew into it, they burst and shattered, their gemstone eyes falling dim to the abattoir's floor.
Except that they numbered in the hundreds as the white wings pounded their way into the beast's weapon, trying to foul the whistling shield. Crystalline plumes rained down and Melisse saw that they cut the six legged demon where they chanced to fall upon it. She saw deep ragged wounds appear that seeped a thick blue, what she supposed was its blood.
In time, the chain began to break under the onslaught of the white beast that was not one beast, but hundreds capable of flaying flesh at the slightest touch.
The lizard paid out more and more of its silver chain, pieces breaking away to fall uselessly to the floor. Finally, there were wings that had managed to penetrate its defenses and the lizard was quickly in the midst of a swarm of sparkling white.
The brown demon dropped down to all six legs, spinning and jerking as the wings attacked it. But, Melisse saw that it had no intention of retreating when it reared back up, this time with pieces of broken chain in each of its four clawed talons. It flailed them about in four directions, batting down wings like summer moths to shatter on the floor. The demon hammered relentlessly at them on all sides with a pounding rhythm like thunder and war drums.
It streamed blue blood, but the onslaught of white destruction began to slow as the floor was littered in broken plumes and rainbow eyes that saw no more.
In a rushing wind, the remaining, unbroken wings flew back from the flailing lizard, coalescing once more into a single white monstrosity, only now much diminished.
The brown demon advanced, its needle grin stretching ever wider, and then Melisse heard the terrible sound of breaking glass that seemed to stretch on for an eternity.
Behind the feathered beast, a golden crack appeared in the air and it widened into an opening. Beyond, there was golden fire that blazed in a realm unknown to men. One that Melisse recognized as the corridors of light and flame in which she had once chanced to travel.
The white demon gathered itself and as it broke away, making for the doorway it had opened, a last length of silver chain lashed out, wrapping around the beast as it squealed in fury and fear.
The six legged demon momentarily held it back from escape by the chain clasped in its claws. But the feathered demon made an ultimate effort and Melisse watched as the lizard was dragged forward, skidding across the stone floor.
She saw both demons slip through the crack in reality, one of them squealing its rage while trailing the other, grinning and bleeding blue.
The opening slammed shut with a booming reverberation and all fell to silence.
It was almost beautiful to watch as a last few feathers wafted lazily down, but the beauty was deadly, spoiled by the destruction and violence of its razored edge.
Melisse carefully made her way over to the Marechal's body, not knowing what else to do.
He was upon his side and she could see that the blood had stopped trickling from his numerous wounds.
She went to her knees and reached out a trembling hand to touch the scar that ran down his body. It started at his jaw and then plunged down across his blood splattered torso in jagged lines that reminded her of lightning blazing down from the heavens.
Except that she could see his bare back, drenched red in spilled blood, and the scar was there as well, its lines matching that of the other side. Her breath caught as she tried to imagine what kind of violence could have done such a thing. Whatever it had been, it had cut the man nearly in two like a log split for the hearth. A wound so cataclysmic that no one could have survived.
Her eyes stung then, as she considered how valiantly he had fought, interposing himself between her and the monster, giving it no thought as he made himself a shield between her and death.
And that he had paid the ultimate price against a being that should never have existed except in the nightmare of fever dreams.
She tugged at him, rolling the Marechal's body onto its back. She wante
d to see his face a last time before she left to take up her journey once more.
His eyes were closed and he seemed at peace. Almost as though he were only resting.
Melisse dared what she had not in his life and put her arms around him to rest her head upon his broad chest.
Only to jump up just as quickly, her mouth dropping open.
"That's...that's not possible," she said to no one, then put her head down to listen once more.
There it was again. Not just one heartbeat, but two, a second one behind the first, fainter, smaller, but there all the same.
Then she felt heavy muscles moving under her as his ribcage expanded to take a deep breath.
Melisse lifted her head up and she saw his eyes slitted open, looking at her, his mouth upturned in an amusement.
With a cough, the Marechal pushed himself erect and said, "Yes, I know. It happens that I am particularly difficult to kill."
Her eyes widened as she said, "But your heart...I mean, hearts. You have two...."
The scarred man chuckled as he said, "Not two, not really. Rather, its just the one that healed a little too quickly into two halves. I admit, for a time the sound of it in my chest was disconcerting but after all these years I've gotten used to it."
Melisse stammered, "But, that's not possible."
"Nevertheless," he replied, "Melisse, do you remember the conversation I had with Lord Perene in the library? Concerning the legend of the alchemist of Urrune and his assistant?"
"Yes," she said, slowly, "Lord Perene mentioned a name. I think it was Etienne...Etienne St. Lucq."
The Marechal sighed as he got to his feet, swaying slightly as he did.
"That's right. While I've gone by many names over the years, the one given me at birth is Etienne St. Lucq. The alchemist of Urrune was my father."
Her voice shook with astonishment as she said, "But, that was three hundred years ago."
The Marechal Chronicles: Volumes I, II, and III (An Erotic Fantasy Tale) Page 12