The Nyctalope Steps In

by Jean de La Hire

  Que rien sur notre terre ne saurait l’égaler.

  La flamberge au vent froid met fin au long sursis,

  Et la face du faquin au fond du limon git. »1

  It was on a cold winter morning in the year of Our Lord 1639 that one might have heard those verses declaimed loudly and clearly over the sounds of sword rattling against sword, if one found oneself in a lonely clearing in the woods lining the banks of the river Seine—in an area which, three centuries later, would become the location of the fabled Avenue des Champs-Elysées.

  If fate had indeed brought a spectator to that muddy clearing, our bystander might have beheld the sight, familiar for the times, of two gentlemen engaged in a flamboyant duel. One was dressed in the dark red livery of the Cardinal’s Guards; the other wore the proud uniform of the Cadets de Gascogne.

  « Mais enfin en baillant, je me suis éveillé.

  A la fin de la pièce, aux vers si torturés,

  Seuls les bras de Morphée avaient pu me sauver

  Des affres de l’ennui où j’avais cru sombrer.

  La flamberge au vent froid met fin au long sursis,

  Et la face du butor au fond du limon git. »2

  These bold verses were being recited in a stentorian voice by the Cadet. Both combatants were of equal size and stature, and they each sported a thin mustache in the fashion of the times. The poet’s face, however, was unique and truly remarkable. It was dominated by a nose that was so big and pointy that he himself had, occasionally, referred to it as a promontory.

  Were our hypothetical spectator acquainted with Parisian society, he would have immediately recognized the notorious Savinien Hercule Cyrano de Bergerac, rightly feared as the deadliest swordsman in France, and equally famous for his fearless conduct. One might well have asked what insanity could have compelled his adversary to challenge such a man to a duel?

  Cyrano’s impromptu poem might have offered a clue: listening to it, one would have understood that the swordsman had, once again, publicly mocked Cardinal de Richelieu’s literary aspirations, drawing inspiration, for reasons no one suspected, from the title of his most recent play, Roxane.

  « Aujourd’hui, à l’épée, pour l’honneur d’un Duc,

  Afin de préserver toute gloire caduque,

  De Sainte Claire et moi allons nous rencontrer.

  Sur ce grand champ d’honneur, l’un de nous va tomber.

  La flamberge au vent froid met fin au long sursis,

  Et la face du cuistre au fond du limon git. » 3

  That last stanza identified Cyrano’s unfortunate opponent. Equally well-known throughout Paris for his bravery, he was none other than Marquis Henri-Jean de Sainte-Claire,4 a man loyal beyond words to his master, who was obviously seeking retribution for Cyrano’s insolence, despite the Cardinal’s own edict forbidding duels.

  Yet, despite Sainte-Claire’s obvious talent with a sword, he could not prevail against Cyrano’s superior skills. Soon, the issue of the duel was no longer in doubt. The Cadet de Gascogne easily blocked all of his opponent’s thrusts, while he himself managed to drive the tip of his rapier ever closer to Sainte-Claire’s face. It was obvious that Cyrano, as was his wont, waited only to finish his poem before delivering the fatal strike.

  The young Marquis, against almost all hope, nevertheless managed a skillful feint, parry and thrust that would surely have maimed Cyrano had he not been so light on his feet. In a bold counterstrike, the poet struck Sainte-Claire just above his left eye. The blow was so unexpected and the shock so violent that the Marquis fell face first on the ground—just as Cyrano’s poem had predicted!

  Sainte-Claire woke up four days later inside a dark bedroom in an inn that was patronized by the Cardinal’s Guards. He heard someone come into the room.

  “Rochefort—thank you for taking such good care of me,” he said, recognizing his visitor at once.

  “Henri! It’s so dark in here! How could you tell it was me?... Well, who else would care for you, I suppose… I feared that Cyrano’s blow might have left you blind, but it seems that, like the Duc de Guise and I, you’re only condemned to wear an ugly scar on your face!”

  “Please pour me a glass of wine! I see a jug and a glass on that table over there.”

  “How the Devil can you see in here! It’s as dark as the Devil’s bottom! Let me open the shutters first!”

  Thus did Henri-Jean de Sainte-Claire become aware that Cyrano’s sword had mysteriously affected his sense of sight. He was able to see in the dark as if it were daylight! He thought this new talent might prove very useful in the Cardinal’s service…

  Two years later, during a moonless night in December 1641, Sainte-Claire was back in the same fateful clearing where his duel with Cyrano, which had almost killed him, had instead ended up gifting him with his strange, new power. Wrapped inside a long, dark cloak, the Cardinal’s Guard had been discreetly following a messenger dispatched by the Marquis Henri de Cinq-Mars.

  The man had often turned back to check if he was being followed, but the darkness was too obscure for him to detect Sainte-Claire’s presence—and unlike the Cardinal’s man, Cinq-Mars’ agent was not a nyctalope!

  Sainte-Claire had been following the man since he had left his master’s Parisian mansion. A few days earlier, Rochefort and he had been summoned by the Cardinal, who wished to entrust them with an important mission. When they had faced the man who had secretly ruled France for so many years from behind the scenes, they had found him pale and sickly. Yet, his eyes still carried within them the cold flame of his unbending will.

  “Gentlemen,” said Richelieu, “I have just obtained information about a plot against the Kingdom. Some of the ringleaders belong to the highest strata of our society and are even close to the King himself. One of them is the Marquis de Cinq-Mars, who owes me everything in life, and yet, it seems, hates me deeply. I do not know the details of the plot, but it is said to be bankrolled by Spain. We have been at war with King Philip IV for six years now; no doubt, he has found a more expedient way to bring our conflict to an end. Rochefort! Sainte-Claire! I trust you above all others. I want you to keep a close eye on Cinq-Mars and report anything suspicious to me at once.”

  Following their orders, the two Guards had kept a close watch on the Marquis’ mansion, Rochefort by day, Sainte-Claire by night. That’s how the latter had spotted the mysterious messenger dispatched in the depths of night and had followed him into the woods all the way to the banks of the Seine.

  Cinq-Mars’ envoy reached the clearing by the river. There, two men appeared to be waiting for him. They were wrapped in long, black cloaks which, nevertheless, did not hide the swords hanging from their belts. Sainte-Claire thought that they must be gentlemen of the nobility.

  A stranger sight, however, was that of a small metal embarkation in the river, which looked like no boat Sainte-Claire had ever seen. It was smooth, grey and oval in shape, and was topped by a metal turret with a door large enough for one man.

  Sainte-Claire watched the three men who, normally, would have been invisible to all in the darkness and listened eagerly to their exchange.

  “Gentlemen, ‘tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good,” the Marquis’ envoy said.

  Obviously a pre-arranged signal, thought Sainte-Claire.

  “The windmill doesn’t care for the wind that’s gone past,” responded one of the two newcomers with a strong Spanish accent, making a courteous salute. “Do you have the draft of the new treaty?” he added, extending his hand.

  At that moment, Sainte-Claire noticed something unusual about the Spaniard’s hand: his fourth finger did not move and was bent at an unnatural angle. He looked at his companion and saw that his hand, too, presented the same, unusual characteristic.

  Meanwhile, the Marquis’ messenger had pulled a document from under his cloak and was handing it to the strange Spaniard.

  “Here it is,” he said. “My master asked me to tell you that it faithfully reflects our latest agreement, and your Ki
ng should be pleased with the new territories conceded to Spain.”

  He then pulled back his hood and Sainte-Claire recognized François de Thou, Councillor at the Parliament and great friend of the Marquis de Cinq-Mars.

  As the treaty changed hands, Sainte-Claire became concerned that such a damning proof of Cinq-Mars’ guilt might be lost, so he pulled out his sword and jumped into the clearing, shouting:

  “In the name of the King and the Cardinal, you are all under arrest!”

  After a second during which they were struck by surprise, the three conspirators reacted—very differently.

  François de Thou, his face contorted with fear, stepped back, trying to see who had sprung on them, already looking for a means of escape.

  One of the two Spaniards seized the treaty and jumped aboard the metal boat. The other pulled what looked like a strange hand-held metallic weapon from beneath his cloak and peered through the darkness, trying to find his opponent.

  With a swift turn of his blade, Saint-Claire disarmed him, causing the gun to fall on the grass, and stabbed him through the neck. Then something truly extraordinary happened: As soon as his foe’s body touched the ground, it was surrounded by a reddish glow and disappeared, leaving only a scattering of ashes behind!

  It was now Sainte-Claire’s turn to be awestruck on the spot.

  François de Thou took advantage of the Cardinal’s man’s shock to vanish into the woods, running as fast as his portly legs would carry him.

  Meanwhile, the third man, the one with the treaty, had reached the door in the turret of the strange metal ship. Sainte-Claire was too far to catch him. He saw the strange gun lying on the ground, grabbed it, pointed it at the fugitive and pressed the knob on its side.

  The gun made a strange high-pitched sound and the Spaniard’s body became also enveloped by a red glow before it, too, disappeared. Then, the metal ship began to vibrate and disintegrate. The Seine waters bubbled up and, after a few seconds, nothing was left of the incident, except some thin grey smoke which floated above the water before the wind blew it away.

  Sainte-Claire looked at the supernatural gun in his hand. “Even the treaty is gone,” he muttered dejectedly. Then, he threw the accursed object in the river and went home to write his report.

  Report prepared for the Watcher’s Council by Quentin Travers, Chief Librarian, June 22, 1965 (cont’d).

  Sainte-Claire’s diary does not contain any more information about this strange affair, the next section being devoted to his dalliance with a young lady-in-waiting from the Court, which offers little or no interest as far as we are concerned.

  A few months later, Cardinal de Richelieu was able to lay his hands on written proof of Cinq-Mars’ treacherous exchange with King Philip IV of Spain, a conspiracy which also implicated the King’s own brother. On September 12, 1642, Cinq-Mars and de Thou were beheaded in Lyon. It is not impossible that Sainte-Claire took some further part in those events.

  The strange facts related in his diary are, as far as I have been able to ascertain, not mentioned anywhere in any other chronicles of the times. The identity of the two strange persons posing as Spaniards remains unknown. It is possible that they were Invaders from another world, who, upon seeing their plot foiled, left, never to return. It is highly unlikely that we will ever learn the truth about this matter.

  As for the remarkable powers exhibited by Marquis Henri-Jean de Sainte-Claire, it is tempting to juxtapose this information with what we know is contained in the papyrus written by Greek historian Manetho preserved in our Library.

  Manetho relates that, during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaton in 1360 BC., the High Priest of Aton, Merira, created a special caste of sacred warriors to spread the faith of Aton and defend the values of light and justice throughout Egypt. The leader of that caste, one special warrior, was endowed by the Sun God with a special power which enabled him to see in the darkness as if it were light. As we know, Manetho went on to mostly detail the story of Akhenaton’s death and how the Pharaoh was buried in the Chamber of Horus located beneath the Great Pyramid, but he also noted that this warrior had the ability to transfer his power to his descendents in order for them to keep defending the values of Aton in times of great need.

  Might Marquis Henri-Jean de Sainte Claire have been a descendent of this great warrior whose name has been lost in history? Certainly, the fact that his descendent, Leo Saint-Clair, a.k.a. the Nyctalope, was endowed with the same power and fought a great number of foes threatening the stability of our world leads us to speculate: as there has been a line of Slayers since time immemorial, can there also have been a line of Nyctalopes?

  Emmanuel Gorlier is also the author of Nyctalope! L’Univers Extravagant de Jean de La Hire, a companion book about La Hire and his universe, from which we have excerpted and translated the chronology appended to this volume. This story, published in Les Compagnons de L’Ombre—the French version of Tales of the Shadowmen published by our sister imprint Rivière Blanche—is a sequel to Fiat Lux! and expands upon the Nyctalope’s mythological origins, while clearing the way for his triumphant return in the 1950s...

  Emmanuel Gorlier: The Three Sisters

  A long, long time ago…

  Silence. Darkness. Suddenly, the Sun appeared over the horizon, lighting a vast, desolate landscape of rocks and dust with its harsh light. A man stood, resting on the edge of a small crater, unconcerned by the vacuum of space, lost in thought. He wore flamboyant clothes and white boots adorned with purple ribbons. He shook his fawn-colored gloves, which swung more slowly because of the gravity that was six times less than that of Earth, and a double spiral of multicolored stones appeared, rotating upon themselves quickly. They were Ioun stones which he had found on a distant white dwarf star. Each had its own unique power—one of which being that they allowed him to move unimpeded on the inhospitable surface of the Moon.

  After a long moment of hesitation, the Magician took a small, wooden box from one of the many pockets of his elegant lemon-yellow shirt. He opened it gently. Inside were three compartments; two were empty while the third was occupied by another Ioun stone of a shimmering color. He removed the crystal from the box with an overly cautious gesture and lifted it to the sky. A thought crossed his mind:

  Rialto, my friend, thanks to this stone you will surpass yourself! The first stone, which you deposited on the Sun, will transmit its stellar energy to this stone, here, on the Moon, which in turn will rebroadcast it to its sister stone on Earth, and that will cause an explosion like nothing anyone has ever seen! Ha! Ha! It will be just as I swore: I won’t have to use even a hint of magic to destroy that bothersome mountain! It will be eradicated entirely due to a natural phenomenon! It is not for nothing that I am known as Rialto the Marvelous—the most powerful magician of our times! In fact, in my opinion, limiting this phrase to a specific time period is highly inaccurate, but still... When I meet my fellow magicians of the Dying Earth, no one will think of searching this far back in time to discover my trick! Now, the only thing that remains for me to do is to bury the stone and place a minor dust elemental over it, set to disperse on the day of our meeting. The planetary conjunction that will place the three stones in perfect alignment will do the rest!

  Using a small silver shovel, Rialto dug a tiny hole into which he deposited the stone. He then poured the contents of a multicolored vial over it. A powder spread over the hole as if it were animated with a life of its own and quickly covered the excavation.

  Rialto smiled, made a few strange passes with his hands and vanished abruptly.

  One hundred thousand years later...

  The small crater on the Moon was still there, unchanged. Suddenly, a meteor crossed the ink-dark sky and hit the lunar surface a few yards from where the Ioun stone was buried. The silent shock had the power of a small atomic bomb. The dust elemental vanished. The stone had been born at the center of a star and easily withstood the tremendous heat of the explosion. Now, it sat alone, undisturbed, at the center of a
very large crater. Nothing prevented it from being in alignment with its solar sister when the Moon was down, and the crater was bathed in sunlight.

  As for the third stone, despite Rialto’s best intentions, it had been discovered on Earth by the necromancers of the dark kingdom of Acheron, who had divined its weird energy broadcasting powers and had buried it in a long-forgotten underground cave where it lay hidden for millennia. But all the elements were potentially in place for what Rialto had only intended as a practical joke to be turnred into a major threat to Mankind, for if the third stone ever came to be discovered and was exposed to moonlight at the wrong time...

  Egypt, 14th Century BC,

  during the Reign of Pharaoh Akhenaton...

  The dark, underground passage was suddenly lit up by the distant light of a torch. A light step sounded and a young woman appeared, her beautiful face was illuminated by some secret joy. She wore a long, hooded cloak and carried a small canvas bag over her left arm. After a hundred yards, she stopped before a massive wooden door and knocked gently. A few moments later, the door opened silently, revealing the weathered face of a powerful-looking man.

  “Hecate! At last! Do you have the stone?”

  The girl entered the room. The man closed the door behind her, after casting a worried glance at the corridor. Hecate opened the bag and pulled out a milky, oval stone with a dark spot that glowed with an inner light.

  “Amon be praised!” exclaimed the man. “The Egg of Set! After all these years, we finally have the means to destroy the Heretic!”

  “Don’t talk so loudly, Imhotep! We could still be overheard.”

  “Pah! We’re in a temple that Akhenaton has struck with a curse! His minions are not likely to be wandering about…” Then, with a sibilant voice, he continued: “Thanks to the power of this stone, we can repay the wicked! Are you sure you can use it according to the legends?”