The Marechal Chronicles: Volume V, The Tower of the Alchemist

by Aimelie Aames

  The alchemist’s son shook his head, unwilling to consider the only conclusion he could make, and it was with her soft voice that he heard the words once more as he had when he first met her.

  ... deliver this thing to me and my mother ....

  The dusty air turned over into a red haze as fury reared its ugly head in Etienne’s mind.

  “You are not wrong, Father. Worse still, I know who it is and that I have been duped from the very beginning.”

  All her sweet words, the way she had led him from one day to another until he had been obsessed to the point of being blind.

  All of it a ruse.

  Myri had come for one thing only, and he had been a fool to believe that the passion ignited between them had been real.

  She had simply been biding her time.

  “Of whom do you speak?” his father asked.

  Etienne growled out his next words.

  “I speak of a witch, Father. Nothing less than a creature ready to do anything to procure the talisman and ... “ he whirled away from his father and sprinted to the front door of the tower.

  “... and I will not allow her to escape.”

  His last words floated back to the alchemist, who could do nothing but shake his head sadly.

  “Oh, my son,” he said to the empty air where Etienne had disappeared into the night, “I think you are wrong. The dark of night was not the sole necessary criteria. That is too easy and would have meant its discovery long ago and not by us. I think that object could not be found except by someone in the throes of true love. And I think that kind of passion cannot exist except when it is harbored equally between two souls.”

  The dust continued to settle, and the way it fell upon the alchemist’s face deepened his wrinkles far beyond his years.

  “I can only hope that you find the truth before you find her.”

  Then he turned away from the destruction at his feet and began the long way back up to his laboratory.

  There was much work to do yet, and then he would be free of the death that followed ever after him in his shadow.

  Then he would be free to show his son that there was such a thing as magic of the heart. Then, there would be time enough for everything.

  Chapter Thirteen

  He ran down the paths he and Myri had taken so often in the forest, yet he did not feel the cool air of a night that had nearly spent itself.

  Etienne was ill prepared for what he meant to do. He lacked the accoutrements necessary for what might be a lengthy hunt. His boots were too light and his cloak too thin. However, his only discomfort was the hard haft of a hammer slung upon one shoulder as he ran. It jostled and bruised him, but he did not care for he was filled with a venom that would carry him onward and tireless for as many leagues as necessary.

  He could not believe to what point he had been made a fool.

  He could not believe that his common sense had been muddied by the blue eyes of a strange woman ... those same eyes which now seemed hard, cold things no longer filled with the soft light of gentle waters in which he might drown.

  If nothing else, he meant to confront her and take back the talisman. She had no right to it and if it might one day help his father in his work, then that would suffice for Etienne. To be truthful, the anger that boiled and seethed within him made any pretext to take back the strange object a good and righteous one.

  It did not take him long and Etienne had gone beyond the limits of what he knew of the forest. However, he did not slow his pace, even if he traveled in a place he had never seen.

  Without questioning why, he knew he could go on until he found Myri, even if it meant that he continue to the very door of her home.

  He would find her. He would tell her exactly what he thought of her.

  Etienne tightened his grip upon his hammer, holding it like a weapon.

  He would take back the jewel and he would not take any refusal for an answer.

  The alchemist’s son clambered down a steep slope, then he forced his way through a lively brook that soaked him to the knees.

  The mud on the opposite bank could not slow him and soon he was rushing up an incline littered with low bushes and ferns.

  With no clue to indicate a change in terrain, Etienne suddenly found himself stepping out from beneath a canopy of forest leaves and into a bright morning light.

  It was a sort of meadow. Perhaps a farmer’s field left fallow then forgotten so that tufts of wheat and barley grew side by side, with thickets of briars that forced him to slow his pace at last.

  Etienne wound his way through the maze of brambles and brush, and the sky overhead was clear and bright. It augured a day of dry weather, one during which he hoped to find some sign of the witch’s flight. It was the kind of day that meant he would travel well and fast, and it did not matter if he carried not even a skin of water with him.

  His anger would sustain him.

  The old field was broad, but its far side turned to forest much like the one Etienne had just left behind.

  Still, he paused as he came to its edge.

  There was something. Something that brought him up short and while he could not see any reason to not continue headlong, Etienne could not shake the feeling that he had come to a sort of frontier beyond which hidden dangers lay in wait for him.

  He peered intently ahead, looking for anything that might justify his hesitation.

  He saw nothing but a line of shadow that felt like it barred the way forward. But it was only shadow, and this day nothing would keep him from the hunt.

  Etienne took a deep breath, then stepped over the boundary made by the forest shadows and entered the trees.

  Immediately, his nose was filled with the scent of humid black earth, the kind of odor that is natural and good and belonging to a healthy wood, the endless cycle of life and death turning its wheels while the sun shines down over all.

  But here, there was an undertone to it. A mustiness verging on outright rot and he found himself blowing his breath back out his nose.

  If he could have named it, if he had had the time to truly think about what it really was, he would have called it the scent of evil.

  He did not have enough time.

  Etienne had only gone a few strides into the dark wood when he stopped dead and stared at a thing standing in the distance where he was sure there had been nothing only a moment before.

  It looked like a man. Yet it was an image that hurt the eyes, for there was something terribly wrong about what he saw. Something about the way it stood.

  Etienne squinted, trying to make out just what it was that bothered him so, but was distracted by the rest of what he saw.

  It was a wrinkled, naked thing. And where a normal man’s face would have been, there was nothing but lined skin with no sign of eyes, nose, or even a mouth.

  Suddenly, it shifted as if only then noticing the man standing at the forest’s edge, a heavy hammer in his hands.

  The thing turned more fully toward him and the fleeting hope that what he saw was a twisted sculptor's rendering, a statue carved and best forgotten under a canopy of shadow and rotting leaves, simply disappeared as it roused itself. It shuddered all over. Then the monstrosity burst into life.

  It ran straight at him. And the wrongness he had felt without being sure of why became far too apparent as the creature flew at him, pounding forward with a ghastly smooth rhythm due to the three legs it ran upon.

  The outermost legs would leap forward, then the middle one would be flung ahead to take their place as it ran. As it was, it moved more rapidly, more smoothly, than anything Etienne had ever seen.

  He barely had time to heft his hammer before it was upon him, and he had a true measure of just how big it was.

  One of its hands shot out and seized him by the neck and Etienne felt himself lifted up off the ground, the hammer falling from his hands as he reached up and tried to pry away the fingers choking the life out of him. Except that each of those fingers were as thick a
s his own wrists.

  His efforts were futile.

  Etienne’s vision began to dim when the monstrous thing shook him like a doll. Then it reached up with its free hand to the strange wrappings that covered it from head to toe, like a ribbon of pale leather wound round and round until nothing of what was underneath was exposed, not even its eyes.

  The wrapping came away as its free hand unwound the leather strapping swiftly and there where he should have seen the visage of the monster, Etienne saw nothing but two black pits that yawned so widely that he fell over and into them with nothing to hold him back.

  There was no more forest. No more creature with its impossibly large hand choking his last breath from him.

  There was only darkness.

  And then, as if by some miracle, Etienne at last saw what felt like the dawning of a long mourned for sun.

  It was his friend Bellamere, his smiling face come to shine back at him in that dark place.

  Etienne. What a fine fix you find yourself in. I can’t say as I’m surprised though. This is the kind of thing you’ve had coming for a while.

  I mean what did you expect? That I’d be grateful you saved me from those bullies when we were so young, so grateful that I’d never leave your side just in case you happened to notice that I was there?

  His friend’s face stretched into a horrid sneer.

  You don’t need to ask yourself why it was so easy for me to just leave everything, you included. I know I don’t. My father made it clear enough. He didn’t care about me.

  And then when I came to you to say goodbye, what did you do? Nothing. That’s what. You just stood there without a word of sympathy. Far be it from me to imagine that you might have taken pity on your only friend and asked me to stay with you and your father for a while. If only until I could have had more time to think things through.

  Etienne’s head rocked from side to side, Bellamere’s words racking him in pain.

  Each phrase struck him with palpable agony, the lashing of a whip that would not cease.

  The alchemist’s son was stricken dumb, a scream of suffering and lament roiled in his throat for all that Bellamere reproached him, but it was a stillborn thing that would not come no matter how much he tried to speak.

  Of course not. You bastard. All you can think of is yourself. You know very well how vulnerable I am. The world is going to toss me up into the air then gobble me down so much as flyblown carrion into a vulture’s gullet.

  You let me go and you didn’t care that it would mean the end of me.

  I just didn’t matter enough to you, you careless, arrogant bastard.

  Etienne trembled as he fought against the power that would not let him speak. Except that he heard truth in what Bellamere said and no matter how much he wished it were otherwise, he knew that he had allowed his friend to wander off into a very hard world.

  The alchemist’s son could feel the heat of his own tears running down his cheeks while his wonderful, mad friend stared back at him with such hatred, such loathing.

  He could not understand how everything had suddenly turned out so very wrong. No matter what he did, it was quite clear that he would find himself completely alone and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Yes son, it is the way of things. The wheel of life which turns round and round, eventually grinding all of us under it into insignificant, unrecognizable muck.

  We are but a mockery of promise, an hour from putrefaction at any point in our lives, death a leering fiend waiting with its bony hand outstretched for each of us.

  Bellamere continued to speak, but his voice changed and his features grew old, so very old and with far too many wrinkles.

  Etienne fought against what he saw then, but he was powerless to look away as his father came to take the place of the smith’s son.

  The worms await us, Etienne. Despite all that we do, in the end we finish as castings of vermin who merit life no more and no less than we do.

  His father’s eyes glared back at him. His mouth was drawn thin and his lips were bloodless with disappointment in his regard.

  And so you do nothing to help me. What a delightful son, he who turns his back upon his kin ... nay, not just kin, but his own father ... and refuses to aid him.

  All I can ask is how you find the strength to draw your next breath, you miserable, selfish wretch.

  The heartache of his father’s mislaid life stretched out before Etienne. And at each turning of the road, he could see where he might have helped him. A kind word here, a gentle hand upon a shoulder there. Each of those things had been in his power, yet he had chosen instead to turn his back on an old man who loved him more than anything.

  Etienne was forced to recognize that this meant he and his denial of his father’s work were, in fact, the reasons that drove his father ever further along the road of his misconceived and all-consuming life’s work.

  His fault, and no other’s.

  He could have made the difference at any point, and now it was too late. All was lost.

  Etienne howled his frustration from the pit of his soul, but the chords of his agony remained muted. He had been stricken dumb and would have given anything to be deaf as well.

  His father’s hair grew long and dark, his grey eyes shimmering to a rich blue that Etienne recognized instantly. Wrinkled skin smoothed over to soft flesh with a blush of color like the most delicate of roses.

  Yet the mouth that spoke remained as hard as ever despite the moist, red lips that formed the words he heard next.

  I would have given you everything I had to give. Already, I had laid my heart bare before you and in repayment, you seek me out with vengeance clasped to your chest like a weapon you would use to strike me down.

  I cannot believe that I ever took you for anything other than what you are ... a petty, ridiculous fool.

  Myri’s eyes flashed with a cerulean blue that was simply stunning. She would have been beautiful in the most absolute of senses, except for a mouth pulled so viciously thin in rebuke for him that her splendor became a hideous thing.

  Etienne spasmed and shook as the hatred she held for him rolled over him like a thunderclap. He was less than nothing before the might of her disdain. He deserved worse than the most infernal chastisement ever devised by man.

  Before the woman who had made his heart sing, Etienne saw that there was no choice.

  He deserved to die.

  Myri continued speaking, but her words fell in a cascade that lost meaning as Etienne’s body went limp with resignation.

  There was no point. All that she said, all that each of them had said was true.

  His resistance served nothing. Whatever was meant to come next, he would fight no longer. Punishment was his due and that it be of a measure to his endless array of errors seemed the only answer.

  The cacophony of Myri’s reproach continued while her mouth opened wide.

  The sounds of her castigation washed over him as her face drew back, stretched to the point that her skin should have cracked while the red circle of her lips yawned wider and blacker than the deepest, darkest place upon all the wide land.

  The woman he loved had become an abyss, a black chasm into which he would fall, guilt for all the hurt he had done to those he loved pushing him, urging him to tip over the brink and into the dark oblivion he so deserved.

  He felt himself teeter upon the edge. Etienne could see no reason to keep his balance and let himself topple over.

  “Watcher, desist.”

  Myri shook her head from side to side, the horrific grin stretching her lips wide fading.

  “I command you. Desist.”

  Etienne could not say where the voice came from, but he heard the hard authority of a woman who was accustomed to being obeyed.

  Myri’s face swam before his eyes, then he saw her slide away like a morning mist before the noonday sun. In her place was the thing that stood on three legs. Sunlight flooded in and he squinted his eyes against the horrific visio
n of the monster. Etienne saw that it had released him and went about the task of winding the thick leather ribbon around its head to cover itself once more.

  Etienne found himself upon his own feet, the deathly grip of the creature still burning like a collar of fire around his neck. As he drew painful breath after breath, he saw as much as heard that a wind had risen in the forest and dry leaves rustled and shifted in time with a voice that appeared to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.

  “This creature was to be your end, alchemist’s son.”

  Again, the sound of leaves shifting in the wind came to his ears.

  “It has been our faithful servant for generations, an accord that still abides from centuries past when my most ancient forebear called it from a long since forgotten realm and bargained for its guardianship. One of my descendants shall pay its fell price one day, but until then, it watches for any who seek our hidden abode among the slack waters of a brackish swamp.

  “Almost no one ever dares to come there. And never do any come intentionally. Yet you have been shown the way despite my instructions to the contrary.”

  The voice quieted, then the carpet of forest leaves lifted up, only to fall back down with a sigh.

  “But so it is when the most powerful of all magic is at play, that thing foolish men name as love. It is the one thing that can cause the least of those who wield magic to surpass themselves for the love of another at their ultimate risk and peril.

  “Add to this a willful daughter, and I need look no further for the mislaid conclusion I had hoped against.

  “However, you are mistaken to search for her here, alchemist’s son.

  “Our home lies yet some distance away, but the Watcher intercepted you long before you could come that far.

  “It is an efficient being and would have meant the end for you but for one reason.

  “Its most dire capacity comes from the ability to use its victims against themselves. It sieves their minds and becomes the very people who mean the most to them, starting with the least, then coming to the last. That one last person who means more to them than anyone else in all the world.