Treachery and subterfuge are all that remain to the man once known as the Marechal de Barristide. Alone, bereft, he plunges into darkness among thieves and criminals, his quest become a deadly threat all its own.
The game he is about to play will be his last and most dangerous. His own soul is at stake while he risks honor and identity in a final gambit to end his centuries’ long hunt.
A grim promise must be kept, but Melisse knows doubt. Little does she suspect that mastery of her own destiny is an illusion as dark powers intercede and twist her to their will.
Both hero and heroine find their paths turned by forces in opposition thus becoming pawns in a greater game of ensnarement and manipulation.
Separately, then together, they will at long last confront their common destiny — a diabolical horror that will stop at nothing to destroy them both.
This is the final volume of the best-selling series, The Marechal Chronicles.
The Marechal Chronicles: Volumes VI, The Crucible
(A Dark Fantasy Tale)
By Aimélie Aames
Copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved
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It has been my experience, be it in folly or else wise,
That the most noble of souls harbor dark countries
Wherein the path forward is muddied, subverted, .
A place where destination loses meaning and choice falters.
Doubt is the monster lying in wait there, even for the best among us.
I knew a man whose fate was as murky as a nightmare,
His valor disguised from all but the most discerning.
His story as lost as he himself was.
Extract from The Alchemist and Other Odd Happenings
BY BELLAMERE — SCHOLAR, SCRIBE, POET, AND SELF PROCLAIMED MADMAN
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Afterword
Other Fiction by Aimélie Aames
About the Author
The Marechal Chronicles, Volume VI: The Crucible
Chapter One — Alexandre
The darkness was almost absolute. Heavy curtains had been drawn against the moonlit world outside and any sounds that might have penetrated from the street were stifled just as much as the dim light of night.
The scarred man stood in that darkness, unmoving, his gaze fixed on the figure lying on the great bed at the far side of the chamber. Her body was almost imperceptible, only a faint outline visible under a jumble of plush silken bed sheets and coverlets.
It was a rich woman's bed. There was not one but two mattresses, and both were thickly overstuffed and doubtless filled with the finest downy feathers her husband's gold could buy.
The curtains rustled gently with what might have been an evening breeze — except that this night, the man knew, the air outside was as calm and still as it was within the bedchamber.
His hand went to the pommel of his sword. Strong, experienced fingers lifted the blade free from its scabbard with the faint whisper of cold metal being made ready.
His footfalls were soft and quick and he moved across the room without error, its least detail registered in his mind so that he could have navigated that place blindfolded.
In a streak of shadow, he interposed himself between the curtained window closest to the bed and the bed itself. Then he whirled and his blade flickered out like a striking serpent to punch a neat hole in the curtain. At first it met with no resistance, only to come to a jarring stop, its smooth forward motion suddenly mired in what could have only been flesh and bone.
The scarred man withdrew the blade and just as quickly punched a second hole higher and to one side of the last.
This time there was no resistance. Instead of finding the interloper's chest and, likely, heart or lungs, there was only empty air and thin light filtered through both holes instead.
He returned his sword to its scabbard and pushed aside part of the heavy curtain. The woman in the bed behind him had neglected to close the windowed doors that gave onto a small balcony behind those heavy curtains.
The swordsman glanced down, and to his mild surprise there was no telltale pool of blood, nor were there any dark droplets leading to the balcony's edge where someone had undoubtedly fled but a moment earlier. He peered down from the balcony, scanning first the building itself, then the street below for any sign of the man he had certainly wounded.
For the scarred man knew what it felt like when his blade tasted flesh. He knew in the instant that his sword punctured the curtain for the first time that it had found the upper arm of a well-built individual. And it had been without a second thought that he had corrected for his next thrust to strike somewhere more vital.
Only there was no blood to show him that his instincts had been true. There was nothing to mark that anyone had been there at all.
A master thief, perhaps. One capable of scaling stone walls without grappling hooks and ropes.
He shook his head.
Or perhaps, and more likely, it was no thief at all.
“Alexandre,” a soft voice called out, and he knew that while he had made no sound, the moonlight slipping by the drawn curtain had awakened the woman within.
“Why ever would my bodyguard decide this is the moment to let in that horrid light while I sleep?” Her voice was low, but it was not as muddled as it should have been.
The steady, deep breathing of the woman beneath her silken sheets had been that of someone feigning sleep, and the scarred man had not been duped.
“It is only necessary because M'lady forgot to close the doors of her balcony. As your dutiful guard, I was obliged to do it in your place.”
Long, loose curls slipped into view as she slid free of the sheets that had been covering her until then.
Her hair shone bright and silver in the relative darkness, but the scarred man knew that daylight would reveal her to be coiffed with a blond mane reflecting hints of auburn color that would catch the eye of any man who chanced to look upon her.
Which was exactly as she intended it to be.
His charge held a bed sheet to her chest with one hand, and he could see that her shoulders were bare. He could also see that her skin was unblemished and fair, even in darkness, and he imagined it would be as soft as the woman's heart was reputed to be hard.
Further, the scarred man understood that the only thing she had worn to bed this night was the sheet itself and nothing more.
“Oh, doors and such. Why bother when I have a protector such as you? Surely a few panes of glass will do nothing to stop the next assassin sent to kill me.”
The scarred man nodded then turned his back on her. He had not missed that the silk sheet had fallen lower with each word she spoke.
“No,” he replied to the woman he could no longer see. “However, the glass would break, I would hear them and gain the advantage and thus, perhaps, keep your skin unbroken by such ugly things as daggers in the night.”
She laughed, and the sound was that of ice jingling as it broke and fell wi
th a winter's wind.
“Don't you mean to say, before you get the chance to do the deed yourself?”
The phrase hung in the air between them, frozen, with nothing to follow and warm her words into a simple jest.
The man she had named 'Alexandre' sighed.
“Lady Keld, that is not my intention. If it were, there have been ample opportunities since I have entered your employ, and I would not now need to trouble myself with the doors you so carelessly leave open. On the contrary, one might think you look to invite another attack upon your person.”
It felt longer than that to him then, but it had only been a month's time since he had been hired by her husband, Durban Keld. Word had spread quickly of the rich merchant's wife’s narrow escape from an assassination attempt in the streets of Haccia.
Her palanquin had been not been ostentatious, nor had it born the markings of the House of Keld. From what he had learned of the affair, there had been nothing to distinguish it from any other that might be seen to wend its way from time to time in Haccia, certainly a means of transportation for the well-to-do of the small city, but not so rare as to make of it a target.
Except that it had been exactly that for someone.
The four porters were killed outright, and the two house guards that accompanied them that day had fought bravely before they, too, were brought down by their attackers.
In the mayhem, no one noticed the woman who slipped from the palanquin, her head covered with a sheaf of burlap that she had hurriedly torn from her market shopping of the day.
The makeshift cowl hid away her hair and jewels, and the confusion and screams of dying men and shouting onlookers did the rest as Lady Keld hid herself among them, making no attempt to flee.
Later, she would give perfect descriptions of the marauders, but there had been no sign of them since the attack.
That was when the scarred man went to House Keld and proffered his services as bodyguard to Durban's wife.
He had had to do little in the way of convincing anyone that he was right for the job. The chief of the house guards had gone down in less than three moves, his face bloodied and his mouth missing two teeth while his weapon lay broken and useless on the ground several paces away.
The fat merchant was a rich man, and it had been abundantly clear that the stranger who had come to his gates that day was a man capable of anything — and if his intention was that of protecting his wife, then so much the better.
He had asked the scarred man to name his price, and silence had been the answer. Durban hesitated, then cited a sum twice as much as he had first been prepared to pay the man, and a slight nod was the swordsman's only sign of agreement.
From that moment on, he had stayed at Lady Keld's side, ready to wield his blade while he learned just how much to his distaste his latest situation had become.
“So why is it that I think you're hiding something from me, Alexandre?”
The scarred man kept his back turned to her while gooseflesh broke across his arms. The phrase she had just uttered was like the cold breath of the long dead — ghosts speaking across too many years to count.
He cursed himself once again for not thinking of another name to give the woman when she had insisted on one. To tell her that he was no one had not sufficed, and now she had somehow found the means to turn her words into a blade that bit deep and twisted as she spoke again.
“Of course, I realize that is not at all your real name. Neither is Lady Keld truly mine for that matter. The real question, though, is one of trust between us, I think. And for that, I have the remedy.”
He heard her rustling behind him as she moved across the room. But the scarred man refused her still and kept his back turned while scenes of long-ago battles rose and fell in his mind's eye, battles where he had not fought alone as goblins kept coming and coming despite all that he and his fellow soldiers did.
Despite all that a woman he had once loved did, only to perish while he had been sent away on a mission.
All of it seemed so futile now. The war … the love he had known for a doomed woman … the admiration for the wartime general who now lay in a tomb in a faraway land, her body long since fallen to dust.
He heard Lady Keld open and close a number of drawers in the large armoire that dominated the opposite side of her bedchamber when at last she sighed with satisfaction at what she had found.
“I propose that we play a game, you and I,” she said, her voice growing louder as she approached him to take his arm.
“Turn around now, Alexandre. Surely you aren't afraid to face a tiny, delicate woman such as me.”
The swordsman turned to see her standing closer to him than he would have liked.
She was clothed in a silken bed sheet she had wrapped about herself and tucked together between the swell of her breasts.
Otherwise, the sheer fabric left nothing to the imagination as she stood there looking up at him, her eyes filled with false innocence.
“This is not the hour for games, M'lady.”
She nodded and said, “No, it isn't. However, it is past time that you and I come to an understanding, and this will put all doubts to rest for both of us.”
In her hands she held a small kettle, a kind of cauldron like those the soup mongers use, but where theirs were enormous things that required three men to move them once filled, that of Lady Keld was practically swallowed up by her two rather delicate, almost childlike hands.
“What is it?” he asked, then sniffed at the strange odor wafting up from it.
“The truth is, I don't know for sure,” she replied, “I purchased it a long time ago and the liquid within has never gone dry even after all these years. Those who sold it to me said it was of immense value and that it could foretell the future for anyone who had eyes to see such things.
“Yet no matter how deeply I looked, I have only seen the blackness of the unknown and its price seemed too dearly paid until I found another use for it.
"In the years since, some have told me it is a terrible, dark magic fabricated long ago by perilous beings who have since fled back to the abyss from which they came.
"I know nothing more of that, but what I did discover quite by accident is that the liquid within knows when we speak the truth and it knows when we speak mistruth."
The scarred man shrugged.
“How can I be sure that you speak the truth right now, about this toy's nature?”
Her eyes grew mischievous in the dim light, the light green color reflecting only silver grey, and once again the swordsman was reminded of the soldier who had become his lover, who then had become his general, before she had fallen in battle when he should have been at her side.
Sandrine's eyes had been like this, grey … demanding.
He shook himself as the woman before him spoke.
“Watch me now, Alexandre.”
She held the cauldron before her and then she spoke while keeping her mouth directly above the object, as if she expected her words to leave her lips to take form and fall down to land within.
“You interest me greatly,” she said, her words clear and even.
In an instant, the black liquid shimmered as if taking on life. Then its surface broke to lift up in the form of a hand that glistened darkly, like ink. It raised itself higher, visible to the wrist, and its fingers were extended and held together, as if signaling a diabolic welcome to unseen visitors.
“What devilry is this?” he hissed and took a step backward.
She smiled at him, then her visage went serious as she intoned words once more above the cauldron.
“I love my husband.”
Suddenly the disembodied black hand curled into a fist, and it fairly shook with the obvious sign of negation.
“You see,” Lady Keld said, “This is no doing of mine. I possess no magical powers, yet I do possess this magical object. You've only to test it for yourself.”
The scarred man shook his head.
“You play
a dangerous game, M’lady.”
The black hand opened, its palm facing outward.
“You see,” she said. “The object is infallible.”
The still open palm before them appeared to agree with her.
“Very well,” Alexandre replied. “But you must agree to return to your bed when we have finished. The largest part of the night still lies before us both."
Lady Keld nodded without speaking as she held the cauldron out to her bodyguard.
He took it and grimaced at the odor wafting from the thing. It smelled of brimstone, very much like something one might expect to find in an alchemist's laboratory.
So alone at the very top of his high tower ...
The scarred man shuddered at the strange, errant thought, then looked Lady Keld in the eyes and said, "What would you have me do now?"
Her eyes sparkled despite the dark hour.
"I would have you speak the truth, Alexandre, or mistruth, if you so desire. Either will serve our purposes."
"Your purposes, you mean," he said as the shining black hand rose into view, its palm open.
"As you say," she replied, then continued, "First of all, let us establish certain points …"
The scarred man interrupted her, his visage stern.
"I am here for your protection,” he intoned.
The black hand held its palm open.
"I do this because it serves me," he continued, and the dark presence in the cauldron did not indicate mistruth.
"I do this because it also serves others."
The bodyguard's eyes were on those of the woman before him, unwavering.
The Marechal Chronicles: Volume VI, The Crucible: A Dark Fantasy Tale Page 1
