Then, without realizing it, as if the words commanded him and not the inverse, he continued.
“Each time, I might have loved. Truly loved. Instead I have turned away as if I have already known such a thing, as if the ache to find it again did not wound me through and through.
“But it is a love that never was, for otherwise, how could I remember nothing of it? I am a man without a past. I am a man who has refused his own future while chasing after phantoms.”
Lady Keld’s eyes softened as she looked at the torment in his visage.
“Alexandre … you can change this. End the chase and look to your own heart. You refuse me and I accept that. That you desire another is only too clear. You should go to her and make her understand that she is all that matters, and it will be enough. I promise you.”
He shook his head.
“No. It is too late. She has gone and I am now closer than I have ever been to finishing this. I have come too far.”
“Perhaps she has not gone as far away as you believe,” she said softly.
“Why do you ask such a thing?” Alexandre’s voice went low, like a growl of warning from a savage beast.
“Whether you came to Haccia alone or not? Why should that matter?
His eyes narrowed as he spoke again.
“No … I smell the stink of him.”
For once, Lady Keld had nothing to say and when Alexandre looked more closely at her, he saw that she trembled.
It was ever so slight — so subtle as to be easily missed, but his senses were wide-awake now that she had evoked the presence of his companion.
“I smell the stink of him on you, Lady Keld," he repeated. "And now I see just how far you have been willing to go to cajole some choice bit of information from me.”
He came to her and bent low so that their noses almost touched. It was almost as though he meant to embrace her.
But his voice was laced in venom when he spoke again.
“And I see fear in you. True fear, for once, has you in its thrall.”
What he saw reflected in her eyes confirmed his suspicions.
“Allow me to summarize,” he said. “You do not truly fear your husband, if he can be called that. Apparently he paid handsomely for you, so why should he damage his investment?
“Yet, you fear.
“Thus, that leaves Modest Klees. Has he threatened your life? Does he hold some key bit of information against which he holds sway over you?
“Is that why everything you have done since my arrival was simply to find the answer to a single question of your own? Or rather, one posed by Modest Klees?
“Where is my companion? Where has she gone?”
He drew his sword then, the sound of it slipping free of its scabbard like that of a hissing snake.
“Tell me I am mistaken, Lady.”
Her eyes grew wide at the unveiled threat of his blade.
“But you are — mistaken. What I fear is that I will fail in my task.”
“Go on,” Alexandre said.
“Klees was there the day I was almost killed at the market.
“He was at the head of his fellow assassins, and he only let me live on the condition that I find out all that I could about a man who would come into my husband’s employ shortly thereafter.
“He told me this man carries a remarkable scar and that his taciturn nature would be a true challenge for my wiles.
“But above all, he told me that my life would be forfeit if I did not discover the whereabouts of the woman who was seen at your side when you first came here.”
Her voice shook as she continued.
“And, if that weren’t enough, he told me that he has heard rumor of a Hidalgo still alive in Yberique and that if I fail, he would seek this rumor out and erase all remaining trace of the Hidalgo line from the world.
“Should I succeed, he promised that it would be my husband who would be erased. From there, I would be free to seek out whoever remains of my family. I would have the financial means and Modest Klees would confide to me all that he knows of the subject.”
He saw the desperation written in her eyes as she went on, this last gamble being all that was left to her.
“So, I beg you, Alexandre, tell me this small thing. Where did the woman go?”
He did not answer her. Instead, he ran his sword back in its scabbard, then with great strides he went to the door.
The key was still in the lock and Alexandre turned it quickly, no longer taking care to be silent.
It was only then that he spoke, keeping his back turned to her.
“Modest Klees is at the heart of all this. The time has come to cut that rotten heart from his chest and end his meddling for once and all.”
Then the scarred man was gone and Lady Keld knew that nothing would stop him.
She did not doubt that it could mean the ruin of each and every one of them.
Except that her guardian no longer cared for her welfare and worse still, it was painfully clear that he no longer cared for his own.
Chapter Five — Silas
Silas knew he was going mad.
He was more alone than he had ever been. It felt as though weeks, months, or even years had gone by since he had been imprisoned in that place. Cold, hard walls surrounded him on all sides. Dim light kept him from utter darkness, its source out of sight, but of one thing he was sure — it had nothing to do with daylight or that of night. It was as unchanging as each waking hour.
Occasionally he would drink a little water and, strangely, he felt no hunger. Nor did he know thirst, but it was one of the only things he could do other than sit and stare at the dull rock surrounding him.
The darkness grows, though, he thought once more.
It was a phrase that kept circling around in his thoughts, an unwanted thing that kept coming back over and over, no matter how hard he pushed it away.
It was a thought that had nothing to do with the light that illuminated his prison, but had everything to do with the growing horror inside him.
He had been left alone. Perhaps he had been forgotten. Perhaps no one cared that he was lost in the deep bowels of an Estril fortress, so far underground that no one would ever find him again.
His thoughts went on like this and while the masked woman had spoken truly and his physical strength had returned, his mental strength was under siege, crumbling further with each passing hour.
I shall go mad. And it will matter not at all, to anyone … anywhere.
He laughed aloud.
He could so and it did not matter for there was no one to hear him, no one to wonder at the sound of his voice or the utter lack of humor in it.
When he had felt strong enough, he had gone about testing his prison, searching it from one end to the other for some weakness he might exploit.
However, it had defied his every effort, the wall that became a doorway of sorts, a mist one walked through when unlocked with a key, had become a wall as unyielding as the rest, and he found no seam nor any sign at all that it had ever been anything other than a wall that would hold him until his very life was spent.
Except that he knew with certainty that long before that, he would become stark-raving mad.
Despite himself, despite his desire for self-mastery, Silas laughed again.
It is the sound of madness, the sound of darkness that grows.
He shook himself and stood up, then began pacing back and forth.
At times he would look down at the sandals he wore, wondering how long it would take him to wear them out.
Then he would examine the floor itself to see if his pacing had left some trace.
In old buildings, stairways would become worn with the passage of so many passersby over the years. Steps carved of the hardest stone would take on the air of having bowed under the weight of so many people, when the reality was that they had merely been worn away in the middle and less so at each side.
Of course, his own steps had left no trace. But, pe
rhaps one day the floor of his prison would look as though it had sagged under the weight of the man imprisoned within.
And what if I don’t die — then what?
He grinned with a twisting of his visage at the question he posed himself.
Silas knew very well what would come to pass. One day he would cease to believe that he had ever existed beyond those stone walls. He would arrive, with absolute certainty, that all of it had been a dream and that the only world that had ever been was one measured by the few footfalls it took to cross from one end of his rocky prison to the other.
The sky overhead would wink out in his mind, the sun and the stars with them.
Then, one day, he would no longer believe in his own existence, that he had been a good man, a good son, someone who had believed a good life would mean founding a family one day.
I am lost.
Then, with no sound presaging it in the devastating silence, everything changed.
Silas’ back was turned as a voice spoke behind him.
“Fare you well, human?”
He whirled to see the masked Estril female standing there. In her arms, she carried a small cauldron of black iron that she then set down upon the floor.
Silas frantically looked behind her, hoping to see a misty doorway. Nothing would have stopped him, masked woman or otherwise, from bursting forward through that doorway and out to freedom.
However, she had already closed it behind her for there was no sign of a doorway. As ever, he was surrounded by indomitable rock and the irrefutable truth that he was in control of nothing.
“How dare you?” he hissed in a low voice, “I am not well — at all.”
She stood tall, looking at him coolly from behind her mask, not a single emotion unveiled.
“A pity,” she said, “I had hoped to find you in better spirits.”
Silas shook his head.
“How can you speak to me like this? You act as though you were gone for but an afternoon, while I have been locked here for what feels like months.”
The sound of her laughter then was the first bright thing to invade his prison cell since the day of his jailing.
“You make me laugh, human. It has not been so long as you imagine.”
Then her voice took on a more concerned tone.
“Did thoughts of our last visit together not keep you company in my absence?”
Silas felt the heat of rage in his face as he answered her.
“You mean to say when you ravished me, despite me. No, that has been no comfort.”
“Ravished?” she said, and for the tiniest instant, Silas heard doubt in her voice, as if she truly did not understand what he meant.
Then, with cheerfulness returning to her voice, she said, “I have come bearing a gift for you. The Lady Lest desires you to have it.”
She indicated the cauldron on the floor.
Silas shrugged, then sat down at some distance from the woman.
“I am not hungry.”
She laughed and again, Silas knew doubt. Something was different.
“Why this is not something for you to eat, my dear. It is for seeing beyond these walls.”
He frowned.
“What do you mean?” he asked, not daring to let unfurl the hope burgeoning in his heart.
“It is an object that the Lady’s brother discovered in some faraway place, long ago. With it, and force of will, one can divine events at great distance, should one desire. However, she sends it with the warning that it was only after using this object that her brother learned of things that led him fully into a life of mischief and wandering far from his home.”
Silas gritted his teeth. Looking somewhere where he could never go would not be enough.
“She thought it might help you pass the time, until …” she paused, as if undecided.
“Until what?” he spat out, “Someone decides to let me go? Or to kill me for once and all? I tell you now that these two outcomes are the only ones I can accept, for spending the rest of my life in this place will mean madness.”
His voice cracked as he went on, “It has already begun. My anger with you should be a raging fire, and instead, I am overwhelmed with gratitude that you have returned.”
Silas rose and went to her, his arms held wide.
But she refused him, taking a step backward, one hand held before her.
“Stop.”
He did, puzzled.
“This vessel will show you what you most desire. Later, when you become more skilled with it, you may bend it to your will, but until then at least it will allow you some respite from this confinement.
“The Lady regrets, but this is the only choice for the time being.”
His shoulders slumped at what she said. Silas had been prepared for anything, and that included an attempt at seduction if that would have meant escaping his prison.
“Then show me what I must do,” he said with resignation.
The masked woman stepped closer to the cauldron while taking care to keep her distance from him.
“You have only to look within. Your heart will lead you where your mind cannot.”
Silas came closer to the cauldron to look down at it.
Its interior appeared to be filled with black, shining tar, the sort of thing employed by shipwrights, or used at times to stopper leaks at the seams of tile roofs.
He looked more closely, seeing an image resolve before him. Then he smiled and laughed.
“The only thing I see is me.”
He looked up to see that masked woman staring at him, then she said, “It is your footwear. Remove them, for they are of your world and block communion with our own. The contact you have with the Estril realm is a physical one and while it is not a force to be wielded by you, it will surely suffice for this.”
Silas nodded then bent to unlace his sandals. Since his imprisonment began, he had continued to wear them, their presence reminding of a past he so desperately longed to return to.
His feet bare, Silas looked again into the cauldron.
She had spoken truly. At the same time as he looked into the darkness before him, Silas felt heat rising from the soles of his feet. It rolled through him, rising, then when the sensation reached his face and eyes, he saw the black liquid in the cauldron swirl.
For a moment, the liquid gathered, lifting upward to form a single closed eye the size of his fist. Then it opened, staring sightlessly back at him, inscrutable and as black as ink.
He felt unreasoning fear, the desire to look away, but before he could recoil, the dark eye melted away and the liquid fell flat, an image of rich color resolving itself before his own amazed eyes.
Silas watched closely, his surprise growing by the second.
What he saw was a kind of darkness, but clearly not the same as that of the black liquid only an instant earlier.
Rather, it was a darkness that felt like a welcome to him, the kind one found if venturing into a forest under a starless night.
Then Silas felt a tickle of fear.
Something moved into view. Something big.
It stood higher at the shoulder than the stoutest draft horse he had ever seen. Its hide was covered in bristles, and they shined even though there was surely no moon overhead this night.
Beyond the beast, Silas made out the faint outline of a dilapidated home. It was perched upon an embankment surrounded on all sides but one by slack water.
Moss hung from the trees and he found himself craning his head, listening for the sound of swamp birds, or perhaps the wheezing croak of frogs.
Except that the enormous creature moving steadily toward the house in a swamp must have silenced all else by its mere presence alone.
It halted, its sides moving as it huffed the air.
Then it grunted and moved so suddenly that Silas found himself rearing back.
The animal had turned around more quickly than could be believed and what he saw were shining tusks and red eyes staring back at him.
> Before he had time to decide what he should do, the image blurred, then slipped into inky darkness that did not take long to form another image, a brighter sight for a man imprisoned against his own will.
The vision before him was one of a sunlit morning. A forest ran dark and green up to the edge of a garden, its grass closely trimmed and well kept.
A hooded figure stepped free of the forest and appeared to hesitate upon the edge that lay between the wild riot of the natural world, and that which lay beyond, a landscape shaped by the hands of men.
He saw a grand mansion, almost the size of a chateau, centered in the midst of a lawn that appeared to roll out in all directions once free of the forest.
Silas’ breath caught and the hooded figure spun around as if hearing a sound from behind, yet very close at hand.
What he saw next truly took his breath away.
The hooded figure’s face turned to look straight at him, as if seeing him across the worlds of men and magic.
His first thought was that her beauty was ferocious. Wild strength reflected in her eyes and the lines of her mouth spoke of fearless determination.
Then Silas saw those eyes brighten from rich brown to a sudden, dancing orange and red.
He knew her. He had tasted those lips, so soft and full under his own. And then he had tasted the fire that showed itself then.
She was inhabited by magic that had risen to destroy him as they had made love.
“Moon girl,” he said, and as he stared more intently at the hooded woman, Silas did not see the Estril back away from him, her masked face turned away.
If he had seen his jailer then, he would have seen that this was no attempt to leave him without his noticing, but rather a turning away from an insupportable truth.
In the cauldron the hooded woman looked about, searching for what might have startled her, then finding nothing, she squared her shoulders and turned back to stride across the lawn toward the immense home.
“It’s me,” he whispered after her, willing that she hear him somehow, someway, but her back was resolute as she went to a pair of great doors and did not hesitate to seize the door’s brass clapper to announce her arrival.
Silas watched intently and he truly did not notice that he had been left alone, the masked woman leaving him in silence.
The Marechal Chronicles: Volume VI, The Crucible: A Dark Fantasy Tale Page 7
