The Marechal Chronicles: Volume VI, The Crucible: A Dark Fantasy Tale

by Aimelie Aames

  “Fear not, human,” he heard Wisp say. “Your strength and the dark power we left behind were enough.”

  With no warning, Silas felt the spinning tumult around him come to a stop.

  He opened eyes he had not realized he had closed and saw a strange shining path winding away from them.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  Wisp laughed with a sound much like tiny bells chiming.

  “We are on the path back to where we belong, at long last,” she said with a bright smile.

  He nodded as they began walking forward, still hand in hand.

  “And where shall we go?" he asked the frail being at his side.

  “Before I answer you, can you tell me one thing?” she asked, then continued without waiting for his response.

  “Do you trust her?”

  Silas hesitated before answering despite knowing exactly who she meant.

  “Let’s say that I trust her to be the brave soul I first met long ago. That much I believe is still part of her, no matter what else she has become since.”

  The willowy female nodded.

  "Then I tell you that this path is not of my making. We are drawn forward and in the bright distance too strong for your human eyes, I see a broken tower,” she replied, her voice losing some of its cheerful tone.

  “I think we shall bear witness there and either find the woman as you remember her to be, or else our own utter destruction."

  Chapter Twelve — Lady Keld

  She had not moved after Alexandre had left her.

  Lady Keld sobbed in silence, a perfect silence, allowing her tears to fall as her failure racked her body.

  Yet, her sadness was a quietly mastered thing, her own survival depending on her remaining hidden within her own home.

  It seemed to her that not much time had passed when she heard the muffled sound of men crying out somewhere nearby.

  She heard the dim clash of metal against metal, the crash of furniture being overturned.

  Lady Keld’s tears dried as she heard the sounds of the dying, lowing like cattle at the abattoir, before these, too, eventually went dry and silent.

  Her eyes grew wide as she heard the door lock click faintly at first, then with the whining sound of protesting metal, it cracked and clattered to the floor as the door swung wide.

  Her throat went dry.

  In the doorframe, a silhouette stood. Lady Keld had not dared more than a candle to light the chamber, and its faint light did nothing to show her who stood before her then.

  Except that she knew — beyond the shadow of a doubt.

  “Dear Lady,” a voice she knew all too well intoned. “There is no longer any need for locked doors in this place.”

  Modest Klees stepped fully into the bedchamber.

  “I have taken the liberty of removing all sources of danger,” he chuckled, “to the very last one.

  “Of course, the city guard has been warned that bloodshed, if not outright murder, has come to visit House Keld.”

  She shrank back from him.

  “No,” Lady Keld said, her voice trembling. “I need more time. He has gone but I know he will come back.”

  She drew the bed’s coverlet toward herself, desiring nothing more than to pull it over her head and hide as a child might from this night’s terrors.

  “When he does, I will get the information you desire.”

  Klees nodded, his features shifting in and out of the dim light’s reach, making of him a phantom.

  “Promises, promises. My, but you are quick to make them. Keeping them, however, is another matter, is it not, Lady?”

  She could not longer help herself as she drew the coverlet up over her body while shaking her head.

  “I just need a little more time with him.”

  The shadowy figured took another step toward her.

  “I am afraid that your time has run out, Lady, just as mine begins to wane far too much for my liking.”

  She understood what he meant. He had warned her what would happen should she fail.

  Anger flared in her bosom as she realized that the rest of her life was no longer counted in years or even days, but in minutes, or less.

  “Then, you should know, Klees,” she hissed at him, “he has gone in search of you. He means to kill you and I pray that he succeeds.”

  Another step was taken, the distance between them closing inexorably.

  “Of course he has,” he chuckled. “Why, I am counting on that very fact. I am also counting on the city guard to intercept him, with the exact description of the murderer of Lord and Lady Keld matching his own, scarred visage and all.”

  She trembled despite her desire to remain calm in the face of her own doom.

  “The guard will not stop him, Klees. Nothing will.”

  A faint whistling sound broke the silence following her words, coming to an abrupt end as Klees lowered his hands to the empty paired scabbards where his throwing knives were normally kept in waiting.

  Except that they waited no more, their hafts sprouting from the base of Lady Keld’s smooth, flawless throat.

  He spoke as her hands flew like frightened birds to her neck just as her eyes rolled back in their sockets.

  “I count on that as well, Lady. The city guard serve simply to slow his pursuit while I take care of the loose end that was House Keld. The scarred fool must understand that all distractions have been swept aside at the last. For when the time comes, I require his full attention.”

  Modest Klees lunged forward, ripping his knives from the dead woman’s throat, barely noticing how her beautiful hands quivered with the aftershock of a life irrevocably ripped away.

  “After all,” he said as he turned around on his heel, “failure has consequences, as it must. As you have come to learn for yourself, Lady. Now there’s no turning back for any of us.”

  Then he swept from the room, his passage snuffing out the lone candle that had burned like fading hope in the darkness.

  Chapter Thirteen — Melisse

  She awoke to the sound of laughter. Somewhere, far from her, there were happy people enjoying one another’s company.

  Yet the servant girl who listened to them knew that despite the Marquis’ treatment of her, she would never truly belong to their world. She would always be outside of it, beneath their notice.

  She would always be invisible, a ghost who passes by their merriment, her passage no more remarkable than the breeze that moves cobwebs in the forgotten rooms and corridors of the manor.

  The young woman forced herself up and off her modest bed. The impression that she had dreamt of something pleasurable lingered in her mind, but she could not remember any of it.

  She paused.

  The dream she could not remember had not been about something, it had been about someone.

  The servant girl shrugged on her clothing, a gown with gathers at the bodice and of satin that flowed down her body to pool at her feet.

  Her eyebrows furrowed.

  The dream had been of someone familiar, it seemed to her.

  She waited, pushing away the unmistakable sound of the Marquis’ laughter, hoping for the dream to come back to her. She felt as though she was on the brink of something, of understanding something vitally important.

  Then a soft yet irresistible touch came to her thoughts and her eyes lost the focus that had begun to gather there. A velour tidal pull that was tender and sweet enveloped her with the comforting thought that she was in her proper place and that there was no need to look further or beyond.

  The servant wandered from her room without bothering to close the door. She had not brushed her hair, nor bothered to put on her shoes.

  A vague smile rode her lips, sometimes fading with the aftertaste of something bitter in her mind, but always coming back with the reassurance that she was where she belonged at last.

  It took her some time, but the sound of laughter carried her onward into a part of Perene manor that she had all but forgotten
.

  She turned a corner to come upon a long corridor, high upon its walls, a series of animal heads looked down their noses at her.

  The servant girl’s vague smile faltered. It was an unnerving place.

  At the midpoint of the corridor she came to an enormous double door, and it was with no small bit of relief that she pushed one side of it open, leaving the trophy heads mounted on the wall behind her.

  She found herself in the manor’s game room.

  Most everywhere she looked, spiders had left their mark and dust had followed covering the disused place in the cobwebs of a forgotten place.

  The lighting was dim, filtering from high placed, narrow windows that might have been once used as meurtrières in the defense of oldest part of the manor, a small fortress put into place by the forebears of the Perene family line. The window openings were angled backward in the cut stone blocks of the wall, allowing archers a wider angle of attack, while the narrow exterior opening minimized their exposure to enemy ripostes.

  “Lady Melisse,” the Marquis called out, and all thoughts of violence and battle sifted away from the servant girl’s thoughts.

  He was seated in his strange wheeled chair, and in his hands he held an equally strange object.

  Part of it appeared to be mounted to an archer’s bow, except that the bow was tiny in comparison to the long bows gathering dust on the room’s walls, these last so long that they were practically equal to the height of a full grown man.

  The Marquis’ object was more like a child’s toy.

  “Watch, Melisse,” he said to her as she approached, then he lifted the small weapon to his shoulder, the small bow stretched tight, and an arrow, more properly called a bolt, was nocked into place.

  She followed the Marquis’ sightline, and it was only then that she noticed Helene.

  The noblewoman was across the room. The bodice of her dress had been torn to one side and her skirts had been all but sliced away, revealing her long cream-colored legs. She seemed oblivious as she jumped up and down vigorously with outstretched hands, her mouth open and her tongue lolling.

  Above her, someone had strung a cord from an overhead beam and at the cord’s end, just beyond Helene’s reach, was tied one of the bonbons that the serving woman had not yet taken the time to taste.

  Up and down, seemingly tireless, Helene bounded in place, her focus on the sweet above her and nothing else.

  A short slapping sound erupted from the Marquis’ hands, swiftly followed, almost instantaneously so, by a loud crack as a loosed arrow careened off the wall between Helene’s legs.

  “What fun!” the Marquis cried, then turning to her, he said, “My assistant has created a new distraction for us, Lady Melisse.”

  Suddenly she saw the woman at the Marquis’ side, as if she had been there all along.

  The silent woman took the crossbow from the Marquis, but instead of lifting up the crank and winding the drawstring backward, she simply drew it back with her fingers to the trigger set, readying it to fire another bolt.

  Melisse frowned. She recognized the weapon for what it was. And as if someone had just lit a lantern in her darkened memories, she remembered Lord Perene discussing the weapon’s theoretical merits with his son, Olivier. The young man had argued for its worth, saying it did not require an entire lifetime of training and building physical strength, thus almost any soldier could wield one when necessary, not only the specialized and highly valued archers.

  Lord Perene had countered with the fact that the bow cross-mounted on a wooden stock was constructed from tempered steel and so stiff that the only way to cock and ready the thing was to wind its crank back before nocking an arrow.

  The nobleman went on to say that any archer worth his salt could loose five arrows in the time it took to crank back a crossbow.

  Yet Melisse saw the Marquis’ assistant draw the cord back as if it took no strength at all.

  She took a step backward from the Marquis and as if from a distance, she heard her own voice.

  “But, sir, is it not a dangerous game to play?”

  The nobleman did not hesitate as he set another steel-tipped bolt in the weapon, nocking it to the cord.

  “Of course not,” he said. “It’s perfectly safe if properly employed … like so.”

  He brought the weapon to his shoulder again, sighted down its length and fired just as Helene jumped up into the air again. The bolt ricocheted from the wall to the floor, as before.

  Melisse could see, however, that her half-sister was beginning to tire, her fingers falling shorter of their mark with each bound.

  “My apologies, sir,” Melisse said. “But my concern is not for your safety, but for that of Helene.”

  The Marquis looked at Melisse, his wide grin disappearing at once. His eyes turned hard and cold.

  “But that’s the point, isn’t it? With no risk, there would be no fun. Besides, it’s not as if I can jump up and down like that.”

  He handed the weapon to his assistant. Melisse looked on, and the strange woman caught her eye, looking straight back at her as if daring her to say something more. This time, she drew back the cord with a single finger while never breaking away from Melisse’s gaze.

  She stared hard at the strange woman, suddenly sure that she needed to fix her face clearly in her mind.

  Without warning, the link between them broke.

  Melisse took another step backward, her legs trembling, and the only image remaining to her was a pair of eyes shining so brightly they might have been made of polished iron.

  This is wrong. All of this.

  Melisse’s thoughts ran before her, startled rabbits of ideas that scattered helter-skelter, eluding her grasp no matter how hard she tried to hold all of it in her mind at once.

  The assistant gave the cocked crossbow back to the Marquis, who turned back to Melisse with a twisted grin riding his lips.

  “This is not real,” she whispered.

  “Of course it is,” the Marquis replied. “Why did you know that I used this very arbalest to put the horse down that put me down? It is for that I am so attached to the thing and feel so very compelled to hone my skills.”

  He chuckled then brought the weapon’s stock to his shoulder.

  Melisse shuddered and felt a rush of heat run through her as if her entire body had suddenly been taken with fever.

  This is the dream.

  What happened next seemed to stretch out over minutes instead of a single instant, all movement drifting into an exquisite torpidity that felt as though it would never end.

  The Marquis squinted one eye closed, then squeezed the weapon’s trigger.

  Melisse drew a sudden intake of breath, as if to scream, while turning to see that Helene no longer jumped high enough, her movements reduced to merely hopping in place with her head craned backward.

  Heat blossomed, engulfing Melisse as it raged against the bonds that had stifled it until then.

  An arrow slipped its own bonds and sliced through the air.

  In a flash of light so bright it was momentarily blinding, the arrow burst into hot ash that rose at once into smoke to drift harmlessly away.

  Helene slumped to the floor, panting breathlessly, as the cord suspended above her flashed brightly before disappearing into smoke, the prize it had held beyond her grasp resisting but an instant longer before it too burned so quickly it did not have the time to fall.

  This fire is mine.

  The Marquis’ assistant leapt backwards in a great bound.

  The nobleman toppled over in her wake, crying out with a strangled voice that came to an abrupt end as his forehead struck the flagstone floor with a sodden thump.

  All of it came flooding back to Melisse as her eyes streamed with tears. The weight of her past, and worse still, that of the future, awakened in the blaze that raged inside her.

  However, it was the present that drew her forward and after the strange woman who had bewitched one and all in House Perene.
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br />   She backed away as Melisse advanced, then spun around suddenly, leaping as Helene had done earlier, only far higher and with far more elegance than the noblewoman had ever managed.

  With no break in her movement, the strange woman flew upward in a perfect high arc against a far wall and with each hand seized a pair of immense greatswords gathering dust in their fixtures.

  She hung there, suspended for an instant, but the whine of tired metal squealed as the swords broke loose from the wall in an explosion of dust and rusted iron clasps that clattered to the floor just before she did.

  A voice rang out, one that none of them had yet heard, and it resonated with the force of one hundred bronze bells ringing out that great peril had come.

  “Celaeno is my name, and your obstinacy shall mean your end.”

  She stood up, in each hand a sword meant for the mightiest warriors, each blade destined to be wielded with two hands for their heft was of a measure to their overlong size.

  The beast of her fire raged in her heart, and Melisse smiled as it roared inside her.

  The strange woman who was no woman at all lifted the swords into the air lightly, as if they were made of straw, then burst forward into an instant, full run.

  Flames crackled, swaddling Melisse as the creature crashed into her, its swords raining down a flurry of blows that should have left her in pieces.

  Instead, the creature’s momentum drove them both backward into the paired wooden doors that gave onto the corridor beyond.

  They burst apart and wood fragments fluttered in all directions, catching fire as they fell.

  Hard stone slammed into Melisse’s back as she was driven into the corridor’s opposite wall.

  The creature broke off its attack, leaping away from Melisse and the flames that shielded her only to turn to face her, its strange eyes that refused to resolve into clarity staring back at her, the only thing clear in them being absolute hatred for Melisse.

  But the flames continued to burn in Melisse’s heart and for once she did not push them back nor try to rein them in. She felt the monster of her fire rising ever higher, its power blazing white hot. Soon, it would go beyond all control and at the last, she would burn just as everything else would.