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

by Aimelie Aames

  “This is starting out well,” he continued with a grin.

  He shifted his one-handed grip then seized the hammer's haft with both hands and wrenched it up in the air like a hero out of legend with his mighty greatsword.

  Then Etienne brought it sailing down to land with a heavy thud just between Bellamere's feet. The smith’s son jumped backward, narrowly missing Harki as he did, then wiped the dirt sprayed up from the ground from his brow.

  Etienne did the same, saying, “Sorry.”

  Then the two of them laughed out loud.

  “Father said it isn't pretty, but it ought to last twice as long as any other hammer he's ever made,” Bellamere said.

  “He's made it of folded iron fused to some other metal. I don't remember which except that he said it was like lead, only harder. He said it's supposed to make it malleable while retaining some spring to it. Something about not breaking or deforming as fast as the others.”

  Etienne grinned.

  “That just might do it, indeed. And the other five are there?”

  Bellamere nodded.

  “Oh yes. Of course. Them and all the rest.”

  Etienne's grin went just a bit wider.

  “Do you know what I'm thinking?”

  Bellamere shrugged and said, “I'd wager I could guess.”

  “Don't bother,” his friend replied as he reached down to take that heavy hammer into his hands once more, then continued, “I'm of a mind to try it out. Right now.”

  Bellamere stumbled after his friend, and the two of them went back the way they had come and without waiting for any kind of preamble, he watched as Etienne heaved the hammer in a high arc overhead to bring it down with all his might upon one of the stones that had defied his every effort until then.

  There was a deep clang, then Bellamere saw that hammer rebound into the air as its haft slipped from Etienne's grasp.

  The alchemist’s son jerked his head to one side as the hammer flew past him to land with a thud several paces behind them both.

  They both turned their eyes slowly back to the oblong stone, expecting that something wondrous had been exposed with such a prodigious stroke of the hammer.

  Instead, there was barely a mark upon it, only a half round scuff that had scraped away a little of the lichen growing upon the stone.

  And from behind them both came a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter. Bellamere looked wildly all about himself, but Harki was nowhere in sight.

  Etienne shook his head, then lifted his chin in the direction of gateway through which Bellamere and his wagon had come.

  “No, Louf. It came from over there.”

  He looked where his friend indicated, but there was no one there and whatever or whoever it was had fallen silent.

  “No one followed you here, did they?” the alchemist’s son asked.

  Bellamere shook his head.

  “No, of course not. I came alone,” he replied then hissed, “Aie!”

  Harki had chosen that very moment to reappear and had given his companion a sharp kick in the shin.

  “Are you alright, Louf?” Etienne asked, frowning.

  Bellamere shook himself and did not miss the chance to kick back at the little red man beside him. Naturally, Harki neatly sidestepped Bellamere then disappeared again.

  “Fine … yes, yes, I'm fine. But I suppose I should say that I had a strange feeling on the road. Once in a while, it was as if someone was watching me from the shadows along the way. As if the trees themselves were looking back at me.”

  He shifted his feet and avoided looking at his friend. He knew that Etienne was well aware of what people said about him, and he did not want to see the familiar face of someone looking with pity back at a madman, nor did he want to see sympathy for his idiocy, either.

  “I didn't think too much about it, really,” he mumbled, then said, “Or at least, I tried not to. Mostly I thought it was because of all those stories I've been hearing about the Black Boar that had me thinking … well … you know … “

  Bellamere's voice trailed off, then despite himself, he did look at his friend and what he saw surprised him.

  Etienne's brow was drawn down and his lips had thinned.

  That was when Bellamere realized that the unfamiliar expression he was seeing was that of his friend terribly angry … something he had not seen since the very day the two of them had met for the first time so long ago.

  Four village boys had surrounded him. Bellamere had been sent to the baker for one of his enormous bread loaves that would last him and his father most of the week.

  He had not said a word to anyone on his way there, unless it was the steady conversation he held with Harki who had been going on about all sorts of strange creatures in some faraway place. His head had been down, as he was wont to do, when from nowhere Bellamere heard a dull sound just as stars burst in his vision.

  He had staggered, then had lifted his hand to his head only to come away with it bloody, then the four boys were all around him calling him names.

  “Bella le Fou! Bella the Mad! Le Fou, le Fou!”

  They had been drawing in closer, circling around him as they chanted their insults, and he had had no idea what to do.

  For lack of any better ideas, Bellamere had simply sunk down to the ground and was about to cover his head against the blows he knew from experience that would inevitably follow.

  Only they never did.

  Instead, he had heard someone grunt, then the insults came to an abrupt halt.

  Just after that, he had seen a fifth pair of booted feet appear among the four others and those soft leather boots ran up to the knees of a boy his same age, only that boy's jaw was set in hard lines and his grey eyes spoke volumes of his contempt for those who had thrown a stone at Bellamere.

  His fists shot out and even as young as he had been, those blows were thrown from lean, corded arms that hit harder than any stone those four had ever thrown.

  Soon enough two of them were down on the ground next to Bellamere and the other two had run off while the newcomer stood still, his legs wide apart and his mien daring anyone else to have a go.

  No one did.

  After a moment, the strange boy reached down and said, “Up you go, Louf.”

  Bellamere did not hesitate to take that outstretched hand and his nickname along with it.

  Etienne had never in all the time they had known one another accused Bellamere of being mad. The closest he had ever come was that very day when he spoke and had simply turned the other boys' phrase on its ear and Le Fou, the Crazy, had become Louf.

  After that, two boys who had always felt on the outside of things found themselves, when together, on the inside of something at last.

  But the anger Bellamere had seen that day had never come back until now, and Etienne was fairly burning with it.

  “Black Boar?” he grumbled, then said, “Don't be an idiot, Bellamere.”

  His tone was bitter and Bellamere was forced to admit that it might very well have been the first time he had ever heard Etienne call him by his proper name.

  “Old folk's stories and legends … it's nothing but smoke and dreams. Pale words worth far less than the brittle pages they're written on.”

  Bellamere saw his friend's face turn into a bitter sneer and thought it made him look thirty years older.

  “Magic and monsters don't exist … they never have.”

  Then he stalked off and wrenched the hammer out of the hole its head had driven into the ground where it fell.

  Bellamere was not sure if he should follow after him, then made up his mind when he remembered that they had both heard someone laughing and Etienne obviously meant to find out who it was.

  The smith's son caught up to his friend at the entrance to the courtyard.

  Like the first breath of spring flowers after a long, hard winter, he caught the unmistakable scent of a woman's perfume in the air.

  Then the two men stepped through the archway, cra
ning their heads in every direction, but whoever had been spying on them had disappeared.

  “Well, whoever it was is gone now, I guess,” Bellamere mumbled.

  Etienne did not answer for a time, only lifting his nose as if he could scent which way the person had gone.

  “Maybe. But what's sure is she couldn't have gone very far just yet.”

  Bellamere sighed as his friend leaned his hammer against a wall, then strode off looking for all the world as if he knew just what he meant to do.

  Despite the fact that there was no one there to hear him … not even Harki … he said, “I think I'll go inside if no one minds. I need to give a book back to Maitre St. Lucq.”

  He did not continue on to say the rest of what he thought and that was he hoped he might borrow another one straight away.

  The door did not squeal as Bellamere entered the tower. Its hinges were well oiled and as he ducked his head to pass under the archway of its opening, he could clearly see that all within had been recently swept clean.

  Bellamere knew that Etienne was tireless in his efforts upon the behalf of his father, the Alchemist.

  Tireless on so many fronts but for one, and that was the unending research that the Maitre carried out high above upon one of the topmost floors of the tower.

  Here, though, the surroundings were relatively bare, a great round space broken only by the stone staircase built directly into the tower's exterior wall that wound its way far overhead, floor by floor.

  Otherwise, the most remarkable thing about the entryway to the tower was the series of enormous pipes that rose up from the floor and continued on to pass through the ceiling above him.

  And while he had never gone down to see for himself, he had been told by the Alchemist that they were joined to a number of furnaces and boilers in the extensive cellars beneath the tower, these in turn connected to chimney pipes that ran alongside the others.

  Unfortunately, Bellamere could see that the Alchemist was not at the ground floor, so he began the arduous, winding climb upward.

  As he went, he imagined the pipes followed him upward through the center of the tower, some of them a dull black metal while others gleamed bright orange and still others were not metal at all but a type of baked earthenware that the Maitre had once remarked as being rather miraculous in that most of them had survived the voyage back over the seas and then, and even more unlikely, the trip overland to the tower itself.

  As it was, Bellamere remained somewhat foggy over the point of those pipes. The Alchemist had gone on at length about techniques of refining and used strange words like refraction and distillation, but what Bellamere did remember was because he saw evidence of it every so often at various floors.

  And these were bright shiny valves and wheels with spigots the Alchemist called robinets and said that the height of the tower itself was necessary for the system to work.

  Whatever their function, Bellamere was glad of their mere presence as an excuse to stop and admire their strangely intricate design while he caught his breath and stoked his own resolve to keep going.

  Of course, he knew that he must if he wanted a chance at more of what he considered the true treasure of the tower.

  Bellamere had no interest in the jewels that were likely stocked somewhere within, nor did he care about the strange substances the Alchemist made from the stones his son broke and ground down for him.

  He could not care less about the mysterious liquids that rose up in the pipes that followed him ever upward to be drawn off at various heights according to the alchemist’s most recent calculations.

  What he cared about … almost all that he cared about was the treasure trove of books within the alchemist’s seemingly endless library.

  The old man had told him it had been amassed by several generations of St. Lucq and that it could never be read through by a single man in a sole lifetime for many tomes had been gathered by the generations of alchemists who had travailed within that tower.

  The idea of so many books one could never read them before dying of old age gave Bellamere a thrill like no other.

  When he had been a child, he had chanced upon the few books belonging to his father and had worked out for himself what the letters meant and then, in time, what the words they formed meant.

  It had been dry reading, discussions of metal working techniques and the like, but every so often, there had been, like nuggets of precious metal waiting to be discovered, brief stories included among the texts.

  Nothing ever so fantastic as what he had read since then in the alchemist’s collection, nor so wondrous as the stories Harki was apt to tell.

  Still, they were a start, and the awkward boy that he had been felt a little less out of place, not quite so fat and clumsy as when he lost himself between the leather-bound covers of a book.

  The staircase wound ever upwards and through floors that were mostly bare until, at last, Bellamere came to a doorway that barred what remained of the way upward.

  He did what he could to calm his rapidly beating heart but knew that he would pant for a while longer as he tried to catch his breath before, finally, giving up and knocking upon the door.

  There was no answer.

  He listened, waiting for some sign, anything at all that he could enter and when there was still nothing, he resolved to enter anyway.

  After all, he was obliged to return the book he clutched protectively in his hands, if nothing else.

  Bellamere took a deep breath and hoped that the Alchemist would not be too angry over his letting himself in. With a quick tug upward, he lifted the door's blocking arm from its sconce and let the door swing wide.

  What he saw next blew all the breath back out of him again.

  The Alchemist was across the room from him. The round walls of the tower rose up on all sides, but they were pierced through with large cutouts in the stone walls. In these same were fitted frames of metal with clear glass pieces arranged in numerous strange yet oddly organized patterns.

  The effect was that the room was positively bathed in rich bright sunlight shot through with glowing lines and flower-like patterns that ran over everything within the room.

  The effect was, indeed, breathtaking, but Bellamere had seen it all before.

  Rather, what had left him frozen and slack-jawed was the Alchemist himself.

  The old man stood directly opposite Bellamere, and in one hand he held a large loop of yellow metal that looked suspiciously like gold.

  However, the most surprising thing was that the round metal loop held a shimmering curtain of liquid that bowed out into what was surely the largest bubble Bellamere had ever seen.

  Maitre St. Lucq's face was bright red and his cheeks were puffed out, and with a frantic glance from his eyes, Bellamere understood that the old man was in need of help.

  He bustled over as best he could. There were low tables everywhere that held bottles and jars that held, in turn, vividly colored powders, or liquids that gleamed as bright as polished silver.

  Bellamere made his way carefully to the Alchemist and saw that the fellow was near to apoplexy when the old man let out a single gasping word through his pursed lips.

  “Blowwww … “

  He did not hesitate. Bellamere took a deep breath and began to blow against the bubble.

  It had been shimmering, probably on the verge of breaking when he had arrived, and the Alchemist took a long, shuddering breath, before speaking again.

  “Gently, boy … gently.”

  Bella nodded, then stopped himself when he saw the bubble begin to hang over at the bottom. He blew steadily as the Alchemist reached carefully for something with his one free hand.

  His breath nearly done up, Bellamere could feel his own face begin to turn red.

  “Just a little more, boy. Give it just a touch more.”

  Despite having climbed all those stairs, Bellamere did his best and blew out just a little harder.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the Alche
mist nod. Then the old man flicked a single grain of dust from his fingertip at the bubble.

  Instead of breaking with a terrible plop, the shimmering liquid froze perfectly solid in an instant.

  “You can stop blowing now, boy,” the old man said and patted Bellamere upon the shoulder.

  The young man sagged and then took his own shuddering breath while he watched the Alchemist turn the metal loop and the frozen bubble this way and that to examine it from every angle.

  Oddly, Bellamere felt no cold from it, nor was it frosted in any way. It was just as it had been, only it no longer shimmered while still perfectly clear.

  “Ah,” said the Alchemist, “The very best of Amurianum could do no better and that with all the ovens of the isle.”

  Bellamere had no idea what he meant, but that was not that unusual. More often than not, the old man forgot that the people around him were not privy to the multitude of facts that he himself was.

  The fat young man nodded as if he understood anyway.

  “You see,” the Alchemist continued, “Glass can be blown but it cannot be done with precision, nor can its inherent impurities be discounted. What was needed was a pure liquid charged with so much essential crystal carefully dissolved until it could hold no more … and then forced to take just a bit more anyway.”

  The old man walked away, still talking, taking the solidified bubble closer to one of the nearest windows.

  “That was the key. Filling up the liquid until it could hold no more and then give it a crystal seed at precisely the correct moment.”

  The old man turned the clear bubble in the sunlight and it gleamed brightly, and even Bellamere could see that it appeared to be absolutely, perfectly transparent.

  “Yes, Maitre,” the young man said, “And a very fine bubble it is.”

  The Alchemist looked sharply up at Bellamere with a frown.

  “Bubble? This is no mere bubble, my boy.”

  He turned it to catch the light from the window more directly, then Bellamere saw with surprise a spot of very bright white light appear upon the floor.

  It moved as the Alchemist moved the metal loop and the bubble it held.

  The white spot lifted up to a sheaf of papers on the corner of a table, and Bellamere had trouble watching it for as white and bright as it became.