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

by Aimelie Aames

  “Oh, how I railed against the injustice of it all. I pled and begged with the unseen world to return her to me, to take my life in exchange.

  “Even, to my great shame, to take your life, Etienne. And for that I am sorry, but my grief was so great, I would have given anything if only I could have held my beautiful wife and taste her sweet kiss again.

  “Of course, my pleas went unanswered and as the voyage played out over the next several months, a hard resolve grew like a knot in my guts, and when I stood once more on solid ground I returned to my forefather's tower with but one thing in mind.

  “No longer would I be but a glorified jeweler. No longer would I live contented in my sort and expect that you do the same in your turn upon my passing.

  “So, I took up the ancient banner held by the oldest of the St. Lucq, and my search began.

  “It has not been without cost, I know. I see you, my son, and I see the price written in a man whose father spent his son's childhood at work with little time for much else.”

  The Alchemist fell silent for a while, and Etienne made no effort to fill in the emptiness that yawned between the two of them.

  At last, his father stirred and spoke.

  “Do you respect what I do?”

  Etienne cleared his throat, measuring his words before speaking.

  “I respect you, Father. As for your work, you know I do not see the point. This belief of yours has led you into a morass of lost years that you can never get back. Neither of us will.”

  Again, silence fell like a curtain between them for a time until his father spoke again.

  “Perhaps … perhaps not. If you refuse to believe the unbelievable, that is your right. But if I can convince you of nothing else, then believe me at least when I tell you that your friend Bellamere is no fool and does not merit being treated as such.”

  Etienne's face fell, and he dropped his gaze to the ground before him while his father continued to speak.

  “On the contrary, his counsel on a recent matter has proven itself perfectly just, even if I fear that it arrives too late.

  “As for my work, son, know that I draw very close to the end now. Several pieces of the puzzle are poised to fall in place, and I must return to my studies to refine what must be done.

  “If I am right, then the time lost to us shall not be lost at all. Rather, it will have been merely misplaced for a while.

  “And as for strawberries and other fruit, heed my warning.

  “I know there are women in the village happy to welcome you into their beds, but none of them are capable of drawing you into a fury such as I have been witness to only moments ago.

  “That kind of fruit, my son, can be sweeter than words can describe, but once gone forever, the memory of its taste can become a bitter thing indeed.

  “I do not ask that you embrace the dream I have for both of us. I only ask that you be careful and that you consider wisely before next you venture into the forest in search of strawberries.”

  Etienne watched his father walk away from him when, suddenly, the old man turned around.

  “But if you find that you simply cannot resist temptation, then at least wear a shirt next time. You can't expect her to take you seriously only half-dressed.”

  He winked, and Etienne thought he saw the ghost of a smile upon his father's lips as he passed through the doorway to the tower, leaving him alone to mull over the story of his mother and the name she would have given him.

  Only, eyes of azure blue kept intruding upon his thoughts and it was not long before he picked up his hammer once more.

  Chapter Five

  Bellamere eased the door shut behind him then waited while practically holding his breath.

  He had done his best to move quietly once he had returned home. The mule had been kind enough not to bray and seemed happy enough to be rid of his tack. A sack of oats did the rest as Bellamere listened to the steady clang of his father's hammer.

  The smithy was on the far side of the barn while their modest house stood back from both. Before Bellamere's mother had disappeared with one of the caravan drivers when her only son was but a child, she had insisted the old smithy be torn down and rebuilt away from the house.

  It seemed a good idea as far as he was concerned, and even more so when he was in temporary possession of a new book and hoping to slip by his father's notice.

  Only the hammer had come to a standstill and Bellamere expected to hear his father bellow his name shortly. First would come the questions as to whether the newly fabricated tools suited the alchemist, then would come hours of arduous work of pumping the bellows or hauling hardwood for the forge. His father's business was in its high season and it would be months yet before he would let the fire go out, preferring instead to bank it over with ashes to be awakened again the following of day.

  A clang rang out, followed by another, then came the steady double rhythm that told Bellamere what he wanted to hear. The neighbor boy, Simon, was in the smithy with Bellamere's father, and there would be no need for the smith's own son.

  He quickly made his way to the larder and found a heel of brown bread that had not gone too hard yet. Beside it, he laid a very thick slice of the yellow cheese that Farmer Cress brought them twice a month in guise of payment for shoeing his horses and other blacksmith work.

  A pair of slightly wrinkled apples finished what Bellamere thought of as a well-deserved snack between meals and he washed it all down with a tall mug of clear, cold spring water.

  Smacking his lips in satisfaction, Bellamere went out the back door of the house and followed the short path leading to the stately old oak that was his favorite place to read in daylight hours.

  Harki was still nowhere to be seen, and Bellamere was not sorry for his absence. The little man could make of himself a terrible distraction when Bellamere set to reading, and the book he held with such anticipation was all he wanted at the moment … not the ridiculous and oft repeated conversations between him and a tiny person no one else could see or hear.

  In this moment, the sole companion he could wish for was the oak itself. It offered him shelter from sunlight that would leave him sweaty and uncomfortable, while the rustling of its leaves calmed him like no lost mother's song ever could.

  Or, at least, he imagined it must be so. In any case, luck had left him without any choice in the matter so it seemed a more pleasant way to look at things.

  And before his thoughts meandered too far down the road as to his misfortune over a mother who had left him all alone with a father as hard as the iron he worked with, Bellamere opened the book with a sigh.

  The pages made a delicious whispering sound as he turned them, and he thought of how they echoed the oak leaves overhead. The scent of an old book, its pages in vellum, and its binding in oiled leather meant to last centuries came to his nose, and Bellamere breathed in the aromas of a good tale to come like someone else might savor the perfume of a rose.

  Les Larmes de la Déesse Lys.

  Bellamere frowned, considering the words, then he had it.

  “The Tears of the Goddess Lys,” he whispered as if he worried that someone might hear and say something to him in a way that would close the cover of the book until the next time he might steal a few moments to himself.

  The rest of the text was written in common tongue, and interspersed between sections there were richly colored illuminations with the occasional inscription beneath.

  The pages crinkled as he turned them and a world long since past was revealed to Bellamere's eyes. And for a time he could believe that all of it had been real and that there really was a Boar who hunted young lovers at the height of each spring.

  A goddess walked the lands of elder days and all that she beheld was a delight to her eyes. The rain bathed her as she walked ever onward and the winds dried her as she continued her trek without end.

  For she had decided see to the entire world and to take its measure. But in her heart of hearts, there where she fear
ed to look despite her great power, a secret desire had blossomed.

  Lys came to barren, dry lands. She passed through regions blanketed in forests so dark and so green it was like the fall of night when she walked among them even though the sun shined down without a cloud in the sky. The goddess came upon harsh, frigid places only to rejoice in the sight of bears and wolves hunting at night, or at the snow foxes as they cavorted under cold skies and on fine grains of ice that covered everything and shifted like the sands of the desert.

  All the world over, Lys traveled, and the secret held so deeply inside her bosom grew and grew until she found herself one day high upon a mountain, the land spreading out in all directions to the edges of the seas, and she knew that she had seen all there was to see. Only then did she dare to turn her gaze inward to regard that which had become unbearable to her after her long travels.

  It was as if a cold wind had found her at last upon the mountain in that moment, and Lys wept.

  For all her majesty and power, for all her magic that was no more effort than a thought is for a common mortal, Lys grew terribly sad at the truth that followed her no matter where she went, like a shadow that no sun could efface. For Lys discovered she could not flee loneliness.

  She remained upon that mountain, and when her sorrow spent itself for a time, she descended to a valley where the trees grew thick, the mountain streams ran clear, and where meadows opened wide to reveal bright flowers of many colors.

  This was the place that the goddess chose to call her home. Her magic rose around her and the mountain became like a castle, its insides formed into great halls and corridors, rooms uncounted with wells of light cunningly placed so that all within was brightly lit with daylight. At night, undying fires burned in countless hearths to fill the abode of a goddess with a warmth she could pretend might be something like love.

  And still, she was alone.

  So it was that she sang to the four winds which carried her song to the far corners of the world, and there where there were beasts unlike any other the winds carried the song of the goddess and her offer of a place where none of them would ever know lack again. A place where men would not penetrate and where peace would be theirs in exchange for their company.

  Great, feathered worms flew to her call, their bright wings carrying them down from far clouds in answer to her song. And the men who saw them named them dragons, for their breath was a hoarfrost so terrible it burnt like fire.

  The riddlers of distant deserts came as well. Their bodies were chimera of lions and of women, and they desired nothing more than to no longer feel the gnawing hunger that never ceased in their bellies. For the valley of Lys promised a place where they could riddle amongst themselves until time unending.

  Dark and terrible horses came too, these same capable of running along unseen paths that slipped from shadow to shadow. There were the great salamanders whose least touch meant death from a fire that could not be extinguished. The lions of thunder whose flesh was yellow stone and their prey, the great gazelles whose tears always ran down to find gold hidden deep underground. These, too, answered the call of Lys, and they would lie down together at her feet and they would no longer know fear or avarice in her keeping.

  And so it was that the goddess drew to herself all manner of rare and strange beasts, and among the least of these was a wild boar, his pelt jet black and his eyes bloody red. He had been born to common sangliers but when his kin saw him for his differences, they sought to crush him under their hooves and slice his belly open upon their tusks, but he was uncommonly strong and uncommonly fast.

  Before long, the young boar had visited the fate intended for him upon those who had sought him out and among the dead, he saw the carcasses of his own sire and the sow who had birthed him.

  The black boar knew chagrin and anger, and he ran away from the lands of his birth. And whenever he came upon man, he was without mercy for it was the only answer he had known until then. Strength and domination, death and destruction were the rules of his solitary existence until he, too, heard the call of the goddess.

  His angry heart knew yearning at the sound of her promise and after years and years of wandering and killing, the boar found his way at last to the valley of Lys.

  He stepped under the canopy of trees, and as he did it was as though their shadow pulled away the one that had fallen over him from his very birth under a dark moon. The boar knew peace and came, at last, to kneel before the goddess.

  Lys was there. Each day, she would descend from her mountain castle and each day, the beasts who answered her call came to her and she would pass from one to the next. At times with a simple caress, other times to answer the riddles of the sphinx, or sing a song to calm the craggy hearts of the yellow lions.

  The boar saw her and fell to his knees, and when she touched him, he knew love for the first time in his sad life. She crooned to him and bade him peace. She scratched behind his ears, and the boar felt tears come to his red eyes as they fell like rain for the love he felt for the goddess.

  And so it was for a very long time until the day came, at last, and as she always knew it would, that Lys perceived the first of men to discover her valley.

  The snow-white dragons roared and said they would devour their frozen corpses. The salamander's long tongue slipped between its jaws and it promised to immolate the men where they stood. The sphinx proposed to confound them with riddles, and the lions said they would crush them in their rock hard paws.

  The boar was the sole creature among all the menagerie who made no promises nor vowed any oaths, for over his heart stole a thing he had not felt since he had come into the keeping of the goddess. Its touch was cold and hard, but he recognized it for what it was because he had known it so very well and for so very long. And that thing he felt then was named Fear.

  Lys stilled them all with a single word, then told them that she would go alone and tell the men that the valley was not meant for the likes of them, that their arrows would ever turn from their paths and that their spears would always fall short and that the hunt would never yield the least prize.

  The beasts bowed to the wishes of their mistress and watched quietly as she left them. And among them, there was only one who thought that what she did was dangerous, and that all her magic would not be enough to overcome the power of men.

  The boar was not mistaken.

  For among those men there was one whose eyes sparkled with honest mirth, his jaw was clean and strong, and his arms well-muscled. He stood apart from the men of his hunting party upon sturdy thighs and showed no fear when the mysterious woman came out from the trees while his fellows cowered then ran away.

  Her power was unmistakable. It rose up and rolled off her shoulders like mist upon the calm waters of an early morning lake. The man felt it and saw it, but the beauty of the goddess trumped all else.

  The lines of her face were that of perfection. Her hair fell in long loose rings like darkness before the storm. He saw danger in her eyes that sparkled of both ice and fire, and in their depths he saw that part of her which tipped the balance of her image from mere perfection over and into a thing of beauty absolute.

  He saw the taint of sadness and the touch of resignation. She was beautiful as the wellspring of her own tragic solitude, and the man knew love in the moment he first beheld her.

  All thoughts of the hunt fled him, and what came to replace them were thoughts of holding the being before him in his arms and murmuring into her ears that he would never, ever leave her … that she would never be alone again.

  And in that moment, Lys read all that passed behind the man's shining eyes and saw the smile that came to his lips as his bow fell to the ground.

  He took a step toward her and the sword at his side came unbelted to fall down as the quiver of arrows upon his back slipped free to join it.

  The man took no notice as his affairs drifted away like the faint smoke of a dying fire, and the goddess did not refuse him as he closed the distance betw
een them.

  The clouds darkened overhead, and Lys spoke in a voice of thunder and told the man that she could destroy him.

  The man replied that he did not doubt her, yet her beauty left him without choice and he dared lift a hand to caress her cheek.

  All fell to a perfect silence. Not a thing made a sound, no creature drew breath.

  Then the goddess reached up to the hand at her cheek and she held it in her own.

  I could destroy you, she repeated.

  I could love you, the man answered.

  And that was all the answer she required as the notion of her unending solitude began to tatter like a banner flown too long in a war that had forgotten its reason for being.

  The existence of the goddess filled with the color of that man's eyes, her spirit taking on his love for her like a clear carafe filling full of golden wine.

  Hand in hand, the two regained the interior of the valley and the man knew no fear when he saw the array of strange creatures waiting within. And Lys spoke to her beasts and told them that nothing would change and they would want for nothing as before.

  But among them, there was one who knew her promises were false and that the man would change everything forever more.

  And that one watched Lys and the man in the time that followed, and he could not see how love filled her eyes or how joy held the two lovers in peace and contentment. That one saw where the other beasts were blind, and he knew that soon his goddess would linger more and more in the company of her man and the beasts of the vale would be forgotten.

  That one was born under a dark moon, and the shadow cast upon his soul had shown itself in his color for he was as black as coal and his eyes blood red and his black heart knew jealousy worse than any hatred he had felt before his time in the valley of the goddess.