Pintuk blanched an even paler shade of white.
“Sir! Yessir!”
His Adam’s apple bobbed another couple times, but this time when he spoke, his tone was calmer, more measured.
“I sent Scout Sprunk back to report on a dead body we found on the road.”
Corporal Lauze said, “Yes, he made it back to us and is now at the rear of the company keeping an eye on the road behind.”
“Yessir,” Pintuk said, breathing a sigh of relief, “Once we found that body, I felt the hairs tingling all over ... the ones that get all creepy crawly when the worm is about to turn for the bad.
“So’s I sent Sprunk back, then went on real quiet.”
Corporal Lauze had respect for the man. When he said he went ahead quiet, he meant it. The scout came from the east, and his people booted their horses’ hooves in soft leather and when they did for stealthy, they did it like ghosts.
“For a long time, I never did see anything outta sorts. But my nerves just kept on jangling and I knew it wan’t for nothing.
“It kept on like that ‘til I got in to these here wetlands that’s all around us. That’s when I slowed way down and took to walking alongside Charlie.”
Neither of the officers said anything, both supposing ... or, hoping ... that the scout referred to his horse.
“And then, when it was getting good and dim ... or maybe I should say bad and dark ... I seen the worst damned thing I ever did see.”
He paused, and Lauze had time to think that scouts, in general, have a penchant for the dramatic in their reports. The corporal made a mental note to ask the captain later if it was part of their training.
“I gotta say, I hates swamps, I surely do.”
Captain Tarn’s face grew dark, but Pintuk did not seem to notice.
“When I was but a wee split, my gammer would tell me all sorts of tales and the worst of them, the very worst always went about in the swampish places with swampish things.”
“Pintuk!”
The captain’s visage had turned dark, and Lauze knew the scout teetered on the edge of the officer’s wrath as he rambled on.
“Why at first I thought my eyes was tricking me, but I looked again, and damned if I didn’t see the biggest damn boar come plodding along in the mists. I’m talking bigger than a tinker’s carriage and blacker than a coal miner's ass, that thing was.”
Lauze shifted his eyes quickly to the captain and back, expecting the worst.
“And that, then, is the thing that has you so up in arms, is it, Pintuk?” asked Captain Tarn.
“No sir,” the scout replied, surprised, “It sure ain’t. Worse’n the size of the thing and that it came out of the mists to cross right in front of me, worse’n its eyes a’gleaming bloody red, was the fact that it glowed from the inside, just like it might if it had figured out how to swallow down the moon.”
Maggie jostled under him, and Lauze tore his gaze away from Pintuk’s face to discover that the company of soldiers had quietly broken ranks and were, each to a one, leaning in a bit closer to them while craning their ears to hear the scout speak.
“What do mean, Pintuk? Are you saying you saw a ghost pig?”
Captain Tarn’s color started coming up again, and Lauze thought the scout’s time was almost up.
“Are you telling me that you’ve come back here with such haste to tell your superiors foolish ghost stories?”
Pintuk was nonplussed.
“No sir, I came back here in a rush because that boar was no ghost, sir. He was big as a house and glowing from his guts and I swear I could almost see his bones for the eerie light coming out from inside him.
“His jaws was tusked and in ‘em ... I swear, I can still see it clear as could be ... in his jaws, the beastie carried the body of a beautiful girl, a woman to be true, only she was bad hurt, sir. Oh, but it was an awful thing to see.”
Approximately forty sighs were let out behind them and without looking, the corporal knew the company was leaning in even closer before.
A black boar and now a beautiful woman. The soldiers were not to be blamed, and he would not look at them if it meant he could keep from drawing the captain’s attention from the scout.
“So, a giant glowing boar ... black if I’m not mistaken ... carrying a wounded woman,” the captain said, “I don’t suppose you remarked whether she still lived?”
The scout shook his head.
“Oh, Captain, I don’t sees how she could’a not been passed on, for there was blood all over and I could but see half her face.
“But, even that wan’t the worst.”
Another pause and this time everyone held their breath, leaning in even closer.
From behind them, Corporal Lauze heard someone clear his throat, then call out, “Well, spit the damn thing out already. What was worse’n that?”
Pintuk milked the moment, then took his cue.
“The worst was that the boar had big giant tears rolling down its face as it carried that girl. I swear, I think the damned thing was a’weeping for her.”
No one said anything for a long moment.
Thoughts of goblins were gone, replaced by giant ghostly boars as silence fell over them. The scout shook his head, his story done, and went to join his fellow soldiers, and the soldiers went back into ranks with no command called.
Captain Tarn turned to Corporal Lauze and said, “It would appear that the danger is not quite past.”
Lauze nodded.
“No sir. It sure doesn’t.”
Captain Tarn cocked an eyebrow at the corporal, looking as though he had something else to say. Instead, he bit whatever it was back and clapped his heels to his mount.
Then, like a breeze rustling through the treetops, the soldiers shouldered their packs and began marching steadily onward, for they knew they would find no patch of ground dry enough to pitch a tent that night.
And even if they did, there was not a one of them who would have been willing to close his or her eyes in that fell place.
And no one said another word, not even to complain ... for almost half an hour.
Chapter Twenty
The air wavered and the soldiers faded ... not into darkness, but into sunlight as a brown, desolate world came gleaming back into Melisse’s eyes.
She squinted, feeling dizzy, then saw an old man looking steadily back at her.
They both sat upon blocks of stone that had tumbled to the ground, just as if a giant had passed by there to blow an ancient tower down.
Her breath caught.
Melisse knew it had been no giant at work. She knew the truth.
She knew all of what happened.
“But how ... ?” she began to ask.
The old man sighed.
“There is more than Death lingering here, child. These are memories that resonate and memories that grow as the wound grows upon the land, taking more into itself and, thus, the knowledge of the past grows with time.
“The afternoon following that doomed day those soldiers passed by, but it was not until years after the catastrophe that I saw them as you have and I came to understand where Etienne had gone.”
Melisse shook her head violently.
“But how could he? Why didn’t he go get help and come back here?”
She forced herself to push back the fire that threatened to come as her anger rose.
She spoke again, more softly.
“Why didn’t he save you?”
The old man looked down to the ground before speaking.
“But he had tried, before deciding to go for help ... before losing his way.
“However, he could not find me for I was trapped under several blocks of stone. They weighed so heavily upon me that I could not move and my chest was crushed so that I could not draw enough breath with which I might have cried out.
“It was hellish, a punishment for my folly such as that deemed just by the gods who look down over all humanity and judge us ... and doom us.
“I lay the
re, trapped, for months until I was able to shift the stone pinning me in place enough to slip free at last. But I must admit that it was a blessing as much as it was a curse to lie there day after day, night after night, straining with such vigor that I lost count of the number of times I broke both my wrists or the bones of my hands, only to be healed each and every time. For if I had been free to leave with Etienne, the same fate as his would have befallen me.
“Instead, I had ample time to contemplate what had happened. To consider the visions that rose in the wreckage of the tower, the manifestation of a living magic that continues to grow while snuffing out all life within its reach.
“If I had been free to step beyond its boundaries, like my son, I would have suffered as he did ... as he still does to this very day.”
The old man looked beyond Melisse, his eyes focusing on events that had taken place hundreds of years before.
“I felt her terrible anguish, her endless despair, as she reached out to save Etienne from death. She broke the coils of starlight meant to endow me with immortality when they, in fact, could not do so alone. The alchemy was imperfect, the infernal device unbalanced and about to destroy us all.
“She reached out with desperation and she wrought magic that reached to the very roots of the earth.
“Her boundless love for my son was of a measure equal to an impossible task.”
The Alchemist paused. His chin was strong, like that of his son. His eyes were just as grey, but where Etienne's were cool and detached, Melisse saw that the old man's were alive with emotion.
“My poor son. He could not have known what would happen when he walked away from here.
“And afterward, it was too late and it was impossible for him to understand that he must come back.
“So it was that when Etienne stepped beyond the borders of an amalgam of magic and alchemy, he was lost to his past life ... lost to himself.
“That is the truth I eventually came to understand as I lay there for so long, trapped. And it is why I have remained here in the purgatory I created for myself, to atone for my sins against the natural world.
“It took years before biting hunger and raging thirst died away to a dull roar that even now requires that I need only imagine a clean, cool water spring where I might drink and the torment surges anew to rake me upon its coals.
“But I have never dared for should I attempt to set foot beyond this wasteland, I would be as lost as my son, doomed to wander aimlessly, never understanding what my continuing life means for the suffering of this land.
“For the wasteland sustains me, as it sustains my son. That is the terrible imbalance that dooms us to our fates.
His eyes grew more distant as he continued to speak. It was as though he could see Etienne, far away and oblivious to his father's regard. Oblivious to so very much.
“Even now, in the short time you have been here, the wasteland has grown in several violent swells outward. Somewhere, for some reason, my son does himself terrible harm.”
The old man shuddered as if chilled by a cold breeze. But no wind blew in that desolate place.
Finally, his vision tightened down to an unflinching, focused stare upon Melisse's face.
“Have you understood what you have seen? Is it clear to you now what must be done?”
She hesitated before answering.
“I’m not sure. To begin, I think that the Marechal, I mean, Etienne, must be brought here.”
“That is correct, but it is not the real beginning of the end. That must commence with me.”
Melisse shook her head.
“No ... you are right. I don’t understand.”
The old man nodded.
“The witch who loved my son and fell with us that day found a power within herself at the very last. An extraordinary power unlike anything I have ever seen nor expected to see again until the moment you passed the dread borders of this place.
“Like the convergence that enabled my son to discern the hiding place of the talisman, the conditions were met because she was filled with the one thing to make it possible. The rare catalyst named love ... and rarer still, that of true love.
“And the immeasurable anguish of seeing him destroyed before her eyes enabled her to thrust her magic into the maelstrom of starlight about to destroy us.
“With it, she did the only thing she could. Hers was a power of the earth, of nature. And she forced it into the catastrophe of my alchemy despite the terrible risk it meant to the very laws that govern the natural world.
“Alchemy alone could not have done it. I know that now. Nor any magic possessed by the witch. But, the two, together, and in the grasp of a woman despairing for her one true love ... she succeeded where no one ever should have.
“Etienne has never returned here. Oh, I have felt his approach many times over the years. And each of those instances, he pulled up short, then turned his course.
“Why, I asked myself for so very long.”
The old man paused, considering, before he spoke again.
“Tell me. What has he told you of his past life?”
“But that’s just it,” Melisse said, “He doesn’t seem to remember anything. I often had the feeling that when he spoke of his past, it was more from what he had read in a history book than any real memory of his own.”
“As I suspected ... “ the Alchemist said, trailing off, only to speak again with renewed vigor.
“Allow me to come to my point from a different direction.
“During your experience of the events leading to the tower’s fall, did you feel something? Something that went beyond me and my minor powers of conjuring to tell this story?”
He did not wait for her to answer.
“The events that have unfolded before you are not only the hollow imprint of the past such as one might imagine phantoms of the dead to be, hopelessly trapped in an echo of their spent lives. On the contrary, behind all of it there is raw emotion, an intelligence to what you have just witnessed.
“I have considered for so very long, asking myself why my son has never ventured to set foot here after that day. And in time, I found the answer.
“The images and emotions you have just seen are mingled with the memories of my son. The witch did the only thing she could to save him. She seized the power that went wild during the ritual and she welded our souls to the land. She married them together in a desperate bid to save my son from certain destruction. But she did not envision what would happen next. How could she? There was not time.
“I believe that when my son awoke and went beyond the boundary of the power still at work here today, part of his soul was torn away and a large part of his memory with it. And that is the intelligence that still lives in this ulcer of misery upon the face of the land. My son is as wounded as this place, yet incapable of understanding why, knowing only a pain that reaches to the roots of his ruptured soul, with no sense of who he really is or how he has come to be a man who does not age, who does not take the least hurt for long. And he cannot know that this does not come at a cost. He is the overweighted half in the balance of the scales of natural laws. His continuing life comes at the cost of the destruction of the land itself. He lives as all this ...” and the old man held his arms wide as if to take in all of the desolation surrounding them, “... takes more and more life into its deathly embrace, so long as ... “
His voice trailed off, the strength of his conviction draining away from him then. It was as if he lacked the courage to say the rest.
But Melisse understood. All that he had said, all that she had seen leaped into focus with a crystalline clarity that chilled her to the bone.
“I will not do it.”
Her words hung in the air between them.
“You must,” he said, “And you must begin with me. It is the only way to know if you are capable of it.
“But, I believe that you are. Your fire mastered the power that reigns here. I believe that your strength surpasses even it a
nd that with the heat of a thousand suns, you can, in an instant, undo centuries of wrong.”
Melisse shook her head, horror in her eyes.
“I will not do it,” she repeated.
And the old man spoke again as if he had not heard her.
“When you bring Etienne here, he must not find me. He must rejoin the part of him that has been lost for so long. He must understand fully before the end so that the reason for what you must do is clear and that he shall have the strength of knowledge before it is over. He deserves that much ... it shall be a mercy to assuage him at the last.
“Further, if he sees me, he will lack the strength to do what must be done. As would I if I were to see him once more, and all your efforts would be for naught.”
“I said I will not do it!”
Melisse stood and felt the fire within her rouse. Like the starlight trapped in its cage of lenses and mirrors, it was a beast desperate to escape and wreak havoc.
The old man nodded.
“But you know that you must,” he said, his eyes blinking back the memory of so many tears.
Chapter Twenty One
Melisse stalked across the dread landscape, her brow furrowed and her fists clenched.
Fire shrouded her like funeral cloth, woven about her, protecting her against the power that scratched and scrabbled, desperate to gain purchase and strip her life away.
She smiled a grim smile despite the anger burning in her heart.
The cursed land tried but could not succeed. About that, the Alchemist had not been mistaken.
And while he had not known why, Melisse did.
Hers was a magic from another realm, a place with other laws that had no ties to the world where she had been born.
She had walked its fiery corridors. She had seen demons disappear into its maw.
She was, just as much as the Marechal was, an imbalance, an outrage to the perfection and beauty of nature itself.
Dark power pounded down at her, but she continued to its borders, her head unbowed.
And it was only as she crossed over into the land of those still living that she released her fire, her need of it gone.
The Marechal Chronicles: Volume V, The Tower of the Alchemist Page 19
