The Marechal Chronicles: Volume V, The Tower of the Alchemist (19 page)

“But this cannot be,” she said, her expression grave, “They will not succeed, for the laws of creation will not permit such a thing.  The equilibrium of existence ...”

“... the equilibrium of existence cannot be defied, yes,” Harki finished, “Yet they make the attempt and in so doing shall certainly destroy themselves.  Unless ... “

“Unless I go to them at once and stop them.”

The woman’s voice had been quiet and low, and she said nothing more.

Harki clutched his own sides with his arms.  He did not bother looking to see if the witch was still there.

He only wished that she had not already forgotten the first of his warnings in the face of the second.

He had seen the ravages of love and loss.  Soon, so would she, and he doubted she would fare any better than the goddess named Lys.

He hugged his own sides and wept, alone, before fading from view to never again be seen by the eyes of men.

Chapter Fifteen

He found his father where he knew he would.

The laboratory door was not closed, and Etienne walked through it without knocking.

At first he did not see his father.  Instead of books and papers scattered as if a minor cyclone had passed through the room, there was no sign of anything other than the array of mirrors and lenses placed carefully in a myriad of positions throughout.  Each had been covered in its own dark velour cloth, and the scent of fresh, clean air filled Etienne’s nose.

Then he spied his father near one of the windows farthest from him, not with his head bent down to peer at old words in a book but with his arms held up before him and, in his hands, a series of small lenses mounted to a slender board.

The Alchemist nodded to his son.

“Come, Etienne.  Look through this.”

He went to his father’s side, taking care to avoid bumping or otherwise upsetting the careful adjustments his father had already made to the many instruments in the room.

“What is it?” he asked as he took the object his father gave him.

“I call it an
aerial perspicillum
.  It allows one to look great distances and my own components have eliminated a need for occultation along its length.  Errors of color have likewise been dispensed with due to the exceptional quality of my crystalline lenses.”

Etienne held it up to one eye to see the first golden loop holding its lens before him.  Quickly, he adjusted his grip to center the other lenses positioned down its length, one within the other in concentric circles.

“Ah, and what do you see, son?”

Etienne scanned the bright sky before him, sweeping the instrument from one side to the other before lowering it.

“I looked to where I saw you looking, Father, and there is nothing at all to see.  Only bright blue skies ... “

His father nodded.

“Yes, that is right.  Not even a bird to trouble the view for there is no breeze and no thermals for raptors to climb while waiting for their prey to show themselves.”

Etienne heard calm satisfaction in his father’s voice.

“And this pleases you?”

“It does.  Conditions have come to alignment, my son, and this night will be a moonless one with the stars as abundant as they can ever be.  No ill wind shall trouble the view with the gauze of clouds, unless my instruments have decided to lie to me for once and all.”

He did not doubt his father.  Etienne knew that he had spent years working on various devices that would predict the weather.  They were strange things with a strand of hair strung between dials that would in turn displace a fine needle like a clock’s hand whenever the weather was about to take a turn for the better or for the worse.

There was also another device of an entirely different make.  It was made of thin tubes of glass filled with a highly refined oil.  The amber fluid would rise or fall according to unseen energies his father once described as forces that weigh upon all things in the world, even if no one was aware of them.

It made little sense to Etienne, but of one thing he was sure.  When the dark amber began to climb up its glass prison walls, then dark skies would soon follow, and before long the heavens would open up once again in a vain attempt to wash away the sins of the world.

If his father said the night to come would be one of fair weather, Etienne did not doubt him.

Then he saw his father looking at him and he wore a frown as he did so.

“Etienne ... what is it, my boy?  You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”

The alchemist’s son shrugged, then stared off into the endless blue horizon.

“In a manner of speaking, I have, Father.  You are a sight for sore eyes.”

The frown did not leave his father’s face as he said, “I don’t understand what you mean, but I don’t recall if I’ve ever seen you so shaken.”

“My hunt for the object was in vain.  And in my pursuit, I discovered certain errors in my comportment with those closest to me ... errors due to my own arrogance.”

The Alchemist studied his son for a time.

“Etienne,” he said, “This is the way of life.  We suffer through our mistakes and can only hope to learn from them and do our best to not repeat the same errors again and again.  That, above all, is key.  We must not continue in the error of our ways.”

Then, as if the sunny skies outside had at last found their way to the somber man standing before his father, Etienne smiled.

“You are right, Father.  And it begins here.  I tell you now that I will no longer turn my back upon what you do.  I have seen things that have made me understand how much you mean to me and if it is in my power to aid you now, I shall not rest until the thing is done.”

His father looked away from him then.

Etienne waited, his resolve firm.

And when his father turned back to him at last, he saw eyes that shined in an old man’s lined face.

“Long have I hoped to hear such words from you, Etienne,” he said, then reached forward to pat his son’s shoulder before clearing his throat.

“The objective is to stop the march of time and bring Death itself to its knees,” his father said.

It was as if Etienne’s promise undid a barrage that had held the old man mute until then.  His words came in a flood.

“But how?” the Alchemist asked, then continued on in a rush without waiting for his son to respond.

“As you know, I have studied the texts of our forebears and considered the subject endlessly.  I have come to believe that as we age, some vital component within our bodies becomes polluted, impure.  This impurity accumulates until infirmity comes at the last and we are reduced to doddering old fools, weak in mind and body, easily swept away by some malady as trifling as a sniffly nose.

“This impurity ... it is a complication of the body’s essential truth.  Innocence, youth, these are the provenance of healing and growth.  These are the reasons that a wound will heal and quickly fade to almost nothing when we are young, while the same will stay inflamed like a weal upon the body of an old man such as mine.  Thus, this impurity interferes with healing and renewal.

“So, the next interrogation goes to how to remove this impurity.  This is where I found the old texts running in synchronous lines of logic with my theory.  One must drive the impurity out with the most powerful of all forces, that power which penetrates all things.

“One must master light itself.”

He paused then, at last, and Etienne frowned at what he had heard.

“Light?  How can this be?”

He shook his head and continued without waiting for his father’s answer.

“Certainly it is a force to be reckoned with.  Without it, forests would not exist, nor crops in the fields.  But there is nothing easier in the world than to blot it out.  A simple curtain of dark cloth hung over a window in mourning and this force you speak of is banished.”

His father smiled.

“Exactly, Etienne.  You have hit upon it perfectly.  The irony of a thing with such power while being vulnerable to something so vulgar and crude as rough cloth.

“It requires subtlety, my boy.  And the subtle light we shall tame and separate for our uses does not belong to the day.

“This night we will harness the light of the stars.”

***

They had spoken long afterward about many things.  Much of it to do with the alchemist’s studies ... some part of it to do with what would come after.  And neither of them spoke further of the subject at hand, choosing, rather, to skirt the events to come as if not evoking them would chase away the ever present specter of another failure.

The Alchemist proposed that they would journey to Barristide to visit with Bellamere, to assure themselves that he fared well and to aid him, with coin if necessary, if he did not.

Etienne grinned at that.  He did not know if he would see Myri again, and it hurt him more than he was prepared to admit.  But the thought of seeing his friend again helped to ease the ache he felt in his chest, the hurt that surged with each beat of his heart when he thought of the woman he had named thief on more than one occasion.

And if the truth was that she had not, in fact, stolen the talisman, then another truth remained that he could not deny.  She
had
stolen his heart.

Time passed more quickly than either of them expected, and soon they found themselves dining together for the first time in a very long while.  The sky grew darker and both men’s hearts beat a little more quickly as each minute slipped from the present to the past and carried them inexorably forward.

“Why not lie down for a moment, Etienne?” the Alchemist said, “I see that whatever, or whoever, you found and did not find in this morning’s hunt still weighs upon you, both in spirit and body.”

Etienne sighed.

“I do not deny it.  If you are sure, then yes, a little sleep beforehand might be of an aid to both of us.”

His father nodded as he stood up, only to find himself swaying upon his feet.

Etienne realized that he could not remember ever feeling more tired in all his life.

“That’s it, my boy,” his father said, “Off for a few winks while we wait for the night to turn over to its fullest.  I shall wake you when the time comes.”

Etienne said nothing in reply.  He simply walked away from the dinner table and forced his heavy legs to carry him up and away, trying not to stumble as he went.

Chapter Sixteen

It was like the dream he had dreamed before.  That was how he recognized it for what it was.  But what unfolded before his closed eyes while he lay sleeping in his bedchamber left Etienne staggered.

Night surrounded him and dark trees heavy in shadow lay before him.  And in that darkness, he watched as Myri slipped free from shadows that clung to her as thick as cobwebs, reluctant to let her break free.

Her bright gaze flashed in his direction, and even as Etienne saw the smile she smiled for him, he strained to move, to say words of warning that would not come.

She only had eyes for him, and thus she was blind to what followed in her wake.

But Etienne saw it and knew that it would devour the woman he loved.

It was almost as dark as the night, but its color was rooted in deep greens and browns.  It stretched out a great diamond-shaped head and revealed itself to be a serpent whose maw opened to gape wide.  Within were countless jagged teeth that would have been as fine as needles in an ordinary snake’s mouth.

But this was no normal beast, the span of its jaws easily as wide as Myri was tall.  And still she did not hear the ghastly thing slithering after her at a speed that would quickly overtake her.

Those ragged teeth grew larger in Etienne’s vision. Myri grew smaller and he opened his own mouth, straining with all his might to say something, anything, that would turn her around to face the danger trailing after her.

Etienne was powerless as she smiled at him, and as the monster reared up upon the coils of its body, he could do nothing to save her.  Nothing.

“Son, the time has come.  We must move quickly now.”

Etienne startled and took a deep, shuddering breath.  Then he opened his eyes to see the room resolving itself around him and, with it, the face of his father as he bent over him, a burning candle shielded in his hands.

“Yes,” he croaked as he blinked his eyes, then shook his head while wishing very much he could chase away the images of his beloved about to be devoured by a monster.

He cleared his throat and looked his father in his eyes.

“I’m ready.”

***

He followed after his father.

They marched steadily upward to the laboratory, and Etienne asked himself if it would be for the last time.  If it would not all go terribly wrong when he knew there was no reason to think so.

He had promised his father that he would aid him.  His father had prepared for this moment with years upon years of careful research.

He must place his faith in that and trust that all would go well.

And as they came to the laboratory at last and stepped through its doorway, Etienne could not chase away the image still burning in his mind’s eye.  His beloved Myri and the serpent about to destroy her.

And he thought he knew the beast in that image.  He felt sure that he should have been able to name it and then possess the power to render it impuissant.  Somehow, he felt if he could just name the thing, then he could banish it forever more.

Yet try as he might, it escaped him and the nagging worry in the back of his mind would not be silenced.

“We must move lively now, Etienne,” his father said, “Quickly but surely, otherwise the time it would take to set things to rights will spoil this night’s attempt, and such ideal conditions might not present themselves again for quite some time.”

Etienne understood.

The two of them moved across the room, gently pulling away the velour coverlets from each apparatus as they went.

Neither of them made a mistake so that in short order, all the instruments were unveiled and their carefully adjusted positions intact to the very last one.