The Marechal Chronicles: Volume V, The Tower of the Alchemist (20 page)

“And now, Father?”

Etienne watched as his father smiled wide then pointed up with a single finger.

“And now to the roof we shall go,” the old man said, pleasure clear in his voice that he had withheld at least one last surprise for his son.

Etienne had not noticed it until then, but when he followed his father’s eyes, he saw a ladder leaning in one corner.

Neither of them had reason to go to the tower top often.  The edifice was crowned in a crenellated turret made of cut stone so tightly fitted together that one had to bend a knee and study it closely in order to make out the joint lines.

Many years ago, the two of them had spoken of having a pointed roof built over it, but the truth was that the ancient craftsmanship that had gone into its making meant that it never leaked in even the worst and seemingly endless tempest.

Etienne had argued that it would make the tower a little less foreboding in appearance and secretly hoped that his father might allow him to fly a bright banner from a vane atop the pointed roof.

But he had been a young man, a child ... if he was honest about it ... and the idea had been set aside like so many things over the years.

Doubtless, a foreboding tower suited the Alchemist just as well, for then he was less likely to be disturbed by anyone other than those with actual tower business, which was rarely the case to say the least.

Etienne moved quickly and set the ladder fully upright into a pair of incised holes in the floor while leaning it against the only opening in the otherwise unbroken ceiling.

“Me first?” he asked, then started up without waiting for his father to reply.

He climbed up several rungs, then set his shoulder against the heavy trapdoor that barred the way through the ceiling.

Its cross-bolted lock was not closed.  It never was, for neither of them ever saw any reason for it.

Etienne expected its hinges to screech with rust and disuse as the trapdoor lifted, but instead it surprised him and remained perfectly silent.

The reason why became instantly clear to him as he poked his head through the opening.

Someone had been through that opening recently.  Someone had been hard at work at something quite amazing, and the oiling of rusted hinges at that someone's passage had been a trifling thing in comparison.

A lens far larger than anything Etienne had seen his father produce was set in an enormous ring of yellow metal that held it perfectly horizontal overhead.

Etienne climbed the rest of the way up and glanced down to see his father making his steady way up after him.

He shook his head.

He knew his father to be an extraordinarily obstinate man, but this drifted over the borders of the unbelievable and squarely into the lands of the impossible.

“How did you manage this?” he breathed as he leaned back, trying to take it all in at once.

Etienne felt his father's presence at his side and heard him breathe a satisfied sigh.

“Wondrous, is it not?” the old man said.

“Yes, but how was it done?”

His father chuckled.

“Well, it's not as if I carried it up here in one piece, you know.

“It took me quite a while, but its crafting was
in situ
, and once the loupe of gold was cast and set, I merely required a gentle crosswind and a brazier of hot coals underneath to lift the liquid concentration up.  A harmonic struck upon a fork of silver lent it enough symmetry for the briefest of instants, then a simple crystal seed did all the rest, freezing the whole into place to make world's largest, most perfect lens.”

“But why?” Etienne breathed as he turned on his heel, trying to take in the entire thing at once.

“Because the light we require shall focus here.”

The Alchemist pointed to the floor directly beneath the lens's center.  Etienne saw nothing but a velour cloth on the floor like those they had just removed from the various devices under their feet.

“Underneath this last coverlet lies a mirror of multiple facets,” his father said, “At the right moment, it will be unveiled to capture the light from the lens overhead in its polished planes.

“These, in turn, shall split the beam into several angled divisions that will intersect with each of the mirrors set in the windows of the room below us.

“Thus the light of stars will be brought to the latticework of lenses and mirrors within my atelier, and there we will see what we shall see.”

The Alchemist made it all sound so simple.  It was if he had not spent so many years of his life to arrive at this precise moment and more as if he were giving simple directions as to how to bake a fruit pie.

Of course, Etienne knew better.  All that his father had done was about to come to culmination.

He wished he felt as certain for what they were about to do, that he possessed even half of the confidence he heard in his father's voice.

“Not to worry, my boy.  I shall go back down and you are to stay here until I give you the signal to unveil the mirror.

“Once done, you have only to descend and watch as the procedure runs its course.”

Etienne nodded, then a rush of words ran over his better judgment and his desperate desire to believe that his father knew exactly what he was doing.

“But why you, Father?  I can do it.  I am younger and stronger.  Surely it should be me for the first trial because if things go awry, I might resist whatever danger is imposed better than you.”

His father’s face drew down in honest sincerity as he answered him.

“My son, your willingness to take my place is a noble sentiment, and I thank you for it.

“But no.  I shall be the one to bear the brunt of this attempt.  You and I both know that my life has nigh run its course, while you still have so much to look forward to.”

The Alchemist paused then.  His face grew drawn and the excitement that had illuminated his features this night dimmed, making him look older than his years.

“But should it go wrong,” he said, his voice quiet, “... then please, try to remember the good between us.  Think of those moments and shrug off this mantle of bitterness you have so affectioned until now.

“And if ever one day you decide that all you believed was inverted and the supposed wisdom of years reveals this in another way, another doubtful light ... if that day should come, then I tell you now that no, the fault was mine.”

Etienne shook his head.

“Father, I don’t understand.”

“Ah, then, that is good.  My fondest desire is that you never do.”

The old man brightened then as excitement came back to make his words quick and light.

“Now enough with this foolishness.  The time has come, and I do not believe I go willingly to my death.  All of my calculations, all of my research, all of my life has led me to this and it is with a glad heart I take the last step and do not doubt I shall emerge from it with death forever removed from my path.

“Then I will have all the time I need to learn how to be a good father to my good son.”

The Alchemist strode quickly to the opening through which one could see the last rung of the ladder poking up.  Old age did not appear to work against him as he lowered himself down the ladder, only to pop back up just as quickly.

“Besides,” and his father winked at him, “ If you are to be the first and the procedure does not go as planned, whom shall I call to pull you back in after being blown out the window?”

Etienne blinked back the heat that rose in his eyes then.  They fairly stung, yet, and as always, some doubt nagged at him.  There was some essential truth, as his father so loved to put it, that still eluded them both.

“So what must I do?”

“You have but to wait, my son.  When I call out, lift the cloth from the mirror on the floor then come downstairs to watch as alchemy masters the natural world.”

His father disappeared from view once more.

Etienne waited ... but not for very long.

Chapter Seventeen

The son of the Alchemist had gone to the edge of the parapet to look down at the darkened world below.

He imagined the great beast that had come to plunder the treasure that had been hidden in sight of anyone and everyone ... yet no one had even suspected its existence until events had taken on a momentum with equally unexpected results.

And through it all, Etienne had discovered a marvelous woman who had taught him to believe in the wonders of the world.  Only it appeared that he had lost her due to his own doubts about her true motivations.

He knew he had been a fool.  Myri now chased after a creature that she could not hope to master, not if what her mother had told him was true.

Yet she did it anyway for she would not have Etienne believe her to be a thief or that she was complicit in the theft of the stone.

He thought again of the dream where a monstrous serpent had been about to devour his beautiful Myri.  The image of that other beast filled him with dread, and he found himself clutching the low stone wall before him with such force that if there had been enough light, he would have seen white knuckles crowning his trembling hands.

With fear ...?  Perhaps.  With doubt ...?  Absolutely.

Doubt that he would never see her again ... doubt that all of it was about to go so very wrong.

Etienne promised himself then that when this night's doings were done, he would leave to search for Myri and he would not rest until he had found her, no matter how long it would take him.

He must tell her that he had learned the truth.  He knew she had not stolen the talisman.  He knew also that there was something far more important he must tell her.

Something that required but three short words, yet those three words would carry more weight, more sincerity, than anything he had been moved to say during his entire life.

He strained to see in that dark place, telling himself that maybe she would come to him after all.  Perhaps if he wished for it more than anything, she would come.

Then he shook his head.

That kind of thinking was only more foolishness, of the same sort as his childhood idea of building a roof over the tower so that it would not appear so sinister ... so that folk might come to visit and maybe even make friends with the lonely boy who lived there with his father, the Alchemist of Urrune.

Etienne smiled a grim smile in the darkness.

If a roof had been built then, what they did this night would not be impossible.  Perhaps his childish wish had held more wisdom than either he or his father had ever suspected.

“Etienne!”

His father's voice was bright and clear as he called out from below.

“Now, my son.”

Etienne glanced quickly overhead at the lens about to be put to use.  Its diameter extended slightly beyond that of the tower and for what reason, he could not have guessed.

He shrugged.  He had made a solemn promise to his father and he meant to keep it.

Etienne went quickly to the center of the parapet and lifted the velour cover from the mirror set into the floor.

He did not know what to expect, but there was no sudden conflagration or other stunning result.

“Is it done?” his father called out.

“It is, Father,” Etienne replied.

He hesitated, then continued, “But nothing is happening.”

There was low laughter from down below, then his father spoke again.

“There is a certain inertia, I think.  Patience is key.”

His father sounded as calm as ever while Etienne felt a strange mix of disappointment and relief that perhaps his father had been mistaken once more.

Then it began to happen.

What he saw reminded him of the motes of dust that hang, suspended and shining, in a lazy late afternoon shaft of light.  The kind of light that would slip through a barely cracked door within the tower and illuminate the possibility that magic might exist whether he wanted it to or not.

There was a hazy column barely perceptible before him that grew more evident each second.  It descended from the lens overhead, perfectly centered on the strange mirror on the floor.

From there, Etienne saw thin lines appear as the beam was fractured into several others that angled back up from the mirror on the floor, only to strike the outermost edge of the lens above him.

The reason for its size became clear then.  The divided beams intersected the lens at its edge, but instead of traversing the transparent material, they rebounded in perfectly vertical lines beyond and down from the edges of the parapet.

Etienne did not need to guess where they might be directed.

“Come down, come down!” his father called out, “It begins!”

Etienne went swiftly to the ladder and descended, expecting to see something wondrous below.

But what he saw once there was more of the same dim, barely visible, beams of light.

His father stood in the middle of the room.  A small square had been drawn on the floor.  The old man was rigorously within those chalked lines and doubtless in the perfect center of the laboratory.

Etienne looked to the windows and saw that he was right.  The beams from overhead streamed down in perfect vertical lines, only to strike the mirrors so carefully placed at each window.

The beams then reflected at right angles toward the interior of the room to be caught in the dizzying assemblage of lenses and mirrors.

They crisscrossed and shifted in a complex, geometric pattern that had been impossible to discern until then.

Etienne’s eyes went wide with what he saw.  He knew his father was more of a true Alchemist than the last half dozen men to bear the name of St. Lucq, but to see the outcome of all his father’s years of meticulous study materialize before his eyes in that moment fairly took his breath away.

He looked all about him and soon he was sure of it.  The beams of light were growing stronger, more visible.

“It is a resonant coil within which the light is trapped,” his father said, but his voice was a muffled thing, as if he had spoken behind a closed door.

“The lenses and mirrors are the cage and starlight is the beast they have ensnared.”