The Marechal Chronicles: Volume V, The Tower of the Alchemist (4 page)

Bellamere did not mind.  The neighbor boy was a simpleton, yet his mind did not wander as he went about the tasks set to him by the smith. 

The young, overweight man driving the cart knew without a doubt that one day the neighbor boy would pass from informal apprenticeship to named apprentice, and this despite the fact that the smith was father to an able son.  Only that son preferred books and reading to his father's forge, but even still …  that was not the worst of it.

The worst of it was that no one would even think to contest such a breach of the most basic rules of inheritance among craftsmen.  No one would find the least problem in that the smith would overlook his own son and name a blunt yet faithful assistant named Simon as his formal apprentice and thus give the neighbor boy full rights to the smith's atelier one day.

No one could think it be otherwise … not even Bellamere himself.

And that, as everyone knew who knew of him, was because Bellamere, the smith's son, was quite mad.

His madness was not violent or rude.  Nor did he do himself harm or ever come close to harming anyone else.

Nevertheless, he was as unbalanced as a chair with one short leg.

Bellamere could not have disagreed, yet he was helpless to do otherwise as he continued his conversation while driving the cart down the road, its flat wagon filled with a heavy load destined for the tower that grew ever larger upon the horizon.

Seated beside him was a little man with only a few sparse curls of red hair springing up here and there on an otherwise bald head.  The small fellow's eyes were large and dark and his ears oversized and pointed.

He wore no shirt or shoes, only a pair of bright red pants held up by braided suspenders.

Harki had confided one day to Bellamere that the suspenders were a particular point of pride for him as they were crafted from the fine hairs of one hundred different beautiful maidens, and that it had taken him almost as many years to amass enough to make a respectable set of suspenders.

Bellamere had some doubts about that.  The little creature told many a tale, most growing stranger with the telling, and it was this evolution of stories he had heard many times before that gave Bellamere reason to believe that his companion was worse than the worst layabout fisherman spinning tales of the fish that got away.

And then, as in the present worrisome circumstances, when Bellamere actually needed to know something obscure and unlikely, the red pantsed little man would have no idea of the subject despite seeming to know everything about everything else.

“That's just like you,” Bellamere murmured.

“And so what if it is,” a little voice squeaked in answer, “I've never heard of it.  Now if you'd like to hear of the Golden Gazelle of Lillian's Falls, or the Yellow Lions of Glissant Mountains, or even the Red Dragons of the Fallen Cliffs of Flame, of those I could tell you tales until your very ears fall off, so tired they would be as I would regale you with tales of fascinating creatures in extravagant and mostly unknown places.”

The little fellow paused, then sniffed before saying, “As for dirty pigs running about in the night, I don't see the point.”

Bellamere frowned, then clucked at the mule, who ignored him as it usually did.  It knew the way to the tower as well as he did and that included the length of time it would take to get there.  The animal would arrive at its own rhythm, and as for the impatience of its driver, well, it did not see the point either.

“The point is people are going missing and nobody seems to want to do anything about it except to repeat old stories that are of no use to anyone,” Bellamere said.

“No use to anyone, or of no use to you?” was the squeaking reply followed by a snort and a chuckle, then, “Besides, I thought you enjoyed a good story from time to time.  For that matter, the older the better.”

Bellamere shrugged.

“I did … I mean, I do.  But they should be written down.  Otherwise, stories like the ones the old folk are telling right this very minute in the village to anyone who cares to listen have a way of taking on a life of their own and end up changing in the telling.  They're not fixed, I tell you.”

There was another tiny snort from beside him as Bellamere continued.

“And this is not just about pigs running about at night.  If there's one thing the old folk are agreed upon, it is that there is only one explanation and that's the Black Boar of Summer.  Not just pigs.”

Harki did not reply for quite some time and just when Bellamere was sure that was the end of it, he spoke up at last.

“All's I can say is that I'm fresh out of pig stories.  If I think of any, I'll let you know.”

The young man grunted.

“Fine.  You do that.”

Strangely, the little red pantsed creature fell silent, although Bellamere knew very well that it would not last.  It never did.

Bellamere's mule-drawn wagon rounded a final bend in the dirt road and as it did, he stopped breathing as he craned his head back just as he did every time he came to the alchemist’s tower.

The edifice had been hidden from view for the last league or so, as if Nature itself conspired to make it that much more extraordinary when the trees finally left off and there were no more leaf-filled branches forming a veritable tunnel of greenery that hid the tower until the last moment.

Harki laughed aloud.

“Don't say it,” Bellamere warned, taking a breath.

“Why not?” was the response, then “It's not as though you haven't seen it before.”

Bellamere did not answer and without fail, and as he knew the little fiend would, he heard him say, “Don't tip your head too far back boy, or it's like to roll right off … not that you'd ever miss it of course.”

Without looking, Bellamere made as if to shove the little man off the cart's bench seat, but his hand, as he already knew, met with no resistance since Harki was no longer there.

Instead, he felt a presence with no more weight to it than that of a feather settle upon his shoulder, and a pair of red pantsed legs appeared much closer than he would have liked.

“Get off,” Bellamere said, swatting at Harki … but, as before, the little man was no longer there, but back at his place upon the bench.

Bellamere caught himself, then looked quickly from right to left to see if anyone had seen what he had just done.

Thankfully, there was no one, the only sound other than the cart and its mule being the steady clang and bang of someone hammering upon something very hard nearby.

And that someone was the very reason Bellamere had been sent that day to the tower that most anyone else in the village feared to approach.  Too many legends and dark tales for the usual folk to dare.

No … one would have to be somewhat out of his mind to come willingly to the tower.  Naturally, that meant Bellamere, and that was something that suited him just fine.

The mule brayed and Bellamere jerked his eyes back to the road before him to see that he had pulled the reins to one side without noticing, as if he were trying to pull the mule off the worn track before them.  Even it knew there was no sense in that and did not hesitate to remind the cart driver of the same.

“Errr … sorry,” Bellamere mumbled, then looked sharply down at Harki.

Naturally, the little unnatural being chimed, “Oh, yes … sorry you are.  No need to remind us.”

The cart creaked and groaned as it trundled along the road that led them in a circle to a high stone wall that ringed the tower at its base.  They passed under an arched opening into what amounted to a kind of courtyard and strewn all about, in every direction, there were blocks of stone in a myriad of shapes and sizes.

Bellamere drew back on the reins, but the mule had already come to a standstill.  It knew as well as he did that the wagon would go no further before its wheels would run afoul of stones that would stop it dead.

There was a steady clang and bang, then the sound of a low voice cursing.

Bellamere clambered down from the wagon's bench, the thing's leaf springs creaking with relief as he did.

“Ho there, Etienne!” he shouted in the direction of the hammer sounds.

From behind a row of stones that stood higher than most men were tall, he heard the reply.

“Over here, Louf.”

Etienne had taken to calling Bellamere that and if it had been anyone else, it would have put him a dark mood.  But coming from the alchemist’s son, he knew it for what it was and that there was nothing of malice in the sobriquet.

The owner of the voice stood on the other side of those tall stones and as he picked his way around them, Bellamere found his friend at last.

Etienne stood there, sweat streaming down his body, a great hammer, its iron head nearly beaten away, in his hands and before him was an oblong, strangely rounded stone.

He had taken off his shirt, and Bellamere knew that any maiden who cast her eyes on the muscular wielder of that hammer would have swooned at his feet.

Bellamere held a particular fascination for women's bosoms, and he had not missed how they heaved upon the rare occasions that Etienne came into town on an errand for his father.

A lifetime of breaking rock for his father's work had sculpted the alchemist’s son into a man of exquisite form.

The fat man who stood there tried not to think of the enormous contrast between them.  One of them pudgy and soft in every sense of the word, while the other stood straight as an arrow with a chest so broad and arms so generously muscled that he hefted his hammer with no difficulty while Bellamere doubted he himself could even manage to lift it from the ground.

But he knew that the greatest effect Etienne had on young women came not from his lean and powerful body, but from the cool grey gaze he cast upon them when he deigned to notice the women at all.

Of course, once in a great while, Bellamere knew his friend would turn that gaze upon some fawning, well-bosomed creature and with a simple flash of his bright smile, they would go off arm in arm.

Bellamere could not help but admire that.  As for himself, he had yet to take a woman to bed despite his love of creamy breasts peaking from the village girls' bodices. 

Etienne nodded at Bellamere, then turned to regard the rounded stone before him.  Most of the others had been roughly shaped when they were hewn from wherever it was they had been found, but that other stone was as rounded as any river stone, only it was far too large to be such.

At least that is what the fat young man supposed. 

In any case, it did not matter because for some reason that Etienne had never explained, he had decided that that stone was his nemesis.

All others broke eventually under his hammer.  Some of them were broken further into tiny gravel, to be ground to fine powders for his father's work.  Still others would crack wide to reveal a treasure of beautifully colored crystals within that the Alchemist would fashion into rare jewels that would then be sold to far away kings and queens over the seas or beyond the mountains.

The Alchemist himself had explained this to Bellamere one day.  The working of those stones was the true secret to the alchemist’s wealth, as it had been his father's and his father before him.

Bellamere had been just a child when the Alchemist had come back from a voyage that had lasted so long that no one ever expected him to return.  Except that one day he did, and at his side was a child he declared to be his son, saying only that the mother had not survived the voyage at sea.

A few weeks later, a steady procession of heavy wagons and heavy horses to draw them began to arrive at the village, each demanding the way to the alchemist’s tower.  Naturally, the curious villagers took care to spy out what made those wagons sit so low upon their axles, only to be disappointed at finding nothing more than rocks.

Wagonload after wagonload of stones of various sizes and colors were portered and offloaded at the alchemist’s tower over the coming months.  Enough so that people spoke of the fleet of ships the Alchemist must have hired to bring such foolishness from far-flung lands to the tower.

Quickly enough, though, they forgave the man and his strange ways when those same porters came back through the village with their wagons and their bellies empty while their purses swelled full.

For a time, the village prospered as trade for food and drink made a certain number of the townsfolk rich by anyone's standard.

In the end, though, the steady flow of foreign porters slowed to a trickle, then stopped altogether. 

Then those same folk went back to their old ways and took a dim view of the Alchemist and whatever he did behind his high walls.

Not one of them knew what Bellamere knew.  All those stones had been brought there to be broken and ground down into any number of strange powders, or rendered with various liquids to create yet other oddly colored liquids to be kept upon the alchemist’s innumerable shelves.

All of the stones would be broken … except, perhaps, for a few.

Etienne had pointed them out to Bellamere the year before and said that one of them might be a lucky stone, the kind that when broken opened up like a cracked eggshell to reveal an interior of sparkling purple or, on the rare occasions, bloody red. 

Those crystalline interiors were worth more than their weight in gold, and Etienne loved nothing more than to strike hard and true to find such a treasure and then delight his father with the news.

Bellamere had also understood that those rare stones made up the equally rare moments where the father took much notice of his son.  Then, together, the two would work carefully in a high room of the tower, grinding with precise tools and polishing with fine powders to achieve gemstones to rival any found the world over.  Otherwise, the Alchemist spent his days turning pages in iron bound books, working out translations from languages long since lost to the world of men.  And when at his research, it would seem as if his son ceased to exist for him.

The corpulent young man could understand what that felt like, and he believed that Etienne would concur from his side of things if ever they spoke of the subject of their fathers.