The Marechal Chronicles: Volume V, The Tower of the Alchemist (11 page)

Apparently, the afternoon's surprises had not finished for the little red pantsed man as his face drained of all color at Bellamere's remark.

“And what would you know of it?  How have you come by such curious knowledge, for these are old tales told by no one but me, and even I have not told you this.”

“That's right,” Bellamere replied, “You haven't.  Lucky for me, Maitre St. Lucq loaned me a book that talks all about them and a goddess named Lys.”

Harki's pale face grew drawn and tired at the mention of the goddess's name.  When he spoke, his voice trembled and if it was with fear or fatigue, Bellamere could not have said.

“And does your book speak of the great halls under the mountain, the corridors polished to perfection, the love dispensed upon such stone and none of it repaid in kind when the goddess slipped forever and ever behind the veil of the night sky?”

“No … erm … that is to say … “

Harki continued as if he did not hear Bellamere, as if what he heard in that moment were echoes ringing across the centuries.

“Did this book speak of the custodians called by Lys to guard her mountain castle, to keep it and care for it as only we could?  Or that when she passed into the beyond, we were forgotten and locked out, our beloved halls closed to us forever more?  Her vanity and egoism cast us out in the world with nothing left to us but to seek out the petty stonework of men, the most magnificent of them but a pale reflection of the grandeur we once knew.”

Bellamere was slow to answer once the little man had fallen silent.

“Harki … are you a Laminak?  Is that what you are?” He took a deep breath, almost afraid of what he said next.

“I mean … are you really real?”

The little red pantsed man's face fell as he focused at last on Bellamere.

“Oh, smith's son … alas, your suspicions mean the end of our association.  What was necessary was your honest camaraderie but now with doubt gnawing at the foundation of your trust, the way shall be closed to me.”

There was a slight popping sound, as if the air had suddenly filled in the space occupied by the little man an instant before.  He had disappeared, and Bellamere wondered if he really was gone for good.

Or, for worse. 

He could not deny that despite Harki's endless teasing and sarcastic remarks, he had kept him company when there was no one else.

“But we were friends … “ he murmured while he could not help but think there really was no one to hear him.

Bellamere sighed and decided he did not want to read any more about the Black Boar of Summer, for it suddenly felt like a shadow had slipped out from the old pages of the book and clapped itself over the smith's son's shoulders like an unwelcome cloak.

And Bellamere knew it for what it was, as familiar to him as anything else in his life.

Its name was Loneliness.

Chapter Six

It did not take him long to find the meadow and its treasure trove of strawberries.

Etienne carried a large basket with him and he wore a white linen shirt that had seen very little use, for its color was pure and the fabric still supple.

While his father might have a preference for raspberries, the alchemist's son thought it a shame that the strawberries would go to waste.  There was an old woman on the outskirts of Urrune who would turn the delicate fruit into a marvelous
confiture
in exchange for part of the harvest.

He knew that even his father would welcome the little pots of jam with their beeswax seals that smelled heavenly when the snows came and the green forest turned grey and cold.

There was more ripe fruit than Etienne had remembered from the day before, and he worked in silence upon his knees.  Birds sang around him, and the leaves overhead whispered those secrets only other trees might comprehend.  And if he strained his ears from time to time, expecting to hear the telltale sound of a twig breaking under a woman's foot, Etienne did not admit to himself that he was there for anything other than strawberries.

Soon enough, his basket was near to overflowing and the knees of his trousers were soaked through with morning dew.  He stretched forward for one berry that had caught his attention earlier.  It positively glowed a rich bright red, its size exceptional and demanding that it be tasted right then and there as a reward for all his efforts.

Etienne closed his eyes and bit into it, and the flavors of spring rushed across his tongue in all their sweet glory.  The taste was that of a flood of clean water in the mouth of a dying man in the desert.  The savor like that of peaches and roses and so many other good and delightful things.

He sighed and sat back on his haunches, and it was only then that he opened his eyes and discovered his basketful of berries was gone.

“Thief,” he muttered and was on his feet in an instant.

He looked quickly about himself and there, barely perceptible, he made out several tufts of fine meadow grass that were only just then springing back up.

“Light on your feet you are, but not  …  quite  …  fast enough.”

Etienne burst forward, fleet as a wild stag.

His stride fell far longer than the faint footfalls that he read before him, yet the trail was clear and he had no doubt he would overtake the thief in short order.

Trees flew past him and his shadow grew longer as he ran, twisting and turning, then ducking low only to spring upright to chase after the faint signs of someone fleeing before him.

In time, his lips drew down and the fading smile there was replaced by grim determination.  And before the race he ran was over, Etienne drew up short, his chest heaving and sweat running down his neck.

The way forward was still just as evident as it had been from the beginning.  Yet, that way lay a truth just as evident even if it wounded him to admit it.

The alchemist’s son waited until his breathing took on a normal rhythm, then he turned on his heel and began walking back the way he had come as the morning had long since given way to an afternoon that would not tarry much longer either.

This time, the way was far clearer to him.  His heavy footfalls had left the forest floor’s leaves in disarray, more often than not with thick clods of black earth that had clung to his boot heels before falling away just as swiftly as he had run.

 He judged the distance he had run as only being half done before he would come back to the meadow of strawberries.  And as he rounded the corner of a thicket that positively swarmed with tiny chirruping birds, he saw something on the trail that stopped him cold.

The basket of strawberries.

They appeared to be just as they had been when last he saw them with but one difference.

Etienne looked about himself as he approached the basket then down at an enormous strawberry that he was sure had not been there earlier.

It was easily twice as large as any other he had picked that day, and he did not hesitate breaking its ruby flesh between his teeth and savoring the juice that flooded his tongue.

The way back to the meadow did not take long after that, and as Etienne was about to step out from under the thick canopy of forest overhead, a familiar scent came to him at the same time as a soft hand slipped under his arm.

He stiffened but refused her the satisfaction of looking her way as he continued walking without breaking his stride.

“What a lovely basket of fruit.”

Etienne clenched his jaw and said nothing.  Nor did he shrug away the hand holding his arm as they walked.

“However, it would seem that the day’s harvest was won with some difficulty for how hot and sweaty you are.”

He could hear the smile in her voice.  A teasing bright smile framed in rich red lips that would make him forget his anger if he dared look its way.

“Apparently, my basket sprouted legs and ran me a merry chase.”

“Really?”

Her reply was a mocking one.

“Or, perhaps it had been simply misplaced ... behind a tree just beside you and you only assumed that chasing after innocents in the woods your best answer?”

Etienne felt fury rise up as a physical heat washed over his face.

He stopped dead and flung her hand away.  Then he looked at the young woman at his side, his glare baleful and clear.

“Who are you?  I mean, who are you really and why are you here?  Tell me now, for I warn you that my patience is nearing its end.”

The young woman’s blue eyes widened and to Etienne’s satisfaction, he saw her take a step back from him and his anger.

Then she turned to face away from him before speaking, as if what she was about to say was something she dared not face herself.

“I will answer you ... in the best way that I can.  But first I would ask you a question, Etienne.”

Etienne growled and began walking again, sparing her no thought as he took up the trail toward his home.

When her hand slipped through his arm once more, he spoke.

“Questions for answers and answers for questions unasked.  Your ways tire me.”

“Nevertheless,” she said, “What would you do if one day a beast came to your door ... let us say a dog ... and you could read in its eyes several contradictory things.  In its gaze you see a sadness that runs so deeply it goes beyond anything you could ever imagine.  And, there is also a loneliness to match this sadness that explains why it had come to you at all.  But worse still, you see the potential for violence in the thing.  A hatred seethes just under the surface and you understand that this
dog
is just as capable of tearing your throat out as it is to fetch the stick you might throw in guise of the companionship it so desperately desires.

“What would you do with such a thing once it found its way to your doorstep?”

The way she spoke then forced him to slow his pace.  He heard how torn she was as she spoke and that this might have been the most honest thing she had said to him thus far.

“I think my answer would hinge upon whatever real danger the beast might pose.  Will it harm me?  Will it harm those around me?”

“No.  And yes, I think so.”

“Then it is a thing for which pity has no place and should be destroyed. Thus, its suffering will be brought to an end for the better of one and all.”

They walked together in silence for a time before she spoke again.

“Yours is the same counsel as that of my sister.  However, my mother did not agree and, in the end, my only sibling left our home to travel to southern lands.  In the years since then, we have learned that she has found a home among a traveling folk and has given birth to a niece I have never seen.”

Etienne heard her sigh.

“My sister is the sole family that I know of, apart from my mother, and my mother never speaks of those who might have preceded her.

“So, in some ways, I am more lost in the past than you, Etienne, for the St. Lucq family is known and has marked its passage through time for generations.”

Etienne’s voice was low as he replied to her.

“Is this your idea of explaining yourself to me?  You know, some folk start at the beginning for such things before passing into discussions of dangerous animals and the need to put them down.”

“My name is Myri,” she said.

The alchemist’s son gave no sign that he might have already heard such a name whispered upon the breath of a wayward wind.  As it was, he had already decided it was born of his own imagination, and the feeling of coincidence coming to alignment once more in his life was worth no more than a half-remembered dream.

“Fine,” he said, “Now tell me why you are here and how you knew to call me Alexandre when even I had no knowledge of this name until after I questioned my father.”

Myri sighed.

“I am here because I followed in the wake of a dangerous beast that led me here.  I am also here because my mother told me that she has seen what would come if I did not.  She gave me a name to call the man I would find at a tower and told me that it was the name his mother had chosen for him.”

Etienne shook his head and only just noticed that somehow the woman at his side had led him off the path leading back to the tower.  Instead, they walked once more beneath a canopy of leaves, and Etienne could not help but remark that the air had grown cooler.

“So, you persist. You tell me that magic exists, that your mother did not just guess at my first given name.  And, by consequence, you would convince me that my father and I possess some great, useless talisman.

“Yet you cannot offer me the least proof for any of it.”

She did not answer him as they walked around a bramble thicket.

They both stopped once on the other side.  One of them wide-eyed, the other downcast, looking defeated.

“What is this?” Etienne asked, his voice low.

Before them were animal tracks deeply embedded in the dark forest floor.

One might have imagined that a great stag had passed there sometime earlier that day.  Only it would have been the kind of stag that walks only in the dreams of the most daring of hunters, for the size of the tracks were larger than the largest dinner plates Etienne had ever seen.

“What is this?” he repeated in a whisper as he went to one knee to look more closely. 

The toes of the tracks had driven so deeply into the ground that most had filled with water and Etienne doubted he could reach their bottoms with one of his fingers.

Whatever had left them had been more massive, more gigantesque than should have been possible.

“Alas,” Myri spoke at last, “The time has long since passed when we might have brought an end to the creature’s life, if ever we could have.  He grows stronger with each passing year.  Sometimes, I can believe he grows stronger with each life he stomps out as he rages at the sight of young lovers each spring.”

“What are you saying ... is it that the Black Boar exists?”

Myri shrugged.

“No, I dare not.  Not after having seen your reaction over your friend’s mention of the beast.  Nevertheless ... “

“This is not possible,” he murmured in answer.

“There was a time when I could control him, soothe him,” she said.