The Marechal Chronicles: Volume V, The Tower of the Alchemist (21 page)

His words were so full of life, so effervescent, that Etienne could not help but smile.  Yet the sound was clearly dampened as if a barrier had fallen, or was falling, into place.

“Father ... your voice.  It grows faint,” Etienne called out, convinced that his own voice was as attenuated as his father’s.

“No need to shout, my son.  I hear you just fine.”

Except that the alchemist’s son had to strain to hear his father then.

The light grew more visible with each passing second.  Etienne would not have said that it grew brighter, for it did not bother his eyes the way a bright light would have in that otherwise darkened room.  However, it became more present, more defined, and the motes that drifted within its beams more agitated, swirling in all directions.

“There remains but one thing left to do,” the Alchemist said, reaching into one of his pockets.

He drew out a very small fork, and Etienne saw it had only two tines.  Its color was bright and shining, clearly a precious metal, and then he remembered what his father had said as to how he had created the lens upon the parapet of the tower.  A silver fork and a harmonic tone struck upon it.

In his other hand, he held a tiny brass hammer. The Alchemist cast his gaze all about himself, nodded, then struck the fork a single, ringing blow.

A bright, high-pitched tone chimed in the laboratory and Etienne saw some of the beams of light shudder with the sound.  He looked about to see the reason for it, then Etienne understood that his father must have fabricated a certain number of the lenses and mirrors in such a way that they would answer and resonate to the sound of the silver fork.

Instead of a momentary vibration, the beams of starlight shuddered even more, their paths widening in such a precise way that they changed their reflected paths as well with an ever-increasing amplitude that showed no sign of dying away.

Rather, the opposite quickly became clear as the entire room leapt and danced with the beams of light shifting and refracting in the most marvelous ways.

Even if it had not been part of his father’s great project, Etienne could not have been more impressed by the result thus far.  The play of light jumped about so quickly that thin beams became wide ribbons of shining beauty that danced around and around in a robust , faeric gyre.

The beauty of it was breathtaking.

Then, without warning, it all changed.

Horizontal beams had widened into large ribbons and these rippled and shifted only to suddenly rise up all at once.  Until that moment, the whole had been a streaming, continuous flow of starlight caught in a geometric pattern.  But then the light took on the aspect of waves upon a violent sea.  They rose up and up, breaking apart, until Etienne could no longer see his father in the center of that potent maelstrom.

The next moment saw all of it come crashing down as wave met wave and a new thing was born in the confines of the laboratory.

The first thought Etienne had was that of a
toupie
, more commonly known in recent years as a top.  An ordinary child’s toy around which one wound a string only to tear it away to send the top into a spinning dance that held it upright when common sense would have predicted it to fall over.

What was then before Etienne was just like such a toy, only it was not made of wood but of enormous, shining blades of light that turned round and round with his father at its center.

The frenetic shuddering that had given way to the spiking waves of light had disappeared completely.  Instead, the object before the alchemist’s son appeared to be made of scintillating blades that turned around themselves within an inner circle and an outer circle.

Etienne stood still in the alcove that provided access to the roof overhead.  He could not be sure if the sound of his voice would break the enchantment, or alchemy, before him.  It appeared to have broken free of its connections with the lenses and mirrors in the room and had become a separate, perhaps delicate and easily disrupted, entity.

His father broke the silence first.

“This was ... broken,” he said.

His voice was no longer muffled as before, but his words were cut off as a blade rotated between him and Etienne only to resume once it was past.

“What?” Etienne called out, “I don’t understand.”

His father spoke again, doing his best to time his words.

“Last time ... broken ... explosion ... by now.  This ... a success.”

He nodded at his father’s words, then called out.

“And what now?”

The question went unanswered as both men’s attention was seized by the spinning top of starlight.

There had been silence in the laboratory until then, broken only by their own voices.  But the object changed once more and a deep rushing sound developed in time with the passage of each vane of light.

The sound was an eerie one.  What came to Etienne’s ears was like that of a sudden wind lifting before a dark thunderstorm, only to die away to come back just as quickly with the next revolution of the top.

What was more was that he felt nothing at the sound.  If it had been like a natural wind, he would have felt it just after hearing it. But the passing blades made only sound and did not seem to affect the air as they turned.

And just as quickly as the sound began, Etienne heard the frequency increase and soon enough he was able to see it.  The blades were taking on speed.

They turned more and more rapidly, and he watched as his father became a series of blinking images in the heart of the manifestation of light and magic. His movements winked in and out in a staccato rhythm that made of him a stuttering clockwork man.

Those flashing glimpses unnerved Etienne.  The old man seemed to search about himself.  It was as if he had not expected what was happening, and a sensation of cold rippled over Etienne’s body.

The hairs on the nape of his neck stood out as he strained to hear the least word from his father.  But the Alchemist made no sound that he could hear, nothing that might restore the confidence draining away from Etienne in a rush.

There was no moving air as alchemy turned ever faster.  However, with each susurration of sound that grew increasingly louder with each revolution, Etienne felt something else.  He felt the tower begin to sway.

Wild fear reared to twist Etienne’s insides. He felt a turning point, or to be more precise, a point of no return was about to be reached.

In his mind’s eye, Etienne once more saw the monstrous serpent that had risen behind Myri in his dream and he knew it for what it was.

Its name was failure, and the beast was about to take both father and son into its gullet.

The tower shuddered and Etienne had no trouble imagining how it would look from the outside, swaying as if buffeted by a fell wind of destiny turned wrong.

“Father!  Wait!  There is a flaw in your reasoning,” Etienne shouted.

He saw his father flash a look of alarm at him as the blades of light turned inexorably around him.  They were taking on more speed.

He watched his father’s lips move, but the sound of his voice could no longer break past the light turning over and around him.

However, that did not stop his son from trying to make himself heard.

“Father!  In all your research, where is it written that one of our forefathers succeeded?  For if he did, why do we not know of him?  Where is he now if he discovered a means to true immortality?”

Whatever his father had been attempting to say came to an abrupt end as Etienne saw his lips stop moving.  And then with no way of expressing what he felt, Etienne watched, helpless, while panic leapt like a wild beast inside his guts.  His father simply shook his head, then looked down with what could have only been a sign of defeat.

Etienne realized this was no sudden revelation for his father.  The old man knew this.  He had known this for a very long time yet had kept it for himself, never speaking a word of it to Etienne.

Suddenly, the last of the confidence he had in his father sifted away and Etienne cast about himself, looking for a way to stop what had already started.

The tower shuddered under his feet in a vibration that rode from his heels and up through his body to make his teeth chatter.

Whether the procedure would succeed or not, one thing became perfectly clear to Etienne.  The tower would fall if he did nothing.  His father would die if he did nothing.

The alchemist’s son wheeled and seized the ladder still standing in the alcove behind him.  He ripped it down and in a single sweeping motion, he swung it with all his might into the path of a blade of light.

The magic did not break.  Nor did the ladder.  Instead it held fast to the starlight, as if stuck in a quagmire.

At the same time, Etienne felt a shock of power that froze his grip upon the old wood.  Then he was off the ground and swinging in the air.

He caught a glimpse of what was about to happen, and his eyes flew wide as he swung like a child’s doll suspended from one end of the ladder and into the next blade of light.

There was searing, icy pain.

His breathing stopped instantly.

He could not move his limbs.  Only his eyes allowed him to see that the blade following the one which held the ladder had taken him in a jagged angle across his body.

Smoke rose to sting his eyes and despite the noise of the magic, Etienne heard the sound of sizzling meat.

He had been struck through and through, from his chest and neck down across his body.  The sound of cooking meat was that of his own flesh, burning as wild power carried him round in revolutions that shuddered harder with each pass.

Etienne could not turn his head.  He supposed that the blade had taken him through the jaw as well.  He only knew that what he could still see was dimming rapidly.  He knew that the quiet sound that had accompanied him, mostly unnoticed, his entire life had ceased.

His heart beat no more, as cloven as the rest of him, and death would not tarry far behind.

At least the pain will not endure long, for my life flees even now.

Then a powerful voice rose in that terrible place and, at last, a cool wind blew to carry away the smoke in Etienne’s eyes.

“I name you, Alexandre.  I name you, Etienne.”

It was a woman's voice, a voice that the alchemist's son knew.

Something began to crackle.  A sound like the birthing of lightning upon dark summer skies.

“I name you, my Love.”

The crackling sound grew louder in Etienne’s ears until it felt like they would burst long before the tempest broke to destroy him and his father both.

“And I will not surrender you to Death!”

For an instant, an instant only, all was frozen.

The turning blades of light went still and in the briefest flash, an image registered itself in Etienne’s dying mind.

He saw a woman outside one of the tower windows.  Her arms were raised and she appeared to stand upon thin air.

Around her seethed colored mists, green and brown, the glowing colors of the earth, the colors of the natural world. 

The colors of a dreamed serpent poised to destroy my beloved Myri.

Then the world exploded and the night sky appeared overhead.

A rain of debris fell in the wrong direction, rising up and up, then turned at last.

Blocks of stone laid in place so many centuries past fell down in a mortal storm to land at the foot of the tower while Myri, a witch of distant marshes, set foot in the laboratory.

Power flooded from her and into the alchemist’s creation.  Brown and green collided, then melded with the silver starlight construction.

Her eyes were fierce, power ridden, as feral magic poured through her.

The blades of light slowed, then ground to a halt.

Etienne blinked rapidly, desperate to chase away the fog of his own mortality and catch one last glimpse of the woman trying to save a dead man.

She was opposite him.  Their eyes met, and he saw horror and fear reflected in those dark pools of blue.

Then he saw her eyes harden with grim resolve.

Her power, like mist upon a swamp, grew thick about her and she threw her arms wide as if she meant to embrace Etienne from afar.

She set her jaw as Etienne strained against the blade that still held him suspended in the air.

He threw the last of himself into this one supreme effort, and while no sound came, he managed to form the three words he so longed for Myri to hear.

Three words that he should have spoken into her ears far sooner than this.

Her eyes widened as she watched him try to speak.

Then magic erupted from the witch.

It rippled down her arms as Etienne sagged, the last of his strength, the last of his life, draining away.

Witches’ magic, ancient and powerful, wrapped around the device made of light, encircling it as in a lover’s embrace.

And then Myri, despair and anguish lending her immeasurable strength, drew her power taut and she squeezed.

Etienne’s eyes went dark.

He saw no more.

Then, as if from a deep well, he heard a terrible boom that was followed by a hundred others, an explosion that went raging on like a thousand foot high cataract upon the river Styx.

From far away, he heard the endless sound of cataclysm, barely able to register the fact that his body rose up in a boneless heap.

Then he felt the bottom drop out of the earth, and he fell.

All of it fell.

Fly away, my darling Myri.  Fly away, my Love.

And the son of the Alchemist ... the hero of a shy blacksmith’s son ... the unlooked-for lover of a witch ...

The man named Alexandre by his mother, Etienne by his father ... that man fell with the tower of his ancestors, and he knew no more.

Chapter Eighteen

A horse galloped in the darkness.

It ran and ran, yet there was something strange about the cadence of its hooves.  There was something particular to its gait as it hammered down the blind paths of oblivion.

Then the man who heard it and had no other thoughts of what came before, or what might come after, decided he was mistaken.