The Watchtower (40 page)

Will had an unbidden thought of the cliff cave at Pointe du Raz where he had spent the day. Compared to this Parisian locale of horror, it was home.

"May I protest against this bitter exile you order? Exile from you and thus from life itself? I know of no Watchtower, no such authority, no such guardianship. I reject the Watchtower. But not you my love. Never you." He took a step toward her.

"You know the Watchtower now," Marguerite told him in an authoritarian tone, snapping her fingers. Flames burst from her fingertips. Will felt the heat lick at his skin and knew she had the power to destroy him. "You know what you need to know."

She fled from him along the river with an alacrity, an evanescence, that suggested she might still have one foot in another world. Will blinked, and she was gone.

Immortality, like memory, was not so easy to shrug off,
he thought.
For Marguerite, it would never really be in the past.

Yet Will knew this couldn't be entirely true, for that antagonistic look in her eyes, a totally human look, had been all too real. He also knew better than to follow her, for there lay the worst heartbreak of all, trying to rule fate when fate ruled him. Numb with grief, and trembling with a nightstalker's fear of being uncovered, Will ignored the latter to sit for a while. He stared into the blood moon of the Seine, an implacable face of this new world to which he'd been admitted, and waited for a breeze to break up its otherworldly shimmer and release him from its grip.

height="0em" width="1em" align="justify">One came along. It shattered the moon into a thousand fragments of rosy ice. Will retreated up the bank, intending to mount his horse and ride back to Pointe du Raz to search for Dee and demand he return him to his mortal state. Despite his hunger and thirst. But halfway to his horse, he caught sight of a distraught young woman just emerged from a tavern, weeping while meandering drunkenly near an alley. A quick survey of the street told him no one else was about. The pale skin of her neck was as alluring as Marguerite's had been. And why shouldn't it be? For his nocturnal needs, one young woman compelled him as another did: theirs seemed the sweetest blood of all to salve his thirst and fill his hunger, an intuition that would prove valid over the centuries.

In a single stride five times the length of his normal one, he was at her back, pushing her headlong into the alley, one hand over her mouth to stifle her cry, the other bracing her fall--his humanity lingered--as his mouth opened and his tongue tasted teeth-drawn juice of her neck. As she fell prone, only his incredible arm strength kept her above the ground, her face never quite touching the rough and soiled pavement of the alley.

When his swallows ceased at last, he lowered her gently to the ground. He caressed her neck gently, feeling for her pulse to assure himself that she was still ...

"Alive? Yes, she's still alive."

Will looked up and found to his horror that he was not alone in the alley. A hooded figure was standing in the shadows.

"But not all your victims will be so lucky," the man said in an angry snarl.

"Who...?" The man's voice was familiar and--more amazing still--he seemed to know his thoughts, as if he somehow shared his mind. "How...?"

"Is this where you want to spend eternity? In the shadows hiding from your beloved, or..." The man stepped out of the shadows and lowered his hood. Will gasped at the sight of the man's face. He'd thought discovering that Marguerite was mortal was the worst surprise of the night, but this ...
this
got even further under his skin.

"Or would you like me to show you another way?"

33

Chateau Hell

The coach took me across
the Seine to the Left Bank and went south down a long, straight street. Although much looked different from the Paris I'd left a few days ago, this street looked familiar. I recognized the imposing edifice of the Sorbonne and a number of other academic buildings. Although they weren't wearing jeans and backpacks, the scholars in robes walking the streets in rowdy groups laughed as loudly and drunkenly as their twenty-first-century counterparts.

As we drove farther south, though, the city looked less and less familiar. Where I'd have expected the Luxembourg Gardens we passed instead a monastery. We drove through a gate in a stone wall and into a rural area, then pulled up to an elegant chateau, its limestone facae distinguished by a tall, octagonal tower.

Which looked familiar.

As I got out of the coach, I turned around in a slow circle, trying to get my bearings, but without the Eiffel Tower flickering in the distance or the light of the observatory tower ...

"Monsieur," I asked the driver, "what sort of monastery did we just pass?"

"It belongs to the Carthusians." Then, crossing himself, he added, "But this ground was once the site of Chateau Vauvert, which many say was the home of the devil himself. It is not a good place, mademoiselle, but it is where Monsieur told me to take you."

"It's okay," I told the driver. "I think I know who lives here."

As soon as I'd given him permission, he whipped the horses into a gallop and sped away. As I walked to the door, I recalled that the Chateau Vauvert had taken up the ground that was occupied in twenty-first-century Paris by the Luxembourg Gardens and the Paris Observatory. I also remembered that the expression
go to Vauvert
was synonymous in French with
go to hell
because of the reputation of the chateau, from which strange screams and cries were often heard. It
was
a lonely place, I reflected, staring up at the enormous doorway of the later chateau that had taken its place. This chateau was decorated as if it guarded an entrance to the underworld. Caryatids framed the doorway, voluptuous women whose lush bodies resolved into scaly tails. Sea creatures swarmed across the arch above the door. I lifted the heavy iron doorknocker--carved in the shape of a seahorse--and knocked twice. The sound echoed in the still night. When the door opened, I was only half surprised to find Madame La Pieuvre, her silver hair piled high on top of her head, wearing a low-cut brocade dress with a wide lace collar from which hung a long train.

"Octavia," I said with a relieved sigh. "I've never been so happy to see anyone in all my life!"

A smile dimpled her plump, white cheeks, but she looked confused. "Do I know you, my dear?"

"You will," I said with a more tired sigh. "It's a long story. I know it's a lot to take on faith, but..."

"I'm sure I've taken a lot more on faith," she said with a sympathetic pat on my shoulder. "Come on in,
ma chere
, and you'll tell me your long story over dinner."

* * *

Madame La Pieuvre took me to the top room of the chateau's octagonal tower, which was lit by cleverly designed lanterns and fitted out with a telescope and a number of other astronomical devices I wouldn't have thought had yet been invented.

"I have some observations to make later," she said, waving me toward a silk-upholstered chair. "I'll ring for our supper to be brought here."

Supper was a delicious fish stew seasoned with Provencal herbs. "Bouillabaisse, my favorite!" I exclaimed.

"
Bouillabaisse?
What a lovely word for it. I'll have to remember that."

When I'd slaked the worst of my hunger and drunk two glasses of a delicious sparkling white wine that she was amused to hear me call champagne, I told Madame La Pieuvre my story. I told her all of it, from my first glimpse of the silver box in New York City, about which she had heard rumors, to our trip to the Val sans Retour. I thought she'd stop me there, but she continued to listen with the same grave attention, her gray eyes as placid as a morning fog rolling over the sea, to my entire marvelous tale. The only sign she made that this part of the story had affected her was that she poured us each a glass of green liqueur, which she told me the local Carthusian monks had made. "They call it Chartreuse," she told me. "I love it for its color."

I sipped the surprisingly potent liqueur and continued with my story. When I finished, she asked me one question.

"May I see that timepiece you crafted?"

I slipped its chain over my head and handed it to her, surprised that this was the detail that most interested her. She examined the front of the watch, opened it, watched its gears moving, then turned it over. Her eyes widened when she saw the design of the Watchtower on the back.

"This wasn't on the original watch you saw," she said.

"No, I added it."

"Do you know why?"

I shook my head. "It just seemed to belong there."

She closed the watch and handed it back to me. "I imagine Cosimo Ruggieri strived for years to find the correct symbols to make his time machine work, but only a descendant of the Watchtower would know what symbol to add." She rose to her feet and crossed to the north window, where her telescope was set up. Her arms, released from her train, plucked instruments from shelves as she went.

"Cosimo has been endeavoring to trick time all his life," she said, adjusting the telescope. "Here, come take a look."

I put my eye to the telescope. It was not trained on the heavens, but on the low skyline of Paris to the north. The view of dark, huddled buildings brought home to me the reality that I was not in my time. Paris had not yet become the City of Light. But by the glow of the nearly full moon I could make out the twin, square towers of Notre Dame, the three towers of Saint-Germain, the Tour Saint-Jacques, and the slim spire of Sainte-Chapelle. Brightest of all, though, northwest of Notre Dame, was a glowing orb. As I watched, a thread of lightning descended from the sky and struck the orb, illuminating a skeletal framework of interconnecting circles and ellipses. It looked like one of the astronomical contraptions I'd spied in the Musee des Arts et Metiers.

"What is that?" I asked, my eye still glued to the telescope.

"Cosimo Ruggieri's tower," Madame La Pieuvre replied. "It's been drawing lightning for the last seven nights. I've been watching it, waiting for Ruggieri to return from his abbey in Brittany where my Bretagne friends have been keeping an eye on him, wondering what he was bringing with him that required so much power. Last night I received word that he and Dee had awoken
la bete
."

"You mean Marduk?" I asked, glancing away from the telescope. Madame La Pieuvre's face, lit by flickering lantern light, was round and pale.

"Yes,
Marduk
. The name is a perversion of the name he took many centuries ago. He called himself Duc du Mar--Duke of the Sea. I am ashamed to say that he was originally one of the
fees de la mer.
He arrived here in Paris on the boats that brought us after the fall of Ys. The aristocracy of Ys was a proud group. They enjoyed the way that humans worshipped them. Some genuinely fell in love with humans..." She looked away from me, her face wistful. I recalled that Monsieur Lutin had told me that more than any of the other fairies, the sea fairies had thrived off their contact with humans.

"But others abused their power over their human consorts," Madame La Pieuvre continued darkly. "The worst offender was the Duc du Mar. He surrounded himself with human slaves whom he ravished and then disposed of when they no longer pleased him. His appetite was insatiable. Soon he was no longer content with mere physical abuse. He wanted to literally
devour
them. In his attempt to possess his humans wholly, he began to drink their blood. Some say he even ate their flesh."

"Ugh. How could the rest of you--the other sea fairies--allow that?"

"We weren't sure at first what he was doing. We realized it only when his victims began rising from the dead as vampires. He made hundreds of them. They swept over Paris terrorizing the populace. The
fees de la mer
met and decreed that Marduk--as he then began calling himself--must be stopped, but by then it was too late. Marduk had gained the power to take on the appearance of his victims. Thus he slipped from our grasp and escaped Paris. He went on a rampage across the countryside, leaving a path of drained bodies and vampires in his wake. Eventually we hounded him into the Pyrenees. There, without enough human victims to sustain him, he began feasting on beasts of the wild--boars, wolves, and bears. He took on traits of all the animals he had devoured and became a monstrous beast with an insatiable appetite for human flesh."

"Like the Beast of Gevaudan," I said, recalling what Will had told me. I described the legend of Gevaudan to Madame La Pieuvre.

"Yes, that sounds like Marduk--or perhaps one of the creatures he spawned. I'm afraid that the forests of Europe have never entirely been free of such creatures since Marduk went on his rampage. At last we hunted him down to his lair high in the Pyrenees. I was among the hunting party. We captured him, but only after he had taken many lives ... including that of someone very dear to me."

Her eyes filled with tears. must be brought him back to the Ile de Sein--to the last vestige of the city of Ys--and imprisoned him in a cave deep beneath the sea. Watchers were set guard in the tower on the Ile de Sein--and in the towers on the mainland--to make sure he never escaped, but over the centuries the watchers have grown lax and susceptible to corruption and bribery. Many of the towers fell into ruins--or into evil hands. The tower on the Pointe du Raz, for instance, became the property of Cosimo Ruggieri, a gift from his late patroness Catherine de Medicis. We feared then that Ruggieri was up to no good, but we never suspected that he had the power to call forth Marduk from the sea. But then we didn't know that the English sorcerer John Dee was working with him, or that he'd found, through Will Hughes, a way to gain the silver box and the Watchtower ring from Marguerite."

"It's not Will's fault. He had no idea what Dee was planning, and he tried to kill Marduk. He
did
kill him, I think, but when
my
--I mean Will from the future--tried to drink his blood, Marduk revived and attacked him."