Elisha Rex

by E. C. Ambrose

  He shifted her carefully, almost tenderly, into a hollow at the heart of the stone, then his warmth knelt beside her, but his touch had changed.

  She winced as he took up her sore wrists, stroking them gently with his thumbs. Lightly, he kissed her wounds, and she shivered again but not from cold. Rosalynn grew very still beneath his touch. His strange, alluring touch. “Elisha?”

  “Hush, now, Rosie.” He lifted her arms over her head and other hands clasped them, rough hands that seared her with their mockery as they tried to conceal their laughter. They must not ruin the scene.

  The scene? Quickly, she scrambled for the notion, grabbing for the hand with clumsy fingers, but the idea fled as metal once more clamped her arms. Rosalynn jerked against the bonds. “Elisha, what’s going on? Elisha, talk to me!”

  His strong hand wrapped her ankle, drawing her leg out straight. She kicked him, lashing out wildly now. “Don’t do this! Elisha, stop it—if this is your plan, it’s gone too far!”

  Iron snapped shut about her ankles, her legs stretched and spread despite her struggles. No, no. What was happening?

  Her savior’s shadowy face again appeared over hers. His touch upon her stayed as steady as ever, the reassurance he projected warring with his actions. Something slashed through her chemise and ripped it away.

  Across the yard, Thomas cried out, “Rosalynn! Rosie, where are you?” His broken voice, barely recognizable, fell into coughing.

  “No!” Rosie screamed, for Thomas as much as for herself.

  His hands, no longer compassionate but crazed, rubbed all over her body as she jerked at her chains.

  The mouth abandoned hers to her screaming, roving down to her breast, her belly, lingering there, then further.

  “Elisha, no!” she wailed, tears burning down her cheeks as he forced himself upon her.

  Across the courtyard, Thomas’s ragged voice cried out, “Leave her alone!”

  Elisha, too, cried out, stumbling to his feet and hurling aside the skin, breaking free of the memories but knowing they would never leave him. Shame flared through him, his own wicked hands that tortured her to death. He smacked at his skin, wiping away whatever he could of her, whatever he could of himself as if that might prove his innocence—beating back the horror that assailed him. Rosie, Rosie—dear God!

  He trembled and wept. Then his knees buckled and he fell to his face on the flagstones, heaps of bone towering over. The familiar chill of death embraced him, urging him to make the choice. He had one refuge yet, in the peace of the grave.

  Chapter 20

  Elisha’s left arm clutched his stomach as if he might stop the retching. Fighting off the vision hurt even more. He had lived through Rosalynn’s ordeal, through her own sensations. Just then, he wished that he, too, died with the slashing blade, if only so that he might never relive that memory.

  Death chanted all around him, a wild cacophony. Every one of the deaths that had ever touched him shrilled in his ears and howled through his brain. His brother’s voice wove through the tumult, bewildered and angry, and somewhere nearby, a baby wailed. The shame consumed him no matter how he fought it—he didn’t kill her! And yet she went to her grave believing he had. Had they even buried her? “Oh, God,” he cried to the hollow church. The lock of hair he kept at his wrist pressed between his thundering heart and the unyielding stone. “Oh, Thomas, where are you?”

  A hand stroked the nape of Elisha’s neck and he jerked, eyes wide. The hand caught hold and lifted him to his feet. His knees shaky, Elisha fell against the archbishop’s chest, only to be hauled upright again.

  Elisha swayed, and something tingled at his arm, clutching the other man for support. A patch of fabric dangled on a thread from the mancer’s neck. Dried blood and oil stained the cloth, familiar blood, and the thread, too, reminded him of something in its shaggy darkness.

  “You should have kept to the peasants, Barber, and left the matter of France to your betters.” Sticking his hand toward the back of his clerical robes, the archbishop produced a dagger and rammed it home into Elisha’s chest.

  Elisha shuddered in the archbishop’s grip. He stared down at the gilded hilt. It winked with rubies, echoing the candle flames, as crimson blood welled up around it to darken his shirt.

  A very good blow. Clean, well-aimed. Difficult to patch that wound. His heart seized.

  Elisha reached for the dagger, then hesitated. A few minutes, at most. Less, if he pulled it free. Sooner or later, it must hurt. Such a blow, to kill him, it must hurt. His legs trembled, and he slumped to his knees to wait for the pain.

  What did the heart do, truly? The ancients put forth many theories with which Mordecai regaled him at their studies. Elisha pictured Galen’s drawings, composed by studying dissected apes, and how the tubes went this way and that, gaping open, bloodless at the front to give an illusion of wholeness. Elisha’s hand strayed to the hilt. Ecclesiastical gold, surely. Only the best to murder the king.

  The king. The first jolt of pain sprang through his tightened chest, and he gaped.

  “What the Hell’ve ye done?” someone shouted, an echo in the hollow of Elisha’s mind.

  “He would’ve killed me, my son, surely you saw him reach for my throat. I shall bear the weight of all that I have done—in elevating him, and now in laying him low. Would to God I had seen his evil sooner! Still, what more fitting end for the man who slew the queen and usurped the throne, than to be slain by one of those he deceived?”

  A rustle of fabric cast aside as Madoc discarded the cloak which had muffled him. “By God, he never killed her.”

  “We were all of us betrayed by him. You will see the truth in time.” The archbishop crossed himself. “Never before have I been forced to slay a man. I find myself weak with the deed. Come, my good man, lend me your strength,” the archbishop called, his sonorous voice shaky.

  Killing. Death. That, too, should mean something. If only the wound did not throb so, perhaps he could work out the meaning. “I’m dying,” Elisha said, with something like laughter. Already, his hands and feet grew cold, trembling, and shadows danced before his eyes.

  The archbishop stepped back, wobbling, one hand outstretched to the bearded soldier beside him, whose sword was wavering. The mancer reached for contact. If he made it, the soldier would die. With a sneer, Madoc ducked the arm and marched three steps toward Elisha.

  “Take heed, my son! He’s a witch and a traitor!”

  “Aye, yer Grace, o’course he is,” Madoc answered. He hawked at the back of his throat, and spat.

  The glob landed neatly on Elisha’s forehead. Madoc’s eyes glinted with his smile as he turned on his heel and stalked from the church.

  In an instant, the archbishop discarded his projection of holy benevolence. “Bodyguard, you say? I’m sure you’ll find a better one in Hell. Judas, perhaps—he’s always been ready for those with ideas above their station. And I don’t believe you would object to kissing a man.”

  Madoc’s spit was warm on Elisha’s forehead, another marker of the shame from which the blade had freed him. Silly to rely on a dagger at a time like this. His fingers crept toward it, growing increasingly numb. They caught on the ridge of scar upon his left breast, just a bit aside from the fresh wound. Then it had been Thomas’s knife, flashing to kill the stranger who murdered his father. Elisha’s lips formed the king’s name. His throat ached. He should not die. He could not die. He could not remember how to save himself. He gulped in a breath around the pain and coughed blood.

  A sensation like a hole bored through his head and sudden light flooded in where Madoc’s spit dripped down, making contact. The howling in his ears transformed, as if the dogs that bayed to shred him barked now on his behalf. Death, Elisha named the sound; Death as familiar as his own name and as accursed.

  The brilliance of Madoc’s faith suffused his mind through that contact. Elisha reac
hed again for the knife as the gift of strength unfurled within him, and he remembered all. With a careful hand, Elisha pulled free the blade, the wound sealing itself as the metal withdrew and Elisha taught his flesh once more to be whole. Strength flowed through him, cold as iron and malleable as tin.

  Elisha smiled and cast aside the dagger as he rose from the floor.

  “You are an unholy monster,” said the archbishop.

  “So are you.” Elisha started forward.

  The mancer stumbled back then pulled out a curved fleshing blade and grinned—from an image of Elisha’s own face. Dark, familiar waves of hair curled over the imposter’s shoulders but the grin froze upon his face and he hesitated as Elisha came on. A projection, nothing more, and Elisha dispelled it with the truth.

  “Nothing you do can surprise me anymore.” Power pulsed through him, and he flung out his awareness like a lash. The pendant the mancer wore was stained with Elisha’s blood and strung upon a cord woven of Elisha’s hair, allowing him to adopt Elisha’s presence, to project it to others. Elisha felt the echo of his own touch. With one hand, he seized at the sensation, attacking through that contact.

  The archbishop’s face went pale. With quick fingers, the mancer tore away the talisman. In three long strides, he crossed the room and leapt at Elisha.

  Elisha threw himself out of the way. He fetched up hard against the wall and would have cried out, if he could find the breath, as Rosalynn’s blood wept upon his hands.

  In answer, the channel of power at his skull opened, filling him with borrowed strength, the strength of the living, not of the dead. He surged back to his feet as the mancer caught up the dirty skin Elisha had cast away. Instead of succumbing to Rosie’s panic, Elisha reached back through the blood, searching the memories and finding what he needed: rage. Rosie died in agony and fear but not without knowing anger, a boundless fury at the man she believed had done this to her. Elisha.

  His fingers clenched the blood that stained him. It was hard to force the body against its natural tendencies, but toward them: simplicity itself. No one could be so foully murdered without wanting her revenge.

  The mancer’s will bent against Elisha’s, tapping the horror of the queen’s skin. They struggled for the same talisman. Contact: both men had that through the blood that spattered them. Affinity: the righteous anger of the dead sprang up through Elisha. Knowledge: Elisha understood injustice better than most. He twined these things together and finally cast, the power rippling through his hands, leaping the space between them, tossing Rosie’s skin in a wicked dance. Her fury blasted back, as he woke the power of the death of a magus.

  The release knocked him against the wall and pinned him there. His chest spasmed and his fingers dug into the grooves between the stones. He sensed that howling passage of Death through which the mancers moved and spirits fled. If he let go, surely the maelstrom would rip him away to Hell.

  After a time, the tumult subsided, and the final moans faded away. Elisha cautiously opened his eyes.

  In the far corner a figure lay, staring at the ceiling with eyes sharply veined, lips parted, utterly unmoving. His rigid arms held Rosie’s skin to his chest like something precious. Elisha’s living power had manifested Rosie’s dying wish.

  But any sense of success withered as he gazed upon the man, the archbishop overcome by his own talisman. The mancer died with his lips parted, but without ever saying what Elisha needed to know. What had the monsters done with Thomas?

  The power that had come to him through Madoc’s not-so-distant faith dwindled, like something irretrievable slipping away.

  Elisha scrambled out the door into the growing light of day. Rain and wind struck from the south, pushing against his arm, fluttering his sleeve like a sail. He should not be so cold—he had broken contact with the dead man and his dreadful prize. “Madoc! Where are you?”

  “Here,” sighed a heavy voice. “I’m here, yer Majesty.”

  With his jerkin and tunic pulled off, Madoc sat leaning against the steps, one arm outstretched, dark blood oozing from a long slash. His chest rose and fell, but in ragged movements, as if losing the rhythm it had so long practiced. He cocked a shaggy eyebrow at Elisha. “Ye’ve won?” Then he gave a snort of laughter. “O’course ye did—ye lived.”

  Elisha dropped down beside him and clamped both hands about the wound. “Dear God, Madoc, what’ve you done?”

  “Gave ye strength.” He stared at Elisha’s hands, and his own pale in the dawn’s light. “Ye needed that, more than me.”

  “Damn it, not at the cost of your life.” The force of Rosalynn’s death still tremored through him, leaving him too weak for another casting.

  Madoc’s spit made the contact between them as he bled himself, and his faith bound the power of his bleeding to the urgency of Elisha’s need. Now his life trickled between Elisha’s fingers.

  Madoc shook his shaggy head and rumbled, “At any cost—ye’ve got to find the king.”

  Sagging against the steps, Elisha, too, shook his head. “Ah, bloody Hell, Madoc, I don’t even know where to look. Rosie only knew the ocean lay nearby, and we live on a bloody island!” She had hated him so thoroughly in those last moments that he feared to touch her again.

  “They’ve slain the queen,” Madoc breathed.

  “And you,” Elisha answered.

  “Not dead yet, and the magic didn’t get me,” Madoc pointed out. “Got me Mum’s blessing, haven’t I?” His hand slid away and fumbled in the dark between them, rattling the little case that still hung at Elisha’s belt. In a moment, his hand came up with a small bundle. “Bit of saint’s bone, bit of the dirt where I come from, wrapped in the blanket that first wrapped me, and stitched up with a prick of Mum’s blood to ward off curses.”

  Stitched up. Elisha lifted his head, then gave a short burst of laughter. “Curse me for a fool, Madoc—Even if I’ve not the strength to heal you, I’m still a barber.” He snapped open the lid of the case he always carried, even as king, and he dug through for suture thread and the sharpest of his needles.

  At the first prick, Madoc cracked open his eyes, and his teeth gleamed in a brief smile.

  With every stitch, Elisha warmed, and the flow of power through him receded, until he set the knot and sealed away, at least for now, the possibility of Madoc’s death, and with it, the power it had afforded. “You’ll be weak. Drink a lot, eat red meat.” He wrapped a bandage around the stitches as he spoke. “I have to leave you. I’m sorry. I hope they’ll take care of you, even though you are a friend of mine.” He swallowed. “When another witch touches the queen’s skin, they’ll believe that I killed her.”

  “Bring home the king, and they’ll know better,” Madoc mumbled.

  Draping Madoc with the cloak he had discarded, Elisha rose. “Thanks. It’s twice now I owe you my life.”

  “Yer life? I saved the bloody kingdom, right?”

  “I’ll see you knighted when we come home.”

  “Do that. The missus’d fair bust a gut to hear tell of it. Yer Majesty?”

  Elisha glanced down.

  “May the dawn find you joyful and the darkness hold no fear. Somm’at my people say. I don’t guess it helps, but there we are, eh?” He took a deep breath.

  “And I’ll wish the same for you, Madoc.”

  “Look, there, yer Majesty.” Madoc lifted his chin toward the ocean where the thin light of dawn began to spread.

  On the horizon, a shadow rose, slowly revealed as a series of low mounds with tall shapes above: ships, the French fleet. Elisha’s chest constricted, his mouth dry. On they came, with the expectation of a warm welcome from their allies. To the east, a spit of flame, then a soft rumbling. The line of ships rocked, and a sail went down. The rumbling grew, then the bombards roared.

  At this distance, they could not smell the powder, not yet, but billows of dark smoke swirled along
with lances of fire that struck red and gold into the sails of the enemy. Hulls cracked and masts fell. The ships pushed forward with the wind, and Elisha could imagine the terror on board, the desperate attempts to turn about or seek cover. With a groan of wood, one of the lead vessels pitched sideways, its masts falling, its hull broken. At the near end of the arc of vessels, one suddenly swept upward, smashing against the rocks at the cliff base. A few tiny figures tossed up into the sky and plunged into the sea beneath the onslaught of the waves and their own foundering vessels.

  More ships ran afoul of the rocks as the commanders lost control and the line broke. At the center, they shattered, rocked, and sank. Those on the outside spread away, fleeing initially west, toward the Isle of Wight, away from the bombards’ glare. A few ships would escape and circle round to France, to tell King Philip they found England not so weak as they believed.

  Lord Robert and his men would be at the beach by now, ready to handle any survivors who might wash ashore, seizing them in the name of the king and exacting rich ransoms from the kin of any nobles. The breaking dawn lit a scene of struggle and fear: ships crashing on the rocks, cracking with the bombards’ blast, sinking in the sea; men tumbling into the water, their prayers and screams inaudible at such a distance; the first wisps of smoke reaching Hythe from the thundering bombards. Above, the sky showed only a few clouds just edging with the sun’s glow. A fair day in England. But her king had work to do.

  With the shade of a smile, Elisha stepped once more through the door up the steps among the scattered bones. He had not the strength that Madoc had loaned him, but neither was he so weak as he might be—and he did have hope.

  The air stank of decaying flesh, and he wondered how long Rosalynn had been dead. A couple of days, at least.

  Elisha forced himself forward, walking mechanically toward the corpse on the floor, its arms around the remnants of the dead queen. First, he recovered the jeweled dagger, still icy with the potential of his own death, and his heart caught on the memory of the wound. Death could be a treacherous ally, so eager that even he was vulnerable when his defenses broke down. He called upon it cautiously, a master who can no longer trust the hound. Elisha shaped the cold of Death into a barricade just beneath his skin, using the affinity of its ever-present nature, which lurked even in himself. If he would face a lair of mancers, he could not walk alone. His emotions dulled, and he stared down dispassionately at the strange embrace of the victim and her killer.