Elisha Rex

by E. C. Ambrose

  “Well,” Thomas cut in, “if it’s Randall who would prevent us, then take us to him. Let him explain himself to his liege-lord.”

  “His Grace is on the way,” called out a breathless man at the back, and Elisha straightened in his saddle. Beyond the bulk of Saint Bartholomew’s, the squat shape of Brigit’s chapel stood in a sea of people, soldiers, barons and peasants alike. A party of men hurried up the road, swords at the ready.

  Cold crackled against Elisha’s awareness, and he dodged his horse back again, narrowly avoiding the mancer’s grasp. A hand caught his leg on the other side.

  “Hold him! Keep him!”

  A smaller group of soldiers in the duke’s livery surged forward, separating the horses, surrounding Elisha.

  “Release him, I say!” Thomas shouted. “He’s an innocent man!”

  They unhorsed him instead, Elisha gathering his power as he fell. Kicking away the hands that tried to snatch him, Elisha scrambled to his feet, projecting the awful menace of his fury. He spun a circle and spotted the mancer backing away into the crowd. Elisha lunged after him, reaching through the deathly power that suffused them both.

  Pressing his hat to his head, the mancer whirled back, sword in hand, its edge dull with old blood.

  “Do you dare?” Elisha spoke without words, sending the shock of his strength into the air and the earth.

  A few of the soldiers drew back. “Captain—” one of them ventured, but the mancer ignored him.

  “Have at me, then. Show them the truth about you!” the mancer urged him even as he backed away, fetching up against the twitching leg of Thomas’s mount.

  “Your Majesty, the hat!” Elisha called.

  Thomas reached out and snatched it from the mancer’s head, eliciting a cry, first from the man, then from those around him as scraps of flesh still bloody tumbled from the woolen cap. Growling, the mancer snatched at it as the bewildered soldiers withdrew. Elisha felt a grim satisfaction, until his left eye saw the cold shards of Death penetrate the heat of Thomas’s presence, and he realized his mistake. Thomas flung the thing away, but the talisman had already marked him.

  The mancer turned, hand atop his head, still streaked with blood.

  Thomas stared at his own hand, his face pale, and moved as if to wipe off the stain.

  “Make way for his Grace, the Duke of Dunbury!” someone shouted.

  Elisha shot forward, leaping onto the mancer even as the wind howled into his ears, the mancer reaching for Thomas through the blood that marked him. He set his fingers against the man’s skin and summoned death. The mancer screamed.

  His hands grappled with Elisha, tearing his borrowed tunic. A black shadow wrapped Elisha’s arm, like a ferret up a lady’s sleeve, and he sucked it inside, his lungs swelling with borrowed strength. The screaming stopped, or perhaps Elisha could no longer hear it for the mad snapping in his skull, his faithful hounds baying for more. Elisha rose from the body, and none now lay a hand upon him.

  From his horse, Thomas gave a slight bow and said, “Your Grace. We’ve been expecting you.” He swallowed. His presence shivered with doubt and remembrance.

  “How could you help him?” The duke’s sword jutted up toward the king, as steady as his voice was not. “You know, you were there,” he gulped for breath. “How could you, after all of that?”

  “Because Elisha is innocent of the crime you would kill him for.”

  “Rosalynn’s murder! Can’t you even say the words?”

  Elisha stood calm, watching the pink-faced duke confront his latest betrayer. Thomas slid down from his horse at last, his travel-worn boots hitting the dirt not far from the dead man’s open eyes, rimed with frost, the same color as the clouds which moved in to obscure the sun. Thomas proclaimed Elisha’s innocence while overlooking the body at his feet. To all those around him, Thomas looked like a fool, like the very worst kind of hypocrite, or, after all, a man bewitched, for how else could he defend such a murderer?

  “Randall,” the king began softly, “you think that I’ve forgotten, but I have not. There is other evidence we have been blind to, evidence that it was the archbishop at the heart of this madness, and now Brigit has claimed his place. They’ve been trying to break our allegiances, to trap us each in our own grief and pain so that we did not see this day as it overtook us.”

  “She fears him so greatly, and yourself, Your Majesty”—another twist of the duke’s lips—“that she set us here to guard against your arrival. Good God, man, what’s he done to you?”

  The stillness at Elisha’s back, where a hundred soldiers shifted and stared, broke into muffled groans and curses. Before him, the duke’s scowl wrenched briefly into a wince then returned again. His off-hand absently rested against his stomach and his sword-arm twitched.

  “I do not wish to hurt you, Your Majesty,” he said through clenched teeth. “After the ceremony is over, then Father Osbert can set about to exorcise this devil from you.”

  At another groan behind him, Elisha looked back. Several of the men held their stomachs, a few rubbed at their hands, blinking fiercely. “What’s the matter, man?” demanded one of the few unaffected, a lad of perhaps seventeen years.

  “I don’t know. Too much drink. God, but it stings.” The soldier’s brow furrowed.

  “Can’t you smell it?” said another, an older man, rubbing at his eyes. “Wind must’ve shifted. Somebody’s fire’s blowing in my face.” He coughed sharply. “Damn that smoke.”

  Through the clear air, Elisha stared. Many of the soldiers—most of the older ones—fidgeted with their hands, as the coughing spread, their eyes reddened, and their faces looked glossy.

  His awareness flashed red-hot and Elisha whirled as the Duke slashed toward him. The blade arced toward his chest. Elisha’s breath caught.

  With a clang that shook his very teeth, a second sword struck away the first. Thomas’s arm rigid, his blade stopped the point inches from Elisha’s heart.

  “If it’s a fight you’re after,” said the king, “then I am for you.”

  The duke smothered a cough and gave his head a quick shake, tears glinting away from his face. “Don’t make me kill you to see justice. I still believe you might be saved.”

  “Then let patience master your grief, Randall, and listen to reason.” Thomas forced back the duke’s blade, stepping between them, his body warming Elisha’s. “You know all he’s been through, all he’s done in our behalf. If you can shake the horror of what happened to her, Randall, you’ll know he would never have done it.”

  Elisha studied the afflicted men around him, the duke included. “Thomas, it’s beginning.”

  His sharp blue eyes cut briefly to the side, meeting Elisha’s gaze with the slightest nod.

  Over Thomas’s shoulder, beyond the duke, the low form of Brigit’s temple glowed faintly gold in the sunshine. Yet a shadow loomed over it, a flickering, shifting thing, hard to make out. Even as Elisha watched, it grew stronger. It was a thing of memory, a projection—brought about by what? A contact forged across time in the place her mother had died. But a projection alone couldn’t hurt, couldn’t make a soldier imagine smoke where there was none. The desolati wouldn’t even see it.

  The duke retreated a step, scratching at his throat, then forcing his hand away. “Have at you, then, Your Majesty, I have God and justice on my side.” His face crumpled with pain, and he shook his head, lurching another step back.

  “Were you here, Your Grace?” Elisha asked, dodging Thomas’s protective stance as the duke’s young magus and Lord Robert emerged from among the duke’s defenders. “Were you here? When they burned Rowena at the stake?”

  “Of course I was—King Hugh was yet my friend! We were all here,” the duke sputtered. He swayed and tugged at the straps of his breastplate.

  Robert put out a hand to support him, despite the rising redness in his own face. Wip
ing his arm over his sweaty brow, he muttered, “God, but it burns.”

  A stab of inquiry flared out from the young magus, confusion darkening his face. Elisha pointed toward the temple and the staggering crowd that surrounded it, coughs and curses echoing among the church buildings. Towering over the little building, taller by far than ever it had been, loomed a vision of the stake, wreathed in dancing flames.

  Chapter 36

  Elisha wrapped himself in the knowledge of death as a few of the soldiers began slapping at their clothes. The screaming began in earnest, spreading out in waves from the crowd around the temple. Priests thrust out their crosses, shouting prayers and exhortations only to be cramped by the phantom pains that swept the gathering.

  “What’s he doing to me?” Randall choked. Then he pushed away his supporters and staggered forward, his sword outstretched. Beads of sweat ran down his cheeks. He kept blinking, shaking his head to cast off whatever illusion possessed him.

  The magus shot out his hand and caught hold of Elisha’s arm, probing with his magical senses. “It isn’t him,” he reported, his touch bewildered. “There’s a projection. It must be a strong one, to reach so many at such a distance, but I can barely feel it. How does the magus casting the spell have contact?”

  “It’s history,” Elisha said, “turned wrong side out.”

  “Speak not in riddles!” the magus shouted. “What’s happening to them?”

  Soldiers dropped to the ground, rolling desperately and beating at themselves. Splashing from the riverbank told of other attempts to escape. But they could not flee the past, nor what they had seen, for Brigit reached into the heart of memory and conjured the flames.

  “Brigit said she would give them the past, and they would give her the future. She said she would bring down the nobility of England,” Elisha told him. “She’s forged an affinity with her mother’s death, and she’s using it to make contact with everyone who was there, to reflect her mother’s suffering onto them. I can’t imagine how she’s drawing the power to do it.”

  “Holy Christ,” the magus breathed.

  Stretching himself to the utmost, Elisha felt spasms of pain emanating from the hollow. Madness intensified around him. Men tore at their clothes. Their screams and curses rebounded from the churchyard walls. Elisha and Thomas stood forgotten by all but the duke’s nearest intimates, and even these struggled to control the reactions of their own bodies. Thomas’s presence echoed with fear, but he remained at Elisha’s side, his face and figure revealing nothing.

  A short, sharp draft touched Elisha’s face, with the briefest howl of loss. The Valley of the Shadow tore open in the air and shrieked closed. A woman stood behind Robert where only soldiers stood before. The earth beneath their feet had been seeded with scraps of flesh, a net of blood to forge contact with any who touched it, and provide the means for the mancers to travel anywhere within the marked earth. Again and again, in dread staccato, the air tore open and mancers appeared: the stranger he’d seen on his long crossing of England, the two women, more of the people who hunted him in the marketplace. These unearthly wails pierced the agony of the crowd, a jagged cacophony. At the back of his throat, Elisha began to hum.

  Trembling, the magus released Elisha’s arm. Chaos howled from right, then left, then behind. Five, ten, fourteen mancers swathed in shreds of death and smiling.

  “Stay back,” the magus shouted, holding aloft his sword. “Duke’s men to me! All who yet stand, to me!”

  Drawing up the reins of death, Elisha invoked the power that gripped him and let it seep through the tainted ground and leap out through his awareness—threatening, but not yet deadly. The mancers stirred and shifted, the first two sharing a glance, but they did not approach. For a moment, they stood in balance, weighing the risks.

  The duke screamed and dropped to his knees, tearing at his armor, his sword forgotten. Sweat drenched his face. “Oh, God, it burns! It burns!”

  “Elisha,” Thomas started, his voice low and beginning to tremble.

  Pain and fear contorted the duke’s face. For a moment, Elisha wondered if he himself had looked like that on the night that Randall’s blade had cut him down. The scar on his belly pinched and his stomach constricted. Randall struck out the candle and called for his death on the bridge, the night before. Months before that, Randall slapped him, then offered him Rosie’s hand, and knew he would not accept. Elisha’s first and, until his daughter’s death, most staunch of allies, Randall arched his back and clawed at his bracers as he cried out. His men, too, staggered, helpless in the throes of sorcery.

  Kneeling beside the duke, Elisha called upon his skill, and the buckles slid free, the breastplate dropping away with a clang.

  “Don’t—you’re scaring him,” Robert managed, his sword waffling in the air. “He fears you.” Then his face crumpled. He dropped the sword and sank to his knees.

  Chuckling reverberated among the screams, nasty shivers of laughter that fell against Elisha’s skin like freezing rain. The duke’s body jerked and flailed. Elisha gathered him close, projecting what comfort he could from the cold that suffused him.

  “Why don’t they attack?” hissed Thomas at his ear.

  “They will,” Elisha muttered back, dividing his effort, maintaining the contact with all those too sensitive to death.

  “You’re holding them off,” Thomas whispered.

  “They fear me,” Elisha answered. “Like everyone else. It won’t last.” He cupped the duke’s fevered head in his hands and let his senses travel inward.

  Heat seared along his skin. His flesh throbbed with the cutting ropes that bound him to the stake. Betrayed to his very core, he looked for hope, for help from anyone and found none. Thousands of faces all arrayed against him, church and king, lord, merchant, peasant; faces alive with hatred and excitement. Elisha shuddered, remembering his own trip to the grave, the humiliation of his shaved scalp, the taunting of the crowds, even those he once loved abandoning him to this fate. Rowena’s bitterness, summoned to life, burned at his throat. His lungs filled with smoke and the bile turned to hate.

  A hand touched his shoulder, and Elisha jerked back to himself, still cradling the duke. Pushing away the agony, Elisha stared up into Thomas’s face, the keen blue eyes searching his. “Why not you?”

  “I did not watch.” Thomas’s voice was as hoarse as if he, too, breathed the smoke of memory. “I couldn’t. Another example of my cowardice.” Then he nearly smiled. “And you. You were the only one among us who moved to help her.”

  Elisha reeled, the sharp clean air suddenly free of death as he recognized the truth. He gave a hollow laugh. “So that’s why Rowena chose me. She even gave out a prophecy, a way for the magi to keep a watch and draw her daughter to me. The medical man with death in his hands. Brigit wanted me to be present today; another point of contact with the past.” He kept his palm cool upon the duke’s forehead, staring out through the waiting mancers, over the writhing forms of those Brigit held in thrall. Even if he chilled the flames of those around him, those he cared for, thousands would die. Even if Thomas survived this, he would be king of a beaten people, terrified of the will of their queen. The mancers had intended a war with France to divide the nobility, forcing them to take sides against each other. Brigit’s plan would simply crush them.

  He lowered his voice and Thomas leaned in close, their breath mingling over the duke’s vacant stare and shuddering chest. “She cannot consummate this without blood. She can’t maintain contact with so many for so long without that power. Right now she can’t—” He caught his breath and felt the mancers edge closer. “She can’t quite kill them.”

  “But what can you do? What can any man?”

  “I am not any man,” said Elisha. “Neither are you.”

  Thomas clutched his arm. “If you go there, she’ll kill you.”

  Drawing back his awareness, deliberately cutting
off his knowledge of Thomas, Elisha continued, “Some will follow me, some will stay to pin you down. Be careful.”

  “Elisha, don’t.” His fingers dug in. “If you’re what she’s after—”

  “Watch over them,” Elisha said. “You’re their king.”

  “I can’t do it without you.”

  “If I don’t go, the kingdom will fall, and they will rise over it.” For a moment, their eyes locked. Elisha let himself grow cold, pushing Thomas away, even as nausea swelled within him. Leave Thomas to face the mancers, or bring him through death itself to face—what, God only knew. Save Thomas’s life and sacrifice a thousand others. Elisha let the screaming fill his skull and remembered what it was to hate. Thomas’s face softened, and he took back his hand. Elisha lifted his palm from the duke’s hot skin, and the duke whimpered, rolling to the side. Getting his feet under him, Elisha prepared to rise as Thomas readied his sword.

  Randall heaved himself up, sword in hand, shrieking fit to deafen the angels. If there had been any angels.

  The edge of the duke’s madness stabbed Elisha’s awareness. He held up his hand and caught the blade. His cold fist closed around it. Cutting his palm and fingers, the blade shattered. A piece nicked Thomas’s cheek, and he winced.

  Elisha clenched his jaw. He could not afford to weigh Thomas’s life so highly that so many must die. That was what it meant to lead, to place the nation over all else.

  “Elisha—” Thomas’s voice broke.

  “I know,” Elisha answered, less a voice than a rumble of the earth and air.

  The mancers stirred. One of them reached out to nudge a sobbing soldier with his toe. The soldier’s scream curled on his lips, forever stilled. The mancer’s silhouette shimmered with glee, a power Elisha knew all too well.

  “What can we do?” moaned a pike man, clutching his weapon with whitened knuckles.

  “Don’t let them near you,” the young magus warned. “Anyone who’s not afflicted: Don’t let them touch you.”