Again, laughter blew around them, ruffling Elisha’s hair. He reached out and set his hand on the young magus’s shoulder. The young man jumped and swung, stopping his blade just short, his breath coming quick. Dark eyes met Elisha’s.
“Courage,” Elisha sent. “Look to the king.”
Elisha dipped briefly to the grass, gathering a handful of blades, his palm still stinging from the duke’s sword. Spinning, he flung out his hand, scattering a hundred tiny knives shot through with his own cold power.
The woman screamed and fell. A few others vanished. The first man raised his cloak and ducked behind it, the garment shredding as if it were woven from the wind.
Elisha feinted right.
The mancer lunged, and Elisha knocked him aside with a well-placed boot.
With a cry, the young magus sheathed his sword and snatched at the ground. The grassy blades he forged of magic were only blades without the power of Death, but they still carried a sting.
The remaining mancers drew swords or axes of their own, weapons that hummed through Elisha’s presence with edges honed in murder. His throat and eyes burned as if he, too, felt the threat of Brigit’s vengeance.
Somewhere to the side, steel rang and Thomas shouted, “Go!” and his cry echoed in the air as the crows plunged in. Hundreds of them dove upon the mancers, and Elisha’s heart leapt to see them.
Elisha dodged a spear thrust. He sprang upon the blood-seeded earth, the ground these monsters marked with evil, and reached out. The air cracked around him, the way that ice shatters on a river as the tide pushes it onward. He stepped out of the light and breathed deep of the Valley, its dancing shades and flickering horrors so familiar now as to be ordinary. Spreading his awareness thin, Elisha felt the answering echoes of blood nearby, specks of it scattered on the roads, a perimeter of death where a skilled mancer could summon himself at will. Slivers of flesh, too, answered on every mancer, carried in hats or sleeves, carried close to the skin, a network as sure as Roman roads, with Brigit at its center, their combined strength set to defend any man of them against incursion.
Elisha gasped, his resolve shaken as he knew that touch: Walter, the king’s man-servant, Pernel’s lover, staying behind to fend off their enemies while the king took Elisha to safety. But Walter had not known how awful an enemy he faced, one who caught and shredded him, his riven flesh doled out as favors to the few, his tainted blood spattered to keep Elisha at a distance where they thought they could control him. Fury and protest swept through him. If he reached out now, through the blood that linked them—but the blood showed more than that. Not just the mancers touched upon the trail of gore, but a thousand soldiers, children, women. The web of contact carried Brigit’s power out to every one of them. Contact was indeed a two-edged blade: how was he to separate the innocent from the damned?
The air around him shuddered, if air there was in such a place.
With a silence as of an indrawn breath, the howls around him stilled, and he was not alone.
When the sound began again, bursting against his ears, the howling wove into a concert wild as the song of wolves and just as full of purpose, even to those who did not understand. “Well met, Elisha Barber,” sang the dead, and those who passed among them.
Elisha’s palm stung and the whirlwind filled his ears once more. He knew which way he had to go and whom he had to meet.
Chapter 37
Elisha stumbled out with a gasp into darkness. No—not quite. Candles lit each corner of the room and each corner of the broad, square altar at its center. Tendrils of smoke curled into the peaked ceiling above. It smelled of fresh wood and earth, dripping wax, and the tang of blood. An unearthly wailing filled the room, as if he had never left the Valley, but sobs broke the rhythm.
“Ecco il barbiere,” said a voice nearby.
“English, please,” intoned another.
“Here is the barber, as he said.”
Seven figures stood just out of his reach, staring at him, barely visible in the gloom. Seven piercing, cold presences, but they were not alone. The magus Briarrose, Brigit’s friend, stood by the altar, holding up a bowl to her mistress. Upon the altar of sobbing stone, Brigit stood wreathed in flame, tall and gleaming. Almost, Elisha lurched forward to save her, to once more beat out the flames as he had on the day they met, when he had known not who she was, only that she was burning. She wore only an ivory shift, just like any witch bound for the stake. One hand held the shallow half-moon of a skinning knife, dripping blood, the other hand held a flaming brand. The fire that rose up around her took shape, a second image flickering within as she invoked her mother. Rowena’s face echoed and flickered around Brigit’s, captured just as she had been twenty years ago when she died, exactly here, in exactly this way.
“What shall we do with him, mistress? Will you share him with us?” called a taunting voice.
Sobbing stone. Elisha took a step forward, his left eye caught by the rising shade of Rowena, doubling her daughter’s form, but he forced himself to look down, where Brigit’s bare legs braced to either side of her sacrifice. Wells for holy water, the builder had imagined, but Elisha knew better—they were wells to anchor chains and channel blood.
His arms and legs stretched with chains, her father lay upon the table, weeping, his round belly trembling and marked with blood, though Elisha could see no wounds. Here was the affinity she needed, the death of her father to mirror the death of her mother and bind the magic that would shatter her victims and leave the kingdom open to her command. Outside, the scattered remains of mancer victims on the broken earth formed her contact with them all, a web of power strengthened by the mancers. She nurtured those connections now, focused on her father, preparing the way and working toward that final moment when she slew him and sealed the fate of the present with the doom of the past.
At her father’s head stood Briarrose, holding a brazier.
Elisha sucked death up from the earth. The place smelled of ashes, flooding his memory with fear and flames. He pushed them aside and reached for the cold, layering death against his skin until he steamed faintly in the light.
The two nearest mancers stepped up, one drawing his curved blade. The other laid a hand on Elisha’s arm, hot fingers wrapping the skin. The hand trembled, violent shivers that crept up his arm and slowly consumed his shoulders and face. “Kill him,” he urged the other who lashed out only to see his blade shatter as it touched Elisha’s skin.
Smiling grimly, Elisha said, “I suggest you let go.” The first mancer jerked back his hand, cursing in French.
“Don’t be stupid,” said Briarrose, her lips pinched. “Draw on the others.”
Opening himself, Elisha sensed the network formed by Walter’s flesh, radiating Brigit’s pain as she concentrated on her mother’s execution. Once, long ago, he had served as the focal point for energy sent to heal Mordecai’s hand; this web worked in reverse, drawing off Brigit’s power and sending it to the thousands outside, the shared talisman of death scattered within the earth reflecting the curse and transforming it from the memory of their shared guilt, to an overwhelming force with the strength to kill.
“Mother wanted him here, to witness my rise.” Brigit’s voice crackled with energy.
Her father’s head wagged desperately side to side, and he managed another wail. She gazed down at him, a look almost loving. “This is the only way, Father—the way to make our vision come true.” Her hands, too, looked dark. “At last, you’ll give my mother her due.” She brought the flame in her hand close to his face, fire lapping along his jaw as he screamed. Blood dripped down her wrist to sizzle against his skin, her blood forming the bond between the present victim and the past.
Outside the walls, the gale of human misery grew louder, and a priest urged all to repent their sins and escape this earthly torment. Brigit chuckled, very softly. Off to his left, three mancers reached out, each touching
the shoulder of the one before, the last offering his hand to the one who still held his ruined knife. He did not take the hand, but spun and vanished into the Valley of the Shadow.
“Damned foreigners,” muttered the leading mancer of the chain.
The howling power of death filled Elisha’s skull, but he focused on Brigit and Briarrose, and the man they were torturing. Candles flickered in the gust of chill wind, and someone’s teeth chattered. Elisha focused his awareness, but something stirred in his abdomen, and Brigit turned in his direction, her mother’s flickering shade raised over her head.
“Or have you seen enough?” She swung her arm down, slashing with the fleshing blade, and her father screamed as she sliced down his stomach. The image of the stake sharpened, Rowena’s mouth a black pit opening in Hell. Brigit’s own blood oozed more slowly down her arms, mingling with her father’s, linking the pain of his burning to Rowena’s of the past, and sharing the echoes across the ruined Smithfield heath. The rakes and shovels, the mancers of the night before—they had not been there for Elisha, as he had assumed, but to seed the ground with blood and spread the net into which her victims must fly. How many dead lay scattered there, Walter’s remains now mingled with them, to make an area broad enough to capture this great audience? Brigit would slay her father with fire and pain, and everyone who had borne witness to her mother’s death would share in the death of her father. Elisha’s left eye showed the three of them in a terrible balance, the living woman, the dying man, the burning witch, an unholy trinity of pain.
Outside, the priest fell silent.
The chain of mancers sprang to the attack, but Elisha reached for the Valley and snapped through it to Briarrose’s side. “Aren’t you worried about the baby?” he murmured as she hissed.
The air broke again with cold, and Elisha twisted away toward the table as the lead mancer in the chain shot out a hand and grabbed. Missing Elisha, the mancer seized Briarrose by the neck. She gave half a cry as her braid turned white and the flesh crumpled from her bones, the brazier with its stock of coals tumbling to the ground.
“Merde!” The chain of mancers stepped as one, their legs moving together, their minds joined to a single purpose. Elisha tensed, barely breathing. He could best any one of them but not all of them together.
“Idiots!” Brigit shrieked. “Take him!”
“He has contact,” the leader snarled back at her.
Brigit’s blood ran hot across his fingers, striking through him with the force of magic. Nine-year-old Elisha stood by the fire, appalled as the priests burned an angel. Could they not see the shadow she cast? Rowena burned, her features bright with flame and purpose, enraptured. Elisha ran toward her. He could save her—surely, something could be done, his painted banner forgotten in his hand, the last remnant of his childhood. Ranks upon ranks of the audience waited and cheered and shouted, drunk with excitement. It was they who deserved to die, they who wrought sorrow, death, and pain. The ignorant, the afraid, the desolati. The same crowd jeered twenty years later when Elisha was driven to his grave. The same priests gloated. The same nobles fanned their faces. The same prince shut his eyes. Why fight for those who would not fight for him?
His trembling hand clenched; the ring flashed gold upon his finger, already streaked with darkness. Atop the altar, Brigit faced him through a veil of flames.
“Barber,” she crooned from her own dry throat, “the king bleeds.”
“No!” Elisha cried. Surely he would feel if that were true. Then he glimpsed again the moment. Shattered bits of the duke’s blade cut the air. One of them marked the face of his king. Where had it landed, the shard wet with Thomas’s blood? Why had Elisha not seen?
“His life is mine, Elisha, it always has been.”
The power of death trickled out slow, draining from his flesh to leave him weak, his senses already frayed. The mancers’ presence enveloped him, sweeping over him to fill the hollows his strength had left.
“Take off the ring.”
Another hand caught hold of his. Elisha clenched his fist but the fingers pried, the inexorable will of death arrayed against him this time. His hand gave way, aching as they slid Thomas’s ring from his hand, and snapped his only link. Stupid not to have another talisman—
“We would have found it,” rang the mancer’s voice as a cold hand seized his arm. “We find them all.”
Brigit slashed her fleshing knife, and her father screamed. The fire towered up through the roof, its crackling all but deafening, blocking the cries that rose outside. But she did not want to kill him quickly, not until his torture broke them all.
The room lurched, the ground unsteady beneath his feet. Elisha caught himself on the edge of the altar, the stone biting his hands. A palm cupped his temple, frigid fingers pressing in upon his shaven skull, finding the holes that Mordecai drilled. He shuddered as the cold strength of the mancers slipped inside.
The flame of her mother’s death beat all around Brigit, bathing them both in a wild, orange glow. Hands outside struck against the walls and voices clamored to heaven to save them. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” stammered a few, the words broken by pain and pleading. In moments, their prayers would be answered, and peace would rend them from the world.
Clasped by the hands of death, Elisha raised his face. His vision flickered, too, crimson streaks cutting his world. “I fought for your mother’s life. Let me live to see her fly.”
She smiled down at him, almost kindly. “Yes, Barber,” she said as she reached her blade to her father’s throat.
All around her, the flames leapt higher. Outside, the screams soared, even when Elisha thought they could be no worse. Then the shrouded figure rising over Brigit’s head stirred against her bonds. Rowena gazed heavenward, her shoulders flexed. The memory surged with power and the flames rippled at her back. In Brigit’s projection, the spreading wings spanned far beyond the temple she had built. Enormous, golden wings stretched outward and up, echoing the color of flames, trembling with glory and power, as if Rowena could snap her bonds and soar away into the heavens. It was just as awe-inspiring as Elisha remembered, the moment that had set him on his course. Rowena’s final magic touching him as a boy, him swearing he would be ready; if ever again he saw an angel wounded, he would have the skill to save her. He had run toward her while all the others cowered in fear.
Elisha’s bloody hand rose to his cheek, as a touch long forgotten flared again to life, and the soft feathers stroked his skin, gentle and strong as the breath of God. He dragged his fingers in the sign of the cross, painting his chest and arms with Brigit’s blood. His cheek blazing with the angel’s touch—blazing as it had not done since he first knew death—Elisha dared to hope.
Knocking away the hand that still squeezed his skull, Elisha surged to his feet. Mancers grappled with him, cold blasting him from all sides. If a man knew death, if it could take him far and near, could he not summon himself through life as well? Elisha reached out. He had no talisman, nothing but his need and the splashes of her blood. Elisha flung himself through the brilliant light to Brigit’s side.
Brigit shrieked as he appeared, stumbling against her, knocked to his knees by the force of the journey. She slashed at him, catching him across the side as he half-turned to save himself. The pinned man moaned as she dropped alongside.
Pain slid along Elisha’s ribs. The beating flames enveloped him. The angel screamed, and he was so near the past that he could hear her broken voice. Golden wings swept upward as if they all might fly away. Elisha remembered joy and found desire, he sent Brigit an image: the mirror of herself, as she wished them all to see her—vibrant, beautiful, powerful—then he wrapped his arms around her, all of his will bent upon this.
Her presence shivered with confusion, then Brigit’s knife-hand slapped at his back. “Let go of me, you fool. I don’t believe you anymore.”
Elisha knotted together his fin
gers at her back. He made no reply, as he closed her in the circle of his arms.
“Get him off me!” she shrieked. Elisha lowered his head against her shoulder.
“Elisha.” She jabbed him with the end of the blade, not long enough to stab him, though he could feel the wish that it were so. “I can still drag Thomas into this.” Then she froze, as she felt the truth.
Sliding into Brigit’s web, joining himself to every contact, Elisha insinuated his fingers a little tighter, making sure that blood met blood, completing the circle of her blood, beyond which she could spread no magic.
With a woof, the flames blew out. The angel’s wings swept upward and vanished. The sudden silence hurt Elisha’s ears as if his pounding skull exploded to fill the void.
The knife gouged into his back as she writhed, too shallow to kill but deep enough for pain. She struggled, careful not to injure her father and cause his death now while his dying could serve no end. Howling, Brigit bit Elisha’s neck, excited by the spray of his blood. Brigit’s presence revealed her anticipation as the blood flowed down his chest. In moments, his own blood would break the circle and set her free.
Elisha drew down his remaining strength to heal the wound, praying it would not be too late.
“Take him!” Brigit struggled more wildly. Her power cracked against his, seeking an opening, a way to re-connect with the past and complete her conquest.
But if Brigit might bond with her mother across all time, then Elisha, too, could take hold—he had been there, and he had been neither afraid nor vengeful. Every twist of her sorcery, he met with one of his own, matching each attempt to re-gain her spell, forcing his presence to mingle with hers, he re-opened himself to the child she carried, forcing their connection ever deeper, feeling the shiver of each magical thrust. Memory streaked through the flesh—the angel’s wings, the arrows shot. Brigit focused on injustice, channeling her mother’s pain and fury, but Rowena’s anger and betrayal wilted before the child he was, the one who would have saved her. For him alone, she was magnificent, gentle, perfect, and beautiful.
Elisha Rex Page 35
