Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  When the bells stilled, Elisha rose and shuffled toward the church with the rest. Soldiers would be seeking him at the walls and gates, not in their very midst, though Charles and his queen would be well-defended, just in case. As he passed among the graves, Elisha breathed in death and kept it close beneath his skin. His left eye glimpsed the shades that lingered—not so strong as those in the places where they died, but nevertheless giving notice of their silent presence. Here and there, some shone with the gleam of the worthy death, those like Martin Draper, whose death quelled the fire in London, or the witch Biddy, whose sacrifice allowed Princess Alfleda to escape. Others flickered with the bleak agony of injury and disease. The more he lingered among the dead, the clearer these glimpses became. He would never know them through the dread power of magical knowledge that the mancers gained in killing, but his way was enough.

  Among the worshippers, Elisha passed into the church, a clean new building lit with a breathtaking sweep of glass. He extended his senses, and swept the crowd with his gaze, his right eye obscured by the dip of the bandage he had formed of his tunic, his left seeking the residue of murder that marked the mancers.

  Beyond the rood screen, rich male voices broke out in chant, resonating through the church. From time to time, he heard the rise and fall of the celebrant’s Latin and recognized the voice of the archbishop. Elisha circulated along the perimeter of the church, as if he followed the steps of Christ through each station. There, at the front, Emperor Charles’s hair caught a rainbow of glittering light. His wife clung to his arm, both perhaps still reeling from the earlier fright and grateful for the chance to pray. To the right, behind them, a soldier’s bowed head bore the gloom of a killer. Further back, one of the nobles carried a second shady cloak of murder. Both had been present in the chamber that day, neither had any strong reaction. The soldier had a sharp mustache and a long nose, the noble was thickset, bearded, with a scar that tracked from his left eye to the hidden corner of his mouth. Elisha kept searching. Standing with a group who looked like merchants, a short woman’s feet flickered with shades. She was harder to make out, and Elisha couldn’t be certain he would know her again.

  Closer by, a young man swept the crowd with his gaze, an almost brazen stroke of awareness, as if he rifled the pockets of the gathered citizens. Elisha gave a prayer of thanks for the young man’s lack of discipline. Two or three shades hovered in the young man’s presence, one of them sharply limned, edged with fresh pain. Another . . . Elisha frowned and focused. A shade flickered in and out, faint even when it was discernable, bound to the man’s twitchy right hand.

  Beyond the screen, amens echoed, and the shuffling of feet indicated the service was over. The crowd parted, allowing passage for Charles and his retinue, including the two mancers closest to him.

  Keeping his eye on the young man down the aisle, Elisha moved slowly against the current, stopping to kneel at a side altar as the young man went by. Elisha caught the slightly iron tang of blood and turned carefully. A partial imprint of a boot remained where the young man had been standing, a mark made in blood. Crossing himself and moving his lips as if praying, Elisha moved to kneel again by the mark, touching his finger to the blood. Hot with life, flickering with pain. For an instant, he felt again that unbearable stretching, torn between life and death. The mancer’s victim lived—but not for much longer. He was ripe for the harvest, and his reaper would be coming soon.

  Elisha closed his fist around the blood and pain. Leave now and take his knowledge to warn Ludwig. Stay and find this tortured soul who might lead him to the mancers’ lair. If he went to Heidelberg, he left the threat behind to fester and grow. He had not come here merely for warnings, but for war. He had a chance to strike while they believed that he was gone—he’d be a fool not to seize the advantage. But a man’s life hung suspended, somewhere close, a life that now lay in his hands to save, or to discard for the mancers’ pleasure.

  Concentrating to remember his projection, Elisha limped back to the church door, crossed himself, and returned to the graveyard. Crimson stained the horizon and the sky above deepened to indigo as the last stragglers made their way home. He found a recent burial, thick with the miasma of death and mourning, and used it to cast his deflection, wrapping his own life with death, his presence with absence. Then he opened himself to the blood that marked his palm. Pain echoed in his hand, throbbed across his back and forehead, seeming to ebb with each slow beat of his heart. His lungs strained in terrible gasps, his arms aching. Elisha forced himself to breathe normally, to know what the other felt without taking it on himself.

  The victim hung in near-darkness, a feeble light revealing huge round shadows, a dirt floor. Damp clung to his skin and the musty smell of old wood mingled with the sweetness of fresh grapes. A vintner’s workshop—far enough from the city that no one could hear the screams. Elisha’s jaw tightened, but he felt no other presence there, no mancers. Surely, he could save this one man without sacrificing his larger mission. He took a deep breath, drawing in the death around him, taking his time to forge the armor beneath his skin, to shape his weapons: the cold, the horror of the grave, the decay that time wrought on every little thing, the death that lay beneath every surface of life—waiting to claim its next victim.

  Only a few times had Elisha opened the Valley. To travel through it required a familiarity with death, knowledge of the destination, and contact with that destination in some form. He was sensitive enough, and his affinity with death meant that he could open the Valley without a murder. He had seen the Archbishop of Canterbury open it with fierce majesty, and the mancer Morag open it with perverse pleasure. The monk today had torn it deliberately, revealing the sense of what lay within to awe his witnesses. Elisha worked now with the patient intensity of a surgical strike. He breathed in death, found the contact that joined the blood on his hand with that of the living victim, and pulled himself through. The night whispered open, the wails of the dead caught in a gasp, their maelstrom of hurt and horror suspended as Elisha stepped through into an accepting silence, as if he were one of them. He felt the echoes of other presences, the remnant emotions of death, including the soaring joy and strength of Martin’s sacrifice. For a moment, he sensed something else, a lingering presence, hot where the others were cold, familiar, but out of his reach, then he was beyond the Valley—emerging into the flickering glow of a hooded lantern showing the blood-stained earth floor of a vintner’s warehouse.

  Elisha listened, breath caught, every sense extended. A single life lingered at his back, fading with each labored breath. Pain echoed from the ground and mice nibbled at shadowed beams, their teeth resonating through wood. The great rounds of barrels stood around him, but he heard nothing—no shout of dismay nor hurrying step. Swallowing hard, Elisha looked up and stifled his cry, his heart thundering.

  Christ hung upon the cross above him in the darkness, blood marking his wrists and feet, and oozing from the rend in his side. Blood tracked down his face into his beard. His frail chest rose, hitched, and fell. His eyes opened slowly and welled with tears.

  Chapter 5

  For a moment, Elisha stared at the crucified man, held by his gaze as if he truly faced the son of God. But the blood that soaked Elisha’s knees was recent, each ragged breath grated with fresh agony. Elisha’s own scars burned in sympathy, his back remembering the scourge, his hands trembling as if once more pierced and pinned. The cold pall of death hovered close, its time almost at hand.

  Breaking the trance, Elisha pushed himself to his feet, his head on a level with the victim’s chest. The cross stuck up at an angle, held between the roof beams and the dirt floor with a few stones piled at its base.

  Stripping the false bandages from his hands and head, Elisha allowed his grasp of death to recede, letting his hands warm again, reviving the instincts and training of the healer. “Don’t be frightened,” he said. He wet his lips and repeated the words, this time in German. Stepping into
the shadow of the cross, Elisha put up his hand, bracing the victim’s chest.

  The man gasped, his heart lurching, and Elisha sent what comfort he could, steadying the rhythms of the ravaged body. Crowned with a wreath of thorns, the victim’s head dangled just above Elisha’s face and blood dripped from his forehead onto Elisha’s cheek. “I’ll take care of you,” Elisha said, through contact and aloud. “I’ll do what I can for you, do you understand?”

  The man took a breath, his cracked lips moving, his voice audible only through the magic of contact. “You are. With them.”

  “No,” Elisha said, and the man winced at the fury in his single word. He spoke more gently. “I am their enemy. By all that’s holy, if I have the power, I will stop them.”

  A spasm passed the weary face. “They will. Return. For me.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  Again, their eyes met.

  “You’re going to fall, I can’t help that,” Elisha told him quietly, “but I will catch you.”

  Elisha took his stance carefully, preparing to receive the man’s weight. Across the shivering skin, he sent the softest urge, conjuring the end of iron and touching every nail with its small and silent death. The nails rusted, bent as they withered and sifted away in a powder stained like blood. The man’s hands dropped, his body sagging into Elisha’s arms. The crown of thorns tangled in his hair scraped down Elisha’s cheek and scored his throat as the man’s head lolled. Elisha sank beneath the weight, bringing them both to kneel. As the man gulped for breath, the strain of his stretched limbs and cramped chest finally released, Elisha merely held him. On the wall by the cross hung a spear, a scourge, a few knives and skinning blades, a hammer.

  When the man’s heartbeat ceased to pulse between life and death but moved, ever so slightly, nearer life, Elisha lay him down, trembling, on the dirt. He knew the man’s injuries: they were known to every Christian and displayed in every church in the world. The worst of his condition was the time he had hung upon the cross. He might have been there for days, but Elisha had no power over starvation, exhaustion or weakness.

  He rose quickly and crossed to the nearest of the huge barrels and found a taster’s cup, cracking the tap and filling a cup of wine to bring to the stranger’s lips. “Just a little for now.” After he had taken a few sips, Elisha splashed the rest over his wounds to clean them. He needed this man stable enough to travel, and soon. If he carried him, then he need not worry about the wrists and feet just yet.

  Elisha placed his hands to frame the wound at the stranger’s side. He sent his senses inward, finding the depth of the wound, the severed muscle and skin, carved by the Roman spear. He choked his cry as he showed the flesh how to heal, using his own unbroken body as the model. For a moment, he felt they shared the wound—the victim’s pain halved, Elisha’s side abruptly pierced with a shaft of pain, then he closed the muscle, his medical mind providing the knowledge that knit together vessels and nerves, and finally skin. Shaking with the effort, Elisha withdrew his hands, straightening his back and flexing his shoulders.

  The man’s dark eyes regarded Elisha, tracing his features, fluttering closed then open again with a start.

  With careful hands, Elisha removed the crown of thorns and cast it aside. He felt the other’s exhaustion, confusion, fear, and wonder twisting together. “We need to go. Do you live in Trier?”

  The slightest nod.

  “I can bring you there. It will be awful, but swift, faster than horses.” He bent to gather the man into his arms, then his skin tingled, and the stranger whimpered as terror shot through them both: the stranger had felt that sensation before.

  Wind howled at Elisha’s back, and his left eye caught the flare of wild light as the Valley opened. Elisha’s head jerked up. “No,” he whispered.

  “—careless of you—all ye saints and martyrs!” said a voice.

  Elisha rose and spun about, keeping himself between the Valley of the Shadow and the man its travelers had come for.

  “Christ on the Cross!” cried the young man, then snarled, “Not any more. Fuck! What’re you doing with my Jew?” He tossed down a bundle of linen.

  “Shut up.” The older man rapped his companion’s head with bent knuckles that Elisha recognized. Brother Henry still wore his habit, with the hood tossed back to reveal a wizened face and a nest of silver hair around his tonsure. He narrowed his eyes at Elisha. “So the Lord has given you into my hands. Praise God.” He crossed himself with fierce accuracy, then slid his hand into the opposite sleeve.

  Power streamed up from the floor, from every death known by this terrible place, drawn by the monk as he gripped a scrap of skin in his hand. He had the knowledge Elisha lacked to tap the resonance of his slaughterhouse.

  “Take your Christ,” Brother Henry told the younger mancer. “And I shall take the English.”

  The blood on Elisha’s skin flared to agony, but he had not released his grip on death and his armor held, deflecting the worst of the pain. Behind him, the prostrate victim, assaulted by the flow of the mancer’s magic, screamed and thrashed, his hand locking around Elisha’s ankle. That contact linked his need with Elisha’s power, and Elisha struck back at the young mancer, reflecting the pain and then some, the victim’s urgent will steeling his own.

  The mancer howled and the darkness of murder swelled to his command to force away the contact Elisha had forged.

  With a leap toward the opposite wall, Brother Henry seized a long knife, stained with old blood. An ominous mist swirled over the blade as he thrust.

  Elisha dodged the blow, but fell, his ankle twisting from the victim’s grasp. The monk lunged after him and Elisha scrambled away. Sending his awareness into the floor, Elisha seized the spilled blood of the earth and tried to tumble it, but it was too mingled with other deaths—deaths the mancers knew and held. The blade plunged again toward his chest. He rolled and struck the barrel hard, the breath knocked from his lungs. Cold sprang through Elisha’s back and legs, the icy strength of death pinning him to the floor as the mancer squeezed his off-hand weapon, the stripped skin from one of his victims.

  The barrel’s tap stuck out over Elisha’s head as he tried to break away. He turned his attention from earth to wood and brought forth the rot inherent in the oak. The barrel groaned then collapsed, a flood of wine sluicing over Elisha’s face and figure. Some of it turned instantly to ice, crystals clinging to his clothes as the rest rushed onward and forced his attacker back.

  To Elisha’s left side, the victim retreated from the fight at a painful crawl, edging toward the wall of weapons.

  Elisha sent heat and snapped free of the icy mud, scrambling to his feet. The blade swung down, slashing across his shoulders with a hard edge forged in murder. It shot through his flesh, so sharp and fast he had no time to scream. The force of every death it carried—a pregnant woman, a child, a priest—carved into him.

  Arching away from the blade, mouth open, Elisha dropped to his knees. His heart seized, his breath stopped. The howling darkness tore at him from within.

  Once before, the Valley had opened for him of its own accord. That time, Martin’s presence lingered there, lighting his way, if he chose to take it. Now, there was no light, no flickering imagined Hell. The Valley seared into being, not outside, but within, reaching into him with an intimate knowledge, a personal assault like nothing he had ever felt before as the mancer conjured Elisha’s own death.

  A spear cut across his startled vision followed by the grunt of impact. His spear thrust, his desperate strength utterly spent, the mancer’s victim collapsed at Elisha’s side. Brother Henry tumbled against Elisha’s feet, his body jerking, the baying glee of death leaping free.

  Elisha called it to him. Power rushed through his feet and pushed back the pain. The deaths, the tortures, they were not his own. He rejected the Valley that beckoned him, and sealed it with the death of the man who t
ried to kill him. He took a deep, cold breath. When the presence of Brother Henry’s companion flared hot with reaching, with his fear and his desire, Elisha put up his hand and brushed away this new assault.

  Not since the battle of Dunbury, when he took the power of his nephew’s head and severed himself from the mortal world, had Elisha felt so clear and distant. The young mancer cried and cursed, his voice felt like the ripples of tiny fish. He wanted something that lay at Elisha’s side. He would not have it. When the mancer took his curving blade and grabbed the victim’s leg, Elisha reached out a steady hand.

  The young mancer pushed away, waving the bone of some dead man as if to fend him off. At Elisha’s touch, it shattered.

  The mancer’s presence stilled as he conjured the Valley. It tore open, an echo of it answering from Elisha’s heart. Through Brother Henry’s still form, Elisha reached out and pulled it shut.

  Spinning, eyes wide, the mancer gave a piteous squeak.

  Elisha rose and seized his throat. With a sigh, he breathed in the mancer’s death.

  Chapter 6

  Elisha let the body fall, his hand shaking. The wine-scented air filled his lungs again, his lips sweet with the earlier flood from the barrel. Attunement returned slowly, the flickering candle, the rasping breath of the only man who still lived. Elisha blinked, rubbing his face. No, surely he himself should be counted in that number. He could no longer be certain. The experience of the Valley opening within had both shaken him and filled him with a tremendous strength, but he did not know what it meant—save that he had taken a few steps nearer to that awful ecstasy of the necromancers.