Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  Elisha gripped the knuckle bone and stepped into the Valley. Again, the darker points directed him to the dead man’s bones. Most lay cold, alone, probably hidden in churches waiting to be used. Two talismans of the victim mingled with the heat of the living. He slid through the Valley and emerged in a narrow street, into the path of a stout man who stumbled, his sleeve torn so that a few things tumbled free along with the talisman that drew Elisha here.

  Turning, growling, the man said, “You might’ve washed up before you came.”

  “Sorry,” Elisha said.

  He had thick lips and bristling brows. He did not look like a murderer, nor did he carry the depth of shades Elisha had come to expect. “What do you want anyway? I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  “Just to talk,” Elisha told him.

  The man’s features furrowed. “English, are you? Heard you lost your candidate.”

  “We’ve got a new one,” Elisha told him.

  “Can’t hurt, can it? That kind of thing just makes ’em more ripe for harvest.” The fellow grinned, then bent down to gather his things—bones and bits of leather, each flickering with the chill of death. “You be more careful, though. Next time just give it a shiver and let the other fellow answer. Some o’ them aren’t as forgiving as me.”

  Elisha stared down at the velvet cap on the man’s head. He looked for the moment like any wealthy man who spilled his purse, except the coin he carried was paid in blood. Every item he picked up carried a thrust of fear and pain. No doubt, Elisha reeked of it.

  “Here,” said the mancer, holding up a patch of dried skin. “Can you smell that?” He brought it to his nose and smiled. “A man never forgets his first, eh?”

  Since he slew King Hugh back in England, Elisha had been at pains to insist he was no assassin, no dealer in death. Tonight, quenched in the dead girl’s blood, drawn by the old man’s pain, Elisha renounced that claim. He reached out a fistful of cold, touched the nape of the man’s neck, and the stiff bolt of death passed from his hand. The man’s thick lips gaped, his eyes rolling up to stare, then Elisha stepped away, letting the man fall to the street, his first talisman clutched in his hand, the relic of a woman’s breast, the nipple showing dark against the freckled skin.

  His shade roiled to Elisha’s touch as he withdrew into the Valley, carrying that power too close to his heart.

  Summoning himself through the Valley with another of the relics from the stone table, Elisha met the woman merchant from Trier. She fought, landing a blow with a fire iron that numbed his arm, but did not stop his touch.

  Six more times Elisha crossed the Valley, employing the talismans of those he had slain in the forest to bring justice to the killers. As he travelled, the Valley’s chaotic presence felt more acute, no longer a chill miasma he passed through, but rather a clinging, constrictive smoke, as if it sought to inhibit his passage.

  A few mancers had time or breath to scream as Elisha dispatched them. One, he met on a dock where the man held a child beneath the water. The man died. The child met Elisha’s gaze, and fled, his terror as plain as his desperate cries.

  The last, he met in a church. Before the altar a woman knelt, hands clasped, three talismans laid before her: the bone that drew Elisha to her presence, a patch of skin no longer recognizable, and a hand, desiccated with age. At his arrival, she jerked and looked up, her face streaked with tears. Rage, fear, glee he had met this night, but sorrow unnerved him despite the evidence of her complicity in the slaying. The power of the deaths he wrought gathered around him, spanning the altar like unholy wings.

  The mancer gasped, her hands trembling, then broke into a tearful smile as her eyes slid shut, head tipped back. “Come, Lord—I’ve waited so long.” She spread her arms to embrace her death.

  Elisha hesitated, staring at her exposed throat, framed by braids of dark hair streaked with silver. She looked a few years older than he, and would have been lovely, but for the grief and fear that marked her face. Many of the others took him for one of them at first and exposed their wickedness. When they knew he was not, he expected violence, the violence with which these people lived—the violence with which they killed.

  Her eyes opened and she stared up at him, then tipped her head. “Why do you hesitate, Lord? Are you not here to slay me?”

  For a moment, in the brightness of her gaze, he wanted to deny it, but the power of death roiled in his palm, waiting the chance to strike again, as if the dead mancers urged him on.

  “Please!” she pushed herself forward and he drew back a pace. “Please, Lord,” she continued, her voice falling, “If you don’t, I’ll return to them, I will—they’ll never let me go.”

  Elisha spread his hands, death swirling about him. “If you don’t want to do this, why would you return?”

  With a shake of her head, the woman searched his face and figure again. “You must know what they would do to me; I deserve to be punished—God knows—you know, I deserve it.” She stroked the dried, dead hand, then held it up to him. “I’m wicked, Lord, I have always been wicked. You saw fit to send my husband to punish my wickedness. And when I—” She faltered, bit her lip, then continued. “When I denied his punishment, you sent them.” She dropped her gaze to the bone and the scrap of flesh with a shudder. “Strike me dead, Lord,” she whispered, “surely Hell can be no worse than this.”

  “Who do you take me for?” he said at last.

  She clasped her hands again, the mummified hand still between them as she cowered and her voice sank so low that only his magical senses carried her words. “Lord Uriel, the angel of repentance.”

  Lord Uriel, the archangel, the guardian of Hell.

  He closed his fist, extinguishing the darkness. “Your husband beat you,” he murmured, sorting through all that she had said.

  She gave a tiny nod.

  “You took his hand. It gives you strength,” he said. “Power.”

  She flinched, but nodded again. “I never meant to, Lord, I know that sorcery is wrong, I know that. I never meant—”

  As if she had recalled with whom she argued, she broke off, shrinking back.

  “And they found you.” The dead hand, the talisman of murder, would have drawn the mancers just as in the New Forest of England they were drawn to the child’s head he once carried in a jar. He hoped for a miracle, for the power of resurrection, and found death instead. But when the mancers sent Morag to recruit him, he rejected them, while this woman, expecting her punishment, accepted what they made of her. Pity soured his strength. Was she wicked? Had she been, before her husband’s beatings drove her to his death? Who was he to stand in judgment?

  Uriel. The angel of repentance. Elisha wet his lips. “Repent,” he said softly. “And sin no more.”

  Her head shot up, but Elisha retreated, snapping into the Valley. It seized him, a sudden sharp presence swelling around him—a presence both austere and terrifying, the touch of a distant mind that stroked over him, piercing and probing, closing the Valley around him as if that distant one could fling a cloak over his head and smother him. Elisha sealed himself, coiling the weapon of Death into an armor beneath his skin, repelling that touch and struggling free of the Valley.

  He stumbled into the Church of the Holy Spirit, the moon glowing through the cloth-covered windows, and caught himself on the altar, his arm throbbing as the cold strength of the dead left him merely flesh once more. Gasping for breath, Elisha sought attunement, the first discipline of the magus, to know the place he occupied, to know himself. That one, that presence in the Valley, knew the passage of the dead. It was not roused immediately, only as Elisha sped on his mission of death, slaying mancers and opening the Valley again and again in service to his cause. Could a magus be attuned to the Valley itself, aware of those who passed through it? A mancer could, a person of immense power and sensitivity. Conrad named his father the master of the paths of the dead, also
, if Eben were right, the master of Rome. A master among mancers, the warden of the Valley—a man Elisha hoped he never had to face. But if he would stop their plans for Rome, then he must go there, to the very nest of his greatest opponent.

  The woman from Trier had likely been on the alert because she knew what he had done in the vineyard. The others, unprepared, had no chance to fight back.

  How many had he slain tonight? Eleven? Twelve? As many as he killed in England to save the crown. Surely he was in the right—this was a war, an invasion of evil, insidious and secret, slaying where it would. Someone had to fight back. Avenging angel indeed.

  Elisha fought for his own breath, then slumped to his knees. Killers all, even if he did not catch them in the act. Murderers, just like him. Fatigue throbbed in his temples and shivered his limbs. At first the transits had been, not easy perhaps, but a familiar resistance—as the warden grew aware of his activities, it became harder, the warden’s search for him building like friction against Elisha’s magic and wearing him down.

  Elisha’s head rested against the altar that concealed the old man’s finger, his eyes squeezed shut, his skull aching, the tortured voices of the Valley still ringing in his ears and in his flesh. How many mancers were there? One of those he slew tonight called out in a language he did not even recognize. He could stand hip-deep in slaughter and he could not kill them all. The warden nearly caught him this time, after a dozen slayings. Next time, he would be ready for Elisha, expecting the assault, even if the individual mancers did not.

  The weight of the dead bore him down, their screams, their curses echoing in his ears, and he remembered the woman who prayed for death, to free her from the slaughter she felt compelled to embrace.

  His body succumbed to sleep, to dream of an endless Valley, lined with the shades of those he killed, jeering voices that multiplied around him. One of the men at the stone table spoke of his wife who would be waiting for him—waiting forever, as wolves devoured his body, along with his victim’s.

  It was not guilt that stirred his dreams, for when he woke and tried remorse, he saw again the bloodied corpse of the dead girl, the startled face of the child who would not be drowned that night, the gratitude of Simeon’s father, and certainty settled in his bones. And yet . . . his own behavior appalled him. His anatomical knowledge turned to knowing where to touch to be closest to the heart or to the veins. And through it all, he pulsed with righteous wrath, the hunter’s joy, not so different from the joy the mancers found in their slaughter.

  His own hands bore only the blood of the victim, yet they seemed distant, the hands of a stranger. He remembered learning magic, elated at this skill even as he worried over what might happen if his witchcraft were discovered. Brigit wooed him to her cause, hoping for his support because she knew that his power could be this, a stroke of death in the darkness, without warning, without hope of escape. These last months, in Thomas’s behalf, he reconciled himself to power, to being feared as a knight should be, for the strength of arms he wielded in a righteous cause. Now, with Brigit lying as one entombed, and Thomas far away in England, Elisha had become a foreigner, even to himself: he wore a Jew’s clothes, spoke the German language, parlayed with emperors, slept among the dead, slew his enemies out of hand.

  For a time, this night, he reveled in his strength. Viewed more clearly, he knew the hunt must fail. Bardolph and Eben would be making their own plans, calling upon the ones who remained, and the warden of the Valley would be on the alert. Had the warden gathered knowledge enough to recognize Elisha’s presence when he merely used the Valley, without the added power of his killings? The presence of the woman he recognized from Trier, and the foreign mancers, their references to the mancers of England and France, suggested they worked as guilds, halls of murderers, linked across the distance to the others of their awful trade. He had damaged their brotherhood tonight, but he could not bring it down that way: never again would they be caught unprepared.

  Diplomacy, trying to warn Archbishop Baldwin and Emperor Ludwig availed him nothing, and this, too, had failed. He could not win in single combat. He would meet an opponent who countered him with strengths he could not imagine: the warden would be waiting, like a cutthroat in a darkened alley. His fight was just, and he was doomed.

  Chapter 11

  By the time the sounds of market filtered through the hollow church, Elisha’s body ached all over. Wounds, he could heal, but the exhaustion of his effort and of sleeping on a stone floor could not be resolved through magic. Pushing himself up, stripping off the tunic stiffened with blood, Elisha smoothed his undershirt and tried to brace himself for the long walk. He edged cautiously around the door, squinting despite the pall of mist that obscured the early sun. His left arm throbbed from elbow to wrist from the blow of the mancer’s fire iron. The cowl at his neck felt too hot against his stiff neck, and he slipped it off to tuck through his belt. His enemies would be alert for his power, not his face. If they knew his weakness, they might well strike him now.

  Sighing, he moved between the first of the carters and vendors setting out their wares. The warmth of Martin’s talisman, the long strip of cloth the draper had pressed upon him like a lady’s favor to a knight before Elisha first set off for war, hovered at his chest. He let its strength flow, calling up his awareness, preparing to shield himself in other ways.

  “Hallo! We thought to see you last night,” called a cheerful voice, and Elisha looked up to find Gretchen a few paces away. She tipped her head and frowned at him. “You ought to have come, really. Wherever you slept doesn’t appear to have done you well.”

  Kindness. Again. But he sensed no duplicity in her, only a soft concern. “The night has served me ill, Fraulein. If there is a basin and a meal on offer, I’d be grateful.”

  “I can’t come with you—I’m only down for some herbs the empress hopes to soothe her. But tell them I sent you, and they’ll take care of you.” She gave him a nod of encouragement—more forward outside of the imperial presence.

  “How does she with child?”

  “Not well.” Her brightness died away, and she hugged her basket. “She can hardly hold her stomach, but we know she’s got to eat more. She’s weak all the time it seems.”

  Elisha poked through his medical pouch and found the packet Mordecai gave him for the voyage. “Ginger. It can help.”

  Gretchen accepted it and tucked it in with the others. “Thank you.” She bobbed a curtsy. “I’d best be on.”

  “I’ll be along myself in a while.”

  “I hope his Majesty treats you more patiently this time.” She gave a nod and hurried away.

  Only a few patrons occupied the Unicorn’s common room, served by the aproned woman Elisha had seen calling after Bardolph the evening before. Wearing a bonnet that concealed her hair and echoed the roundness of her face, she put out a platter of cheese on one table before turning to him, her expression shifting from expectant to concerned in the space of a breath.

  “Gretchen sent me,” he told her, and the innkeeper’s wariness withdrew into a smile that resembled her daughter’s—though the hard lines did not ease around her eyes. “I’d like a chamber for washing, then breakfast. A razor, if you’ve got one,” Elisha added with a smile of his own—another item he’d never have been without in England. The last barbering he’d done was to prepare Thomas to be king.

  “This way. She did say we’d be looking for a foreigner.” She bustled down a crooked corridor toward the back.

  “Was anyone else looking for me? I thought I saw an acquaintance of mine leaving last night, but I wasn’t able to catch him.” True enough: she needn’t know what Elisha would do when he caught him.

  She ushered him through a door. “Nobody asking,” she said. “What’s he like?”

  “Tall, sharp, bearded. Carries his arm in a sling. I know him as Bardolph.”

  “Oh, my, yes. No wonder you couldn’t catch
him—he didn’t stay long—but he didn’t mention he was looking for anyone.”

  Elisha ducked into the chamber. A broad brickwork, emanating warmth, marked the center of one wall, with the rattle of cookery next door. The bathing chamber backed up to the kitchen, then. She rustled out again and returned with a basin and toweling, setting them out on a table. A young man followed with a great, steamy pitcher of water, then gave a nod and departed.

  “Always off to church, that Bardolph,” said the innkeeper. “It’s a wonder he’s not turned cleric.”

  “Is he so devout? I’ve not known him long.”

  The innkeeper hesitated, then shut the door and faced him. “Peace of the river to you, stranger.”

  Elisha caught his breath, the tendrils of her awareness stroking him through the floor. His left eye saw the remnants of sorrow and deaths that touched her, including two infant shades that gathered soft and gray about her, lives that she had lost, but no lives that she had taken. “And to you, I would say—but I am a stranger. If there are ways . . . for our people, I do not know them here. Will you stay and talk with me?”

  “We were speaking of Bardolph,” she began, “but do take your ease. We avoid names, here, unless they’re needed or widely known. We do go to the river. We greet each other as you’ve heard, and yes, ‘also to you,’ would be a fair reply.”

  Elisha stripped off his undershirt, shifting his belt so he need not remove it and risk abandoning his property all over again. If she made anything of his scars, she did not say so. He washed the last of the blood from his hands. By now, it was so dry and mingled with the dirt of his night’s work that he doubted any would mark it for what it was. “And Bardolph?” he prompted. Water rinsed away some of his exhaustion, and he faced his weary reflection in the small mirror, taking up the razor to shape his beard into a German point.