Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  “Yes, Majesty. It was like the room filled up with pain, with terror and death. Like that. That’s what their knives can do,” he said, pointing to the hideous wound in the dead mancer’s side where Elisha had driven his own murders deep within. “My mate, he was just touched by one of them, and he screams and dies.” He gestured at the dead miner’s face, warped by the blast of death. “I want to bring him up to Raphael’s, Majesty, so’s the priest can lift the cursing from him before his wife sees him.”

  “Go on then, bring him up.” The emperor nodded, and the second miner hurried up. Between the two of them, the miners lifted their dead companion and shuffled up the hall.

  “Sorcery. Back in Heidelberg you were taken for blessed.” The emperor’s mustache bristled as he swung his heavy regard toward the steward, Harald, who had witnessed Elisha’s recovery.

  “Forget about me!” Elisha’s fists clenched. “I don’t matter, truly, Your Majesty. What matters is stopping the enemy.”

  “The upstart Charles cannot manage a battlefield, Barber. I see little to concern me in his quarter now.” He stood solidly, as if expecting battle to be joined right there.

  “These are the enemy!” Elisha gestured toward the dead mancers. “It was necromancers who slew your daughter Anna and used her very flesh as a weapon.”

  The light of the lantern carved deep shadows in the emperor’s craggy face. “So you say.”

  “Every one of these men carries such abominations, to create the terror the miners witnessed.” Elisha lunged and drew off the dead soldier’s mantle, expecting to find the draped skins of his victims, but finding only a linen tunic underneath.

  “Unhand him,” spat one of the guards. “Show some respect for the dead.”

  “It’s there,” said Elisha, “I—” He broke off. He saw the shades that hovered there still, and felt the chill of death that clung to the mancer’s hands, but these were things no other man here could know.

  The steward Harald squatted at the dead man’s head, tipping it aside to look at the mark on his neck, the clear outline of Elisha’s hand branded by cold into the dead flesh. “This could be merely strangulation, Your Majesty. We should at least see if there are any other marks.” He reached out one hand, methodically unclasping the long row of buckles down the mancer’s chest and pulling aside the rumpled cloth. A skewed tunic pulled up from his belt, showing a wedge of tanned skin, as different from the mancer’s pale flesh as could be, and at his side where even his own skin would hardly be revealed to the sun. Elisha caught the edge of the tunic and they peeled it back together. Beneath his clothes the mancer wore a tight-fitting vest stitched with braided strands of hair, strips of skin laid side by side, pale, beige, freckled, one with a tattoo, one with the dimpled center of wrinkles where it once overlaid a joint.

  Harald’s dark eyes met Elisha’s as he grimaced and dropped his side of the tunic.

  The emperor growled low in his throat.

  “These are the skins of his victims, Your Majesty,” Elisha said, and he continued with precision, “He used them to incite terror and to kill. He murdered all of these people, and he is not alone. A man like this slew Anna, Your Majesty, and flayed her, and wore her for a trophy.”

  The emperor’s head swiveled to look back at the corridor. “Come!” Then he stared down at the mancer’s vest of skins. “Black arts. Necromancers.”

  A lightness soared through Elisha as the awful moment turned about. The emperor believed him—at long last, he saw it for himself. “It’s all true, Your Majesty.”

  The emperor glared. “I know,” he rumbled. “I’ve known it for years.”

  Chapter 25

  “What’s your will, Majesty?” said a fresh voice. Clad in rich clothes, his cursed sword hung from a baldric embroidered with imperial eagles, Eben the mancer entered from the tunnel. His round face and ruddy beard glowed warmly in the salt-stained light. “Ah. I heard a rumor you would die tonight, Barber. I’m relieved not to miss it.”

  Harald’s shoulders sank and he kept his head bowed as he stepped back to stand among the emperor’s party.

  Eben slipped a dagger from his belt, but the emperor trapped his hand. “Enough. Not here.”

  Eben’s smile slipped. No doubt he was hoping to claim Elisha’s death all for himself, to add to the dozen flickering shades that pursued him. “Your Majesty must see how dangerous it is to let him live even another hour.”

  “With his healing powers, my lord, I doubt your blade would be sufficient,” Harald murmured. But of course, he could not see the shades of death that stained the steel.

  Eyes narrowing, Eben nodded. “True. You should have kept those miners as surety of his obedience.”

  “I should greatly prefer not to lose any more of my citizens to your feuds.” The emperor waved his hand toward the remaining dead. “Especially not someone as esteemed as the margravine herself. The fact that she felt she must run from my soldiers suggests a certain lack of confidence in her safety.”

  So Ludwig did not know that Katherine was a mancer herself. Good. Elisha reached out and caught the haft of the pike that had pinned his clothing, pushing it back with a quick movement, and a burst of magical strength. The power of the dead lingered within.

  “Majesty!” blurted the startled pikeman, but Elisha ignored him.

  “Unless you have an objection to my being dressed for my trial,” Elisha snapped. He snatched his braes, pulling them up, and following with his hose more carefully, binding the straps and knotting them snugly.

  Inside, he reeled. Ludwig knew about the mancers, had known about them for years. Since before his daughter married Thomas? Likely. Before Charles, certainly—and the mancers slew Anna, not for her own sake, but for something her father had done, or failed to do. He was livid not because he didn’t believe Elisha, but because the mancers had thrown their support behind his rival. Ludwig expected mancer power to win his own kingdom, not to be wielded against him.

  He pulled on his jerkin, palming the packet of letters and tucked them again at his waist. When Elisha reached for his belt, Eben growled, “Don’t let him take his things.”

  “You came here to look for the lady—perhaps you’d like to continue that search elsewhere,” Ludwig suggested with a flick of his finger toward the exit.

  “I came here to punish the one who defiled her,” Eben replied, raking Elisha with a greedy stare.

  While the great men glared at each other, Harald quietly gathered Elisha’s belt into his hand and tucked it through his own, then draped the cloak over his arm, concealing it. He ignored Elisha’s glance, standing erect once more at the emperor’s side.

  The emperor said, “If you think I shall abandon the margravine and her estates to your ambitions, my lord, you are greatly mistaken.”

  “I am not the only man here with ambitions,” Eben replied, then added, with a tip of his head, “Your Majesty.”

  “I have gotten you the man you wanted—are you adding your marriage into the bargain?”

  Beads of sweat stood out upon Eben’s forehead, and he gripped the baldric, his sword twitching. “If we are negotiating, Your Majesty, we might at least go somewhere more comfortable.”

  And outside the mines, where the mancer could wield his magic properly. Elisha’s trap had brought some of the mancers here, but they had known he was coming to Bad Stollhein—they would have prepared a trap of their own. Elisha sat to pull on his boots, letting the loose cloth of his tunic cover the mancer-soldier’s fallen knife. When he rose, hitching up the band of his hose, he picked up the knife at the same time, tucking his hand under his tunic as if to smooth out the cloth and slipping the knife into the band where it ached at his hip with a sinister chill. He listened carefully, trying to see if the emperor’s irritation with Eben was merely an aspect of his choleric disposition, or if it suggested a chance for Elisha to shear him from his mancer allies. �
�Your Majesty,” Elisha began, but the emperor jabbed a finger at him.

  “Quiet, Barber! There’s nothing you can say that I don’t already know.”

  Eben’s smile brightened at that rebuke. To the soldiers he said, “Take hold of him, tightly. When we pass from the mines, he’ll try to use his sorcery to flee.”

  “Do as he says,” the emperor ordered, and the men finally obeyed, two of them locking their grip about Elisha’s upper arms. Eben counted on Elisha’s reluctance to kill them. The men’s nervous tension translated through their flesh. They feared him, indeed, but they feared their emperor’s wrath a good deal more. Elisha allowed himself to be taken, keeping an eye on the steward who carried his medical kit and coin purse. Once outside, he could summon the power to shake the ground. With luck, he could seize his things, open the Valley and be gone before Eben or the desolati could stop him. But where could he go? He needed to get to Rome, to stay ahead of the mancer plot, but the talismans he currently touched could take him only to Brother Gilles’ chest, via the nail trimmings, to a mancer’s slaying ground, through the soldier’s blade, or back home to England.

  Lord, how he longed to go home. Then he imagined seeing Thomas’s face, and he did feel shame. Thomas had children—his own daughter had been taken by mancers to be used against the crown—surely he would forgive what must be done to save them.

  The emperor’s entourage passed through the church of Raphael, with a small knot of miners on one side, holding vigil, and a fervent crowd of flagellants on the other, commending their brave leader to the Lord, not knowing that Katherine surely sent him straight to Hell.

  Even as they mounted the tunnel to escape the salt, Elisha felt a growing chill. In the jostle of mourners and flagellants, Eben ended up directly behind him. Casting back a glance as if scratching his chin against his shoulder, Elisha noticed that Eben’s hand gripped the hilt of his sword as if preparing to draw. His left eye observed the meshing of shades that came together around it, every moment more clearly, a braided strength that fused the weapon with the hand that bore it, extending Eben’s power down the length of the sword. The guard’s blade on Elisha’s hip hummed with an answering power—the two blades had shared at least one killing. The blades shared an affinity and he could use it, if Eben did not use it first. Walking ahead of Eben, Elisha reached for attunement, finding the soldiers who marched before him along with the brooding presence of the emperor. Elisha’s awareness fragmented where the salt impeded magic, but leapt into clarity as they emerged above the village.

  Dropping to one knee, Elisha twisted aside, dragging one of his guards with him. The man shrieked as Eben’s cursed sword slashed into him. For any other blade, the blow would be glancing at best, but this weapon carried its poison, shafts of cold and decay crackling through the dead man. Released on one side, Elisha snatched out the knife he’d taken, reaching for knowledge of the shades it carried. The Valley howled into being, blazing where the guard fell, but the roiling shade flowed to Elisha and the Valley snapped shut.

  Eben plunged through where the guard had been, swinging. The sword whipped through the air, trailing a black fog of death.

  “What are you doing, man?” the emperor shouted.

  At the sight of Elisha’s knife, Eben hesitated, recognizing it for its former owner.

  Thrusting out the little knife to one side, Elisha cast a summoning, drawing Eben’s blade to his through the deaths that connected them. Eben’s arm turned, his face set in a snarl as he tried to control his blade. It struck Elisha’s with a clang that tremored up his arm. Cold shot forth from the contact, but he warded off the attack with power from the grim, fresh death of the soldier whose blood still dripped from Eben’s sword.

  Both weapons shattered, the combatants stumbling forward as the tension collapsed. Elisha shot out his hand for Eben, but the lord arched away and spun, staggering, out of his reach.

  The second soldier released Elisha, taking up his own sword, but wavered, uncertain whom to attack.

  Eben retreated, hovering at the emperor’s side. “Your Majesty needs allies against the upstart, not to mention the French and whoever else dares defy you. That man has already slain twelve of us, Majesty. Twelve who would have stood with you. You cannot allow him to escape.”

  “Twelve who would have stood with me? How many stand with Charles?” The emperor kicked Eben away from him like a dog.

  Fury swept Eben’s presence, white-hot, dispelling his usual calm. His hair and garments shivered with no earthly wind, and shades rippled around him like a flock of ravens. Elisha dove between them as the mancer regained his balance.

  “Your kind slew my daughter, Eben,” the emperor thundered. “You claimed you would cement my throne, for the sake of unity, but you have gone over to my rival. I would see the empire once more under a single banner, but you! You would reeve it flesh from bone.”

  As if the emperor’s fury quenched his own, Eben drew himself up, solid once more, the shades that surrounded him gathered to his hand. “Yes,” he said quietly, “we will.” He raised his fist, something clenched in his grasp, exuding cold, and all around him, the night ripped, spilling mancers at his command.

  The soldiers brandished their weapons, forming a ring around the emperor—and Elisha with him, more by accident than choice. As he felt the Valley tear open with each mancer’s arrival, Elisha counted under his breath. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve—fifteen.

  A wind rose up around them. Some of the mancers drew weapons of their own, others merely stood, hands bare and ready. Mancers ringed the soldiers. One of them, a tall man with silvery hair that rippled in the uneasy night, Elisha recognized even in the darkness: Conrad, and he had another man kneeling at his feet, but Elisha could not make out his features.

  Harald dumped the cloak and held out Elisha’s belt. “Have you any weapons?” the steward muttered.

  Elisha wrapped the belt around him, the familiar presence of every talisman tingling, and he didn’t answer, giving all his attention to the mancer army arrayed against them, drawn from every estate. Three mancers unslung bows and stepped back from the circle, preparing to take aim from beyond Elisha’s reach. Inside the ring of death huddled two dozen soldiers, the steward, the emperor, and Elisha himself. The mancers would never reveal themselves unless they intended to win, to slaughter everyone who had seen them, and this time, he had no hidden allies waiting to strike.

  “Are you certain about this, Eben?” asked Conrad. “That is your emperor at the barber’s side.” Something dangled from his hand, a pale cord that shifted in the flickering light. At his feet, the kneeling man murmured prayers. Not a mancer, a prisoner.

  “Ludwig’s become completely intractable.” Eben stripped off his baldric, and it crumpled in his enchanted grasp, fraying to nothing and whipping away in the wind. “He must go. Hold the dark road.”

  Conrad gave a nod and swept the cord around his prisoner’s throat, drawing it tight and cutting off the prayer.

  Eben took a deep breath, and exhaled horror. The shades they carried should have been invisible, black on black, yet to Elisha’s eye, they danced like flames, rising up, their eyes and mouths open pits that sucked the heat from the air. Shades grew from each mancer, flaring up into the night, the torches of the soldiers and the lanterns of the houses showing darkly through. Where they overlapped with light, the shades glistened and rippled like pools of blood. The smell of rotting flesh roiled out, along with a sound, at first so soft Elisha felt it in the hairs at the back of his neck before it reached his ears, the rising moan of the dead. Conrad flexed his arms, his prisoner twisted and struggled and the Valley soared open, the chill of coming death turning both men’s breath to frost upon the air. The mancers, lost in the inky night, crouched, stabbed at the ground, and stepped away from the towering spirits.

  One of the soldiers screamed, dropping to his knees, others stood their ground, but their mail and we
apons rattled with fear.

  “Can you see them?” Elisha breathed.

  Harald bobbed his head, his throat working. “Christ and all his saints preserve us.”

  “It’s an illusion.” Not quite true, but the projections could not harm them directly—the apparitions merely focused the soldiers’ fear, and their attention. Shit. How were desolati, ordinary men, ever to fight such an enemy?

  Through his feet, Elisha sensed the torment of a dozen souls long dead: each mancer had planted a knife when he stabbed the ground, anchoring the dread spirits they had conjured and forging contact with the soldiers who shared the ground. The Valley linked these dead, its thrumming center held by Conrad’s dying victim. Another presence hovered in the open Valley—Conrad’s father, that warden he had sensed on the night he hunted, the one who intimately knew the paths of the dead. Outside the circle, the archers raised their bows with casual precision. The mancers moved deliberately, with the inexorable strength of those who know they cannot lose. They had every advantage on their side from the cursed blades linked through the earth, to the warden of the Valley stretching forth his power to let that roiling horror swell into the night, bound to the writhing figure at his son’s feet.

  A few of the torches guttered, and the soldiers cursed and whimpered their fear.

  “Take them!” The emperor shouted, drawing a sword of his own.

  “How?” cried one of the soldiers. “They’re huge!”

  “Not the spirits, the sorcerers,” Elisha answered, but someone shrieked and died behind him, the power of that death snapped up by a silent mancer. The killing had begun, and Elisha still had little idea how to counter the powerful magics arrayed against him.

  Cursing, Elisha pulled free his surgical knife and slashed open his palm, gritting his teeth against the shock of pain. He seized Harald’s wrist, making contact and forging the affinity of sight. Shutting his left eye, Elisha cleared away the visions, sharing this clarity with Harald, allowing him—no, forcing him—to see the living mancers, who could die, and not the terrible visions they conjured through the ground.