Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  Thomas cradled the baby against him, bouncing slightly, the habits of fatherhood never lost, but his eyes remained fixed on Elisha. Elisha did not trust himself to speak. For a long moment, he considered staying. Rome was broken, its relics destroyed—what more remained of the mancers’ plans?

  He did not know, and so he must return. Brigit’s blood still slicked his palms, and through it he conjured himself back to her side in the mancers’ chapel, ready to save, to heal, to wield the strength of life, for as long as it would sustain him.

  Immediately, the floor pitched and he stumbled, nearly falling, but righting himself in an instant, senses extended. The mancers’ vale rang with shouts and screaming, and sawdust hovered in the air in the trembling structure. The forces he had brought together, the vibrant strength of life, the terrible chaos of the Valley, still sent their tremors through the earth. Pain and terror leapt around him. Four of the mancers lay dead, crushed when half of the building collapsed. The broad altar thrust up at a sharp angle, its thick edge atop the ruin of Bardolph’s chest, his eyes open, but unseeing as blood dribbled from his mouth.

  “Returned from Hell, are you, you Devil?” cried Renart, holding up a golden cross. “And what have you done with the baby you’ve stolen?”

  Elisha hesitated, for a moment mystified by the mancer’s posturing, then he saw the press of faces beyond the broken wall and shattered doorway, the villagers who clustered around the false nuns and monks, pleading for salvation from God’s wrath. The cold wind of the Valley swirled around them, shades flickering from the broken bodies of the fallen.

  “It was not God who broke this place and cracked the earth to swallow up your fellows. No! It was Satan—and there stands his messenger.” Renart jabbed the cross in Elisha’s direction. “False stigmata he bears, given by a demon, to sway you to him! The end times are upon us, my children!”

  Renart, clothed in the raiment and the word of God, faced him with a grin of triumph. Elisha himself, bare-chested, bloodied, gripping a knife instead of a cross, could think of no way to defend himself from such madness, but he had a witness.

  Through the blood of the new mother, Elisha reached out, sensing Brigit’s warmth, and that of the woman who held her. “Gretchen—fraulein, will you support me? You know that he’s not what he seems.”

  “Neither are you,” she answered, “and my husband is dead.” Her words echoed with grief.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You are only sorry because it means I will not help you.”

  He flinched and glanced at her. Gretchen knelt with Brigit in her arms, the shimmer of magic tingling all around them as she protected her charge from the rumbling earth. Then Brigit moaned, lifting her head. With a shaky hand she smoothed back her red-gold hair. Worry creased her face as she glanced about. Briefly, her gaze rested on him, green and bright, and strangely distant. Without recognition, she searched on. Elisha remembered loving her, hating her, fearing her, holding her, stopping himself from killing her—

  The Valley tore open at his back. In the same moment, pain struck through him, as if the chaos of his emotions could pierce his flesh. The blow carried guilt, betrayal, release—a sharp, familiar death. Elisha staggered, coughing blood, and caught himself on the upturned altar.

  “He’s ruined Rome! Now we’ll never get the desolati to come,” shouted the newcomer as he jerked the knife from Elisha’s back for a second blow. Conrad, his urbane voice transformed by fury.

  “Papa!” shrieked a young girl from the crowd outside. “He’s killing the nice man! Make him stop!”

  Elisha dropped to the side, gasping for breath, and the knife hacked into the wood instead. Plain silver hilt, long, strong. The blade Elisha had used to pierce the mancer-monk’s skull.

  “My father trusted you,” Conrad said.

  “Shut up, boy,” Renart muttered through clenched teeth, glaring at Vertuollo’s son. “We have witnesses.”

  That fine nose and broad brow—Elisha would have known him anywhere for the count’s flesh and blood. Would his child look like himself, or like Brigit? It was spring in the meadow; why did he feel so cold? Gretchen stared at him over Brigit’s shoulder. Something dark and poisonous roiled within him, a deeper cold unlocked by the mancer’s blade. Then he closed his fist around Thomas’s ring and forced back the assault.

  Conrad’s shadow loomed over him, reaching for him, but another mancer stopped him. “What about the rest of us?” asked the mancer, in the dialect of Rome—the gravedigger Elisha had seen, his form edged with a flicker of shadows.

  “Yes—aren’t you going to share?” demanded another mancer, pushing past the onlookers. Elisha’s vision blurred, the pain spreading, but he dragged his senses back, drew in his awareness, swallowed his strength to find the wound and force the flesh to heal.

  “All righteous shepherds share in the kingdom of the Lord!” Renart cried, his voice carrying a warning as he tried to preserve his air of holiness in front of all the desolati witnesses.

  Elisha spat blood, wiping his mouth. Conrad, projecting a bit of his father’s chill power, said, “This man is mine, and his death is my father’s.”

  When the blade struck down again, Elisha was ready for it, striking back with the deadly power that flowed in his veins. “Holy Mary defend me!” he shouted and the blade shattered, its wielder’s curse becoming a scream that choked into nothing. Conrad reeled, his body shuddering, fingers clawing the air as his skin withered to the texture of old leather, his blood gone still in his veins. The body clattered to the floor, the black strength of Conrad’s dying streaming to Elisha’s hand.

  The nearest mancers stumbled back from him as Elisha staggered to his feet. He gripped the altar’s edge and thought of Isaac, desperately calling upon the Holy Family, defying his own religion to save his life. “If my cause be worthy and my need be just, Holy Mary heal my wounds.” He cried out as the flesh knit too fast, the blood streaming back, slowing to a trickle, easing to nothing but a scar that ached with every breath.

  Renart gaped at him, the cross wavering, the greedy mancers hesitating.

  “Do not play at miracles with me, Renart,” said Elisha very softly. He let Thomas’s ring slide down onto his finger and closed his scarred hand around it. “You will lose.”

  “Kill him now—take him now, while he’s still weak,” the gravedigger insisted, but Renart put out his hand, the cross pressing against the other mancer’s chest.

  “No!” shouted the little girl again, rushing through the broken wall to Elisha’s side. Elisha recognized the child he had befriended on the snowy trail to get here. Her father trailed after, while the other villagers crossed themselves.

  “And deny the count his vengeance?” Renart glanced back to Conrad’s twisted form, then to Elisha. “You really think you’ve won, don’t you? I’ll be there, when you see how wrong you are.” Renart’s lips twisted once more into that grin as he retreated. “Come, my brothers and sisters—we must away!”

  Elisha vaulted the altar, dodging broken slats as the mancers hurried out, pushing their way through the crowd. Outside, people still wailed, still called for aid, and the ground gave another tremor, smaller this time, but some of the cries ceased while others rose to screams of agony. One of the mancers stopped by a fallen woman, dragging his fingers through her blood, his presence brighter with relief, and Elisha pounced, catching the back of his neck with a grip of ice. The mancer hung limp in his grasp and Elisha lay him aside, keeping his eyes upon the others.

  “Weak, did you say?” Renart observed.

  “Most reverend father! I bring the relics of the Chapel of Saint Anne! Let us pray,” cried a nun, striding the green meadow with a golden casket carried before her. Bits of salt flaked off the casket—they must have packed it in salt to conceal it from Elisha’s notice. The mancers gathered uncertainly, looking to Renart.

  “Go,” said Renart. �
�Go. No need to spend ourselves for nothing.”

  Like dogs called to supper, the mancers ran for the gilded case, one after the next. The reliquary gleamed with gems and reeked of murder. They pushed open the lid, plunging in their hands for their talismans, and the Valley pulled wide, a roaring space of darkness. The nearest villagers cried out, confused and chilled, and unseeing as the mancers slid through, the gathered shades receiving them with wild howls and swelling fear. The villagers huddled, all entreaty for the aid of the false clerics dying upon their lips. Even if they did not see the Valley, they could not help but feel its power. And the Valley itself . . . the Valley had changed. It felt vast and dreadful, far greater than the intimate doom of any given gathering of the dead. It thrummed in his chest, pulsing like a second heart, but one in dangerous excitement, ready to burst.

  Renart vanished with the rest, still smiling, and the Valley sealed itself behind them, though the patch took a long time to clear, like smoke still furling where a torch is snuffed.

  Elisha’s limbs trembled, all the strength he had gathered to fight them keeping him on edge, his breath panting mist into the cooling air as the first flakes of snow began to fall. A few hundred people remained, some of them injured, and all would be cold. He shook himself, dispelling the cold within. “We’ll need to break up those boards and build fires,” he called out. “You!” he pointed to a thickset man with an axe. “Get started. We’ll need to free anyone who’s trapped and see to the wounded. Are there any barbers or surgeons here?” Two men and a woman—defiant against the men’s stares—came forward.

  “I studied at Salerno,” she said, meeting Elisha’s gaze. “The scuola is open to all who would pass the examinations.”

  Salerno . . . Vertuollo had said they let the Salernitan act too soon. Vertuollo knew Elisha, more so than any other mancer, perhaps more than any other magus aside from Mordecai himself, and the count had stated that Elisha could not fight them. For better or worse, Vertuollo assumed Elisha to have strength equivalent to his own—the power to hold a city and its mancers under his sway—and he did not believe Elisha could win. Elisha had focused on Rome, but that was not all of their plan. Something else was coming, something they believed he lacked the power to defeat. Distracted, Elisha looked back to his newly recruited healers. He reached out to her, welcoming her—and sensing only a desolati’s fear and courage. She could not be the Salernitan he sought, but perhaps she could point the way. “We’ll need all the help we can get. Thanks.”

  He let the sense of Death retreat as he focused on the living, fetching his warmer clothes from the pack his horse still carried.

  By nightfall, the worst of them were seen to. Elisha made no more obvious miracles, but he gave a breath of magic here and there to tip the balance in favor of healing. Those who had traveled up with him whispered the stories of fires that did not die and shed warmth far beyond their circles, and Elisha began to believe that he had won, no matter what Renart might say. He had destroyed the false relics they planted, brought down the churches they would have used to terrorize and decimate the masses at the Jubilee, and broken the Roman circle, casting its leader from his own gateway and slaying his son. Surely that was a chink in their mail that they would not soon repair, though the idea of facing Vertuollo’s fury gave him pause. He had stolen back the baby they hoped to use against him. Brigit had awoken, but seemed vacant, the ambition and purpose which always animated her lost in her long sleep. If that power revived within her, Elisha would have cause to tremble, but for now, she was merely another lost soul. He had overthrown their plans for Rome, and their claims to righteousness in the apocalyptic vision they had been working toward. He had undone the apocalypse. Hadn’t he? Then why was Renart still so confident?

  That uneasiness kept him up as night fell, circling the fires, checking on his patients, daring, at last, to venture toward the intact corner of the broken chapel where Gretchen sheltered with Brigit.

  The two women hunched over a brazier, warming a bowl that smelled of herbs. Good. Then Elisha swallowed. They brewed healing herbs for Brigit—was it good, indeed? He knelt outside their small circle, hiding the bloody floor where Bardolph’s body had been pinned. Bardolph and Conrad’s corpses were gone, hauled away by sympathetic villagers who still held Brigit in awe and her handmaiden by extension. “Fraulein. How is she?”

  But it was Brigit who looked up, beautiful by the firelight—so like the first time he had seen her. “Sir,” she murmured. “I feel so . . . empty.”

  It took a moment for Elisha to understand her, it had been so long since he had heard his native tongue. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Gretchen glanced at him sharply. “Are you?” She shot out a hand and grabbed his wrist. “Are you apologizing before you kill her?”

  Cold power ebbed beneath Elisha’s skin, gathering at his scarred palms. “You don’t know what she is capable of.”

  “Now?” Gretchen gave a harsh laugh. “Neither does she. I will not let you take her. Or will you kill me, too?”

  Elisha’s shoulders sank.

  “I thought not.” She released him with a little push. “I will take care of you, Lady. There is a convent close by where you can heal. I won’t let anyone hurt you. Not him—not anyone.”

  Bracing his hands on the floor, Elisha rose up to one knee, gazing at Brigit’s vacant face, unable to find the spark that had so long been her presence. He might walk the border of life and death, but it was she who had lingered there too long. What knowledge might she now possess?

  Outside, Elisha breathed in the ordinary chill of night in the mountains. This place was beautiful, with an austere strength both compelling and foreboding. Was it time, at last, to go home, to hear the music of his own tongue echoing from the narrow streets of London, and to feel the familiar stroke of a winter’s rain? Did he dare to travel the Valley now, when its warden must be in a fury? He must stay at least long enough to see these pilgrims safely out of winter’s rage, now that their mancer clergy had abandoned them.

  He cast about for a place to find his own rest when a shout from the pass drew his attention. A lantern’s light wove a tricky path down the slope, its bearer stumbling, running, calling out. Elisha and the woman physician moved toward the bearer.

  “The holy one! The saint! Is she here?” he coughed and bent double, gasping for breath as they came upon him. Elisha caught the fellow’s arm to steady him while the woman took the lantern and held it up.

  “Is there a priest?” the man gulped between phrases, unable to get his breath, and his arm beneath Elisha’s palm felt too hot, his eyes bright and his red face streaked with sweat that plastered down his lank hair.

  “We’re healers, we can help the fever,” he began, but the man shook his head, nearly toppling over with the movement.

  “It’s all of them, the village, struck down, my wife,” he broke off again, and Elisha sent him strength and comfort, but the runner wobbled and his knees collapsed under him. Catching the man, Elisha took the lantern from his grasp and eased him down into the mounting snow. “Please,” the runner mumbled, a bloody froth blooming at his lips. The lantern wavered, its light showing the man’s stricken face, not merely bright with fever, but tracked with a crimson webbing of veins.

  “Oh, no,” the woman breathed, backing away.

  “Sir,” Elisha began, but already the heat beneath his hand stirred with an unnatural chill, and the breath that last escaped the man shimmered dark as the Valley opened to receive him. “No!” Elisha kept his grip on the stranger, but he could not battle a death he did not understand. “You know what this is,” he began, turning to find the lantern’s light retreating, the woman doctor hurrying away so that he must run to catch up with her. “What is it?”

  “I know only rumors,” she said. “Towns in the south where dozens grow sick, where black bulges mark their bodies and there is no cure to save them.”

 
Ships of the dead, the harbor closed for rumors—the map to the south spreading with the paths of death. A plague of Biblical proportions . . . “What can we do?” he called after her.

  “Pray!” she shouted back. “And hide.”

  Elisha’s uneasiness fused into a weight at the pit of his stomach. Death was coming to the vale which had, until so recently, been innocent of that stain. Here, then was the foe he could not vanquish, the reason for Renart’s joy. Pray, or hide. He knew he could do neither.

  Overhead, snow obscured the stars. In the gathering gloom, Elisha found his horse, his cloak still draping its withers, and readied himself for the storm.

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