Elisha Magus

by E. C. Ambrose

  “Are you?” Morag roared. “We’re the masters! We’re more than kings! Ye’ve got the strength, ye’ve got the skill, and ye want to be a bloody barber all yer fuckin’ life?”

  He had—ever since he’d seen an angel die. Now, dared he hope to be a surgeon? To be a doctor in the eyes of all? To tame his wild power and be the man who saved a king, setting Thomas in his rightful throne? Morag offered him a place in the palace of Hell. He might earn it through his sins, but it would not be for want of striving. Morag’s dark eyes bored into him, and Elisha knew his answer was writ plain upon his face.

  A shock of cold blasted Elisha’s hand, first shaking, then numb, creeping up toward his elbow. He called upon the power of his cloth, remembering Martin who had given it to him and the long affection between them. Heat urged his flesh back to life. Pushed back against the stone, he brought up both feet and kicked hard, catching Morag in the belly and thigh. The mancer stumbled, pivoting so that they nearly changed places.

  “Why’d I show myself for you?” the gravedigger shouted on a howl of dark wind.

  The blast knocked Elisha flat, finally breaking the grip on his arm. He scrambled up again, finding his surgical knife. A pathetic weapon, but it had killed before.

  Morag lunged for him, then stopped short, eyes narrowing as he looked at the knife. Afraid of its puny blade? No—in the space of breath between them, Elisha felt the cold that clung to the blade, the vestiges of murder that caught Morag’s attention.

  “Mebbe not a fuckin’ waste of time.” the mancer muttered.

  “I’m grateful for your help—now I will be grateful if you leave me alone.” He was grateful, too, that his hand didn’t shake as he held out the knife.

  Morag snorted. “Can’t do it. Can’t let ye walk from here, now ye’ve seen. But I’ll be happy t’ carry you.” From his belt, he slipped free a knife of his own, a broad, half-moon shape, dark with blood. He moved it back and forth and grinned.

  A wave of horror that curdled Elisha’s stomach spread from Morag’s presence and made the evening sky go dark. Their breath came in clouds, pale in the shifting darkness. They circled like brawlers, but the leaves overhead cackled together and the ground crunched with frost. Morag lunged, Elisha dodged and feinted, turning to keep his enemy in sight. The bandit’s death stained his blade, and while he moved, he conjured, bringing up the echoes, allowing the knife to become a talisman unto itself. When Morag pounced again, Elisha was ready, ducking but surging inward, closer to the mancer, thrusting not only with the blade but with the focused anguish of a man’s destruction.

  Morag stumbled back, letting out a whoop as if a game were on, and he was sure of victory.

  Elisha pressed the advantage. Morag fell to his left, his arm swinging up, and Elisha froze. This was no chill in the air, no creeping sense of doom, but a slap of ice against his chest. He gasped for breath, his lungs pierced, his heart working too hard. He felt slick with blood, unable to scream, and clutched at his chest. Aside from the narrow cut left by Thomas’s blade, he bled no more. What he felt was a memory—but not his own.

  Elisha tried to cast off the phantasm, drawing from the cloth, but its tiny heat withered. Then Morag was on him, flinging him back against the stone, the breath knocked from his lungs as if pierced in truth. The mancer shoved up against him, trapping him with his own bulk, his knife trapped as Morag brought up his own. Morag shifted his grip, setting the blade not crosswise for a quick slash, but vertically, one tip of the crescent tucked beneath Elisha’s chin.

  “Where’s the fun in that?” Morag muttered, eyes narrowed as if he calculated dark designs.

  Blood dripped from the blade to trickle down Elisha’s throat. Pierced chest, blood streaming. The French magus who died in his arms.

  “You skinned him,” Elisha breathed very carefully. “Did you kill him, too?”

  The gravedigger’s thick eyebrows twitched up, then he smiled, his rank odor curling into Elisha’s desperate lungs. “Could kill ye now—but ye’ll be sweeter by and by.” His off-hand seized a handful of Elisha’s shirt and shoved him backwards.

  Elisha braced for the crack of his skull on the stone. Instead, they plunged into the howling abyss. One of the gray shadows at Morag’s shoulders flashed toward him immediately, and Elisha reached back, feeling the rush of power in spite of Morag’s snarl.

  “You wanted the abbey—here ya go.” The words seared a cold pathway down the curving blade into Elisha’s skin.

  The world split open, and Morag plunged him through, dropping him as the world snapped shut again. He tumbled onto the bloody field, gasping, his knife drawn, his being charged with that final blast of cold. He sprang to his feet, searching. No one. Alaric and his men had gone, and Morag had not followed.

  For a moment, Elisha worked to catch his breath. The mad magus saved his life from Alaric, only to think of taking it himself—then he held back. Why? Elisha would be sweeter soon, he’d said. What that meant Elisha did not want to know, but he needed to. Morag wanted to recruit him on behalf of another, and Elisha’s refusal made them his enemies, so why let him go? The release was nearly more frightening than the threat of murder. Like Morag’s whoop of battle joy, it suggested they had absolute certainty that they could take him when they wanted. Duke Randall thought Elisha the most dangerous man in England. The duke had been very, very wrong.

  And that brought him back to the problem of the princes. Alaric came dressed for an audience, not for Elisha’s benefit and not for a mere abbot, surely. Alaric wanted to impress someone—or to keep his own confidence—for the meeting he faced clearly terrified him. What then? No matter. Elisha had to focus on the primary talisman and get Thomas out of danger as quickly as he could. Brigit was not the only one searching, and not even—Blessed Mother!—the most dangerous. Elisha staggered toward the gate and finally yanked off his remaining boot and cast it aside.

  Brigit’s bandits were dead, thanks to Thomas—how many others might be lurking about? Or worse? He wished he had a sword, a dagger, anything. But nothing would avail him against the mancer who used Elisha’s own weapons and knew them better. Thomas was armed, but the danger he expected would be his brother’s soldiers. If he saw Brigit coming, he might well count on his beggar’s looks to disguise him and come out to see what he could learn from her.

  How far had Rosalynn’s plan extended? She arranged her rescue, saving Thomas at the same moment. The solution seemed obvious: hoping Elisha would get himself free, perhaps even believing it if she had felt the magic in the church or if she seen Alaric again without Elisha, she would send Thomas to safety in a place they could meet—the very village she suggested as a hiding place.

  Casting a slight deflection to dodge any unwanted glances, Elisha walked toward the western road. A bell rang out from the church, calling the monks to Compline. Had so much time passed already? Elisha kept to the shadows, conserving his magic in case the eyes of ordinary men were not all that he must fear.

  Torches blazed around the stable yard, illuminating a milling group of men, and he heard Alaric’s voice. “Why aren’t the horses ready? By Compline, we said. Where’s that stable wretch?” The prince’s tall, dark shadow sped along the wall and into the building. Elisha heard a child’s shriek of pain and he froze, his fist locking around his surgical knife. By God, he had not taken twenty-seven lashes so that Alaric could abuse stable boys and insult women. He had to find Thomas, for more reasons than one.

  The lay brothers who were meant to guard the gate had been distracted by the commotion at the stable, and Elisha ran through, free of the abbey grounds. He slogged as fast as he could down the muddy track and over the bridge where the abbey fields gave way to wattled yards, sheep folds, and huddled houses. Soon, the houses, too, fell behind. Before him, sunset lent a bloody murk to the clouded sky over the clustered darkness of the forest. The tilled fields ran out, leaving Elisha in thickets. Pigs snorted at his passage, and dogs barked as he left the last of the civilized land. Ahead, hil
ls bulged against the skyline, topped with rustling brush. A flock of birds took flight with a scatter of cries.

  A pond glinted dully to his right, and he turned onto an ancient lane, grassy and overhung with branches. A broken hut stood at the end of the pond with a ruined sty beside it, woven branches thrust up like ribs.

  Elisha tried to calm his thundering heart. He slowed to a walk, ducking under the young trees growing thickly from tumbled pastures and the striped remains of furrows. Creatures rustled and started, fleeing his passage. Elisha hoped one of them would be Cerberus, ambling out to meet him, having recognized his scent. Instead, the trees grew closer.

  Suddenly, the forest swept apart, revealing a clearing with a handful of houses a little more intact, and a low stone building topped by a little arch where a bell chain still hung, the bells from the nearby abbey filling in for the silence of this steeple.

  Elisha stopped and his eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. Six houses, their doors open or missing altogether, surrounded a meager yard, its earth so packed that few plants struggled up. The little church backed up to a larger building, probably a storehouse or tithing barn. Attunement. Immediately, if possible. Drawing a deep breath, Elisha stretched out with his other senses, letting his awareness fill in details: the patter of collected rain that trickled from the roofs, the scent of distant wood smoke. A crow cawed, then a chorus of them. As he reached out his awareness, he felt their slender heat. At the church, a patch of chill, then something colder brushed past. Elisha’s gaze fixed upon the church. Light sprang up at his back. Elisha cried out, turning, yanking out his knife.

  “You’ve wasted our time,” drawled a voice nearby. “Sensitive? As sensitive as a clod, I’d say.” A figure stood silhouetted by torchlight at the door of a ruined house.

  “You leave her be!” screeched a second voice, from above. “Don’t tease her.” The crows chorused their support.

  “Tell your friends to be quiet, or we’ll be found,” snapped the first. “We’re not the only ones about tonight.” A man, his presence cold instead of hot. It was not the cold of Death, but something smaller. It resembled the feel of the knife in Elisha’s grip.

  “You chose this place, Parsley, for us, or for your finer friends?” the second voice screeched back.

  The patter of the dripping water grew suddenly louder and the torch sizzled with scattered droplets. “Let us at least learn a little more about our guest before dismissing him.” The new voice, too, pattered, gentle as the drops. A mist hovered there. No, not a mist, a man as gray as rain.

  “Who are you? What do you want from me?” Elisha called out, but he thought he could almost feel the answer as he tried to make sense of what he heard and touched.

  “If he must ask …” drawled the first man—Parsley. He let the words dangle.

  Were they simply magi, or more necromancers? If so, they had little experience with Death—he felt it only by the church, in spite of cold Parsley’s presence. Then he sensed a more familiar presence, though he could not place its origin at first. It suffused the earth around him. Elisha dropped to one knee, making contact, taking a gamble. “Chanterelle,” he said into the dirt, using the witch’s way of speaking without words. All witches could use water, to make contact with one another. But Chanterelle—

  “I’m here,” she murmured. Then the ground before him bubbled, and she emerged slowly, as if mounting a staircase no other could see.

  “Ah, finally she rises!” Parsley said.

  “Because he knew to ask for me,” Chanterelle said, her voice barely carrying in the air, though Elisha felt the anger it held. “And he knew how.”

  “He would, wouldn’t he? He’s met you before.”

  Then Chanterelle focused on Elisha, her gaze as well as her anger. “But he’s just come from the mancer—and the mancer let him live.”

  “Shit,” said Parsley, his presence colder than ever. Elisha glanced back, his memory stirred as the man spoke again. “You said he wasn’t one of them.”

  “She said he wasn’t. That doesn’t mean he isn’t,” observed the misty form, the man gray as rain, who moved nearer. “Now that you’ve brought us together, Chanterelle,” he murmured, “you need to go. They have already tried once to kill you. Now that they know you’ve been tracking them, they won’t stop until they have you.”

  She gave the misty man a glance almost of pity. “I will not go until you have seen the truth about him.” Returning her focus to Elisha, she said, “You have met the mancer.”

  “The necromancer asked me to join him. He—” but what could Elisha say? That he had been tempted? “He plans to kill me later, when he thinks I’m ready. Next time we meet won’t be so easy.”

  “A coward, then, if not a mancer.” Parsley shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now he’s failed your test.”

  Chanterelle continued to regard him from behind her curtain of hair, and finally spoke again. “He’s not turned mancer,” Chanterelle murmured. “I know their touch.”

  “He looked here,” said the voice among the crows. They were clustered on the steps of the church, and a woman moved among them, hunched, old and ugly, clad in black. If ever a witch lived to give rise to the image of sorcery itself, it was she. Crows perched upon her shoulders and hopped along at her feet. “And we saw what he did on the road. Even you, Sundrop.”

  The misty figure—Sundrop?— gave a nod, but the cold man rejoined, “He hasn’t got the knowledge, or the sensitivity. He is not one of us.”

  “If you haven’t the time, Parsley, you shouldn’t’ve come.”

  Elisha bristled to be left out of the conversation. For the moment, listening served him better than questioning. Let their private conflicts reveal them. Indivisi. Testing him, to try Chanterelle’s claim. Knowledge and sensitivity.

  “He hasn’t been a magus very long,” Chanterelle offered. “He hasn’t learned much.”

  He knelt among them, ignorant as a child, despite the fact that she was half his age. Time to grow up—and fast. Parsley was not the only one who had other friends to look out for. Elisha rose to his feet. “The body in the church,” he said. “Who is it?”

  They fell silent, aside from the caw of a crow.

  “You see?” Parsley, the cold man, folded his arms with a soft clang. “Any mancer’s boy would know that much.”

  More, then. There was more for him to know. Elisha forced himself to relax and stretch his awareness. He found the body by the chill he’d felt when he reached out his awareness. Now, he reached up through the earth that gave him contact, however distant. The woman with crows cocked her head at him. Chanterelle slipped aside a fistful of her bedraggled hair to watch. The chill reached back, fitting him like his old, familiar boots. Elisha focused on the corpse they had brought to the church and recognized it. He swallowed past the ache of his throat. “I killed the man. Is that what you wanted?”

  Shoving off from his doorframe, Parsley stalked nearer, his eyes glinting in the light. “Is it what you wanted?”

  “He was a bandit, attacking an innocent woman. He had to be stopped.” Elisha thought to say more but held back. These people had no claim on him, no need to know his regrets.

  “You had a talisman. An evil thing—”

  “No,” Elisha said, circling with him, meeting his eyes. “Terrible, yes. Not evil.”

  “A baby you killed—not evil?”

  The crow woman hissed.

  “The baby was dead.” Tension knotted Elisha’s shoulders.

  “You did it,” the man insisted.

  “I knew it, I didn’t do it,” Elisha shot back. Then he straightened. “I knew it,” he said again. The signs had been there, yes. Medically speaking, an experienced practitioner would have guessed the child would be stillborn. But Elisha did not need to guess. For a moment, he met Chanterelle’s obscured gaze, and she smiled. Elisha turned from her. Nausea cramped his stomach. That same practitioner might guess it had been too long since he’d eaten, but Elisha’s sickness went dee
per than hunger. Could it be true? Could all of his training, all of his trying, have led up to this: that he made himself servant not to a necromancer, but to Death itself?

  Chapter 19

  His wrist throbbed with every heartbeat, and he loosened his grip on the knife. No wonder Morag greeted him as friend, almost as a brother. “I am not with Death.”

  “You may not have chosen it,” said Sundrop, the mist-man, “but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Chanterelle did not choose her other self.” Sundrop gestured toward her, and a spattering of rain fell. She sank down to her knees, hugging herself. In a soft, solemn voice he continued, “There are only so many times a girl can be forced to the floor before she sinks right through.” The dirt that still clung to her body shifted and shivered on her flesh, forming a second skin from her shoulders to her knees.

  Crows hopped down around her, tipping their heads, studying her, their mistress following. “Most don’t choose, not at first, my pretties.” She caressed one of the dark birds, and it bobbed up at her.

  “Or they wouldn’t choose such stupid things,” Parsley, the cold man, snapped.

  Elisha bristled at his harsh tone. The man must have a heart of—“Iron,” Elisha said aloud, leveling his knife at Parsley. “I’m surprised to find you in such company. Aren’t you afraid of rust?”

  Sundrop laughed as if storm clouds had broken. “Ignorant, but not a fool. Knowledge, I’ll grant you. Sensitivity, yes—he’s even spoken through raindrops. But I don’t see how a man can be with Death. Even the ’mancers don’t claim that.” A speculative expression made the misty features suddenly acute—a young face, sharp and long-jawed. “Though the ’mancers might well wish to claim you.”

  “Why do you?”

  “We don’t.” The iron-magus flicked Elisha’s blade with a finger, bending it as if it were straw.

  Sundrop splashed Parsley’s hand and he cursed, snaking back his arm. Tiny pits of red showed against his skin as he wiped away the water, glaring. “If the magi are a race apart, we are apart from even them,” Sundrop explained. “When Chanterelle suggested you might be one of us … well, some of us were curious.” His gestures, graceful and gray, took in his companions. “Some of us were furious. Mancers are no man’s friend. But a magus who walked with Death could be friend or foe—who could know?”