Elisha Magus

by E. C. Ambrose

  “Nothing!” Elisha wanted to cry out. “Nothing! It wasn’t your fault. I was wrong, Nate—” But the events witnessed through his brother’s eyes had happened months before, and he was as helpless now as he had been then. Through his brother’s ears, he hated the sound of his own voice.

  Nathaniel fell back from the stairs. He had lost it all, everything in one terrible moment when he had done the wrong thing. Swallowing his grief, he turned away and saw the razor and basin set aside upon the heap of their furniture, moved out of the way for the failed operation inside. The razor winked in the sun, the brass basin an inviting empty vessel, waiting once again to be filled. The tools of Elisha’s ostensible trade. Nathaniel knew better. He knew that Eli’s true work was the healing, stitching up wounds and setting bones. Even as he despised his brother’s unholy pride, he knew, too, that it was justified. Elisha had healed a thousand men, while Nathaniel could only mend their pots.

  He took up the tools and returned to his own place, the dark calm of the workshop that was his domain. His beautiful Helena was dead because he couldn’t accept his brother’s apology, couldn’t accept it because he might have to admit that he, too, had doubted his wife, had doubted why she would marry someone like him, poor and hopeless. If he could have bowed to his brother a long time ago, everything would be different now. His family might have lived. Nathaniel laughed in a way that Elisha found achingly familiar. Hadn’t Nathaniel’s own pride been just as great?

  One of the seven deadly sins, the ones you could not just atone for, the ones the apostle Paul himself reported would prevent the sinner from entering Heaven. Nathaniel opened the razor, tilting it in the shaft of sunlight that split his workshop wall. It didn’t matter now what God would think of him: his Helena was dead, sacrificed to his stupid pride. He opened the razor and leaned over the waiting gleam of the empty basin.

  Chapter 35

  Elisha jerked himself out of the memory. They had provided a talisman all right, but one too strong. He couldn’t control it, it overran his own awareness. He caught gasping breaths, trying to find his balance, but it was gone. His brother’s guilt rushed through him, mingling with and mirroring his own. His hand cramped from gripping the razor so tightly.

  Finally he noticed the texture of the bond that held it, his fingers edging the loop back, still working on escape. The loop was a thin braid of human hair. Elisha wrapped his fingers around it, a bare quarter-inch of compassion in the captured horror exuded by the weapon of his brother’s death. Thomas’s hair, a trimming from that haircut Elisha had given him in the garden.

  Now he remembered Thomas’s hand clinging to Rosalynn’s and the lines of worry around his eyes. The expression was neither boredom nor irritation, but concentration. He had given Elisha the means to make contact, and Elisha leapt at the chance, the slender ray of hope in the thundering dread that surrounded him. At once, Thomas’s presence filled him, Thomas’s thoughts focused on him, urging him to succeed, to live.

  Suddenly, like his brother at the moment he had chosen death, Elisha didn’t care what God thought, whether his talent was good or evil, whether every other person he had helped had left him on this day. Thomas remained, steadfast, as he had lent his own strong hands to heal Elisha’s in the ancient tomb they shared. Trapped by his crown, he could not say a word, but he had sent the message nonetheless. Thomas needed him to live.

  With careful wriggling, Elisha managed to slide free the strands of hair, the braid looped in his palm, clinging there by virtue of the blood and sweat that had slicked his hands. He drew himself back in, mastering his fear. First he must be strong enough to resist the suffocation of the grave, then he must work his way to freedom. And still he did not understand the threat of Morag’s presence.

  Taking a deep breath, Elisha shut his eyes. He drew upon Thomas’s compassion and the fears and regrets that surrounded his brother’s death. He brought them together like that braid, entwining strands of power. A new idea glimmered in the midst of darkness; a way, without showing his strength, to make room for hope in the midst of the anger surrounding him and thus find the balance he so desperately needed.

  He slipped his senses out through the wood of the coffin that pressed in on him, sensing the dedicated stance of monks and priests, the attentive presence of the soldiers. Four strong men seized the ropes beneath his prison. They heaved the coffin up and lowered it down. He rocked and struck bottom with a thump. The first shovel of earth rattled down upon the lid. Elisha’s heart thundered in the tight space of his tomb—the warder’s voice insinuated itself into his memory, describing the tortures of live burial. Out, out he crept from his mind, summoning up that insidious power. Come, Death, if it would serve him. By the bonds of blood and grief, he commanded it. The cold unfurled within him, as if it had been waiting for his call. Shivers of death ran along his skin, tickling like a thousand crawling things.

  From the writhing braid of his power, he drew the bleak and unforgiving permanence of Death. He could not be smothered—he was already gone, he told the darkness. Death was his servant as was the darkness.

  Yes, he would be cold—the cold of the grave, the cold of despair and of those bereft of hope. The cold of his brother, and colder still, but that very cold could preserve his life.

  As he enveloped himself in Death, he nearly lost the thread of Thomas’s compassion. He searched, gripping the razor, so that the braid of hair pressed into the scar at his palm. On that terrible night, Thomas joined their hands together, allowing Elisha to heal. This spark found space among the shadows, and Elisha cast its light out along the paths that he had laid, out among the excited lords and their dismayed ladies, out further still among the merchants and their clients, out beyond that to the workmen and tradesmen and prostitutes, to the people he had dedicated himself to serving. He took that compassion and suffused it with his memories, glancing back over his life, the children he had saved, the workmen who kept their jobs because of him, the women healed of their wounds and sickness by his hands, the babies born whole and healthy.

  His eyes shut, breathing in the already stale air of his doom, he called upon his incipient panic and blew forth these memories like the wind that uplifted the crows overhead.

  Everyone who had been touched by Death, now was touched by him. He touched them not with the awe that Rowena had sought, but with the intimate moments they already knew.

  Little by little, they fell silent. A woman touched the scars on her arm, remembering how he had bound the wound, and turned away. A father remembered the medicine given to his fevered child, and bowed his head. The mistress of a brothel ran her fingers through her hair while her girls embraced each other and wept. Malcolm Carter, who had brought Elisha to Dunbury, thought of his son’s broken leg and crossed himself. Somewhere on the outskirts, Arthur Mason, who fought in the battle of Dunbury Ford, studied the stump of his leg and spoke a prayer in Elisha’s name.

  Elisha’s spirit soared. It was true; he had not been for Death all these years, but Life. He laughed as the power surged through him. The Law of Polarity fleeted through his mind. It was not Death he fought for, but Life. Life that he preserved and tended and might have died for. And if that were not God’s battle, what could ever be?

  At last he had broken the hold of fear and hatred that had mired him in doubt. Focus, Mordecai had reminded him. At last, he just might manage it. The sound of falling earth grew dim and distant, its weight groaning against the wood. It was time. Elisha’s elation spread, tingling through his fingers and toes. He could do it. He was unstoppable.

  In spite of his surging confidence, somewhere in his belly lodged a knot of terror he could not dispel, a foreign fear he was determined not to feel, a lingering sense of Morag’s presence. With a will, Elisha squeezed away that fear and got to work. He sought affinity, imagining all the similarities between the bound lock of hair in his fingers and the locked chain around his wrists. With a roll of his fingers, he let the hair fall straight, and the manacles clatter
ed free. For a time, he rested his forehead on the wood floor, working his fingers, shaking out his aching wrists. He allowed himself to drift, waiting, allowing the audience time to disperse before he began his real work.

  When he judged that an hour or so had gone by, Elisha stretched his awareness beyond the skin, feeling the priests and nobles above him recede toward the city. A number of people lingered, devoid of hatred now but uncertain what to say or do. A few of them were crying. “I’m sorry,” Elisha whispered, though they could not hear him. He had not meant to cause them grief, only to stop the terrible waves of their hatred long enough to find his focus.

  In that moment of regret, Elisha felt a familiar step approaching, a presence he knew so well he could almost taste it. He snapped back his own awareness, gathering his power deep inside, revealing only the fear and the pain, the things anyone might expect to find. Brigit was no sensitive—he did not know how far she could even attune herself. Could she feel him through the earth? Not likely. Certainly not clearly enough to communicate through rock and wood. But he could feel her coming. Then she stood over him, crying.

  Tears struck the earth over his coffin and seeped down through, tears of genuine grief. For Alaric? He was recently lost, and Brigit’s claim to the throne lost along with him. These tears shone not with ambition, but with love. Each tear carried with it a moment, a smile, a look, a touch. It was not Alaric she mourned.

  Elisha gasped, his fingers spread upon the wood as the memories sank through. He had seen them all before—but from the other view, his own. Once again, he was given the strange blessing of seeing how another saw him. His brother saw him competent, arrogant, distant. Brigit saw him strong, desperate, furious. She saw him struggle with the rules he was given, saw his discovery of magic and shared it with him. She saw him take the flogging he earned by his defiance of his superior’s orders, and felt a shock of dismay when she realized the man he defied orders to save was Alaric, the prince who loved her. Brigit remembered the moment she showed Elisha the talisman, his ignorance and naivety: he did not understand what he had, what he might be. But she did. With her help, he could become great. With his help, she could achieve her mother’s dream. No witch need ever burn again. If he would only recognize who he really was.

  They shared a kiss that night, a kiss of such passion that it swept her away along with him. It swelled through her body—and inspired a new idea. She broke the kiss—hating the need to delay. But they would come together again. She would have him—when her body was ripe and her womb was ready. He wanted her, and she would make sure he enjoyed her—he wouldn’t even think of what he gave her in return.

  Elisha barely breathed. Her tears showed him all he had resisted. How could he believe she loved him, when she would have let him hang for the sake of creating a greater talisman for her own use? She still had the hanging rope; she savored it as a part of him. She savored everything about him, treasured every memory, acknowledging that his sacrifices made her stronger. He wanted to hate her, to punish her with a vision of all he had gone through, touching her as he had touched the others. Slapping her back from her obscene grief.

  Yet it was true, in its own way. She loved him with a passionate desire that made Martin Draper’s attraction seem a weak and pale thing. She loved him, though it shook the vision of what her life should be and that was a distraction she could not afford if she would win her kingdom. Her love was commanding and cruel, like a master willing to beat a loyal hound who ignores an order. Her tears rebuked his doubt, and Elisha let her be. He let her weep over him, but he withdrew even further into himself, removing the perceptible fear and replacing it with cold. If she could feel him there at all, let her believe that he lay already dead beneath her feet.

  It seemed a long time before she left, but that effect was caused more by the shroud of his brother’s death that he used to conceal himself. That day when he killed his first king, time had passed strangely, his awareness almost outside of time, as if he could minutely observe everything around him in the instant of another man’s death.

  When he next unfurled his senses, the dread kindled again at the back of his mind. In the shock of Brigit’s coming, he had forgotten about Morag, but still there was no sign of what the mancer had done. As Chanterelle had taught Elisha, he allowed his focus to become particular. He wasn’t merely looking around as he used to, he was looking deep—as if he had moved from the examination of a patient to the diagnosis of their specific ills. The roughness of the wood became a series of fine lines, some raised, some depressed, like ridges of hills infinitely small. The piercing wound in his shoulder resolved into a small, sharp triangle, its point pressing against his shoulder blade, a stream of blood winding between the fine hairs on his skin. It severed only muscle, and he knew where to place the sutures. When he was free, he could heal it—but that nagging worry kept him from expending the strength just now. He was not out of the ground, not even out of the coffin. Focus.

  Elisha deepened his awareness a little further from himself and found the panel over his head, the one Mordecai told him would be loose. Tucking the talismans close to his body, Elisha wriggled his hands upward, wincing as they scraped the wood. He felt over the panel with his fingers. The board gave beneath his fingertips with the slick sensation of rotten wood, a faint hum of magic concealing the fault from those who prepared the grave. Elisha dug his fingers in and pulled, tearing free a few slivers, then yanking the board inside as it gave way. It rapped his head, stinging his naked scalp. He brought it in front of him, working it down his body out of the way. A bit of loose earth trickled in after it, touching his head with a lashing cold. Elisha stopped, releasing the rotten wood.

  He let out a breath, his chest aching slightly. Did he still need to breathe? What was the operation of his affinity with Death? Always, it maintained an uneasy balance with his body’s own needs. Chanterelle had shown him how she found breath within the dirt. He needed to get free of the constricting coffin and use what he knew. He was not Chanterelle, of course, and did not have her connection with the earth, to move effortlessly among the grains and pebbles. The best he could hope for was a sort of swimming, like a fish. The earth might shift over him, but it couldn’t be helped. If a passerby saw movement, they would imagine the dirt shifted due to the recent excavation.

  He took up his talismans, wishing he had some better way to carry them. He would need at least one hand, and the idea of placing either the hair or the razor in his mouth revolted him. Transferring them to his left, Elisha rolled back onto his stomach, relieving the pressure on his shoulders. He took a deep breath, his last within the coffin, and pushed himself toward the dirt. Feeling ahead for the minute spaces Chanterelle had shown him were always there, Elisha moved the dirt. Thankfully, it was freshly turned, loose, rather than packed. He moved as carefully as he could, his right hand extended before him, keeping his eyes closed against this rough, new darkness. Again, he felt the chill. It must be someone else had died near here, leaving a trace.

  Elisha kept his awareness tighter. He had strength enough for this without taking on that terrible power. The crossroads was clear toward the city but had some clumps of brush toward the west. It should be safe to emerge there, and not so far that it would tax his strength completely. When he found the roots of those bushes, he would know to rise. In between, the ground would be hard, unturned, and he would need a greater extension of power. He crept forward, his knees and toes pushing against the wood of the coffin, then scraping the small stones, grinding in the dirt. Elisha gritted his teeth and went on, until his battered toes touched the soil, the coffin left behind him. The pressure increased, the weight of earth bearing down on him, and it was a continual process using the contact of every grain of dirt against any surface of his body to push the earth away and behind, allowing it to tumble into the coffin.

  His right hand shivered. He inched it forward again, but the cold grew worse, creeping up his hand until his fingers felt numb and cramped. Now his wri
st and arm trembled.

  Cursing inwardly, Elisha released a bit of his focus, taking his attention from the tiny grains to the cold earth that stretched before him. Something mixed with the dirt here, making it lighter than it should be. Elisha snapped back his hand. His stomach roiled. He felt the earth reaching back toward him, felt the terrible sense of loss, like the fury of the crows, but close, so close. Chanterelle. Now that his focus wavered, he could feel her, all around him, mingled with the earth. Morag had slain her and ground her into the dirt she knew. Every bit of soil, every stone, stung with the taint of her death.

  Chapter 36

  Elisha’s lungs burned, tears trapped behind the squeezed lids of his eyes. He kept his jaw clamped shut against the urge to gulp for air—there was none but the tiny pockets trapped between the grains of earth. Not enough. His chest couldn’t expand, his ribs groaned. All around him, the dirt grew dense, pressing in on him. He remembered the comfort Chanterelle used to take from this contact, but all he felt now were the echoes of her terror and the irretrievable union of her flesh with the dirt. Dirt-whore, Morag called her, when she came to answer Elisha’s need. And he had hunted her down.

  Elisha could not move forward. Even from here, his skin recoiled, and his hand rebelled against thrusting through her. To continue would be a violation as cruel and sickening as that of the men who drove her to earth to begin with. He tried to retreat, inching backward by digging in his toes, but the way behind was already filled with the earth he had displaced. His body cramped into the smaller space, pulling back from the edge of what he now recognized as another grave. He guessed if he moved aside and tried again, he would find the shreds of her mingled in a circle all around. He might probe deeper and try to go beneath—surely, in only one night, Morag could not have dug too far down. But going down meant doubling his effort for he would have to rise again. His nostrils itched from the effort of breathing. In fact, he itched from the soles of his feet to his battered toes and legs, to his aching sides to the top of his scraped and shaven head. The longer he delayed, the harder it would be to ignore the mounting unpleasantness of the sensations that built up in his flesh. He had to go up, right now, or die in truth only a few feet short of the grave.