Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle (38 page)

“
I am now.
” Bowing his head, Elisha watched the rush of tiny silver fish around his feet, the muck of the bottom oozing between his toes.

“Where is Marigold?”
asked Briarrose.
“She was to meet me
.”

“I have a guess.”
Looking up to the king, Elisha sighed, the sound catching a little at the band of pain around his neck. He thought of the other empty rooms: Brigit’s, Lisbet and Maeve’s. The men might believe their prayers had saved Elisha, but the king would not—he would be looking for traitors. “What is your will, Your Majesty?”

Indicating the duke’s men, the king said, “Those good gentlemen have
come under a flag of truce. Why so? As well you may wonder. They wish to bargain for your life.”

Elisha frowned up at them. It made no sense.

The king shrugged his broad shoulders and smiled. “Even before the physician started spouting his nonsense,” —this brought a cry of outrage from Lucius— “I have intended your death, for one crime and another. But how has the duke heard of it, and, more importantly, why does he care?”

Wetting his lips, Elisha bent his thoughts to that question.
“One of you is in the castle of the duke,
” he whispered in the water.

“
We do not speak of politics
,” someone answered.

“
I don’t give a damn about politics.
” Elisha’s frustration cracked through his attempts at control.

“
Then why turn the arrows to rain?
” asked a gentle touch upon his feet: the voice of Willowbark. “
You have already taken sides.”

“
Men were dying.
” He glanced back to the bridge, to the silent scarecrow figure of Mordecai, surrounded by the king’s men. “
They still are
.” When he searched in that direction, despite the distance, despite the fact that Mordecai stood on stone, and Elisha in the water, he felt the tremor of the older man’s bones. Fear and worry gathered at the back of his throat, and a strange serenity centered around the prayer shawl.

“I am waiting for your answer, Barber. Why should the duke be interested in you, when you have so vehemently claimed not to know him?”

Turning back, Elisha noted the king’s too-casual stance, the slight drumming of his fingers. He had no sense of attunement to the man. But while he did not know the king as he knew the surgeon, his eyes could serve him well enough. Elisha did not need to feel the emotions in the air to know that they were dangerous. “I’ve already told you the truth of the one time I met the duke. But he is besieged, Your Majesty, what does he have to bargain with?”

Narrowing his eyes over his hawk-like nose, the king appraised him. “I discovered my traitor, have you heard? That very lord who received my message.” He gave a grim smile. “He was meant to assemble the force that would take advantage of my tunnel. Instead, he waited a few days to allay my suspicions, then turned over both message and messenger to the duke.” The sharp blue eyes leveled at Elisha as he realized what this meant: The duke had known to aim his bombard at the sapper’s tunnel because this unnamed ally
of the king—now proven false—had told him, and given him Prince Alaric as a hostage.

He wondered if Brigit knew where her lover was now.

“Your Majesty, I—”

“Apparently my son has offered to recant his claims against the duke’s daughter in exchange for his freedom, but why does my enemy want you? Why is he ready to offer such a prize—my own son—for the life of a miserable barber?”

Miserable indeed, Elisha thought. “Your Majesty, I wish I knew.”

Still staring, the king flicked his fingers.

Elisha whirled in time to see the guards shove Mordecai against the bridge rail. One of them caught his arm, jerking the hand flat against the stone.

“No!” Elisha ran with the current, but the guard had drawn a hatchet.

The blade arched through the air, descending with a cold whistle, splitting skin, hacking bone, chinking into the stone below.

Elisha screamed, grabbing his own wrist. His knees buckled, dropping him into the river.

The severed hand tumbled like a shot dove and splashed beneath the bridge. Blood streamed after it.

Mordecai remained silent, his wrist lifted by the guard, his eyes shut, but a wave of anguish shot through Elisha’s body from his right arm, and his right hand felt cold, quivering as if water washed over it. Fear, pain, loss all eddied in the river.

Up on the bridge, Mordecai’s head pitched forward, and the guard let his arm slip free as the surgeon crumpled to the stone.

Elisha gripped his own wrist. If he felt the pain, then it must be possible for Mordecai to feel the cure. Doubled over in the water, Elisha pulled free the cord which should have tied his shirt. Using his teeth and left hand, he jerked it into a tight circle at his wrist, the cord sliding easily into the grooves already worn by the leather belt the guards had used to bind him. As he had once felt through the surgeon’s vision, he now joined the two of them together, reaching out to know the angle of the cut, which bones snapped, and where the tendons shriveled. He pulled the ligature as tight as he could stand, then a little tighter, his hand going numb and stiff. He couldn’t see Mordecai
behind the stone rail. He could only pray it would work, but he would have to get to him soon.

“Usually,” the king observed, “I have to threaten wives and children, or other lords, at the very least. Killing Jews and peasants hardly seems sporting.” He laughed as Elisha raised his head. “Oh, yes, there’s more. A girl, a soldier, a few men fighting under a banner of a hare.” He flipped his hand negligently. “Anyone who visited you. Anyone who helped you up this morning, or dared to speak your name.”

“What do you want from me?” Elisha howled. Icy fingers seemed to take his hand. He was running out of time. Waves of shock shivered through him. “To get your son back, you need only let me go.”

At this, the king laughed again, and fury began to supplant the cold in Elisha’s blood.

“
Sage?
” someone asked. “
What’s happening?
”

“
Sage can’t answer,
” Elisha cried in that secret way.

The king strolled along the bank until he drew abreast of Elisha again.

“
I thought I felt him
.”

“
You did. He’s dying—shut up
!” His teeth clenched to hold in the start of the giddy laughter.

Dropping to one knee, the king leaned out over the water to get close to Elisha, who shot him a glare. “Now, Barber, it’s just a Jew, after all. Think of the others yet to come.”

“What do you want?” Elisha repeated.

He dropped his voice to a murmur. “I’ll make the bargain; you’ll kill the duke.”

“I’m not a murderer.”

Sharp teeth flashed through the king’s bearded smile. “But I am.” He rose swiftly. “Bring out the girl.”

Elisha jerked to his feet, fear flooding his brain, but it was not Brigit the guards held between them. Not Brigit—Lisbet, and Ruari bound behind her. The girl’s frightened gaze flitted here and there, searching for an ally.

“You were expecting someone different,” the king murmured, “No,
that
girl deserves something special. She seems so very like her mother.”

Elisha met the king’s eyes. “I’ll do it.”

Losing his smile, the king said, “His body in the river at dawn, or I’ll
pitch them from the tower. One by one. You can watch.” Turning, he summoned the two men in the duke’s livery to approach. “Well, he knows no more than you reveal about your master’s purpose, but I will accept your bargain. Send out the messenger in one hour, and I will do the same.”

Bowing briefly, the two men hurried away, glancing all around them, giving the king all the trust he was due. Perhaps they guessed at his whispered command, or perhaps the brutal amputation had shaken them, not understanding its cause. They hurried over the bridge, past the king’s guards, scuffing Mordecai’s blood into the dirt on the other side.

Giving them a cheery wave, the king turned again to Elisha. “Are you truly a witch?”

“What do you think?” Elisha muttered. The river voices, which had grown silent at his rebuke, began to reach out again, tentative and frightened.

With a hearty laugh, the king shook his head.

“I have seen it!” the physician said, stomping along his side of the bank, pointing back at Benedict’s body. “When I was defending myself from the treachery of my assistant, this man sought to defend him with the dark arts, turning my bolts into serpents of the water.” His outthrust finger shook.

Again, the king laughed. “Is it true, Barber?”

Elisha merely stared up at him, ignoring the mottled colors of his hand as he tucked it beneath the opposite arm.

“I thought not. He’s too dull-witted for magic. If he could do it, he would defend himself now.”

They might argue all day over his head, while Mordecai lay dying on the bridge—so near, and yet unreachable while the king’s guards surrounded him. Shutting his eyes, Elisha reached out into the water. The touch faded quickly, but he found what he sought, and called it back, by the bond between them.

From their opposite bank of the river, the king called out insults, and the physician sought to counter them, to convince the king of Elisha’s complicity. How much more dangerous could a witch be on the side of the enemy, surely there was—

Focusing his will upon his own ends, Elisha drowned out their words. He opened his eyes, searching the shadows on the far side of the bridge.

There! A small, pale thing bobbed in the water, slowly but inexorably moving upstream.

One of the men on the bridge saw it first. He gasped and blanched—crossing himself as Mordecai’s hand passed from sun into shadow and emerged again.

“Your Majesty!” someone shouted, leaning over the rail. Beside him, two men were sick, one fainted, the rest started to back away.

Lisbet’s keepers hurried back the way they’d come with the girl flung over a shoulder.

A young man broke and fled the waterside, crying aloud for divine salvation. In moments, half the guards were with him. Some of the rest drew weapons and sprang after the deserters, relieved to have a reason to run that would not look like cowardice.

In his trance, Elisha reached down to the water, lifting the sad and severed thing in his palms. Hours before, this hand had saved his life.

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Elisha turned to the king. He raised his head, feeling his shorn locks along his cheeks, and started to smile. “The hand of a healer is a powerful thing, Your Majesty,” he said, his voice even and deep. He took a step toward the king, water tugging at him with a thousand questions.

Scrambling to his feet, the king stumbled back a pace. “What can you do?” he sneered. “Abuse me with a Jew’s remains?”

“I will tear your face off,” Elisha replied, taking another step. “I will rip the intestines from your belly and bind you to the tail of a horse from Hell.” He reached the bank. “I will cause your eyes to boil in your head and collect your screams to summon a thousand demons. I will snap a hole into that skull of yours and laugh while your brains ooze out into your beard.”

Retreating inch by inch, the king darted a glance around. His few defenders trembled as they shifted toward him. “If you can do all this, why haven’t you done it?” he shouted boldly enough, but his voice quavered.

Elisha’s gaze never faltered.

As he mounted the bank, Elisha stripped the seeds from a frond of grass. Bearing Mordecai’s hand upon his bound right palm, he flicked a seed at the king.

“Now is your doom upon you!” Elisha howled.

An egg struck the royal forehead, spattering the king’s face.

Reeling at the blow, the king screamed and ran. He flailed at his hair, flinging off the sticky stuff. His guards sprang to his aid, some glancing backward, staring at Elisha wild-eyed.

Elisha sprang onto the bank and sprinted for the bridge.

Mordecai lay sprawled against the rail, footprints tracking through his blood in both directions. Dropping to his knees, Elisha gently touched his neck—still warm—and found his heart still beating.

Bending over Mordecai, Elisha carefully raised the stump of his arm. No blood flowed from the severed veins. Maintaining a firm grip, he untied the bond around his own wrist with his teeth and quickly bound off Mordecai’s wounded arm.

Lying the hand upon its owner’s bare stomach, Elisha gathered Mordecai into his arms, awkward as his own hand tingled with returning life. His sense of connection with the surgeon wavered, despite their contact.

Moaning, Elisha pulled Mordecai closer. “
Live!”
he urged without voice.
“I have already lost a man today, I will not lose another.
”

There was no answer.

Struggling to his feet as a chill swept through him, Elisha took a moment to steady himself. Mordecai felt light in his arms, a fallen bird. An angel.

Again, the brief wind of death ruffled his heart.

Wetting his lips, Elisha remembered the warmth of the surgeon’s hands, reaching him in the dark and cold. Mordecai in his arms, he stumbled toward the church, toward the altar where he had lain to rest his unholy burden. The talisman of strength enough for such powerful magic.

Slipping on a bloody step, Elisha twisted in his fall to strike his own back rather than cause Mordecai more harm.

At the jolt, the surgeon’s dark eyelids fluttered, and the lips parted to let out a sigh of breath.

“Sage?”
Elisha cried.

“
It’s you.
” A touch as fragile as frost.

“
Of course. Of course I’m here
.” Staggering, he regained himself and started to run.

“
I am not dead
.”

“
You will not die.
” Elisha countered fiercely.

Again, that sigh. “
Pity.
”

The delicate warmth of contact slipped away again, and Elisha cursed. He splashed through the brook and fetched up at the door of the church, only to find a barricade built across it. As he panted for breath, he heard the rise and fall of Latin liturgy—a desperate Mass to ward off the evil of himself.