Elisha Magus (20 page)

Elisha shook him off, touching Thomas’s lips in warning. “As you live, Your Highness, don’t speak. Your brother’s below.” The damp exhalation of Thomas’s breath passed over his fingers. But Alaric was only one man. If they jumped now, they could cut him down and drag his body into the open mound. His guards hovered at the edge of Elisha’s awareness—too far to come to their prince’s aid. Why then was the dread so heavy on him? Every stalk of heather quivered with it. The earth throbbed with it. For a moment, the night split open, a slice of brilliance that shivered down his flesh, then slid shut, and Alaric was no longer alone. But how did anyone get here without Elisha feeling his approach? Unless he had felt the man’s arrival, and it felt like death itself. He longed to turn and look down, but held back, waiting for the right moment rather than reveal their hiding place by moving without caution.

“Good Lord!” Alaric blurted. “Where did you come from?”

“I walked in places other men can’t dream of, Your Highness,” the newcomer drawled. “Or should I say, Your Majesty?”

“There’s still one obstacle to that,” Alaric snapped.

“That is your part, my prince.” The speaker added a hiss. “We are occupied on other fronts.”

“What, still working in Naples? I can understand the Holy Roman Empire giving you a bit of trouble, but Naples? Really.”

Elisha wished he could see the prince, to see whether his stance matched his brave words or if it revealed the fear that ran beneath them.

At his side, Thomas stirred, his eyes flaring. His wife had been from the Empire, Elisha recalled: daughter of the emperor himself. Elisha lay his hand over Thomas’s, sending him a whisper of calm—the best he could manage for either of them.

“I see you have been paying attention, Your Highness,” said the stranger in a long, slow tone. “Then you know we have made kings before. And unmade them. Your bravado does not impress me.”

Even now that Elisha could hear the stranger and sense the stir of Alaric’s emotions in response to him, Elisha felt nothing like the layering of physical and emotional humanity that defined the presence of another person. Where Morag’s presence had been invisible, even when Elisha could see and touch him, this man projected an air of authority, demanding reverence. It reminded Elisha of nothing less than entering a church—that instant need for genuflection after a lifetime’s indoctrination. The projection, however, did not show Elisha who the man was the way a presence ought to do—rather, it showed him how the man intended to be received. He did not merely deflect the senses, he manipulated them to his own ends, creating for himself an air more regal than mere royalty. Elisha had never realized such a deliberate manipulation was possible, until now.

No owl nor crow nor rustle of heather broke the silence now, until Alaric sighed. “Yes, forgive me. I do appreciate all you’ve done and will do.”

“And all you have to do is kill one man. One man. Really.”

“I could kill him gladly myself if—”

“If you knew where to find him.”

“I see him everywhere—in every thief in the shadows, every beggar seeking alms.” Alaric’s voice held a note of hysteria, then he murmured, “He slipped the assassins. He dodged his own bodyguards and eluded the whole bloody Northern Army, and you think I am going to find him.”

Thomas went rigid at Elisha’s side, the words of his brother’s confession stilling them both.

“It is not the first of your plans to go awry, Highness. Since early Spring, nay, since you changed your mind about your betrothal, events seem to have been slipping from your command.”

“My father’s still dead, isn’t he?”

“Owing primarily to a barber and a baby’s head.”

Elisha flicked a glance toward Thomas, and found the other gazing back at him, silent and barely breathing.

“This is getting us nowhere. If you want me to rule, we need to find Thomas.”

“Do we want you to rule? That is not so obvious as it once was.”

Elisha shifted carefully, drawing back his awareness as he clothed himself in deflection, turning slowly until he could look down upon the scene. He did not break contact with Thomas, leaving his hand to rest upon a taut wrist, hoping the deflection could do for him as well.

Alaric swallowed, then he adjusted his golden chain. “What, would you raise up Thomas now? Everyone’s heard he tried to hire out our father’s death. The last thing the barons want is a king so eager and devious he’d kill his own father.” His lips curled into a smile, as if he had the magus right where he wanted him, and Elisha wondered if his terror were as transparent to the other as it was to himself.

Alaric stood across the dell, a wary distance from the robed figure before him, who remained just below Elisha’s hiding place. The edges of the robe furled and shifted in a sinuous pattern, obeying no mortal wind, even as they concealed him from head to toe. It resembled less a garment than a drapery of shadows. The regal projection faded, and dread hung upon the air, a creeping sensation that gave Elisha a sudden sympathy for the hare, quivering in the grass before a hound, uncertain if it could flee, desperately hoping that stillness could conceal it. If Sundrop had drawn the moisture from the air, this magus drew the light, creating a void of terror where even the breeze dare not stir.

“You are not the only candidates,” the magus replied, and before Alaric could question him, the man went on: “But we do harbor a certain admiration for your daring.” For a moment that miasma of fear lessened, and the robe of shadows warmed as if to an approaching dawn.

The shock of opening rippled once more against Elisha’s skin, and he clamped his teeth against his cry. A brief flash and a chill wind ruffled the heather as if blowing from a long passage where a light was suddenly extinguished. Another magus stood there, shifting his hunched shoulders with a satisfied groan. “Never get ’nough o’ that, I tell you. Better than fucking, init?”

“I shall ask you to keep your crudities to yourself,” the master drawled.

At the voice, Elisha’s skin felt suddenly colder. Morag, together with his mysterious master. But why did the master bring another magus? Then Elisha saw Alaric’s throat bobbing, and his sharp exhalation blew frosty in the air. They played with power, taunting each other it seemed; even as the master exuded that hint of dawn, suggesting he approved of Alaric, he brought another to stand for night. Alaric’s allies could come and go as they pleased. They could appear out of nowhere and summon one another. What else might they do? Alaric, faced now with two of them, was braver than Elisha had imagined. Even Elisha’s presence at his side could not balance such allies.

“Morag, here, will help you … Highness. Myself, I have other matters to attend to.” The tall, robed figure gave a wave of one hand and vanished with a shock of cold. Elisha thought Morag’s technique too quick and powerful for him to follow, but it still released a sense of the passage—that howling turmoil of tortured wraiths. This man arrived and left with the deftness of a surgeon lancing the darkness.

“What’ll it be then?” Morag asked. “Got another war for me?”

Alaric recoiled, but his tension eased, and the arrogance of his role returned. He’d been left with a servant, no longer worthy of the master’s attention. Apparently, the sting of this insult couldn’t outweigh his sheer relief. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find you in such company. What did you do with the barber?” Then he jerked forward, going pale. “You didn’t bring him to your master, did you?” His glance flickered to where the master had vanished.

Morag chuckled. “Naw—yon barber wasn’t havin’ any of that.”

Alaric covered this new relief with irritation, growling, “Then where is he? I thought you meant to help me bury him.”

“Pfff. He weren’t ripe yet.” Morag flapped his hand. “I’ll do it, Highness, in good time. That why you got me here?”

Was he ripe now? Elisha hoped not to find out.

“I should feel a good deal better if I—”

“Leave me the barber, Highness.” For a moment, Morag’s absurd guise slipped, and a hint of his dark power eddied in the air.

Alaric swallowed and gave a single nod. “I need you to search for someone—you are capable of that, I trust, and without any surprises? I need to know precisely where he is.”

“Oh, it’s precision you’re wanting.” Morag shifted with a creak of his leather jerkin. “You’ve got something of his, have you? Something close?”

Reaching into a pouch at his waist, Alaric produced a slender bundle and unwrapped it to reveal a short, sharp bodkin, easily concealed. “It’s marked with his blood. Will it do?” but he asked coolly, and Elisha guessed he already knew the answer.

The other grinned. “Oh, aye, Highness. Blood’s the best, next to flesh, eh?” He reached out for it and Elisha’s heart sank. Morag would search for Thomas with his blood and find him—steps away from his brother’s sword. Elisha’s strongest deflection might conceal himself, but if Morag was any sort of sensitive, then Thomas was dead. Elisha searched his mind for some defense. Deflection was triggered by the law of opposites, inverting your own presence. If blood could be used to search, it could also conceal.

Elisha tugged on his shirt, and it pulled free from the dried blood at his chest. It stung, then trickled damp once more. He ran his fingers lightly over the wound, then turned swiftly to Thomas. “Don’t move,” he breathed. “Don’t speak.” He smeared his own blood across the prince’s forehead, the mark of his hand staining the prince’s cheek. “Whatever happens next, whatever you hear, do not move.”

Thomas seized his arm, drawing him closer. “What are you doing?”

“Saving your life.” He hoped. His blood might conceal the prince, at least to a casual search. Might. If he could tip the balance a little further.

Elisha broke away, rolled, and jumped down to meet the necromancer.

H
e landed,
stumbling slightly, and caught himself with one hand against the stone, wincing as it jolted his injured wrist. Alaric cried, “Holy Mother!” followed swiftly by the swish of drawn steel.

“Hallo, what’s this? Elisha Barber, init? Very pleased we meet again. And weren’t we just speaking of you.” He lifted his blunt hand as if tipping his cap, but he still held the assassin’s knife.

“What are you doing here?” Alaric demanded, then he hesitated, his glance shifting over his shoulder, toward the village where he’d found Brigit. He glared at Elisha, shifting into a swordsman’s stance.

“When I heard armed men approaching, hiding seemed like the best option.” He met Alaric’s hard stare. There were moments during the prince’s conversation with the mysterious magus that Elisha had recalled the young prince’s bravado and charm. Twice he had saved the prince’s life and been repaid in kind when King Hugh sprang a trap to catch both himself and Duke Randall. In the church, Alaric pleaded for his aid, only to turn to his destruction when Brigit’s brutal treatment fouled his attempt. Now, Alaric looked older, more fierce and yet more fragile, like a blade hammered a bit too hard. It might strike a killing blow or shatter on impact.

“You came here to meet Brigit, didn’t you?”

“To take back what she stole from me, Your Highness.”

“I see,” the prince replied but with an arch of his brow that implied disbelief.

Morag chuckled, a throaty sound that jiggled his hunched shoulders. “Seems like maybe thanks are in order, yer Majesty. Given he did off your dad and all.” His grin was tilted, his breath foul with rotten teeth.

“No doubt the country shall improve with better leadership—even for those of lesser rank. Serfs. Barbers. Common folk.”

Morag prowled behind Alaric and back again, emerging from the darkness by Alaric’s shoulder. He tipped up his scruffy chin. “Not a bad idea, yer Majesty, t’bring him in on your side.”

They were a study in opposites: the prince tall, handsome, clad in riding clothes, but richly so, while his companion was stocky, lumpish, stinking. Elisha wondered if the man were leprous and had some putrefaction concealed beneath his sloppy clothes.

“He’s already rejected that offer. Really, he leaves me no choice.” Alaric held up his sword, but his glance flicked from Elisha to Morag, as if he couldn’t decide which of them was more worrisome. And Thomas had thought Elisha bargained with the Devil.

The hunched magus watched him beneath bushy brows, and Elisha felt the fleeting tingle of the man’s awareness extended to him, like the touch of fleas in bedstraw. The brows gave a minute twitch. Somehow, Elisha had reacted to the invisible touch. Morag knew and it surprised him. Morag turned the assassin’s knife in his hands, a trinket too small to deal death to princes.

“You heard all we said, didn’t you?” Alaric smiled a little, the smile of a conspirator to his mates, resting back on one heel as he slipped his sword back into the scabbard. “I have nothing against you, really. Nothing that a marriage or two won’t settle. We don’t have to trust each other to work well together.” He tipped his head a bit toward Morag, offering an example.

The invisible touch advanced again, this time so softly it was more of a change of atmosphere, like the opening of a distant door that disturbed the pattern of dust in the air. Elisha willed himself to stillness, to reveal nothing, clamping down on his emotions to be sure not a whisper of his heart could be read by another. His hand tingled, the fingers slightly numb, perhaps due to the binding that supported his sprained wrist.

“I don’t think he’s listening, Majesty. He’s a bit distracted, eh?”

“It’s this place,” Elisha said, gesturing toward the mounds that made the darkness more complete. “It’s not the best for conversation. Surely there’s a tavern at Beaulieu with a private room? We could meet on equal ground, without soldiers or hostages.”

“A good wine would ease my palate,” the prince agreed, but Morag’s furrowed face twisted.

“Not the best? This place? Why, I’da thought a man like you, a magus full-blown and besotted with the dead would love it!”

Damn it. The prince might accept his misdirection, but Morag already suspected something. Elisha dropped his defensive skin and unfurled his awareness instead. With sickening clarity, the scene swelled inside his mind, the lurking presence of the dead in the mounds, the sprinkling of pain that echoed on the surface, the looming stones behind him with their terrible juncture: the heat of Thomas’s presence marked by his blood, and the cold weight of the talisman, so close together that their edges blurred, and Elisha might not have known the living man from the sucking distraction of the dead. Pray God that Morag felt the same. Before him, the prince’s cockiness returned. Untrained in the ways of witches, his emotions flickered out around him, eager now to go, hopeful that Elisha would go with him and give him some alternative to his unpleasant allies.

But from Morag himself, Elisha felt nothing. He could stare straight at the man, could feel the breeze of his passing as he stalked another circuit past Elisha, leaning closer, and feel nothing at all, not even the sense of an object, the way he felt the standing stones at his back. Every muscle in his body tightened, and he forced his hands not to make fists. “You’re a gravedigger—I guess it means more to you than it does to me.”

“Really.” Morag rocked back. “I heard you were close with Death, like a lover, eh? Didn’t notice it last we met.”

“Maybe the
indivisi
should be talking to you.”

Morag’s laughter echoed around him. “Babies! Their knowledge is shit.
Desolati
, like the rest. But maybe it takes a baby head for you to get a rise up, eh?”

The words shot straight to his memory. Morag still had contact with him, despite his own defenses—but how? He tried to shake off the vision, but still he saw his own hands take up the sorry thing, the remains of his brother’s child, and pack the little head in a jar with some vain idea of healing it, bringing it back to life with the mystical Bone of Luz. But neither medicine nor magic could wake the dead. He swallowed, his chin dipping, but forced himself to watch Morag. Cold crept up his numbed fingers, insinuating itself into his flesh as if he held the copper jar, his skin sticking, the horror of its contents seeping into him. Elisha’s stomach clenched, and his ribs felt too tight.

“No,” he protested, but too quietly, trying to focus long enough to work out what Morag was doing to him, and how.

Morag watched him, a spectator at a bear pit, eyes alight, thick lips caught in a fascinated smile. Then he held out the little knife toward Alaric. “Hold this for us, Majesty. Your brother’ll wait.” He emphasized the word “brother,” and Elisha shivered, his effort to focus shredding into nothing. In his mind, he opened the door to his brother’s shop, searching, and found blood, pooled in his basin, spattered on the floor, oozing from the dead man’s throat.

“Nathan,” Elisha whispered, and his knees buckled. Morag caught his arm in a powerful grip, sinking down with him.

His brother lay dead, a suicide, blond hair tossed over his face, revealing the awful wound. Elisha held him, the body already growing cold, his guilt grown colder still. He steadied himself on the offered arm. The blood, his brother’s life severed, as the child’s had been. If only Elisha hadn’t been so arrogant. If he hadn’t been such a fool as to doubt his brother’s love, if he—Christ, what a waste. His brother’s life, his brother’s blood allowed to drain away. For a moment, the talisman’s power echoed in his chest with the horror of a life cut short. How much more powerful would his brother’s head have been? Elisha gagged, turning away, trying to put off the image. It was not his thought! It never had been. He hated that power, hated the strength it gave him and the injury it made him capable of. And he hated most of all the way it made him feel: that sense as he moved to kill the king that he, Elisha, conquered all. “No,” he whispered, or tried to, but his dry lips did not move.

Was it not enough that he hated it? That he renounced it at every step? But he could use it, too. Brigit’s face drifted before him, Brigit’s suggestion that this power might be harnessed against evil. What he might do in the name of justice. No witches need burn. No soldiers need die. No princes need hide. Elisha gasped, jerking out of the memory he was forced to imagine—and not a moment too soon. Morag’s face thrust inches from his own, the man’s breath clouding before him, the man’s grip holding him steady. The face broke into silent laughter. “Go on, then, Barber. What else could you do with a dead man’s blood?”

Morag was leading him, like a dog herding a sheep, merely by suggesting which way to go. The miasma of grief and despair echoed in Elisha’s memories, and all Morag need do was push him a step too far. The cold on Elisha’s arm, where he caught himself as he stumbled in the grass. The cold of Death, and the slick, creeping sensation of another man’s blood damp upon his hand. If he’d been less worried, he would have understood right away: the mancers had spattered the blood of a dead man all over the ground. It marked Elisha now and left him open. Morag kept his insidious contact, the insect-tingle of his awareness smothering Elisha’s skin.

Elisha summoned up the cold of this stranger’s death and struck back. The blood stung his arm, frost swirling out in tendrils, and he lashed them forward toward the other man’s skin. Their misty breath between them turned to crystals that tinkled to the earth like rain. Morag twitched, but he didn’t let go. His fingers dug in, welcoming the cold, and the frost evaporated back into mist. But the blood showed Elisha more, it shimmered around in his secret senses, marking the ground around the barrow, the area carefully prepared to enable the mancers to work their magic and insulate themselves from outsiders. If the stranger’s blood gave him just a hint of death, it also gave him contact.

Elisha reached out through the earth to the next patch of blood and snatched at it, splashing the dirt away like water beneath Morag’s feet, and he lurched, at first dragging Elisha toward him, then letting go as the earth rocked. Elisha sprang away from him, but Morag scrambled up again, growling. “A pretty trick for a sensitive child.”

“Look,” Alaric began, but Morag cut him off with a gesture. “Stay back, Majesty.”

He reached toward his belt, and Elisha tensed, expecting a dagger, not the bottle that Morag pulled free. Again, he found the blood, the resonance around him of this one dead man. It came more easily now that he knew its touch, but it did not respond. No matter how he tried to twist it to his use. Instead, it cried out, as if his reaching awareness were a brand against the body that once contained it. He shied away, the wails of remembered death piercing his hearing from all around him. He wiped his hand against his trousers, trying to free himself from the dizzying shrieks that grew louder with every moment.

Something splashed across his face and throat. Elisha spun, wiping at his face. He had to find his balance, but the ground now tipped against him, sloshing at every step where it was marked with blood. His hand struck ground, scrabbling among the stones.

“I don’t need the knife, yer Majesty,” Morag said, his tone as ordinary as ever, “yer brother’s—”

Before Morag could finish, Elisha launched his assault. Knowledge, Mystery, Affinity—and a handful of stones that flew like arrows.

Morag howled and danced, slapping down the missiles Elisha flung at him. One arrow streaked across his brow, spattering his face with blood. Another pierced his leg, another stuck into the hump at his back, quivering there like a feathered banner. They had little force without the bow to fire them, but the tips could still draw blood and strengthen Elisha’s magic. Morag whirled, jerking free the shaft in his leg with a roar. “Stupid barber!” He flung up his hand.

Elisha’s face and throat scorched with pain as the dead stranger’s spattered blood sizzled with power. He screamed, staggering. Horror blazed to life through his skin, through the potency of the blood that marked him. It was not merely cold, but frigid. He could feel the work of Death.

It started with a lash of fear that built into a frenzy. He was attacked, beset, seized by a stranger in the dark. Strong hands tore his clothes and flung him down. Knives hacked into his arms and legs. He fought back with all his strength, bucking against the knees that bore him down, screaming against the knife that cut out his tongue, then choking on his own blood as he heard an awful ripping. Every inch of his body burned with pain.

Dimly, Elisha realized this death did not belong to him, but to another. Elisha fought it, but the force of the murder cascaded through him, carried by the victim’s blood, reaching down from his face, covering the mark of the angel’s wing.

He felt the rough stones of a path that scraped his body. “Help me!” he screamed aloud and gagged on the phantom blood that filled his mouth. He thrashed against the unseen, brutal hands. A blade carved into his belly and something burst. “Please,” he sobbed through ruined lips. “Please,” he begged, and he begged for death.