Elisha Magus (22 page)

C
rows settled around him.
They hopped upon the earth and dropped onto the stones. They landed on his shoulders, claws pricking at his flesh.

In his secret senses, he found their presence, a shifting, fluttering form. A hundred lives both small and worthy, and somewhere beyond them, the lingering sense of their mistress, a woman who loved every feathery soul. Their swirling wings and patterns wove a screen of darkness, misleading the soldiers, giving him time.

Simple healing relied on the body’s need to be whole, but it needed Thomas’s strength, and the king’s presence faded fast beneath his hands. He pressed harder, his own thighs straining as he pressed against the earth.

He had knowledge and affinity in plenty, if he dared to use it. His years of surgery in London, not to mention the hundred wounds of the battlefield, taught him the muscles, veins, and arteries he had envisioned in that flash when he understood the wound. He sought them now inside himself, drawing his awareness deep into his body until he could track the course of every vein.

Slipping his awareness to Thomas, Elisha caught his breath at the length and depth of the wound at the king’s thigh. He felt it now as if it sliced his own skin. In his mind, he overlaid the images, Thomas’s wound, his own whole flesh. Thomas’s body wanted to heal, to be whole, but it had not the strength until Elisha showed the way.

He drew a deep breath, and drew down the strength of the crows, the mad woman’s talismans in their thousands. Power echoed from one to the next with the magnification of magic and resonated through his flesh, steadying his shaking hands. Thomas’s skin twitched, his muscles shivered. At the same time, Elisha felt a chill slice across his own thigh and gasped. He fought it, trying to hold the single image of unbroken flesh. Pain streaked through him. He convulsed against it, reaching for the birds. Something winked into darkness. Then another, and another. And each one sent a short, sharp energy into his hands. The pain eased and the shivering ceased. Elisha bowed over Thomas, his arms trembling and his hands slipping from their place. The gash in the fabric showed smooth skin, curled with hairs, barely a scar to reveal where Death had tried to mark him.

Elisha gave a breathless laugh, stronger now than when he started.

Crows burst into the air around him, cawing wildly. Those on his shoulders launched with a tearing of claws and Elisha reared back as they ripped his shirt and scraped his skin with stinging welts. It reminded him all too clearly of the day of his flogging. He waved his arms to scatter the rest.

A dozen black feathered forms littered the ground around him, unmoving, their claws curled and eyes glinting.

“Necromancer!” shrilled a woman’s voice. “We came to help, we did, and what did you do? You killed them and ate their lives like candies.” The crow-mage stormed between the mounds. She dropped beside the dead birds, wailing, then gathering them, crooning over each one. Under her hood, her eyes and mouth crumpled in pain, tears streaking her face.

“Forgive me,” Elisha said. “You came—they came—when I needed you. I never meant—”

“What you meant doesn’t matter! It’s not what you mean, it’s what you are.”

“Majesty!” called a distant voice. “Your Majesty, where are you?” Feet thumped, and the fire’s glow died at the gap Chanterelle had made to break the circle of blood. The last of Morag’s deflection was spent with his departure, the crow-mage snatched back her magic at Elisha’s betrayal. Alaric’s men would soon be searching, their master absent too long now.

Elisha turned to the crow-mage while testing the ragged pulse at Thomas’s throat. “You and your friends saved his life, mother. I can never repay that.”

She hissed at him, then rose up, her arms full of crows, her face buried in their bodies. Weeping, she stumbled away, leaving a drift of dark feathers.

Elisha gathered Thomas’s head against him, catching him under the arms, and dragged him, stumbling, to the open end of the large barrow. He hauled them both inside and fell to his knees beneath the lintel where he and Thomas had lain earlier. The dead crows’ strength lingered with him still, and Elisha worked a desperate deflection as Alaric’s men spied their prince and ran. Elisha cast the last of the crows’ power into his spreading awareness and found the soldiers’ sense of despair, fear, a darkness too black for mere torches to penetrate.

“Your Majesty!” Mortimer and three others stumbled into view, their boots singed, and they dropped down by the fallen prince.

Clutching Thomas against his chest, hardly daring to breathe, Elisha stared as they checked Alaric’s body, and Mortimer at last slumped onto his heels, shaking his head. He reached out to close the prince’s still, blue eyes, then reached a little lower, noting the absence there. “Have they killed you for a chain?”

“By God—so much blood!” swore one of the guards, and crossed himself with a trembling hand. “Surely they are wounded, some even dead to have bled so much. We’ll find them, my lord.”

“Will we?” Mortimer looked up. “There was magic and devilry here. Or how should all this blood have been shed without our hearing?”

“And them mounds just … gone.” The guard grimaced.

“Heathen things. I’m sure it’s bound up with the demon that stole the barber,” Mortimer said. “I fear our king moved away from the Lord this night, just when he was most in need.”

A few others pounded up, breathing hard. “Nothing, my lord. No sign of anyone leaving.” The leader frowned into the shadow of the standing stones, and Elisha held his breath. He strengthened the darkness as the soldier approached, calling up the layers of despair and grief that lingered there. Sheltered in the mouth of a tomb, he sat upon the precipice dividing life from death and turned that wicked edge to defend them.

The soldier leaned between the stones, his breath forming a mist as his gaze roved over Elisha’s head. Finally, he drew back with a shiver and turned away, slumping in defeat.

“Come—we cannot leave him lie. In the morning, we shall conduct a thorough search and not a bandit nor a beggar shall remain. If the demon or the barber remains to be found, we shall find them.” Mortimer directed the men to drape Alaric with his fine velvet cloak and lift him gently, the ermine trailing blood at his feet. As the bearers moved away ahead of him, Mortimer straightened and took another glance about. He slid his fingers beneath his doublet and took out a golden cross, gripping it. “Thy will be done,” he murmured. Then he smiled at the darkness and strode away.

E
lisha felt them
withdraw even as he heard their footsteps retreat. Finally, he let the shield of despair sink back into nothing. He slumped against the stone, cradling the king against his chest. His arms shook, the gory holes still open at his palms, but he tried to breathe normally. He swore he would allow himself only a moment’s rest, a blessed moment’s peace upon the terrible night. His eyes slid shut.

Pain jolted him awake as his hand was briefly gripped, and he glanced down to find Thomas’s eyes open, barely visible but for their liquid sheen. Thomas’s hand released Elisha’s, the fingers shifting to probe, but gently.

“What did he do to you?” Thomas murmured.

Elisha stared into the darkness, mastering his breath.

“What have I done to deserve such a defender?” Thomas whispered.

“Something very wicked indeed,” Elisha told him. He wanted to smile, as if this were a jest, but he had known the thrill of taking the lives of crows and bending them to his own will. He knew the joy that Morag felt at opening his passage through Hell, and he knew the awful affinity between them.

“No,” said Thomas, his voice still low, “Surely God has brought you to me.”

“It wasn’t God out there tonight. It was the very Devil.” The very least of the Devils—and he had beaten Elisha to the gates of Hell. When next they met, he would strip Elisha’s skin as a hunter strips a squirrel. Elisha tipped his head back against the stone and knew, with a stark cold truth, that the next time they met, he hadn’t a prayer.

After a time, and with a muffled sound of pain, Thomas moved to sit up. His chest and back must still be hurting; next time, Elisha must be sure to heal his patient more thoroughly. When he could gather the strength, and find some light, he must see to his own pierced hands.

“You healed me?” There was a soft clatter of chain. “I remember … crows. I saw your open eyes and a dagger stood between us.” And then, very softly, “I thought you were dead.”

Thomas’s warm hand found Elisha’s hair, his shoulder, trailed down his arm. Ever so carefully, he took Elisha’s damaged hand atop his own and gave a whisper of dismay. “Both?”

Elisha wet his lips, and whispered, “Aye.”

Their careful breathing dominated the close chamber they shared. Beyond the door, stars twinkled, serene above the plain of blood. Thomas shifted and something tore, then his hands returned, wadded with cloth that he pressed to Elisha’s wounds, his hands clasped between Thomas’s own. “Can’t you heal yourself?”

“Perhaps, had I one hand uninjured.” His palms throbbed beneath the king’s gentle pressure, as if they prayed together.

After a moment, Thomas said, “You have mine.”

“It hurts,” Elisha answered quickly, pushing away the king’s compassion. “You’ll feel the wounds as your own. If I’m not strong enough, they will be.”

“You are.” The king took a deeper breath. “You are strong enough. I know it.”

Elisha swallowed hard, grateful for the gloom cast by the distant moonlight. He did not think he could look upon the king as he worked, or meet his eye. For Thomas’s healing, he killed the crows, but he must rely upon the power around him for his own, the power of the dead who inhabited this place and those Morag had brought here, twisting them to terror. A final test, if a man could be with death.

The shades rose even as he began to reach, they echoed his call, growing more defined as he breathed, and Thomas’s grip tightened, ever so slightly, frost tingling in the air. “Talk to me,” Elisha said. “Distract yourself before it comes.”

Thomas drew a breath and said, “What of my brother?”

Elisha thought of his own brother. Nathaniel should have placed the blame for his losses where it truly belonged: with Elisha himself. “Dead,” Elisha told him, the word ringing in their little cavern as he reached his awareness down to his maimed hands, to the hands that covered them, still strong.

“I thought to curse him,” Thomas murmured. “Then I thought of dying with hatred on my lips.”

Alaric’s stricken face flashed before Elisha’s memory as his dying brother commended him to God. “It was curse enough for him to be blessed by you. Lord Mortimer seemed rather glad that Alaric was gone.”

Holding the image of the healed flesh—even marked by branding, as Elisha’s and Thomas’s both had been—Elisha brought the power in, and Thomas cried out, his hands jerking, and then it passed, and both of them gasped for breath before Elisha slid his hands away. They still ached at the center, as if the flesh remembered.

Thomas let out a long breath. “In spite of everything, I am still sorry at my brother’s death. Does that make me a fool?”

“Only in that you care too deeply.” The shadows he had summoned frayed as he worked and then dissipated, trembling as they passed. Even after they sank into their rest, the darkness felt so very cold. Perhaps their souls had gone to Heaven or to Hell, as the church would have him believe, but the memory of death was captured in their fleshly remains—the pain, the grief, the suffering, the loss—all the echoes that endowed a place or a talisman with power. Was his use of it any more pure than Morag’s? But Elisha had not slaughtered a stranger in an alley for the sake of the strength that he might steal, nor stripped the skin from the dead and sent them doubly naked to the grave. Elisha shivered, his head slumping, exhaustion passing through in giddy waves.

“I am a curse upon those I love, it’s true.” Thomas shifted a little away from Elisha, coming to sit beside him against the wall. “Do you know why my father burned the Lady Rowena?”

At Elisha’s murmur, Thomas went on: “I used to dream of her. I dreamed of battles where she—or perhaps, I think now, her daughter—stood by me. I dreamed of … the things that young men do, I suppose, when a woman is beautiful and out of reach.” His voice was halting, awkward in a way Elisha had not known him to be. Almost, Elisha was tempted to make contact and feel the king’s emotions, but Elisha’s awareness felt fragile, and Thomas’s confession too personal already.

“Lady Rowena was wise. Kind. She tutored us in history. I was trying to keep her away, avoiding her because of my dreams. I think it worried her, it made her … pursue me. Certainly Alaric thought she did. He told my father she was bewitching me. I don’t think Alaric meant for her to die—only to be sent away, to be punished for wanting me. For not wanting him.” Another deep breath, a swallow, and he finished the tale. “Until the day of the stake, I wasn’t ever sure she was a witch. She was the first to die for me.”

Brigit couldn’t possibly know this, that Alaric had betrayed her mother. She never would have seduced him if she knew the truth. What would become of her when she learned of Alaric’s death? They were not even married yet. If she viewed the body, would she know what Elisha had done?

“That was my last witch, Elisha.” Thomas spoke more firmly now. “And I did not even witness any magic—I closed my eyes at the stake and had to hear of it later. What happened tonight … it was …” His eyes focused past Elisha. “That Hell-spawn had my wife’s face on his belt, like a favor from his lord.”

In the slender moonlight that ebbed through their gruesome door, Elisha could see the pale cast to the king’s face. “A necromancer.”

At the word, Thomas recoiled and crossed himself.

“What all witches are said to be, he was in truth. He conjures magic from death. From murder, when he can get it. Mancers, the magi call them.”

“The very Devil indeed.” Then Thomas met his gaze. “And what are you?”

Elisha wanted to defend himself, to show himself unlike the mancers, but at the very least, Thomas deserved the truth. “In faith, I wish I knew.” Elisha moved his scarred hands, the hands he once claimed were the only thing he trusted. “Magic is based first upon knowledge. I am a surgeon by training, a healer from the day the lady burned. But to work for life is to understand death. The rule of opposites, we call it. When I slew your father, Highness, I called upon the strength of death itself. I did the same when I healed you.”

“You are with Death, the mancer said.”

“It means I know so much about Death that I can summon it without a talisman—without another way to magnify my power.”

“And the baby head?” Thomas asked, his voice sinking very low.

Elisha’s shoulders slumped. “A talisman,” he answered. “A very strong one. I did not mean it so.”

“That’s what I was carrying. The thing you thought would draw them to me.”

Nodding, Elisha said, “I have to get it. I meant to bury it.”

“I see.” Thomas moved to face him, regarding Elisha with a level, hard gaze. Beneath the grubby beard and wild hair, beneath the fatigue of bleeding and battle, just for a moment, Elisha saw the king that could be, weighing what he knew and passing judgment. Twice now, they fought a common enemy, each drawing blows meant for the other. Either of them would be dead if not for the other. But the set of Thomas’s jaw and the easy strength of his hands told the truth they both had been forgetting: this beggar, this branded thief, was the last man of the royal family in England. He had suffered too much already at the hands of those he could not trust, and he should consider Elisha to be among them.

Stiffly, Elisha rose to his knees. “I need to go fetch it, Your Majesty.”

“And if the soldiers return?”

“There will be more of them tomorrow.”

Thomas sighed in agreement.

“Besides, a witch has ways …” He gave a little shrug.

“You made sure they did not find us.” Then the king, too, stood. “It seems, for now, we are safer together.”

“In order to protect you, I need to have contact with you.”

Thomas tipped his head, laying his fingers along the line drawn on his face with Elisha’s blood. He watched from shadowed eyes until Elisha nodded. “You need contact as well to kill me,” said Thomas carefully.

“I would see you to safety, if you will let me, Your Majesty.”

“There is no safety for me here, Elisha. Nor anywhere.”

Elisha pushed himself into motion and crawled out of the narrow passage, his hands pulsing with his weight. “I think you’re wrong about Duke Randall, Your Majesty. I think he would serve you, if he knew you needed him.”

Thomas did not respond and drifted after Elisha, both choosing their steps carefully as they straightened up from beneath the lintel. They walked slowly, as if they’d aged a hundred years that night. Where would they go for safety? Elisha could not afford his exhaustion. Shaking himself, letting the sting of scrapes and the ache of bruises wake him, he opened his senses to the world. He felt drained yet alert at the same instant, vigilant, acutely aware of the man who walked behind him. He was the sole retainer of the uncrowned king.

By the light of the lowering moon, the trampled ground was visible, partially scorched when the mounds collapsed. Dark places spattered the heather, stains Elisha knew to be blood, some of it his own, too much of it Thomas’s. By now, the mancer’s blood markings must be so intermingled as to be nearly worthless, but he stared down at them, wondering how Morag and his master appeared out of nowhere and vanished there again, down a corridor of the dead. Where had they gone—all the way to Rome? Maybe, if Elisha were willing to murder someone, he, too, could follow that road. He, too, might walk through Hell from one place to another, as easily as he had walked here from the abbey. Then he saw Thomas kneel by the place where Alaric had fallen, and nausea rose to sear his throat. The murder, at least, he had already done. The murder of his second king.

Clamping a hand over his mouth, afraid almost to breathe, Elisha turned away and scrambled up the tilted stone. He spied the metal pot where he had left it the night before. Steeling himself, he took it up. Now that he had relaxed his intense awareness of Death, the pot lay in his palm without threat or chill. The Bone of Luz, the mystical bone said to allow resurrection, was a myth. But Elisha wondered if his recent experiences offered a new way to raise the dead. He thought of the pain captured in the shreds and blood of the men who Morag carried. If it were possible, Morag would have used his power to raise Alaric, perhaps using the blood the prince had spilled to enslave him just as he enslaved the ruins of his victims. If Morag, who reveled in power, could not do it, Elisha concluded, it could not be done.

Elisha rose to find his way down. Below him, kneeling in the trampled earth, Thomas prayed, his hands clasped together, his lips stirring with quiet words. The last nobleman to view the body, Lord Mortimer, had prayed as well, apparently giving gratitude to God for Alaric’s death. Mortimer had other plans, but whether his plotting against Alaric would benefit Thomas remained to be seen. Mortimer seemed driven by his sense of godliness, and Thomas was nothing if not a God-fearing man.

Elisha lifted his gaze beyond, past the mounds and the road. The meadows beyond still bore the regular shape and furrowed texture of fields gone fallow these many years. A group of riders emerged from the trees that sheltered the ruined village, and he ducked down reflexively. They carried no light, as soldiers would, and something about the latter two struck him as strange. Cloaks flowed down in layers along their horses sides. Or rather, dresses. Two of the riders were women. Tentatively, he focused his awareness toward the road. The hoof beats grew instantly louder, and voices with them.