Elisha Rex

by E. C. Ambrose

  Elisha stepped away and motioned for the ax, though he himself was executioner. As he had sworn that he would never be.

  Chapter 18

  Four days later, with the sound of the axe that took Mortimer’s head still ringing in his dreams, the king’s party reached Hythe, a small town near the seaside. Elisha dismounted alongside St. Leonard’s church, a tall, gray Norman building that dominated the town from its steep slope overlooking the harbor. Lord Robert took Saltwood, with a small troop of men, while Randall rode on to Lympne, the locations where a show of force might be necessary. Sundrop, his spirits buoyed by the knowledge that Farus was dead, rode to join the bombards on their promontory. The nearer he could drive the ships, the more likely the plan would be successful. Even before they rode, the rain magus stretched out his power toward the coast of France, dissipating the clouds, and pulling them aside, creating a calm, clear passage for the French ships. The clouds hung at a distance ready to sweep in when he chose and drive the ships to their death. Perhaps the rocks alone would be enough to wreck the claims of France.

  As his horse was led away, Elisha looked up at the porch before the church. Why did the death of Mortimer—traitor to his country as well as to Elisha himself—weigh so heavily, while he allowed a thousand soldiers to sail to their doom? He would never see their faces nor hear their voices; he knew them only by the badges the crows had stolen, and the ruin they would wreak upon his land.

  “Key,” said Madoc gruffly, holding the lantern beside him, and the local priest sighed loudly before he mounted the stair to unlock the door. When it creaked open, Madoc stomped up beside the priest while a few men lingered to guard the entrance. Beneath the peaked roof of the porch, three sundials sheltered from the lowering day. Elisha frowned up at the useless dials.

  “We had the church lifted back in King Henry’s day, so that we could hold the procession of St. Leonard without leaving holy ground,” the priest remarked, climbing a second set of stairs. “The Mass-dials were hidden. There has been talk of locating a new Mass-dial outside, but the spirit has not yet moved us to do so.”

  Elisha came into the shadows, only to stop short again, gasping and steadying himself with a hand to the stone. A narrow passage opened to either side—the processional the priest referred to. And it was lined with bones.

  A thousand deaths overlapped and undulated like a nest of eels. Their chilly touch came at him from all sides save above. The long bones of legs formed neat piles on one side, thick stacks higher than his head, with the occasional skull set in among them. Thousands of ribs curved together, the raw materials from which to build a man. Surely there were not enough skulls—but even as he formed the thought, he felt them ranked together on shelves elsewhere in the church, their dark eye sockets a pattern of black pits, regular and terrible. Ahead, Madoc crossed himself and muttered in Welsh.

  The priest stared down at them. “We are justly famed for our ossuary. If you wish the tour, I shall—”

  “No,” they both said at once, and Elisha pushed himself up the stairs, tripping and arresting his fall upon the inner door. He had attributed the gathering gloom of his heart to Mortimer’s death alone, not knowing the place they must enter. Hoping to regain his balance, Elisha reached for attunement, letting himself know the place where they must wait.

  “It’s unholy,” Madoc rumbled, his hand fixed upon the hilt of his sword.

  Elisha nodded, gathering himself to follow the priest inside. “The tower is there, Your Majesty. If there is anything else that you require, my home is across the lane.”

  A stained glass window showed St. Leonard before his holy hermitage. The patron saint of prisoners. Elisha’s skin tingled with the presence of the dead and now with this coincidence: Did the prisoners he sought pray for St. Leonard’s intercession? The power of the place seeped in through his awareness, the displaced dead woven in a thicket around the heart of the church. Madoc made a circuit of the nave, lighting a few candles that could not glow bright enough to reach the vaulted ceiling. It smelled of wax and bones and Sunday incense, and the salty thrum of the ocean a few steps away.

  At last, they mounted the narrow stair into the tower, circling round and round, their shoulders brushing the wall. They came to the cramped bell chamber, where thick beams supported enormous bronze bells, and clambered along to the ladder which brought them up, at last, to the rooftop, to breathe deep of the ocean air. To their backs and to both sides, the dark crescent of the town stretched out, with a few patches of light at windows or moving through the streets. Ahead, the ocean rolled, catching highlights from the moon.

  “Wish we knew how long we’d have to wait,” Madoc said, setting the lantern by the narrow spire he leaned against.

  “It might not even be tonight, but if they’ve been waiting fair weather, they’ll have it now.” Elisha leaned on the wall before him, gazing out to sea, the wind ruffling his hair.

  “Not sure I like this witchery.”

  Elisha’s head sank.

  “Most o’ the men don’t know what’s up, just we’ve got wind o’ the French plan.”

  “If you can’t reconcile yourself to this, Madoc, I’ll find another guard to wait with me.”

  “Naw, Your Majesty.” Madoc pushed off, his scabbard rapping the stone as he came to join Elisha at the overlook. “Me mum’s given me a blessing against witchcraft.” He glanced sidelong, his beard and eyebrows casting spiky shadows up to his face and forehead. “Dunno but that your type is a bit of a blessing in itself, eh?”

  Elisha laughed. “It’s a blessing that brings its own curse.”

  “Yon archbishop claimed you as holy.” He wagged his head this way and that. “Could see my way clear to think it, seeing as you heal with a touch—a proper king, eh?”

  “I need contact. To work magic, any magus needs contact.”

  “Certes? Not with a look, then?”

  “If the magus is especially sensitive, the contact might be distant, a bit of hair, a spot of blood.”

  “But yon rain-master, that boy thinks he can call up the storm?”

  “He loves the rain so much he can feel it in the air, even from a distance. Most aren’t that sensitive.”

  “You are sensitive, eh? But not to rain.”

  The last edges of pink sunset rippled along small waves, then merged into darkness. “Aye,” Elisha echoed, “but not to rain.”

  Madoc regarded him for a long while, apparently unwilling to press for more. At last, he gave a grunt, then one hand slid beneath his leather jerkin. Probably touching the cross, to ward off Elisha’s presence. Madoc’s own presence felt solid, warm, emanating a calm almost priest-like, the reason why he so appreciated the stolid captain as his guard. Madoc’s dogged center, unruffled by all that happened, gave order to the uncertainties that swirled around Elisha.

  “Take it in turns?” Madoc suggested. “I’ll give a nudge.”

  Elisha nodded, settling to the floor to wait. He might have gone to Saltwood, demanding entry and a good bed, while some other stood watch in the tower, but, like Mortimer’s execution, this felt too important for him to remain in comfort. For now, he was king, and these deaths belonged to him. The layered strength of the bones below him echoed within his own skeleton. Would it be possible to claim the deaths of the sailors? Could their slaughter buoy him up? But the thousand bones of the strangers in the ossuary provided less power than the immediate deaths of the crows he knew, or his subtle touch upon Mortimer’s back followed by the sudden, sharpness of the ax as it struck off the traitor’s head. Sickened by the rush of that moment, Elisha had turned the seductive strength aside, like a man fending off an overeager hound. It called to him as he slept, edged with the golden, shrieking horror of the mancers’ passage, that mysterious place where they bent the world to their desire, as if Mortimer waited there to guide him deeper.

  He shuddered and woke, the weight of Madoc�
��s cloak kicked off as he stirred. The glow of the single candle lit Madoc’s back and the square roof of the tower, just a bit wider than his own height. Good thing Robert hadn’t been assigned to this post—he’d not be able to lie down from one thick wall to the other. Stone spikes rose up from each corner, pointing toward the stars.

  Elisha rose and stretched, his back aching. “You did not wake me.”

  “Would’ve in a moment,” Madoc told him without turning, his hands grasping the edge of the wall.

  “You see something?” Elisha joined him as Madoc gave a nod.

  “Boats?” The guard straightened, squinting out to sea.

  Squinting with him, Elisha stretched his awareness in that direction. A strange, sharp spike of pain punched back from the water, and he recoiled but forced himself to push beyond it, to the horizon. He sensed a patch of darkness shifting with the sea, more solid than the sky—a ship, with a tiny light upon its bow that rose and fell with the waves. As they watched, a second light joined the first, then, a moment later, a third, rising and falling together. Elisha’s heart hammered, his breath catching. Dear God—it came!

  “The lantern,” he said, turning, but Madoc had already taken it up, opening the side and nudging the candle out of the way to slide in an oil pan and wick, then another, tilting each wick to light them against the first, until the lantern’s glow leapt up several times brighter. He reached to hang it upon an iron hook, their view obscured by the sudden glow.

  To the north and behind them, another light flared into the night at the tower of Saltwood under Lord Robert’s care, and to the other side, a third, small at first, then growing. Lympne, and Randall. Shielding his eyes from the glare of their lantern, Elisha leaned back toward the ocean. They could descend now, their work done, while the scout vessel returned to its commander, to summon the ships to die.

  “Couple more hours yet, ’til dawn. But not much.” Madoc’s grin gleamed. “Be nice to see them bombards turned against somebody who’s earned it.”

  Not the words Elisha would have chosen. He swallowed, again stretching his awareness, searching for the ships that hid beyond the horizon, a few thousand eager men, restless to be fighting, just like Madoc and his men back at Dunbury. It was not their battle, not really, but they knew loyalty and duty. They went where the lords directed, and they stood ever-ready to die. He sought the hearts of those distant sailors. He wanted to apologize.

  Instead, that spike of pain once more cracked his awareness, like lightning in the darkness. Down below, a single small boat scraped the sand, and pain radiated from it like ripples from a sinking stone. Someone stepped out to walk up the shingle, pausing, then continuing on toward the foot of the church. A fearful voice cried out further up the road, and he heard the clatter of steps as his men went to investigate, but they moved away from the presence he sensed, as if they did not notice it at all.

  Elisha sent his awareness down to the stone, down, gathering the strength of Death from the bones below, racing toward the lonely steps that moved up the street—an agonized, echoing presence, familiar, yet changed. A second, slight presence followed after in her wake. Almost, she had passed by the church before Elisha resolved the sense of what he felt: a woman he knew, shadowed by the death of someone close to her. Then he was bounding down the steps. Rosalynn! By God, his prayers were answered.

  She walked by, oblivious, the thousand piled dead concealing him from her own magical senses.

  “What’s wrong?” Madoc cried out, then thundered down behind him. “Majesty?”

  Outside, the walker froze.

  Elisha threw open the first door, but Madoc caught his arm. “Majesty, wait for the guards.”

  The floorboards creaked, Elisha stiffened, and the heat of living flesh seared through his web of awareness. It carried the tang of fear and the wail of a hurt even he could not fathom. And more, it carried a name, a presence so distinct and familiar that Elisha would be held no longer.

  Breaking Madoc’s grip, Elisha flung open the outer door. “Rosie!”

  “Yer Majesty! Elisha, wait,” Madoc growled in the darkness, but Elisha was down the steps and half out the door. “Blast ye, Barber, something’s wrong. Didn’t you hear that shout?”

  “Rosalynn, I’m here,” Elisha cried, shrugging off the shield of Death that concealed him.

  Madoc smashed into his back, tumbling them both and knocking the wind from Elisha’s chest.

  “Get. . . off,” Elisha panted. “The queen.”

  “If that’s the queen, then I’m the bloody bishop. Something’s drawn off the guards, Majesty. Don’t go out there.”

  Elisha fought Madoc’s grappling hands. Rosalynn’s pain and terror spun through his own emotions, and the echo in her presence was suddenly plain: she had lost the baby. Thomas’s baby. His scalp pricked with the dread that came over her as she listened to the violent sounds of Madoc struggling with him on the ground. Through the contact, Elisha snapped a warning, flesh to flesh, encouraging Madoc to let him go.

  Then something shocked through his hands, and Elisha let go with a gasp. Something defended Madoc, something deep and strong that flowed through the soldier’s spirit.

  With a surge of power, Elisha rolled them both, landing on top, Madoc smacking against the wall with a puff of breath that clouded the air. Madoc did not understand. He had only the senses of a desolati: reacting to the sight of something unfamiliar, the sound of a fearful cry—unlike the awareness of the magi who could sense the presence of another and recognize them from that alone.

  “Elisha? Is that you?” cried a broken voice from the darkness. “What’s happening?”

  Snatching the soldier’s sword from his grip, disarming his own bodyguard, Elisha scrambled up and spun, hope lighting his path toward the darkened street.

  “Elisha? Oh, thank heavens!” The wounded voice rang through the darkness, her arms outstretched, then she drew back, almost flattening herself against the opposite house, fear radiating around her. “No, don’t touch me, not yet.” Hair tossed around her head as she shook it violently, staying his pace with her outstretched arm, her figure shrouded by the darkness.

  “Rosie, why?” He halted in the porch, hurt.

  The voice dropped low once more, almost unrecognizable. “I know how sensitive you are, Elisha, and I’ve been through so much. With everything that’s happened these past months, I must feel like a whirlwind to you even at that distance. For you to touch me now, I can’t imagine how it would hurt you.”

  Grateful for the darkness that hid them from each other, Elisha smiled, brief and sharp: even at a time like this, Rosie talked too much. Tears burned his cheeks. “Thank God you’re alive, at least. Where’s Thomas? Is he with you?”

  Another wild shake of the head. “I had to leave him, I took the chance. Sweet Mary, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I thought my father was here—but you! You’re the only one who can help Thomas now. Dear Elisha.” Her hand flew up, pressed to her hidden face as she quaked.

  Elisha took another step, only to be stopped again by her muffled cry. Something moved behind him, and Elisha softly cursed himself for letting the man stay. Madoc had to see, even with his blind desolati eyes, that Rosie needed help.

  “It’s not a bloody woman, Barber,” muttered a voice from the darkness.

  Elisha half-turned, a snarl growing in his throat.

  “Someone’s with you! I thought I sent off all the soldiers. I couldn’t bear for them to see me,” she whimpered. “Oh, God, does he know who I am?”

  “It’s all right,” Elisha snapped, then reined in his anger at the new wave of fear that touched him. “He’s leaving.” His hands balled into fists as Madoc rose. “Right now.”

  Madoc, a stocky, vague shadow, separated himself from the church door, towering upon the steps as he descended, his hand reaching for his sword and coming up short.
/>   Elisha yanked out the blade. “Don’t move.”

  “Ye must be made t’ see!” Madoc insisted, though he held out his empty hands, his teeth flashed briefly as if bared.

  “Is it one of them, those terrible cannibals?” Rosie’s voice wavered.

  “He’s no mancer,” Elisha said, then stopped, the sword wavering a moment as he recalled that mysterious protection that pulsed against his hands. “Are you, Madoc?”

  “That’s the one ye can’t trust,” Madoc howled. “Look at it, just look at it!”

  “And turn my back on you? Not likely,” Elisha snorted, though his glance wandered in that direction, for the figure moved behind him.

  “We’re strong enough, together, Elisha, you and I,” Rosie said. “I’m here, if you need me. I have some power in me, in spite of everything.” Indeed, the damaged voice grew stronger as he listened. Was she then a full magus? Not merely feeling the echo of her baby’s power? He had to see her more clearly, to make contact and know what had happened to her, and she wouldn’t come any nearer with Madoc still there.

  “Don’t turn yer back t’that! For the love a’ God, Elisha Barber!” Madoc reached out.

  “Be careful,” she cried, “it wants contact—don’t let it touch you. I know what they can do.”

  Too much distraction. Madoc lunged aside, diving for the church.

  Rosalynn shrieked, and Elisha scrambled up after him, back to the sanctuary. Madoc grabbed something and thrust it into one of the candles, whirling as Elisha dashed into the low room, stolen sword at the ready.

  Madoc raised his hands, lifting over his head a burning brand. By the dancing light, blood trickled from his hairline and his eyes flashed white. The flame trembled as Madoc shook, those eyes staring beyond, out the door, his lips parting his beard though he made no sound.

  Sweat slicked the sword in Elisha’s grasp as he froze, slightly crouched, and Rosalynn’s scream broke into silence, her presence looming behind him, filling the doorway and touching him with tendrils of fear.