Elisha Rex

by E. C. Ambrose

  Elisha found his voice. “The archbishop, the necromancer, claimed me for king, and I used the post to search for you and Rosie. She was dear to me, Thomas. Almost as dear as you are.”

  The bony shoulders rose and fell, then the spine straightened, and Thomas lifted his head. “Is that what this has been about? My God.” A tremor ran through Thomas’s body before he spoke again. “The messenger, the one that got Rosie and I from the city, far from our guards, claimed that you needed us. Trust no one, said the messenger, not even Randall. Who else could have lured us there? We didn’t want to believe you abducted us Your servants kept us like animals. You tortured and murdered my wife—” He drew a deep breath. “For what? For jealousy? Because you thought you could effect some daring rescue, and I would fall upon you as my savior.”

  Dumbstruck, Elisha’s eyes widened.

  “I’m not a damsel in some accursed story. I am done with stories.” He pushed away and nearly fell onto the ground, but for Brigit’s hands that caught him.

  “Come away, Your Majesty. Don’t listen to him. Please, come away. I’ll find you some clothes.” Her voice had a familiar lilt to it, a gentle quality Elisha had not known she possessed. “We’ll get you back to the city, back to the throne.”

  Elisha’s body went rigid as he placed the tone: it was his own. She imitated the manner he used to soothe his patients. “Thomas, she wants the throne, she doesn’t care what she does to get it. She’s made a truce with the mancers. What is she giving them in exchange for the throne?”

  “But you’re the one who stole it,” said the king. “Can you deny it?”

  Thomas sagged against Brigit, his long arm draped over her shoulder, but she glanced back, and a smile lit her face, and Elisha could feel her crowing move through him.

  Meeting her pale green eyes, Elisha summoned what little strength remained. “If you ever hurt him, Brigit, nothing in Heaven or Hell will stand in my way.”

  At that, Thomas turned. He straightened to his full height, his chin dripping blood. “Nothing in Heaven cares a whit for you, and nothing in Hell would dare to oppose you. In that country, you are the king.”

  Elisha knelt on the table of sacrifice, watching them go, the woman leading her horse, leading the man just as surely, his desperate arm wrapped about her, her strong one tucked around his waist with unmistakable possession. Thomas stumbled as he walked, and she held him up and pushed him on until they turned the bend and disappeared.

  Chapter 23

  For a long time, Elisha lay still in the hollow carved to hold a man. The flickering shades of the dead moved through him, more distinct now than they had ever been before. Soldiers fought brief and silent battles against marauders from the north. They screamed and fell in anguish, only to rise up again and repeat the moment, an endless dance of dying captured by stone. Older shades walked among them, men cast up from the pounding sea, men in skirts of armor, women in deer hides or homespun woolens. One of these crossed from the broken gate to the well and cast herself in, over and over, an echo of her death. A steady stream of men and women struggled against invisible assailants to be flung upon the table where Elisha now lay. They sank through him with a slight chill, as if he had taken a deep breath of early spring, and each sacrifice long past imparted him a gasp of strength. Every twenty-five breaths or so, Rosalynn died again.

  She plunged through him on the way to the stone and shivered him more closely than the others because he knew her. He knew the terror that strained her limbs and the awful betrayal that caught the pit of her stomach. He need not hear the words she cried, for he knew them already. She died screaming his name. Pleading for his mercy.

  He could only pray that, as she sat among the angels in the Kingdom of Heaven, comforted at last, some one of them might tell her the truth and convince her of his innocence. As for himself, he had only to convince the king.

  Thomas had lost another wife. Would he ever recover? The two women looked as different as spring and autumn, his first wife blonde and thin, the second round, dark, rosy. He had lost another child, too. Elisha squeezed his eyes shut. Thomas was strong, he had survived before—but then, he had not been made to hear the slaying, nor to believe his only friend was the killer.

  The kingdom was more at risk than ever, the mancers had a new leader—one pregnant with a potential heir—and had orchestrated their efforts to ensure his friends would believe the worst of him. Elisha had no idea how he might counter the betrayal they believed of him. What could he say or do to show them the truth? The mancers were already winning, insinuating themselves into the kingdom and destroying it from the inside, like rats in a granary. They had set barons against barons, barons against peasants, and even, through the archbishop’s role in proclaiming Elisha’s anointed state, cast doubt upon the holy church itself. Defeating the French seemed the least possible victory. At every moment, his enemies grew stronger, his friends more endangered—he was damned if he knew how to prevent it, and damned all the more if he did not try.

  Elisha had work to do. First up, learning as much as he could about his enemies. He jumped down from the table, scattering crows from the corpses. They protested in a racket, glaring at him, but he ran for the storehouse, the only building in the compound.

  The regular stone of the walls showed a series of different shades, different lichens, suggesting it had been constructed and re-constructed over a period of years. A fragmentary arch stuck out from one long side, marking the ruin of a structure long-collapsed.

  The cob horse snorted and stamped as he passed, giving a tug against its harness.

  Inside the long, low structure, a few skips of coal stood by the door. The rest of the room held four beds with bedding, a few clothes, a table and benches, pots and pans, a chest containing ordinary flour, eggs, and some turnips. The lid thumped shut as Elisha dropped it and swung about. Nothing. A door at the back led to an open-air hearth with a huge pot on top, reeking of coal fire and old flesh. Elisha slammed the door and put his back to it, gagging. His brief glance had shown no hiding place for anything of worth. The chill awareness of death lingered there, but without any of the sting of dying—it was a rendering hearth for boiling flesh from bone, almost more terrible for its utter lack of secrecy. The dark hole of the mine still beckoned from the yard.

  The shade of a miner looking the wrong way tumbled into the pit as Elisha came in for a closer inspection. The horse turned, prodding him with its nose and lipping his hair. He pushed it back, returning to the chest of supplies for the handful of turnips. One of these encouraged the animal to draw up the platform, and Elisha hurried over to climb aboard. When the horse finished chewing, it swung about, looking for more and gamely approached, the chain rattling and squealing, lowering Elisha into the darkness. Even before the pit swallowed him, the air chilled, and his skin tingled.

  Black dust hovered in the air, stinging his eyes and making him cough. A circle of sunlight, cut by the brace of the lowering mechanism, illuminated the floor and part of the wall of Thomas’s prison. Only Elisha’s grave looked darker, and that had not reeked of rotting flesh. A jug of water and a pile of straw filled one arc of the round chamber. The rest held a series of shelves and hooks around a thick wooden table grooved and stained with blood. A butcher’s block.

  As neatly laid out as the ossuary at St. Leonard’s, but without the reverence of purpose, the unholy reliquary held bones, bottles, ragged bundles. Taking a last deep breath, smothering his cough, Elisha drew nearer. Each shelf carried a single skull, or none at all, and an organized set of bones. The leather flasks smelled of blood. Hair, fingers, and toes dangled from bundled skins. His muscles tensed to run, to flee the pit with all haste, but he forced himself to stay, to search among the dozen or more dead gathered there. A few echoed his approach, as if he had known them in life, and now they recognized him in death as well. When he concentrated on a single individual, touching a skull with trembling fingers,
he caught the flash of death, the struggle as the victim was carried to the table. Some were strangers to him and must have died elsewhere. On the shelf behind the block, Elisha found what he was seeking: Anna, Thomas’s first wife. No bones—they must have skinned her after burial and could not transport the body, but they divided the skin into a few pieces, including the face that Morag had carried.

  Elisha lay his gentle palm over Anna’s remains and opened himself to her death. As with Rosalynn, he entered late into the scene, this time at Thomas’s familiar hunting lodge. Anna faced a pair of leering men, already bloody, and swung a dagger that caught one of them across the collarbone. They advanced, forcing her back, and she stumbled at the top of the stairs. She screamed, crying for her daughter, begging.

  Then she caught her breath, Alfleda’s wail filling her ears. The third man up the stairs carried the body of a girl, blonde as her daughter, mutilated.

  “Take off yer gown, child,” the man snarled.

  “No! Leave her be!” Anna scrambled up, the dagger flashing, but the second man caught her, wrenching her arm so the dagger fell.

  “Take off yer gown, or I’ll kill yer mother.” He held a knife at Anna’s throat.

  They’d kill her anyhow, Anna knew. They wore no masks, nor treated her with the respect of a royal hostage. But they might preserve her child. She nodded faintly, and Alfleda, her face tracked with tears, nodded back with similar reserve. Carefully, she stripped off the silken gown, her grandfather’s gift. Anna smiled encouragement.

  Outside, in the darkness behind the lodge, the chapel bell clanged. Biddy, the old woman who lived at the chapel, must be sounding the alarm. For a moment, they all froze.

  “Shit!” spat the leader. “Hurry up!” One of them snatched up the gown, Alfleda trying to hide her nakedness as he wrestled the dead girl he had carried into the princess’s gown.

  Then he dropped the body and grabbed Alfleda, slinging her over his shoulder. She screamed all the way down the stairs, then shouted, “Biddy!” and “No, Biddy!” and “Mamma!” in a rising wail as the knife hacked into Anna’s throat.

  Jolted, Elisha flung himself back to the present and drew back his shaking hand. Alfleda might have survived that night. What then? He resumed his search. The shelves held only three children, two of them boys, the third, an older girl—too old to be the king’s daughter, and too complete. If they had harvested the princess, some remnant of her would be here, laid aside for later use.

  Elisha retreated from the shelves, coughing, eyes watering, but with a surge of hope. Five of the mancers were dead, never to kill again. And, somewhere, Alfleda lived.

  He clambered onto the platform and pitched a turnip out the hole over his head. The horse gave a whinny and a burst of speed, spilling him over at the top, breathless and grateful for air.

  Other mancers must come here, as Morag had done, storing their grisly trophies. And the one he had not killed, the stout woman, could return at any moment. He thought of taking one of the relics of Anna, to show the other magi what had happened there, if they could see it so long after her passing. But the risk of being caught with such a thing was too great.

  He cast a few sparks and the acrid interior of the coal pit caught fire with a whoosh, sending the victims to their final rest and depriving the mancers of their arsenal. Elisha withdrew his awareness, unbuckling the horse to lead it away, out of the unholy yard. He took a few minutes to carry the bodies of the mancers—and the victims they wore—back to the flaming pit to cast them in. That done, Elisha scrubbed himself clean at the well and replaced his tunic.

  Elisha could travel in the mancers’ way, but the only death he knew here was Rosalynn’s, and that would lead him back to St. Leonard’s in Hythe where her horrified father must have found her by now, alongside the archbishop. Madoc’s tale might convince him for a while, but Randall would bring his daughter to his magus-wife and they would see the story they were meant to believe. Elisha prayed they would be gentle with Madoc, and that his friend would not insist on Elisha’s innocence too stubbornly. If he had thought more deeply before destroying the mancers’ talismans below, he might at least have used Anna’s remains to transport himself back to the lodge, the site of her murder, to search for anything that might bring him to her daughter. His shoulders sagged as he watched smoke furling up from the hole. Still, he could not be sure he knew her death well enough to make contact across that distance. Rosalynn’s skin and the place of her dying were fresh, still raw, still so close to life.

  He packed a sack with the remaining turnips, a few bags of oats, and whatever other food was unspoiled, along with a few things he found in a smaller chest: fancy buttons and buckles, knives and rings. The possessions of their victims, who he did not think would begrudge him these few things, easily traded, if it helped him find the rest of the mancers and put a stop to them.

  The horse watched with interest as he tied on the sack. He found no saddle and hoped the animal would be steered by the simple headstall of its harness, even without a bit. If not, he’d have to walk. The mare Thomas had given him showed her breeding in the fine shape of her head and long legs, while the cob before him had a lump on its forehead, a ragged tail and a grubby dun coat. When he stroked its neck, little puffs of loose hair and coal dust rose up around his hands. He spoke to it softly, explaining the urgency of his goal, using the sound of his voice to settle the horse and the warmth of his hands to build trust, the spell of kindness. Where was Cerberus, Thomas’s dog? Waiting in the royal kennel, forlorn—that was a reunion Elisha would like to have seen. His throat ached, and he shook off the thought. Brigit would be busy solidifying her power and her hold over Thomas, but that distraction would only last for so long. And she would never be so busy that she lost track of Elisha. Even if he dare not come to London, to his king, she would be waiting for him to reveal himself, to be drawn back in to her plans. She should have killed him when she had the chance. Thomas might well have helped her.

  Could he stand against Brigit in the growing power of her pregnancy, never mind her insidious troop of mancers? If he ever reached her again, how could he defeat her without becoming the monster his friends already believed him to be? Elisha rested his forehead on the horse’s withers, his long sigh echoing the horse’s contented breathing.

  At last, he swung up to the horse’s back. The gelding stamped a little, tossing its head, but settled again in a way that suggested it had been ridden before. Thank God. He turned the animal’s head and nudged it south, picturing again the map Pernel made him. Would Pernel reveal his part in the search? And if he did, would it help Elisha’s cause, or simply turn Thomas against his servants as well?

  Elisha’s stomach rumbled a little, now that the reek of death and smoke was behind them, and he pulled out a dried sausage to chew while he rode, thankful for the desolate country. Brigit and Thomas would likely ride for the nearest royal port, reclaiming the kingship and making all haste for London. In days, the kingdom would be searching for the queen’s killer. How quickly would his supporters believe they had been betrayed by a false messiah, one who killed the man who had anointed him?

  He could not imagine, with what lay before him, that his life could do other than end badly, at Brigit’s hands if not at Thomas’s, or Randall’s. He had no power against the past and the betrayals that haunted them all, but there was yet one chance to save the future. Thomas still had a child, one he believed was dead, preserved by the mancers for whatever else they might have planned. Find her, bring her home, and Thomas might begin to trust him. Find her before Brigit did.

  He still had the problem of Brigit’s awareness. She would be watchful, preparing for his next move, and the child they shared heightened their connection. How could he pass unseen from her knowledge? He shivered in the wind, and an answering chill rose up within him. For a moment, he resisted the near, familiar voice of death. What purpose remained in denying the truth? He op
ened himself to the cold.

  The horse gave a whinny, bolting a few paces, then allowing itself to be gentled by his hand, the one part of him still warm. The shades of the dead sprang up around him—ancients, miners, soldiers, Scotsmen. His mount plodded steadily onward, through the mists of the dying. Each one gave Elisha that shiver of strength, and each one concealed him as he breathed it in, forging his affinity with death and denying his own life. The troubles of the flesh dwindled to nothing as the sense of purpose filled him. Moving ever southward, he stalked from death to death like a thief through shadows.

  The ghosts shifted through him in brief passages of terror or gratitude. A woman prayed as disease took her, and her presence enveloped him briefly like a warm cloak. Tears pricked his eyes, and he longed to remain swathed in warmth, but he rode on. He entered another, a man who screamed his agony inside Elisha’s veins, clawing at wounds that suddenly cut Elisha’s own flesh. Elisha flinched, and the horse sprang away, leaving the pain behind. The next one felt young and small—a child parted from its mother.

  He crossed an ancient battlefield where the dead cried out for help or hurled curses at those who struck them down. When he moved through, they fell briefly silent and still, then began again, like a eddy of leaves stirred up by winter wind. After a few days ride, he no longer sensed their dying moments. The barrage of memories and pain drifted away. He became a vessel of cold passing by day or night, shivering the evergreens. Dogs barked at his approach and howled as he departed. When he entered their presence, they made no sound.

  During the day, villagers he passed would nod or look away. Once in a while, someone turned to watch as he passed, or gasped in his wake. Magi.

  Somewhere outside Coventry, a man followed him, though not too near. Elisha stopped and turned, his horse pricking up its ears, so attuned were they now to each other. Elisha lifted his head and met the man’s gaze. He sent a tendril of his awareness and felt an answering chill. The man straightened, blinking, and one hand tugged his bulky cloak a little tighter. A mancer, and one who wore his gruesome talisman.