Elisha Rex

by E. C. Ambrose

  “Her majesty wants his things, and she’s higher than your master, any road.”

  Images swam through Elisha’s mind, but he could not find a face to match the fear that stabbed his belly when they mentioned the duke. Hands tugged him this way and that, stripping his clothes. Elisha groaned, trying to hold down his supper, but the taste of dirt suddenly filled his mouth. He struggled, and the hands dug in, sending a bolt of pain through his body. Elisha went limp. His jaw throbbed in rhythm with lights that pulsed behind his eyes.

  “So long as justice is served upon him, I don’t know that it matters whose master is higher,” observed the younger man.

  Elisha fell with a thunk back to the ground, ripples of pain rolling out from his skull. He raised his hand to try to find the source of the agony, or he thought he did, but his numb fingers were slow to respond.

  “Here, now, he’s moving.”

  “Well, stop him.”

  Hard hands wrapped his arm and gave it a twist. The soldier pried at Elisha’s finger and tugged something off.

  “Leave me alone,” he whispered. He wanted the side of his face to melt away and take the horrible nausea along with it. Herbs flickered to mind. He used to be able to ease pain and stop the queasy feeling in his gut. Once, on a boat, someone gave him an herb that helped. Mordecai. What happened to him?

  The hands stripped his hose, leaving him naked and shivering.

  “Whyn’t we just kill him now?” one of the soldiers complained.

  “Because he has a power of healing,” the duke’s man explained. “A wound won’t kill him. Drowning might work. It’s why witches are dunked.”

  “Diabolical, I warrant,” answered a soldier gruffly.

  Elisha’s wrists and ankles twitched against those who carried him, his head striking the ground. The throbbing entered his bones, and Elisha’s stomach heaved. He tipped his head to the side and vomited.

  “As if he needed to smell any worse.”

  “Bloody Hell,” said one of the men at his feet.

  Elisha’s buttocks scraped against stone. They adjusted their grip, and he heard the guttering of water, a strong current. Waves shifted inside his skull, and he passed out again.

  Water splashed over Elisha’s face and ran down his shoulders. He sputtered and jerked, only to find his arms held taut, slightly twisted, to either side. Rough stone cobbles bit into his knees, so cold he remembered death and felt comforted. Another torrent of water struck him, and he cried out, trembling, his skull beating time to his heart.

  “That’s enough. He’s awake.”

  “Thomas,” Elisha gasped.

  Someone slapped him. “You have no right to the king’s name,” Duke Randall’s voice growled.

  Fear lanced through the scar on his belly. “No, Your Grace.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Thomas.

  “If you think that, Your Majesty, you’re falling into his power. He’ll do whatever he can to manipulate you.”

  Elisha’s eyes crept open, but the feeble light of torches throbbed in his vision, and he shut them again. “Your daughter,” Elisha stammered. “Your Majesty, how is she?”

  “None of your concern,” the duke answered.

  “I wondered that myself, love,” said Brigit’s voice, growing nearer. “I never had the chance to bid her goodnight.”

  Reflexively, Elisha mastered his senses, shaky as he was, and began the ordeal of attunement, reaching out to understand his surroundings.

  “She’s gone with Allyson,” the king replied. “I can’t say where.”

  Elisha lifted his head, opening only his left eye for blood still trickled into the right. Brigit stood to his left, too near the king, while the duke stood directly before him, feet planted, the sword hanging at his side. A handful of men in royal livery backed the king, with a good twenty more in the duke’s colors arrayed all around them.

  “I thought it best that she not be here.” Thomas folded his arms. “I can’t say where they went—I don’t know.” A phantom smile passed his lips.

  “Well done, Your Majesty,” Elisha sighed, drawing their eyes.

  “The king needs praise from you like a man looks for compliments from Satan,” said the duke.

  “Found this on him.” One of the guards offered the ring.

  Brigit put out her hand, but Thomas took it between his fingers. “Interesting.”

  “You see the depths of his depravity, and his obsession, Your Majesty.”

  Thomas’s gaze, sharp and blue, shifted back to Elisha’s face.

  “We had it from the queen’s hand, T—Your Majesty—when she came to kill me,” Elisha said. He searched in Thomas’s direction, desperate to know what the king believed.

  “Don’t be absurd,” Brigit said, “You can see for yourself I still have the ring.” She flashed her hand at him, decked with a rather shiny copy. “Besides, I retired to my chamber and haven’t left there since this afternoon. I get worn out so easily.” She yawned, fluttering her beringed hand over her mouth.

  Thomas slipped the ring onto his finger, though it reached only to the second knuckle. He made a fist around it.

  Elisha’s right eye would not open all the way, giving him a slanted view, stained with blood. These might be the last faces he saw, the last words he heard. Tension showed plain in Thomas’s lean shoulders, and that fist still held. Each time he met Elisha’s eyes, he shied away, and finally did not glance back in that direction.

  “Is that all he had for a talisman? There must be others,” Brigit said.

  From his blind side, a man said, “A few locks of hair, some in his medical kit, and these from his sleeve.”

  “Give it here,” commanded the queen.

  “No,” Thomas’s voice overrode her. “That’s mine.” Then he paused. “And this . . . my daughter’s hair, isn’t it? This is why you went to the manor?”

  “I had to keep her safe.” With each throb of Elisha’s skull, Thomas shifted in and out of focus.

  “A ploy to earn your goodwill, Majesty. The only reason he brought her back is that Brigit’s people already knew he’d taken her,” the duke pointed out.

  Elisha tried to focus on the king. “They would have killed her!” Each movement of his jaw sent shards of pain. “Alfleda must have said.”

  “She did,” replied the king.

  Madoc dropped a bow before the king. “Please, yer Majesty. He did not slay the queen. ’Twas the archbishop who came with that—”

  “You did your duty in fetching us here, Madoc,” the duke interrupted. “Don’t make yourself a traitor for his sake.”

  The duke’s men edged closer, swords at the ready, and Thomas caught Madoc’s shoulder, easing him aside, but not letting go.

  Elisha reached for strength and forced himself to speak. “It’s not over with my death. There’s two dozen mancers or more—”

  The duke snapped, “Somebody shut him up.”

  “No, Your Majesty, go look at her church, it’s a slaughterhouse—it’s no altar they’re carving. Thomas, don’t trust her! Whatever you believe, do not trust her.” He broke off as a soldier stood before him, cloth in hand.

  The duke’s man pried his jaw open and stuffed his mouth with a rag, then bound a length of rope tight about his head. At the man’s touch, Elisha recognized the hum of power that underlay the other man’s presence—another magus. “You can feel that I’m telling the truth,” he pleaded through the contact. “You know I did not kill her.”

  “You’re a sensitive, God knows what lies you can project,” the duke’s magus answered.

  A prim little smile settled on Brigit’s lips. “Have you bound a witch before?”

  At that, the magus had the grace to look a little uncomfortable. “No, Majesty.”

  She held out an imperious hand and took the rope—not, Elisha w
as glad to see, a rope made from his hair. He could not reach his senses very far without a talisman, but he retained some awareness. Then Brigit snapped the rope around his wrist and gave it a yank, searing the fibers into his skin and drawing blood. Elisha bit down on the cloth that gagged him.

  “There’s no need for cruelty.”

  “It’s not cruelty, Thomas, it’s good sense. A witch can’t reach beyond a circle of his own blood. It reflects the power.” She made a knot that squeezed Elisha’s torn flesh, then handed off the rope to the duke’s magus who tugged Elisha’s arm behind his back and repeated the procedure on his right hand. As the knots pulled fast, Elisha’s fading senses curled back into his skin. He felt suddenly very alone.

  The magus wrapped a second length above Elisha’s elbows, binding his arms tight against his chest.

  Thomas pressed his fingers against his closed eyes.

  “We can’t afford to wait for execution,” said the duke, more gently. “Look what happened last time.”

  “I know.” Thomas squeezed the bridge of his nose and gave a short nod, then he opened his eyes. “You’ve got to at least give us time to get the queen away.”

  Brigit’s chin rose. “You can’t think I would miss this.”

  Setting his hands upon her shoulders, Thomas commanded her gaze. “Brigit, you know as well as I the power that a witch has upon dying. Think of your mother.”

  Her back went rigid, then she cupped her hands around Thomas’s face and gave him a kiss. “Yes, love, I hear you.” As she swished by Elisha, she glanced back over her shoulder. “I’ll want to be certain we’re safe, though. Do bring me his head.”

  Behind the pulsing of his blood, Elisha felt a trickle of sweat down his wet back as she walked away with two guards in her company. He imagined his own head in a jar, the betrayal of his death harnessed to Brigit’s command. His eyes stung, and the right one slipped closed again as he watched. Already, he knelt half in darkness.

  “You’d best go, too, Your Majesty. The drowning should sap his strength, on top of his injuries. I doubt he’ll have the power for,”—the young magus glanced at the other soldiers—“for anything diabolical, but it’s best you be far away. We’ll give you half an hour.”

  With a grave nod, Thomas turned and stared down. Elisha lowered his eyes, trembling.

  The touch came unexpectedly, sending a jolt through Elisha’s aching frame. Hot and strong, Thomas’s fingers traced the scar along his throat and tipped up his chin, bringing Elisha’s eyes back to his own. From this angle, kneeling in the dirt, Elisha could trace the scar that marked Thomas’s throat. “That night at the ball,” the king murmured, “You did not mistake my feelings, Elisha, but it was not Rosalynn I was watching. For what it’s worth.”

  Thomas let go, rose, and left. “Madoc! Pray attend me.”

  “God’s blood, Elisha,” Madoc muttered, his own head hanging.

  “Y’heard the king—move it along.”

  Elisha stared after them as the king’s soldiers closed rank around him, escorting the queen away, leaving the duke’s men and their furious master. The ball seemed a lifetime ago. He shut his eyes. Elisha danced with the dishonored Rosalynn, watched by a ragged stranger whose attraction he had sensed. A stranger who turned out to be the elder prince, disguised and claimed for a traitor. In the darkness, he held Thomas’s face, and Thomas’s words, but their meaning eluded his addled mind.

  “How’s this?” one of the soldiers asked.

  Something fell with a thud next to Elisha’s legs, snapping his eye open. Scraping the rope over skin as Brigit had taught him, the young magus bound an iron hitching post to Elisha’s ankle.

  “Give it a long line. We’ll want to haul him up in a while to be sure he’s dead.” Randall’s voice sounded hollow, not victorious. With Elisha’s drawing in the Earl of Blackmere and Lord Robert’s earlier support, Randall must believe all his friends tainted. Elisha wished he could speak, that he could find the words to pierce Randall’s fury and persuade him.

  What was the alternative? To give up and surrender to the darkness. The air he sucked in through his nose stung with vomit and blood. Desperate for clean air, he fought the gag, trying to force it out or dislodge the binding rope against his shoulder.

  Overhead, the broad bridge swept up to the near gate, crowned with a series of spikes. Mortimer’s severed head stared down from bloody sockets, mouth gaping from its rotting flesh.

  Elisha let his head drop and felt a wave of nausea. His right eye no longer responded. The area around it was hot and swollen. Lucretia had struck him well—a little harder, a different angle, and he would be dead.

  “I mislike this,” sighed the duke. “How will we know their majesties are safe?” He stared back at Elisha with no change of expression.

  Slowly, Elisha shook his head.

  Duke Randall scrubbed both hands over his face.

  “Perhaps we should do it now, Your Grace,” another soldier offered.

  “Forgive me, Your Grace,” said the young magus, stepping up with a quick bow. “We really ought to give them the full half-hour. This is the best plan we’ve made, but still, I’d not wish to risk the king’s life on it.”

  “I’ve a candle, Your Grace. We could use it for time,” one of the soldiers volunteered. He tugged something from his belt and placed it into the duke’s hand. Randall tottered forward a few steps, turning the thing in his fingers as he came to the low wall of the bridge. With a blunt fingernail, he carved a line around the candle, not far from the top. Ceremoniously, he planted it on the wall. At a flick of his hand, a guard brought a torch and lit the candle’s wick.

  A curl of smoke drifted upward, sinuous and gray. The glow spread over the stone as it gained in strength. Light danced among the shadows lingering in the gaps between the stones.

  Nobody spoke. Leather creaked and metal rattled from time to time, and the river rushed on below them. Nearby, a crow cawed.

  The wax slowly gave way, the flame creeping closer to the duke’s line. Elisha’s mouth went dry. The bowl of the candle glistened as it melted. Drops beaded up and quivered, then slid down the candle’s full height to the wall. Another followed, just as stately, gliding along the creamy surface to form a small mound below. Over and over, Elisha swallowed. If he had his breath and his lips to guide it, he could blow out the flame that burned so near.

  “Good.” The duke propped himself on the wall to the other side. For a moment, Elisha recalled a time they shared in Randall’s own courtyard, the duke taking a bench beside Elisha and hoping to convince him to marry his daughter.

  Oh, Rosalynn. If Elisha had wed her, would she yet live? In that other world, Elisha lived as a lord, his father-by-marriage a powerful man, second only to the king—a new, young king. Alaric. Prince Thomas, betrayed by his general on the northern border, came sneaking home, hoping for comfort and to convince his brother that he had been wronged. Not knowing that Alaric was the master of his betrayal, Thomas sought out his brother and died at his hand, quietly by the blade, or painfully by the mancers’ command, his skin harvested to serve their ends. And Brigit would still be queen. The archbishop laughed, draped in the flesh of kings, then it was Brigit’s laughter that echoed in his memory. A bargain to defend the magi, from both the mancers and the barons—what had been sacrificed to win it? The desolati, powerless as peasants beneath the power of others.

  Elisha flinched, forcing back the vision. Who remained to oppose her? Blackmere and Lord Robert? Madoc and the other peasants who worshipped Saint Barber? But how could they defy the barons arrayed against them, never mind the mancers with their secret ways? When he died, she won. He squeezed shut his eyes. He knew what was coming, but could the knowledge save him? Not when his head throbbed so hard he almost wished for death.

  “What makes it so hard,” said the duke, and Elisha’s eye snapped open, the right eye twitching in the att
empt. Blinking back at him, Randall went on, “What makes it so hard is how much faith I placed in you, and how very wrong I have been. I have thought myself a fair judge of men, until you.”

  Elisha had to turn his head far to the right as the duke moved in close. In spite of his dazed vision, Elisha saw the depth of the man’s wrinkles and the puffy flesh around his eyes. His cheeks sagged, his lips drawn down by their weight.

  “That’s why it wounds us so—first to suffer at your hands, then to cause you to suffer at ours. I was not sure Thomas had the stomach for it, even after what you did to his wife.” Randall blinked a few times at that, his lips trembling. “There’ll be no priest for you, just as there was none for her.” His forehead furrowed over those watery eyes. “They would not take her at the church. After how the archbishop died, they feared the devil’s touch upon her skin—all that we have of her. That’s why we brought her west, because they denied my daughter the right to be buried in hallowed ground.”

  The man’s breath heated Elisha’s skin. If Elisha had his voice, he could tell them the king, and even the queen, had nothing to fear from him. He struggled to form a plan to survive, to find a way to fight back, but he had none; everything had been stripped from him, everything but the king’s final words, and they gave him nothing. Randall should take him now and have done. To wait even a few minutes longer, for both of them, was simply torture.

  The duke’s eyes shifted toward the candle; then he dashed it aside. “Do it now! Now, I tell you!” He thrust a finger toward the waiting soldiers. “This devil knows them both too well for them to escape if he would have them. Kill him now!”

  “Yes, Your Grace.” They grabbed him, to wrest him to the top of the wall.

  Elisha sobbed, twisting his head, catching a glimpse of the man who used to be his friend. He remembered Farus shrieking as the water closed over his head. He remembered the rush as he submerged and the struggle for breath. The post would drag him straight to the bottom for a death he could not heal.

  “What, now you have remorse?” the duke thundered over his head. “Now would you beg for the mercy you forbade my daughter? To Hell with you, Elisha Barber!”