Elisha Rex

by E. C. Ambrose

  Then a sharp, cold tool slipped inside his skull, prying upward. Elisha snapped free of the flesh and drifted away.

  Chapter 35

  The small townhouse rose up around him, its loft open at one side with a ladder going up. Smoke curled from a handful of lanterns hung from the loft edge or placed on the benches. A fire glowed at the hearth, a tripod within held a bubbling pot. Nothing smelled, nor did the fire crack and pop. A man lay on the table in the center of the main room, on his side, most of his body concealed by blankets, his bloody head resting on a pillow, half shaved. The scalp peeled back in four triangles over the ear framing a crevice that marred the bone beneath.

  A surgeon worked over him, a silver tool gripped in his hand. He moved the handle with precision, lifting a section of the shattered skull, easing it back into place. Elisha should have liked to study surgery with him.

  Another man, a servant, stood close at the surgeon’s back, a hand braced upon the patient’s jaw, holding his head in place. His thumb rested at the pulse point, and so he might be fooled into thinking that the patient’s pulse still leapt. As the surgeon’s lips moved, his hand replacing one tool, the servant hesitated and chose another, then drooped, took it back, and gave a different one which the surgeon accepted, resuming his work.

  A fourth man—assuming the patient could still be counted in their number—knelt before the table, clinging to the dead man, his face hidden in the tangle of their arms, his shoulders quaking. He already knew what the others ignored.

  The roof overhead opened up with sudden light, a tempest of brilliance and wailing that struck down the silence. Elisha gazed up into the tunnel that opened there, a frightening place, now familiar. That was where he belonged. He was already naked and light. Except his left hand felt heavy, detached. He tried to shake the feeling away, then used the right hand to lift it up before his face and figure out what the trouble was. Bloody scrapes marked the wrist. Something small and gold encircled the little finger. That wasn’t right. He gave his hand a shake, but the ring remained. It wasn’t even his ring, it was Brigit’s. Oh, she would be angry about that, she knew he had the real one. And she knew that Thomas knew. He could never go back to her now. Damn, that made things difficult.

  The howling void overhead grew louder, but some voices called more sweetly: an old witch, a repentant traitor, a man who loved him, a young doctor he once drew from a river. Elisha waved them away; he still had this problem of the ring. He couldn’t take it with him, obviously, but he couldn’t seem to shake it, and his good hand couldn’t grasp the thing to leave it behind, as if part of him remained in some other place.

  He stared down at the men around his body. Thomas had put it here, and Thomas would just have to take it off again and let him go. But Thomas looked too preoccupied to disturb just now. Kneeling on the floor, he clung to the corpse’s hands. The corpse lay there, the surgeon still close as he replaced the patches of skin, the servant drawn back to his master, draping him with a blanket, but reluctant to reach out with his blood-stained hands.

  Elisha didn’t want to go back, to sink into that flesh of corruption and pain. Perhaps if he put his hand in the fire, the ring would melt, and he could go. He reached out his hand, the flames reaching back. No, not the flames, the angel.

  Smiling, Elisha moved closer to her, his cheek warming with the memory of her touch. He could talk to her now. She didn’t have to die alone, but she, too, refused the ring. Her daughter’s ring. Wouldn’t she be happy, now that Brigit was queen? Brigit built a church on the place where she had died. Brigit would commemorate her. Brigit would avenge her, and every witch ever wronged by desolati. Then Elisha wouldn’t be alone, either, because all of his friends would be dead. His left hand responded, closing into a fist.

  The howling passage sucked at his back, but he drew it down to him, into him, taking the cold, the light, the knowledge. As the surgeon anointed him with oil of roses, Elisha drew down his soul. He took a deep breath, armoring himself against the pain, and pulled himself home.

  Red, streaking agony filled his vision, but Elisha held on, for a moment bridging the abyss between life and death. With a howl of fear and a bolt of light, the Valley slammed against him. Calling up the power of his brief passage, Elisha urged his skin to heal, and the surgeon let out a long breath, his hand lingering, his heat joining with Elisha’s, lending him the strength of the living to match the power of the dead.

  At last, Elisha opened his eyes, the right one flickering slowly, the lashes still thick with blood. But the left eye felt cold, a hollow in his skull, as if his eye had been replaced with a ball of ice. He wiped away the blood, and Pernel cried out.

  Thomas’s head jerked up, and he caught his breath. “Elisha. You’re alive. Praise God!” His grin broke through his fading tears. Then his blue glance flickered over Elisha’s face. “What’s wrong with your eye?”

  “I died.” He gazed at the king, but the image seemed too deep, hovering shadows drifted at Thomas’s shoulders.

  “I don’t understand.”

  He wiped his cold left eye. For a moment, the spirits were gone and then returned. Elisha gentled his voice. “I could have left this world, Thomas. I came back because I have to stop Brigit.”

  “We have to, you mean.”

  “I don’t think that you can help me anymore.”

  The grin returned to Thomas’s pale face and he shook his head. “You still wish me gone. Very well, your resistance is duly ignored. I’m fair with a blade, and an excellent archer.”

  An answering smile crept across Elisha’s lips, and he pushed himself to sit up on the table, the blankets sliding down to pool across his lap. The rope burns at his hands and arms showed pink, barely healed, and a cautious hand found his scalp whole, though tender. Raised lines crossed the site of his incision, and hollows in the bone beneath, marked holes into his skull.

  The floor creaked as Mordecai moved in front of him, wiping his hands on a cloth, his belt of books swaying at his hips. He examined his patient and inclined his head.

  “Thank you,” Elisha said, reaching to grasp the surgeon’s hand, feeling the exhaustion that flowed back to him. Mordecai had performed delicate surgery, all the while using the strength of his knowledge to hide Elisha from the mancers. No wonder he was tired.

  “Pleased to be of use,” Mordecai told him through the contact, his damp eyes blinking a few times. “Where did you go?”

  “The Valley of the Shadow. It’s how the mancers travel, to a place they have marked with a victim’s blood.”

  The surgeon shivered, drawing back his hand.

  “Brigit has built a chapel over the place where her mother died. I think she’ll use that to make contact with a crowd.”

  “She wanted the dedication ceremony to follow close upon the wedding, to ensure the nobility could attend. You’d called for a parliament, so all the great lords and the less are already in London.” Thomas frowned. “Is she hoping for resurrection?”

  Pernel filled a round of tankards, then climbed the ladder and returned with an armload of clothing that he piled on the table, beginning to ready each piece until Elisha waved him away.

  “That’s not possible.” Elisha pulled on some of the new clothes while Pernel assisted Thomas in changing from his wet things. Elisha gulped at his drink, his body still shaky and seeking the comforts of the flesh. “In part, she wants revenge, but she also wants witches to rule. She’ll find a way to demonstrate her power, and show the consequences of disobeying her. She promised the mancers she would break the kingdom.”

  “Come, Master,” Pernel murmured, leading Mordecai to a chair as the surgeon gave a mighty yawn. Hours must have passed, with Mordecai working over his flesh and sending what comfort he could to his spirit as well. Hours . . . By tonight, it would be done. None left with the strength to resist her.

  Elisha slid down from the table, unsteady on his fe
et, and Thomas reached out, his blue eyes sharp with concern. “I’m fine,” Elisha told him. “Truly. I feel as if I’ll live forever.”

  “Elisha—”

  He braced himself on the table, then glanced away as a ghostly woman died in childbirth. Too much like Helena. “Have you stashed any horses in this rescue of yours?” A figure all of shadow moved as if opening the door, then plunged backward, falling from an unseen blade.

  “Two,” said Thomas. “How do we stop her?”

  Elisha swung away toward the surgeon, but Mordecai’s head already slumped to his chest, and Pernel was wrapping him with blankets. “Take good care of him.”

  The servant nodded, but his glance was for the king. “And his majesty?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Pernel gathered their empty mugs and nodded. “I believe you will, Your—” Then he gave a soft breath of laughter. “But I don’t even know what to call you.”

  “Elisha,” he said and put out his hand.

  After a moment, Pernel grasped it, started to bow, and stopped himself. “Well met,” he said at last, then he hurried to open the door and usher out his two kings.

  Outside in the street, a pair of men struggled, one with a stick of wood in his hand, bludgeoning the other, both of them silent.

  “How do we stop her?”

  Elisha stared at the ghostly duel.

  “Brigit,” Thomas prompted. “How do we stop her?”

  Both combatants fell to the earth, dissipating, only to rise again a moment later and resume fighting. “Right,” said Elisha. He closed his left eye, and the figures vanished, though he could bring them back if he stretched out his awareness. “If I can get contact, I can probably kill her.”

  “The stable is this way.” Thomas set off, Elisha trailing after as he edged past the spirits that rose up around him. “And the baby?”

  “That’s her defense against me,” Elisha murmured. “She doesn’t believe I would do it.”

  “Would you, even to stop her?”

  Elisha weighed the lives around him. Thomas’s eyes tracked a crow that soared overhead, his uplifted chin revealing the scar of the mancer’s blade. Elisha imagined the baby, small and wrinkled, innocent, unscarred—his own unfamiliar flesh and blood. “I don’t know,” Elisha said at last, and the king touched his shoulder. Then the pair of them ducked inside a wretched stable where a lad leapt up to help with the horses.

  As they rode, Elisha extended his senses all around them, trying to discern between the living and the dead. Thomas’s presence glowed like a fire to his left, burning with renewed purpose. In the late afternoon, the sun finally broke through leaden clouds, giving the appearance of a heavy-lidded eye, displeased at being aroused from slumber. Elisha focused on what lay ahead and tried to work out what he might expect from Brigit and the mancers. He thought of using his own blood to mark Thomas’s clothes, keeping the king close and safe, but the chance that Brigit could achieve contact as well posed too great a risk. Besides, Elisha reflected as his horse burst through a crew of spirits toiling by an ancient bridge, how safe could it be to keep close to a man so intimate with Death?

  “She’ll be expecting us,” Elisha said at last. “She wants you to be there.”

  “Can she still . . . feel you?”

  Elisha shook his head. “Something changed when I died. I hope that it will keep me invisible to her.”

  Looking off down the road, Thomas murmured, “I wish you would not say that so lightly.”

  “I don’t know how else to say it. Each of my near-deaths changed me—the other magi observed that my presence felt different. After I travelled all the way to the lodge, even Brigit didn’t recognize me until we stood face to face. A man can’t be close to death for so long without changing. There’s a young man who keeps bearing witness to his miracle and thinks it makes me some sort of hero. Some sort of—saint.” Elisha took a deep breath and stopped babbling. Would it be harder to reassure Thomas, or himself? But Thomas did not know that they rode through the shades of the dead.

  “You are a hero,” the king said. “But not for that.” Their hoof beats filled the silence, and the horses snorted clouds into the long shadows.

  As the city walls grew in the distance, tension built across Elisha’s shoulders. London crouched on the horizon like a storm, ready to pound away the villages spread out before and thunder down upon them. To the left, by the river, the Tower glinted gold in its own palisade. Elisha thought of its dungeon and the bridge of traitors beyond, and turned his horse sharply away, across the moors and off among the smaller farms. Passing through the dead no longer thrilled him, but he missed that little burst of strength in these unsettled lands.

  They rode a wide circle around the city, Elisha taking the lead. Few people walked the roads or tended the sheep and a knot of worry built in his gut. They passed a broken wagon laden with baked goods, small festival cakes spilling across the mud. The baker stood by cursing at his ox. “—sure to miss it now, ye bloody beast!”

  Another festival. Dear God, what could Brigit mean by it? She summoned them all to witness—what? Something more dangerous and divisive than a French invasion. An event so devastating the mancers would accept her leadership to make it happen.

  Something flickered in his vision, then more, and Elisha glanced up to find a flock of crows wheeling overhead. Thomas followed his gaze and crossed himself. They entered a cluster of houses and emerged again, reining in abruptly. Crows swirled before them, rank upon rank, a flurry surrounding the dark figure of a woman. Thomas swept his sword from its sheath, but Elisha stayed his hand.

  “So, Barber, my brother Farus is dead.” She stalked out, head lowered, eyes flicking from one rider to the other.

  “He betrayed Chanterelle to the necromancers, lady,” Elisha told her, his horse dancing as his fists tightened.

  The crow-mistress bobbed her head, black garments ruffling. “We would’ve taken him ourselves.” She gave a sharp cry and clicked her mouth shut, the crows settling around them. “Despite his bitter flesh.” Her dark eyes focused on Thomas, and returned to Elisha. “They gather today, and we hope to be well-fed.” A crow on her shoulder bounced up and down.

  Elisha took a deep breath, dodging the shimmering eyes of the thousand birds. “Will you help me, lady, and help your king?”

  “No king of mine! Last we helped him, it was we who fell.” The crows screeched around her, and Elisha fought the urge to clamp his hands over his ears.

  “She lent me the lives of her friends, to draw upon for healing you the night your brother died,” he told the king. “I was careless, and some of them died.”

  Thomas nudged his mount a little nearer, inclining his head. “Mistress, please, thank your friends for their sacrifice. I would not wear the crown without your service.”

  She swiveled her head, staring at him, and a thousand crows stared with her, sharp, black beaks and shining black eyes. Then, she gave herself a ruffling shake and stalked to Elisha’s horse. “The evil ones, you’ve seen them? Show me.” She put out a hand knobbed with age and scarred by the grip of talons.

  Elisha took her hand in his and remembered the mancers, each and every one that he had seen. Her eyes flicked this way and that, as if she looked upon a gallery of paintings, then she drew away, and gave that bob of her head. Another cry, and the crows took flight, spiraling up in the sky and flying in a black cloud toward London.

  “What will they do?” Thomas asked softly as the crow-mistress let them pass.

  “I’ve no idea—but I’ll take any army at our back today.”

  They came from the shadow of a church, its cross cast long and dark up the road before them. A party of soldiers blocked the way. Elisha nudged his horse into a gallop. “Stand aside, in the name of the king!”

  “Halt!” one of them shouted, then fell back as they saw who followed.
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  “Be firm,” cried someone else in the ranks. “The king’s bewitched!”

  “Bewitched?” Thomas sharply reined up his horse. “Who dares suggest it?”

  A thickly bearded man pushed through and lifted his chin. “His Grace, the Duke of Dunbury gave us orders, Your Majesty. Said you’d be under the devil’s influence.” He tipped his head toward Elisha.

  The man’s presence felt at first, like nothing at all, an absence carved from the flow of life around him. But then the cold seeped through. A shade hung about him, echoing his movements, and Elisha stared, almost recognizing the ruined face.

  “Your Majesty, this man is no ally,” Elisha said.

  Thomas’s gaze sharpened, but he made no reply, instead facing down the man before him. “My wife has planned this festival, and you would bar my way?” Despite his borrowed clothing, he sat tall and regal, glaring down with all the arrogance of his throne. Elisha’s blood warmed at the sight of him.

  “And him?” The cold wind blew, and the edges of a dead soul rippled around the mancer, flickering terror barely tamped down. “You want me to allow in your last wife’s killer? Your Majesty, ’tis plain you’re not thinking clear.”

  The crowd of soldiers tightened, their eyes glinting white as their hands gripped spears and sword hilts. The mancer walked purposefully toward Elisha’s horse, his hand already outstretched. He let the tattered edge of fear fly at his back, shaping the winds. The men stopped murmuring, their separate glows merged, carefully woven, their fear and anger directed at Elisha himself.

  Elisha’s horse danced a few paces back, eluding the hand set out to catch its head. “Do not touch the king,” Elisha whispered, sending the words upon an icy breeze of his own.

  The mancer’s eyes crinkled, just a little, into a smile only Elisha could feel. “Come, sir, we don’t want any bloodshed upon this sacred day.”