Elisha Daemon

by E. C. Ambrose

  Elisha’s eyes flashed up as he prepared to refuse, but Harald went on, “Yes, I’ll know where you are, but I’ll be gone from here shortly, and I trust you’ll not stay there more than a night. The margravine is correct that you need more rest.” He tapped the vellum with his finger. “They’ll ensure you get it.” Next, he slid a knife from his boot, another from his sleeve, and a third from beneath his jerkin and placed them alongside the bundle of meat. Each had a handle of wood and a sharpened slice of metal inlaid with salt. Each crystalline weapon lay like a hollow in Elisha’s awareness, a dull space occupied by a keen blade. Harald gave a grim smile. “Don’t worry, I have more.”

  In the corridor behind him, the broad shape of Friar Gilles appeared, carrying a pair of sacks tied together, ready to be slung over his shoulder. “I am as prepared as may be, doctor.”

  Elisha finally rose. “Thank you all.” He took a breath to say more, but met their eyes one by one, Gilles’s alight with passion, Harald’s keen and focused, Liesel’s frightened, and Isaac’s dark with worry.

  Elisha held out his hand, but Isaac did not respond. Just as well, he had no comfort to send, not today. “I pray I have not led your family to greater sorrow.”

  “It is better we are together, to face what may come. The abbey has a rich larder, it may be we shall simply bar the gate and wait until the winds have changed.” The goldsmith stepped back among his family.

  “You cannot mean to go without at least bidding farewell to the margravine,” Liesel said, her daughters nodding their agreement. “That is the sort of parting a lady could not forgive.”

  “I’ll find some other supplies and meet you at the gate,” Friar Gilles announced. He scooped Harald’s offerings into his hands and shuffled off.

  The big wooden door into the inner courtyard stood opposite the warming chamber where the gate warden usually sat copying pages, ready to see to the needs of his guests. Elisha shoved open the door and a flurry of snowflakes curled in around him. He stepped through and pulled it shut again at his back. Katherine stood in the snowy garden near the far wall, tracing a gravestone with her hand. Elisha spread his awareness, building attunement and projecting his presence to let her know he was there. She kept her eyes down as he approached, then lifted her hand to him.

  “It is hard to be good when you are not here,” she said to the brush of his fingers. “The killing is like strong ale. It makes my head dance and my heart flutter. It makes me want another draught. Is it so for you?”

  “I have felt it so, but then, too, I have been so close to death myself that I can never easily deal it to another.”

  “Not even Vertuollo?”

  “If he did not stalk me here nor threaten my friends, then yes, not even him.”

  “You were the hunter on the night we met.”

  She had been kneeling in a church, praying for deliverance. When she took him for the angel of death, she begged him to release her from this terrible craving for the power of death.

  Katherine rapped her chest with her free hand, just over the talisman she carried. “Now I am the hunter, the righteous dealer in death. I slay not the helpless victim on a slab, but the predator who slavers over him. I have become you, in some tiny way. There are moments that it fills me with pride and with delight—and moments that I wish my dark angel would return and tell me, ‘No.’”

  He took her by the shoulders, turning her from the grave to meet his eyes. “You do not have to do this.”

  “Of course I do. If there is such evil in the world, such evil as I have been, then someone must stand against it.” She reached up, stroking her fingers through his hair, her hand lingering on the white streak over the scars that marked his skull. “It is my penance as well as my pride. My sons are recovered, did I tell you? Soon they will be hunting, too.”

  “Oh, Katherine,” he said aloud, his breath disturbing the snowflakes that circled between them.

  As if that had been all she had been waiting to hear, Katherine’s presence soared with joy. She leaned into him, cupping his cheek, kissing him, then she pulled away, releasing all contact. “Fly away, my Raphael. And if we do not meet again, then I will imagine you safe at home with your beloved, telling him the tales that you would not share with me.”

  With that, Elisha took his leave. He felt a lump in his throat as he walked away. Could he ever go home and find his comfort there? What if he made his king a target to the count’s revenge? Perhaps it was just as well he lacked the talisman of his brother’s death, the surest pathway to where he’d begun.

  At the gate, Friar Gilles handed over a pair of sacks, joined like his own for easy carrying, then pointed to the assortment of salted blades. “You’ll want to find places for those I imagine.”

  Elisha followed Harald’s example, with the longest blade in his boot and the next in his belt, but unless he had hours of practice, he doubted he could slide a blade from his sleeve without trouble, so he added it to his medical pouch, draping his fur-lined cloak over all. The golden ram pin Isaac had given him winked in the dim light as they departed. Harald’s map brought them to the University grounds, to a narrow door in a tilted alley where the keeper let them in without a word and gave them a chamber at the back with a separate exit. They shared a glance, wondering what manner of place they’d come to, but neither asked. Friar Gilles sat on his bed, laying out his relics to organize the hurried gathering of items, giving a little blessing and a kiss from his fingers for each and every one.

  Elisha, too, sat down, feeling the weight of his exhaustion and the light-headed rush of the wine. As he lay down and wrapped his cloak around him, he attuned himself to the place and spread his awareness lightly all about him. He thought of Vertuollo in his lair in the catacombs, a web of death-magic that transmitted every twitch straight to its master. The thrum of the ever-present Valley rose up inside as he opened himself to it. He needed no catacomb nor thread of murder to sense that place between the world of the living and the mystery of death. At a distance, it pulsed as it drew down the dying, and wailed as it opened for the living, and he sensed the passage as Katherine and Harald departed on their own dangerous road. Once, in the forests of Germany, Elisha slept on graves to conceal himself, now it was as if he were the grave and all the world lay open to him, all the world that lived and breathed and wept and died. Wrapped in such cold comfort, Elisha slept.

  Chapter 8

  The next night, well-rested and hoping the distant church would be empty, Elisha and Gilles stood together to open the Valley. In their joined hands, Gilles held a pair of tiny relics from his collection, a chip of iron from the coffin of Saint Matthew, a parchment tag dangling from its little silken bag, and a bit of bone from Saint Gregory VII, who shared the apostle’s resting place. In spite of their holy resonance and air of death, either of these relics could be false. Elisha hoped the two of them together would point the way. He focused on the description he had of Salerno and sent his awareness south, back into the plague-gripped landscape of the Italian peninsula. Just shifting himself in that direction brought the shadows high, the rising tide of darkness swelling, a pot at the simmer about to boil over. He dreaded the return to Italy, but he must allow Katherine and Harald to track the mancers, and he must follow where his knowledge led: to medical school.

  Elisha’s expanded awareness flickered with dozens of lives around the twin pools of death that were the two saints, and he withdrew, shaking his head at Gilles. He wanted their arrival to be as secret as possible. They tried again, later in the night, to find a few more deaths, a few lives remaining. By dawn, at last, Elisha could wait no longer and they took their chance. Opening the Valley, Elisha called upon the peaceful dead to surround and uphold them, shielding Friar Gilles from the true horror of the place. But the peaceful dead did not attend him. The soaring laughter of Biddy, the spark of joy that was Martin, even the depth of knowledge that was Mordecai defied him. Instead, Eli
sha’s eye spiked with pain in remembrance of the mancer-monk he had slain at Vertuollo’s behest. The martyrdom of Father Uccello, who died rather than to reveal the truth of the monk’s death, spread in a heavy pool of guilt that sucked at his strength. Elisha’ back and lungs seared with cold, the deep and awful death-stroke he used to slay Vertuollo’s son.

  Elisha cried out as he stumbled from the Valley, dragging Friar Gilles with him in a roar of dead voices.

  Gilles trembled and gasped for breath, pushing away Elisha’s hand, and blowing on his own fingers as if to warm them. “You did not say it would be like that, so close, so personal.” Gilles shuddered and stuffed his hands into opposite sleeves, hugging himself.

  “Vertuollo’s using it against me.” Elisha pulled his cloak all the tighter, blowing out a cloudy breath. “The Valley. It costs him too much to prevent my passage completely, but he can manipulate it to hurt me, just as I tried to use it to protect you. Forgive me.”

  Friar Gilles bobbed a nod, but his gaze lifted, then he slipped a hand free to cross himself. “It worked! Here we are. Where, exactly, I cannot say.” He turned about as Elisha began the process of attunement, centered on the two familiar corpses who lay nearby, the saints whose bones had drawn them here. They stood in a vaulted crypt lit by a pair of enormous candles mounted on waist-high pillars. Frescoes flecked with gold embellished every surface, depicting the ministry of the Apostle, Matthew. One mural to Elisha’s left showed the king’s attempt to martyr him, by nailing him to the ground, slathering him with pitch, and setting him on fire. The candles’ glow enhanced the pale white in the downed man’s eyes, fixed, though they remained, on Heaven. Elisha turned away, his throat tightening.

  “Glorious, marvelous.” Gilles hurried to each of the artworks in turn, barely touching them. “Look at this martyrdom—have you ever seen such workmanship? And the gold in the halos. It is simply magnificent. Our churches in the lowlands are not so fine, but then, we have not been blessed with the presence of the bones of an apostle. Surely that is an inspiration to all.”

  The broad hall of the crypt, laid out in aisles divided by arches just like a proper church, held a few dozen forms on pallets. A few moved and moaned restlessly, flinging off their blankets. The rest lay still, the air heavy with the acid tang of vomit that turned Elisha’s stomach.

  “What’s all of this? We have not come to the hospital, have we?” Gilles asked.

  Elisha had hoped the nearby medical school would have a ready cure, but now that they had arrived, his hopes withered. “The pestilence. Let’s go.”

  “Oh, dear. Surely the priests are tending these poor, suffering souls—” Gilles broke off. One of the corpses closest to the altar wore stained white vestments and a golden cross, his mouth oozing blood, black swellings pressing over the collar at his throat. A spider web of fine red veins tracked the dead priest’s face.

  Gilles hurried along after Elisha, down the aisle and up the stairs into the quiet sanctuary above. The few windows let in the weak light of dawn, and a handful of early worshippers trudged along the nave, dipping their fingers in holy water or praying in the chapels. Their eyes edged with darkness and faces tracked with grief, they took no notice of the newcomers, barely stepping aside for them to pass by. Elisha’s left eye saw the echoes of the dead all around, thick and gray. The living moved among them, equally gray and lifeless. He nearly walked into one old woman, expecting her to dissipate or pass through him, leaving him the chill of death.

  Instead, she aimed a scowl at him. “What’s the purpose after all?” she said as if they were already having a conversation. “The church can’t help us, can they? Or won’t they bother? Is God listening, even to them?”

  Elisha gave her no answer. Even to a man who long believed that God turned away from His creation, so much suffering felt like an affront.

  “What did she say?” Gilles asked in German, coming alongside as they stepped out the doors. “Oh, I am going to have trouble if I cannot even understand the language. I know plenty of at least three languages, aside from the Latin tongue, but I do not think they will aid me here.”

  The local dialect sounded quite different from the language of Rome, but Elisha’s awareness made it intelligible, and he would likely begin to adopt their pronunciation before too long. What, indeed, would Gilles do? “Perhaps we can find you a tutor, a fellow friar who can be your guide.”

  “It might do, but I hesitate to trust too much in others, knowing we must keep your true purpose secret for now.”

  “Likely forever.” From the steps, Elisha scanned the narrow plaza before them with its colonnade edging and downward slope. Below, the ocean frothed at the jetties that defended a fine harbor empty of ships. Ranks of buildings marched up both sides, their rise and fall indicating where valleys cut grooves down the mountain slopes around. Above the town, terraced gardens carved into the slopes, and a castle marked a towering cliff. The growing day showed near empty streets—none of the bustle there should be to get to market or to haul goods out for delivery. The few people he could see moved quickly, heads down, as if they tried to escape from something.

  Not far from the church square stood a similar cluster of buildings, two and three stories tall, with broad shuttered windows and only a bell in an arch rather than the tower associated with most monasteries. The ever-present thrum of the Valley grew deeper in that direction. That would be the hospital. Elisha set out again with Gilles muttering in his wake. The day was cool, but not so cold as Heidelberg, nor did the skies portend snow. Moist and warm, as Doctor Emerick had told him.

  The gates of the medical school had not yet opened, so they bought a few rolls warm from the oven of a local baker, an idea Gilles enthusiastically embraced, saying a blessing as they broke bread together. When they returned to the gates a little later, a pair of young men in long robes responded to Elisha’s knocking. “I’m seeking the medical school—is this it?”

  The two looked him up and down. “And who might you be?” asked the skinny one. “You don’t look like a patient.” He stared more closely at Elisha’s mis-matched eyes and the white patch in his hair and added, “I don’t think.”

  “No, I’m a surgeon lately attached to the Empress Margaret. I’d like to consult your professors on medical matters.”

  “Really.” The other youth, with owlish eyes and a down-turned mouth said, “You’ll find them a little busy at present. Come back after the plague.” He started to shove the door closed when a sharp voice reprimanded him, and a woman swept into view behind them, her deep-red hair pulled back beneath a cap, her robes of an identical design to theirs with the addition of a long green cowl.

  “You wish to consult? We are not offering consultations at present, although classes continue.” She cast a dark look at the young men who hurried off into the courtyard at her back. “But we do welcome any medical practitioners willing to share in both our knowledge, and our work. You say you are a surgeon?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “You will have read John of Ardene’s work on anal fistula. How do you find his technique?”

  Startled first by her interruption, then by her question, Elisha frowned. He had not read the work, but he certainly knew the technique. “It’s adequate as long as the fistula is near enough to the anus. Look, do you—”

  “Do you blend your own theriac?”

  “I find simples prove more useful than compounds in most cases of poison.”

  She folded her arms, staring directly at him, disconcertingly like a lion. “Galen tells students to dissect their own apes, do you agree?”

  Galen, the classical doctor a thousand years dead. Mordecai had shared some of his teachings and discarded most of them as irrelevant. “If students don’t do their own work, how do they learn?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Weapons ointment—”

  “Is a waste of good coin.” Elisha leaned in, planting
his foot on the threshold. “Are we done yet? People are dying.”

  “Indeed they are.” She stepped back and waved him inside. “And you’re now hired to attend them. With me! Your manservant as well, please. I shall find you a chamber. We’ve a number of vacancies at present.”

  “I came seeking advice, not employment, mistress.”

  “Yet, as you say, people are dying, and we are short of staff. You seek the knowledge of Salerno, and we require your assistance for as long as you remain, agreed?”

  That was a bargain he could make, even if he could not stay for long. “I’ll do what I can,” he answered.

  They trotted after her as she crossed the broad plaza, not deviating from her course as students in plain robes, and physicians in more decorative ones, turned and dodged to avoid her. “The teaching hospital is near full-up, but a bed or two empties every day. Some for the obvious reason, some because their families come to take them to the church instead, to see if prayer is more efficacious than medicine. It rarely is.”

  “She thinks you are my manservant,” Elisha told Gilles in German, and the monk huffed out a breath, shaking his head.

  “So be it. God’s will be done.”

  “On earth as it is in Heaven,” the woman added. “I do not speak German, but I do understand a good deal of it. Latin is the primary language here.” She swiveled her head. “It may be best to keep your imperial affiliation to yourself. People in the area are of mixed opinions on the subject of the empire in general. Many would prefer imperial authority over that of the church, while others long to return to the fold, as it were.” Her lips bent briefly into a smile. “Whichever encourages the school, that is the one I prefer.”

  “Maestra Christina!” called a voice from across the yard, with a familiar accent.

  The woman did not glance away, her dark gaze arresting Elisha’s eyes. The other person must be calling for someone else, then, for she made no reply to the shout. “One last question,” she said as they reached an arched door in a long wall of stone. “This pestilence: miasma, conjunction of celestial influence, or God’s punishment for sin?”