Elisha Daemon

by E. C. Ambrose

  Still, in the dead of night, with the sole mancer he’d found here having professed his ignorance and died shortly after, Elisha could hardly pursue his larger goals. All day, he worked among the plague victims, read a dozen tedious tomes and drew himself closer to the school’s community. Now, surely, he could indulge his heart and serve a single child. The nun followed more hesitantly as he dropped beside the bed. She carried the lantern that had hung by the door and held it aloft.

  His patient sat with his back to the wall, knees curled up tight, his arms pulled across to their bindings. His eyes stared straight ahead. His unruly hair lay tangled around his face, and a trickle of blood worked down his forehead and right cheek. For a long time, he did not breathe, then his chest suddenly hitched and he gasped a breath.

  “You see? It is as I said, completely silent. For the sake of the other patients, Doctor, I suggest you don’t disturb him. He was so wild earlier that he’s torn out his own hair.” She pointed toward the trickle of blood from his scalp.

  Elisha reached out to the child and gently brushed his shoulder. The boy gave a spasm, then resumed his immobility, his chest jerking with each breath as if in protest. “You call this an improvement? Sister, he’s nearly paralyzed. What happened?”

  “Nightmares. What else? The demon grips him most strongly at night. He woke me, and I came for you.”

  Elisha shifted slowly toward the bed, drawing closer to his patient, projecting a calm he did not feel. He stroked the hair back from the boy’s face and saw that the nurse was right, a patch of hair as thick as a thumbprint was gone, yanked out by the roots and tearing the skin. Elisha let his senses unfurl, spreading over the child and his disordered bed, damp with sweat and urine. From his medical kit, he drew a scrap of linen bandage and wiped the blood from the child’s face. He tucked the cloth back into his kit to be burned at the next opportunity. “What’s happened to your hair?”

  “I told you, he’s torn it out in his frenzy.”

  “Then where did it go? It’s plain his bedding hasn’t been changed for at least a day.”

  Placing the lantern on the floor, she stomped around to the other side of the bed and pulled the bedding off the next one. “Forgive me, Doctor. You are not alone in feeling the strain of these dark days. I will take care of it right away, if you can take care of him.”

  Braced for a return to screaming, which might be better after all, Elisha leaned down and gathered the boy into his arms, lifting him just high enough for the task at hand lest he tug the child’s bound wrists. The thin frame strained away from him, and the boy issued a pained cry, so low Elisha only felt the vibration of despair in the child’s chest. Elisha started singing his lullaby, very softly, as much into the contact as aloud.

  The nun efficiently stripped off the soiled bedding and replaced the straw mattress with another over the rope supports below. She placed a blanket over this. Through it all, Elisha saw no sign of the tuft of the boy’s hair, torn from his head with such violence. He replaced the child and retrieved the nun’s lantern from the floor, holding it up to shed light on the boy’s face, blotched with evidence of sickness and cures, bruised by his own terrors. Elisha sat on the bed. With his off-hand he touched the boy’s chin, turning him toward the light. Again, the body resisted, and Elisha released him immediately. Over the boy’s mouth, faint, but plain enough to Elisha’s sight, lay the imprint of a large hand.

  “Who came here before you? Who was here when you woke?” Elisha demanded.

  “Nobody. I woke to the screaming and came for you, that’s an end of it. I noticed his hair when I got back.”

  “So, in fact, you don’t know.” Elisha shot a look at her. “Anyone could have been here.”

  She held the bundle of soiled bedding at arm’s length. “Who could’ve got by me to come in? Who would’ve wanted to?”

  A magus, for one thing. Any magus skilled enough to cast a projection, which was all of them Elisha had ever met. Or a mancer who missed taunting a favorite victim? Silvio. Elisha could picture him gliding over the sleeping nun, letting the boy sense his approach to build his terror, then shutting him up while he yanked a talisman from the boy’s own head. Had he meant to kill him, then, only to be interrupted by the nun’s return? Or would that spoil some vicious mancer game?

  “You can take care of that, sister. I’ll call if I have need of you.” He did not take his eyes off the boy, but heard and felt her retreat until the door shut behind her. Elisha returned the lantern to the floor. He reached out and lay his hand very lightly on the boy’s knee. “This man who hurt you,” he said into the contact, sending an image of Silvio that made the boy’s flesh squirm and his knees draw up even tighter. “This man will never hurt anyone again, do you understand?”

  “Demon,” the boy’s flesh answered, barely a whisper even then.

  “Him, or me?”

  The boy’s eyes flickered. “Killer.”

  “Yes. Would you rather that I lied to you?” Elisha tried to turn the hard edge of his words, the anger he felt toward those who inflicted such suffering, and ensure he did not visit his anger on the victim instead. “Very well then.” He added a smile. “Bream is my favorite meal. Maestro Lucius was my dear friend in London. Tomorrow’s going to be a wonderful day.”

  The boy blinked, and his next breath sounded more even.

  “Go on—lie to me. Tell me anything. Tell me your name.”

  “I wish my father were here.” A lie that slithered hard, like the crack of a whip. “This is my home. He called me ‘runt.’”

  Two lies, painful and hard given, and one truth, small, and just as hard. Runt: like the smallest piglet in a litter, bound to die and not worth feeding. “You deserve a better name.”

  “Lie.”

  “No,” said Elisha out loud. “Even if you don’t believe me.”

  The boy’s chin dipped, his body slowly releasing his fear, shivering. Elisha reached down for the blanket and drew it up while the boy’s eyes searched his face. He lifted his elbow, letting Elisha tuck the blanket under his arm. Softly, Elisha started singing, watching the boy’s breathing grow ever more regular. From the wary flitting of those eyes, he knew the child would not go to sleep while he stayed. Elisha rose and backed away, those eyes following him as he collected the lantern and walked back to the door. He hung the lantern there and stepped out onto the landing. The nun stirred on her pallet, and Elisha bent down. He set his hand on her shoulder. “Thank you, Sister. I do appreciate you keeping a watchful eye. It’s only my worry for my patient that makes me harsh with you.”

  “I understand,” she said, gazing up into his face as he sent her an image of watchfulness, a sentry on duty against the depredations of evil. She sat up taller against the wall, fingering the cross she wore at her neck as Elisha took his leave. She would sleep no more that night, but knowing this would allow him, and maybe his patient, to rest.

  • • •

  On the way back to his room, in spite of his weariness, Elisha itched to learn what he needed to know—to find the mancer-maestro responsible for the plague. His mind kept returning to the flesh-bound book in the library and its strange diagram, but he tried to set aside that obsession. Only a magus would suspect anything about the work, only a sensitive or a mancer would recognize the skin for what it was. The blasted thing had a purpose, he was sure of it. Or was it merely the jittery power of Silvio’s death, combined with the ever-present thrum of the spreading Valley that made him suspicious? Salerno, like Heidelberg, began to feel like a city of ghosts where the dead and the living freely mingled; like the map of Rome, its streets of the living overlaid with the shadowy passages of the dead.

  Streets of the living, and a map of the dead. Elisha’s eyes snapped open. No wonder the diagrams looked all wrong—it wasn’t meant to be anatomical at all—it was a map! The rivers presented as a metaphor for the passage of the humors weren’t metaph
orical at all. He scrambled out of bed, hurriedly casting a deflection so as not to wake Gilles, and pulled on his robe. He ran back to the library, breathless, pleased to see the windows still flickering with at least a single light. Elisha bounded up the steps to the door. “You can’t—” began the student at the desk, another of Lucius’s acolytes.

  “Ask Lucius in the morning. Better yet, ask him now.” Elisha pushed through the chairs toward the shelf where the flesh-bound book resided, but there was no sense of chill, nothing at all. He spun about, extending his senses, searching.

  “Look,” the student began again, but Elisha cut him off.

  “There was a book here, a thin one bound in pale leather and chained. Where has it gone?”

  “If it was chained, it hasn’t gone anywhere.” The student sighed heavily and went to the shelf where Elisha had been looking. He triumphantly plucked out a slender, chained volume just as Elisha had described. “See?” He presented the cover, but Elisha shook his head.

  “That’s not the same book.” Damn it all, someone had gotten here first. Half the students and all the professors knew he wanted to get into the library. Whoever knew about the book had taken it back. “Do you have any maps? Or anything about Kaffa?”

  “What the blazes is Kaffa?” The student replaced the book.

  “It’s a trading port. Genoese, I think, or Venetian?”

  “Oh, for goodness sake. If it’s a trading port, and it’s not heathen, then it would be Genoese or Venetian, wouldn’t it?” The student flounced over to another section, to a large chart on the wall, the only one that wasn’t medical. He waved his hand over it. “Maps and trade are hardly our line of interest, but this one shows the origin of a number of medicinal spices. Good enough?” Without waiting for an answer, he resumed his post by the door.

  Elisha leaned in close. Fine lines traced all over the chart and names of herbs, minerals, spices both rich and ordinary. He was so tired that he swayed on his feet. Damnation. He took a few steps back, perching on a study carrel, his eyes growing unfocused as he looked at the map. One of the seas looked like a kidney. Another shape . . . yes, he was right.

  He was right! There. Elisha stalked back to the map, letting his gaze remain addled and pressed his finger upon the “heart,” a spit of land where so many of the lines began. Kaffa. The mancers bound a book in flesh, to guide their fellows to the place where the pestilence began, seeking knowledge. So, was Salerno just a false trail? It, too, appeared on the map, no doubt thanks to school pride. But Vertuollo himself mentioned a Salernitan, and showed up here, for what? Not just to hound Elisha with accusations, but to distract him, to join with Lucius to try to keep Elisha away from the library. What other clues had he missed in his distraction? What had that strange invocation said? “Give praise to Saint Stephen.” The martyr of Rome? The founder of the Cistercian order, or the one-time king of Hungary?

  The mancers began their plot years ago, and they had been laying the groundwork all this time. Binding books, disseminating the knowledge, pointing to where to find them and providing a map, to what, exactly? More slowly, Elisha descended once more to his chamber, his senses still unfurled.

  Several of the plague victims outside the gate died during the night, while a few others now writhed with the fever and swellings that started the disease. Elisha let them be—he hadn’t the strength right now. At last, he tumbled into bed and buried his senses, save that ever-present net of awareness that would warn him if anyone came near.

  Morning came all too soon, with the weight of its delayed reckoning. He felt so much closer to an answer, yet he knew he was out of time. He needed to visit his patient as well, to see how he had passed the night. That thought gave him a moment’s pause as he washed his face and prepared for the day. When he found what he needed, what would become of the boy? Perhaps Danek would consent to serve as his physician when Elisha moved on to track down the mancers, leaving behind another who trusted him, another who needed him. As he had left behind Katherine and Isaac. As he had left behind the rabbi and his people. As he had left behind Thomas and Alfleda, and his own infant boy.

  His eyes slid shut against a sudden stinging.

  “Come on, then, you’re not the only one with places to go!” Friar Gilles bumped him with an elbow. “The prior up at San Matteo is interested in some new relics. I won’t divest of anything you think you’ll need, of course.”

  “Let me know how the church is faring—the riot last night was caused when they shut the doors against some plague sufferers.”

  Gilles crossed himself, his fleshy face turning to an unaccustomed frown. “Why’d they do a thing like that? Still plenty of room, and it’s now more than ever that folk need to come to the Lord.”

  “Folk are starting to say the Lord has abandoned us.”

  “Surely not! Well. I shall see what I can do, and perhaps the idea of a new shrine will kindle the faithful.” Gilles swung about, patting his head as he considered his stash of relics, then he was probing his scalp a little more closely. “Say, you’ve got a razor, yes? My tonsure’s growing in. Would you be willing to take care of it?”

  Dropping his towel, Elisha pointed to a chair. “Let’s get you fit to meet the prior.” It had been a long time since Elisha last carved a tonsure; most of the monasteries had their own brothers trained to do so. Still, he worked carefully, and cleaned up a pink circle with a few reddish flea bites standing out. “Sorry about the fleas. I’ll ask Danek for some rosemary to rub on the bedding.”

  “They really don’t bother you,” Gilles mused. “When the Lord touched you, He gave you gifts both large and small.”

  “Just stop.” Elisha prodded him out of the chair. “I’ll see you later.” He strapped on his belt and medical kit, then hesitated. “There was a young woman, a leper, chased from the hospital yesterday. She died during the riot. Will you see she’s properly buried?”

  Gilles met his eye and nodded. “I’ll make it part of my price. Go with God.”

  “And you as well.”

  Elisha ate a quick meal in the refectory and found Ariane waiting for him by the door. Her robes were of fine cloth that brought to mind Vertuollo’s mourning garb, so plain in color, yet so clearly expensive in weave.

  “If your tour is to be complete, we might as well begin with the lair of the enemy,” Ariane said. She led him efficiently toward the northern range of the yard where the ground floor held the classrooms. “Maestro Lucius teaches Galen and the other masters, so his room is at the end nearest the library, and his students take all of those duties. Here.” She conducted him into a theater with ranks of benches and a cluster of students milling about, but no sign of Lucius.

  Elisha’s restless energy, gathered for the fight, held in a hard knot at his breast. Just then, Herve the library keeper entered, descending the stairs toward the center of the room and waving the students to their seats. “Come, come. I shall begin, and Maestro Lucius can assume the class when he is available to do so.”

  The physician’s absence instantly roused Elisha’s interest. Was he mustering evidence for his accusations, or had he, after yesterday’s confrontation, quit the battlefield altogether? Elisha trotted down the steps two at a time as the student prepared at a lectern. “Where is Lucius?”

  “I do not believe that is any of your concern. Doctor. If that’s what you would have us believe.” Herve tried a smile, which did not sit well on his angular features.

  “When do you expect him?”

  “I believe he was called out last night to aid the victims of the riot, as such, he is due some rest.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” Elisha said. “I was the one who led the team. Lucius was nowhere in sight.”

  Herve looked briefly disconcerted. “I am certain that’s what the messenger said who came for him, that he was needed. No doubt he simply avoided wherever you were . . . working.”

  “
Where is he then? In his chambers?” Ariane demanded.

  “Not there either, as we customarily dine together with some of his other advanced pupils and we did not find him this morning. He may be in consultation, or he may simply have sought a moment of solitude from his recent trials.” Herve aimed a pinched look at Elisha. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have a lecture to deliver.” He brushed them away from the lectern with one hand.

  Ariane glided back up the steps into the corridor. “We might as well carry on, I suppose. Maestro Cenci teaches a concentration in the relations of the humors, here.” They stood at the door of another lecture hall, this one with a level floor and a cluster of desks. Maestro Cenci, a thin man with a sharp mustache, oversaw a group of students, heads bent over vellum sheets, painstakingly copying a chart from the wall. He glanced up at them and gave Ariane a nod, before resuming his inspection. Elisha sensed only the focus of a man intent upon his work, with little apparent imbalance in his own humors. Not the mancer he sought. They continued along the corridor.

  The next room exuded a distinct chill, and Elisha drew his power up beneath his skin, honing his projection of merely academic interest. Ariane knocked to enter, revealing a chamber dominated by a large table with a skeleton on top. Other bones occupied the perimeter, most of them broken, and the instructor, Maestro Carel, discussed the various breaks, how they might occur, and how they might present in an injured patient. Carel glared at the open door until Ariane shut it again, leaving Elisha with an impression of annoyance and possibly even violence—not the sort of projection a mancer would allow. That deflated his excitement at sensing the chill of death. Somewhere his enemy was hiding.