Elisha Daemon

by E. C. Ambrose

  She knew too late, she remembered too late to save herself, or any of them, for Elisha reached out and bound them all, every mancer he touched with his blood, and every mancer their webs of murder joined. In England, he slew them when they merged their power to attack him, but here, they need not even try—their killings joined them, their hundreds of victims linking each to each with links of power. Elisha’s own torture, the knives that carved his body now and spilled his blood all the faster forged an affinity with every one of those deaths, and he took them for his own, the spreading wave of his power conjuring them all, awakening their horror and joining them with his own. He felt as if he rose up, flying, upon an explosion of magic, welling like a fountain that spread through his fingers, through his very flesh and bone and every drop of blood they shed in their eagerness for him to die.

  “You want to kill us all with your death, Elisha.” Brigit’s calm penetrated the delirious rush of dying. “There is only one problem. You do not wish to die.”

  He laughed. All pain, all fear had departed, leaving him open to the all-consuming presence of Death itself. He did not wish to die? He had wished it a thousand times, only to force himself to soldier on, to face the foes that could not be defeated. If she believed that, she knew nothing at all.

  “You want to see England again,” she continued, tenderly cupping his face. “You want to walk the streets of London, crowded with the people you’ve saved, and have hot cross buns at Easter. You want to set a child’s broken arm, and see the smile of that baby your brother’s wife adopted—oh, Elisha, it’s a beautiful smile. You’d like to know if Pernel has recovered from Walter’s death, and Allyson from Randall’s. You want to see Alfleda grow from a child to a princess worthy of the word, and watch her married, and be certain her husband is worthy of her, for if he is not worthy, you want to be there to warn him away.”

  Her words washed over him, every name conjuring the image of someone he cared for, Pernel’s loyalty, Allyson’s resolve, Alfleda’s eagerness. The taste of hot cross buns floated on his tongue, fresh from a baker’s oven, the sugar stinging his lips, and he could feel the sheltering houses of London leaning around him, channeling the sky into swaths of glowing gray with their peaked roofs and leaning plastered walls.

  “What about our son, Elisha? Will he favor you, or me? Will he have blue eyes or green? What might be his first words, and where will he take his first steps? Can you imagine watching him grow, stumbling toward you, his hands outstretched, wanting nothing more than your touch to draw him close?”

  Elisha’s breath caught in his ruined throat. Mancers’ blades carved into him, slicing between his muscles, digging into his joints. He only had to let go, to release the magical storm he carried, the knowledge so hard won, so hurtful, so deep. To let go of life and embrace his own death, and he could slay them all.

  “You want to know if the laws you passed as king will change the ways of justice, and if your victory over France will last. You want to know if the king will stand on behalf of all witches as he has stood for you, Elisha.”

  Elisha’s will trembled, and he tried to avoid her touch, to fend away what would come next, what she must say, what he could not bear to hear. He deadened his flesh to her touch, but they had known each other too long for that and his very weaving of the webs that joined him to the mancer had left him vulnerable on the stone before her, the hot breeze of her breath touching his raw flesh and racing in to warm his heart.

  “And Thomas himself,” she murmured, her words sinking deep. “Could you really give up and die, without once more seeing his face, without hearing him call your name, without looking once more in his eyes?”

  It was hard to work magic without consent, moving the flesh in the ways that it willed, in full harmony with its own nature. The flesh was meant to die, to decay and dissolve back to the earth from which it was born. All that Elisha needed to do was to let go and consent to his death. It would be the most natural thing in the world, to die at last after all he had been through, all that he had done. More than ever before, he waited on the threshold between life and death, finally ready to make the other choice. She stood over him, stroking his cheek and reminding him of the world, of all that he had lived for, longed for, fought for—of every reason he had to live. With every speck of blood and strip of muscle, with every scrap of skin and shard of bone, Elisha fought the battle within himself, the same one he had always fought, vanquishing death on behalf of life. Her words and the world that they conjured left him utterly undone, his power unraveling with every cut of a mancer’s knife.

  To slay the mancers, Elisha must claim Death, and he could not. With all of his heart, he wanted to live.

  Chapter 36

  “What are you doing, my lady?” Renart asked, his voice edged with fear. The torches had blown out in the panic.

  “You wanted relics, yes, Your Eminence?” Brigit replied. “You wanted ways to make the world small enough to submit to our will. The law of contagion makes it all possible, but he showed you before, time and again, what you did not wish to see: that life is stronger than death, that the bonds it forges are more powerful even than murder. A talisman of death cold enough to repel the pestilence cannot defend you against death itself—how about a talisman of life? The relic of a saint still living?”

  “Can you—” For a moment, Renart’s voice failed in the darkness. “Is that even possible?”

  “Not for any ordinary magus, but for a man who fought death his entire life, fought it with his entire being? Oh, Your Eminence, what might not be possible with such a man?” Her voice rang in stillness, echoing in Elisha’s skull as in the temple all around. “I shall need a light.”

  A torch flared, illuminating a small circle of eager faces, Renart’s eyes gleaming, Brigit’s face bright with the flame, Vertuollo still and solemn, a dozen other mancers clustering about, firelight illuminating their shaky grins and shifting blades. Tears glazed Elisha’s vision, distorting their features into demons and monsters. He couldn’t breathe, and it didn’t matter. He couldn’t bleed, and it did not matter. He could not die, and he could not even scream as the pain seeped back, the willow bark wearing off. Streaks of agony marked his arms and chest. Unwilling and unbidden, he began to catalog his injuries: severed wrist, severe blood loss, arms partially flayed, multiple stab-wounds to the chest and throat, vocal chords cut. He should be dead already. And yet already his body was trying to heal, nerves and vessels twitching to come together, muscles shivering with the urgency to knit, his barren wrist still reaching for his missing hand. As Brigit encouraged his need to be whole, to heal and survive, his flesh obeyed, her magic binding with this most urgent need.

  “Don’t just hack him into pieces, we must be very deliberate if we’re not to trigger his power. Here.” Brigit’s voice grew stronger, more commanding, then she brought out a bundle with her off-hand, leaving her other palm cupping Elisha’s face. Something clattered onto the stone beside his head, then she lifted a scalpel into the light. “We must balance the urgency for life with his will for death—the perfect balance of opposites. There, spread out that diagram. You—place tourniquets at every limb, at least until we can catch the blood.”

  Renart chuckled. “My lady, I did not know you were a surgeon.”

  “I have become what I had to be,” she said. “I have learned from the masters—Elisha not least of all. And my title is ‘Your Majesty.’”

  He laughed again, the sound moving from that slight panic into a relaxed sound of approval. “Tell me how to assist in the operation, Your Majesty, and I am at your will.”

  “We need to call upon his knowledge of healing, to create an affinity, so that everything we undertake from this point forward will be a surgery, not a slaughter. If we push him too far, I don’t know that even I could convince him to go on living.”

  “Do not underestimate yourself, Your Majesty. You are very persuasive.”

>   “Then you will slay him in the guise of healing?” Vertuollo, his Latin resonant and precise.

  Brigit’s humor insinuated itself into Elisha’s skin. “On the contrary. If we do this right, he shall never die. And anyone with access to one of his relics and the wit to invoke his affinity will live forever.”

  “What will remain of his awareness?” the count asked. “His sensitivity?”

  “Once the cardinal’s wafer wears off, I can’t imagine that he will have the strength to think on much besides the pain. His essence will be dispersed among the talismans we take. They say that soldiers who have lost a limb will go on feeling it. This will be much the same, if on a greater scale. Pass me those hooks, will you?”

  “How will you share, Your Majesty? And with how many?” asked a man’s harsh voice in hesitant Latin.

  She stroked her fingers down Elisha’s face and lifted them at last, pressing his right hand open. “His hands belong to me, and the skin of his right cheek. The rest will be shared.”

  Elisha tried to turn his head to follow her movement, but the wounds at his throat gaped and pain shot through him so he pressed his head back into the stone. His fur-lined cape lay beneath him, but the fur grew sticky with blood, soft no longer.

  Someone cinched a strap around his left arm, cutting off the trickle of blood, then another slid over his right wrist.

  “I should have thought you would claim his heart,” Vertuollo remarked.

  “I’ve had it before—it’s just like any other. It is his hands where his talent lies.”

  A healing man who carries death in his hands, her mother Rowena had said. When he underwent trepanation and nearly died, Elisha imagined he had seen Rowena, his angel, reaching back for him from the fire, ready to lead him onward, away from this life of pain.

  “I will have his witching eyes,” said Renart, flaring his own. “We will need vessels to receive our relics. Paolo, to the workshop.”

  “But I don’t want to miss—” protested the harsh voice.

  “Did you not hear the queen? You won’t miss a thing. If you are quick to return with as many vessels as you find, you may even make your own choice.”

  “Thank you, Your Eminence.”

  The Valley fluttered through Elisha’s skin with a tingling sense of the man’s departure. He could not die and pass beyond it, to whatever might lie there, yet if he survived, if Brigit’s surgery proved successful, his mind would be so fragmented, so pierced with pain, he could do nothing to prevent them using him in whatever way they would, taking talismans of him and making themselves immortal, with the whole world laid at their feet, ripe for the slaughter. He remembered the scene at Salerno, lascivious women, drunken men, dancing and debauching one another, stripping each other of dignity and honor while a mancer orchestrated their madness and reaped the power of his reward.

  The passage of the Valley pulsed like a second heartbeat as the mancers who had fled now returned, bringing more, and once—there!—the shrill terror of Jude’s passage through the Valley, with Gretchen at his side, accompanied by the familiar sorrow of Nathaniel’s death. To England then, where he had told them they would be safe. Jude was right: Elisha was a liar, no less than Danek had been. There was no safety. There could be none in a world where plague and mancers both roamed free.

  “Shh, shh,” Brigit crooned as she worked, her cold steel expertly carving between the bones of his wrist, probing and retreating, working methodically, just as he might have amputated a hand. Guy and his resources had taught her well: She was becoming what she needed. She could not master Death herself, not unless she understood Life as well, and so she undertook the study of surgery and healing, the knowledge Elisha had already possessed when he discovered the mystery of magic. She had wanted him, wanted his power, wanted his worship, wanted his secrets for her own. And now she had him utterly at her command.

  His feet grew suddenly cold as someone stripped off his boots and hose, then gave a cry. “Here, Your Majesty, one of those foul blades!”

  “Hush! I need to focus.” Brigit’s blade went awry and jabbed Elisha’s palm so that his fingers twitched as if to snatch the scalpel from her.

  “The blades that cut magic,” said Vertuollo in a hushed tone. “Interesting.” He leaned over, briefly visible in Elisha’s narrowed view, and took the slender salted knife that glittered in the torchlight. “Can we not sever his own magic with it?”

  “She works in opposites,” Renart answered, moving beside the count so they might share contact, and whatever was said next, Elisha did not hear.

  There must be a way—he could not simply be defeated, not by his mere desire to live. What weapons remained to him? They had taken the salted blade, not that he had a way to use it, and they had already disarmed his affinity with death. The Valley thrummed and pain streaked his limbs. Every time he thought he came close to a solution, the knives dug deeper and the connections flew apart in splintered agony. The mancers around him moved in and back in a terrible dance, filling vials with blood, catching his tears, carving slivers of his skin, sliding through the Valley as if they slid their hands upon him, unstoppable and sickening. Elisha drew himself deep, his awareness retreating from his skin and flesh and bone. Yet the further he withdrew, the louder grew the humming of the Valley. He reached for it again. Now—let him die now!

  “Hold him!” Brigit cried aloud and through his broken body. “Everyone with a talisman, conjure him back, hold him here.”

  Elisha gasped without sound or breath, his spine gone rigid with the strain. For a moment, he imagined he could reach England or Heidelberg or anyplace but this terrible here.

  Knocking reverberated through the temple. An icy anger swept the gathered mancers and many of them tugged down their hoods, glancing about uncertainly. Beyond the door, Elisha sensed Harald’s return—along with dozens of others. Praise God, he was saved!

  Chapter 37

  “It’s the papal guard,” one of the mancers whispered. “We can’t afford to be recognized, not if we’re to claim benevolence. There aren’t enough of us to rule by force.”

  “I will not allow them stop us now,” Renart said, his voice so hard Elisha’s brief hope fled.

  “We haven’t time for a battle.” Brigit gripped her scalpel, “but your temple is compromised.”

  “We have another place to go,” Vertuollo said. “The way of the dead.”

  “But how long can we stay there?” Brigit demanded. “Besides, he’ll be closer to his affinity there than anywhere else.”

  “No, it is ideal. They’ll break in the door of an empty room.” Renart stared at her. “Although I do appreciate your artistry, Your Majesty, you shall have to work more quickly. If you cannot—”

  “I can.”

  Renart reached out through the Valley. Then he cradled Elisha’s head, almost gently, and carried him in to that place between. The maelstrom overwhelmed Elisha, throwing down his defenses, pouring in a cataract of dancing chaos. Shades flickered around him—shades he remembered but could not name, and the clinging dead that marked his captors soared around them, swooping like carrion birds delighted by the scent of fresh meat. The howling escalated in his ears, as if the shades were maddened by the presence of such a company of the living, and a growing company it was.

  The Valley lacked direction and definition, except by the ties that linked the killers with the slain, and joined the outspread network of relics they had forged from those they killed. These trails tangled about the mancers, the only solid things in that space of chaos. Yet Elisha’s right eye showed a different path. He lay in the grip of the mancers, Brigit readying her blade, and saw that second web in strands of light that penetrated the shadows, even there, in the Valley. He had seen those golden strands before, but never understood them. The mancers prided themselves on their relationships with the dead, but the dead were not all that joined them, not to each ot
her, and not to the world outside. Outside the Valley, Elisha saw the webs of death, but within the Valley, he saw the web of life itself.

  “Hurry! We must hurry,” Renart spoke through the Valley, in words that echoed from death to death. “Come and share the queen’s bounty.” As he spoke, those dark strands of death that joined them tightened, and the mancers came. Count Vertuollo slipped through like a lord upon the dance floor, between the couples.

  The French lord, the Italian merchant, the Hungarian child, the German maid, the German lady, and the English king. What on earth was happening? The Valley’s thrum bewildered his senses, but he felt them still as those other, familiar presences entered the Valley. So many mancers, so few magi, and just one man, desolati, and desperate: Thomas, here, in the one place Elisha had sworn he should never see. His friends, too, had come, entering the Valley for what—for a vain attempt to save him?

  Elisha screamed. In the air, in the world, they had cut out his voice, but in the Valley that cut his heart, he spoke for multitudes. The shades in their eternal torment echoed his cry.

  “Attack. Do not let them reach the queen,” Renart ordered calmly.

  Brigit sank her blade into Elisha’s cheek, carving deep so that the blade chinked against his teeth. “Go on, kill us now,” she said into his flesh. “The dead give voice to your pain, but they can’t help you, and they cannot save your friends.”

  Then Renart gripped his chin, anchoring him in this place without form, and shoved a knife into his eye socket, twisting his head aside.

  Jude fought in absolute silence, flinging stone after stone, tainted with his own dread knowledge. Gretchen fought beside him, but growing further away, the sinuous streaks of her magic repelling a mancer, only to be faced again with a half-dozen more.