Harald twitched and frowned, then his sword arm straightened. Releasing him, Elisha leapt for a soldier, flicking him with blood, another and a third, making contact and sending them clarity. The soldiers he touched joined battle with the mancers, swords sparking through the air, but it wouldn’t be enough—the mancers came to kill Ludwig, and Elisha didn’t know how to stop them. Conrad’s prisoner must be the key to holding the Valley, but Conrad himself stood outside the circle, mancers shifting between them. If he could get the emperor to safety, Elisha could more freely flex his power.
Another soldier tumbled, taken with a choking rattle, and a bowstring twanged. Elisha dropped to the ground, a stone bruising his calf. He reached back for the emperor, but Ludwig stood and shouted orders, his voice whipped by the foul wind, as if he could not hear the retching of his men nor see their terror. Elisha grabbed the stone, wincing as it jabbed his cut hand. The Valley rent for another soldier, but the vigilant killer sucked down his death and grew yet stronger.
Somewhere down the slope, horses whinnied their fear. If only they were close enough to ride.
Elisha lifted the stone, stumbled to his feet, an arrow hissing through the spot where he’d been a moment earlier. With all the strength he could muster, Elisha threw the stone downhill toward the horses, then he snatched Harald’s arm and the emperor’s belt. With no time to warn them or ward himself, Elisha ripped open the Valley, plunging through to the blood-stained stone.
Chapter 26
The three men staggered as the Valley sealed behind them, twenty yards or so downslope from the battle where a howl went up at their vanishing. “The horses!” Elisha ran, sensing the pattern of heat and worry from the tethered mounts. “Ride, Your Majesty—you must flee!”
“Do you take me for a coward?” The emperor slapped Elisha’s hand away.
“Every man they touch, they kill.”
Ludwig’s sword swung toward Elisha’s head and stopped short. “It’s you who dared touch me.”
“Only to save your life, Your Majesty.”
“The empress’s guard, Your Majesty, thirty strong,” Harald panted. “They’re just by the manor.”
“Go!” the emperor shouted, and the steward pulled himself up on a bareback mount and kicked it into motion. Ludwig swung his head about to Elisha. “I can’t leave my men there to die, nor my enemies to prosper. You are the monster we all came here to slay—surely there is something you can do.”
Elisha, already shaking from the night’s exertions, stared back up the hill. Fifteen mancers, all still standing. Last time he fought so many, they linked themselves together to overcome him, and he turned their connection against them to magnify his own power. Taken one by one, any given mancer might be overcome, but only by bringing all he had to bear against that one—leaving fourteen more to attack. From the sudden spike of interest, he knew the mancers had noticed their absence. If Elisha and the emperor struck now, they had a chance. If not, the soldiers would be dead, the mancers hunting their true prey. A little above the battle, the archers took aim on the trapped soldiers, launching shafts fringed with echoes of the dead. “The archers can kill me from a distance, and I can’t touch them. I can do nothing against the archers—not without bringing down the mine and your own men with it.”
Ludwig’s thick beard parted in a sudden, ferocious grin. “Then they are for me.” He caught the mane of the nearest horse and swung himself up, brandishing his sword as the horse plunged up toward the battle. In the flaring light of torches, the emperor looked like the archangel Michael, come to slay the enemies of the Lord. He had none of his rival Charles’s charm, but, in that moment, Elisha saw why men would follow him into battle, even such a one-sided battle as this.
If he would salvage anything of this night, Elisha, must follow. Cloaking himself in shades and deflection, he ran after. The guise would not last long, but it might do until Ludwig could distract the archers. Ahead, the ring of soldiers squeezed and pushed back, but did not approach the flickering shades formed by the planted knives, even though the threat came from the other side. If Elisha could strip the mancers of their magic, even a bit of it, they could be slain as other men. The unearthly moaning of the Valley led him on, and the knives, with their history of death, pierced the vale of the dead. Conrad and his father, the warden, held it open, sending power to the mancers and fear to the hearts of those they fought.
Elisha circled toward Conrad and his victim, but Eben stood as body guard. The victim still writhed, his shoulders jerking. His hands must be bound at his back. The shadows moved, and for a moment torchlight glinted on a sweat-streaked, tonsured head and caught the whites of the captive’s eyes. Brother Gilles, his mouth gaping and face suffused as the cord drew tight around his throat, but Conrad did not kill him—no, he held him there on the border, his imminent death keeping the Valley open. Shit.
But murder was not the only way to open the Valley.
Dropping to his knees beside the first knife planted in the earth, Elisha steeled himself and opened to the Valley as he grasped the hilt, his cut hand stinging. The Valley groaned to his command, an effort that tightened his every muscle and made his jaw ache with the clenching. As with all magic, it was easy to create in the natural order, and difficult to defy it. Passing through the Valley, as all the dead must do, was terrible, but natural. This rending, propping open not a single door, but a dozen, defied the nature of both this world and the realm beyond: It must strain even the warden and his son, even with the promised death of Gilles to hold the gate. The chaos dazzled his right eye, but his left . . . twelve shades stretched between the blades, bridging the realms, drawing off the power of the Valley to the mancers who had killed them.
Talismans worked because of resonance, because they magnified the innate skill of the magus. These shades reflected the power of the Valley itself. Every time the Valley tried to close, sucking them in, leaving only the remnants that clung to the killers, the warden within the Valley reached back, sending the power to kill with that single touch, ripping the life of their victim into the Valley. Elisha killed by seeking the death inherent in life itself, making nature his ally in destruction, making his killing inevitable, and hideously easy.
Using the contact of his own near-death, Elisha called the pinned shades, summoning them back to the Valley not through the contact of the blades that killed them, but rather through his own kinship, the Valley that opened within when he had nearly died. They rushed through him, extinguished from the earthly plain as if by a mighty wind.
Power rebounded against him, the warden reaching back, trying to hold the conjured shades, but the warden had not killed them—he had no direct control over these shades—nor did he have Elisha’s kinship with Death itself. The warden had been unprepared for Elisha’s entrance, his manipulation of the Valley, achieved without killing anyone. The lashing howl of the warden’s broken power knocked him flat as the Valley wailed shut, its warden thrust away, likely as staggered as Elisha himself—or even more so.
He held on to the knife as if to pin himself to the world, gulping for breath. The pounding madness of the Valley ceased, leaving a sharp silence, a single beat, then cut by the rage of the abandoned mancers and the elation of the soldiers, whooping and calling gratitude to the saints above as they joined battle. The mancers were still magi, and most held other deaths to call upon, but nothing like the horror of the Valley itself. Diminished and angry they fought on, struggling for contact with the remaining soldiers, the elite warriors of the emperor’s own guard.
“Conrad!” Eben howled, “what happened?” His form crackled with cold that shocked a soldier dead.
“He broke the path to the knives. Your blades aren’t strong enough, and I can’t hold the Valley open alone.”
Every time someone died and the Valley beckoned, Elisha reached back through the memory of his own death and snapped it shut, denying the mancers their full strength. On
e of the deaths chilled Elisha’s hand—it was one of the soldiers he had marked before fleeing the scene. Elisha caught the power, abandoning the knife and curling his fist, healing himself, but holding his connection to the Valley. Death gnawed at his chest, eager to return him to his rightful place. Instead, he leapt through to Conrad’s side and thrust out his hand.
Conrad wheeled, hauling Gilles before him, and Elisha caught the friar, sending a withering stroke along his skin that frayed the cord around his neck to nothing. Gilles tumbled to the ground. Elisha leapt for Conrad, letting the power of death precede him. The mancer, a gruesome talisman held in his grip, vanished into the Valley before they’d even made contact.
Above, the emperor’s battle cry resounded over the thunder of hooves, the shriek and crunch of a sickening death.
“Fucking barber!” howled Eben’s voice over all. The Valley ripped, and before Elisha could stop the opening, Eben sprang through, landing at the nearest cursed knife as Elisha rolled to the side and staggered up. “Even if you live through this night, Barber, we’ve got worse for you. You can’t even imagine what we’ve wrought.”
He slashed out with his dagger, stained by a dozen deaths. Elisha stumbled and fell, rolling downhill as the tip sparked against the cobblestones, then Elisha snatched himself through the Valley, back to the bloody stone by the stable, his lungs laboring, his pulse pounding in his ears.
The mancers howled their frustration, then one of the cursed knives tumbled from the gloom to clatter to the ground nearby. Immediately, the Valley ripped again, and Eben stepped through the contact between his dagger and the knife he had thrown. Two more mancers stood with him, their own blades shimmering darkly.
“How the Hell did you get here?” Eben demanded of Elisha. “You can’t pass through living blood.”
Shouts echoed up the hill before a blaze of torches. Harald led the way on horseback while thirty men or more sprinted after him, armed and angry.
“My lord,” said one of the mancers, with a flicker of his power to draw the eye toward the desolati reinforcements.
“I’ll take him, you get the emperor.”
The other mancers flashed away through the Valley as Elisha shouted, “No!”
In Elisha’s moment of distraction, Eben grabbed his arm with one hand and sliced downward with the other. The dagger bit across Elisha’s hip, grinding against bone.
Pain shot through him, the snarling cold of death blasting into his flesh from the cursed blade. He forced it back, rejecting the call of the Valley. Eben tore free his blade, twisting Elisha’s arm so that he screamed, then shoving his face hard to the ground. The blade drove downward, Elisha’s blood spattering in its plunge toward his spine. Desperately, Elisha cast his power outward, into the blood that marked the dagger. The blade shattered as it plunged toward him, scattering frigid shards across his shoulders.
Eben cursed and dropped the hilt before the freeze reached him.
Writhing against the ground, Elisha managed to turn and straighten his arm. Eben dug in his fingers, his power swelling, and the cloth of Elisha’s sleeve disintegrated under his grasp. But now Elisha could grab him back. He jerked the mancer forward and slammed his other fist into Eben’s face.
Eben’s nose broke, spewing blood, splinters pushing backward, and Elisha reached for Death. Never far from him, it sprang at his command, surging through his flesh. Eben’s throat produced a strangled sound, the splinters of bone shifting just far enough, then he toppled, the cold release of his demise soothing Elisha’s wrenched arm and injured side. Drawing strength, Elisha forced his side to heal, pain vanishing in the chill wonder of another man’s killing. He pushed Eben’s body off of him, shaking out both hands, the one frigid with Eben’s blood, the other stiff, its damaged sleeve revealing damaged skin beneath. He urged his fingers to close.
In the distance, wielding death, the mancers strode into battle. The archers up the hill had not launched an arrow for a long time, and Ludwig wheeled his horse among them, then plunged downward, sword gleaming as he shouted. Fresh soldiers converged upon the mancers, but Eben’s companion flashed away, the Valley rent open and shut, open again, like a bolt of lightning. Eben’s companion sprang forth beside the emperor’s mount, and his sword slashed across the horse’s throat. In a gout of blood, it staggered and pitched sidelong, Ludwig falling with it.
Elisha ran, stumbling, as the mancer raised his sword and thrust, the shades of all those it had slaughtered wreathing the blade. Ludwig shrieked, his own sword cutting the air, then tumbling down, free of the hand that ruled it.
The soldiers threshed nearer, their rush of bodies obscuring Elisha’s view.
The Valley ripped over and over as the surviving mancers fled the scene. Two dozen soldiers they could slaughter, but not fifty, not prepared with the knowledge Harald would have shared. Just for a moment, elation flooded Elisha’s spirit: It could be done! Armed with magi knowledge, a force of desolati could fight the mancers and even defeat them.
His elation died quickly; what of Gilles or Harald or the emperor?
Shaking off his numbness, Elisha ran uphill. Harald’s riderless horse thrashed about and leapt a pile of corpses to clatter down past him, back to its fellows, eyes rolling with white. Two dozen or so men remained standing, dazed, glancing around to see if the enemy had truly gone.
With its tumbled bodies and the upthrust pikes that pinned a few, darkness transformed the battle into a strange forest of rounded stones and limbless trees.
Elisha cast his awareness through the earth and caught the flicker of cold that hovered over the still form of Brother Gilles. He stumbled in that direction, hauling off a dead soldier. Gilles lay face up, his chin tipped back, his throat bruised and scored and not moving. Elisha dropped beside him and caught his clammy face in both hands. Somewhere deep, the pulse still quivered, but he had no wounds to heal, no bones to set. Gilles, who believed Elisha to be holy, lay now at the verge of death. What kind of wonder-worker could not save even the true believers?
He remembered the rabbi’s awe as he scribed letters to his friends, to anyone who would listen. Some of the wonder-workers, he said, could even breathe life into those who lay as the dead. Elisha brought his mouth down to Gilles. With the power that coursed through him, he reached for healing, for the urgent needs of the flesh to live, and he breathed for the fallen friar.
The body twitched beneath his hands, and he breathed again. Gilles shuddered, then his eyes fluttered open and he took a gasp. “You,” he breathed. “He named you demon, the one who took me, but it was himself he spoke of.” He lifted a trembling hand, but Elisha shook off his reverie.
“Rest,” he ordered, and straightened away, glancing around into the night. “Steward,” Elisha called, swallowing, and trying to work his voice up. “Steward!”
“Doctor?”
Elisha picked his way around the dead to find the steward kneeling by Eben’s companion, taking a few deep breaths of his own. Harald glanced up. “Pikes work well to strike at a distance. But poniards will do, if you have no other.” He lifted his bloody fist, still wrapped around a spike as long as his forearm.
The mancer’s face was a pool of blood, pierced through the chin.
“You’ve done very well,” Elisha said, surprised.
“I brought that point for you.” Harald looked away. “I am his majesty’s assassin. But too late to save him.” He started up, swaying, and Elisha tucked a hand beneath his elbow to help. They moved a few paces, to where the emperor’s horse lay slaughtered. Ludwig lay beside his mount, his eyes open and staring, his hand in death still reaching for his sword. His ribs lay crushed, his heart forever still.
Elisha knotted his hands into his hair. “I’m sorry.”
“He should have listened to you sooner.” Harald went down on one knee by the fallen emperor and said, “I wish he had heard that his son was born. The child is weak
but Doctor von Stubben is with them. I—”
Grabbing his shoulder, Elisha stopped his words. “What? Von Stubben was dismissed.”
Harald shook his head. “He’s been with the emperor longer than I have. We met him upon the journey and he reported that you had undermined his post. He joined—”
“Shit!” Elisha turned and ran, tripping downhill and leaping the bodies to run for the manor, stumbling through the dark and empty streets. Surely, Doctor Emerick wouldn’t allow von Stubben near the empress—which meant something had happened to him, as well. By the time he reached the broad steps of the manor, Elisha’s legs trembled. Only a handful of men remained on duty there, and he stumbled up to them, shouting, “Urgent news! Where is the empress?”
“You are banned,” one of the guards pronounced, and they clustered in front of the door. “On pain of death, as I recall.” He lowered a sword at Elisha’s gut.
“The empress is in danger—someone must warn her. Where’s Doctor Emerick?”
“The margravine called him away, but the empress is well-tended—put out your hands.” To one of the others, the captain said, “Search him for weapons.”
“You don’t understand.” Elisha raised his hands, but he wanted to wrap them around the captain’s throat. “The baby is in danger, they’re both in danger. For God’s sake, let me pass.”
Quick hands patted down his sides, pausing at the medical kit, rumpling the packet of letters. Behind them, the door sprang open and Lady Agnes appeared, looking pale. “It’s the baby. We need Doctor Emerick.”
A soldier on the lower step snapped to attention and ran down into the street.
“Please let me help!” Elisha lowered his hands, but the captain brought his sword up under Elisha’s chin, forcing him back.
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