Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  The idea that he might be mistaken for a mancer himself had begun to take root, suggesting a plan that could ease his way here, if he could reassure the local mancers about his purpose and still keep them at arm’s length. At all costs, he must beware the warden. Any mancer strong enough, sensitive enough, to hold the Valley open for so long was indeed a force to be avoided. He could not afford to let his urgency destroy the very secrecy he needed.

  As it happened, any travel beyond the palace was put off while Cola and his meager army confronted the baron who had barricaded the vast oval structure they had passed—il Colosseo, Cola named it.

  • • •

  From a balcony two days later, Elisha and the members of the council watched as Cola ordered a few more executions. As an executioner draped a noose over each man’s head, one prayed, one pleaded, two others shouted defiance—urging the vengeance of God upon the tribune. The air stank with fear and rot. The executioner kicked the first one over the edge. Bone cracked as the condemned man’s head jerked back, and Elisha flinched, his hand rising to his own throat.

  “Such is the treatment of the enemies of the Republic,” Rinaldo murmured, watching Elisha’s reaction.

  The Valley opened, but the cold dread of the first criminal’s death slid aside, drawn off by an unseen strength as blood spattered from his mouth to the ground below. A mancer had marked the gallows slates and siphoned the power of those who died. Another degradation of the condemned men, and one that few but Elisha would ever recognize.

  The second criminal kicked and strangled, until Cola raised his hand, and a pair of women broke from the crowd, running up to pull on the hanged man’s legs, mercifully snapping his neck rather than leave him to choke to death.

  “The tribune’s justice upsets you,” Rinaldo observed.

  “I have too often known justice to go awry.” Elisha’s hands ached from clutching the rail. He scanned the crowd, looking for the flicker of shades that marked a mancer’s wake. What mancer could resist such a feast of fear?

  Two men, distant from one another, wore the signs, one in the black habit of a monk, the other in workman’s garb, leaning on a shovel as he watched, eyes wide to take it all in. A few half-hearted cheers rose from the crowd. Most merely stared, mouths drawn tight.

  The weeping man, given his shove, kicked and gurgled a long moment, but nobody came to tug on his body as he swung back and forth, his bowels releasing, until he finally twitched into stillness.

  The workman mancer emanated a thrill that reminded Elisha of Morag’s pleasure in the power of the Valley. Would the Germans have warned their allies who to watch out for? Elisha sealed his presence beneath his skin and transformed the shade of his eyes, making them both appear gray. It was a projection only, the flesh would not conform easily to his will against nature, but the markers of the barber they feared must be concealed. The shock of white hair, the scars upon his hands, he erased. If the mancers spotted him, they’d see only a dark-haired stranger.

  The executioner repositioned the knot before knocking the last man down for a sharp break. Scattered applause and cheering greeted this last execution, then Cola made a little speech in the local tongue. Rinaldo led cheers for the tribune until they echoed from the stone buildings all about, and the crowd drifted back into the haunted streets.

  “Now will we have the peace to make our visits?” Elisha asked, turning away from the dangling dead.

  With a gesture of dismissal, Rinaldo explained, “There may be reprisals. For several days, at least, we should remain inside the palace. Among the tribune’s first pronouncements, he made a law that no murderer should be suffered to live, no matter the circumstances of his birth. A noble law, but there are still those who do not understand that order is maintained only by strength.” He aimed a finger at Elisha. “Don’t go anywhere. I must join the tribune for counsel. If you will excuse me.” With a nod, Rinaldo dismissed himself—no doubt to tell his master that their visitor was among those sickened by this mode of justice. How far could their suspicion grow before Elisha found himself once more at the end of a noose?

  The yard and steps emptied. After the last of the populace filtered through, a pair of guards closed the tall gates, barring them with a huge beam.

  Two mancers now, Elisha would recognize on sight, and he had evidence of a third. He pushed away from the rail and descended to the piazza below. The executioner directed a team to haul away the older remains of the criminals that had been cut down to make room for the new. The workman mancer helped with this gruesome task, pushing a barrow out through a smaller gate as Elisha approached the scaffold.

  Death stained the stones beneath and fresh blood now dripped down to join it, mingling with even less appealing fluids of the dead. A sensitive mancer could use his own blood to mark the area where a dead man’s blood might fall, then use that contact to gather the power of the criminal’s death. Another sensitive—the warden of the Valley, a man who knew the paths of death almost as intimately as Elisha himself, and apparently could employ violent deaths he had not actually committed. That was worrisome indeed, narrowing Elisha’s few advantages. Worse yet, how was Elisha to remain unnoticed in the city with another sensitive as its master?

  The workman mancer returned to haul away another body, but he paused, his stare aimed directly at Elisha, and a hint of his magical scrutiny snaked out. His eyes narrowed as he turned away with the body, leaving one more for a final load.

  The workman returned for the last body, and Elisha started to walk away, but the man called, “Here, sir, you seem at ease with the dead—give a hand, would you?” The fellow waved an arm, his voice cheerful and pleading, at odds with the heavy weight of his stare.

  At ease with the dead. Elisha’s heart raced, but he concealed that as well. He should have known any foreign visitor would not escape notice in such unsettled times, especially one who had not been seen to arrive by any ordinary means. For a moment he thought to ignore the workman mancer, but if Conrad and Eben’s conversation could be believed, this man and all the Roman mancers followed the warden of the Valley, Conrad’s father, as their master. Better for the warden to be aware of him, but think him no harm, than to associate the stranger with the enemy. Every death that touched him he drew up like a cloak of shadows, recalling the mancer-archbishop of England, Jonathan, and the skillful projections he used to intimidate other magi and those who risked contact. Elisha made a mancer of himself, steeped in sorrows unfeigned.

  He gripped the talismans connected to Rome, conjuring a thread of cold. “Of course, let me help you.”

  The mancer grinned. “Thank you kindly.”

  Together they lifted the last body, and Elisha felt the unmistakable tingle of contact, an inquiry made along the very flesh of the dead man as they placed him in the barrow.

  “Who are you, then?” the mancer demanded, wary, but not yet ready to strike.

  “Please tell your master who marks the gallows that the English are returning to strength. I am here to make us ready for Rome.”

  “He mentioned a stranger passing his gateway, better for you that you’ve been honest than to keep secrets.” He offered a crooked smile, but his presence gave a pulse of hostility. “Know this: we don’t share.”

  The workman referred to the Valley as the warden’s gateway, as if it were his private road. That disturbed Elisha, but he was careful not to let it show. “No need. I shall go about my work and be gone.”

  “I should do likewise.” With a bob of his head, the mancer released the body. Elisha stepped back as the man heaved up the barrow’s handles and trundled away.

  Elisha stood trembling, his throat dry. Had he just made peace with the enemy, or had he cast himself upon the waters, unable to swim?

  Chapter 32

  When the nightly skirmishes between the tribune’s men and their enemies ended, and another corpse joined the rotting ones upon the scaff
old, Elisha, Uccello, and Rinaldo rode out of the city at long last so that he could carry on his mission. The need to proceed cautiously was one thing—but to make no progress at all, except in his language skills, was quite another, and he chafed under the enforced stillness.

  A vast cemetery spread around the Church of San Lorenzo, full of the quiet presence of the dead. Here and there lay murder victims, and others unjustly killed whose shades shimmered with the echoes of their earthly pain. The mere presence of so many dead at first piqued Elisha’s interest, but while the mancers appreciated the resonance of such a location, especially for working magic, ordinary corpses were of little use without the mancers’ personal involvement in the deaths. Among the gravestones, a mancer moved, his presence chilling the relics Margaret had given Elisha. The mancer’s head rose as the party rode by, sharp eyes tracking them. He made no move to follow or speak, but that chill lingered. The warden’s eyes were on him, through his companions if nothing else. The thought brought Elisha’s breath up short, and he forced himself to play his role, projecting a strength he did not feel, and concealing the signs of his own identity as he always did when he wasn’t alone. Cola’s spy threatened execution if he were revealed to be an enemy—the warden’s spies promised so much worse.

  Inside, using Latin as the language they shared, Father Uccello told the tale of San Lorenzo’s martyrdom and revealed the stone on which the saint was laid out after his grisly martyrdom—and the iron grill on which he had been burned to death, with a section of burnt flesh still attached. His closely controlled presence shivered a little at that, and he studied again Elisha’s mismatched eyes. “Burning is now a favored punishment for witches. Thankfully, they rarely frequent Rome. There are too many holy things here for their comfort.”

  His stare alone reduced Elisha’s comfort; it made Elisha want to blurt out his secrets, to reveal the terrible witches already at work in Rome, and the destruction they would bring down upon the city and all who traveled there. Breaking the Church itself, just as the rabbi had said.

  Elisha turned away and continued his pilgrimage from altar to altar. Excitement surged through him as he felt the brush of a familiar shade. On taking a careful stroll through the church, he located two relics shared with the cache given him by Margaret. The second fragment occupied a large reliquary overseen by a pair of stern monks who relaxed only when Elisha dropped a few coins in the box for candles and lit them, thinking of his mother’s piety, his brother’s tithing, his own king’s abiding faith. He lit one candle for his stillborn nephew, another for Queen Margaret’s murdered boy, and forced the memories aside.

  Another mancer, a thin, severe woman dressed in black, looked up from a nearby altar, her eyes, and her other senses, upon him, stalking him. Elisha offered a polite nod, and she turned away.

  Under the guise of tucking back his hair, he plucked a few strands and caught them at the base of the elaborate reliquary, sensing the layers of other dead the vessel contained.

  To use the hair against him would take a highly sensitive magus, one with knowledge of Elisha, like Elisha’s use of Mordecai’s hair to reach the Isle of Wight. Such a subtle marking would pass beneath the notice of most mancers, and serve to give him warning in the meantime if others used these relics to open the Valley. He could link all the relics in this way and pull them from the churches through the Valley, as he fled the scrutiny of so many mancers. He could finally go home.

  In addition to the two victims whose talismans he carried already, the church held three more items freshly forged by the mancers—three more shades he could pursue and one day lay to rest.

  • • •

  The next day, they rode again, but from a different gate, through an empty country toward the church of San Sebastiano, accompanied by a small party of soldiers in case the bandits emerged. A pair of mancers working in a field stretched their senses toward Elisha, making his skin crawl. Though he clamped down on the sensation immediately, a growing unease gripped him, translating to his horse who stamped and snorted, startling at shadows. While the entire city of Rome teemed with shades both new and old, this broad avenue paved with ancient stones carried legions of the dead, quite literally. If Elisha did not blink them away, his party passed through troops of soldiers clad in the metal skirts and plumed helms of the ancient Romans. The fresh shades of recent travelers moved among them, along with strangers in the garb of distant lands and Northern climates. It should be warmer in Rome, even in November, but the chill reached Elisha through his fur cloak, as if cold permeated the land.

  “You seem unwell, my dear sinner,” said Father Uccello, eying him. “Don’t fear—the church is just ahead.” He pointed past a series of old stone buildings.

  Between stood two small churches Elisha could see already. “Which one?” he asked, hoping his relief didn’t show.

  “Not these—these are merely entrances to the catacombs. San Sebastiano is a bit further, across that field.”

  “Catacombs?” Elisha formed the unfamiliar word, trying to get a sense of it.

  “For many centuries now, it has been unlawful to bury the dead within Rome. Such a ban is necessary in a city so large as Rome. So the dead are here, beneath us. We encourage the people to use the new graveyard, as at San Lorenzo, but many will still follow the old ways.” He turned his palm up in half a shrug.

  Drying fields and small farms surrounded the older structures, some with smaller houses built into them. Elisha said, “There are no gravestones.”

  “No, the catacombs are caverns, dug out for miles. Rather than graves, there are shelves for the dead to take their eternal rest, Many of our martyrs are interred below.” Father Uccello crossed himself.

  Elisha stared at the ground as they rode, his mount’s hooves treading through dim shadows that rose like a mist from the very earth. He wished he could stopper his awareness completely and set aside his unease, but, especially outside the city walls, he needed his vigilance. Since he had spoken to the workman, mancers appeared everywhere—serving in the tribune’s hall, working the fields, tending the graves—and he’d begun to think the conversation had been a bad idea after all. He could feel their attention upon him.

  His unease increased as they rode, his stomach churning and shoulders tense. He envisioned ranks of the dead down below, some disintegrating with age, some just begun to rot, piled together on beds of stone. “May we stop, please?” Elisha reined in his horse before the other men even answered, in front of a small church.

  Father Uccello reined in as well, sitting stiffly as if riding triggered that old injury Elisha had observed in his movements.

  “You wish to enter here?” Rinaldo’s lip curled, and he remained on his mount as Elisha slid down and let one of the other soldiers take his reins.

  Elisha shook his head, but approached the small building slowly, leaning one hand on the doorway as if weary, and let his awareness stretch down below. He need not reach far: blood marked the lintel—the same blood he noticed at the scaffold. When someone brought their dead here for interment, the mancers would know, and come to reap fresh talismans. Then, too, if the mancers of Rome manufactured false relics of their own, it would be in a place like this, where the miasma of dread would keep most people away, and the remains of their activities could simply be left among the other corpses when they had ripped both life and strength. What better place to conceal their brutality than here, in the halls of the dead? No wonder they stared, watching him greedily. Were they envisioning his own dismembered corpse and skinless face?

  Elisha paced away from the chapel, leaving the mancer’s mark far behind. He wasn’t ready, not for that. The entire purpose of revealing himself to the workman had been to avoid having to meet the master.

  In the grassy verge, a tumbled marble slab lay. He started to sit on it, until he made out its length: a sarcophagus, absent its body. A little way down, a few more stones emerged, the bases of anc
ient columns, and he perched on one of these, facing San Sebastiano over the rough fields and monuments between. Now that he focused his doubled vision, Elisha found gaps and streams among the shades that lingered here. They had not died here, so the forms remained indistinct, but the gray pall gathered thickly in some areas and not at all in others. Slowly, he climbed to stand upon the fragment of column, breathing carefully and gazing out over a map of the catacombs below, a webbing of the dead. Closer to the chapel and beyond it, sharper shades emerged, dark and cold with recent death. No wonder the master of Rome stood warden of the Valley, for he lived in a web of death, its pathways and crossings as dense and worrisome as the dread Valley itself. “Do the bandits use the catacombs? To hide in, I mean?”

  A shrug. “Only if they are brave or foolish. They might be crushed in a collapse, or possessed of evil by staying with the dead.” Rinaldo shuddered theatrically.

  “The dead have no cause to linger, Captain,” Father Uccello said. “Their spirits rise or sink as befitting their state of grace upon their deaths.” His single eye stared at Elisha.

  Near the recent interments, trails remained in the pall, as if the living disturbed the peace of the dead when they descended into the caves. Between this chapel and the taller tower at San Sebastiano, the shadows roiled. It must be easy, in the chaos that was Rome, to take a victim from the streets and bring him here to suffer and die and rot among the thousand bones that lay below. He thought of the moment he shared with Thomas, the king’s fear that Elisha would be left without even a stone to mark his grave, and the thought made him jittery.

  “Nor have we cause to linger—let us ride on,” Rinaldo urged.

  Sick with dread, Elisha re-mounted, and pressed onward, hurrying through his prayers, three watchful mancers tracking him at every moment until he fled the church at last, retreating from the warden’s web for the precarious safety of Rome.