Rinaldo continued, “Can it be that my lord Colonna has affected Father Uccello for the better? I have rarely seen him look so vigorous. Or did you give him some medication to aid his recovery?”
“I know some methods for injuries like that. Do you know what happened to him?”
“It was during the last visit of the Emperor Ludwig—God rest his soul—” Each man crossed himself, then proceeded down an ancient stair toward the apostle’s tomb. “My father was a soldier for Ludwig—it is why I speak German. You will know, of course, that the emperor proclaimed his own pope. This was twenty years ago, now. Naturally, there were many in the clergy who did not wish to bow to the emperor’s candidate.”
A candelabra on either side lit the narrow chamber. Gesturing toward a small, square opening in the sandstone wall before them, Rinaldo said, “Here we have the Apostle.”
Elisha obligingly knelt to look through, but the presence of the ancient dead, even such an important corpse as this, could not deflect his attention from the problems of the living man, and of the missing monk. “Father Uccello resisted the emperor’s will?”
“Many priests and monks simply abandoned the city, but Father Uccello is also Orsini, and they will never give ground to the Colonna, and so . . .” Rinaldo shrugged, a carefree gesture that emphasized the easy, natural movement of his shoulders. “Attempts are made to convince him. ‘Il Silencio’ some call him still, ‘the Silent One,’ for he will answer not at all, even at the rack.”
Emperor Ludwig, the mancers’ early favorite, the grandfather of King Thomas’s beloved daughter, tortured priests. Elisha felt ill as he started for the stairs. “Can’t the tribune do anything about the Colonna and the Orsini?”
“He does try.” Rinaldo led the way swiftly back to the horses. “They have been at odds for centuries, vying to dominate Rome. It cannot be solved in mere months.”
In a city where a priest could be assaulted during Confession, what effort could possibly suffice? The holy authority that once held the city had broken down. It was a portrait in miniature of what would happen if the mancers succeeded in breaking the Church. The priest himself waited outside, but did not look at Elisha as they mounted and rode for the Capitol. A hesitant rider on the way to San Paolo, Father Uccello now settled gracefully in the saddle, and Elisha envisioned the constant pain of his injuries dispelled to a quiet ache. Would the priest’s belief in the confessional sacrament prevent him from revealing Elisha’s sorcery? Heaven only knew.
Back in the palace, Elisha excused himself as quickly as he might. He had a mancer to meet.
• • •
In a disused chapel in the palace, he hid his letters, his medical kit and most of his talismans, keeping those less personal and ranging in a circle around him the mancer-made bits he’d linked to Rome. At the center of this ring of death and fear, Elisha attuned himself. From the meager possessions he had accumulated in Rome, he took out the map Rinaldo had given him showing the pilgrimage churches, including the distant San Sebastiano, center of the web of death that was the catacombs. Elisha longed to wait until the morrow, but that only gave the mancers more time to plan. Better to face them now. It might be their home, layered with the dread power they forged, but any island of the dead was home enough for him.
He began by searching, sending his awareness beyond walls, touching first one and then another of the relics he carried. Among them, he found the one that linked him to San Sebastiano and the mancers of Rome. It gave a cold tingle at his touch.
Cradling the fragment of bone, Elisha sent the barest whisper of thought along the paths it carried. The warden was sensitive, possibly as sensitive as he. If the mancer could sense him at all, it would be a kindred spirit who called him. A slender shock of cold returned his touch, and Elisha spread the Valley wide before him, the howls of the dead framing a direction, an invitation from the gatekeeper himself. He felt a curious pull to the south, a growing reservoir of power that threatened to draw him off-course. Intriguing, but not enough to deter him tonight. He stepped through madness toward the catacombs, where two mancers expected him. Only two. Good. They did not anticipate trouble then, or else they had the means to summon up the others as need be. The passage, with the warden’s power reaching back toward him, felt as comfortable as stepping into a bath.
He emerged into a cavern carved with pillars and arched overhead with mosaics that glittered in the light of candle-stands at each corner in his line of vision. Close and moist, the room held bones in niches along the walls, the skulls placed at the fore, a hundred blank stares aimed at him. Rough openings led out in several directions, structuring the webbing of the dead he had sensed from above ground. In a wooden folding chair with lions at its arms, an old man waited, regal in his silver beard and hair, his eyes pale and sharp. The resemblance to Conrad was clear. He wore fine garments with the shimmer of expensive thread. They seemed lightweight and practical at the same time, leggings ending in a pair of close-fitting boots worn with thick-heeled wooden clogs to keep his feet from the muck of city streets. Beside him, an embroidered robe hung from the head of a figure carved into the wall. “Brother,” he said in Italian, inclining his head and offering a similar chair. “Good of you to join me.”
Elisha dredged up a smile. “Latin is a better tongue for me, Brother, if it suits you.” He accepted the chair, feeling awkwardly underdressed.
“Certes. I would like you to feel at ease. Given the short notice, I was unable to arrange for a meal. I hope you are not disappointed.”
“No, the tribune feeds me well, when he is able.”
The mancer’s eyes crinkled with a smile. “You do not find Rome at her best, I fear, but we, of course, have other means.”
Elisha’s left eye revealed swirls of darkness that caressed the mancer’s feet and shifted along his chair, like fawning pets come to beg for his touch. Less distinct than the true shades of the dead, Elisha had noticed these same kind of tendrils drawing power toward the priest from his flagellants, and the horror of the dying toward Elisha himself. The echoes of death roiled out around the warden along every path and hall, but those in the second opening on the left were disturbed, like fog stirred by the passing of a ship; the sign of the living who had moved through the warden’s web of power. The second mancer waited there, his presence nearly erased by the conjuring of the dead. When Elisha stretched his awareness in that direction, he could barely find the man, like a patch of deeper darkness, misted in fear. Elisha quieted the drumming of his own heart.
The warden’s courtly manner and overly civil speech reminded Elisha that he himself had at one time been a king. He thought of Thomas, wearing majesty even without a crown, and conjured up again that part of him. “How could I fail to be at ease in such a place, Brother? Forgive me for worrying you at such a time. No doubt you have more important concerns than guests.”
With a slight raising of his hand, the other replied, “Our associate has already disturbed me tonight, with unlikely tales of your behavior. If anything, I thought you might keep me waiting. Thus, you find me pleased at your prompt attention to the matter.”
“As I told your man at the tribune’s palace, I have no wish to become further involved with your affairs than I must, but I do assert the right of England to claim her place among the Chosen.” Bardolph’s name for them.
“Brother Tigo said that you claimed to be the master of England. I know your land has recently experience some turmoil.” A tip of his head.
“There was another claimant who divided our cause. I have taken care of her.” Elisha folded his hands together.
“And yet, my associates have been wondering what you’ve been doing. You have not brought any relics, after all. In those places you’ve gone, they find nothing changed.” The mancer watched him keenly.
“If I’d been up to anything interesting, you’d have noticed, wouldn’t you?” Elisha pointed out. “Just as
I found your mark upon the gallows. It’s not as if you need to personally kill a man for his death to have meaning in your practice.”
His companion relaxed slightly. “There are very few who can make that claim. Perhaps only two?” He tipped his head again, and Elisha tipped his in turn. His throat felt unbearably dry, his palms itching. “Certes, none of my associates are so skilled, and Brother Tigo, I fear, is more blunt than most.” The remark ended on a trailing breath, as if on a question.
“He inserted himself into my . . . negotiations . . . when I had not the time to explain.”
The pale eyes flared just a little, and the mancer’s quiet tendrils of interest insinuated themselves into the miasma of the dead. “Negotiations? Do tell.”
“You do want the Pope to come here, do you not? To attend the Holy Year in person and to bring his many thousands.”
“Even without the pope, they will come.” Taking his gaze down to his perfect oval fingernails, the mancer said, “I understand that my intimacy with the paths of the dead makes me useful to the French and the Germans, but at times I am not certain what I shall gain in return. Rome gives me a fine banquet, I have a bold son to carry on our traditions. It is he, really, who wishes to join in the spoils of this game, though it means I hardly see him anymore.” He flicked a glance back up. “I thought the English had withdrawn from the field.”
Elisha suppressed his knowledge of the warden’s son and focused on the man’s curiosity. “I was nearby when Jonathan fell.”
“There is a man we shall miss. There are few enough of us as it is, even among the Chosen.” He emphasized the word, joining himself, the dead archbishop, and Elisha in a brotherhood of power, then he gave a genteel sigh. “The Germans did not think there was any promising material left in England, though.”
“The Germans don’t know as much about England as they think.”
“My son tells me they are still pursuing the absent English queen. And he nearly met that barber everyone’s been speaking of.”
“I found the barber unremarkable,” Elisha said, carefully mastering his emotions. The warden had no direct knowledge of Elisha until now, and he prayed that ignorance would be enough to leave him unrecognized.
The mancer’s fingers slid along the wooden lion beneath his hand, lingering on the teeth. “In sooth,” he said, drawing out the sound, “at first, I thought you might be that barber. Certes, Brother Tigo’s tale would seem to support that conclusion.”
“And now?” Elisha let the power of death flow through him, his skin shimmering with darkness.
“You wear the raiment lightly, as if it were silk, and you had only just come to town, yet you were immediately aware of me. This suggests the great depth of your knowledge. It is rare indeed that I meet someone as aware as myself.” The mancer’s eyes crinkled. “But some of my adherents are impatient. They grow restless waiting for the Holy Year, and they will not accept the more cautious pickings as I have done.”
Marking the gallows to steal the strength of the dead. Elisha swallowed. “It’s a long time to wait, I agree.”
“It would have been even longer without the poet and the tribune waxing eloquent about the glories of Rome,” the mancer drawled.
What poet, Elisha wondered, but he could not ask without revealing his own ignorance. “The tribune’s behavior of late is turning his allies against him, hence my negotiations. Perhaps working more directly with the Church or the barons will yield a better result.”
“Very wise. The Germans have been getting hasty themselves. They should have kept the Salernitan under closer control.”
The Salernitan? Another mystery Elisha noted.
A rat scampered along the edge of the room. The warden casually expelled a crackle of power. The rat convulsed and died, its leather tail thrashing into stillness. “But we need not discuss politics, when there are more useful pursuits.”
“What did you have in mind?”
With a smooth movement, the mancer rose, beckoning, and led Elisha toward the second arch. “I noticed you noticing our companion. I do try so hard to find the right companions in this lonely work of ours. They were instructed merely to observe.” He shook his head, his silvered hair stroking his shoulders. “Any man so quick to betray one of the brotherhood cannot be trusted.”
They walked silent among the dead into a second, larger chamber, this one hung with oil lamps, light shimmering upon the instruments that lined its walls: hammers, knives, saws, probes all beautifully polished and sharpened, ready for the brutal surgeries they would perform upon the broad table at the chamber’s heart. Beyond the table, a great wooden wheel leaned against the wall, with the mancer monk chained out upon it, sweat beading his tonsured head and a silver pin sealing his lips.
“Distasteful, isn’t it. Men of our sensitivity forced to such a course. I have expended much effort to ward this chamber so that we need not feel the full effects of our work. My studies suggest that those who indulge their own ecstasy during the harvest may dilute the finished talisman. I wonder if you feel the same?” He arched an eyebrow, then continued, “As for this one, I have given him a lesson in patience.” The mancer gestured gracefully. “I think he now understands the value of restraint. I do not usually share, but after all, my brother, it was you he sought to betray.”
The warden watched him as if casually, no stray emotion escaping his carefully forged presence. But Elisha guessed what this was about: That barber, the one who was taken in at every turn by his compassion, what would he do, in a moment like this, with an invitation to murder? The warden waited to see, to know for certain what manner of man Elisha was.
Elisha let his heart go cold and reached for a knife.
Chapter 35
The warden inclined his head. “You will wish to remain clean, especially if you must go among the desolati tonight. I keep a supply of garments on hand.” He displayed a few clean robes in shades of russet, like dried blood.
“You are a most generous host,” Elisha replied, taking up one of the garments. A small collection of bones and other relics formed a line upon a chest nearby, along with two human skins, rippled at their edges, and a monk’s cassock all folded neatly. The monk had been stripped of his talismans. Elisha looked away, resuming his consideration of the knives arrayed upon the walls. Any surgeon would envy such a collection. “In Germany, they do not clean their knives, but prefer to let the signs accumulate, making them talismans in themselves.”
The warden curled his lip. “I cannot abide sloppiness. Only the insensitive require such crudity.”
Elisha selected a long, slender blade with a smooth horn handle that fitted his palm. As he wrapped his fingers around it, the bound mancer whimpered, and his master swelled with power, a rushing of shades that tingled over Elisha’s skin. The warden felt all that passed within this chamber, the place hummed with his presence, like a web trembling at the touch of its spider. Interest pricked the web as other mancers stirred, some near, and some far, bound to the warden by the brutality they shared. All those who had been watching him. At the slightest twitch of their master’s anger or fear, the catacomb would flood with mancers and Elisha’s mission would be over, Rome ceded to the mancers to terrorize the pilgrims and tear down the Church relic by relic. If Elisha refused this offering, or turned his skill against the warden himself, he would, in moments, be confronted by the gathered strength of all Rome and beyond.
Slowly, as if considering his choices, Elisha approached the wheel. A few hammers of different sizes rested nearby, waiting to break limbs.
The captive writhed against his chains, grooving his flesh. Two sharp paces, and Elisha stood before him, staring into the mancer’s damp brown eyes. The remnants of murder clung to the monk, flickering shades of a half-dozen victims. Elisha braced the mancer’s chin with his left hand, a gesture firm, yet gentle—the only comfort he dared. Then he drew on the mantle of Death, let
ting the Valley within his breast beat with that dark power, shedding all sign of his humanity. The hovering chill of Death swelled and pulsed with the leaping fear of the man beneath his hand, but Elisha no longer cared. His power encompassed the mancer’s skull, the vessels that carried his blood, the sweat that sheened over his face, all concealing the mystery within, the fragile organ that, once damaged, could never be made right. Knowledge filled Elisha with eagerness—the knowledge of the fragile life he held before him, the knowledge of the power to come with its destruction.
With a swift and calculated blow, he plunged the knife into the mancer’s eye.
The black pall of Death rushed free in an instant, a cold that shocked his hand and feathered his cheeks with frost. The power cascaded through him, and Elisha gasped, his body quivering, charged as if he stood too near when lightning struck. The Valley remained shut, all the cold and the panic streaming from the dead man straight to Elisha’s frigid heart.
The warden let out an appreciative sigh, accompanied by the frisson of satisfaction along every thread of Death that linked him beyond the chamber.
On the wheel, the mancer’s body sagged, his head pinned upright by Elisha’s blade as the tension left the stretched limbs and terrified face. Elisha gripped the hilt a moment longer, blood oozing from the pierced eye, until the mancer’s face relaxed.
At last, he released his grasp, drew a deep breath and stepped away, not yet turning from the corpse that he had claimed. He drew off the borrowed robe, returning the garment to its hook, spotless.
The warden leaned in to examine Elisha’s work. “I have never seen a harvest so smoothly made.” He studied Elisha with frank admiration, and a knot of fear that hid at the back of Elisha’s throat dissolved beneath the mancer’s wonder. “You are an artist of death, my brother.”
Elisha Mancer Page 30