“—a vision, that’s right. Of a chapel built in the snow. I’m not so credulous I’d believe in a saint with no miracles, but a job in the winter time? That, I’ll take.” The speaker patted a bundle of carpentry tools slung over his shoulder.
“Like as not, it’s just another rumor. Lot of strange stories about,” his companion grunted. “Did you hear about the ships of death down at Genoa?”
The carpenter snorted. “If all the sailors died, how’d the ship get to Genoa?”
A woman stopped short in front of them and turned back, her eyes glittering. “It’s the end times, is what it is. There’ve been signs.”
The two men shared a look over her head, and kept walking. The end times: the predicted apocalypse from the Book of Revelations, in which famine, death, pestilence, and war would sweep over the land, slaying a third of all people. He remembered little else of that volume from his long-ago days at church, but it fit. If the mancers had their way, indeed—those days of darkness were coming. Scorched earth and bloody rivers. Ludwig’s words echoed in his memory: To bring down the Church, they would need a miracle of Biblical proportions. Preachers focused on the parting of the Red Sea, but the plagues of Egypt were miracles, too.
Elisha kneed his horse, weaving through trees or on narrow tracks to move past the walkers. He would pass one clump of travelers, only to come upon another group some way up the road; or join a makeshift camp that grew by night with stragglers. He wrapped his cloak tighter, huddled next to his horse, and conjured up every image of warmth from his talismans of joy, Thomas’s ring and Martin’s strip of cloth. It snowed in London once in a while, leaving enough to shuffle through, and it had lately been cold enough to freeze the Thames. A year or two ago, at the urging of a few of the whores he tended, Elisha skated the frozen river with broad cattle bones bound to his feet, a slippery prospect that left him bruised and laughing, innocent joy of a sort none might ever know again.
In the morning, mounted again, he passed a few lingering shades, freshly risen from the frozen dead. The next night, he pressed ahead of the struggling mass, his horse breaking trail in the fresh snow that filled the tracks of others who went before. In a protected hollow, he laid a fire, lighting it by summoning the dry heat that opposed the snow. The next to arrive had a cooking pot, and each succeeding traveler added something until there was enough hot pottage to share around the makeshift encampment. Elisha sat vigil that night, a stranger’s child resting against his leg, the whole gathering keeping contact to stay warm. And it was his strength that warmed them, a quiet thrum of power focused through Thomas’s ring and shared among them—not so much that it was strange or miraculous, but just enough that none of his companions should die.
Dawn rose slow, creeping gold among the peaks and towering, dark trees, and Elisha was glad of his company, missing the close-set houses and rough-paved streets of home. Would he ever see London again?
His horse snorted and stamped, shaking off its blanket of snow and waking a few of the travelers. The child at his knee stirred and rolled over to blink up at him. “I dreamed of a place with so many houses I couldn’t see the sky, so many people I could hardly breathe, and a great king who loved me.” Then she pushed away from him, frightened, until the man on her other side woke and caught her.
“Calmi, cara. It was this man who made our fire.” The father smiled, then said, carefully, “She is a fanciful child. Forgive me if she offends.”
“Not at all,” Elisha replied, thinking of Alfleda, Thomas’s beloved daughter, and of Thomas.
Much as he wanted to keep them warm every night, he could not linger at the pace of weary villagers but pressed on, joining another group, then a third, then riding up a steep slope, his horse, too, beginning to tire, and into a valley touched with springtime.
Chapter 44
Deep between snowy peaks, broad enough for meadows, a camp of hundreds already gathered, laying out the lines and cutting sod in the shape of a cloister that spread from one end of a chapel that rose in their midst. From the dense green grass sprouted tiny flowers in blue and yellow. The pedestrians around him gaped and crossed themselves and cried tears of rapture when they saw the greening valley, many falling to their knees in prayer. Elisha, too, wanted to weep. His right eye saw the valley as his fellow travelers did: a miracle.
His left eye saw the truth. Among the joyous, worshipful pilgrims, dozens of necromancers worked, dark and joyless, to manufacture this false spring. Their cold power settled low, like mist in the valley, while the place thrummed with the strength of their enchantments. Clad in the rough gray woolen robes of Franciscan friars or Poor Clares, they tapped no talismans of death, but those more personal, those of childhood, of love, of a hundred things Elisha was sure they no longer understood, coaxing an unseasonable warmth. Tendrils of rotten power spread; the warmth here was that of an infected wound.
Drawing up magic through the more innocent of his talismans, Elisha refined his projection. He matched his eyes, making them the steel-gray of the left instead of the vivid blue of the right, then subtly changed the contours of his face. He could not hide beneath the power of death, not when the mancers themselves worked so hard to eradicate it, and this loss left him feeling exposed, a knight having left behind his armor. But what then? Even if the mancers did not see him, how would he get close to Brigit or learn the depth of their plan? They already countered many of his tactics by not linking themselves in power, by not working the Valley or even carrying the relics they forged. By creating the impression of the miraculous, they summoned hundreds of people who would support them, and they spread the rumors of holy events. In doing so, they surrounded themselves with innocents, an audience of believers, armoring themselves against his intervention with others’ lives instead of deaths. They would know that he had risked his own life to save Katherine’s children—what could he do if he feared to harm these others? On the other hand, he had also killed Brother Tigo and allowed Father Uccello to die, and they must know that as well. Did it seem strange to them, this betrayal, or did it mean nothing at all to a group for whom the betrayal of innocents was their custom in trade?
Then came the idea that froze him as if he remained outside the enchanted valley. They deprived themselves of Death because they thought to cripple him. But he knew Death. He was no necromancer, not a worshipper of death, but indivisi. He knew Death so intimately that he could no longer be separated from it. He was not merely its deliverer or its exploiter, he fought it, knew its coming, succumbed to its cold touch—and chose to return again. They built their cloister openly, daring his presence because they believed him yoked to the dreadful talismans they, themselves required. They failed the first rule he ever learned of magic: they failed to know him at all.
Elisha grinned and allowed his deceptions to fall away. He didn’t need their tortured victims to open the Valley, he carried it always, close to his heart. At need, he could summon it, summon himself away from their traps or conjure himself the strength to defeat them. At last, he had an advantage over them. Vertuollo must be keeping aloof from the others if they did not know the depth of Elisha’s affinity.
He unwrapped the bindings from his hands and chafed them, the scars at their centers showing white and smooth against the ruddy skin. The mancers forged the atmosphere of holiness in their clerical robes—Elisha, too, could play that stage, claiming the spiritual power that so many declared on his behalf. He stripped back his hood and, rather than hide beneath deflections, he projected rapture. Dropping the reins, he encouraged his mount forward, sending it joy, the delight of good grass and an end to winter. The horse pricked its ears and shook out its mane, trotting eagerly down the steep trail. Slowly, the train of murmuring, praying supplicants became an entourage, drawn by his delight.
The first mancer he passed, a man with narrow eyes like a weasel, startled at his appearance, reaching for a pouch, then aborting the gesture to cross himself instead. H
e gave a whistle, and a few heads turned, especially those freshly tonsured or wimpled, their flat eyes staring as Elisha rode nearer, weaving among the makeshift tents and hovels.
A stout mancer in the garb of a nun stood on the steps of the chapel, arms raised, her voice carrying over the crowd, over the rapping of hammers and the grunts of workmen. “—and there appeared a great wonder in heaven, my children, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head, a crown of twelve stars! And she, being with child—yes, my children! The Lord sends us this sign, this woman, just as John foretold!”
Elisha frowned, the horse slowing as his projected joy faltered. The voice sounded familiar, as did the words she spoke: the Book of Revelation. And the miraculous woman, being with child? Good Lord—she meant Brigit. No wonder the mancers were so pleased to find her.
“You hear the rumors of dread, but I say to you that this dread will burn from us our corruption and iniquity! It will be the fire of justice and of the Lord’s righteousness that will scour us! If you repent and submit to the Lord’s will, you will be saved! Repent! Repent!” She thrust up her fist and the crowd before her took up the chant. It rose all around him, and the nun swiveled toward him, her long face grim and fearsome, her eyes close-set like a hawk’s. “And suffering will purify your soul.”
She was the stout mancer from England, the one he had allowed to escape when he rescued Thomas. He should have killed her before, but she had done him no direct harm, and he had not then possessed the urgency to slaughter mancers wherever they were found. She had not appeared at the final battle for the British throne, or rather, what he had assumed was the final battle. Now that they controlled the presumptive heir to the throne, they might have a new plan. But the nun’s words suggested something much greater than England at stake, if they would convince these people that Brigit’s child were foretold in the Bible itself, the mighty leader of men who would appear before the Apocalypse, an event the mancers seemed ready to create.
He squared his shoulders. “Where is the queen, Mother, so that I may honor her?”
“Honor?” she thundered, filling her voice with power. “Kneel, Sinner, and honor first your Lord!”
Elisha slid down from his horse, managing with surprising grace and walked forward, though around him, many others knelt as she demanded, and the chants of “Repent” faded away.
“Oh, arrogant sinner, surely there shall be—”
“You would deny me, Mother?” he asked, quietly. He projected his voice with a thrill of magic, endowing it with resonance beyond himself, then he spread his hands, his palms displayed. Silence spread around them, but for the frantic alert whistles of a few of the mancers, like mad birds trying to get the nun’s attention. Elisha smiled gently.
“Deny you?” she replied, and her voice, too, had fallen. “I do defy you—that ever a sinner like yourself should be granted an audience with the crowned one!” A wind rose around her, rippling her garments, and she raised up a wooden cross.
Around them whispers began. Elisha’s presence, his projection, and the scars on his hands elevated him in the eyes of the audience—the audience the mancers brought here for their own purposes, now serving him instead. Would they listen to the nun, or support the stranger in their midst who presented himself with holy majesty?
Elisha mounted the lowest step, and the nun’s deep-set eyes darted, looking for guidance from the others, although they could not reach her before he did. He pressed his advantage, step by step until they stood together before the door, she facing out, eyes wide and jaw clenched, he staring at the fresh-cut wood. “Thank you, Mother,” he said.
“No!” howled a woman’s voice from the crowd behind him. “Don’t let him! You can’t let him!” Gretchen’s voice, raw and anguished, as she rushed toward the chapel.
Ignoring her, Elisha pushed open the door. Thank God Gretchen hadn’t had time to warn them, to prepare them for his approach, or surely they would have a stronger defense. What had they expected from their armor of humanity, as willing to believe his projections as their own? Still, his skin tingled, his muscles tightening. He celebrated that they seemed to underestimate him, but he should not make the same mistake of them. He had assumed the mancers were acting out of ignorance about his strength—what if they simply had another plan in waiting, one he couldn’t see? This would not be the end of it, unless he moved quickly before they were able to re-group against him.
Candles lit the chamber before him, and braziers reduced the need for the sorcerous spring that warmed the vale outside. An altar as long and low as a bed occupied the end of the chamber. Two men turned at his entrance: Bardolph, who startled so badly he knocked over his chair, and a well-fed fellow with liver spots showing on his tonsured scalp. This second man looked familiar, but older—Elisha placed him from Father Uccello’s memory: Renart, the French mancer complicit in his torture and God knew what else.
“Elisha! By God, my prayers are answered,” cried a woman leaping up from her place by the altar. She stumbled, her steps hampered with a rattle of chain, but her arms still stretched to him. Tears streaked her face: Sabetha.
Elisha broke between the men and seized her arm, sending a ripple of cold Death along her skin. She gasped and tremored, but the chains at her ankles cracked with cold, and she clung to him with a grasp of need and gratitude. “They killed him, Elisha, you must know. If there was anything I could’ve done—but there was a girl, and she knew all about you.” She sobbed, her voice breaking.
With a shake of his head, Elisha silenced her. On the altar before him Brigit lay, her face pale and lovely, her breathing as soft and steady as ever, her great, round belly nearly due. A golden crown of stars rested on her head, just as the Book of Revelation predicted, along with a cloth-of-gold gown gleaming like the sun. A pair of moon-pale slippers peeked out beneath. They clad her in the raiment of prophecy. Now they need only make it come true.
“Bardolph!” The door slammed open and Gretchen staggered inside. “It’s his baby, Bardolph—the baby is his!” She fell into her husband’s arms, gasping for breath, and too late.
Elisha scooped the slumbering Brigit against his chest and reached for the Valley that hovered always so close to his heart. The Valley groaned open, painfully slow, as the mancers sprang toward him. Given his intimacy with death, he expected the opening to be as easy as the last time; instead, he strained, teeth clenched. He conjured power from every talisman he still carried and cried out as the Valley ripped for him—for all three of them, Sister Sabetha who clung to his arm, the woman he cradled against his cold breast.
For a moment, the terrible madness of the Valley shrieked around them as if they stepped from a church into a battlefield. Brigit’s body resisted, his arms trembling as he tried to carry her through—but through to where? He reached along the Valley to England, to his brother’s workshop, but the Valley pushed back against him and he swayed beneath its defiance. Even beyond the two women he clung to, Elisha did not stand alone.
“How long can you hold, Brother? How long can you stand so open?”
Count Vertuollo’s voice echoed all around him, thrumming as if it channeled the myriad howls of the dead into a choir and he its master. He stood, silhouetted by a hundred flickering shades. Hands spread, face illuminated by the queer light, Vertuollo waited, his posture echoing the risen Christ, bringing a message not of redemption but of ruin.
“No, Brother. Today, no living man may travel here.” He shook his head, almost sadly. “There is no road for you.” He raised his hands, his shades clamoring around him as his power surged and sliced straight for Elisha’s heart.
Elisha twisted away, wrenching his focus to shut the Valley he had opened and snatch the women back with him. They would flee into danger, yes, but away from a much greater threat. At the same time, he flung up his defenses: warmth, heat, friendship, the magic of Martin’s laughter, the memory of Bid
dy’s sacrifice. Death was not always evil, not always cruel. But the Valley would not close: Vertuollo held his gateway, coolly in command of the mancers’ dark road. In the midst of death’s realm, in the face of its master, Elisha struggled for the powers of life. Sabetha pressed herself to his side, his left arm wrapped in her grasp as she cried out.
Trapped in the Valley, he fought in vain. The wave of power slammed into them, a torrent of searing cold that shocked through him.
Clutched against his chest, Brigit’s body convulsed, and Elisha felt a rush of wetness. For a moment, he stood paralyzed—had he just lost his son? He’d never considered the risks. He prayed it was only her water breaking, not the blood that foretold an abortion. He clung tighter, even as her body jerked in his grasp and he thrust back against the waves of cold that Vertuollo set after him. His muscles shook with the effort, desperate to extend what little protection he could conjure, but here, in the warden’s domain, it was not enough. His knees buckled, and the howling around him pierced his concentration. Elisha twisted, trying to shield Brigit and the child she carried.
Sabetha’s eyes flared, glancing to the woman she had tended for so long, then she lunged past him, the living heat of her body thrust between the warden and the unborn babe.
Sabetha writhed and twisted, wailing. Her flesh withered, her eyes bulging as Count Vertuollo’s power thundered against her, full-force. With one sharp twist, she broke free of Elisha, breaking their contact. The black power of dying ripped from her huge eyes and open, howling mouth as her body shredded under the onslaught of the terrible cold. Her living form disintegrated into the chaos of the Valley.
With Sabetha’s anguish echoing in the chamber around them, the Valley snarled closed, leaving Elisha and Brigit on the outside, back in the chapel—with mancers all around.
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