Elisha Magus

by E. C. Ambrose

  Rosalynn plucked up her skirts just enough and glided a few steps ahead of him through the tunnel of trees. “Beaulieu Abbey, on the other hand, answers only to the Pope himself. His Holiness has even granted it special privileges of sanctuary throughout the grounds, not just in the church itself.”

  She kept talking, or rather, he assumed that she did, but he practiced his attunement and succeeded in blocking her sound from his mind, focusing instead on the tangled trees that set off the road from the fields on one side. Bells rang out across the countryside, summoning the monks and laymen from their work. Laborers propped hoes over their shoulders and trudged back toward the moated monastery. The scene brought Elisha back to his childhood in the village, with its daily rhythm of fields and bells; men and women plodding home from their work, children carrying the baskets leftover from a lunch, beneath the round, full tolling of the bells that ruled their lives. London had bells, of course, but they meant nothing to Elisha’s work and merely echoed among the half-timbered houses that buttressed the twisted streets.

  The light grew suddenly warm, and Elisha turned to find its source. The trees ceased some distance from the walls, leaving a slope that led downward to the water. Pink and gold drenched the sky and painted the clouds against the darkening vault of heaven. Above, indigo, not quite as deep as night, and before him, a scene of such splendor that he crossed himself. The duke’s castle commanded quite a view of the surrounding towns and country, and Elisha would never forget the first time he climbed the tower at the ruined monastery and could see for such a distance. But it had not prepared him for this.

  The colors of the sinking sun glowed across the water between their vantage and the opposite shore. Beyond stood thousands of trees, thick as London houses, interrupted here and there by fields. Hills rose up after that. Looking the other way, he found a few boats making their way to the port, their wakes turning over darkness, their sails gilded, the fishermen made more ruddy by the light. He breathed in the slightest taste of salt. Somewhere in the distance—closer now than he had ever been—swelled the boundless sea.

  A warm hand clutched his arm, and Elisha jerked away, staring into Rosalynn’s face, her brows furrowed. He shook himself and pushed his awareness back out until her voice came clear.

  “Are you well? It’s like you’ve not heard even a word I was saying! I was that afraid for you. Or is it a witch thing?” She glanced around quickly to be sure no one was near. “My mother is, and keeps expecting that I’ll be, too, but there hasn’t been any sign of that. My brothers aren’t, but you know it’s more likely to carry through in a child of the same sex, isn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t know, my lady.” He looked back to the scene below, hearing the splash of oars and the slap of water against the shore, the distant song of a crew on their way home, but his eyes rose again to the miraculous sky so wide above the water.

  Rosalynn laughed then. “What, haven’t you ever seen the sun setting before? You grew up in a village, didn’t you? And of course my father has a western tower.”

  Elisha spun about to face her. He took her arm and turned her toward the gloomy fields, the trees, and the darkness that hung beneath them. “In the village, that’s what you see. The dirt, the fields, the rows you have yet to tend. When the sun sets, you’d best drag yourself to bed because when it rises again, you’d best be ready. In London, the sky flows like a river between banks of rooftops. It gets narrower every year as the merchants add more gables.”

  She pulled away from him. “You don’t have to be rough with me.”

  He took a deep breath. “Forgive me, my lady. It has been a long journey.”

  With one hand, she tucked a few strands of dark hair back beneath her travelling veil. In a voice very small, she said, “You do not care for me.”

  Shame burned at him, and Elisha did not know how to answer. There was nothing he could say without lying or hurting her more.

  “My father will be disappointed.” She glanced away, her fingers knotting together. “He had hoped … but you know—oh.” Her chin fell.

  “I know what he hoped,” Elisha echoed, “but I little thought he shared it with you. Not such a distant hope as that.”

  “I hadn’t gone far that night, had I? I did not mean to hear, it was just, well, it was hard to avoid. And it touched upon me, didn’t I? So I had the right.” For only the second time since he had known her, she fell silent without prompting. “He worries about you. About both of us. It might be a good match.” She watched him sidelong, with the eagerness of attraction, as if their single dance had kindled some hope within her. “Only I get worried, too, and then I tend to chatter.” She swallowed hard, and her eyes glistened as she looked away.

  “I’d like to go down to the water, my lady. Why don’t you go on ahead, and I’ll be there in time for supper?” He touched her arm gently, trying to add a sense of comfort that overlaid his touch.

  “Yes, very well. By tomorrow noon, you shall be shut of me.” She crossed her arms, tipping back her head as if to keep the tears from flowing.

  Resolutely, he turned away, finding a narrow path that led down in a series of angles. He could not decide now if he wanted the peace of silence, or the comfort of other magi he could reach through the water. Silence seemed very appealing, but he also wanted word of Brigit, to be sure they were ahead of her. Rosalynn’s broken heart and ruined life were really nothing to do with him; it was not something he could heal except by sacrificing himself, and that he was not willing to do, not for her or even her father. He pictured himself bound to the stake while Rosalynn circled around him, talking, and he begged her to simply light the pyre. Grim and unworthy. She’d told him that she chattered when she worried, and goodness knew she had plenty to worry over.

  Elisha crossed the wider trail at the bottom of the slope and came at last to the water’s edge. He sank down gratefully and pulled off his boots with a groan. Turning to place them behind him, he glimpsed the figure of Rosalynn above, just far enough that he could not clearly see her face. The sunset touched her skin with a rosy glow, and she looked regal in her gown of blue, the creamy veil rippling over her shoulders. She should marry some crusading lord who would see her this way always, gilded and strong.

  The cold water at first shocked his toes, then numbed them, finally easing away the aches and sweat of the road. He edged his presence into the water. Water enabled a weak sort of contact among the witches, enough to send their voices and sometimes sensations across greater distances. He opened himself to this contact, and tension struck through him sharper than the cold.

  “—she only needs us to support Prince Alaric’s claim to the throne, in whatever way we might. We needn’t perform any castings at all,” one voice said through the water, with a sense of exhaustion.

  “She wouldn’t be my first choice. No more would he, for that matter,” another voice snapped back. “Neither of them shall fly the banner of justice.”

  “This could be our best chance to be heard, to be free, don’t you understand?” That voice felt familiar. Briarrose, wasn’t it? Brigit’s friend. Strange how Elisha could know what someone was like when he’d never met her. “We’ll finally have a magus on the throne.”

  A deeper voice put in, “I just don’t think the time is right. We’re being rushed into this, and I don’t like it. There’s been inquisitors in France for years, there’s a mess in the Holy Roman Empire. Even the Pope himself fears to return to Rome. Too much is happening.”

  And the magi of Paris were so worried they were seeking a new home. Allyson knew, but neither she nor Elisha knew enough to do anything with the news the dead man had brought, except to be even more vigilant about the Channel.

  “It’s our own place we need to worry over, Watercress. But I agree with you in principle. We are being pushed. Somebody wants this done and quickly. For that very reason, we ought to stay quiet.”

  “We don’t have to cast any spells,” the first voice protested again. “You’re a
ll so used to hiding in fear that you don’t recognize the chance we’ve got before us.”

  “Listen to Foxglove,” Briarrose urged. “Or think of Rowena if you doubt us. She pointed to the signs, she prepared the way for this.”

  “For her daughter to be queen,” Watercress pointed out. “That hardly seems the mark of an altruistic plan to elevate the magi.”

  “She gave the signs, as clear a prophecy as any could wish for. And now here he is, and with a magus prepared to assume the throne—as queen, at least. It’s time for us to come together. The time is now!”

  “Bittersweet is hardly the harbinger of light we might wish him to be,” said Watercress’s friend. “Or have you forgotten his crime?”

  “Why not ask what he thinks? I believe he’s joined us,” said Briarrose. “Who’s there?” she called out, almost playfully through their watery contact.

  “Watercress,” in a worried tone.

  “Briarrose.”

  “Foxglove,” wearily.

  “Thyme,” said Watercress’s friend.

  “Bittersweet,” Elisha announced, using the herbal name that would protect him if any of those gathered were questioned about the other witches.

  And so softly he nearly missed it, “Chanterelle,” in a quiet voice but with a clarity of presence indicating the speaker was very close by. There was another presence as well, or rather, the echo of a presence, as if he felt the silence between breaths.

  Immediately, Watercress said, “We can’t talk with him around. He’s one of them!”

  “Tell me you’re not starting up about necromancers again,” said Foxglove. “We can’t even be sure there are any.”

  “Of course there are! Why do you think the desolati fear us so much? They think we’re all necromancers!”

  “I’ve never seen any evidence of such a thing. And we prefer not to use the term ‘desolati.’ Many of us have spouses without talent—there’s no need to be insulting.”

  Elisha wanted to protest that he was no necromancer, that he wasn’t even sure what it meant, although he knew it had something to do with conjuring the dead. If any here might be accused of that, it would be him. “Whatever I have done, I did it alone and without instruction. I never meant—” What? To hurt anyone? It would have been a lie.

  “You see? And Marigold trusts him,” Briarrose offered, sending a thread of comfort through the water.

  “He withered the king and turned weapons to rust! If he’s not a necromancer I don’t know what is.”

  “Even if he isn’t we cannot afford to have the king’s murderer on our side. Sorry,” said Thyme.

  “He’s not one of them, he’s one of us,” whispered Chanterelle.

  “What was that?” Watercress demanded. “Speak up, child.”

  “He’s one of us, the indivisi,” she said, but no louder than before.

  “He’s an accursed necromancer!”

  Foxglove broke in at a shout, “I told you, there aren’t any necromancers. They’re just a story told to frighten people. Just believing in them gives our enemies power to suppress us.”

  “I wasn’t sure there were indivisi either,” Thyme said, “and now we seem to have one.”

  “The mancers’re real,” said Chanterelle. “And so close by. I’ve heard them in the earth.” Her voice grew a little louder. “Do you feel that?”

  Elisha spread his awareness around him, catching the edge of fear in Chanterelle’s presence. He had not fully attuned himself to the place and started to do so now, sending his awareness into the earth and air, reaching out with his other senses to the darkness. The sun had nearly gone, but moonlight fell around him, turning the scene from gold to silver. The air remained warm, the water chill, but there was a cold beneath the cold, a force that did not flow like water. “Yes,” he answered her. “I feel it.”

  In an instant, she was gone, her presence lifted from the water. With his senses fully alert, Elisha heard a rustle across the water, wide though it was. He rose in time to see a figure spring up from the water’s edge. Slight and long haired, the figure ran through the reeds over the rocky verge to the grass and dove into the earth. It swallowed her up with a tiny spit of dirt, just as a splash of water marked a cormorant’s dive.

  “Just as well she’s left,” said Watercress. “The indivisi are all mad, every one of them.”

  “It comes of too much knowledge. They devote themselves to one thing so thoroughly they can’t relate to anything else,” Foxglove replied.

  “But that’s not what we came to talk about,” Briarrose began.

  “She’s not mad,” Elisha cut in, “she’s frightened. Didn’t you feel it? It was like … like an eel slipping through the water to find her.”

  “Maybe he really is one of them,” Thyme said.

  Then a shriek shot through mud and water, jolting from Elisha’s soles to the crown of his head. He cried out in echo.

  From the bank above, Rosalynn’s voice called, “Elisha? Are you hurt?”

  He shook himself, casting off the sense of the other’s terror and searching the darkening shore for any sign of her. She seemed to have vanished into the dirt, but how far could she go? Something glimmered—a torch in the hand of a thick figure hard to distinguish from the shadowy trees at its back. The torch dropped as the figure moved away into the trees. Smoke furled upward from a dozen places in the earth, then flickering cracks of flame crept across the heath beyond. That dark figure had set the very ground on fire, kindling the peat which might burn for weeks. Orange and crimson flames worked their way inward from all directions, converging like hunting hounds, tiny flames, but quick and driven. A woman hid beneath that earth, but her enemy was already upon her.

  Chapter 8

  Elisha splashed into the water, but it was quickly up to his thighs and pulling hard against him. Damn it! Chanterelle was trapped, might already be burning, and he was helpless.

  “Elisha!” Rosalynn stumbled to shore, breathless. “What’s going on? What are you doing out there and why did you cry out like that?”

  “A woman’s in trouble—over there!” He jabbed his finger toward the opposite shore. “Where’s the bridge?” He spun about in an arc of water, but Rosalynn caught his hand.

  “This way!”

  Aside from a few buildings further on, he saw nothing to span the water. “There’s no—”

  “This way,” she insisted, tugging at him. “There is no bridge, not for miles. There’s a ferryboat.” Rosalynn pulled and Elisha ran after until they ran together along the bank.

  The cottage door stood open when they got there, an old man peering into the twilight, his own fire in the hearth behind him. “What’s on? Thought I heard a scream, I did.”

  “There’s someone in trouble on the opposite shore,” Elisha told him. “We need to cross.”

  “No night crossings,” the man said stiffly and started to pull the door shut.

  “We’ll pay double,” Rosalynn announced. “I’m Lady Rosalynn of Dunbury. We need that crossing, right now.”

  He looked her up and down, then stepped out and preceded them around the cottage to a dock at the waterside, only to stop again and peer across the water. “Looks like smoke. Peat fire, eh.”

  Elisha steeled himself for another refusal, but the man went on, “Just you stay on the river path when you get across, eh?”

  “Yes!” They scrambled into the boat, and the old man cast off, setting his hands to the oars. Elisha leaned out from the bow, willing the boat to hurry. He searched for some way to use his power to speed their passage, some way that wouldn’t result in a wreck. He doubted Rosalynn could swim any more than he.

  “Do you know, I have a cousin whose keep guards a ferry crossing, and he got quite close with the ferryman,” Rosalynn said suddenly. “The fellow had to quit when he got older, of course, he couldn’t really pull as strongly then, could he? But we used to have the most fun visiting and seeing just how fast he could get us across the lake, my brothers and me. A
nd I’m sure he wasn’t as strong as you.”

  She leaned earnestly toward the ferryman. Elisha couldn’t see the man’s face, but he noted the tightening of his neck and the quickening of his strokes. Rosalynn’s admiring chatter undertook to inspire the man, and Elisha nearly smiled. He clung to the edges of the boat as it swayed with wind, water, the pressure of the oars. So quickly, the movement made him queasy, and he clamped his jaw against the roiling of his stomach. The shore grew closer, the flames still low and fierce, crackling through the earth, weaving back and forth. Smoke carried toward them on the breeze, then away.

  When they were a few feet off the dock, Elisha leapt from the boat into waist-deep water and ran, his feet slithering over muck and submerged stone.

  “Here, you!” The ferryman called. “Mind the peat! It’ll be burning below, where you can’t even see. Your man’s gone off his course, he has,” he added to Rosalynn.

  “Never you mind,” she replied stiffly. “You may go once I’m ashore.”

  Their voices fell lower, then splashing followed by the creak of oars told of the ferryman’s retreat into the gathering darkness. Elisha ignored them and ran for the burning earth. Several acres between the reeds and the forest edge crackled with heat and shifting smoke. He gasped and coughed hard, doubled over.

  “Elisha?” A gentle hand caught his shoulder. “I don’t see anyone.”

  “She’s here,” he gulped. “I have to find her.” He spread his awareness, this time reaching deep into dirt. He had a little knowledge, thanks to the farm where he was raised, but it still felt like breaking untilled soil with his fingers. Then his spreading senses reached the edge of the peat. The deposit was dense and crumbled, layer on layer of moss and bog myrtle compressed, dry from the growing heat, most of it already smoldering. It throbbed with fear and pressure, and presence, more than one. Old and new. He tried to call to her, but his voice could not pass. The twisting mass of earth defied him. Already sweat streamed down his face from the heat, and his lips felt dry. He searched the area with his eyes and found no sign. His hands and knees grew hot, and his wet clothing dried in seconds. The fear that thrummed beneath him grew to terror. He drew breath in gulps of smoke that seared his throat. He had only moments left before he could stand it no longer.