Gently, Thomas shook his head, then purpose returned to the sword, forcing Elisha back. The rough wall held him, the king’s sword pinning him there. Thomas took a deep breath. “By God,” he whispered, “I needed to trust you.” His grief cut Elisha more sharply than any blade.
“Then trust me now. Rosalynn has no reason to ally with your brother, nor do I. He is your father’s son, born a tyrant. I begged her to keep you from your brother, and she did.” She had done brilliantly, and he would give her all due gratitude when they met again. If they met again. “I would swear upon the Cross, Your Highness. I would carry a bar of burning iron if that would convince you.”
“And wouldn’t the Devil give you strength. You’ve already told me you’re not devout. Do you even feel pain?”
Elisha flinched and saw the hurt echoed in Thomas’s own face. Betrayed again, just as he had dared to put his faith in another. Betrayed as Elisha had been the morning of his hanging. He swallowed, his own breathing pressing the sword’s point harder, and met the prince’s haunted gaze. At last, he spoke, carefully, quietly. “I swear upon your father’s grave, as the man who put him there, that I mean you no harm.”
Thomas’s chin lifted, his breath caught as he searched Elisha’s face. With the grace of a fallen angel, he stepped back, sliding his sword back into its sheath, his eyes downcast. “Forgive me,” he whispered.
“Your Highness, we have no time for anger, or regret.” Elisha wanted to touch him, to lay a healing hand upon his shoulder and mend the wounds his king carried so deeply, but there was no time for that, either. “The talisman, that thing I asked you to carry.”
“It’s here.” Thomas fumbled at his waist a moment, then passed over the bundle.
Elisha stripped off the wrapping with numb fingers, removing Brigit’s contact, and tossed it away. He should like to put the cloth to flame, but he dare not. “My enemies are looking for this. I should never have let you carry it.”
A clatter of horses moved by, beyond the house, toward the heath of mounds.
Thomas regarded him across a great distance. He lowered his voice. “You trusted me. I should have done the same.”
“No time,” Elisha said, matching his hushed tone, though he thought the prince’s men too far away to hear. Thomas gave a rueful smile, which vanished at Elisha’s next words. “You need to go, to hide. I think they’ve left the lodge, you may be able to return there.”
“And you?”
Elisha spoke the plan almost before he knew what he would do. “Your brother is going to meet someone—I need to know who.”
“Oh, do you?” Thomas folded his arms. “If my usurper is gathering allies, it seems that I’m the one who needs to know.” He spoke lightly, still treating his crown as a distant hope or folly.
“Let me be your scout, Highness, until you can afford a better one.”
Thomas gave a firm shake of his head. “This was not meant to be your fight, Elisha, and you cannot win it alone.”
Elisha tightened his grip on the talisman. Would Thomas be safer with or without him? It all depended on the roll of the dice—which enemy must he next confront? Before he could say anything, Thomas had stripped off his cloak and set out at a trot, moving low through the heather in pursuit of his brother’s horses. Elisha hurried to catch him up. Thanks to the hilly ground, they were able to parallel Alaric’s course without being seen. Elisha spread his senses, trying to find out if Alaric had other magi with him who might reveal their pursuit. When he focused ahead, he stumbled and nearly fell but for Thomas’s hand upon his elbow, catching and holding him with its strength. Ahead, in a dell nearer them than the road the prince followed, lay a patch of frigid night where the layers of Death grew dense upon the ground. It stung Elisha’s awareness and sent the shades of the mounds around them dancing as if on the gibbet. For a moment, he fought for breath, then glanced at his prince. “I know where he’s going,” he whispered hoarsely. And, in knowing, he knew whom Alaric must meet.
Somehow, he found his footing and led them around to the west, coming up carefully atop a tall mound. At its collapsing end rose a pair of huge stones, tilted to one side beneath a broad capstone, the lintel where the ancient heathens had gone to meet their dead. Elisha found purchase on the rough, slanted stone and scrambled up. Thomas followed, and they lay on their backs, side by side on the narrow slab. Elisha turned his head to overlook the circle as Alaric and his men entered and dismounted. The knights lit a pair of torches to plant in the shaggy mounds to either side of the entrance before Alaric ordered them back. Leading his horse, they complied, though Mortimer shook his head and grumbled. The men spread out in all directions, moving away until they could not be seen, and Elisha could barely sense them.
“Twelve men, in a ring around us,” he breathed.
“Holy Rood,” Thomas lay back, resting his head against the stone, laid out as if for his funeral. “I’m a dead man.”
“You won’t die,” Elisha told him, and nearly smiled. “I know a thing or two about Death.” But even as he said it, the air thickened around him with a stabbing cold that sent his words out on a cloud of mist. Elisha’s heart lurched, his grip tightening on Thomas’s arm so the other man glanced back at him, face etched in a frown of moonlight and shadows.
“Something’s changed for you,” Thomas murmured. “And not for the better.”
Elisha let him go, suddenly stung by their contact. He tried to deny what he felt, what he knew, but it was too late: Death stalked his king tonight.
Death seeped from the earth around them, buried in the mounds and creeping through the heather. Already, his fingers stuck just a little to the metal of his talisman, and he carefully set down the pot over his head, his arm passing before his face. Someone approached the lintel, alone: Alaric. The sense of death grew stronger, seeping out of the stone beneath him, up from the barrows and the torn bits that scattered them as if scavengers had been at the bodies they once contained. Elisha’s throat closed over his misty breath. He should have made Thomas leave him. Rosalynn found a way to save the prince, why couldn’t he? Instead, he brought him to the precipice from which no man returned. Tears burned at the back of his eyes—the only thing still warm.
“Always cold, you said.” Thomas reached toward him, covering his shaking hand. “What’s wrong?”
Elisha shook him off, touching Thomas’s lips in warning. “As you live, Your Highness, don’t speak. Your brother’s below.” The damp exhalation of Thomas’s breath passed over his fingers. But Alaric was only one man. If they jumped now, they could cut him down and drag his body into the open mound. His guards hovered at the edge of Elisha’s awareness—too far to come to their prince’s aid. Why then was the dread so heavy on him? Every stalk of heather quivered with it. The earth throbbed with it. For a moment, the night split open, a slice of brilliance that shivered down his flesh, then slid shut, and Alaric was no longer alone. But how did anyone get here without Elisha feeling his approach? Unless he had felt the man’s arrival, and it felt like death itself. He longed to turn and look down, but held back, waiting for the right moment rather than reveal their hiding place by moving without caution.
“Good Lord!” Alaric blurted. “Where did you come from?”
“I walked in places other men can’t dream of, Your Highness,” the newcomer drawled. “Or should I say, Your Majesty?”
“There’s still one obstacle to that,” Alaric snapped.
“That is your part, my prince.” The speaker added a hiss. “We are occupied on other fronts.”
“What, still working in Naples? I can understand the Holy Roman Empire giving you a bit of trouble, but Naples? Really.”
Elisha wished he could see the prince, to see whether his stance matched his brave words or if it revealed the fear that ran beneath them.
At his side, Thomas stirred, his eyes flaring. His wife had been from the Empire, Elisha recalled: daughter of the emperor himself. Elisha lay his hand over Thomas’s, sending him a w
hisper of calm—the best he could manage for either of them.
“I see you have been paying attention, Your Highness,” said the stranger in a long, slow tone. “Then you know we have made kings before. And unmade them. Your bravado does not impress me.”
Even now that Elisha could hear the stranger and sense the stir of Alaric’s emotions in response to him, Elisha felt nothing like the layering of physical and emotional humanity that defined the presence of another person. Where Morag’s presence had been invisible, even when Elisha could see and touch him, this man projected an air of authority, demanding reverence. It reminded Elisha of nothing less than entering a church—that instant need for genuflection after a lifetime’s indoctrination. The projection, however, did not show Elisha who the man was the way a presence ought to do—rather, it showed him how the man intended to be received. He did not merely deflect the senses, he manipulated them to his own ends, creating for himself an air more regal than mere royalty. Elisha had never realized such a deliberate manipulation was possible, until now.
No owl nor crow nor rustle of heather broke the silence now, until Alaric sighed. “Yes, forgive me. I do appreciate all you’ve done and will do.”
“And all you have to do is kill one man. One man. Really.”
“I could kill him gladly myself if—”
“If you knew where to find him.”
“I see him everywhere—in every thief in the shadows, every beggar seeking alms.” Alaric’s voice held a note of hysteria, then he murmured, “He slipped the assassins. He dodged his own bodyguards and eluded the whole bloody Northern Army, and you think I am going to find him.”
Thomas went rigid at Elisha’s side, the words of his brother’s confession stilling them both.
“It is not the first of your plans to go awry, Highness. Since early Spring, nay, since you changed your mind about your betrothal, events seem to have been slipping from your command.”
“My father’s still dead, isn’t he?”
“Owing primarily to a barber and a baby’s head.”
Elisha flicked a glance toward Thomas, and found the other gazing back at him, silent and barely breathing.
“This is getting us nowhere. If you want me to rule, we need to find Thomas.”
“Do we want you to rule? That is not so obvious as it once was.”
Elisha shifted carefully, drawing back his awareness as he clothed himself in deflection, turning slowly until he could look down upon the scene. He did not break contact with Thomas, leaving his hand to rest upon a taut wrist, hoping the deflection could do for him as well.
Alaric swallowed, then he adjusted his golden chain. “What, would you raise up Thomas now? Everyone’s heard he tried to hire out our father’s death. The last thing the barons want is a king so eager and devious he’d kill his own father.” His lips curled into a smile, as if he had the magus right where he wanted him, and Elisha wondered if his terror were as transparent to the other as it was to himself.
Alaric stood across the dell, a wary distance from the robed figure before him, who remained just below Elisha’s hiding place. The edges of the robe furled and shifted in a sinuous pattern, obeying no mortal wind, even as they concealed him from head to toe. It resembled less a garment than a drapery of shadows. The regal projection faded, and dread hung upon the air, a creeping sensation that gave Elisha a sudden sympathy for the hare, quivering in the grass before a hound, uncertain if it could flee, desperately hoping that stillness could conceal it. If Sundrop had drawn the moisture from the air, this magus drew the light, creating a void of terror where even the breeze dare not stir.
“You are not the only candidates,” the magus replied, and before Alaric could question him, the man went on: “But we do harbor a certain admiration for your daring.” For a moment that miasma of fear lessened, and the robe of shadows warmed as if to an approaching dawn.
The shock of opening rippled once more against Elisha’s skin, and he clamped his teeth against his cry. A brief flash and a chill wind ruffled the heather as if blowing from a long passage where a light was suddenly extinguished. Another magus stood there, shifting his hunched shoulders with a satisfied groan. “Never get ’nough o’ that, I tell you. Better than fucking, init?”
“I shall ask you to keep your crudities to yourself,” the master drawled.
At the voice, Elisha’s skin felt suddenly colder. Morag, together with his mysterious master. But why did the master bring another magus? Then Elisha saw Alaric’s throat bobbing, and his sharp exhalation blew frosty in the air. They played with power, taunting each other it seemed; even as the master exuded that hint of dawn, suggesting he approved of Alaric, he brought another to stand for night. Alaric’s allies could come and go as they pleased. They could appear out of nowhere and summon one another. What else might they do? Alaric, faced now with two of them, was braver than Elisha had imagined. Even Elisha’s presence at his side could not balance such allies.
“Morag, here, will help you … Highness. Myself, I have other matters to attend to.” The tall, robed figure gave a wave of one hand and vanished with a shock of cold. Elisha thought Morag’s technique too quick and powerful for him to follow, but it still released a sense of the passage—that howling turmoil of tortured wraiths. This man arrived and left with the deftness of a surgeon lancing the darkness.
“What’ll it be then?” Morag asked. “Got another war for me?”
Alaric recoiled, but his tension eased, and the arrogance of his role returned. He’d been left with a servant, no longer worthy of the master’s attention. Apparently, the sting of this insult couldn’t outweigh his sheer relief. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find you in such company. What did you do with the barber?” Then he jerked forward, going pale. “You didn’t bring him to your master, did you?” His glance flickered to where the master had vanished.
Morag chuckled. “Naw—yon barber wasn’t havin’ any of that.”
Alaric covered this new relief with irritation, growling, “Then where is he? I thought you meant to help me bury him.”
“Pfff. He weren’t ripe yet.” Morag flapped his hand. “I’ll do it, Highness, in good time. That why you got me here?”
Was he ripe now? Elisha hoped not to find out.
“I should feel a good deal better if I—”
“Leave me the barber, Highness.” For a moment, Morag’s absurd guise slipped, and a hint of his dark power eddied in the air.
Alaric swallowed and gave a single nod. “I need you to search for someone—you are capable of that, I trust, and without any surprises? I need to know precisely where he is.”
“Oh, it’s precision you’re wanting.” Morag shifted with a creak of his leather jerkin. “You’ve got something of his, have you? Something close?”
Reaching into a pouch at his waist, Alaric produced a slender bundle and unwrapped it to reveal a short, sharp bodkin, easily concealed. “It’s marked with his blood. Will it do?” but he asked coolly, and Elisha guessed he already knew the answer.
The other grinned. “Oh, aye, Highness. Blood’s the best, next to flesh, eh?” He reached out for it and Elisha’s heart sank. Morag would search for Thomas with his blood and find him—steps away from his brother’s sword. Elisha’s strongest deflection might conceal himself, but if Morag was any sort of sensitive, then Thomas was dead. Elisha searched his mind for some defense. Deflection was triggered by the law of opposites, inverting your own presence. If blood could be used to search, it could also conceal.
Elisha tugged on his shirt, and it pulled free from the dried blood at his chest. It stung, then trickled damp once more. He ran his fingers lightly over the wound, then turned swiftly to Thomas. “Don’t move,” he breathed. “Don’t speak.” He smeared his own blood across the prince’s forehead, the mark of his hand staining the prince’s cheek. “Whatever happens next, whatever you hear, do not move.”
Thomas seized his arm, drawing him closer. “What are you doing?”
Elisha broke away, rolled, and jumped down to meet the necromancer.
Chapter 22
He landed, stumbling slightly, and caught himself with one hand against the stone, wincing as it jolted his injured wrist. Alaric cried, “Holy Mother!” followed swiftly by the swish of drawn steel.
“Hallo, what’s this? Elisha Barber, init? Very pleased we meet again. And weren’t we just speaking of you.” He lifted his blunt hand as if tipping his cap, but he still held the assassin’s knife.
“What are you doing here?” Alaric demanded, then he hesitated, his glance shifting over his shoulder, toward the village where he’d found Brigit. He glared at Elisha, shifting into a swordsman’s stance.
“When I heard armed men approaching, hiding seemed like the best option.” He met Alaric’s hard stare. There were moments during the prince’s conversation with the mysterious magus that Elisha had recalled the young prince’s bravado and charm. Twice he had saved the prince’s life and been repaid in kind when King Hugh sprang a trap to catch both himself and Duke Randall. In the church, Alaric pleaded for his aid, only to turn to his destruction when Brigit’s brutal treatment fouled his attempt. Now, Alaric looked older, more fierce and yet more fragile, like a blade hammered a bit too hard. It might strike a killing blow or shatter on impact.
“You came here to meet Brigit, didn’t you?”
“To take back what she stole from me, Your Highness.”
“I see,” the prince replied but with an arch of his brow that implied disbelief.
Morag chuckled, a throaty sound that jiggled his hunched shoulders. “Seems like maybe thanks are in order, yer Majesty. Given he did off your dad and all.” His grin was tilted, his breath foul with rotten teeth.
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