Elisha Magus (16 page)

Rome was where the Pope should be, far to the east. Weeks away at best. “If Rome is Heaven, then what was Hell?” Elisha twisted away from the hand, not wanting this fellow behind him, especially on a riverbank.

“Hell’s what you make it—you just ain’t thinkin’ right.” He hooked his thumbs into a belt. “But you’re thinkin’ now, eh?”

“You took me to Rome and back in an instant? It’s not possible.”

“Not for most.” That grin returned, smelling of rotten teeth and gapped by those already gone. “You strangle your own strength, playing w’ scraps like that.” Morag pointed to the talisman cloth. “You’ve had more. The kind a power gets a man up in the morning.”

“I made the earth move with this.”

The gravedigger bobbed his head side to side. “Gonna tell me you’re happy with that? Bullshit.” Elisha scowled, and Morag let out a guttural chuckle. “I coulda ripped the place down. Like that.” He snapped his fingers, and the gesture flashed in Elisha’s awareness with a sudden leap of cold. “Coulda smashed them soldiers like lice between my nails.” The blunt fingers pinched and the cold snuffed into nothing. “Part of your trouble is just you ain’t workin’ at it. Hardly done any magic, nuffin’ big. Well—one thing big, eh?” Morag reached out and gave his shoulder a friendly slap.

A different riverside sprang before his eyes, King Hugh trapped there, his face shriveling to dust and his crown rolling away, Death leaping from the shrunken man to Elisha’s hand. And the thrill of power afterward. He tasted again the visceral joy, a rush of strength that flamed through him, when he could have done anything, been anything, and no man had the power to hurt him, ever again. Elisha recoiled from the memory, shaking himself.

Morag licked his lips and sighed. “Can’t believe you let that one get away.”

“Get away? I killed him,” Elisha blurted.

“Wasted. Y’could’ve had so much more. Any idiot can kill somebody.” He hitched his thumb toward the great oak at his back, a stocky stone at its base. “Y’see that? William Rufus took an arrow to the lung right here.” He thudded his fist into his chest and made a grotesque face while his other hand imitated blood squirting from a wound. “You ain’t the only one as killed a king.” Morag leaned his shoulders against the rock, his hump compressing awkwardly. “Wisht I coulda been here then. Wisht I coulda brought yon prince out here. We’d show him what happens to kings, and mebbe he’d show us a little more respect, eh?” Morag settled into the stone like a cat on a hearth, but the hearth was cold with the sense of the dead, stained with blood, probably from the butchering pit in the yard where Morag had snatched him.

Now, the other magus watched him from slitted eyes. “Saw Hell, did you? Lemme show you again.” He waved his hand in the air, beckoning.

“I don’t want you to show me anything,” Elisha murmured, but some part of him did, the part that could suck down a man’s death and spin it into power, into armor, into weapons, into whatever his need required.

When finally he allowed Morag to grip his hand, he focused, intent on what was happening. Again, it happened too quickly, as if without thought, and they passed from the world. This time, Morag held the passage. It howled around them with the thousand voices of the dead—cries of torture, tears of despair, unheard prayers to distant saints. They were not souls, exactly—at least, they had not the sense of presence that a living person embodied. Rather, they were shadows, cast by the dead and captured in their pain.

But Morag twisted what he heard, and the maelstrom blasted into a sudden wind, the sort that sailors and millers admired. The gravedigger threw back his head and laughed. “Yes!” he shouted. “Yes!” Power flooded through them. Through his grip, all the strength of this vast and dreadful world flowed to Elisha’s hand, strength to break steel. His presence expanded, an awareness so full he could not drink it all, so rich, he could not take in all that he could know. It suffused him from toes to tingling scalp, such medicine that a man might never know sickness. By God, if he could channel that—

His knees trembled with the rush, and he would have collapsed if not for the grip of Morag’s hand. Unlike the heat of Mordecai’s healing, this grip was solid and void at once, like a physical deflection—the strength of the lashing wind of Death outweighing the slender life of man.

Outside was rage, horror, pain; inside, Morag kept it at bay. It swirled and eddied through him. Elisha stared at him, brought his every sense to bear upon him, the heightened, extraordinary awareness Morag’s very touch allowed him. The crowds of the dead, flickering like Hell’s inferno, resolved around the misshapen man, casting him in shadows. Four shadows or more stretched and shrank and clung in tatters about him, springing from his hands and shoulders. He touched the howling throng through these, the shades that never left him. They filtered the powerful wind, fluttering. Enslaved, they fed Morag on the pain that shrieked around him.

Elisha reached back and some of the shades stirred toward him, twin shadows, thinner than the others, that stilled at his presence.

Morag’s head snapped up, his body tremoring and he let go the door with a reluctant twinge. It slammed in an instant to a thunderous silence, an afterimage dancing in blue against the trees until Elisha could blink it away.

Elisha sank to his knees, gasping. His heartbeat filled the silence. He wanted to vomit, to purge his stomach until he had forgotten all he saw and heard and felt, forgot the way the shadows reached for him. He wanted to know how it was done—how Morag stepped through this place of horrors all the way to Rome, how to gather the strength of a world, how to spread his awareness through a shifting sea of knowledge.

Slowly, the chatter of crows, the distant neigh of horses, the calling of a shepherd emerged from the stunning quiet. Elisha quivered and worked to calm his breathing. Slowly, he raised his head.

“Hell, may be, but I’m the master.” Morag grinned, his grip tightening. “Hell’s all mine. Who needs Heaven?”

But the strip of cloth cradled his wrist with the pledge of the friend who had given it, and Elisha let that slender strength seep back into his bones. It felt the more slender now that he had felt what Morag possessed, what he offered to share. The gravedigger summoned and dispelled his passage with so little effort, even Elisha had not sensed it. He might be weakened by Brigit’s spell, but still, Morag’s agility struck him with a terrible awe. Morag’s mysterious talismans drew down a power almost unimaginable, a power that strained his senses to contain it. Elisha thought of all his teachers, of Brigit, Mordecai, Allyson—nothing they ever said or speculated had suggested this.

Elisha’s little scrap gave him the skill to tame his racing thoughts and seal his emotions back in his own skin. It gave him strength to lift his head and look up into the eyes of the man who would be his master, the man who claimed to master Hell. The necromancer.

M
orag stared back at him,
his eyes dark and cold beneath his furrowed brow. The hairs on Elisha’s arm tingled as if spiders crept from Morag’s sleeve, but he had sealed his emotions—or thought he had.

After a long moment, the mancer growled. “Never shoulda got me for this, he shouldn’t. Don’t ye feel it?”

Elisha bit back the obvious question. Morag searched him, looking for a reflection of his own fascination with the power of the dead. Elisha felt that power. He knew what it might do, and he even longed for the world that might lie open to him if he seized it. But Elisha’s work, his heart, was with the living.

“Bloody sensitive, my arse.” He jerked Elisha’s arm so that Elisha had to scramble up to alleviate the pain. Then Morag swung him against the stone, leaning over him, reeking breath blowing out in Elisha’s face. “Anybody’s got a baby head in a bottle for a talisman’s got to be one of us, he says. Somebody got to go see, and seeing’s you awready know the fella—” Morag snarled. “Ye didn’t even make that talisman a’purpose, did you?”

“On purpose? Are you mad?” Then Elisha caught his breath. The necromancer thought Elisha was already one of them. Or he had believed it, until now.

“Are
you
?” Morag roared. “We’re the masters! We’re more than kings! Ye’ve got the strength, ye’ve got the skill, and ye want to be a bloody barber all yer fuckin’ life?”

He had—ever since he’d seen an angel die. Now, dared he hope to be a surgeon? To be a doctor in the eyes of all? To tame his wild power and be the man who saved a king, setting Thomas in his rightful throne? Morag offered him a place in the palace of Hell. He might earn it through his sins, but it would not be for want of striving. Morag’s dark eyes bored into him, and Elisha knew his answer was writ plain upon his face.

A shock of cold blasted Elisha’s hand, first shaking, then numb, creeping up toward his elbow. He called upon the power of his cloth, remembering Martin who had given it to him and the long affection between them. Heat urged his flesh back to life. Pushed back against the stone, he brought up both feet and kicked hard, catching Morag in the belly and thigh. The mancer stumbled, pivoting so that they nearly changed places.

“Why’d I show myself for you?” the gravedigger shouted on a howl of dark wind.

The blast knocked Elisha flat, finally breaking the grip on his arm. He scrambled up again, finding his surgical knife. A pathetic weapon, but it had killed before.

Morag lunged for him, then stopped short, eyes narrowing as he looked at the knife. Afraid of its puny blade? No—in the space of breath between them, Elisha felt the cold that clung to the blade, the vestiges of murder that caught Morag’s attention.

“Mebbe not a fuckin’ waste of time.” the mancer muttered.

“I’m grateful for your help—now I will be grateful if you leave me alone.” He was grateful, too, that his hand didn’t shake as he held out the knife.

Morag snorted. “Can’t do it. Can’t let ye walk from here, now ye’ve seen. But I’ll be happy t’ carry you.” From his belt, he slipped free a knife of his own, a broad, half-moon shape, dark with blood. He moved it back and forth and grinned.

A wave of horror that curdled Elisha’s stomach spread from Morag’s presence and made the evening sky go dark. Their breath came in clouds, pale in the shifting darkness. They circled like brawlers, but the leaves overhead cackled together and the ground crunched with frost. Morag lunged, Elisha dodged and feinted, turning to keep his enemy in sight. The bandit’s death stained his blade, and while he moved, he conjured, bringing up the echoes, allowing the knife to become a talisman unto itself. When Morag pounced again, Elisha was ready, ducking but surging inward, closer to the mancer, thrusting not only with the blade but with the focused anguish of a man’s destruction.

Morag stumbled back, letting out a whoop as if a game were on, and he was sure of victory.

Elisha pressed the advantage. Morag fell to his left, his arm swinging up, and Elisha froze. This was no chill in the air, no creeping sense of doom, but a slap of ice against his chest. He gasped for breath, his lungs pierced, his heart working too hard. He felt slick with blood, unable to scream, and clutched at his chest. Aside from the narrow cut left by Thomas’s blade, he bled no more. What he felt was a memory—but not his own.

Elisha tried to cast off the phantasm, drawing from the cloth, but its tiny heat withered. Then Morag was on him, flinging him back against the stone, the breath knocked from his lungs as if pierced in truth. The mancer shoved up against him, trapping him with his own bulk, his knife trapped as Morag brought up his own. Morag shifted his grip, setting the blade not crosswise for a quick slash, but vertically, one tip of the crescent tucked beneath Elisha’s chin.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Morag muttered, eyes narrowed as if he calculated dark designs.

Blood dripped from the blade to trickle down Elisha’s throat. Pierced chest, blood streaming. The French magus who died in his arms.

“You skinned him,” Elisha breathed very carefully. “Did you kill him, too?”

The gravedigger’s thick eyebrows twitched up, then he smiled, his rank odor curling into Elisha’s desperate lungs. “Could kill ye now—but ye’ll be sweeter by and by.” His off-hand seized a handful of Elisha’s shirt and shoved him backwards.

Elisha braced for the crack of his skull on the stone. Instead, they plunged into the howling abyss. One of the gray shadows at Morag’s shoulders flashed toward him immediately, and Elisha reached back, feeling the rush of power in spite of Morag’s snarl.

“
You wanted the abbey—here ya go.
” The words seared a cold pathway down the curving blade into Elisha’s skin.

The world split open, and Morag plunged him through, dropping him as the world snapped shut again. He tumbled onto the bloody field, gasping, his knife drawn, his being charged with that final blast of cold. He sprang to his feet, searching. No one. Alaric and his men had gone, and Morag had not followed.

For a moment, Elisha worked to catch his breath. The mad magus saved his life from Alaric, only to think of taking it himself—then he held back. Why? Elisha would be sweeter soon, he’d said. What that meant Elisha did not want to know, but he needed to. Morag wanted to recruit him on behalf of another, and Elisha’s refusal made them his enemies, so why let him go? The release was nearly more frightening than the threat of murder. Like Morag’s whoop of battle joy, it suggested they had absolute certainty that they could take him when they wanted. Duke Randall thought Elisha the most dangerous man in England. The duke had been very, very wrong.

And that brought him back to the problem of the princes. Alaric came dressed for an audience, not for Elisha’s benefit and not for a mere abbot, surely. Alaric wanted to impress someone—or to keep his own confidence—for the meeting he faced clearly terrified him. What then? No matter. Elisha had to focus on the primary talisman and get Thomas out of danger as quickly as he could. Brigit was not the only one searching, and not even—Blessed Mother!—the most dangerous. Elisha staggered toward the gate and finally yanked off his remaining boot and cast it aside.

Brigit’s bandits were dead, thanks to Thomas—how many others might be lurking about? Or worse? He wished he had a sword, a dagger, anything. But nothing would avail him against the mancer who used Elisha’s own weapons and knew them better. Thomas was armed, but the danger he expected would be his brother’s soldiers. If he saw Brigit coming, he might well count on his beggar’s looks to disguise him and come out to see what he could learn from her.

How far had Rosalynn’s plan extended? She arranged her rescue, saving Thomas at the same moment. The solution seemed obvious: hoping Elisha would get himself free, perhaps even believing it if she had felt the magic in the church or if she seen Alaric again without Elisha, she would send Thomas to safety in a place they could meet—the very village she suggested as a hiding place.

Casting a slight deflection to dodge any unwanted glances, Elisha walked toward the western road. A bell rang out from the church, calling the monks to Compline. Had so much time passed already? Elisha kept to the shadows, conserving his magic in case the eyes of ordinary men were not all that he must fear.

Torches blazed around the stable yard, illuminating a milling group of men, and he heard Alaric’s voice. “Why aren’t the horses ready? By Compline, we said. Where’s that stable wretch?” The prince’s tall, dark shadow sped along the wall and into the building. Elisha heard a child’s shriek of pain and he froze, his fist locking around his surgical knife. By God, he had not taken twenty-seven lashes so that Alaric could abuse stable boys and insult women. He had to find Thomas, for more reasons than one.

The lay brothers who were meant to guard the gate had been distracted by the commotion at the stable, and Elisha ran through, free of the abbey grounds. He slogged as fast as he could down the muddy track and over the bridge where the abbey fields gave way to wattled yards, sheep folds, and huddled houses. Soon, the houses, too, fell behind. Before him, sunset lent a bloody murk to the clouded sky over the clustered darkness of the forest. The tilled fields ran out, leaving Elisha in thickets. Pigs snorted at his passage, and dogs barked as he left the last of the civilized land. Ahead, hills bulged against the skyline, topped with rustling brush. A flock of birds took flight with a scatter of cries.

A pond glinted dully to his right, and he turned onto an ancient lane, grassy and overhung with branches. A broken hut stood at the end of the pond with a ruined sty beside it, woven branches thrust up like ribs.

Elisha tried to calm his thundering heart. He slowed to a walk, ducking under the young trees growing thickly from tumbled pastures and the striped remains of furrows. Creatures rustled and started, fleeing his passage. Elisha hoped one of them would be Cerberus, ambling out to meet him, having recognized his scent. Instead, the trees grew closer.

Suddenly, the forest swept apart, revealing a clearing with a handful of houses a little more intact, and a low stone building topped by a little arch where a bell chain still hung, the bells from the nearby abbey filling in for the silence of this steeple.

Elisha stopped and his eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom. Six houses, their doors open or missing altogether, surrounded a meager yard, its earth so packed that few plants struggled up. The little church backed up to a larger building, probably a storehouse or tithing barn. Attunement. Immediately, if possible. Drawing a deep breath, Elisha stretched out with his other senses, letting his awareness fill in details: the patter of collected rain that trickled from the roofs, the scent of distant wood smoke. A crow cawed, then a chorus of them. As he reached out his awareness, he felt their slender heat. At the church, a patch of chill, then something colder brushed past. Elisha’s gaze fixed upon the church. Light sprang up at his back. Elisha cried out, turning, yanking out his knife.

“You’ve wasted our time,” drawled a voice nearby. “Sensitive? As sensitive as a clod, I’d say.” A figure stood silhouetted by torchlight at the door of a ruined house.

“You leave her be!” screeched a second voice, from above. “Don’t tease her.” The crows chorused their support.

“Tell your friends to be quiet, or we’ll be found,” snapped the first. “We’re not the only ones about tonight.” A man, his presence cold instead of hot. It was not the cold of Death, but something smaller. It resembled the feel of the knife in Elisha’s grip.

“You chose this place, Parsley, for us, or for your finer friends?” the second voice screeched back.

The patter of the dripping water grew suddenly louder and the torch sizzled with scattered droplets. “Let us at least learn a little more about our guest before dismissing him.” The new voice, too, pattered, gentle as the drops. A mist hovered there. No, not a mist, a man as gray as rain.

“Who are you? What do you want from me?” Elisha called out, but he thought he could almost feel the answer as he tried to make sense of what he heard and touched.

“If he must ask …” drawled the first man—Parsley. He let the words dangle.

Were they simply magi, or more necromancers? If so, they had little experience with Death—he felt it only by the church, in spite of cold Parsley’s presence. Then he sensed a more familiar presence, though he could not place its origin at first. It suffused the earth around him. Elisha dropped to one knee, making contact, taking a gamble.
“Chanterelle,”
he said into the dirt, using the witch’s way of speaking without words. All witches could use water, to make contact with one another. But Chanterelle—

“
I’m here,”
she murmured. Then the ground before him bubbled, and she emerged slowly, as if mounting a staircase no other could see.

“Ah, finally she rises!” Parsley said.

“Because he knew to ask for me,” Chanterelle said, her voice barely carrying in the air, though Elisha felt the anger it held. “And he knew how.”

“He would, wouldn’t he? He’s met you before.”