Elisha Mancer Read online

  Rave reviews for E. C. Ambrose and The Dark Apostle:

  “In a grim world of medieval warfare, witch-hunts and primitive surgery, E. C. Ambrose has crafted a shining tale of one man’s humanity and courage. A gritty read for those who like realism as well as hope in their fantasy.”

  —Glenda Larke, author of The Last Stormlord

  “A vivid, violent, and marvelously detailed historical fantasy set in the perilous world that is medieval England in the middle of a war. Elisha Barber wades through blood and battle in his pursuit of arcane knowledge—forbidden love—and dangerous magic.”

  —Sharon Shinn, author of Troubled Waters

  “Ambrose’s fantasy debut depicts a 14th-century England in which magic and fledgling science exist side by side. Elisha’s struggle to bring relief to those in need is complicated by his own need for redemption and his innate fear of what he cannot understand. This beautifully told, painfully elegant story should appeal to fans of L.E. Modesitt’s realistic fantasies as well as of the period fantasy of Guy Gavriel Kay.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Elisha Barber is at its heart a story of resilience, of why we strive to be better, even when that journey seems pointless. As the start of a new series, the book sets a half-dozen plates spinning, and not a one wobbles for a second.”

  —San Francisco Book Review

  “E.C. Ambrose has created an exciting, adventure-filled world that draws you in; you are able to picture not only the characters but the world they live in. Elisha Magus is fantasy at its best and I can’t wait for the next book by E.C. Ambrose.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “I am really enjoying this series. After reading the first book I was eager to read [Elisha Magus]. It did not disappoint.”

  —Night Owl Reviews

  “The historical milieu is detailed and brings the period into sharp focus. . . . The magical battles rivet readers’ attention as Elisha fights for his life and sanity. Book three looms in the wings as Elisha learns to wield his powers and protect his chosen king.”

  —SFRevu

  Novels of

  The Dark Apostle

  from E. C. Ambrose

  ELISHA BARBER

  ELISHA MAGUS

  ELISHA REX

  ELISHA MANCER

  Copyright © 2017 by E. C. Ambrose.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art by Cliff Nielsen.

  Cover design by G-Force Design.

  DAW Books Collector’s No. 1749.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  All characters in the book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780698188532

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

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  Contents

  Praise for E.C. Ambrose

  Novels of The Dark Apostle from E. C. Ambrose

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  “We are devoured by a secret ill: it is not life they are taking from us, it is goodness; we can neither live in virtue nor die with honor.”

  —Petrarch

  Chapter 1

  Eight days out of Brussels, along the eastern bank of the river, the bulk of Cologne Cathedral grew upon the horizon. A steady drizzle shivered Elisha’s skin with a hint of pain, his first sign of the mancers he had travelled across the Channel to find—and destroy. The vessel’s captain strode back and forth while his men moved with efficiency, sometimes swinging outside the rails to judge the distance between their boat and the numerous others travelling or preparing to moor at the busy dockside. Smaller vessels shoved up onto the shingle to load and unload over the sides with a cacophony of shouting and gestures. Elisha leaned over the rail, then dodged sailors and scrambled to the far side as they came about to dock. Raindrops glazed his hands, the contact bringing that sense of a stranger’s hurt. His awareness showed the presence of a magus, at least, and likely a mancer, given the excitement that accompanied the pain. Elisha needed to reach Emperor Ludwig, the father of King Thomas’s slain first wife, to warn him about the mancers who stalked the crowns of Europe. After Ludwig’s excommunication, a rival emperor, Charles, had been raised in opposition to Ludwig, perhaps by the mancers themselves. This inadvertent contact through the rain could be his chance to start uncovering their plan for the Holy Roman Empire, and give Ludwig what he needed in order to stop them.

  He spun about. “Captain! Is there time to go ashore?”

  The captain tipped his head back, squinting at the gloom that settled over both city and river. “We’ll be off at Nones—that’s maybe a couple of hours. Best you stay with the boat, if you don’t know the city.”

  Elisha hesitated. The city wall stretched in both directions along the river, punctuated by towers and gates. It had to be two or three times as vast as London. Even the cathedral, though its spire stood unfinished, towered large enough to encompass St. Paul’s and Westminster both. The boat pushed between a dozen others, making for a gate directly below the bulk of the church. “I think that is landmark enough,” he answered, and the captain looked up again at the city this time before he grunted.

  “Brace!” he shouted and each man caught hold of some fixed object while the oarsmen strained and shoved the boat aground.

  Elisha swayed with the jolt, then stepped up on a chest near the rail and swung himself down to the shore.

  “Are yo
u going to see the magi, then?”

  He turned back, startled, to find his fellow traveler Brother Gilles leaning on the rail above him.

  Slipping back his velvet hat, Elisha was about to speak when the hat flew away, twirling in the breeze. He snatched after it too late and glared as it landed on the water with a ripple of burgundy silk, only to plunge beneath the keel of a passing boat. Really, the hat was just as well gone. After years of cheap woolens and bloody linen, the velvet had felt absurd and extravagant, a guise he had taken on—along with the title of “doctor”—when he had been granted the office of King Thomas’s personal physician. He was no longer a king and still not a noble, but it should be enough to gain him an audience with the Holy Roman Emperor.

  “Alas, my dear sir, you have misplaced your hat. What misfortune!” The round friar clucked his tongue, beaming down at him, hands hidden in the folds of his weighty robe. “But perhaps I have dismissed you too quickly, my good doctor, if you desire so fervently to view the holy shrine.” The relics dealer had ignored him since their embarkation, when he learned Elisha had little respect for the bits of bone and other remnants he claimed to be from saints—and no inclination to pay for them.

  But then, Elisha carried his own remnants, the talismans that gave him access to his magic. He wore only one talisman openly, the golden ring given him by King Thomas, and more precious than mere metal. Beneath his robes and tunic, he carried a stronger talisman: a vial of earth from the ground where his brother died. Like the other talismans among his things, this one strengthened the reach of magic, amplifying it like the belly of a drum making a single hide sound like thunder. And unlike the others, this talisman offered him a direct connection to the dirt floor of the workshop where his brother cut his own throat. If he needed to, Elisha could reach back through the tainted soil he carried and open the passage of his brother’s death, the passage he thought of as the Valley of the Shadow. Elisha could summon himself to England through that howling place of pain and fear, and go home. If only he could summon himself to the Emperor Ludwig’s side so readily, but no magic could be made where he had neither contact nor knowledge, and so the river remained the fastest way.

  “You mentioned a holy shrine, the magi,” Elisha prompted.

  “Indeed. The three kings who witnessed the birth of our Lord”—Brother Gilles crossed himself—“have been translated here, their holy bones gathered into a magnificent shrine of gold.”

  Magi. Wise men. Brigit told Elisha the Biblical magi claimed that title to harken back to the wisdom of old. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  “I shall accompany you,” the friar said grandly, heaving himself up and nearly falling as he jumped to the ground, his sandals squelching in the mud as Elisha caught him.

  “Thank you, Brother, but I’m sure—”

  “Nonsense! I, too, should like to pay my respects to such a holy place.”

  If need be, he could outpace the friar. For the moment, they moved on together, slogging up the muddy stones to the pavement that edged the wall and passing beneath the hard gaze of city guards. The gate cut off the rain, and he lost the sensation that drew him, then emerged again to find it stronger, coming from the direction of the cathedral itself. The friar stuck at Elisha’s elbow, chattering about the other great relics of the area, lamenting the fact that he hadn’t time to reach Aachen to venerate the dress of the Virgin and the Loincloth of Christ, not that these notable items were displayed, of course, but still the sense of their holiness lingered, did it not?

  Elisha frowned, listening. Of course things worn or used by these holy figures would retain their connection—it was one of the basic principles of magic—and their bones or dust must be closer still, allowing ordinary people contact with the saints, as if they, too, understood the heart of magic.

  A broad square opened out before them, with a few steps up to join it to another. Market stalls stood at the sides, while jugglers, tumblers and a dancing bear attracted small crowds in the steady drizzle. Up ahead, adjacent to the church entrance, the crowds cleared a large ring, and a man wailed in pain to the sound of whips slapping flesh. Elisha’s jaw set, his own back, once beaten, tensed with the memory as he quickened his steps.

  Within the ring of citizens a second ring of people shuffled, one after another, their garments torn down from their shoulders, each bearing a whip of many tails to lash the back of the one before him in the circle. Welts stood out against their shivering flesh, some struck so often that they bled, a thin stream of crimson trailing down to mingle with the rain. They moaned and shouted incoherently, lashing each other onward.

  At the center of these miserable wretches a tall man loomed, wearing his tunic one-shouldered, the drape revealing his own beaten back. “Hear us, Almighty Lord! Let our suffering reach your ears as we drive out our mortal weakness!”

  “Yes!” and “Amen!” cried some in the circle, and some of their audience as well. The lashes fell again and Elisha flinched. Faith so often drove men to madness. He looked away as they struck again, but their blood swirled into the water, and he gave thanks for his boots to defend him from feeling their pain. Even the sense of it in the stinging rain distracted him. A trained magus could control his presence, containing his emotion beneath the skin, but these desolati, those without magic, had no such skill. Blood drifted in pink eddies around the friar’s sandals and moved in lazy circles inward. Elisha blinked and focused. His left eye overlaid the scene with shades, the residue of those who had died here, endlessly shadowing the moment of their deaths.

  “Yea, Lord, from the deeps we call to Thee! From our hearts, we call to Thee! We mortify this earthly flesh and deny all earthly comforts for Thee!”

  Extending his magical senses to understand what was happening, Elisha also traced the paths of blood with his eyes. The apparently ordinary ripples, disturbed by the shuffling feet of the flagellants, swirled inexorably inward to lap the naked toes of their leader, as if he sucked their pain through his bare skin. Withdrawing his awareness, Elisha backed out of the circle.

  “Indeed, good doctor, it is disturbing—”

  “Hear me, ye sinners all!” the leader thundered, swinging about to face them, and power sparked in the rain on Elisha’s skin. “The Lord knows your hearts! The Lord knows your sins! The Lord knows where you are, He knows who you are! Fall upon your knees ye sinners and despair!”

  Dozens in the circle dropped to their knees. Over their heads, the wild eyes of the flagellant leader caught Elisha’s glance. The leader raised his own lash and smiled grimly. “Come, sinner,” he pointed the whip at Elisha. “Do you not kneel in the presence of the Lord?”

  “It is not God who spurs you on,” Elisha answered.

  The leader swung his lash over his shoulder, the dozen tails striping his own back. As they fell, the rain slapped Elisha with the force of a hundred lashes, every blow that fell upon the flagellants gathered and reflected by their leader, the necromancer.

  Elisha staggered and cried out, wiping the water from his face, cursing the loss of his stupid hat—ludicrous as it was, it had shielded him from this contact. His presence, felt through the rain, must have exposed him as a magus to the mancer who now struck at him. The lashes fell again, and Elisha’s face and hands burned with pain. He stumbled and fled toward the nearest building. As long as he stayed in the rain, the mancer could make contact, delighting in the wanton use of his power. As long as the mancer stoked the agony of his followers, and they devoted their hearts and flesh to him, like living talismans, he commanded more power than Elisha could muster, lost as he was in a foreign land. The rain stopped abruptly as a lintel intervened overhead. Tripping over the threshold, Elisha fell headlong into the cathedral.

  He rolled over, breathing hard, wiping his face and hands on his robe to dry off the tainted rain.

  Concerned churchgoers leaned over him, and Elisha shook his head to fend them off, answering briefly i
n English, then recalling the German he had learned on the weeks-long voyage from England. A priest loomed in, then Brother Gilles patting his shoulder.

  Pushing back, Elisha sat against the wall and finally caught his breath.

  “My good doctor, you seem quite overcome,” Gilles said, the heat of his hand soothing Elisha’s damp confusion. “Are you then caught in sinning, or can you be so sensitive to the suffering of others?”

  “Some of each, Brother.” The murky depths of the church around them slowly clarified, its vast arches reaching upward, every surface of the ribs elaborately carved, framing slices of stained glass impossibly tall. How was such a building able to stand with so little stone in its walls? Incense lingered in the transept where he sat, and people shuffled by, many stopping to gawk at the rainbow walls and far-away ceiling. Workmen clattered at one end and stone dust lingered in the air.

  “You seemed sensitive to my relics as well, sir.” The friar pursed his lips. “Perhaps you would be willing to look them over with me. I do like to be certain of their authenticity, especially since I must present items suitable to the Emperor Ludwig and perhaps to the Holy Father himself. The rival emperor, Charles, is to meet with Ludwig at Trier to discuss terms and I know he is a very devout man. God willing, this journey could do much to enrich the coffers of my humble priory.” A quick crossing of his chest followed this avowal. “Have you recovered sufficiently to visit the shrine of the Magi?”

  “I think so,” Elisha murmured, rising to his feet and allowing himself to be drawn into the shuffling line of pilgrims. They passed through bands of color shining down from the windows and came up to the rounded end of the circuit where the sudden glory of the golden shrine gleamed against dark wood. It rose on an altar high enough to pass beneath, and several men and women reached upward, pressing their fingertips to the underside as they prayed. The wealth of a city stood over his head, the holy bones of the Three Kings resting there. As he passed beneath, Elisha prayed for a way out of this cathedral. As long as the rain fell, as long as the mancer led his flagellants to beat themselves for his power, Elisha could be pinned here.