Elisha Mancer

Book 4: The Dark Apostle

by E. C. Ambrose

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Epic Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

E.C. Ambrose's gritty, sharp historical fantasy series, The Dark Apostle, follows Elisha Barber through a magical reimagining of 14th-century England

Elisha was once a skilled barber-surgeon, but healing is no longer his finest art. After discovering his exceptional potential for a singularly deadly magic, Elisha has slain a king, stopped a war, and even had the regency thrust upon his own commoner's head until he could rescue the true heir, Thomas.

With Thomas back on the throne of England, Elisha must now work on his king's behalf to fight an even greater threat than civil war: the specter of the necromancers, a shadowy cabal that has already corrupted priests and princes, and that may have even grander, darker plans.
 
Elisha travels to the continent to warn England's allies of the mancer threat, as well as to discover the full extent of the mancers' plans. But it soon becomes clear that if he is to have any hope of stopping those plans from coming to fruition, he must forge new alliances in unexpected places—as well as embrace the terrifying magical abilities in his possession, a move he fears will make him into just the kind of man he strives against.

Release date: February 7, 2017

Publisher: DAW

Print pages: 400

Sample

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 you 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 in 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.

Bardolph, the German mancer who escaped the battle in England when Elisha saved Thomas, might have gone anywhere through the Valley of the Shadow, any place where he knew the dead and could make contact through a talisman. Had Bardolph spread word of Elisha’s coming? Elisha could not know if the mancer flagellant recognized him as one who stood against them, or merely as a sensitive magus, to be scorned for his rejection of stronger magic, but he could not wait to be sure—he had to get back to the boat. Their journey would soon diverge from the Rhine and he could not navigate to Trier and the emperor on his own.