Elisha Magus by E.C. Ambrose Read Free Book Online

The attacker lurched into motion, running, blood dripping, back down the corridor Elisha had just come from.
    “Hallo! What happened? Holy Mother!” yelped the night attendant emerging from the infirmary.
    “A man attacked us. He ran for the Great Hall—shirtless and bloody. Stop him and send help. Go, go!” Elisha shouted as he rolled the Frenchman to the floor, already stripping off his own doublet and tunic to staunch the wounds. He held the magus on his side, pressing the silk against the pulsing wounds at his back. The man’s hand groped up his arm, clinging. Elisha opened all his senses, searching for the wounds with practiced hands and the awareness of the magi. Nine blows penetrated the man’s chest. Elisha brought to bear all his anatomical knowledge, following each blow almost as if he moved with the weapon. Five thrusts cut the man’s heart as if slicing it for a feast.
    Blood gushed over Elisha’s hand, soaking the shirt. Too much, too fast. The magus’s grip tightened, burrowing into his flesh, and Elisha stilled. A burst of images sprang through the contact—a king at prayer, a witch dying, castles and towers, the king again, meeting with several others, a grand figure with a hat like an arched door, who blessed the king in a church so magnificent it dazzled the viewer. Then cold, an ebbing away. Elisha reached back, tried to cling to that fading life as he sought for the means to stop so many wounds. He urged the flesh to heal, fumbling in his pouch for the slight talisman he carried, a scrap of cloth given to him by a friend and returned to him after he had applied it in a more traditional healing. The talisman, endowed now with the strength of friendship, the urgency of his earlier need, and even the blood of the nobleman he had bandaged with it, magnified his talent. Power warmed his hands, the wounded flesh rousing, twitching to his urgency. The slashed heart gave a thump and a shudder, and blood sluiced over Elisha’s knees. The weapon must have many blades, for he swore the attacker had struck only twice. Blades in both hands? Maybe. Bare-chested? Had he imagined that? The Frenchman’s erratic heartbeat grew still, and the slight response of his own healing instinct faded, the flesh releasing all tension. A magus could be strongest in death, but even then he must live long enough to use it.
    Elisha crumpled the cloth talisman in his hands, slumping back on his heels. He had lost many on the battlefield, but at least he’d had a chance, a knowledge of what was coming, if nothing else. This …
    “Elisha.” Mordecai’s hand was on his back, and others came near.
    “A man was hiding in my chamber. He had a knife, a handful of knives—I don’t know.”
    The night attendant returned, hurrying along with a pair of servants from the Hall. “What can we do?” he called, then swallowed and stopped as he took in the scene. “Nobody covered in blood, sir, though some of ’em are sleeping without their shirts. I don’t see how he could’ve got out, but maybe through the arches, if he dodged the king’s men.”
    “Bare-chested and bloody? He’d’ve had to cross the breadth of the hall, and nobody noticed?”
    “Not so’s we’ve heard.” The attendant tipped his hands. “Anything taken, sir?”
    “I’ll check,” Mordecai said, slipping back the comforting heat of his hand to lead the attendant inside. After a moment, a candle was lit and their voices murmured.
    “That’s one of the Frenchmen,” one of the servants said.
    “The ambassador will need to be told, but the duke first.” Elisha dripped again with another man’s blood. He was careful not to wipe his face.
    “I’ll go to his Grace.” The young woman trotted off.
    “A few of the containers are missing, some expensive things,” Mordecai said. “Looks like robbery.” It would explain the clatter of the man’s emergence. Elisha searched his memory for any detail of the man’s presence, chill and cutting and angry: